Towel, In Process of Being Thrown
The Partner is laughing uncontrollably right now. Bullet train from LA to San Francisco is the cause. The cost of it, the inflated contractor bids, atop the current California budget deficit. To a backdrop of schools being closed and prisons being farmed out to the highest bidder. THEN he starts talking about the next election, 2012 (OMG how did I miss THAT) and the very great probability that the Republican Party will come out of the box with lots and lots of cash. He thinks Dick Cheney will be the next President. This was after he read me an article about Modoc County that made me scream, about how people up there think the budget cuts should be in areas of environmental oversight. Finally I had to tell him to Shut Up. We briefly then fantasized about what the impact might be if there were a disease manifested by an uncontrollable movement of the arm and fist up into the air while the other arm would be compelled to slap down on the rising inner elbow. Fangiullo-ITIS, perhaps? Although my Italian spelling is not so good.
I was already in high dudgeon, Gentle Reader. In virtually the same week, one of my two credit card companies mailed me two disturbing envelopes. One said they were tripling, basically, the minimum payment on my card. Just like that. The other, addressed to MR. (boozilla), offered me another one of their cards for my business. Pardon me, but WTF. I called them to research the possibilities of avoiding trainwreck, and was greeted with a bland banality that reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s definition of evil. These are trying economic times, the guy said. No poo poo Sherlock, I said. They’re way more than doubling the payment, aren’t they? he said. The bank isn’t trying to push people into default, he said. No? I said. It sure looks like it. ‘Splain to me what they ARE doing, if that isn’t it. They need a few more tax deductions? As an Attempted Small Business Owner, where just exactly is the support for MY infrastructure? Blah blah blah. The bank doesn’t have any other programs to address this right now, he said. We’ll skip the part about him telling me what a long time highly important and valued customer I am. If you don’t mind. So this was bad news, in short. Then to get a solicitation addressed to MR!!! Dammit. A lovely little sexist ohyouaren’taman? Invite for me to sign up with them for another bendover. With “lifetime rewards”. I think I’ll pass. And yes, I’ll go last. And time will tell, just who has fell, and who’s been left behind, when you go your way and I go mine. How did Bob Dylan know?
The Little Things
It was a weekend of sturm und drang. Fracas everywhere. Quite wearing, actually. BUT. As usual, redeemed by something wonderful.
The birds, Gentle Reader. They have a play tree the Partner made for them from recycled beach logs. It was quite a wonderful sculpture, really. Poppy had finally chewed off all the ladder parts, plus it was encrusted with….ahem. After some scuffle about With ALL the Other More Important Things We Have To Worry About Why Are You Bringing This Up??!!?? Partner did take tree outside for repairs.
When it returned, it was Absolutely Fabulous. New ladder area with fantastic different sized rungs, extra places to stand on, and sparkling clean. As well as being made of very stern woodstuff that won’t disappear the first day of chewing.
The girls, of course, knew something was up and demanded to be let out to see it last night. And what a revelation that was. Poppy went to her normal spot on the tree, and BEAMED. She sang a little song. She looked like she might cry. She kept looking back at Partner, smiling, tentatively putting beak and foot on new spots, checking out the ones that were still the same (yes, this IS the same!) flew around and gave both of us lots of kisses. It was like watching our neighbor’s two year old get a new toy truck: He put his hands over his face, and laughed, then threw his head back, as though it were all too wonderful and too much. That’s just what Poppy did. Boo, who is currently laying eggs, bustled out to investigate and, after registering her total approval, returned to her cage for her new favorite game, Cheerio Toss. She won’t let us in all the time now, so you get to stand there and propel cheerios to just that one certain spot where she wants them…..So, yes. This IS how I spend part of my time since you ask.
Coupled with the next fun I get to have, now that I’ve dealt with my various tax ID issues: The Credit Card Company That Has Decided Now Is The Time To Quadruple My Payment. I can hardly wait. But still, the Bird Tree has been restored to splendor. We have our own Parliament of the Birds right in the living room, and that is a good thing.
It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
Words we live by, Gentle Reader. Although the explanation for some of the things that seemed like good ideas at some time is often rendered in advanced shellfish, so we really Don’t Get It At All even after the fact.
It’s hot again. HOT. Too hot to really do anything, although the garden is calling, saying, quite clearly, WEED ME…perhaps later. But our small and active mind is pondering communication at present. Or lack thereof.
I am the kind of person who can be at the grocery store and know what everyone in line is thinking. This goes along with, see advanced shellfish above, sometimes a total inability to divine what the person right in front of me, talking to me, is really meaning in what they are saying. Probably that has to do with my vintage coping mechanism kit. I thought I had left that behind…..But I have been noticing that when there is a disconnect somewhere between the words coming out of someone’s mouth and the feeling state that is coming along with the transmission, I get, actually, nauseous. And nervous. Yeugh, in short. It has to do with feeling the feeling strongly and getting, perhaps, a bit overwhelmed by it. Especially since usually the words coming along with the feeling are quite different in meaning. Confused, is what I get.
How does one get on the same page again? This is my question. Perhaps those uncomfortable feeling states are an inescapable part of life, not to be denied, and not to be wallowed in. To be observed and learned from. There certainly seem to be quite a few of them, I’m just saying. And, naturally, there are the other feeling states, all kinds of them, all colors and degrees and temperatures, and the same thing applies. There’s excrement and there’re roses. Intertwined and of a piece in the big picture. Everything moves and shifts, and while at times that is exhilarating- when you are in the flow of it and aware– keeping one’s balance is a neat trick. Apparently, being an old dog, it’s one I’m still working on. Along with all the other dogs, young and old, on earth, of course. If this was all so easy, Darfur wouldn’t exist, Khameini would be drinking tea quietly and enjoying his advanced age, wisdom and lovely garden, people would drive properly, and…well. I think you get the picture, Gentle Reader.
On to weeding the garden. That, at least, is clear.
The Arms of Morpheus
Boy, do I miss THEM. I had a rough few days last week, and once again it took me a while to figure out why, exactly. But! It was the usual reason: No sleep. Which was, at least, better than it being because I finally went completely bananas, which was my first thought.
I have never lived any place like this before, and I must say I hope I don’t again. Ever. It isn’t just the constant fire engines and airport flight path fun and jet engine testing at 2:30 am; you can get used to that. Or the trains that run some nights from 11 pm to 4 am, blasting their horns. Something kind of romantic about that.
No. It’s the Neighbors. I haven’t discussed the Guy Behind Us because, well: He screwed up one time too many with me and finally lost the battle. So aside from occasional paint blistering belches of fish sauce and kim chee at midnight from his kitchen it hasn’t been like before. When he was “remodeling” the property. With a hammer. He put a roof on and used a manual hammer for the entire job. It took months and of course always transpired before 7 am, on weekends, on holidays (Christmas!). Recently, however, he’s been alot of fun. I was in our backyard and saw flames through the fence. Flames. Is anyone there? I said. Silence. Honey? I said. Call the fire department right now. Then Mr. Neighbor said, it’s my barbeque. Right. Under a tree, a several foot long trench of foot high flame. A Barbeque.
The other neighbors are not much better. Seven a.m. here takes place on a planet where time has no meaning. I used to transcribe witness interviews for the County Public Defender, and sometimes for extra fun the interviewers would drop their pencils right by the mic. It sounded like a steel beam being dropped from a great height. This is what every morning sounds like around here, and it seems to me to be…unnecessary. Somehow. But alot of things seem unnecessary to me, and most of them revolve around people not paying attention, and not paying attention to each other and what’s around them.
I’ve been thinking about the concept of Do No Harm. Given that something gets roughed up no matter what you do, it behooves us to be careful. And we can be careful about what we think, and say, and do. We are, as they say, Not Alone.
Chocolate
I thought this deserved its’ own, separate few words.
Chocolate sauce, Gentle Reader. Truly one of the great things in life. Last night I made some with cream and Trader Joe’s excellent chocolate chips. It was amazing. Especially with raspberries and vanilla ice cream. A transcendent experience, in fact. I highly recommend it.
Small Miracles
I watched a flower open the other evening in our garden, a clematis.
It must have popped open and caught the corner of my eye, because I had just looked at it a few minutes before, still a bud. But there it was, deep velvety purple petals with ivory backing, center part yellow and green, all of it quivering and expanding. The top petal was a little crunched down and as I stood there holding my breath, I saw it straighten up. I saw the colors shift a bit. The stamens were straightening themselves out, wobbly as new lambs. The whole thing just blew me away.
In talking to my friends and colleagues, it seems that many of them don’t really think we have time for things to get better on earth now. We’re on a collision course with a fate we’ve helped speed up, and perhaps make worse, as well as the hugeness of the cosmos, which appears to have its own agenda and designs. Perhaps, in addition to just trying to do no harm, the experience of these small moments of timeless grandeur are messages. Messages that say all will be well in spite of how it appears now. The incredible reality of how a coyote blends in with its surroundings, how every grain of sand and every snowflake are different, how spring comes and things are reborn: This reality may shift but there is an undying element in it. This is what we have to remember, maybe.
Oh, The Fun We’re Having
I feel an odd sense of hopefulness about developments in Iran. Perhaps I’m crazy. But there appears to be a sort of a glimmer of possibility for shift, which could create glimmers for shifts elsewhere. In other words, a move toward integrating old paradigms into actual positive reality. A loosening of the logjam. A breakup of the ice on the river (interestingly, the French word for that? is debacle.) It’s a melancholy hopefulness, of course, because these sorts of things, since they involve humans, are seemingly always very costly. The entrenched Powers That Be never want to give up their hog’s share of things. The “my way or the highway” deal. Why, indeed, can’t we just get along? We’re running out of time and also this way of doing things is not only unproductive. It’s boring. Not only taxing but tiring. ( Also it is wasteful, and Nature does not waste energy. We may be moving toward a point where Nature is going to say to us: Get off me you– you wastrels!)
I’ve also been thinking about real estate, and real estate agents. Suddenly there appears to be a realtor for about every 5000 people in this country. How did that happen? And why is that necessary? Also, who are they? It is interesting when you look into THAT. Personally, this is what I think. The concept of “owning” land is a little strange. It’s like owning air, or water, or sunlight. I read an interesting thing in Delancey.com, which is a wonderful daily email about ideas. It was about the American Revolution, and how a good deal of the support for it ultimately came from people living in America who wanted to own land so they could make lots of money. Hmmm. So, let’s see here. First, there are people already living here, the First Nations. Then, Europeans come, obliterate them, and say, “Only WE and Our Special Designees can own this land”. Which, while it isn’t anybody’s really, certainly wasn’t THEIRS to make that decision over. So then, other Europeans come, but the time line has shifted, and they’re lumped in with the First Nations: They can’t own land either. Revolution ensues, and what do you know? A different, supposedly more egalitarian set of rules comes up, so that if you have enough money, you can own land. ( Unless you’re a member of the First Nations. In that case, you are still and forever S.O. L.) A neat and orderly way of limiting ownership, when you think about it. Fast forward to today, where we have legions of real estate agents who do what exactly? Maintain and participate in the long, limited lineage of who may own property. Except that greed got in the way this time and now the whole thing has blown up. Which just, to my mind, shows you the faultiness of the original premise. *SIGH*
Meanwhile, off to the nursery for a potting soil purchasing extravaganza. My kind of land ownership.
Have You Ever Noticed…..
One of the fun things about working at home? It always seems to the other people living with you as though you are available all the time (since you are THERE all the time), which can lead to a certain amount of crossness due to interruptions in the Middle Of Important Sentences Being Written, etc. So I had crossness today. Oh, well.
Today mostly I am thinking about how important some spiritual practice or internal discipline really is. We so seldom really know what is going on with another person, perhaps even what goes on with ourselves. Feelings can come over us, overwhelm us, and we may not even know really what we are feeling. It’s pretty hard to make a decent choice or decision within such parameters. But training yourself to keep a perspective, not jump to conclusions, sit with the whateveritis, and eventually come to see it for what it is, can let you, in D. Suzuki’s words, let it go as it goes.
Which is not so easy when you’re dealing with old patterns, entrenched ideas, things you didn’t even know were in there except you knew something was hurting because clearly there was something you were maybe trying to avoid. I suppose the ability to see what one is looking at and hear what one is listening to, then respond, is what makes heroic figures who they are. They can make decisions based on what is going on, not what they’re afraid is going on or what they don’t know is going on or what MIGHT be going on if…..
Well. Ahem. Heroic figure not me. But I made it through another week, largely because I have learned a little tee-tiny bit to sit with the whateveritis. It doesn’t get any easier to do, but it gets less frightening. Which is interesting. The fear is still there, of course, but it isn’t calling all the shots. It’s just another party to the action.
Meanwhile, yesterday I was listening to one of my all time favorite songs, “Fight the Power” by the Isley Brothers. Once a birthday party was given for me in a downtown, inner big city, bar. With a jukebox. And everybody imaginable crammed into a long galley shaped bar. Talking, laughing. That song came on, and as if rehearsed to perfection, when the chorus including the world “bullshit” came up, every single person in the place raised their glass and sang along at the top of their lungs. It was a great birthday. And somehow, a moment of warrior-like poise.
The Lady’s Not For Burning
1) Cheney Redux. I should’ve stayed in the woods. There is a song by Godsmack that sums up how I feel about him: “go away”. Why is he talking now? When he kept silence at a time when speaking might have been productive? (That, there, is a rhetorical question by the way.) Personally, I think Leon Panetta is right about Cheney’s motives. Honestly, though. Why is this man getting all this attention? What part of his agenda don’t we get by now?
2) *sigh* We live in a world where we all, creatures great and small, have to eat each other to live. That should provide a bit of a humbling context for things. Plus a dollop of respect for our fellow creatures who, in Buddhist thought, have all been Someone to us at one point or another, and who, at one point or another, will or have eaten us, or we them.
3) Basic experiential observation, as well as science, shows us that things can only expand so far before they collapse. COLLAPSE. Be it a souffle or a banking system or hamburgers or weather systems or bridges or cities or relationships or whatever it might be. Why we continue to ignore this basic truth is puzzling to me. I go into the grocery store and am stunned at the way people go through it without giving a thought to what it takes to get all that stuff there. And get all that stuff everywhere all over the world. Except to places where people are lucky to get a cupful of grain to cook, or have to scavenge for their food from the detritus of the upper classes. That’s a whole other part of it. But: Expanding population, more food needed? Where can it all come from? Especially if everyone insists on eating fast food, eating hamburgers, eating prepared food and eating things because they feel like it and not because they are available at the time, in the place…..The same thing goes for money. The current system has been expanding and expanding and expanding…..and here we are, at the boom. All that imaginary money is floating around after the real explosion. It’s puzzling to me that anyone could think we may go back to how things “were”.
4) Gas prices. Gentle reader, here in Cali gas is over $3 a gallon. Now. If we have such limited supplies of gasoline that it must be that expensive, things need to change immediately. They should anyway, but….If the supplies are not that limited, then why is the price going up? Bottom line, as usual, is…ta da…our old friends, greed and over expansion. Those at the top must have their allotted amount of profit as determined by them. Nothing is tied to anything real anymore. Every value is determined by the person who stands to make a profit from whatever the commodity is. Intrinsic value seems hardly to exist. Heck, take women’s handbags! (Please!) There are actually purses that cost in the five figures. High five figures. Purses. What is that? Who would possibly do such a thing on any end of that continuum?
4) Laws. I think I am at the end of my tolerance for non-enforcement of laws. Why make them? If we enforced the laws as written things might move quite a bit more smoothly. Enforce, for example, the vehicle code. That alone would be a huge big deal. If the immigration laws were properly enforced, instead of being bent to serve the needs of corporate interests for cheap labor, we’d all be a lot better off, undocumented workers and documented alike. Of course enforcement of law is kind of like setting the value on a handbag. Selective, subjective….Justice is what keeps a society functional overall. It is not something to be used for the benefit of a few individuals who believe they can call the shots. So many people, so much stuff going on….we have to start where we are with what is in front of us and start to sort and discard.
5) United we stand, etc. If we ALL got together and said, so sorry but I am not buying your gas, I am not using your credit card, I am not participating in this craziness…even for one week….it would send a message that ultimately might get through to those who still run things, and still are not listening.
6) oh, well. Here we are, and away we go!
Back on the Street Again
Hello, Gentle Readers. Indeed, I was gone for few days, and here I am back again. Overjoyed? I thought so.
We went a few hours north of here to a summer art festival on a river. I must say it was wonderful, wonderful to see old friends, wonderful to NOT HAVE MY CEL PHONE WORK and NOT HAVE MY LAPTOP and NOT BE NEAR A TELEVISION. I almost forgot what bliss that is. Wonderful to be on a river, wonderful to see redwoods and a nest of ospreys. Of course, this wouldn’t be my life if the whole thing went without incident.
We decided to camp this year, to save money and just be outside. So, after packing up all the booth stuff and all the product, and all the camping gear and food, we set off. We arrived at the campground and it seemed OK. The Partner and I both prefer camping in the middle of nowhere, but this was a working trip after all. So, there we were, relaxing after a long day, looking up at the redwoods through the tent. I confess to having had a nagging sense of foreboding because the Partner had said, more than once, how much he was looking forward to peace and quiet. Uh oh. What to our wondering ears should appear but…..A Large Asshat. With a surround sound system to blare out his almost beyond belief terrible taste in music, two stand up barbeques to provide chemical fumes, AND!!! two, count ‘em, small pony sized dogs with basso profundo barks. This was nothing but enhanced by the arrival of four more humans, bringing the festive group to a total of six. Six loudmouths and two Hounds of the Baskervilles. Lots of liquid refreshment. So, there we were. “Quiet time” supposedly commenced at 10 p.m., so I called the ranger station after having endured two and a half hours of top volume Kenny Chesney interspersed with 80’s techno and intense barking. Rangers were at an emergency, apparently. I went to the “camp host” trailer, and found they were cowering in it refusing to answer the door. Yes, this meant that I, clutching my newly rebatteried MagLite, had to stump over to Happy Acres and ask them to tone it down. This did not go particularly well. What noise, Large A. enquired with a flat stare and stiff shoulders. The dogs? Ha ha, the dogs. They were by now foaming at the mouth and lunging at me, and his comment was, “they’re friendly”. This, Gentle Reader, is right up there with “I’ll only park in your driveway for a minute”. A passive aggressive owner with two out of control dogs telling me the dogs are friendly. So, I said, I can handle the dogs, pal. I watch the Dog Whisperer, after all. And, indeed, they started wagging their tails, sat down, and barked conversationally. They just need to be quiet, and the music and yelling needs to stop, I said. If you could just be mindful that you aren’t the only person here. I leave you to imagine the special hours that ensued after Large A. snarled at me, have a wonderful night. It was long, is what it was.
Anyway, we got out of THERE, giving Large A. & Entourage a hearty 21 horn salute on the way out, and everything was totally groovy from then on except for not having had any sleep at all that one night. (And not much the night before because our neighbors at home were up all night partying. Sleep people, sleep. It’s more important than you know.) My inventory got a bit gnarly but what the heck. I found myself laughing at irritating non-customers instead of worrying. Good. It took all this week for the fatigue to wear off and the anxiety to kick in again, so that once again I can send off my crisply worded memos to whitehouse.gov about how non-stimulating the stimulus is for small business. And blog, of course. It’s more fun than ever because Boo is now imitating my every key stroke with her beak against her food bowl and cage side. Ah, home again. I missed you guys!
