Ants that Bite, Ants that Don't

We walked to school when I was a kid; Mom said goodbye at the front door and the bunch of us could make it safely the several blocks to school to be met by the crossing guard every schoolday. As we closed the gate, my mom would always call after us, "Don't let anybody look at you crosseyed!" We knew what that meant even though we didn't know what it meant.

There were usually the four us us and the three of Todd's family, but by the time Todd and I got into fourth grade sometimes the grouping was different - changing schools for the older kids, altered start schedules on special days, I'm not sure, but occasionally the two of us were left to get each other to school - or maybe we lagged behind doddling too often and the bigger kids assumed we were following. Nothing bad happens in this story, you can relax.

This cool early fall morning, it was just Todd and me. We'd come to the vacant lot with the tall dry yellow grass. It was a good place to find examples of the ants we'd been talking about earlier while sailing big ficus leaves, with red berries in them, down the gutter water, singing the Gilligan's Island theme and making up stories about the Skipper fighting with Gilligan and the Professor solving problems. (Todd's Mr. Howell was superb.)

Red ants bite, black ants don't bite. No, all ants bite. No, only red ants do. Why would their biting be determined by color? Here was the vacant lot. It didn't take Todd long to find a nice crack in the soil with red ants, big red ants, industrializing their way in and out of the crack.

He squatted down and let one crawl onto his hand though I kept telling him he didn't need to prove red ants bit so much as prove black ones didn't. But we were ten and the ants available were the big red ones. The ant explored his palm and he turned his hand as the ant went over his fingers. Todd was no dummy, he had just fallen under the spell of, "Maybe all ants don't bite and maybe I've misjudged these big red ones..." Todd turned his palm up again as the ant found the thin fold between index finger and thumb.

THEY BITE!

We shook it off and I apologized as if I'd bitten him. We walked on. He winced that it didn't hurt. We put our attention on the route to school.

The crossing guard was gone.

She had taught us well, and we crossed the boulevard practicing "Safety First!" like champs.

We went through the gate onto the schoolyard.

No one was there.

No children on the playground running, no rhyming at the drinking fountain and spitting - jumping-back dodging water spew from the rougher kids, no jumping rope, no kids on the bench at the side of the building sneaking into their brown bag lunches. Quiet school. No girls brushing each other's hair. Empty school.

Todd and I, with a feeling of sudden Saturday tried to wrap our minds around this vacant schoolyard. Where the - ? Could we be late? We'd only stopped a couple of minutes. Could we be late? We hadn't played around that long.

Maybe we were late.

We had classrooms across the hall from each other in the new building. We went up the stairs and into the classrooms, ducking our heads in a little goodbye as we opened our classroom doors. I went to my desk and sat down. The the teacher didn't point me out or make a fuss, she just let me start working with the other children and gave me a little smile of admonishment and welcome in perfect balance. I doodled ants that day - a big red ant and little black ant.

A Lyric to Earle Hagen

"LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Earle H. Hagen... [who] ...composed memorable themes for 'The Andy Griffith Show,' 'I Spy,' 'The Mod Squad' and other TV shows, died Monday. He was 88.

"'The music just flowed from him,' wife Laura said of composer Earle Hagen.

"Hagen, who is heard whistling the folksy tune for 'The Andy Griffith Show,' died at his home in Rancho Mirage, his wife, Laura, said Tuesday. He had been in ill health for several months...

"...For television, he composed original music for more than 3,000 episodes, pilots and TV movies, including theme songs for 'That Girl,' 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' and 'Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.' . . .

"'He loved it,' his wife said. 'The music just flowed from him, and he would take off one hat and put on another and go on to the next show.'..."

A Lyric to Earle Hagen

A fair lifespan musically wonderfully spent.
How oft' we have each,
walking down a hallway or strolling down a lane,
driving a happy road
or perhaps washing dishes,
pursed lips and blown breaths
precisely as he did that time -
that time he whistled into a mic,
and made us all picture for years to come
and maybe forever
the day and the lake
on a backlot in the
San Fernando Valley
and the boy who would grow up
to be a favorite director
as the young child character Opie
throwing a stone
into the water as his pa
proudly looked on;
and we,
quietly inside our future memories,
just kinda figured
the whistler
was Andy.

* * *
JohnLa offers this lyric:

Whistle loud
Whistle long
I always liked to whistle
That song

The Human Expression

Ze Frank asked for this on his blog today. I liked what I wrote, so I'm putting it here, too:

Ze: would love your story
i am interested in a particular memory: the uncomfortable moment when you first see your parent (mother or father) as being weak...being human. could you describe that moment? and tell me how old you were.

Me:
My dad was planting a rosebush in the backyard for my mom. I got to go watch him. I was small enough to be up to his shoulder when he was squatting down. The rosebush was potted in a metal can, and he cut the can with pruning shears to split it open to get the rosebush out.

As he maneuvered the plant and pot to release the plant, the metal can cut his left hand between the thumb and forefinger. I had never heard the "S" word before but I understood right away what it was for. I can still hear it the way he said it - a primal "S" word, no time to think about who might be standing nearby.

He put his hand to his mouth and spit an arc of blood to the grass behind him. The afternoon sun caught highlights of red and yellow orange against the backdrop of green lawn. He was wearing a black plaid shirt he wore a lot in those days. I waited silent a moment then asked if he was okay and he said, "yes," and kept planting, "sorry about the cursing."

What happened to the moment next falls into imagination. Did I go get my mom? Did he go treat the wound? Did she come out and ask what happened?

I still see the sunlit arc of blood and spit and green grass and still sense the toddler's insight that Daddy is one of us.

Making it Up as We Go

"Planning" is the ability to apply hindsight to the future.

Remover of Obstacles

This is Ganesh. He is the remover of obstacles. I bought this one at Target. He was made to look ancient, rustic, carved from stone, dug from the depths. He was all one color. This didn't sit right with me, so I went to the cabinet, moved a couple things out of the way, took out my paints and brushes, and painted him as I imagined he would have looked when he was new, had he really been old.

He is happier. So am I.

Gracious Grand or Tight Fisted Hand?

If you commit to kindness and compassion you can always escape to a larger perspective.

If you commit to being rotten and mean your world becomes ever more constricting.

Dharma of the Dachshund

The Catholics' Fair

The Catholics had a fair last night.

I know, because I was there alright.

I did not try the carney-rigged rides

(to spare losing the contents within my insides).

The rides held up fine, there was laughter and ease

complemented supremely by a cool evening breeze.

The Catholics raised money in honor of the saints.

All the revelers seemed happy; I heard no complaints.

As I entered the venue, a priest said hello.

Though I'd never met him, he was among those I know.

Sure there's a fatherly quality about his profession,

(I wonder if he knew it's been a while since confession).

Paradox Cove

The beaches of Northern Los Angeles county face south. Back when I was a teenager and tanning was good for you, this was perfection because you could lay out facing the water all day and get evenly tanned as the sun arced across the sky.

Locals know that on this part of the coastline, east is also south, and west is synonymous with north. Note to travellers in the San Fernando Valley on the US 101: Need to go north? Go west. Need to go south? Head east! (But if you're on the five, north is north. Careful. That one goes to Sacramento.)

North of Malibu and south of Point Dume there is a pretty little cove that was once paradise. Guarded from the big swells by the point, the water is calmer, the shelf is longer, the wading is easier and the wave knock-down potential is far smaller. You can see the sun rise over Santa Monica and, after a day of swimming and running and playing and tide pool discoveries, watch the sun dip down behind Point Dume and cast beautiful colors on the sky and water before darkness brings out the bright blue stars and deep hopefulness.

That's how nature made Paradox Cove, but that's not so much how it is anymore. Now there's a big restaurant with lots of gluttonous tourists who are not looking at the sea. They are looking at food, and plenty of it.

A "beach bum" nostalgia theme reckons to keep the eroding forces of the masses at bay. The decor is amended with ye olde broken downe ship parts, and black and white photos of the secluded beach that once was. But memories of paradise have been replaced by wait staff in uniform. They are unhappy. They are uninspired. Some must slog through sand to bring the feasts to the diners. It does seem they are aware of the sand, but the beach goes unnoticed, obscured by umbrellas, tables, crowdedness.

The Paradox Cove of the early 21st century is big splotch of an eatery, a fat faced fish feast fiasco where they serve giant martini glasses filled with deep fried calamari flown in from God knows what ocean, laid on beds of sogging French fries and served with ketchup (Ranch dressing available). Each vat of this appetizer is so encroyable large that to eat seventeen handfuls would put barely a dent in the mound of it, so there should be no reason to stop gorging.

The trip to the beach was for an easy dinner and escape from routine. The little friendly mom and pop fish shack further south along the coast was what I'd had in mind, but my error was indecision, as I also wanted to enjoy the drive north (and west!) during the pre-sunset afternoon. The sunlight was truly golden, sheering down through the sky and casting a magical glow over everything.

Summer had sprung out of an April Saturday and the valley was hot and dry. I simply wanted to see and sense the sea, enjoy good company, and have a little fish dinner and maybe a beer on a nice patio. The idea sounded good to my friend Montega, too, so we headed through the canyon to the beach. But Montega was just at the end of a couple days' vacation in Palm Springs and still craved the indulgences of resort living. She kept pointing out restaurants with valet parking. I missed the cue that negotiation was in order, so every idea she had, I shot down:

"Moondoggies!"

"No. Too pricey."

"The place we had those crab cakes!"

"Can't afford it."

Worse than my concerns about spending money I didn't have, I felt bad for stifling her happy recommendations, so I said, "Let's go wherever you want."

Paradox Cove was the next option to present itself.

Pay to park. Be sure to get validation! Enter the restaurant approach the angry hostess. "Two hour wait," she sneers as she looks away and hands us an eight inch wide plastic crab.

"Wha - - "

"It'll light up when your table's ready."

"In two hours?"

"In two hours," and she diverts her attention to the next customer - a puffy woman in a t-shirt two sizes too small who seems to perceive her fleshy overflow to be acceptable as "cleavage."

Two hours? Ease up, you're at the beach, I think, so I stand in line at the bar for a few minutes trying to struggle the crab into my purse. There is no room in my purse for a big plastic crab, so I hand it to Montega, who carries a bigger purse than I do. Tired from a long day driving from the desert, Montega takes a seat at a nearby bar table, brushing little heaps of peanut shells from the table to the floor; this is how it's done. This is Paradox Cove.

The bartender, seeing the queue of the thirsty, announces that if any of us want to have our drinks outside, we'll have to order them from the outdoor bar.

I want to go outside and watch the pink evening light absorb into the slate blue sea. So we go. Montega hands me a ten but I have a twenty and tell her I'll get this one and we can even out at dinner. She finds us a seat on a little beach couch next to where the guys with the shiny Harleys park their shiny Harleys. With a crowd as eager to be somplace as this one is, we'll have to sit tight or lose our territory. I go to the bar and greet the bartender with a friendly hello. He ignores me. He's making two Mojitos and isn't on duty for me yet.

Maybe management didn't expect the heat either and didn't schedule enough staff; could be the bartender's overworked, so I play it cool. I look off to the distance for the sea but it seems only like a movie backdrop behind the many. I can't hear it. I can't smell it. I can't feel it. I'm not altogether sure it's even really there.

I watch him make the drinks and remember the experience that made me discover the Mojito: a year before, I had my first minty refreshing Caipirinha in Albuquerque (of all places), and how robustly and happily the bartender made our special, wonderful drinks of minty crisp refreshing Brazilian truth serum/love-the-world potion. The common Cuban version is the Mojito, nearly as soulful at heart if made with artistry and passion, but not here. Not this time.

He sets up the two tall glasses, drops some mint leaves into the bottom, makes attempts at crushing the leaves with the leaf crushing pestle, and squirts premixed concoctions from plastic bottles with metal spouts into the glasses. He pours the rum with a measured stinge.

He talks to a waitress about how late he worked the night before and how there are too many customers tonight. There are many words but none of them much different than the ones before.

And then my turn comes. He approaches and uses the word, "Hello."

"Hi! Two Mojitos, please!" He works in a bar area half the size of an elevator. He walks over to the other end of it and gets two glasses, just like the ones he's just doctored. On the way back, he checks his cellphone for a text, flips it closed dispassionately, wanders to several different spots behind the bar and causes the drinks to compile, one element at a time.

He pours some rum but not much, then pours a little more. He talks to his friends some more, standing still. He holds the glasses immobile as he says more words. It crosses my mind he could be distracted over the girl that didn't text or call. But no, he is not downhearted. He is weary. He has made many Mojitos.

He comes back to where I wait, sets the glasses down, puts a wilted mint sprig in one drink and a half dead one in the other, sets them in front of me and says with a cheery tone: "Twenty three ninety, miss!"

I have a twenty in my hand and another in my wallet. I give him both. There was my dinner money. I would have one taco perhaps. I peel an honest tip from the change.

Darkness falls. Here in the outdoor part of the restaurant, food is served on big futons that function as tables and diners sit on the edges and eat from appetizers piled in the middle. By now they are sorting out their bills. Montega and I keep each other amused with conversation for the time but soon we are reserving our energy, as the only thing we can think to talk about is the fact that we're hungry.

Her purse is open so that we can see the crab. Other people's crabs are flickering and glowing. Other people laugh and saunter through the sand. My drink has had its effect and has worn off. I am ready to drive again, two hours since the drink now. The shiny Harley men get on their bikes and rev the engines that sputter, fight, fart and roar into sync. The riders fade off into the night.

"I can't take it anymore." I stand up. I'm thinking of home but we've put in our two hours so I go to the host station. This time its a friendly young man with braces on his teeth. He sends me back to Montega for the crab. He needs to see its pincher to read its number.

He surmises we'd wandered too far off so the signal couldn't reach the crab. I tell him we'd been sitting at the outisde bar and other people's crabs were flickering. He offers to seat us immediately.

The food is mediocre. The customers stuff their faces beneath the big whalebone suspended from the rafters and drink many tall drinks. The waiter puts the hard sell on Montega to buy a drink she doesn't want. I plead Designated Driver and he backs off, but he puts a knee on the seat on my side of the booth, leans in toward me and seems so inspired about her having another drink I can almost swear he'll buy her one, but she knows the game. She acquiesces. He brings her a fruity martini. "How is it?"

"Better than cough syrup!" She has charm.

He laughs.

Dinner takes the rest of my money. You can't order one taco at Paradox Cove. You have to order three and they come with six tortillas.

Montega, bless her heart, is good with money and has the dollars for our parking (validation rate applies!). I shall not return to Paradox Cove unless I happen to swim past it while playing in the summer's blue blue sea. Paradox Cove, once paradise, has gone too far south for me.

* * *

They called it paradise,
I don't know why.
Call someplace paradise;
kiss it goodbye.
- Don Henley

Oh, It's Those Neural Pathways Again!

Live Science: Practicing mistakes embeds neural pathways to repeating the same mistakes. Ya THINK!?

Excuse me: DUH! This is why we invented "Teachers" (and "Therapists") (...not to mention the old trusty aversion to painful situations and experiences).

Tsk.

Live and learn.

Distal Glue Persuasion

Stay centered.

Some people just want to find out if they can persuade you to be as obtuse as they are.

Babalu Across the Universe

Read about and hear a segment of my favorite astronomer featured on NPR: How far has I Love Lucy travelled since 1951 - and how does she sound today from a couple trillion miles away?

All earth's broadcast sounds merge eventually and dissolve into the hum of the echo of the Big Bang, (whew! Lucky for us, so far, it's not the big whimper!)

See (and hear) also: Chris Impey's website.

Why I Love Tim Robbins

Read Tim Robbins' Keynote Speech at the NAB 2008 (page links to text and also an audio file of the speech).

My favorite element is the sarcasm, but the moment of choice is this inspirational one, in case the sarcasm didn't quite take:

"...And you, the broadcasters of this great nation have a tremendous power, and a tremendous potential to affect change. You have the power to turn this country away from cynicism. You have the power to turn this nation away from the hatred and the divisive dialogue that has rendered such a corrosive affect on our body politic. You can lift us up into a more enlightened age."

Tim Robbins Site is http://www.timrobbins.net/

On Internet Dating

Internet dating is a form of torture invented by the devil.

Amended: May 03, 2008.

Think of your best friends and the qualities that make them your favorite people. If you made a list of elements you were looking for in a best friend, would you, in any way, no matter how specific, careful, or imaginative, be able to conjure up these wonderful people from a shopping list? Would you have picked them from a dossier in which they'd identified the parts of themselves they wished to brag about while humbly missing mention of key quirks? Would they have posted the qualities they may not even be aware of but which charm you or challenge your growth, make you love them all the more, and make you a better person for knowing them?

Would your favorite past romances have caught you with a snapshot?

Could you have ever contrived the unlikely circumstances that led you to falling in love in the first place?

Can you actually plan your own favorite best ever bona fide surprise?!

Thesis stated, who else but Beelzebub could tease a society into thinking it could find true love via approvals and denials of assessments of inventories of evaluative criteria? Yes, yes, a preacher from the Midwest and a dozen or so savvy business teams could and do. Oh how rude of me to demonize them, perhaps they know something about a certain elemental personality type within the population for whom ticking off lists is romantic rapture - for these few (and I must admit I know three couples who discovered each other this way) the statistics bare this out as a worthwhile business enterprise with profit margins significant enough to make the venture worthwhile to capital investors across the board.

BUT for those whose desire is for the wondrous surprise of sun-kissed windswept flourishing joie de' vivre (et j'en sais quois!), romance, love, laughter bliss my heart my soul is home - what magic I never knew - for this type to turn the gift of romance over to the devices of conscious selection and measured critical evaluation, every befuddling encounter with an oddball causes a piece of the soul to die trying, and this, my friends and loved ones, is indeed, a form of torture.

N'est pas?

Is This Really Possible?

Brains, Training and Automatic Responses

My new favorite book is, "Making a Good Brain Great" by Daniel Amen, MD. He's a psychiatrist and human behavior specialist researching and teaching brain health. He analyzes brain scans and identifies which parts of the brain drive which parts of personality. He examines neurological patterns and how they are affected by everything from thoughts to toxic substances to genetics.

Dr. Amen's website also has some fascinating animations of scanned brains. It's so nice they can study human brains nowadays without killing mice, whose brains, science has discovered, are mostly just focused on cheese.

It's comforting to get some education about diminishing or even averting memory loss in old age, and I'm enjoying what I'm learning about the cogs and wheels in my own head. Also, the book is helping me understand where losses may have occurred in others and how to play to others' strengths.

If only Amen had this guy making videos for him - he could have a weekly series. (Video takes a while to load but practicing patience is good for your neurotransmitter development).

So, more green tea, keep up the exercise and fitness, and just say "om."

The Chimp/Monkey/Human Phenomenon

"Dance Monkeys, Dance" written and performed by ernest cline. I think this fellow is very clever.

http://www.ernestcline.com/dmd/

...and refreshing.

The Disillusionment of Six

Four Men and an Elevator

I went to meet a friend for lunch today. She works in a big skyscraper in Century City.

Because it is a skyscraper, I had to check in at the front desk before I could go up to her office to meet her. I walked up to the reception desk and a man in a polyester faux-business suit (affordable and easy to clean, who can blame him?) was leaning on the counter not quite admitting belonging behind it.

"Do you work at this thing?" I said.

"Yes," he said, "How can I help you?"

"I'm here to see Irene Parisknova-Millicent Beane, please." [Name changed for publication.]

"Ah, yes. And your name?"

"Jean..." (He was waiting for something more...) "...Nnosullivan."

I was on a list so I was given clearance. He pointed behind me and now had an accent, French or Italian, something classy, "The elevators are just there, ma'am."

"Thank you!" I turned and went for the first bank of elevators I saw but was stopped by a man in a suit by the same maker but the pants were olive. (Designation: Security Guy.)

"What floor?"

"Forty."

"Not this one, that one, miss."

He gesture-herded me into the direction of the next bank of elevators, which I entered, intently passing Security Guy 2. Security Guy 2 followed within inches, "What floor - what floor, ma'am?"

"Forty." I didn't look back, stepped into the elevator, catching the doors' electric eye to thwart their attempt to close, and pressed the button but it didn't light up. There was a sixty-ish man in the elevator. He wore tan slacks and a peach colored sweater. White hair. Expensive clothing, too many too-white teeth for a man his age. The guard followed and pushed the button in a way that made it light up. I thanked him but was not sincere. My guess was he felt it, which put me a little on the defensive.

Alone in the elevator with the comfortably well off man, I said, "I'd never make it in this parta town." The silence lasted a floor or two, but perhaps my saying nothing more made him comfortable chancing engagement, "hmm?"

"Too many rules," I said, looking up at the numbers, "too uptight. Just to get onto an elevator took three approvals."

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"San Fernando Valley," I said.

"It's..." he looked down slightly, shook his head just a little, then up at me, to condescend: "It's 'The Valley', you don't say 'San Fernando', you just say 'The Valley.'"

At that point I didn't say anything. I just smiled.

"Where are you from - originally?" he said.

"I'm from the San Fernando Valley," I said.

"Native?"

"Yup! My whole life."

The elevators opened at floor 34 and he grunted as he left, eyes averted.

The doors closed on yet another rule.

Epilogue: Lunch was delicious! We ate beside the big green lawn.

Befuddlement Unraveled

Devotion to secrets
causes the betrayal
of those devoted
to the truth.
If those who wish to conceal a wrong
fear exposure acutely enough,
the cost of maintaining the illusion skyrockets,
overall trust depreciates,
distraction
diversion
dramatics
And, if necessary, histrionics
become the order of the day,
and one by one
all involved
in the maintenance of the lie
become
the
shlimazl.

My Four Cornered Credo et Latin

Inspiratis
Antequam
Expiratis

Inhale
before
you exhale

an involuntary physical reflex,
a choice for the mind:

Inspire
before
you expire

Allow inspiration
before
you die

"Over One Million 8's and 3's"

"The Real Meaning of 4000 Dead" by Lieutenant Sean Walsh:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725642,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world

(the above links to article in TIME Magazine.)

Support the troops. Bring them home.

Beyond Babies

Parents: before you discourage your children away from the career that they aspire to but which scares you, consider how suited they may be for a life of compromise. Do you want your child to live a mediocre life just so you can feel secure?

"Art in the Background"

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83-URSqWVAM

Presumed concepts of what is "background" are challenged in this masterpiece of tertiary elements alternating as fore- back- and sub-grounds. A refreshing perspective from fmtpo. Encore fmtpo! Encore!

Art Imitates Life Imitates Art and the Bridge Between

(Click image to see larger version.)

March 17th Doncha Know

What the People Want

(Click on image for larger view.)

Imaginary Chicken Hatches Dreams of Being Real

(Click on image for larger view.)

Seventy is the New Twenty Nine!

(Click on image for larger view.)

A Pile of Junk Can Be Art, Too, If It Also Has You!

One day while downtown for jury duty, I ate my lunch in the courtyard of the LA Museum of Contemporary Art.

I sat beside a fountain and looked at a 25 foot high, 18 foot wide sculpture made of severly damaged airplane and helicopter parts. It was cleverly structured to look like the pile of junk had fallen naturally into place, but against gravity, as the pile was larger at the top and very small at the bottom and was suspended above the ground bound and stitched with steel cable.

I analyzed this art as I ate my sandwich and drank my iced tea, contemplating for revelation: this had to be more than a pile of junk. It had to be more than the labor of its construction and the toil of the installation. This pile of junk had to have some meaning, this sandwich is pretty good! Wait: it is an upside down pile of junk. Am I supposed to be thinking of plane crashes? I can only think of who this guy musta slept with to get such a prominent showing of their piece! Maybe a woman made it; how sexist of me to presume only a man would manage this much wrecked and wrested steel! The artist is probably somebody famous maybe I should know who it is. Maybe I'll go get a cookie for dessert. Is this sculpture about the price we pay for breaking the laws of nature? Why do modern contemporary artists get away with so much? Is it a statement about the violence and destruction that permeates our daily experience but which we choose to ignore as if it would never really touch the holy ground on which we walk? Is it about nine eleven? Is it a statement about the power of sheer mass against itself? Who said the artist could put this here?!

And it came to me:

You can analyze the hell out of a pile of junk and, even if upended it will still be a pile of junk.

Daylight Saving

Schmaylight Schmaving.

The Thing About Lies

When, in any kind of meaningful relationship, one person lies to the other, the intuition of the person being lied to becomes obscured. This causes injury to the psyche of the person being lied to.

The joy of a close relationship includes a shared internalized reality. When one person's contribution is driven by fiction, the reality is destined to crash. When the "dupe" begins to sense discord, asks for a reality check, and gets a lie, the desire of the "dupe" to trust the friend forces self-admonishment.

This is a downright cruel thing the liar has done.

It can be remedied with honesty, humility, and diligence to maintain honesty for the future.

Lying by omission is a little more tricky; some information is nobody's business, but the person withholding information knows the difference between keeping healthy boundaries and being deceptive. What is the litmus test? Omit information that isn't necessary to the health of the relationship and it means nothing. Omit information that is necessary and it means everything.

Compassion IV

Thought A:
"We will never have peace as long as we have the instinct to protect our families from hostility!"

Concept B:
"We will have peace when Compassion becomes so huge no one would think to attack anyone else."

Upbeat

Stay upbeat so you don't get beat down.

How to Wear Perfume

A reminder: perfume is meant to be an invitation, not an announcement.

This message brought to you by the person who, with her lunch buddy on the patio today, sat downwind of the ladies who smelled like big, sour, fleurs d' eau non!

Money and Timing

I understand so much more now:
why accountants worry about rules
why bill collectors are quick to anger.

Product delivered
long before,
yet no word and no word and no calls back
I reached further to the cahootant accountant
who hubristically said,
"Your check is in the mail!"

I check the mail
today and today and tonight and tonight
week, 'nother week, week-week.
And my check is not...

"The postal workers are slow and bogged down!
And Presidents' Day last week came to town!
Your check, just keep looking, check the mail and you'll see!
Your check is in the mail, it is, trust me!"

Now I understand why we need contracts
and laws and lawyers and the threat of them.
I know how to fight, but I don't like to.

The check, finally retrieved by hand
the money is in my account,
the client is history.

My karmic lesson:
Don't make people wait for their money.
It's rude.

"Do you like my hat?" "No. I do not." "Good-bye." "Good-bye!"

A year ago, I went to Manhattan for the first time. I liked it there, once I relaxed and stopped asking myself, "why are all these people here?" It was cold. I wore a hat, gloves and a coat while outside.

One day, my friend and I were walking up 5th Avenue, and we passed someone famous. I kept my awareness of him a secret til he was a safe distance away, then I told my friend, "Ah! That's who it was! I just saw the blonde guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy!" It had taken a moment to place him, but I recognized him by his profession first, because of the look on his face, now and forever etched into my memory, as he observed my hat, looking askance, absorbed in it. Either he loved my hat, or he did not like that hat.

I decided that if in about a year, everyone was wearing a hat like I had on that day, it would figure he'd loved my hat. I do not see blue barets abounding. I do not think he liked my hat.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Miss You!

Some people, when they say they "I miss you!" don't mean they want to spend time with you, it just means they miss you. They miss lots of people, but that doesn't mean they're going to stop what they're doing to spend time with them. This personality type is simply interested more in the singular path than the mutual.

This public service announcement brought to you by the person who just figured this out.

Spelling Out Sports

I know sports make people happy. I'm not against sports, I just don't like watching them (but playing can be fun). In an email to me, Blue Green Power Plant pointed out that sports are at least fair and relatively peaceful compared to the news. BGPP is right.

My absence of appreciation for sports is that the reality they set up is so arbitrary and yet people take them so seriously. What is this connection with a group of people from (or sponsored by the economic interests pertaining to) a particular city that makes that city better than its antagonist? Does one city have better sanitation, parks, or police or fire response time than the other because of the sporting team's performance? Nay!

But speaking of things being arbitrary, indeed the same is true about everything. BGPP's comments motivate me to introspect further. I have discovered this: Sports throw me into existentialist angst. To manage this, my mind goes soft and I fixate on color schemes and physiques, the layout of the game venue and ideas like whether spandex still be the top choice in athletic fashion fabric as the 21st century develops. Will nanotechnology affect team gear significantly so that players can sweat and yet never get wet?

I like the human dynamics that sports can illustrate though - win, lose, try, fail, fight back, back off, strategy - but must I sit through four hours of color comentary and crashing helmets for this?

Maybe I need it spelled out for me without all the clamor: get to the point. Beneath all the rattle and roar and clash and spit and rah rah and war drums: What's this game really about?

Show me the human drama and make the game a metaphor. Give me mooring against the bleak expanse between being and nothingness.

Give me sports through a movie like, "The Longest Yard" or "Karate Kid" or that one about the teenagers in the bike race on the high school track that starred the kid from my math class in Jr. High who grew up to win an academy award last year. Oh what is the title of that movie or that actor's name... Maybe BGPP remembers.

Absentum non Chasem

OMG! I missed the superbowl!

"If it's so important for them to get the ball over the line, why don't they just take turns and get it over with?" - me, age 6 +/-

Glazed

My friend Poncho (not his real name) came to visit me this morning. He was half way through a piece of carrot cake and also had an apple-filled, "huge bearclaw!" in hand.

Poncho is a fit, handsome, self disciplined, health-conscious man, but since the holidays he has been off his game. He says he's been craving sugar and fats, mostly. He had a cold recently and craved greasy fatty food, which he ate, and which helped him sleep - a lot.

He is going back to his healthy lifestyle Monday, after the Superbowl has passed. I think after he finishes that bearclaw in about ten minutes, he will be sick of bad food. He gave me a bite. It was delicious. Now I want a buttermilk donut and a cup of coffee.

When we eat healthful foods, we crave them. When we eat junk, we crave that. This is a fundamental law of human physiology.

Con carina,
Ponchita

I said Pranna, Not Piranha!

Ideas of interconnectedness,
the chaos theory
and the man in the moon
who sees all at once
separate us
from the moment
of exactly now.

This was written ten years ago now.

Happy Musical Fun Thing!

Video: "Menomena: Wet and Rusting"

This just makes me happy every time I watch it:

http://www.blogotheque.net/article.php3?id_article=3433

Greed Kills - Tell Your Friends!

The Cheesecake Redundancy

They bought a cheesecake, plain
served out of the box already sliced
waxed paper separators, exact sized wedges
so there was no question whether
each of us got what was admitted in the Nutrition Facts
(read after the fork had been licked clean)
and I am not exaggerating or
using my poet's licence to embellish the truth of the matter:
Serving size: one slice
Fat grams: 39
Calories: 500.

Fatty and filling and the only part worth savoring; the graham cracker crust
the cake itself: too rich, too heavy, too thick, too much a glob;
obesity on a fork - too dense to experience with any genuine awareness.
I have concluded cheesecake is indeed and certainly not worth the bother,
now that I know
the numerical
facts.

Happy New Year 2008

No one should have to strive for a sense of belonging at home;
it should be given freely embedding a sense of worldly welcome.

Baseball's Giant Arms

I have just enough of the sports gene to enjoy playing a friendly game of h-o-r-s-e- or softball or a little football if there's no sprinklers embedded in the lawn, and even with this, far less sports gene than fans who follow scores and points and personalities and weights and measures and big arms and MPH of pitches and batting averages, even I could tell athletes using steroids in professional sports is the new norm.

What I can't figure out is how anyone is surprised by this. How else would a baseball player get an arm the size of a leg? But we want 'em faster and bigger and stronger. They are swept up in our culture of gluttony! Hard to say no, I'm sure.

Newnorm. Hm.

The Two Dogs Story Ever Present

On a Friday night well past midnight after rain my sister and I were driving home, distant cars' lights and some shimmers of neon shop signs reflected on the the wet boulevard.  I was about seventeen, she was around twenty one.  I lived with our parents, she was on her own already and was taking me home. In the soft light from the corner streetlight my sister saw them first. The context was too wrong for me to make sense of it right away, but there in the slow lane a German shepherd was down. An alert doberman lay protectively beside him.

We pulled over, got out. We checked the shepherd but he was gone. We picked him up carefully and moved him to a soft place beside a tree, taking a moment with him. The doberman followed. These were the days of pay phones. Neither dog had a tag so we called animal control to come for him and guided her to come with us.

I snuck the doberman into my bedroom. The hours were too small to wake anybody up for discussion, so I made her soft place on the floor and brought her some water and food. As I got into bed, my whispers to lie down did not take effect. She paced then rested her chin on the edge of the mattress. This was a time when dobermans were deemed the breed to be leery of. The lore was they could turn hostile in an instant. But she'd taken a chance on trusting me so an "okay!" and she was up, rolled onto her back and nestled into me. This must have been how they slept every night, she and her mate and their human.

In the morning when we got up, my parents already knew she was there. How long had they known? Was it their habit to make sure I was home alive after I'd stayed out late?  It occurred to me I'd never thought about that before. My dad sat in his chair drinking coffee, the doberman sat a few feet in front him ears back, eyes steady, listening as he tried to explain to me, or to the dog, that since we already had three dogs, four would be too many. It looked like the doberman had the situation under control, so I went to the kitchen for coffee. I could feel my parents' discussion though I couldn't actually hear it. It may have been one of those wordless ones.

When I came back into the room my dad said, "If we can't find her person, she'll have a home with us."

He took her to the animal shelter to give her a chance of being found. I called the shelter an hour after they'd left the house. Her human had already come and taken her home. The man at the shelter said the owner was there first thing in the morning saying his doberman and German shepherd had gotten out through an open gate the night before and that he'd looked for them in the night. I hung up the phone comforted that the the dog and the man still had each other. Then I drove back to the intersection to make sure the shepherd was not there.

The sunny shiny morning was slightly too bright as if the rain storm had washed the streets a glaring white. The shepherd was gone; it seemed nothing had happened there at all. But some thirty years later I still see that moment we rounded the corner. I see the posture and expression of the doberman beside her shepherd under the dull streetlight, watching, waiting in love and trust.

-This story was revised on April 16, 2012

One Thousand Years

The skinny man scientist
born after I graduated sixth grade says
if we eat these special foods and drink these
special drinks and exercise these
special exercises we can live to be
one thousand years old!
One thousand years old, generations alive today he thinks
can stay alive one thousand years!

My first reaction to this:
don't give me the special foods don't give me the
special drinks don't show me the
special exercises so I can spare myself living a span equal to
a life begun in the time of the Norman invasion of England
to extend half a dozen years past what would, from this moment, be my
hundredth birthday, given I had
eaten the special foods and drunk the
special drinks and exercised the
special exercises.

Even if the body recalibrated due to the scheme,
how could the human personality endure a time span so vast
as the changes of a thousand years on this earth (or worse bleak space or colonial moon!)?
How could I learn that many new tricks how many
special nutrients could I possibly consume to feed
curiosity or sustain enthusiasm let alone interest for
one
thousand
years?!

Walking, I thought of you, my Love.
A thousand years seemed short.

Now Gets Here Before it Arrives Now

Why does there have to be so much going on at once? The world is a busy place, yes, and we know more about everything everyone is doing more than we used to, sure. News that took months to travel 200 years ago takes seconds now, uh huh. So we apparently are compelled to know all immediately and pluses and minuses inventoried and studied and brain cells counted and neural pathways determined and redetermined and speed of light ridden on and trails of comets and sticky footed insects math and hip hop and a dictionary where you don't even have to learn the alphabet in order. And there was that Twilight Zone about the time traveller from the cowboy days brought to modern 1950's Manhattan and the noise was so much from outside the hotel window he, holding his head hands over ears, bounded down the stairs, ran mad into the street and got hit by a car dead. This, a bitty poem, no need to panic; merely the emulation of manic but, do you wonder, don't you ever, about our why our kids are plumpening up like those big New York Thanksgiving Parade balloons and what it means toward soothing a heart to romance our peace of mind?

Slash and Backslash: Finally, Clarification

This is a slash: /

This is a backslash: \

A slash leans its head forward: /

A backslash leans its head BACK: \ It is called a backslash because it leans its head back.

Slash: / lives in the lowercase of the question mark key. It is easy to reach and more commonly used.

Backslash: \ lives in the lowercase above the enter key. It is a bit up and out of the way and less commonly used.

A slash is called a slash because it was the first of the slashes to arrive on the scene. When the backslash arrived, someone said, "Ah, I see there is another type of slash!" And someone else said, "Yes, but that one is leaning its head back. Let us call it the 'backslash'."

As computers came into being, the lexicon supporting their coding included the slash, and less commonly, its slightly daunted sibling, the backslash.

Sometimes people announcing URL's (radio, conversation, instruction) make the mistake of calling a slash a backslash. They think they are showing off how much they know about slashes; they feel very official - you can hear it in their voices.

They are mistaken.

Witnesses

"War is Hell!" said the man.
He'd been there.
He said it in a time when the only witnesses to war
were participants,
in some way or another,
so the naive
really were.

Now in the world
cameras everywhere enough to make us all witnesses
Hell expands to ever greater territory
as each and more of us
defer concern,
delay action,
pretend ignorance.

Simple Notes for Job Interviewers

1) Ask questions of the interviewee. She may be interviewing you, too, but you invited her into your workplace to ask her about her professional experience. That means you need to let her answer the few questions you have come up with in between rants about your properties, your furniture, all the people you fired when you started being the boss, how it's tough that to build your new empire you have had to "break bones" but that you are such a good leader when you "set them."

2) Don't badmouth the places you've worked before or the people you fired when you started your new job. Don't keep the interviewee in your office listening to your rambling babble for one hour and forty five minutes, making her struggle extra hard to maintain decorum for that last fifteen minutes fearing her car might be towed before she gets out (time limit posted at the parking spot you reserved for her).

3) Don't have everything in your office either black or grey and then wear a dark blue suit and pearls (what century is this?!) so the only vivid colors in the room are your pink face and yellow hair.

4) When someone knocks on the door and interrupts with some important papers you had asked them for, introduce the interviewee to the person. When the worker behaves pleasantly and like a "normal" person, do not shun the worker, who, by the way, stayed late to give you the papers you asked for.

5) Remember: the interviewee is there because you were recommended by a colleague. Out of respect for the mutual colleague, the interviewee will stay til you end the meeting. Do not abuse her patience.

6) Do not yawn while you're talking, repeatedly, apologize, yawn again, apologize some more, and take sips of your water, especially if you have failed to offer the interviewee some water.

7) Do not try to minimize the rudeness of your yawning by explaining that you woke up at midnight the night before and couldn't get back to sleep. Next time you have insomnia, drink a nice warm cup of tea and at least lay down and watch TVLand and relax so you are rested and ready to be respectful to the person who took off work, lost pay, and spent gas money to see you.

8) The interviewee may answer your questions and then choose to back up her statements with examples of ways she implemented the decisions she made as a professional. These little images she creates in your mind are not meant to send you off on lengthy tangents about your commute, your stereotypes about what ethnicity uses the bathroom stalls as phone booths most, or what type of rabble may live on the other side of the mountains where you would never buy property because there are - god knows what color you're afraid of - apparently not dark blue or pearl - people living there who are so stupid they accepted Adjusted Rate Mortgages and now they can't afford their houses but you wouldn't even want to buy them up because the neighborhood is just not as good as the one where you have two houses already and are thinking of buying a third but are just perched waiting for the real estate crash to get worse in about five years.

8a) While stating the above, do not form your little hand into the shape of a cresting wave, first knuckle bent on each of the four fingers. This just shows off your apparent disdain for manicures.

9) When notifying the interviewee of your call-back schedule, do not insult her by telling her a second interview will consist of a writing test, especially if you are holding the following items in your lap:

• her three professional writing samples;
• her resume showing that she has a Master's Degree in English/Writing and specific professional training in the style of writing required for the position in question.

Further, do not drive the point home by explaining that others turned in writing samples as good as hers but failed the writing test, thereby accusing the interviewee of plagiarism.

10) When you finally see your way clear to letting the interviewee leave, do not walk her to the door of the building. She will be grateful to have you say goodbye at the office door.

Note to the interviewee: If such as the above ever happens to you: at about the twenty minute mark it is okay to stand up, say, "sorry, my time is up," and leave. No matter how much you like the colleague who sent you here, remember: she sent you here!

Dancing!

These are some of my friends. Someone did something to the settings on their camera that slowed the shutter speed. When I took the photo, I thought I got nothing worth saving. Ah, but non! C'est magnifique, oui!?

Open and Shut Case

Driving:
Radio commercial: obnoxious fast shouting SFX something jarring
I am making a left turn
with respectful concern
for the pedestrian why am I
allowing this voice to shout throughout my car?!

Push of a button:
"Shut up!"
stops the assault
the young man in the crosswalk safely out of my path
I drive on.

Shut up...
shut down
shut out
shut in.

Shut over?
Shut under?
Shut across?
Shut sideways?
Shut othersideways?
Shut through?
Shut away.

Shut back
Shut forward.

My buddy would have laughed
and come up with a shut-combo
I haven't figured out yet.
This makes me laugh
and laugh for laughing
at the conversation I didn't have
but did.
Open and shut case.
Shuttle.
Shuttle cock.
Birdy.

Steve Martin Weds

Steve Martin got married this weekend. Good for him - good for his bride. I mean it. If Steve's happy, I'm happy for Steve. He has enriched my life and I am grateful.

But I should have acted sooner - maybe asked him out a few years ago. Of course I never did since we don't actually live in the same universe. But, technically, I could have, since I did meet him once (do I detect a pattern here, or do all LA natives have these stories?).

Chances are I met Steve Martin before he started seeing Anne Stringfield. But even if I had asked him out for enchiladas, would it have lasted? Maybe we'd have gone out a few times and he would have picked up a copy of the New Yorker after dessert and coffee and seen Ms Stringfield's column. Perhaps as I mused into the the essence of humor in the human soul, he would have become spellbound by her writing and married her anyway. Fate plays out the way it has to and that's that. Even if it twists, it is written once played.

My meeting with Steve Martin was, for him, a fulfillment of a contractual obligation with the publisher. For me it was a lapse into a world poplulated by beings from the universe of goofy fans on tourships to the magic dimension, hoping for a feeling of befriending in an impossible social construct. So we giggle or wave or mutterbabble - or offer a simple thank you.

I went with a friend to the UCLA Festival of Books. He had tickets to see Steve speak in one of the big brick auditoriums. At the event, a repetition of women my age stood in line to ask Steve questions they didn't really need to ask so they could declare their undying love and he could gracefully avoid cringing.

After the lecture, my friend left but said, "get an autograph. Why not?" So, I stood in a long line under the trees to wait for Steve. My objective was to have him sign my copy of Picasso at the Lapin Agile (while being sure to let him see I'd also bought Shopgirl, the book he was there to promote). The line took about an hour and a half. I would never sell the autograph, so why was I waiting? To see Steve Martin. Why? Because he's Steve Martin and I can.

Steve was set up at at table under a tent canope. People could approach one at at time. At about 8 feet away a nice lady in a suit would ask them to wait. She would gesture for them to come to the table just after the previous person had left (deft mob anti-coagulant tactic). As the person before me fawned, Steve looked to see who would approach next. He swung his head slowly, eyes not connecting, a soft gaze, to size me up. Female. Mid thirties. Tall. No knife.

The distant look in his blue eyes and the way he swung his head - and I mean this with the utmost respect - reminded me of a cow in a feed slot. He didn't eschew the task, he just didn't savor it.

So when my turn came I suppose he looked to see who was after me because whatever connection I had started to sense was now gone. His words were kind, respectful and rote. I put his play before him and said, "Thank you for everything." He delivered a merry, "well, thank you for coming!" I said, "of course!" and knew to quickly move on. He was a perfect gentleman meeting strangers who thought they knew him. But none of us did.

(Anne Stringfield does.)

Tumbledice

Cubes with dots in batches
tossed land sometimes in matches
in the distance, a baby bird hatches
gates slam bang open with broken latches
from the airplane the ground looks to be made of patches.
(I met a guy once who came from Naches.)

You wake up early, late, or on time,
comparable to the roll of the dice in this rhyme,
you eat your toast,
drink the coffee (French Roast)
plan to make your day its most
cross yourself and thank your host
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost -
even if religion is no longer your begets,
you hedge your bets.

Charlton Heston in the Black Corvette

I was at a four way stop in the Encino Hills when in the perpendicular lane to the left I saw a black corvette convertable approaching. Its wheels didn't seem to be slowing as it approached the limit line and sure enough it failed to stop, so I waited. It entered the intersection to make a left up toward Mulholland Drive.

I honked to let the driver know I was aware of his infraction and took my moment to look him in the eye. Suntaned with the wind in his hair, he waved and smiled that frownish grin with the powerful lower lip, a friendly hand thrown erect. It was Charlton Heston who had run this stop sign.

The moment was the pure quiet slo-mo sync that can happen when two people are alone; I could hear him think: "Ah! Another fan has recognized me. I shall wave in recognition as I pass."

He may indeed have seen my mouth fall open and eyes widen to a greater blue. And to this day I know in my heart that on that sunny afternoon in the toot of a honk Charlton Heston had renewed in him the experience of himself as a star, Moses, Ben Hur, the Omega Man, "Soylent Green is peeeeple!!!" And I have come to accept that he may never know my experience of our moment together: "Hey! That guy ran the stop sign! It was MY turn to go!"

The Eddie Van Halen One

Sometime late in the 1990's I stopped for gasoline at Coldwater and Ventura in the San Fernando Valley and there was a guy with a really nice maroon 60's VW van all fixed up nice, chatting with the guy who worked at the gas station. I made my octane selection and began to pump gas.

There was something familiar about that guy with the van. I knew him, but didn't; I hadn't seen him in a long time though. I searched my mental catalog... kind of a hippie lookin' guy. Ah - musta been one of the old customers at the health food store where I worked when I was a teenager. We shared a smile and a hello.

When the tank was full and I hung the handle back onto the pump I placed him: He was Eddie Van Halen. Ah yes, my old friend I'd never met, Eddie. I know part of him, he doesn't know me at all - world's greatest rock guitar player chatting with the gas station guy. This is one of the things I like about my hometown.

Later, I saw friends and said, "Guess who I saw at the gas station today?" Terri said, "somebody famous?" I said yes. Larry said, "musician?" I said yes. Larry said, "Eddie Van Halen."

Several years later I saw Andy Dick at Ikea ordering cabinets. That evening I asked the same friends to guess the day's celebrity sighting and on the first guess Terri said, "Andy Dick."

This is one of the things I love about my friends.

Sometime I'll tell you about the time Charleton Heston ran the four way stop sign.

My Near Brush with David St. Hubbins

It was the early 80's and I was going out with a guy who worked at a theatre in downtown LA. Some film crew was making a documentary about a rock band - so he asked me to come to the theatre and meet him backstage, he'd be done at 6 and we could go have dinner.

I went to the theatre and looked around - the stage had a silly big styrofoam skull suspended from the rafters, the fog machine, dark shades of lighting, and the band was doing re-takes of a segment of a heavy metal song.

I went backstage to wait for the guy (whose name I don't remember today, by the way) and the band took a break. I stood next to the guitarist - or he stood next to me - he was close enough that if I'd leaned a little I would have bumped shoulders with him. He wore a silky chiffon white shirt and aqua eyeshadow. I was about twenty or so, and knew how to play it cool, so I did. Acted like I wasn't even curious. Even stifled some sarcasm because these guys seemed to be taking themselves so seriously.

Some time later my sister and I went to see the new Rob Reiner film - the first, "Rockumentary, if you will," and dogged if it wasn't the guy in chiffon - David St. Hubbins. I really shoulda said hello.

Note to self from future to past: say hello.

The Big Stinky Flower/The Anti-Romance

The Big Stinky Flower is in bloom again, this time in Washington DC. No, this isn't a metaphor, it's about the big stinky flower that smells like dead meat. Botanists say it smells that way to attract dung beetles that fertilize it. It's five feet tall (and that's mostly stamen, folks!)

I went to see it a few years ago when it was blooming in Pasadena.

I stood in line two hours to see that flower. It was hot, and the sun was bright, and I didn't know going in that it would take two hours to get to the flower; it was one of those cases where you just start throwing good time after bad in an effort to keep the investment from being completely fruitless. A fellow next to me in line struck up a little half-hearted flirtatious chat as we waited to experience the rare visage and stench of this magnificent prehistoric flower in bloom.

Got there. Had to hurry past the thing because of the size of the waiting crowd. Let me tell you now about this flower: it doesn't smell like BO or rotting meat or anything spectacular enough to wait two hours to smell. It stinks like it does along the 405 as you pass through Torrance at night.

The meager flirt was an architect. I was a writer on a day off. The stamen of the flower reached upward five feet, the deep aubergine petal lay open like a bedsheet. Potent to be sure, but the Big Stinky Flower is not beautiful. Nature made it to impress not man, not woman, not bird, bee or butterfly. Nature made the Big Stinky Flower to impress the dung beetle.

Pessimist/Optimist

I got this from a documentary about Russia. I don't know the validity as it pertains to Russians; I don't know the culture, but it sure is clever:

The Russian pessimist says, "Things couldn't get any worse!"
And the Russian optimist says, "Oh, yes they could!"

Avoiding the Trap the Bully has Set

When you are in a bad situation, and you know it should be much better than it is, it’s arrogant to operate as though conditions are as they should be. Arrogance invites conflict. Even though you’re right – circumstances should be better – the first step to improving conditions is to acknowledge the evidence. See things as they truly are.

Then take the smart tack: use your creativity and work to improve conditions. Lateral movement is often your friend in a bad situation. Going head to head or toe to toe is like trying to punch your way out of a cage.

I am not saying it's easy to do.

Philosophy Wonton

There is a principle that says if you want something terribly badly - if you have so much desire that it actually hurts - you leave no room for the thing you want to fulfil you. Well, that's just ridiculous.

There is a principle that says if you detach yourself emotionally from that which you desire, it will come to you. That's absurd.

Dogs and cats respond to energy, let's use them as examples for attraction: If you keep beckoning a dog or cat the point where you're straining your voice or have squatted to its level so long you're losing circulation through your knees, whether it comes when you call still depends on its relationship with you. Whether you're straining your voice or joints isn't going to change the creature's mind. If you act like you don't care about the dog or cat, again, it depends whether the animal is interested in you at that moment. It might come to you, or it might go chew a toy/take a nap.

The thing is not whether you desire or not, beckon or not, (pray or wish or hope or not), it's whether you engage successfully with the object or subject of your desire. This requires creativity, presence of mind and a willingness to disengage from stupid stuff.

Just thought I'd mention it.

The Findings

We've found the whole thing, the earth
and taken pictures that show it all
you can pinpoint your own rooftop
zoom out to include Greenland
and Australia all on one screen.

We found an old rainforest a few weeks ago
while looking for coal to mine
under Illinois
a mud preserved cavern
the size of San Francisco and they keep finding ruins
they sought
of Aztecs and Greeks
and
artworks forgotten
surface in blackmarket sting operations
(or on ebay).

We've found music and painting and
everything but Atlantis
and their kitchen sinks.
Pompeii and porcupines,
dolphins and stingrays
jellyfish and coral colonies
bugs and frogs that numb your tongue so don't lick them
soil and dirt and rocks and gems
and crude sludge of lives long gone to decay
(it makes our cars go real fast to this day!)
and ice
as continents and mountains
they thought
would never melt ‘til we were long gone
(chunks of it fall into the sea now, on and on).

We have found everything we have needed to find
- so far.

Dating and Romance: It's Who You Know

Every office environment has one: the weird co-worker who writes pretty good emails. This person is kind of witty, maybe even has a little bit of a charming sardonic quality from time to time.

Think about the place in your mind where you go when you read this person's emails. Do you ever feel a strange comfort that makes it seem as though the person isn't actually "weird" at all?

And yet as you read you know what bothers you about the writer and you know these reasons are dealbreakers for friendship or anything more than a cordial professional relationship; maybe the person behaves poorly in meetings, maybe doesn't bathe regularly or use a toothbrush - or barely hides some bundle of ugly personality characteristics. As you momentarily separate the writer from the content, do you ever notice a sense of fascination that the writing persona reveals none of the above?

Ah, this is the cloak of intrigue that creates the appearance of possibility. And it is what internet dating relies on.

's'all I'm sayin'.

MirrorrorriM

No matter how fast you turn around, you can't see the reflection of the back of your own head in the mirror.

Demise of a Bad Era

Chippity Dippity has gone away,
No more fracas chatter fray.
I will not miss that sound any day,
I appreciate its fading out from play!

Barky bark barks much less, ah Grace!
Tho whiny robot continues to whir;
But soon a human will take its place,
And maybe barky bark will learn to purr.

Call for all robots
back to central
endless whiny loops
have been deemed detrimental!

Op Ed: Opt In

Good always wins. The problem is the race is almost always neck 'n neck. The more we develop compassion and honesty in ourselves as a species, the better the lead of the good.

Today's Literary Work: Chatter-Bark

Chatter chatter chatter chatter
Bark bark bark bark!
Chatter chatter chipper chatter
Bark bark b-b-b-bark!
Chatter!
Bark!
Chatter!
Bark!
Bark bark bark bark bark bark (jump) bark!
Chatter chatter (stomp stomp stomp) chat-chatter!
Bark bark bark -
Oh!
Chip chip chip chip chippy!

Thankfully, no waa waaa wa waaaaa wa Waaaaa bottom line the reality is is in other words just
Chatter bark chatter bark chatter chatter bark.

Keep it Real

“Don’t react to what you think is going on; respond to what happens.”

Three Things Today

Sometimes a metaphor is just a banana.

More important than knowing which side your bread is buttered on is knowing where the bread came from.

If knowledge is power, information is the power cord.

If E minor is the lead in, E major is the power chord.

copyright jeanosullivan2007.

Desert Images: Not Photos

Over desert road that ribbon they talk about
sometimes black sometimes
the same color as the bleached rust cliffs
that lift right up to the edge and stop
top flat or shove straight down slightly sloped
to a base of rock rubble sand to chaparral
and yellow grasses
across this and more of this
hearing occasionally from the place in my head
where the speech center resonates,
old Firesign Theatre dialogue:
"That's a beaut!"
"No, it's a mound."
"An’ right purdy, too!"

But more than the playbacks my mind volunteers with such frequency -
the mind begins to quiet.

Thoughts muse subtly about geology
but find no need to analyze why
thrust faults and gapes and gaws in the land
or how the mountains kept such clean horizontal tops
or wonder beyond a ponder why what grows where it grows
grows where it does.

And why that black flitting bird flies here: does it know about pigeons?

Houses in the middle of nowhere are home.

Navajo land with no imposed trees, no hardscape, no green lawns.

Australian Cattle Dog is he lost no his job is to chase our car away.

Grasslands and little short trees shaped like buffalo: camouflage for the missing.

Three horses grazing by the side of the road slow down there is no fence.

Long wooled sheep makes eye contact with me as we go by, he chews, once I think, with that lateral moving jaw.

Sunset colors the whole sky pink longer lingering orange turquoise spreading yellow west east takes periwinkle to grey and twilight - -

Venus introduces the starry - -

At what point did I quietly accept only seeing six or twelve stars in the city-night skies?

I need to learn this deepening sky, observe quiet darkness’ depths.

I bet I find the Milky Way again.

Brain Scan Science!

"Cross sections of two human brains. Left, a normal brain; right, the brain of an unusually optimistic person."

Overheard Today: Women's Restroom

Two women. Two stalls. Doors closed:

"How long have you been together?"

"Four years. "

"...wow... "

"It's great - he's great!"

"Do you like, fight a lot?"

"No 'cause we never see each other!"

Notes on Interdimensional Travel

Stan arrived yesterday via the interdimensional transporter.
His arm had been stuck in Flat-Dimension 440 for an instant.
It arrived flat like paper
flailing from his rounded shoulder
he arrived shreiking in such agony
we fumbled to push the buttons again yet
nearly instantaneously we were able to throw him back into the field
for coordinate correction.
He arrived again reassembled correctly
all in 3D
and the redeeming quality of interdimensional travel
was that we could bring him back
to this dimension
to a moment before
the accident.
Stan's fine
and wonders why
we all looked so concerned.
For him it never happened,
but for us, it was horrible
and we can't forget it.

Remember, Also Remember, Remember Too

God is not a genie, nor is/was Jesus (they do not grant wishes).












God is not a leprechaun, nor is/was Jesus (they do not play tricks on you).

This information may come in handy next time you feel desperate.

And remember too that the wisest of the three wishes was to wish for the genie's freedom; and the leprechaun only tricks the ones who are after his pot o'gold (or his Lucky Charms).

Today's Cartoon: Clip-Art Clocks

Today's Cartoon: Clip-Art Sandwiches II

Today's Cartoon: Clip-Art Vegetables

"I don't mind! I really don't mind!"

"Don't be silly, Zuke, you're in denial! Join us at the intervention!"

Today's Cartoon: Clip-Art Tacos

Pre-Sleep Meditation

Try this next time you go to sleep: As you drift off, conjure up the good feelings you have about your favorite people in the world. Let the feelings fill your heart and feel how far they can expand within you. Identify the feelings viscerally as well as with words in your head. Let the sensations you feel about your favorite people sink into your soul and at the same time lift and drift you off to sleep. Indulge your heart in the extent of how good it feels to love - notice the different qualities of love you feel in each relationship. Recall favorite moments with people and the wonder of knowing another person. Recognize the value of being understood, trusting and being trusted with the pleasure of good companionship.

When you wake up in the morning, notice whether or not you feel better than the days when you fell asleep the night before worrying.

(If you're in love, dwell on the wonder of your luck in having found someone to be in love with. Then act on it.)

Today's Cartoon: Clip-Art Nuts and Squirrel

Today's Cartoon: Clip-Art Sandwiches

Post Superbowl Commentary 2007

Yesterday's superbowl in the rain: there were no cheerleaders. Not a one. Do they not jump and go "woo!" when it rains?

There were some jiggly players though - downright breasty players out there. We gotta get the hormones outa the milk supply!

Still: the players didn't seem to mind the rain too much. So they're one up on the cheerleaders, (or does pro-ball not have cheering? I seem to remember heckling their antics last year... was that the USC game?)

At the party, the guacamole was fabulous, and the fruity mango drinks were delicious, the party hosts delightful and the company, perfect. So I enjoyed the superbowl just fine! Plus they had a little dog that liked to play fetch!

Neighborhood Update

Apartment neighbor who used to drink but quit,
Held off as long as you could, but bit by bit
the shouting resumed;
and the booze it perfumed,
And the cops threw your wife in their car in the midst of a fit.

(I heard your shout that you'd bail her out;
your second mistake at least, no doubt).

The New Year Begins in February

January is just for us to get warmed up into the new year. January is the month to shake off December's forced shopping habit. By February, the feeling sets in that we are indeed in a new year.

So the thing to do next is to decide what changes to make. In January '06 I knocked off my sugar addiction. Feels much better - sometimes now when I'm walking I break into a run just because I have the energy.

In terms of a year, spring is the true start of the year, but our calendars start with 1 in January. It's good to start the counting at one, but starting it at 2 makes a nice rhythmic change. Maybe every year I'll start the new year a month later. In two years my new year will be in spring.

Then of course there's everybody's personal new year that starts on their birthday.

Why I Go to the Superbowl Party

I've been enthusiastically invited to a Superbowl party with people I really like and maybe we'll play a little music, so of course I'm going. But I have to say that's why I like a Superbowl party. I go for the friends, the snacks, the relaxing on the periphery, the laughter, to enjoy the enthusiasm my friends are feeling for this show on TV. I also enjoy the commercials.

I don't have the sports gene. To me football is all color schemes and green grass and gluteus maximuses and hamstrings and quads, lots of people getting in each other's way and something about a ball going back and forth for several hours.

And I also see it sort of the way Ze Frank does: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/02/020107.html

More wine! More cheese! Why does spandex look so much better on a quarterback than on a tight end? And excuse me, but it looks to me like they've all got pretty tight ends!

Disclaimer: yes I understand sports has a value to those who understand it similar to the way good drama has meaning for me. I'm just telling you I don't have the gene so the story doesn't reach me. Aren't I diplomatic?