FullOfIt
NaiveClueless
I consider my naivety one of my more prominent superpowers. Of course this amounts to a delusion, but a generally harmless one. I could never believe the wolf would choose to always hang just outside MY door. I learned long ago that tugging sharply upward on my shoelaces could keep a turbulence-rattled jetliner aloft. I do not always expect the best, though I strongly prefer my experience when I manage to expect something other than catastrophe lurking around the next corner. Slip over here for more ...
BlessedClueless
LostInTheDetails
I try to float above my life, looking down appreciatively if not always skeptically on the proceedings. I can get lost in the details, neglecting to peer through the screaming headlines to recognize even the more universal patterns floating within. And there seem to be universal patterns in there whenever I take the mindful time to observe. Slip over here for more ...
State: Fair-PartTwo
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State: Fair
SacredSelf-Helplessness
I spent in the Library of Congress some of my happiest hours in Washington DC, reading hundred year old religious tracts. I’d kind of backed into the literature by studying the Industrial Revolution, which led me into the fascinating world of efficiency. A hundred years ago, the Western World turned efficiency crazy, the literature resembling nothing so much as fervent evangelical pamphlets. What began as a set of engineering principles quite quickly consumed nearly every aspect of American life. It exported into Germany where it spread like dandelions, even eventually infecting the newly-hatching Soviet state, where it emerged as absurdly-detailed and ludicrously-premised Five Year Plans, which brought industrial and agricultural inefficiencies that quite nearly destroyed that fledgling economy.
The insistence that the highest, even the best purpose of every profession involves instructing others in the proper application of the religion of austerity remains a burgeoning industry even today. Slip over here for more ...
SecondOrderChangeDay
Today delineates the point where all the previous prattle manifests into a real difference, or so it so convincingly seems. But what’s really changed? Like the day before, we woke up in a different part of the universe than where we went to sleep, but unlike yesterday morning, this morning dawned on a Brand New Year! This distinction between last year and this year stems from an agreement, a conviction, a belief, rather than a physical difference, and that phenomenon alone renders this day worthy of great celebration.
Usually, when I encounter a difficulty,
Slip over here for more ...Requiem
I last spoke with Jamie nine days before he left us. In that typical rambling conversation, I confessed that I had grown weary anticipating his departure, and had simply stopped doing it. “There will be ample time,” I respectfully explained, “to grieve after you’ve gone. I’d rather celebrate your presence while you’re here.”
“I wish you would,” he replied. “I’m tied of anticipating it myself.”
There! That got said.
Now I find myself challenged to recognize that he’s gone. I’d long wondered what I would do with my morning missives once this correspondent’s receiver disappeared. Would I continue to find good reason to crawl out of bed and take to the keyboard, and what of the result? Whom would I write for? Would these become mourning missives instead?
I could see the question going either way. I might continue to celebrate life or resent death, but I doubted I could stop writing. The habit seems in me by now. My self esteem depends upon pushing or nudging or carving something out of myself every morning; more necessary than breakfast, far more essential than sleeping in. I would continue the siphon I’d started so long before, such a very short time before. Slip over here for more ...
Unbelievable
I do not just speak of the things commonly classified as unbelievable, all the Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon technology, for these represent only the extreme edge of unbelievability. I speak to even the everyday commonplace, the routine incomprehensibles like water or beer. The bush I sit beside. The composite camp chair supporting me this very moment insists upon more belief from me than the old God of Moses routinely demanded.
I might be speaking to my own, deep and abiding cluelessness. Being pretty much uneducated, I have no grounding in the science of anything, but even science seems little more than a series of explanatory stories which utterly fail to adequately explain. Unlocking the human genome might enable much progress without ever elevating the elements analyzed into anything more than the metaphors they started out being. Science might represent no more than the systematic sharing of metaphors, the doxology of which leaves the fundamental mystery intact. Slip over here for more ...
EasyBaking
Around eleven, I realized that my old and dear friend Dan would arrive in a few hours. The Muse had supposed we would just eat out, and I’d presumed something similar until I flashed on the fact that Dan’s overnight on his way to Albuquerque would be my first opportunity to make a guest supper since before we left Takoma Park, nearly two and a half months ago. How could I pass up this opportunity?
I thought perhaps short ribs, slow roasted with veg, and a passel of those ping pong ball-sized golden beets. Slip over here for more ...
Today
It’s not like I haven’t been living in increasing anticipation of today, but I feel like a virgin in a biker bar here. I’ve heard an awful lot about today, I’ve even written some more or less authoritative pieces on the subject, but never experienced a minute of it until I woke up just now. Deflection doesn’t seem to work here because there will be no tomorrow for resolution. It’s now or never. (I wonder if today will be one of those days where only hackneyed metaphors work.)
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Disappearing
The packers delight in their work as only menial laborers can. The more cerebral and physical professionals seem to lose a dimension or two when they engage. The menial laborer, the clever ones, find extra parts of themselves there. These four absolutely delightful women, two moms and their daughters, took off their shoes and got down to work. Yes, they prefer to work barefoot. Unashamedly. They engage in endless chiding, genuine laughter infuses their effort with warm meaning. While The Muse and I tried, and even took pride in how well we’d prepared for their arrival, their job entails little more than ordering our disorder, which seems to be the primary element common to all menial labor.
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Greasy
Great big gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts resulted. Schmaltz traces its heritage to that latter day variation, too. So does my kitchen. So does yours. Imagine a substance that repels water, the freaking liquid of life. Oh, it also attracts lint and odd bits of cat fur, and dirt, and the odd bug carcass. Clearly, grease ain’t looking for an invite to my table, or should not be. He doesn’t need to beg or plead for an invitation, though, because I voluntarily escort him into my kitchen, shake him up a martini, then let him have his way with me.
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TheDyingMan
The philosophers insist that birth is the primary cause of death among all living beings
Slip over here for more ...PureSchmaltz-ALS-Bucket-Challenge
I take a cold shower every day, more than one daily in the steamy summertime. I've long done this even in winter to remind me that this life isn't just comprised of warmth, but shocking experiences, too. They help keep me awake. Cold showers seem so same-old, same-old to me, and represent no real challenge.
Slip over here for more ...SpliceOfLife1.21-Seamless
With wallpaper, seamlessness means one cannot easily discern where the seam might be, but it’s an optical illusion; one built upon both clever design and skillful application. Look closer, though, and you won’t miss them, for they are there. Slip over here for more ...
SpiceOfLife1.20-Bi-Bye
One should never revisit the scene of any crime or blessed event, lest the witnesses implicate you. They were there. Though you might strenuously deny your presence, they’ll have you out, and your credibility should plummet. But I didn’t deny my presence, I more than implicated myself. I explicated myself, kimono wagging in even that slight breeze. I’m exposed as a principle. I have no credible defense Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.19-Purposed
Many have written, some even eloquently, about the importance of purpose. I saw a report on a recent study which suggested that people with clear purposes might live longer than those without them. And I’ve fussed plenty in my life, trying to identify The Purpose behind whatever I was intending to pursue. Of course, even in those rare instances where I could distill my aspiration into a single motivating meme, I’d stumble across better or multiple better along the way. Crossing the finish line, I would find that I’d satisfied a purpose I could not possibly have seen or appreciated before departing. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.18-Word-ing
The past month, most of my dialogues have been with myself, a delightful companion. I’ve forgotten to plug in while weeding, for instance, and found the company so delightful within my portable echo chamber, that I’ve been playing my own soundtracks and following my own, personal inquiries. I become a machine then, able to work through otherwise long hours, finishing refreshed and surprised at the aches I find lingering. My step son can’t quite comprehend how I manage to complete so much, but my secret might lie in the fact that I’m not really working when working, but chatting with myself. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.17-Paint
This is honorable work, one that discloses quite a lot about the one engaging in it. The finished product might well out-live the creator; each brush stroke potential legacy. The next one in line will know almost everything worth knowing about the previous painter of this particular surface; their patience or lack thereof, their taste, their values, their skill. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.16-SpareChange
”Okay,” I respond, “then we’ll grandpa sit today. You watch me.” And she does. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.15-UnSettled
The connections between the individual tasks take the largest toll. Wait times—for promised estimates, application forms, through the untenable hottest hours of the day—extend even the smallest tasks into tomorrow or next week. My body stiffens and aches, discouraging me from extended repeat performances, especially after a particularly productive yesterday. I see progress without feeling it. My ideals shift around tenacious realities. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.14-Learning
The Grand Other learns quite a bit every day. I understand why, by the end of the day, her mood devolves to cranky. Much of what she’s learning, she’s learning from teachers who seem unaware that they are teaching her anything. She a mynah bird and a skilled impressionist, mirroring almost everything she experiences. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.13-Progress
I believe a balance persists through each iteration of any activity, all the elements interconnected. I can shove and dig, wash and paint, curse and praise without changing this balance, for the balance persists in spite of what I might do with the intention changing anything. I can even stand back at any convenient punctuation point and note how far I’ve come without ever knowing how far I still have to go. The effort might seem over, but it is more likely infinite; endless. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.11-Hurt
I woke hurting this morning. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.10-Truth
Pure ego must need such innocence to thrive. I lost that innocence long ago, trading up or down, depending upon your perspective, for more of the other stuff. My shriveled sense of self benefits from these immersions in a four year old’s centrism, though I’m apparently unable to replicate it for myself. I remain the boss, however, in matters involving permissions, even though I know full well she’s often misrepresenting her needs. She’s teaching me to say “No!” more emphatically, but also more lovingly. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.8-Aging
My mom was in the hospital again this week, admitted for observation after a bout of unresponsiveness. Her Parkinson’s might have spitballed her. The doctors couldn’t say anything but that she seemed not nearly ill enough to admit as if her condition were treatable, and well enough to release her back to her assisted living apartment where her needs overwhelm the staff. The doctor advised that we should expect to see a fairly rapid cascading of ill effects, each of which have more or less haunted her all her adult life, but now seem to be conspiring together against her survival. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.7-Compost
I used plans from James Underwood Crockett’s Victory Garden book, what he called his Cadillac Composter. Three spaces of about a cubic yard each. The left-most for fresh material, the middle for half-done, and the right for the finished stuff; a simple, heavy wooden frame encased in chicken wire and landscaping cloth with boards stacked in milled grooves along the front. I bought a box of composting worms and started collecting every bit of organic waste I could get my mits on, but not grass clippings. Those sour the mix and are better left on the lawn, anyway. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.6-TheWorld
The World has shrunken to about the size of a familiar backyard, Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.5-HeadWork
Here, I set the alarm for four am, as if anticipating some grand performance. I sit on my brother’s patio, scanning the brightening eastern horizon with a child’s enthusiasm, and the sunrise performs entrancing magic tricks. Of course my brain’s clicking away all the while, but engaging with that world rather than disengaged with it. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.4-History
I took my sweet time the first time through, thinking I was changing for the ages, but age seems determined to convince me that nothing I do will preserver beyond a season or two. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.3-Secret
I make up stories explaining why this might be. They range from generous to scathing; each fiction. I wonder if the shame I sense might be fictional, too.
Might not a fictional joy elbow her way into this tragedy? She would be no more real than the unmentionable. She might even maintain anonymity by being unspeakable herself, but leave a palpable enlivening behind her. Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.2-Weeding
But this world tends towards weeds, which means my work here must always be at least partly composed of cleaning up and clearing out. Planting ain’t the least of it and harvesting hardly a blip on a lifetime’s radar; passing fancy. Prepping and schlepping account for much more than 90% of owning anything. Little sitting back to rest on laurels when that laurel bush really needs pruning. It will always need pruning.
Slip over here for more ...SpliceOfLife1.1-Marbles
I never did learn this guy’s name. Never thought to ask. I secretly labeled him Demosthenes because he spoke as if he had a mouth full of marbles. Sounded like Amarillo, Texas to me, though he claimed to live in Arkansas; well, Ar-Can-sawr. I later learned that his father hailed from West Texas. My ear’s getting better Slip over here for more ...
SpliceOfLife1.0-Departure
I suppose some people might find the opportunity to be born in the right place and the right time and never have to migrate from there, but I suspect their number continually shrinks. Most, it seems, come from somewhere else, and whether that place was heaven or hell, the gradient between then and now requires some splicing together. The exile perspective presumes no splicing, though I’m uncertain if unspliced could ever be real. Slip over here for more ...
HardWeek
This idea probably steps over that dreaded line, well into severely bad taste territory, but I’ve had a hard week. Sardonic humor helps. Sometimes. Slip over here for more ...
AttentionSpanner
I seem easily distracted. This declaration weighs in at the rough equivalent of ‘I seem remarkably human,’ and serves as no real distinction at all. The advertisers understand and exploit this universal human trait. The supermarket surrounds me with so much visual stimulus that I lose all awareness of what I take in. My brain devolving into a mush of subliminally suggested memes, I try hard to shop on the periphery, lest the deep, dark corridors between completely subsume by intentions and free will.
Slip over here for more ...SocialFracking
I unfriend chronic SocialFrackers (colloquially referred to as simply “frackers”) because they distract me from the business at hand. They engage like under-recognized precocious children; smart-mouthed, dumb-assed, understandably unappreciated. They seem to wear their grudge on their shoulder, proudly, as if a spangly epallette. They suck all the civility out of discourse. My life’s way too short to let them hang around for long.
Slip over here for more ...Writing
Writing doesn’t pay much of anything, and it’s tedious, lonely work. There is a trade aspect to it, but that seems convoluted enough to prevent most people from entering it. Some writers have agents who take care of the business end of the business. I have an editor or two who welcome anything I submit.
Slip over here for more ...Scale
He spent the next two days working out how that might happen, or, more properly, utterly failing to work out how that might happen. Finally, in some frustration, he figured out something. The answer, the definitive answer to her question just had to be no. He answered her question, so why did he feel as though he’d failed?
Slip over here for more ...TheLastStorm
The Last Storm brings a touch of nostalgia with it. I’m always on alert when the Weather Service issues a Storm Watch. I become, well, watchful, I guess, anticipating the morning’s shoveling duties, making sure the long underwear’s laid out, double checking the old boots and the supply of ice melt. I triple check the larder lest I find myself without milk, beer, or fresh salad greens, the three primary food groups of this transition season.
Slip over here for more ...Sprung
I was worried that the capricious weather might freeze out the earliest flowers, but they seemed to have thermostats telling them to close up tight, and I can see no damage as they open up wide again. They were extra eager to bloom this March. The moment that last deep snowfall melted off, up they came and more than welcome they were, too.
Slip over here for more ...Be-Longing
I might be a member of that group with a perpetual member numbering one, but changing every day. I learned that I was supposed to be something when I grew up, but I’ve either never grown up or failed to become in spite of considerable personal and professional growth. The evolution seems incomplete.
Slip over here for more ...Difference
One of the great pitfalls involves the whole-hearted pursuit of change. This often occurs in groups, when someone whips folks into enough of a frenzy that they temporarily lose their minds, convinced that they might reasonably, for instance, change their culture. Whatever the anticipated need or the imagined benefits derived from this kind of effort, success seems slim, though this one might (I said might) be destined to become the precedent-setting first instance of successful culture changing registered in history so-far; but probably not.
Slip over here for more ...Bluster
This is nothing personal. Bluster quite naturally expands over time. Stretching any truth encourages its ever greater elasticity. Advertisements intend to persuade, not inform, though much promotional material appears informational. If it was paid for by someone expecting to recoup their outlay, I should expect that it might well say anything to separate me from my money.
Slip over here for more ...Optim-eyes
Don Henley
The End Of The Innocence
I listen to the language around me. I listen deeply. I hear insistent preference for The Fairy Tale Form, a descriptive style that might well acknowledge difficulties but also demand resolution, too, almost as if living happily ever after must be the primary purpose of any stumble. We intend this, I suppose, to encourage us. We don’t so much see as optim-eyes, subtly projecting hopes over the top of our fears. This passes as the primary coping strategy of the modern age. Slip over here for more ...
HellPing
NoComment
They seem to offer the same sort of experience as one finds observing the typical autopsy, what might have once been human, laid bare and violated. No, my nose isn’t disjointed because somebody’s comment peed on my birthday cake. Yes, my sense of propriety feels offended. Slip over here for more ...
Seven Star Three Carrot Two
probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to you,
just a senseless series of numbers which
amount to some mathematical some’ bitch.
If I told you this means sixty three,
you’d be tempted to think the less of me.
‘Cause you don’t represent yourself
by distilling essences of anything else.
You never were a mere sum of your parts,
always unimpressed with so-called smarts.
You’re one of them insolent throw-back Joes
who value ‘done’ over what anyone knows. Slip over here for more ...
The Explorer's Dilemma
Such seems The Explorer’s Dilemma. Slip over here for more ...
Fix-ating
I am rather proud of my wrench. And I’m encouraged by my many successes employing it. If I am not always the master of every difficulty, I am always the master of my toolbox.
I suppose enlightenment begins sometime after I realize that no wrench in my expansive toolbox fits the nut I’m convinced needs tightening, or when I begrudgingly accept that no nut exists for my wrenching to secure. Sure, I’ll try the vice grips and even that antique Model T spanner I found at a barn sale, but they won’t work, either. In frustration, then, wisdom might prevail.
Slip over here for more ...No Problem
Friends have published books over the last month featuring the ‘L’ word in the title, but most offered helpful follow-up advice in their subtitles. Read carefully! I’m learning to slow down and chew before I swallow, even when—especially when—that meaning was supposed to be pre-conscious.
Slip over here for more ...False Identity
After those full-immersion years of case studies, conferences, and cow-towing, I fancied myself some kind of leader. Other than getting myself chosen as the chapter head of a small student organization, I’d had little practical experience, and certainly no large-scale strategic involvement in anything. But I carried that attitude, that confident mindset that, given half a chance, my presence would improve any organization.
My first wife would ask what had happened to me, and I would respond absolutely baffled by her question. I felt on top of an expanding world, powerful in ways I had never before imagined. Sure, I worked long uncompensated hours as a management trainee, but I was working with the big dogs, ... digging, it would turn out, really big holes.
Slip over here for more ...Lost In Translating
So, my month-long challenge to catch myself translating whenever I encounter the ‘L’ word, what I’ve quite deliberately chosen to translate into ‘leaversmith,’ has rendered me a tiny bit more mindful. Of course, my newly-hatched mindfulness feels slightly crazy, like a more deliberate form of mindlessness, but I could claim the same effect from any habit-breaking practice.
Slip over here for more ...Greatness
Here, I feel obliged to start listing attributes: behaviors, habits, and actions intended to describe their greatness. Maybe I could throw in a model that cleverly summarizes the universal attributes of greatness, leader-wise. I could even subscribe to one or another theory of greatness and pontificate. My bookshelves groan under the weight of competing theories of greatness.
Slip over here for more ...Disappointment
Some of the leadership gurus explain that continuous improvement looks exactly like this, serial faceplants, slightly different every time. Maybe the same tune, but with key changes in between. Whatever, leadership slips beyond risky into certainty. Set ‘em up. knock ‘em down.
This sounds pessimistic, I know.
Slip over here for more ...Leadershiplessness
Of course I was engaging in what we introverts do so well: blurting. It’s our greatest gift and, sometimes, our very worst enemy. My moments of greatest inspiration have all come from blurting. My greatest humiliations, too. I’ve spent much of my life canned up trying to tame this wild beast. It’s usually better for me when I open my can of worms with little deliberation. Though I might appear insensitive then, at least I appear.
Slip over here for more ...The Leaversmith Challenge
No day passes without me receiving at least one exhortation to become a more effective, purposeful, confident, likable, service-oriented, or successful leader. My Twitter feed overfloweth with ‘em. Facebook apparently thrives by frequently faceplanting into ‘em. And I know I really should want to achieve all of those, if only I knew what any of them meant.
Slip over here for more ...Gun Owner Control
I don’t like ‘em. I figure if Matt Dillon insisted that anyone entering Dodge check his gun at the city limits, I’m with him. I don’t mind people owning them, just that some of the owners insist upon shooting them in public.
Slip over here for more ...My Muse
I forgive my muse her airs;
she’s simply pursuing her purpose,
pulling my head out of there.
How my head ended up inserted
down where the sun never shines
won’t help resolve the dilemma
every great writer must find.
When picking up a pen leaves me stupid,
or setting fingers to keys strikes me dumb,
I’m thankful my muse doesn’t need an excuse
to disabuse what could never become.
She’s gentle as a ton on a toenail,
thoughtful as pie in the sky,
she opens up space by gettin’ in my face,
My response, universally tongue-tied. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-71: Homefull
Homeless 0-72: Hard Reset
I’ve read enough detective novels to appreciate a plot twist. I might see one coming and still feel whip-lashed by the experience.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-28: Caretaking
Others come resplendent with history, so bright and present I wonder if there’ll be room enough for me to make any new history there.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-29: Paperwork
As the search narrows, paper appears: applications, tenancy forms, hazardous building materials warnings, credit checks, recommendation letters. Most of this blessedly occurs electronically now, but the crinkle and clutter persists. So much to specify, so very little to actually state.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-30: Third Thoughts
These days fill up with notions, first thoughts. These usually swarm around me, most prominently when I’m taking my quick, cold morning shower. Many of these turn into some piece of writing, a poem or short piece like this one. They simply appear, a few of them catch, carrying some clever twist or pleasing sound. Later, I’ll add an extra room, perhaps landscape their exterior a bit, and call them done, but I rarely second-guess those first thoughts.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-31: Thunk!
Any search means you don’t know yet, until, suddenly, you do. Or you finally think you do. Then every complication shrinks, barricades evaporate, and self esteem, whether fairly earned or not, soars. Inside the bull’s eye, feeling clever becomes the same as actually being clever.
We might have hit the lotto yesterday. In the grand game of chance, sometimes I find myself holding the right number in the right place at the right time. I can, as a result, recommend no strategy beyond sychronicity, which can’t be rigged, outsmarted, or cleverly planned for.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-32: Creaking Floorboards
A car came zooming down the alley then, and the landlord emerged, apologizing, reaching to shake my hand. The actual walk through didn’t take more than five minutes. Moving detritus everywhere. A kitchen crudely made-over, designed to look great in a photograph, laid out like a galley, a frozen encumbrance to navigation in practice. What might have once been a dining room transformed into a nook. What must have once been a living room, cut up into a way too small dining room and an equally too small living room.
A twisting stairway, two turns bottom to top, every stair screaming with every footfall.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-33: Face to Face
We’d looked at a place just around the corner from their new place when we were first searching for a home here three and a half years ago. That place had been decked out as college quarters, with huge rooms connected by remarkably narrow passages. Its most prominent feature, a spiral staircase to the second floor. The place also had a third floor, so moving anything larger than a toaster would require removing windows and winching, like they do in Amsterdam.
No, thanks.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-34: Roam, Roam On The Range
Yesterday, we drove our rented rig North into Pennsylvania to buy our canning tomatoes. There and back, we passed through a few dozen alternate universes. Shady suburban subdivisions. Rolling Maryland horse farms. Ancient, stone-foundation barns. Small towns. Small cities. Sprawl. Backroads. Freeways. Feeling homeless all the way there and back again, mentally trying on each changing venue, not knowing where we might belong. Roaming.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-35: Loose Beginnings
I read a lot of novels, most of which feature tidy endings, resolving all mysteries. There, now I know that it WAS the freaking butler all along. The story might be a roller coaster ride, but with a clean finish. Real life feels messier.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-36: Possibilities
I could stride through life if only I could sense such a rich network of possibilities every morning. My myopia might be my own worst enemy, because there’s no practical reason that I shouldn’t and couldn’t continuously renew my sense of possibility, except that I seem to have unlearned how to do it. Perhaps I outgrew this once familiar sense. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-37: Cat's Feet
We live in dog town, USA.
We watch as neighbors’ dogs drag their owners around regardless of the weather, pooping in appreciation, I guess, and indifferently leaving the mess for their owners to snag.
Dogs grow up to be eternal adolescents after an overlong babyhood. By which I mean they never seem to really grow up.
Also, chuck your typical dog. Will it land on its feet? It’s as likely to land on its head!
Being cat people, we seem to land on our feet. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-38: Prospecting
At a picnic last night, a friend demonstrated how to pan for gold. He explained how to quickly determine likely spots, sieve and winnow, and, finally, how to pan. This is one meticulous process, apt to bore anyone to death before paying off. The flecks produced in a day might sell for to a thousand bucks, but you’ll earn every penny the tedious way.I’m impressed by the difference between the myth of prospecting and the actual practice of it. The myth insists that dedication produces results. The actual practice requires more brains than brawn. Learning how to quickly determine likely spots is worth immeasurable effort; an ounce of technique seems worth more than a pound of gold.
These same principles might hold true for any sort of prospecting.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-39: Homesteading
I wonder how my ancestors reacted when after months of the most tedious traveling, they stood on the Western edge of the Blue Mountains to survey the Columbia River snaking even further Westward through bare scablands, with snow-capped peaks standing between them and the fabled Willamette Valley, the so-called Eden at the end of the Oregon Trail. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-40: The You'll
I know too well my tacit, standing-order, status-quo-preserving force. It’s passive and surprisingly aggressive, an immovable boulder straddling the middle of the road. The pushy force seems small but wily; Kokopelli—part fertility, part trickster. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-41: Sweet Breezes
I have no freaking clue how I became so fortunate to be exactly where I am today. Sweet summer breezes envelope my present, soften my past, and ennoble my immediate future. It’s my birthday and I’m in no hurry to achieve any future or abandon any past. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-42: Home of Cards
Her team was chasing the clock to complete an eight foot tall house of cards. She, the shortest team member, was balancing on a chair, placing cards on the teetering top of the structure, when another of her team members asked me, one of the workshop facilitators, if he could borrow my measuring stick to determine how close they were to finished.
That’s when her team discovered that they were trying to build an eight foot tall house of cards in a room with a seven foot ten inch high ceiling.
How did they respond? Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-43: Booster Shot
I feel my energy cohering here and I haven’t dipped a toe into the World-famous mineral springs. The sweet mid-seventies breezes fresh from my childhood seem to be reviving my immune system as if I’d gotten a booster shot for optimism. The dry air evaporates way-too-long-believed-in impossibilities. My perspective’s widening now that I’m out of those endlessly narrow, hazy hills in the East. I’ve never worn cowboy boots, but I’m for sure a Westerner, and even a temporary transplant here energizes me—tree-mendously. Slip over here for more ...
Homeless 0-44: Home Away From Home
I find more comfort knowing that my stuff is there than I feel when I’m sitting in the middle of it. I can only wear one pair of shoes, read one book, sit in one chair at any one time. My other shoes, books, and chairs become tacit possessions then, and I their absentee owner.
Slip over here for more ...Homeless 0-45: The Nose
Homeless 0-46: Identity Functioning
It’s an identity crisis. A crisis because loss of identity shakes foundations, bringing all those comfortably dozing conundrums screaming to the surface. It’s a loss of identity because we humans are deeply influenced by the context within which we live; lose the context and self seems to slip away.
This process might be healthy, like pruning a bloomed-out rose bush. For a while, the bush doesn’t look nearly as rosy. But the trim encourages new growth, producing more blooms
Slip over here for more ...Homeless-0-47: Shock and Aaaah
The law says that after five years renting out what was once a primary residence, the status of a property shifts from owner-occupied to commercial holding, and valued at the current fair market price for capital gains taxes. Some government employees stationed overseas get a pass. Our landlords don’t, because they’re ex-pats for a private company.
Unfortunate.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Thirty -Connected
Carless -Day Twenty Nine -Patience
Because this feels like a competition, we speed compulsively as if we’ll lose something if we don’t. We’re so focused upon the future we zoom right past the present, showing up late for our own funerals.
Subtract one car from this calculus and a startlingly different world emerges.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Eight -Mastery
The necessity of seeking help from masters probably qualifies as the very greatest benefit of my mechanical klutziness.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Seven -Fishin' See?
I passed right by the bike shop just around the corner because they specialize in futuristic electric bikes. They’d seen my antique before and given the kind of advice that convinced me that they didn’t have a clue about mid-century classic wheels. They’d had their chance, so I kept walking until I came to the classic bike shop and found the sign saying they’d be open again on Thursday. Dang!
I try to be careful now, but I seem to be programmed to be car-full, instead.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Six -Gridlock
I swear they could (and might) just re-run a tape of yesterday’s traffic, and the reporting would be mostly correct.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Five -Side Effects
My new bearings arrived, brand new fifty year-old parts. Now comes the greater challenge: reassembly.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Four -Judgement Day
The driver spoke a broken, mumbling dialect I could barely understand. I think he was trying to get the engine to settle down before he tried to move the vehicle, but it was coughing and bucking. When he engaged the transmission, the engine died. After motioning another car around this beached whale, I suggested that he should coast the car to the curb because it didn’t seem like it was going to be going anywhere. It was busted.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty Three -Skidoo
Carless- Day Twenty Two -Sweat Equity
The busses are walk-in refrigerators, the Metro trains, moving coolers. The streets swarm here in the dog days with people chasing their own tails, trying to generate their own breezes.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty One -Chessmate
Cars can go straight to anywhere, mostly via arterials. Busses and trains have fixed but circuitous routines. Bikers and walkers skirt the edges of bus and car territory. Getting from here to there by car entails little strategy, just take the shortest, straight-line route. The same trip by bus requires some serious plotting and planning.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty -Cardigan Desire
I figure that if I set my mind to it, I could do without most of my stuff. I suppose that I could go bookless or meatless or guitarless, perhaps even heartless for a while. Affluence stunts the imagination. Ready access to great variety sates nothing but want, and unsatisfied want might be the one necessary element for living a complete life.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Nineteen -Waning Invisibility
Carless- Day Eighteen - Crank Length
I adjusted the seat to compensate for my longer legs, making sure to find that sweet spot between over and under extension; and I think I found that spot. Still, when I started pedaling, something felt wrong. The circumference of the pedal circle seemed too short, restricted. I’d ridden bikes like this before and found them dispensing charlie horse cramps, achy knees, and sore hip joints. The only solution I’ve ever found to this difficulty has been to not ride those bikes.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Seventeen -Good Neighbor
”Hey,” he continued, “if you need a lift anywhere for a beer run or to look at a place, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m just hanging around here.”
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Sixteen -Father of Convention
For most men of my age, though, this marketing ploy stuck. I’d no more ride a “girl’s” bike than wear her skirt, and this little stigma strikes me as simply silly.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Fifteen -Troll Shoulders
Carless- Day Fourteen -Alley Cat
Between the first and second place, though, I discovered a neighborhood with alleys. I felt transported back to my childhood, when I mostly travelled by alleyway. The town I grew up in featured extensive networks of secret passages and little-known shortcuts, and I knew every danged one of ‘em. It was as if the thoughtful city planners had created a shadow street grid, perfect for a ten year old’s needs. Slip over here for more ...
Carless- Day Thirteen -Musings Mysterious
I’ve owned four cars. I’d hoped each would be my last. I drove ‘em until they were essentially undrive-able, abandoning them only after they’d abandoned me. I replaced each reluctantly, not wholly convinced that I really needed to replace any of them. I have experienced carless times before.
I have the same relationship with cars that I have with power tools. I’ve never really felt competent to operate either. Slip over here for more ...
Carless- Day Twelve -Dweeb On Wheels
When we decided to go carless, Amy asked if I needed a new bike as we waited at the bike shop while her twelve speed got a check-up. I admit that I was attracted to a fine, new ten speed, and almost saw myself sinuous and slick, a ‘real’ urban biker, but I demurred. “Nope,” I replied, “the one I’ve got seems to be working fine.”
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Eleven -The Missing Tooth
Now, the haunt seems over. It’s been about a week since I caught myself thinking that I’d just hop in the car.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Ten -Lost and Found
Carless turns out to be one of those something’s missing dilemmas. In this class of conundrum, the important lessons emerge. I couldn’t usefully learn this stuff without personally experiencing it. This ain’t a thought experiment, but an existential one.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Nine -Zip 'e De Do Car
So begins the confirmation ZipCar sent when I reserved my first one. No, the experience wasn’t even a little bit like a first date. Neither nervous nor particularly excited, I learned that I should have reserved a car more than an hour in advance, though the technology certainly enables me to reserve a car almost the moment I need one. Almost, because there’s always the possibility that there are no cars available at that precise moment, which is what I found. I imagined that I’d just saunter over to the neighborhood lot and hop into a zippy car. Instead, I fast walked four blocks to hop a Saturday bus which dropped me nearish to an alternate Zipcar lot, where I secured my wheels
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Eight -Not Hovering
Carless- Day Seven -Good For
I’m adopting the strategy I employed when we found this place. A car’s no advantage when scoping out neighborhoods. I need to walk around to see what a neighborhood’s like; driving-by can’t tell me nearly as much as can the people I meet on the street.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Six -Wits End
I might not have chosen this satisfaction had the old car been handy. I wouldn’t have complained about a fresh loaf of bread. I might have ‘needed’ something from the hardware store. But the slight inconvenience of needing to plan the outing was plenty enough barrier to prevent me from such distractions. I chose to face my own demons in the relative discomfort of my keyboard, instead. Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day Five -OutSmart
Carless-Day Four -Fare Trade
“Can you run up to my office and find a writing tablet for me?” she asked, winding a computer cable.
“Where are they hidden?”
“Just under the printer.”
I slipped upstairs, found one, then hopped back down to hand it to her.
“Thanks.”
I’m very sensitive to time when leaving on a trip. Amy’s event horizon works differently. She’s ready when she’s ready. This morning she would leave about five minutes before she’d ordered the taxi to arrive; unusual punctuality, probably a fluke. I schlepped her bag down the front walk, handing it to the cabbie. Amy and I smooched and hugged, then she disappeared into the cab and the cab evaporated into the hazy morning.
Slip over here for more ...Carless-Day Three -Shifting Gears
We rode bikes instead of hoofing it to the farmers’ market yesterday morning. I asked and Amy said she was game, so I pulled out from the back corner of the garage her 1976 Schwinn Varsity twelve speed, pumped up the tires, and brushed away the accumulated cobwebs and cat fur.
Amy doesn’t ride her bike much. And, as we started out, she struggled to shift gears. My bike has only one gear, so I was a half block ahead of her before I noticed she was fretting. She closed the gap, though, and we continued up through the complicated intersection, where she pulled off onto the sidewalk, clearly frustrated. Gears still not meshing properly. She gamely remounted and we coasted into downtown, to the small bike shop there. Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day One -Taking Credit
The *real* reason has more to do with financial than environmental security. Slip over here for more ...
New Shoes
fresh out of the box today,
they’ll smell like something I’m proud to say
belongs to me, for a few days, anyway.
My old shoes
fit like they were a part of me.
Though they couldn’t hold the shine I’d used to see;
I could not believe when they’d started to leak.
So I bought new shoes,
Though the old style’s discontinued now,
I found something close to my familiar style,
I’m not yet sure these’ll really work in the long run, still,
Time’ll tell.
It’s a new year,
foisted from some midnight haze;
they tell me it’s the end of the good old days,
I knew so well. I say, “Oh Hell, I know
It’s like new shoes.
An alien presence for a time,
but soon even these will loose their shine
and that curious smell, and I will come to know them as well
as my old ones.
Training Wheels
Learning to ride a bicycle might be the perfect training for life. It teaches the same lesson we each encounter when learning to walk, but were too small to retain. Both teach the clear distinction between balance and balancing, which might be trying to impart some acknowledgement of the much more significant difference between being and becoming.
We ask our children just what we were asked as children: “What do you want to
be when you grow up?” Well-intended but none-the-less insidious, our question begs an unfortunate response. They’ll have to choose. They’ll aspire, then, to a notional state their earliest life lesson might have clearly demonstrated couldn’t exist.At sixty, I’ve almost discarded the notion that I might be something when I finally grow up. I’m still wondering when my growing might slow enough that I might reasonably declare myself grown. But then I consider what might follow this curious achievement.
Slip over here for more ...Synchronicity- The Movie Made Just For Me
This seems enough of a not-everyday experience that I feel especially blessed whenever I encounter it. I’m reasonably certain that I cannot, by mere volition or will, force it to occur. Perhaps I’m subtly letting go whenever this movie-like magic appears, unconsciously stepping aside from standing in my own path. How could I know?
I do know that a certain openness seems to surround me these days, as if my molecules had elbow room; space for the unexpected to nudge into play. I’m getting better at going with these surprising flows, acknowledging their presence, accepting their utility, and leveraging their possibilities.
Slip over here for more ...Gravity and Levity
I questioned that my grandfather, who I remember as a grizzled coot with nicotine-stained fingertips and emphysema-thickened chuckle, ever was a boy, though he had a mile-wide mischievous streak and an unrelenting glint in his eye. His sixth grade school photo shows a barefoot Tom Sawyer look-alike, and I’m certain that he never fully out-grew those patched overalls and that soup bowl haircut.
Slip over here for more ...Ganging Agley
But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
Robert Burns, To A Mouse
Life seems curiously analogous to a thirteen year old, fully capable of intruding upon her self; setting off on one certain trajectory only to ricochet onto another, then another, then yet another. I don’t know who proposed that plans should ‘turn out,’ but their’s was one short-sighted, perhaps naive idea. Though most otherwise sentient adults insist that success involves manifesting aspirations into actualities, this occurs so rarely that lady luck gives better odds. Might as well ‘invest’ in the lottery. Slip over here for more ...
Her Why-ness
who tried to understand
Every mysterious wonderment
which fell into her hand.
She started with the obvious,
wondering who? and where?,
then annoyed both friends and family
with her insistent whats? and whens?
Even mere acquaintances wondered where her questions would end.
But this whoman didn’t stop her quest—she continued to carry on—
flinging about her question marks until most of her friends were gone.
And still she posed her questions, inquisitive through and through,
until she bumped into the questions nobody ever gets through.
Not even kings and princesses have ever gained much ground
following the promising breadcrumb trail our curious whoman found. Slip over here for more ...
Leaning Into It
Anticipatory Living
I remember debating with myself: to jog or not to jog. I’d had a roommate who jogged. He’d also played Pop Warner and high school football and even won a football scholarship, but blew out his knee, so he became a journalism major—covering sports. I tagged along with him once while he followed the UW golf team around a course. Aside from the mushrooms I found along the way, it was a most remarkably boring afternoon for me, though my roommate seemed endlessly interested in whatever might happen next.
It seemed that he was mostly living in the future, finding his energy in looking ahead. He seemed to do this when jogging, too.
My final answer to the Deal Or No Deal jogging question: No Deal! It was just too mind-numbingly boring. I took up stationary bike riding, which would have been equally mind-numbing had it not been for the book stand over the handlebars. I could read, which I never find boring, while engaging in unavoidably boring repetitive motion.
I called my bike-riding ‘leaning into it,’ because that was the sensation I felt when poised on that machine. I was certainly not making forward progress, but I was definitely leaning into it. I found the exercise refreshing and the leaning into it strangely rewarding. I began to understand why people jog. It’s an extreme leaning into it; they are chasing their future.
Slip over here for more ...Voice
Remember the first time you heard your recorded voice played back to you? I’ll never forget when I first heard mine. I’d always been a little more than a bit of a ham, mugging for some invisible microphone. Thinking in my mind’s ear that I must sound pretty gol-derned clever. That first playback in a fourth grade music class took my breath away, and not in any good way.My played-back voice sounded nothing like the beautifully-modulated murmur I’d imagined. I sounded like Jerry Lewis imitating Donald Duck.
On The Lam
Just about done
with this bleating winter sun.
I’ve wearied waiting for her engraved invitation to leave.
Barn-bound till today, I’m out here to see some green
peeking through the snowpack back at me.
I’m bound
to butt my head until it’s found,
The stinging Springtime snow has no idea
what she’s found herself up against this time.
I figure if she won’t cede my feed,
I’ll just up and take what I know is mine!
On The Lam,
Forgettin’ my high-handed fantasies!
I won’t ever understand,
So I’ll just accept what grace I already have at hand.
Without any firm permission,
I’m committing to the life of co-mmission!
Tell the sheepdogs I’m off in some new direction,
I’m On The Lam.
And it’s already begun,
Her Icy fingers lose their hold,
Though the bleary old status quo told me otherwise.
Me, I’m believing my own two eyes!
I’m reneging on the compromise that held me here;
Now, I get to be my own surprise!
I’m On The Lam!
On The Lam,
Forgettin’ my high-handed fantasies!
I won’t ever understand,
So I’ll just accept what grace I already have at hand.
Without any firm permission,
I’m committing to the life of co-mmission!
I’m gamboling off in some new direction,
I’m On The Lam.
02/06/2011- Lamb Lookin’ Sunday
Telephoney-Part Two
Now we have cell phone stores. They combine the worst of Radio Shack with the very worst of automobile dealerships to produce perhaps the bleakest shopping experience anyone's ever devised. Shopping for a new kidney couldn't help but seem refreshing in comparison.
The modern cell phone 'provider' offers 'plans' comprised of various combinations of damned whatever you do choices, and an array of actual telephones which, by the way, sometimes even involve telephony, though they much more prominently feature MP3 player, camera, GPS, and web-accessing technologies. Even the lowliest offerings tout ring tones more than usability, and the highest-end feature a dizzying library of 'apps,' which seem to be little more than opportunities to turn the ...ahem... telephone into a terribly expensive video game unit. "Hello? I'd like to place a telephone call." Fergetaboutit! Slip over here for more ...
Telephoney-Part One
My current phone is a bit more than two years old, a pocketknife-sized Samsung Jazz, so old now that Google can't find any evidence that it ever existed. Just as well. If I was Samsung, I'd deny any association to the damned thing, too.
I acquired it at the same time Amy got her first Blackberry, which is a machine so damned complicated that I still can't pick up an incoming call on it for her. She swims the breadth of the web on the little thing. For me, it has all the technological sophistication of an under-sized paperweight with a particularly crude and unusable user interface. Great for some but they forgot to provide access for the rest of us. Slip over here for more ...
Windsock Nation
It started with the budding Harris Organization incorrectly predicting that Thomas Dewey would beat Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential Election. Lord knows where it will end. Americans love pollsters. It’s unthinkable to imagine a representative who does not query the community to determine what s/he should do. We’ve become a windsock nation. Slip over here for more ...
The Tickle Point (continued)
This insight returned yesterday, when I attended a meeting with a bunch of Russell Ackoff Systems Thinking people. Since Systems Thinking has never hit the mainstream... most organizations still cling to reductionist dominion tactics when trying to resolve difficulties (or, as they say, 'solve problems'), ...the Systems Thinkers feel marginalized. Rather like feathers.
This was a meeting of the club of people who never join clubs, so many felt isolated, misunderstood, out of community.
Slip over here for more ...Statesmanship
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me first of all thank my great friend from Montana, Senator
Baucus. We arrived in the Congress of the United States together on the same day, back about 35 years ago. We have been friends for 35 years. We arrived in the Senate at different times. He got here a little before me. We have been in this institution for 30 years. I cannot describe in the limited time I have what a difference he has made--the fact we are here debating, finally, the last piece of this legislative effort to give the Americans what they have sought for more than a century, and that is the basic right to health care.I always found it somewhat ironic in a way that we in this country provide for those accused of criminal offenses the right to a lawyer, the right to an attorney. I believe in that. I think it is correct. But isn't it somewhat ironic that the same country that would provide you with a right to a lawyer if you are charged with a criminal defense cannot provide you with a doctor if your child is sick? There is something fundamentally wrong with that, in my view.
Slip over here for more ...Eat To Excess
I do not can asparagus. Or freeze it for later. After its short season leaves, I’m on to whatever’s in season next. This practice ensures variety, which I agree is the essential spice of the good life. Though I admit, by the end of any season, I’m fairly sick of whatever was in season. Until next year.
Slip over here for more ...Barely Legal Seafood
A Cook's Book
I am not a chef. I am a cook. And a pot wizard. And a cheap-assed shopper.
I do not wear a toque. I only occasionally wear an apron. My knives need sharpening. They were not imported from Germany.
My cookware does not match. I have way more Corningware than I will ever use, purchased for next to nothing at an old family friend’s estate sale. It holds more meaning than utility.
My favorite cast iron fry pan has a crack in the bottom of it, but I cannot bear to replace it. I found it in the oven of the old gas cookstove in that crummy apartment I moved into when my first wife and I separated. It, however, holds more utility than meaning, though it holds a lot of meaning, too.
I am a picky eater. Slip over here for more ...
Integration: Symmetry
Changing the whole idea of change has occurred a few times in the history of science. Transcendent moments where some quiet, previously undiscovered truth emerged from an unlikely place. Those who were trudging the straight and narrow were surprised, often angry. Several of these game-changing insights were not accepted or even recognized until their discoverer was long gone.
Slip over here for more ...Integration: The Essential Milling Around Period
Where does integration start? This is a mostly meaningless question, but rather than simply walk away from it, I'll expound a tiny bit. Integration isn't a step-wise, serial process. I know, I know, step-wise seriality has become the popular method for describing everything, and while I could slip into that worn groove, I'll choose not to. If only because that groove misrepresents integration. It just ain't like that.
I believe that we miss many opportunities to integrate because we don't see them. Primed for one or another 'first step,' when we don't see that step appearing, we get discouraged, even to the point of convincing ourselves that integration is obviously not possible here, at this time, with THEM! So I'll explicitly dismiss the serial, step-wise recipe for integration in favor of a less misrepresenting form. Slip over here for more ...
Disintegration
Disintegration is the father of integration, as well as its first born child. Slip over here for more ...
Integration
The first principle of integration seems to be that the story I create to explain the integration might not make sense to anyone but me. You just had to be there at the 'point of integration' for the story to provide full impact, to experience that ah-ha instant. I got to experience it first hand. My story is inevitably used goods. What's well integrated for me might not seem very well combined to you. Slip over here for more ...
Defining Failure
I entered the seventh grade a successful student. In grade school, I had lived among the top tier of students, participating in an array of extracurricular activities. I played a decent (though never distinguished) second chair clarinet, squaredanced, Cub Scouted, and ran my own paper route. I’d written and produced a play in my fifth grade class for scholastic achievers, and even conquered the dreaded long division. I left grade school college bound. By the end of my first term in junior high school, I was certain that college would be beyond my reach.
What happened?
Slip over here for more ...DC United
Grandma Unplugged
Most of medicare funding is spent 'plugging in grandma,' when grandma ain't going anywhere. While I can appreciate the pain and the trauma associated with unplugging her, I'm baffled at the mindset that decided to plug her in ... in the first place.
Our time here is short, and not improved by artificial extension. If life is sacred, so, then, should be death. The secular death caused by the eventual collapse of artificially-prolonged life is crueler. It does not lesson the grief, and poisons the memory.
Don't debate about unplugging grandma, consider not plugging her in ... in the first place.
Writing Songs
The words or the music, melody or message?
And I always feel dismayed by their innocence,
embarrassed that I cannot coherently reply.
For neither come first, and neither come last
and how either come into being,
nothing but a persistent mystery, even to me. Slip over here for more ...
Rationing Health Care
My complaint centers around the irrational way we presently choose the haves and the have-nots.
What would rationally-derived health care rationing look like? Here are some ideas. Slip over here for more ...
Who Is Your Daddy?
Father is the painting of a blue house green. Father lives on the other side of the sky. Father is a cloudy day with sun. Father is an email, a phone call. Father is paperwork and publishers. Father is books and drives in the country. Father is fireplaces and snow. Father is the ocean I swim in. Father is a cascades volcano, a skyscraper. Father is large and powerful. Father is a bold line across a blank page. Father is a bowl of pasta, an arugula salad, a Christmas goose. Father is a day in June. A long day, where the sun shines almost till midnight.
Love,
Heidi
©2009 by Heidi Astrid Schmaltz, all rights reservedTaking Stock
Perfect until it came time to store our wonderful finds. This little apartment doesn't have a root cellar or an auxiliary beer fridge in the garage, not even a garage. It was time to clean out the also-rans. Time to make stock.
Slip over here for more ...The Dead Fish
Can you explain the scientific reason why?
Sweet Dreams
Crash is mostly sociable. He seems pleased whenever either one of us returns, but also crying plaintively as if mourning. I've taken to offering a few kitty treats when I return, which, I know!, encourages infantile behavior. I scratch heads and switch out their water bowl for some cold water from the filter pitcher from the fridge. I don't expect them to drink the musty tap water here either.
Slip over here for more ...Maps
If only every map-maker was this thoughtful. It seems to me that every map suffers from the same shortcoming as Prague's. Whether it's a hastily-drawn scribble intended to guide someone to the neighborhood deli or some laminated intended-to-be permanent portrait of a city's streets, it's wrong, and wrong in some indefinable but none-the-less situationally significant aspect. The value of each incorrect projection ultimately depends upon the perspective of the user, not the accuracy of the map.
And there's no better perspective for any map user than the one reminding themselves that the guide they are following is wrong in some indefinable way. This to avoid over-dependence and to help each remain open to accepting the unavoidable misunderstandings encountered when following any map.
Slip over here for more ...Chops
And we know when it's present and when it isn't.
This has nothing much to do with following the score and everything to do with satisfying, even exceeding the audience's highest expectations. This is not schlock improv, nor is it simply showing off. It's more like really showing up.
Slip over here for more ...Paper, Scissors, Stone
by Tom WaymanAn executive's salary for working with paper
beats the wage in a metal shop operating shears
which beats what a gardener earns arranging stone.
But the pay for a surgeon's use of scissors
is larger than that of a heavy equipment driver removing stone
which in turn beats a secretary's cheque for handling paper.
Completed over here:
LinkThe White Collar Recession
Second Order Change
I take a break from the Covenant series today to reflect on change. I know, I know, change has been so done, we're sick to death of it. The endless strategies for inducing it, for enforcing it, for managing it. But today, I want to reflect on a different kind of change. Second Order Change.
Some background: Google Second Order Change and you'll get something like 132 million hits, most of the resulting links guide you to indecipherable pages.
(One notable exception here.) Bergquist knows his stuff, but few seem to be able to explain, describe, or coherently define second order change.Let me add to that body of obfuscation!
Slip over here for more ...Inspiration
Certain something’s not the matter!
Still, lethargic, dragging heels,
Don’t dare ask how this one feels!
Me, I’ve tried—maybe not THAT hard—
to build my tenuous house of cards
with rains and winds, my chief assistants,
confused if this defines what isn’t.
Me, I’m dangling from bare threads,
turning on nonexistent treads,
hatless here on weathered ground,
mere threadbare glove without a hand.
The Illicit Smell ...
I remember most warmly an Updike story the New Yorker published in the eighties. In it, he described a New England weekend trip. Several apparently successful couples sharing a large country house. In the morning, he captured the tenuous space between the professional and the deeply personal by describing how, in spite of every doctor's best advice (at least one of these vacationers was, I seem to remember, a doctor), the house was filled with the illicit smell of bacon. Slip over here for more ...
Crime Scene
Five and a half years ago, when the departing administration was, it turns out, just getting started, I traveled to Washington DC to do some research in the Library of Congress. The purpose of that trip, it turns out, was not the library research, but something else. Call it a full immersion experience. I post this story here today in remembrance of those days and in deep gratitude for the days to follow. However we traveled, we ended up here! Cheers! Slip over here for more ...
Good Citizenship
Eighty Six
Today would have been my father's 86th birthday. The first one I've ever known him to miss. But then he 86ed in September.
I've been working to clean out the old family place these last few weeks. Organizing for an uncertain future. I honor his memory today and the context he created, and the one I'll leave behind. Slip over here for more ...
Hold On Tight
There's probably no better way to undermine the present than to stick your head far into the future. Time spent focusing upon there is necessarily time spent not being present here. We live only in the present. Slip over here for more ...
The Dismal Science
MnM
Election Day
Throw Out Da Bums!
Once? You tried it once? Then concluded that it never would work?
Well, it wasn't just them saying this, I've said it myself.
What happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"
Not in the modern corporation, thank yew. Not in my backyard, either. There, the phrase is , "if at first you don't succeed, you've failed." Utterly. Supported by, "We tried that once and it didn't work."
Slip over here for more ...Brush Up Your Shakespeare!
We were doing an extended engagement in NYC a few years ago and, as we often do when working there, we played what we call Broadway Roulette. Show up at Duffy Square a half hour before curtain time and see what tickets are left, buy a couple and head off to a show. We happened one evening on the revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and were delighted. This one piece (in the above YouTube video), where two hoodlums, backstage to shakedown the male lead for gambling debts "accidently" wander on stage during a performance, was the highlight of the show for me, because it reminded me that whatever truth we might nudge out at the client's shop, we needed to respect their traditions, or, more to the point, Brush Up Our Shakespeare. Slip over here for more ...
The Price Of Gas ... ...
The Last Day of Summer
Rain had slipped in overnight, soaking the half-scraped wall
But I still tacked the tarpaulins over the coldframe and
climbed that clammy scaffolding to stand and scrape and sand.
It was Easter when we'd moved the poles and bracing down the wall
and all through May I watched each day usher in the fall.
For I was working some other walls while this one stood half-scraped
Though I hoped I could get back to here before this summer escaped
Almost Down To Sturm and Back
I delivered this eulogy for my father today:
My father was a gentleman,A gentle man.
A Republican.
He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
He was a soft touch;
He loaned much but borrowed little.
My father was a noble man,
A nobleman,
An able man.
He wasn’t handy, but he
He persevered much
And gave so freely, he seemed rich. Slip over here for more ...
Mantis
The evening before my dad died, a praying Mantis landed on the front screen door. Mother recalled that a mantis takes up temporary residence on that porch this time every year. Slip over here for more ...
Life Intruding On My Plans
Bob was born January 15, 1923 in Mt. Angel, Oregon, to Nicholas D. Schmaltz and Caroline P. Bounds. He was raised in Mt. Angel, Scotts Mills, Yachats and Waldport, Oregon, attending Waldport High School. He married Bonnie M. Wallace on October 28, 1945 in Condon, Oregon, where he served with the volunteer fire department, played on the town baseball team, worked with the county road crew, and began his long career with the US Postal Service. Bob moved his family to Walla Walla in 1952, continuing his Postal Service career, retiring in 1978 after 30 years service. Bob and Bonnie raised five children in their Pleasant Street home. After retirement, Bob and Bonnie traveled the country in their motor home, visiting family and friends until ill health intervened.
Bob was an avid reader, enthusiastic baseball fan, resonant singer, and quiet-spoken storyteller. Bob was a member of the Central Christian Church and the local Parkinson's Support Group. He was the primary caregiver for Bonnie for the last fifteen years.
Slip over here for more ...Peg-legging
This will be a brief, peg-legged posting. I have been peg-legging for some time, working around a curious feature. A few weeks ago, my space bar and delete key started working intermittently. Just here and there would I noticethatwhatIhadjusttypedcameoutasonevery,verylongword. Wait a minute or two, and the problem would fix itself. Slip over here for more ...
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