Retroactive Space Heater

"...And then one day you find...

2008-09-26T20:45:00.005-07:00

...ten years have got behind you; no one told you when to run; you missed the starting gun."

These simple yet powerful lyrics have guided me, here and there, for most of my adult life. As in: make the most of your time, because you only have a certain amount of it.

Richard Wright made the most of his time. In a little more than forty years of public life and performance, his music and quiet elegance and inherent dignity have affected millions of people worldwide, bringing tears, joy, and inspiration across multiple generations. Wright was known for intentionally putting "spaces" in the middle of busy music (illustrated here). remaining true to his own affection for the music of Miles Davis, who himself said that the spaces between the notes were much more important than the actual notes in and of themselves. Couldn't the same thing be said about a certain amount of the time we have?

David Gilmour recently referred to the musical connection that he shared with Wright as ''Telepathy". True that, David.

In 2006, when I found out that Wright would be touring with David Gilmour's band in support of On an Island, I was thrilled. While I was unable to attend one of the 6 shows they played in the United States, I was able to scour bittorrent sites for links to scratchy, noisy bootlegs of the tour. Fueled by headphones and marijuana, i imagined myself in attendance at one of the $800 theatre seats (curse you, ebay ticket brokers!!), absorbing the same haunting harmonies of Echoes more than 25 years later. It didn't really matter that I didn't attend, as I followed their progress throughout Europe and North America. Shortly after I arrived in Oregon, I purchased the concert DVD and have enjoyed it a zillion times since.

My point is this, I suppose: Richard Wright went out quickly and quietly, surrounded by his family, at home. This, of course, is all any of us could hope for. However, Rick went out at the top of his game. His musical skill was at its apex, and he had just completed a highly successful tour with those friends he loved, sharing his gift with many, many people all over the world. In the aforementioned DVD, he shared many little tidbits in the included documentaries about how much fun and joy-filled his time with his musical partner has been. Coincidentally, his band released a full concert DVD of their show at the historically important Gdansk Shipyards in Poland only a few days after his death. While I haven't yet seen the film, I have listened to the show, and it truly does show Wright at the top of his game. Make sure to check out the usage of tuned crystal wine glasses during "Shine on you Crazy Diamond". organic, simple, gorgeous overtones.

So, thanks for sharing some of your time with us, Rick. Say hello to Syd for us, and know that those simple keystrokes and important spaces between have given those of us left attached to this mortal coil much to think about, and much to enjoy. Shine on.

this weekend

2008-02-03T00:47:00.000-08:00

...i made a new friend.

...meet my buddy fergus.

2008-01-29T21:32:00.001-08:00

Going along in company together, a wise man Must mix with other foolish persons. But on seeing what is wrongful he abandons them. As a full-fledged heron leaves the marshy ground.

-Udana 8.7

tonight, in Clarice Starling-esque irritation, I delete personal files from my work desktop account. While doing so, I imagine the green, the oxygen, and the finest financial security: money, that is earned doing that which one loves. The loud roar of anger and the twinge of corporate workplace betrayal fades as i bathe in the future green. in preparation for departure, i go through my email inbox. inside, i find the above mail waiting for me.

and now, i'm ready to let go. Thanks, TFG. Together, in conjunction with the Universe, you may just have turned the tide. I may just be a Believer in the complete interconnectedness of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

So be it. Ahead, the delicious transition into the unknown. Adventure!

TMI friday

2008-01-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

it's friday. time for the Too much Information about my upbringing Meme!
True statements are in bold. pass it along, should you see fit to share. :)

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers. ( this must be a british thing?)
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent (and grandma and grandpa, too!)
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (music, driving track/field: discus)
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (Church of the Bretheren, Eldora, Iowa.)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18 (during the ADD/ritalin phase. i really pissed him off, i think. poor guy.)
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels (nope. stayed with friends and family!)
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them (a 1962 Ford Galaxie coupe! Wow! simply an amazing car. loved it.)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child (Like Crazy, I was an only child until i was ...7?)
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course ??
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school (preferred the stereo-swiped the folks speakers)
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (but i knew how much work went into keeping us warm in the midwest wintertime! corncobs, oak, ash, pine)

Bonus Round:
35. Your parents showed affection to one another
36. Your parents showed evidence of a sexual relationship (they're human! good for them, i say.)
37. You were conscious of your parents having money problems
38. Your parents fought in front of you and/or your siblings
39. Your parents confided in you about their marital problems
40. You were concerned at any time before you were 18 your parents might get divorced

unrelated, but interesting and fun!

Today is the feast day of Saint Dwynwen, patron saint of Welsh lovers. Princess Dwynwen was the most beautiful of Brychan Brycheiniog’s twenty-four daughters. She was deeply in love with Maelon Dafodrill, but her father had promised her to another prince.

In his frustration, Maelon raped her and ran away to escape her father’s wrath. Grief-stricken, Dwynwen retreated to a lonely wood and prayed that she might be relieved of her love for Maelon. In her dream, an angel gave her a sweet drink which cured her; but she saw Maelon turn into a block of ice when he drank from the same cup.

The angel then granted Dwynwen three wishes. She wished first that Maelon be restored; second, that she herself would never marry; third, that all requests made to her by true lovers be granted. So make a wish today. You don’t have to be Welsh, but it helps.

a breath of fresh air.

2008-01-24T23:15:00.000-08:00

so. i've made it official, to myself at least. i've printed a calendar for the next seven weeks and one day. i've circled a specific day... the fourteenth of march. a week beyond my six month anniversary at this little TV station in my little market.

seven weeks and one day, and i shan't want or need to commute +/- 2 hours every day to go to work. i'll get a nice job in Corvallis that i really love, and i'll give up my corporate benefits package gladly.

i see happy, smiling, green plants at the end of this tunnel. a nice, warm greenhouse. sunshine. physical exertion. i see a bunch of learning for me at the end of this here corporate tunnel.

i'm happy that it only took me six months of working here to figure out that i really don't want to work here. Thanks, ClearChannel. While I'm sure you'll do just fine without me, I remain grateful that you gave me a nice opportunity to move away and start a whole new life. I will be grateful in the future to collect a paycheck that doesn't have the same watermark that Rush Limbaugh's paycheck does.

next step: finding the perfect place, doing something that i will really love, with a smaller paycheck. and no commute. except maybe on this.

Potential energy, connection with the Ethereal, and politics.

2008-01-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

There are approximately fifteen hundred thousand zillion (+/- 2,000) Greenhouses and plant nurseries in the Valley. One of which TFG and I visited before we went to hang with Miles for a couple of hours. Here in this randomly chosen greenhouse, the love shines out of the windows (more on this later). The lovely proprietor was a wealth of knowledge on what/when/how we could plant, and the seed company, based in the Valley, has zillions of plants which were chosen to sell in the Valley because they are meant to grow in the Valley.

i would imagine myself clamoring out the door in the morning, should i be lucky enough to work in an environment such as this.
"Gotta go! the plants await!"

a one line snippet, delivered by the super-nice proprietor in a lovingly offhand manner:
"Well, Our rule of thumb is that when the snow melts off of the top of Mary's Peak, it's safe to plant."

we couldn't have garnered that type of knowledge on our own in the time we've been here. thanks, super-nice greenhouse proprietor. Over the weekend, I made a first draft at the nature of the seeds/starter plants we would need to fulfill the map I created of the garden which hasn't been built yet. (LITN potentiality/disappointment alert!) This draft is subject to constant revision, as the line between what i want and what will happen in reality will eventually cross over. don't doubt me, dear reader. i make this crap up all of the time.

there's far too much stuff on the list. seven different kinds of organic, ready-to-grow-in-the-Valley tomatoes? Yes! we need them ALL! No. it's too much for the space we have. organic peppers, yes. but do we really need seven kinds? do we really want to grow that much stuff? potatoes. zucchini. onions. garlic. rosemary. basil. a pumpkin. I'd love to spend three hours a day in this upcoming jungle. I can see it, dear reader. i have a reasoned, sensible, and planned expectation that i will make it happen. my new family's first garden together.

...and we haven't even made the list of the flowers we'd like to grow.

But!! (and I thought of you, Jenny while i did this) i did have fun making the map. and the list. and the planning. and the plotting. and the planning of the plotting. and the imagining. and the visualizing. the making of the list and checking things off of the list. checking "making a list" off of the list. in the end, however, we still have to pick the seed/starters and prep the ground and p.h. test. call me results oriented, but nothing actually has been done yet.... no physical results of my "spend a couple of hours in the garden which probably lies in my future" time planning.

it's so difficult for me to reconcile how i'm wasting my NOW (-not actually doing anything except imagining-) by planning the upcoming WHEN which has infinite ability to disappoint because it may not happen exactly the way i imagine it!(when the loving planting/farming/sweating stuff actually gets done, and i have dirt under my nails). A certain pseudo-religion would frown and shake their fingers at me. read the first line of this page, a quote from L. Ron Hubbard, founder of yet another Live in the Now philosophy. of course, we can find a direct crossover. But that's just me- I like to cross-reference!

anyway, enough of the Live in the Now Neurosis, ....for now. no, wait.... ...NOW! :)

Dreams. another area of fruition as of late. Both TFG and TBB have been visited in theirs by a little girl named Yves. (yes, the masculine form of Yvette). I haven't seen her yet, but it sure would be nice if she showed up. i'm pretty sure i'd like her.

and, lastly, this little snippit. I am considering re-registering as an Independant voter in my new state, unaffiliated with anyone. Stuff like this reinforces the thought.

meanwhile, back at the Bad German Disco...

2008-01-16T21:56:00.001-08:00

Embodiment.

2008-01-16T20:04:00.000-08:00

Embodying without judgment

"To be fully embodied means to be at one with who we are, in every respect, including our physical being, our emotions, and the totality of our karmic situation. It is to inhabit, completely, our relative reality, with no speck of ourselves left over, no external observer waiting for something else or something better...(It) involves experiencing the totality of oneself, without judgment."

-Reggie Ray.

I like that the author has the wisdom and foresight to include the little bit about reality in his quote. it makes stuff like this easier for for a loyal Doubting Thomas-ist like me to grasp.

It's been a really nice couple of days here in the Valley. The sun has shone. TFG and I sat in our bedroom today over some really wonderful food from our local (let me rephrase: LOCAL) taqueria with the window open. I was introduced to a yummy rice-based drink, but i still preferred TBB's draft root beer. At said LOCAL taqueria, i was assured that if i was unable to procure any good habanero sauce that their family would certainly be happy to sell me some of theirs- mixed fresh weekly, and at a tenth of the price of bottled habanero sauce. (even though the proprietor advised that "it is really expensive ...to sell."

we practiced some spanish words while we ate. a new favorite of mine is to repeat "Te Molesto?" while i repeatedly tap TBB on his forehead with my index finger. He is very happy to show me another finger with an entirely different meaning, and we both laugh. and then i poke him in the ribs. and then he giggles. and then he unleashes a well-placed elbow to mine. and i gasp. and then we both giggle.

side note/diversion: TBB loves to grapple. He loves the physicality of being around a grown man, and wrestling/grappling/exercising with said (over)grown man. I like this activity too, because of the inevitable bonding that it produces-not to mention that benchpressing him over my head ten times a day is good for my oft-neglected chest and shoulders. we love to be together, and in physical contact with each other. Here is my quandry: often, i am forced (internally) to say 'please, let's stop' , for the reasons which follow:

A.) I outweigh the boy by two hundred pounds. I am stronger than he is, for the time being. I am afraid that random grappling and assorted ninja-esque submission holds will eventually physically hurt him. I don't want to physically hurt him -ever. I am, out of necessity, very careful when we play. I'm convinced that i will accidentally hurt him if we play as hard as he wants to, every day. I'm very big and can be oafishly clumsy. know thyself.

B.) I don't want the boy's memories of our time together as one stretch of violence, even mock or pretend. I don't want to be really good at instantly causing pain to TBB. he's big for his age, and astonishingly physically resilient. still, i don't want him to remember our first stages together, as a family, as a period of all which we did was to bounce off of each other (i want to use the word literally here, but i shall refrain, dear reader).

C.) it causes his dear mother angst. and i'd rather chew my way out of a coyote trap than to cause his dear mother angst. she's a pretty special lady. i like her a lot. i want to un-angst things when i am with her.

i welcome advice from parents who have more experience than i. and that's pretty much all of them. my instinct is to re-direct the energy, but attempts so far towards this end have resulted in an instantly dejected little boy who just wants to play. and playing always equals grappling.

i advised TFG that i believe that i'm evolving. insofar as i believe that i prefer to wear my new pajamas around the house all day. this holiday season, i raked in three pair of pajama pants, each more fuzzy, comfortable and fun than the next. i even went out to get our breakfast while wearing them. Sorry, Mary. i think the lassiez-faire attitude of the Valley is getting to me.

today, the sun shone in the valley.

2008-01-15T23:36:00.000-08:00

Inwardly be free of all hopes and desires, but outwardly do what needs to be done. Without hopes in your heart, live as if you were full of hopes. Live with your heart now cool and now warm, just like everyone else. Inwardly give up the idea "I am the doer," yet outwardly engage in all activities. This is how to live in the world, completely free from the least trace of ego.

-Maharamayana

La Vie en Rose

2008-01-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

and another.
all over the world. yep.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

1. La Vie en Rose (with Edith Piaf!!)

2. "...we counted our spoons", Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. yep. the third picture on the page. from the bottom.

2008-01-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

Unconscious Mutterings, the Free Association meme

Dream big :: the savage wishy-washyness of LITN. ;)

Competition :: unnecessary. unless you're snarling for Alpha Dominance in the wolfpack.

Torn :: Bad Natalie Umbrugalia pop song.

Modeling :: a neck injury, obtained while swimming the seas of shallow.

Coaster :: favorite one collected: Cafe 420.

Slut :: obsolete.

Spread :: the yummy stuff TFG buys.

Amanda :: Petty Larceny.

Romance :: still patience.

Paradise :: Romance. Served with a green salad on the side.

unrelated, or maybe not. regarding worship:

"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our trubute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer."

-Sarah Ban Breathnach

de-mystifying feminine sexuality.

2008-01-12T00:02:00.000-08:00

for my male readers, this is for you. well, mostly it's for me. call it a public service.

EET Is German Disco Lightshow!!

2008-01-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

take whatever hallucinogenics you may have nearby.
Und Yah!

side note: the beautiful boy and i are thinking about naming one of our fifty-eleven bands after this skit. think you could groove to a band called German Disco Lightshow? i think we could.

Unlurk Yourself!

2008-01-10T19:27:00.000-08:00

statement/request: i have like, seven readers, dear reader. one of them is probably you. express yourself, trenchcoat or no. delurk and feel the flying freedom, feel the flapping fringe of the floating freedom which follows.

house news/request for opinion: we're saving up for the best stinkin' vacuum cleaner any of us has ever seen, much less owned. suggestions? do we drop the big cha-ching for the dyson, or will a bissell do? an oreck? i shan't tolerate a kirby, my apologies to those of you who work for them.

backstory: one of the three of us is a vacuum fetishist/playa. one of the three of us is a vacuum ignorist/Zen practitioner. one of the three of us is a vacuum terrified/shock trauma-ed "please don't vacuum! Ever!" practitioner. bonus points to those of you who can correctly identify us. Your opinions on the type/brand of our next vacuum will be weighed more heavily.

2008-01-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

A retrospective on 2007:

1. Family.
2. Friends
3. Me.
4. Someone I love.
5. My Choice.

Archive Meme Instructions:
Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you've written. ... but there is a catch:

Link 1 must be about family.
Link 2 must be about friends.
Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are... what you're all about.
Link 4 must be about something you love.
Link 5 can be anything you choose.

DMA, CD's, and the RIAA.

2008-01-03T20:33:00.000-08:00

a few reasons why i haven't bought any compact discs in a while.
first, there was the insult of the encoded digital rights management included on certain CD's. Humans, especially consumers, cannot be trusted and MUST be punished, even pre-emptively.

then, the recent ruling on the Atlantic VS. Howell case explain that buying a cd is okay. ripping the music off of it to put onto your IPod or other personal listening device isn't. CD's MUST be listened to in your CD player only. MP3 files must be additionally purchased, elsewhere. you have then effectively bought the licence to listen to someone else's music, twice. Listening to your CD in someone else's car (with them present) is also in violation of the licence you purchased to listen to someone else's music. to be legal, you MUST listen to this music alone.

the voice in my head that asks, "well, don't artists deserve to get paid?" says, yes. of course. they signed a deal that made them instant stars, with all of the trappings. the artist is afforded a lifetime of luxury due to their work and creative skills. but they aren't making any money. they wouldn't make any money even if their record hadn't been traded or shared even once.

the recording industry is dead, but it doesn't know it yet. with easy and cheap access to top-quality home studio stuff, artists don't need to spend a thousand dollars an hour to record in a big, beautiful studio. there isn't any rush to get as much stuff in as you can. a home-recording, when shared with friends and fans, can, with care, show the same kind of internal love and harmony that shows up in other self-produced goods. Artists can network and get the music to those who are interested. all that is left now, is to watch while the shark tank of lawyers do their very best to hold on to the massive retainers paid by the RIAA, by attacking the consumers of their product. correction: the consumers of their product licenses.

i imagine that it's entirely possible that the entire major label recording industry will collapse before the beautiful boy makes his first vote for president. and it can't come soon enough. let's replace the old model with one that takes into consideration that which should have been considered all along: a respectful business partnership with the consumer.

Today's Daily OM

2008-01-01T23:56:00.000-08:00

January 1, 2008
Starting New
A Moment Of Choice

There are times in our lives that lend themselves to starting something new. The beginning of a new year, finishing school, leaving a job, or changing homes—these all are times that turn our minds to fresh starts. Their advantage is that they bring with them the energy of that event, creating a tide of change around them that we can ride to our next shoreline. But we can choose to start anew anytime. In any moment we can decide that a bad day or a relationship that’s gotten off on the wrong foot can be started again. It is a mental shift that allows us to clean the slate and approach anything with fresh eyes, and we can make that choice at any time.

Starting new is most powerful when we focus our attention to what we are choosing to create. Giving all of our attention to the unwanted aspects of our lives allows what we resist to persist. We need to remember to leave enough room in the process of new beginnings to be kind to ourselves, because it takes time to become accustomed to anything new, no matter how much we like it. There is no need to get down on ourselves if we don't reach our new goals instantly. Instead, we acknowledge the forward motion and choose to reset and start again, knowing that with each choice we learn, grow, and move forward.

Making the choice to start anew has its own energy—it's a promise made to you. The forward momentum creates a sort of vacuum behind it, pulling toward you all you need to help you continue moving in your chosen direction. Once the journey has begun, it may take unexpected turns, but it never really ends. Like cycles in nature, there are periods of obvious growth and periods of dormancy that signal a time of waiting for the right moment to burst forth. Each time we choose to start anew we dedicate ourselves to becoming the best we are able to be.

i like how the Buddhists have a way of making one give oneself a backspin kick in the forehead.

clouds. and more clouds.

2008-01-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

It's been raining in Oregon. Foggy in Oregon. Rainy and Foggy in Oregon. Grey and Rainy and Foggy in Oregon. Damp and Grey and Rainy and Foggy in Oregon. It is not sunny in Oregon. I'm getting pretty tired of Grey and Damp and Rainy and Foggy. At the small market station i work for, i've kind of fallen into a coach/learner relationship with this Dear Little Old Man, who makes his living by futzing with circuitboards, solving intense differential equations, and driving up the mountain to bring the transmitter back online. DLOM is kind, and has deep creases in his face from a lifetime of smiling. DLOM says to The Fabulous Girlfriend, The Beautiful Boy and I, one cloudy misty day, that it "only rains in Oregon three times a year. From October to May, Some of June, and Some in September."

I've been wondering for nineteen weeks in a row if i'll ever fucking see the sun again. I know it is up there, probably exactly the 93 million miles away that it always is. I just wish i could see it now and again. Tonight at work, the chief meteorologist is calling for rain and fog and grey and damp for another seven days straight. I'm hoping that the smiling face of J.R. Dobbs is in the sky, smiling down at me from above the Rain and Fog and Mist and Grey and ......well, i hope his FROP is as good as the stuff i smoked today. who am i kidding. of course his FROP is good; he's Bob!

Today i took a drive up and down the valley. It was cloudy, but was not raining. However, the moisture saturation in the air was low enough to see the foothills on both sides of the valley, and to see the snow-capped mountains beyond them. I could see Mary's Peak, overlooking Corvallis from the west. She was beautiful. I had pretty much forgotten that she lived there. and then, ten miles north of Eugene, a wallcloud of fog stood there, defiant and still. i flipped the foglights on in the snarfler, and plunged unafraid into the glowing mist.

It ain't all bad. some people really like the clouds. you can see their work here. Christ. i just wish sometimes that a nice, fat, sub-zero northwest blast would come through for a few days like it did (and will continue to) back home on the prairie. An uncaring, Far-Below-Zero wind that scrubs the High Plains, leaving behind topsoil-flavored snowdrifts under the screaming White Winter Sun, circling quickly in the fiercely blue southern sky. Something other than this sluggish, slow-moving sea of clouds, the fan blades of the repeating spiralic systems pinwheeling in from their focal point over the Bering Sea.

I think this qualifies as a complaint. It's okay. I'll simply move my purple wristband to my other wrist, and begin again at this very moment. Happy New Year, dear reader.

two thousand and seven. whoa.

2007-12-24T23:58:00.000-08:00

ripped off from Qacei's myspace page, and customized.

Where did you begin 2007?
In a huge public square, with fifty thousand like-minded revelers in the driving rain. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

What was your status by Valentine's Day?
I was someone's valentine! I had noooooooo idea what the next few months would bring... talk about a universal sideswipe!

Were you in school (anytime this year)?
Yes. I left University this year, incomplete.

Did you have to go to the hospital?
to visit my friend Konstantin.

Did you have any encounters with the police?
I was asked for my passport in Germany. apparently i was not the droid that they were looking for.

Where did you go on vacation?
Holland. (Antwerp, Eindhoven and Amsterdam)
Belgium. (Liege, Brussels, Bastogne, and the Bois Jacques)
France. (Paris, and along the Normandy Coast)
Luxembourg. (Luxembourg City)
Germany. (Aachen, Dusseldorf, Cologne)

What did you purchase that was over $500?
airline tickets. human veal for ten hours, and then wandering sheep in O'Hare for ten hours. no wonder i will not eat either... for i AM them!

Did you know anybody who got married?
One Lutheran wedding in July.

Did you know anybody who passed away?
Not this year. I kind of got to know a couple of people who died before i met them.

Did you move anywhere?
seventeen hundred miles from all that which i thought i knew.

What sporting events did you attend?
Is team-table herb worship in amsterdam a sport? then, i attended that one! oh, and some minor league junior hockey, and watching the Canaries lose repeatedly.

What concerts/shows did you go to?
Low, twice. Amy Steinberg.

Describe your birthday:
worked. felt sorry for myself. noticed no one was helping me feel sorry for myself, and then felt better.

What's the one thing you thought you would not do but did in 2007?
walk the stretch from the Bois Jacques (Jack's Wood) to bastogne at twilight. lots of ghosts there, man.

What has been your favorite moment(s)?
When i couldnt quite work up the courage to kiss TFG for the first time... she stood two steps up from me, so we could be at eye level, and she kissed me. it was very sweet, yo. learning about Hannah and Mitch through rapid 'ignore what's happening in class and pay attention to this seemingly insane woman on the other end of google chat' IM conversations that led to our first date. being terrified at Hannah's Fat Tuesday party. Enjoying Christmas Midnight Mass in a five-language service. We left immediately before the communion, so i'm pretty sure God thinks it's okay that a heathen was in her House for a while. Driving in the French countryside.

Any new additions to your family?
Two. well, three. well, five. One nine year old boy. One green eyed redhead with pale skin (the universe really must have been listening to that one.) One meowing Calico cat, 15. One Husband, and One Little Girl, both having shed this mortal coil.

What was your best month?
march.

What music will you remember 2007 by?
the "put your hands up for Detroit" song. it was playing all over europe when we were there. listening to Sigur Ros on the TGV from brussels to paris. Recording forty seven songs in a two-day marathon in brookings, SD- one of which was forty minutes long. yow.

Made new friends?
a nearly overwhelming amount. 2007 has been an unusual year for me.

Favorite Night out?
the goodbye and good luck party at the Hippie's Farm, complete with fireworks and psychedelics. August.

Overall, how would you rate this year? on a scale of 1-10
it's been a year of terrific change. no, i mean terrifying change. no, i mean...

Other than home, where did you spend most of your time?
in the car. on the highway.

Change your hairstyle?
yep. went bald.

Do you have a New Year's resolution?
haven't considered it yet. guess i could quit smoking so damn much.

Do anything embarrassing?
i embarrassed myself, but i don't quite know if there was anyone else there to witness it. oh wait, i'll just say this: "EEP!" while not entirely embarrassing, i did end up sharing more of myself than i had intended to at that moment.

Buy anything new from eBay?
an mp3 player for me, and a carefully researched phone for TFG.

Get married or divorced?
Hooked up, good and proper.

Get arrested?
no. thanks, cops in Germany!

Be honest - did you watch American Idol?
no. but, i never watched other pop phenom stuff like OC or Desperate Housewives, either. Did watch some Chef Ramsay this year, though.

Did you get sick this year?
called in sick, once.

Been snowboarding?
Nein.

Are you happy to see 2007 go?
I'm hoping for a touch of stability in 2008. but, we'll see. maybe it's overrated!

Been naughty or nice?
i guess i'll have to look at it in a karmic payback sort of way. i guess i've been good enough!

to those of you from...

2007-12-24T22:52:00.000-08:00

Sioux City, Iowa. Bemidji, Minnesota. Bellevue, Nebraska. Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Los Angeles, California. Victoria Island, British Columbia, Canada. Kalona, Iowa. Corvallis, Oregon. Birmingham, England, UK. Albuquerque, New Mexico. La Paz, Baja California, Mexico. Charlotte, North Carolina. Arlington, Virgina. New York City, New York. Worcester, Massachusetts. Isle of Man, UK. San Diego, California. Iowa City, Iowa. Hyannis, Massachusetts.

thank you, Dear Reader, for visiting. thank you for reading, thank you for your empathy, joy, and love. it's been a year of cheap therapy for me, and hopefully some laughs for you!

People i don't know in places like my beloved Belgium have visited. France. Japan. Kamchatka.

it makes me feel comfortably small when i look at the huge map that shows me where you are from.

love,
me.

Two Turntables and a Microphone.

2007-12-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

on Understanding:
First of all, do not predefine understanding, and do not make a principle of non-understanding.
-Ying-an

on self-reliance and instinct:
I believe that we can improve our relationships without involving our partners. If both partners are working, all the better. However, if just one person in a partnership makes significant changes then it is enough to alter the relationship for the better. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that my goal whenaddressing my partnership is keep the focus off of *us* and keep it firmly on *me.*
-Beth Fuller

on self-delusion:
Like a mirage in the springtime, the mind is found bewildered; animals imagine water but there is no reality to it. There is here nothing but thought construction, it is like an image in the air; when they thus understand all, there is nothing to know.
-adapted from the Lankavatara Sutra, translated by D.T. Suzuki

on happiness and pain:
If we train our breathing, we can control our emotions--that is, we can cope with the happiness and pain in our lives. We should practice until we feel this; our practice is not complete until we can see this clearly.
-Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

on Gratitude, and being grateful for what we have:
That very seeing does not see Itself at all. How can something that cannot see itself See another?
-Nagarjuna

on over-focus:
For some years now, students have not been getting to the root of the aim of Zen, instead taking the verbal teachings of Buddhas and Zen masters to be the ultimate rule. That is like ignoring a hundred thousand pure clear oceans and only focusing attention on a single bubble.
-Ying-an

Happy Winter Solstice, Dear Reader.

Passion.

2007-12-19T23:05:00.000-08:00

http://shouldaknownbetter.blogspot.com/

Passion. Longing. Self-Questioning. Husbands. Wives. Text Messages sent with Love, unanswered and unacknowledged. More Longing. Infidelity. Marriage. Divorce. Moving. Sleeping with your back to your spouse while they pine for someone else. Drinking. Dear John Letters. Drunken Emails proclaiming frustration with the inability to accept the concept of Forever. Corporate Politics. Panic Attacks. Desire. Distractions. More Longing. Self-Destructive Thought Patterns. Living, every single second of your life, however long it may turn out to be. Letting go and moving on.

i spent an hour tonight going through the anonymous author's archives. This lady should win an award.

i would recommend going backwards from march, 2006 to the present to fully grasp what has happened between her infrequent posts.

Thanks, Nameless. I know now that i'm not the only self-frustrating romantic getting laughed at while masturbating in the bathroom ;)

Exactly, Scientifically, Right Now.

2007-12-18T21:25:00.000-08:00

this was the first thing i saw on the 'ol Interweb today: ye old daily horrorscope.

For Scorpio, 18 December 2007:
Anxiety surfaces when you realize how important your current actions are. You intuitively know that what you do now could have long-term consequences and you want to take your time and get it right. Discomfort arises, however, when you realize that you might lose an opportunity if you wait. Take a middle-of-the-road approach by balancing your current needs with a sensible plan to achieve stability.

i wish the people who author these would get out of my head.

meanwhile, on the physical plane, here in my beautifully perfect 'water off of a stone' now, i feel washed out. a nicely coated layer of frost today. yesterday, D's xmasquanzaasolstice gift made it all the way from Africa, via New York City, to Corvallis before it was misdelivered or stolen. My exquisite outrage at this delicious cosmic ass-slap only fueled further barely-under-the-surface discontent.

you know, i find the whole live-in-the-now concept to be a giant pain in my ass. Seemingly, it's less of a self-help toolbox and more of a belief system. I got a taste of it twenty years ago, with a William S. Burroughs audio sample in one of my favorite songs. maybe it's supposed to be, maybe the paradigm shift required to think this way is a wonderful, beautiful, perfectly shaped and constructed grindstone that i keep moving my forehead towards, inch by delicious inch.

intuition. i view it as an evolutionary gift that the science of today's world hasn't quite erased yet. if you can't garner input knowledge from anything you see or hear around you, i imagined that i could always trust my gut instinct. educated guesses. disregard it if you're thinking and living in the now.

patterns, as viewed from experience. as in, "if this has happened 3.14169 times in a row, with the same outcome each time, chances are probably pretty good that the 22/7 happening will occur with the same statistic probability. always a valuable tool in MY toolbox. i now am asked to disregard this entire model, as it is toxic and can only implant unrealistic preconceptions of the future, and thusly impede whichever future you're building. uh huh.

hope. it's not compatible with the now, as i understand it. you're creating a false, idealized impression of the future, which doesn't actually exist. But if Stephen Hawking is right and there IS such a thing as tomorrow, you'd be tainting it with inherently destructive expectations.

dreams, and the ideas they fertilize. see above. useless, unless you like Neil Gaiman and Morpheus. which i do.

i'm so very, very frustrated. if this is the part of the lake that i'm choosing to view, it's a real shithole today. and it's not even MY garbage that litters the beach, causing me to trip over it and question my own ability to walk without falling. We can acknowledge that yes, there IS some garbage on the beach, but it is Never To Be Discussed. I want to clean it up, irregardless. but why? it isn't mine, so i'll clinically view in a detached manner. isn't the oil slick beautiful and perfect exactly where it is supposed to be, right here, now? i quell the suddenly loud urge to run, not walk.

...walking away is no longer an option. I love the lake. i'm committed to living here. i'm building a house on it. a nice log A-Frame, with a stone foundation and hearth, up and away from the beach a bit. You'll forgive me, dear reader, if i indulge in a moment of ignoring the present while i wreck the future, yes? There IS garbage on the beach, and i DO trip on it when i walk in the sand. and i'll take a stinkin' rake and garbage can to the beach and clean it up when the garbage can is exactly where the oil slick needs to be. i just hope the garbage doesn't rot and stink out the entire lake while it ignores itself and hopes it takes itself away.

and now, in my now, i'll listen to the proper zenmaster i know, someone i just recently had the pleasure of meeting. For me, She distilled the tail-chasing ethereal to two concise, accurate sentences. which i cannot remember. so, i'll paraphrase the idea into two crude sentences of my own, dear reader.

"Forget about the now, as it's confusingly circular, and you'll just get lost. All of these concepts have to wrap to fit around YOU, not the other way around."

*here's where the argument within falls to the side; as it's the only thing I've heard recently that makes any sense*

I hope whoever found D's xmaskwanzaasolstice gift enjoys it. Really!

....aaaaaaaaand introducing!

2007-12-05T19:00:00.000-08:00

my baby sister!

she's quite pregnant, and my newly-hatched niece and/or nephew is scheduled (or not!) to arrive sometime around the Solstice. Said newly-hatched niece and/or nephew is scheduled (or not!) to arrive at home, in lieu of a hospital. pregnancy isn't a sickness, and i'm so very happy the baby will be welcomed into the world in a quiet, safe place, unlit by harsh flourescents and halogens, filled only with family and love and welcoming. i am so VERY proud of her!

she lives in Stratford-Upon-Avon, near Birmingham, England with her amazing two-tier-bus-driving husband, Mark. It's tough to get Manchester United schwag there, but she always finds some for me, anyhow.

Thanks, Karin! I enjoyed the best cup of coffee in the world (just ask D, she'll tell you) this morning *afternoon* out of my famous Man U coffee mug. I'm sending a massive blast of whatever Karma i've earned your way tonight. I love you!

Thanks, Christine :)

2007-11-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

Do not underestimate your ability.

-Geshe Chekawa, "In Advice From a Spiritual Friend"

Bandwagon Jumping.

2007-11-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

I've never been tagged to do anything online, so when the invitation came today, I imagined that I should follow suit.

Pictures of my life.
1.Age at my next Birthday: 39.

I'm wondering why Engine Number 39 came up, but then the inevitable epiphany came: It's a big, bad, beautiful Steam Engine, that's why.

2. A place I'd Like to travel to and visit: Belize City, Belize.
Latitude: 17.48333. Longitude: -88.18333

Once, a good friend of mine described it to me thus: "Essentially, it's like a little chunk of Canada in the middle of violent Drug Cartel territory." With the fabulous, unfounded rumours of Mexican police and their unfettered power over their own people and anyone who dares to cross their borders and spend tourist pesos, I imagine that I'd prefer to scuba in a place like this rather than in Baja California. Call me crazy!

3. My Favorite Place: It's new to me, but it's four billion years old. It's as West Coast as you can get. It's Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon. I would love to have my family here to visit, and would love to take them here. Granted, it's not Iowa, but it's beautiful (and loud!) nonetheless.

4. Favorite Object(s). Now this one posed a series of questions: Objects I own? Objects I want to own? Objects that are publicly owned? Here are one of each, as I'm far too simple to cut it down. Here's our soundboard that lives in the Office. Inputs. Outputs. Onboard Effects. Effects Loops. XLR in/outputs. Stereo. Mono. Pan Left. Pan Right. Computer in. Computer out. Build your own D.I.Y Audio Multiple Orgasm. Careful kids, you'll go blind.

Object I hope to own someday: a nice, A-Frame home tucked away somewhere. Vaulted ceilings. Wall-sized windows. Wood stove. Rugs here and there over nice hardwood floors. Oh, and a nice little soundproofed studio tucked inside somewhere.

Favorite Publicly Owned Object: The Mardasson Memorial outside of Bastogne, Belgium.

A gift from the Belgian Government to those in the American Armed Forces who suffered, sacrificed, and died to forcefully remove Fascist Totalitarianism from their beautiful country. I wept openly when I was there, faced with the unimaginable loss of life and hope that this beautiful place endured. It is surrounded by peacefully rolling hills, bordered by tall, dark straight conifers, and time passes slowly for the amazing, gentle, kindly people who are lucky enough to live in La belle Belgique méridionale. May their farmlands never again echo from the obscenity of a machine gun. Salud.

5. Favorite Food.

Look. I'm a fat guy. I got this way because I like a LOT of foods, and am too lazy to work any of them off in any fashion. Today. Maybe different tomorrow. Until then, I'll settle with eating Salmon Nigiri every day until I overdose horribly on Omega 3 fatty acids.

6. Favorite Animal.

Honestly? I admire the Human Animal the most. We have the capacity (far too seldom used) for incredible altruism. We have the capacity (far too often used) to put others like ourselves, in a shower room with poisonous gas to kill ourselves out. We have the capacity for beautiful, meaningful Art, Literature, Medicine, Agriculture, Science, Faith, Hope and Love. We have the capacity to aim rockets at celestial objects to take close up photographs. We have the capacity to aim rockets at foriegn cities which would kill every single person there, yet leave their structures relatively intact. We are, quite possibly, the ultimate evolutionary experiment in Polar Duality.

...Specifically? I prefer Women. They smell better and generally are nicer to be around.

7. Favorite color: Green.

Flavor? Aurora Borealis Green.
Like the kind of green I saw in Manitoba.

8. Nickname:
I won't tell you why. It wouldn't make any sense outside of the context in which it was given. Let's just say it was in Duluth, at a campus party. It involved someone's discussion of King Crimson, how i must have listened to them all of the time, and a question, which i mistook for an offer: "wanna get high?" "Sure." "Right on! Got any weed?"

King Wolfgoat the Charismatic. The photo is from the 2nd stage at Jazzfest, 2006.

9. Town I was born in: Sheldon, Iowa.

It looks like this from a couple miles out.

10. Bad habit i have:

Sorry, Mom. It's always been a weakness of mine, and I still indulge when i can. Which is, in all actuality, probably far too often. It's okay. I enjoy my life as it is. As the Process advises, "As it is, So be It."

the best of the best, ranked by geographic location:

1. Holland

2. Belgium

3. Canada

4. Oregon, US

5. Your house, when you offer it to me.

6. My house, when I offer it to you.

Tag.

pinned down. in a four-letter acronym.

2007-11-23T20:34:00.000-08:00

Your Personality Type: INTP

You scored:

73Introversion

71 iNtuitiveness

50 Feelingness

40 Judgingness

Nerdy, secretive, you are the INTP. Communication is sometimes necessary to you but only when it involves something impossibly deep or complex. You talk to your friends about eastern philosophy, western religion, weird ass music like..."well, you probably haven't heard of them", etc. You are highly theoretical, dealing mostly in possibilities. Thus, you aren't highly inclined to action. Rather than flying the aeroplane, you build it and let the ISTP fly it. You read everything, because it increases your knowledge base, and therefore the number of things you can think about. You probably can't relate to "S's" very well, because talking about the "defensive lines of the PAC 10" bores the hell out of you. Where do people fit in to your understanding? You analyze them carefully, much like you would analyze a book, and then base your opinions of them on that. Perhaps you should accept people more than you analyze. your life might be easier.

Introvert: You are internally focused

iNtuitive: You are abstract

Thinking: You use your thinking to make decisions

Perceiving: You use your imagination to define your ideas

...and, here's the full rundown. More than I wanted to know!

Be nice to others. Be nice to your Self.

2007-11-21T22:27:00.000-08:00

Ms. Amy Steinberg told me, along with a room full of other good folks, that "You are your own worst critic! Go easy on yourself!"
She's a pretty smart lady.

Although wishing to be rid of misery,
They run toward misery itself.
Although wishing to have happiness,
Like an enemy they ignorantly destroy it.

-Santideva, "Bodhicaryavatara"

I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we may succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

driving lessons.

2007-11-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

I'll always remember the first time I drove a car. It was 1978. It was an early-seventies version of the Cadillac Sedan DeVille. It was in Sheldon, Iowa, and I was on my Dad's Lap. We lived on the family farm outside of town, and after a visit to town, Dad had me pile onto his lap (no airbags, limited seatbelts. those were the days. the only thing between us and certain destruction was common sense and nearly eight thousand pounds of pure, raw, Detroit Iron). I steered and signalled, Dad gassed and braked. And we drove home together. An indelible happy memory, burned onto my psyche for as long as i'm coherent.

nearly thirty years later, I'm so very happy and proud to extend the potentiality of future memory. Hayden and I have been flaunting the law, flaunting modern common sense, laughing at the faces of those who drive by, and sharing a series of very special, indeed singular events between the two of us. We're driving together. Our favorite haunt is the open lot at Reser Stadium, which provides a quiet place for us to practice, sufficient obstacles, and many opportunities to use our blinkers, and look left and right.

Clutch in. shift into first gear. 1500 RPM on the tachometer. slowly let out the clutch out. pay close attention to where we're going. adjust the mirrors. clutch in. slowly brake. look left. look right. turn on the blinker. 1500 RPM. feather the clutch so it doesn't kill. move from one section of the lot to another. stay on the right side of the road. repeat.

speaking quietly, matter-of-fact; not getting excited *outwardly*, yet jumping for joy inside. he's doing it. he's doing it well. he's a nine-year-old boy, piloting a newer korean-issue five-speed manual.

park. shift into reverse, with the clutch in. same concepts, only we're going to move backwards. what's behind us? take a look in your mirrors. three-point turns. awareness of our surroundings. which section are we going to move to next? careful, aim away from the curbed islands. repeat.

the next step is working towards an open area where we can move out of first gear.

the boy is nine. and i'm so incredibly happy and proud to share space and soul with him.

good work, buddy. if you're interested, we'd love to send you off to a real driving school in France for a month or two in seven or eight years. and then you can coach us.

an entirely unrelated Buddhist ass-kick arrived for me today: i've been feeling a bit sorry for myself lately (a reverse exaggeration, i've been a real whiney bitch), and this is the cherry-on-top of the beautiful reconciliation i've just enjoyed.

"Hey you, expecting results without effort! So sensitive! So long-suffering! You, in the clutches of death, acting like an immortal! Hey sufferer, you are destroying yourself!"
-Santideva, Bodhicaryavatara

There. And Back.

2007-11-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

As beautiful as Corvallis and the Valley is, I was a bit surprised to find that the water is pretty shitty. We went through a couple cases of bottled water, and even took a trip through a couple franchises to find a Brita water filter. no luck.

Today, TFG arrives with a fresh box and the magical water filter contained within. Nice work. I'm not quite sure what the attached digital meter/readout is, or what it measures, but it's there. we have a digitally enhanced water filter.

Today i found a huge pile of leaves outside our door. In my not-quite-understanding-what's-happening-around-me haze, i imagined that someone had put them there. but why? what would the advantage be? i could step over it, around it... as other leaves are swirling around it... and then, as i struggle to light the day's first smoke against the cold wind circling inside our carport... of course. the wind blew them there. the leaves are at the center of a vortex of wind. and now there's a pile of them. I quickly resolved to re-read more Dirk Gently at my next available opportunity.

things at the center of a naturally occuring vortex. not a new idea, but it has stuck with me all day today. the pile of leaves, mostly undisturbed, while the wind whistles around them, adding a few here and there to the outside of the pile. the greatest concentration of stars isn't at the outside of the galaxy, it's at the center. Hurricane winds diminish at the center of the storm, to the point of complete stillness, while you can see the sky above the wallclouds. poop doesn't fly around the outside of the swirling water in the toilet, it aims towards the center. the swirling of a spiral. it's always fascinated me.

and now, here at this exact instant of my life, i'm at the center of a vortex. I'm watching things and people and events and time and happiness and sadness and love and confusion and concern and self-doubt and regularity and harmony and balance and disharmony and chaos swirl all around me until they have become a blur of entropy, with one concept losing distinction because it's become blended with the one adjacent.

and yet, i remain.

my dad tells me to "stick with it. make it work."

other friends from all over the country are telling me to "kick yourself in the ass and get it going."

one friend suggests therapy.

one friend wants me to move away and escape from the confusion, the insanely-coloured swirl of the vortex altogether.

my siblings, (gods! how i love them!) have offered nothing but loving support.

Mom and Dad sent a hundred bucks with my birthday card. It was a most difficult gift to receive, as i'm not in the habit of taking gifts from those who can ill-afford it; especially those who i love more than i can adequately say. In the end, it was difficult to buy things mundane like three-dollar-plus gasoline with it, but the Universe works oddly: i lost the remainder, probably when cleaning garbage out of the car. I'm hoping the Taco Bell employee found it in the trash and was able to do something nice with what remained. :)

i have yet to hear "see, i told you so, you shouldn't have moved five states away from everything you know and love and care about for an uncertain life with this girl and her son..." from anyone other than the dark, accusing, cynical self-doubt monster that dwells within my Self.

it ain't always easy being a Zen-Respecting, Circular-Thinking, Logic-Adoring Secular Humanist. Just ask the vortex swirling around the pile of leaves if it cares what i think. It doesn't. It just is.

and yet, I remain.

See ya, fellas.

2007-11-10T01:40:00.000-08:00

today at around noon or so, the boys across the street went to meet their maker, via what sounded like a high-powered rifle. a pickup towing a mobile butchershop trailer, and their intrepid pilots made short work of the boys; it was less than fifteen minutes from the time i heard the shots fired to the time the trailer pulled out of the lot with twelve quarters of beef.

i'm glad they weren't hauled away to a slaughterhouse with chutes, stress, confusion, and pain.

i'm happy that there were only three shots to take out three giant animals.

i'm happy that the last space they had was their big, green, wide open field, and they went out together.

it looks like they do things a bit differently out here on the west coast. i'm glad.

wish in one hand...

2007-11-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

i think i'd have fun working in a little two or three person PC repair shop, like the one i went to last week.

i think it would be fun diagnosing and solving people's busted 'puter issues. this is an area that i really excelled in at school, and i couldn't wait for the professors to reveal stuff that i didn't know yet about how to improve one's computing experience through the joy of functioning interconnected machinery. i'm really geeky like that.

the thought process goes something like this: X doesn't work. ask self zillions of if/than questions. reconfigure machined components. repeat. run diagnosis software. analyze. repeat. X works.

i think i would have fun not driving ninety miles every day for work.

i like squeezing every snippit of performance out of machines, even those that are a little old and beat-up. TFG's old computer works pretty well these days. wish mine did. i'll fix it when the new motherboard arrives.

working in the box monitoring three different tv stations has kind of sucked the love out of working in live TV production. i'm just not so enthusiastic about it any more. i think i liked working with people, having a small crew working with and for me, and working with robots and line commands and a wall full of flatscreen monitors doesn't come close.

there. i've said it.

note to universe: the place is called A Better Computer and it's on Circle Avenue in Corvallis, Oregon, USA. there's one guy who works there/owns the joint. send him an idea that he could use a little help, and then i'll go in there and let my charm do the rest.

Late Night tuesday, in the box.

2007-11-07T00:43:00.000-08:00

My personal lexicon doesn't attach the following to the word "spirituality".

I guess i'd call it naturally evolving humanity... instead of scraping up the ladder to get to the proverbial Eternal Garden Party, one can instead achieve a higher aim: serve others through evolved common-sense by waking the awareness of the feelings of altruism that occur naturally within all of us.

I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

unrelated snippets follow.

Tonight was the first election i've been in the proximity to vote in, and i didn't. mostly because of laziness (unwilling to do the research to develop an opinion on "new" local matters to me). i kind of feel like i need a political shower to wash away the amazing amount of ads i've absorbed here in the box.

Dense fog in the valley for the next 16 hours or so... not looking forward to the commute tonight :( tonight we ran a story from national that's predicting four dollar gasoline. fuck it. if it goes up by more percentage points, i'm going to get a nice job in corvallis... far, far away from the TV business entirely. which, at this point, would suit me just fine.

from the partnerships list, authored by someone who has clearly evolved beyond that which we routinely encounter in our daily lives:

It is my opinion that when two people have been together for any length of time, you learn to read your partner. You learn to expect certain behaviors, your image of your partner becomes routine. What I mean is that you have become close enough to this person that you stop seeing them as an individual and more as a concept. I would suggest that you step back and allow him to define who he is to you all over again.
-Dennis Montoya

comfort food for my brain tonight:

"He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his beard. He spread his arms out wide.
'I will go mad!' he announced."
-Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
-Phillip K. Dick

my first unschooling conference. or non-conference.

2007-11-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

my top ten moments, in a not-so-carefully selected order of importance:

10. unconsciously kissing TFG in front of a room full of people, to a response of applause and "Awwww!!!" and becoming instantly red-faced.

9. quietly discussing the random need to get the hell away from the Loud! Happy! Loud! Happy! with a dear, new friend. she's in the same camp with me. thanks, Abbi. when i go to another conference, i'm seeking you out and following you to somewhere quiet.

8. finding some quiet time on the beach with Hannah. we've spent quite a bit of time together lately, it seems.

7. the obnoxiously beautiful 70 minute drive on Highway 34 through the national forest. the Highway 20 drive to the coast is beautiful, but it's nothing compared to 34. whoa.

6. Introducing my good friend Jack Lazer to a table full of people from all over the country. my new friends: Craig. Gillian. your children are beautiful. i cannot wait to visit you in your zone. wait until you hear some of the music we're going to make in the new year.

5. explaining the extremely limited fundamentals of Unschooling to Jack, as i understand them: "you know, a kid's only got one chance to really be a kid. why shit all over them with a regiment of school?" -and then seeing the recent college grad nod in instant understanding while he mulled it over.

4. Getting drunk at Squirrel's with Donna while a really interesting, fun band lays down the law.

3. not having any fear when i explained to Mary why i had gone to Portland. Thanks, Phil. you're the man.

2. Explaining the two most important words in French that i know to Kyra, after writing them on her new A.S. tour shirt, and seeing the look in her eyes after i translated them for her.

1. being brought to tears (yes, me. and yes, really) by the subject of the song "Grieve", and in the context in which it was delivered: Holding hands with TFG at the custom-designed, intimacy-overloaded Amy Steinberg show at Sunnyside Up.

none of these people asked questions when i needed to disappear. for that, i thank you.

and, for the technical leaners:

2007-11-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

a tech meltdown.

i have a 32-bit windows box at home, which i've built and rebuilt over the years. i've chosen and replaced multiple motherboards, processors, power supplies and video cards as software demands have made my components obsolete. <-- this is the reason i reeeeeally dislike those who develop code in an unreasonable, irresponsible fashion: they are requiring you to upgrade your perfectly functional computer simply in order to make their software run better. jerks!

a routine mainboard driver upgrade has had a catastrophic domino effect. first, i "lost" my RAID controller (the tiny little splot of onboard software that lets your hard drives talk back and forth to your motherboard). to replace it, i needed to have the correct driver on a floppy. reboot the system and reconfigure. easy.

except the driver is on a flash drive. it needs to be on a floppy. the only available floppy was in the machine that failed. okay. we'll fire up TFG's old PC, and drag/drop the files onto the floppy. gong. disk format error. okay, maybe her A-Drive isn't working properly. i'll switch it out with the A-Drive in my machine, which i know works. Gong. same error. disk cannot be formatted/is write protected. which it isn't. the disk is new, picked up at a wonderful little PC shop in Corvallis.

sheesh.

i reset the CMOS (onboard blip of memory which contains the Basic Input/Output System) by moving a jumper from one position to the other, removing the motherboard battery to allow for dissapation of current, and resetting it. reboot. the computer now won't Post (initial startup procedure, prior to the OS boot). i can't get into the BIOS at all. the POSTcard (diagnosis card attached to the motherboard) indicates a processor failure. which i know it isn't. the processor works fine.

end result of an innocous driver upgrade? my motherboard is bricked. eighty-sixed. toast. shelled. modern art.

and now, i'm faced with replacing an already obsolete form-factor motherboard. my memory is good. top of the line. my processor is good. top of the line in its day (it's still drawing $175+ on pricewatch.com) my hard drives are next-generation SATA drives. my power supply and video card are less than six months old (the result of purchasing a game and being unable to play it).

so. i can buy a new motherboard for an obsolete form factor (ATX) and squeeze life out of the whole setup. play games for a couple more years, and surf the web and non-intensive work (photoshop, audio work) indefinetely. or, i can do a month of research on current form factors and their compatibility issues, shell out a couple thousand on entirely new components to "future-proof" the box. *as if there really were such a thing*

specs follow for the current setup, and a comparison for upgrading.

current box:
MSI K7N2 Delta ISLR mainboard (@FSB 400MhZ)
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ @2.167 GhZ w/copper heat dissapation
1G Corsair XMS dual-channel RAM (CAS pre/recharge timings 2-2-2-6)
Nvidia 7600 GS 512MB AGP (8X) Videoboard
Western Digital and Seagate SATA hard drives
Thermaltake 520W power supply
half dozen "quiet" cooling fans, cables, screws, et cetera
WinXP Pro
Cost at purchase/build: +/- $1100

cost to fix: +/- $60, plus downtime and geek aggrivation

upgrade-to-64bit-computing-box:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200708.ars/3

cost, minus stuff that will cross over to the new box (case, monitor, hard drives, dvd writer)
$800, with Linux Redhat Operating System: $0

cost of a new macintosh desktop, with components equal to or lesser than the above box:
$2500 plus consulting fees.
note: instantly-irritating, self-gratifying *i paid three times as much for the same gear that you did, except i have a nifty monochrome Operating System* territorial pissings come free with anything apple. blech.

maybe i'll read a book instead.

cleaning out my inbox.

2007-11-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

i'm not spiritual by nature. i suppose it may have to do with... ah, who knows. anyway, i really appreciate the buddhists and how serious they are. they're mostly badass in mostly everything that i quantify. discipline. disattached. disarmed. i imagine one doesn't really need to be spiritual to appreciate the view from their eyes.

It is critical to serve others, to contribute actively to others' well-being. I often tell practitioners that they should adopt the following principle: regarding one's own personal needs, there should be as little involvement or obligation as possible. But regarding service to others, there should be as many possible involvements and obligations as possible. This should be the ideal of a spiritual person.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

If we single-pointedly practice great compassion, then, with little effort, we will be able to gain all other virtues.
-Geshe Namgyal Wangchen, "Awakening the Mind"

If we can reach the understanding of what we actually are, there is no better remedy for eliminating all suffering. This is the heart of all spiritual practices.
-Kalu Rinpoche, "Luminous Mind"

For there is suffering, but none who suffers; Doing exists although there is no doer; Extinction is but no extinguished person; Although there is a path, there is no goer.
-Buddhaghosa; Visuddhimagga 513

Every reality is eternal, every essence is as is: just don't seek outwardly. If you have a great root of faith, the buddhas are just states of your own experience; whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, never is it not this.
-Hsuan-sha

Everywhere, truly,those of integrity stand apart. They, the good, don't chatter in hopes of favor or gains. When touched now by pleasure, now pain, the wise give no sign of high or low.
-Dhammapada, 6

Our first priority should be to prepare a long-term strategy for improving the state of the world that focuses on the coming generations.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Friends, I know nothing which is as tractable as a tamed heart. The tamed heart is indeed tractable.Friends I know nothing which tends toward loss as does an untamed heart. Indeed, the untamed heart tends toward loss.
-from the Anguttara Nikaya

Flow with whatever may happenand let your mind be free; Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
-Chuang Tsu
I'm not sure who this guy was, but i'm guessing that he was pretty much a ninja in anything he did.

Fleeting is this world
Growth and decay its very nature
Things spring to being and again they cease
Happy the marvel of them and the peace.
-Nidana Vagga

and my new favorite:

Do not underestimate your ability.
-Geshe Chekawa

for being militantly non-spiritual, this stuff kicks me in the ass.

happy halloween, y'all !

2007-11-01T02:58:00.000-07:00

what a great day! spooks! wierdos! an eight-month old dressed up in a puffy shark outfit!
corvallis came alive for the kids, teens, hell - people - who are lucky enough to have been here. the downtown merchants were giving out candy to the kids in droves.

it's pretty cool living in a place that gives back to the community rather than exclusively taking from them. i'll post some photographs later...

The Peaceful Parterships discussion group

2007-11-01T01:15:00.000-07:00

thank you, whoever you people are. how exactly do you come up with the daily amazingness you have, and share? it doesn't matter. i'm happy you're here. and i'm happy that i'm probably not entirely insane, as measured by typical standards.

little snippits of raw, undiluted wisdom follow, guerilla clipped without permission from random conversations. if you please, don't read anything into this, dear reader. disclaimer: while my communication *read: active listening* skills ain't been so great lately, and our relationship (like every relationship, i imagine, at least all of mine have) has valleys and peaks, there are tools like this to help me. and don't take anything personally. this is merely something i read that makes me feel good, when i see people working through the issues that occur in their daily lives. this is good karma, in the infinite sense. helping others.

"All I know is that I could come up with plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with my husband. He's not perfect after all! What it comes down to is whether I want to be with him or not. And I do, so I no longer argue with reality and ask/expect him to be the person I want him to be. And amazingly, without all the negative thoughts controlling my brain, I am finding that he already is exactly who I want him to be--himself. The man I fell in love with."

"I realize we RU parents/partners have a choice. We can share the tools that make up unschooling with our partners as we have with our children, or we can withhold them until our partner does what we want him/her to do to *satisfy* us. A good start can be asking our partner what would satisfy him/her? Then listening to the answer -- lovingly, patiently. Is it really fair to expect them to hear us and comply, if we're not willing to do the same?"

"This is where I used to get stuck. Until quite recently, I believed the thoughts in my head that told me that my husband's behavior was responsible for my happiness. I am finding now that I am responsible for my own happiness and that it isn't as hard as I feared it would be to find it."

"Being genuine with our partners is difficult sometimes. But I am not surethat hiding our feelings or thoughts is an effective way to a peacefulpartnership. You don't have to make a big speech, but letting her know what your passions are and where your heart is on matters is a core aspect oftrust. You seem to not be feeling as if you can trust her response becauseof the tension happening between you. However, when we are not honest withour partners, that sets up a wedge. The wedge ruins the ability for the relationship to flow."

"When my dh and I "discuss" issues, it often takes him several seconds (seems like minutes in the moment) to formulate a response. I on the other hand KNOW what I'm going to say, immediately. In the past i would read this disconnect, or rather difference in response method, as hurtful. Like his mind had wandered during our discussion, or the issue wasn't important to him. The reality is HE needs his time to get his response together so that he says EXACTLY what he wants to say."

what the hell! are these people super-geniuses?
whoever they are, they blow my mind. thanks to you, whoever you are.

here's your test results, mr. peterson.

2007-10-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

a line i really hated hearing from my public school/university professors. i was always concerned with how much red there would be on the paper. and there was usually more than i imagined there would be.

the algebra professor would click his red sharpie in a gratiuitious manner, and smile a tooth-filled-smile at the class. as a class full of non-traditional students, we'd seen worse than whatever this space cowboy could dish out.

the writing professor would send calm, margin-sized comments on papers concerning run-on sentences and improper syntax. and then she'd grade you on your effort, not as much on your performance.

the lit teacher in high school who would privately chew me out for "choosing the wrong friends" (the skater kids) while he would not-so-surrepticiously hit on said skater boys.

and now. on a parenting advice forum, i get the same red marks. apparently, i'm a terrible father figure because i don't set boundaries. i'm not following the traditional male family role model, apparently. good. this is by design. i'm pretty sure the model involves (literally? figuratively?) dragging kills into the cave and beating one's family into emotional and physical submission.

"I suggest you start setting up some boundaries now before it gets completely out of control later on. You and your partner need to sit down and figure out what your own personal boundaries are, then teach that to your child. How is a child going to learn about boundaries if you don’t have any?"

i choose compassion. and understanding. ever the struggle to evolve, i choose to abandon a typical archetype in that the family father should rule by default, silent until provoked into violence, through word, thought, or deed. it was a simple choice for me. i choose to use my mind instead of angry reaction. still sometimes, this isn't enough for some people. or alternately, it's too much. maybe some parents are so instilled in their own painful upbringing that they continue simply because it's their turn to say "because i said so!" with a sharp swat.

uh, yeah. i hope my beloved english professor (how i miss you, mrs. blackford) will never have to endure the upcoming paragraph:

so, we live in a no-boundary free-form household. and it's fun. and it's annoying. and it's exhilirating. and exhausting. sometimes it smells like dirty socks. sometimes it smells like candles and incense. sometimes it smells like baked lasagna. sometimes it's filthy, with candy wrappers stuck to the floor. sometimes, it's clean, like the scent of fresh dishes out of the machine. sometimes the wrong item goes through the dryer. most of the time the -right- items go through the dryer. there's some questions. and some answers. some cohesive, some not. sometimes i accept the open rejection. sometimes i reject the open acceptance. sometimes it seems like it really is working. sometimes it seems like it really isn't. sometimes there is stability. sometimes there isn't. sometimes it drives me fucking crazy. sometimes i'm so in love i'm a total dork, all the way down. sometimes i miss my batchellor life. most of the time i don't. sometimes i wish i could truly speak openly to TFG, when most of the time i can't. and now, the house is about to be filled to the teeth with people, with loud happy jabbering, loud happy conversations, loud happy loud happy loud happy loud happy ad infinitum.

...and i'll squirm with uncomfortability. i'll greet the few that i have come to adore, smile, and then probably find quick excuses leave often, with little notice in passing from the crowd of loud happy loud happy loud happy loud happy loud happy ad infinitum. who am i to voice my uncomfortability with the close proximity of a sea of faces, some new old friends, some new new friends?

"where is my out in this situation?"

"you don't have one." *wink*

ah yes. still- i'm a person. with feelings. and strengths. and weaknesses. know thyself.

i have knowledge. i am learning. friday i received a formal write-up from both my new boss and my new girlfriend on the same day... and i started to wonder if i really had made a giant mistake with my life. the universe really does seem to save up for the day that it slings the shit at the fan that's pointing at you.

often to my own detriment, i have an instinctual need to put others first. for some unknowable reason, it's a continuing mantra for me. care about how others feel, especially those close to you. dote on them. ask them about their day. concern yourself with their lives. hope for the best for them. show them, through action and verse, that they matter to you. over the years i've learned that a lot of folks love to have an outlet to bitch, and will certainly honor you if you offer that service- but rarely will they return the favor. and that's too bad, really. one can learn bunches about yourself and your own internal mirror if you take the time to closely listen to those who could use a good rant. (watch them, after they've had this opportunity. watch the stress leave them, dissapated.)

when you concern yourself so much with the feelings and hopes and ideas of others, you can really lose track of ...you. i had always imagined that a family dynamic wouldn't dilute one's personal solution, rather simply mix it in with equal parts of other solutions. so, here's to me. the non-boundary setting failure of a father figure. the sock-flinging, overwhelming love partner. the gross mismanager of playlists. the worrier. the planner. the thinker. the person. the human.

and, here's to patience *lifts glass*. here's to building a background grid through which one can better understand the infinite chaos that is the universe, from the galactic level to the familial level.

and here's to you, dear reader, for listening without judgement as i pre-empt your permission to allow me to bitch for a while. thank you.

the gift of peace and security, wrapped in chaos

2007-10-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

am i the luckiest thirty-something lefse-influenced newly-installed-to-the-Valley post-angst Gen X overthinker on the planet? i'm beginning to believe so. take the events of a few hours in my today, for instance. for clarity, i'll provide the play-by-play in a screen script format, to give the narrator more voice.

*begin scene*

Subject S huddles over the glow of a tablet computer in the far corner of the house he's just moved into. S is worried, as per usual. Today's flavor of worry isn't a new one, but the subgenus species is. it's car insurance. S's policy expires today, and after doing some research online, has chosen a company and policy which best suits the needs for himself and his new family. normally, S wouldn't devote so much emotion to a need as mundane as vehicle insurance, when other bills are further behind. the caveat is that since the car is financed, the insurance isn't optional, even to operate outside of the law. the car must be insured. and S is out of options, and money.

The love of S's life, TFG, wanders out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, damp, and trailing the finest ambient perfume shop scent imaginable behind her as she moves. her long, violently red hair is wet. she's as sexy as hell on a stick, and her being momentarily unaware of her sexy quotient only makes her that more desirable. unfortunately, S barely notices. he lamely inquires about availablilty of funds in a long-unused online account.

S: Hey. is there anything left in your paypal account? this insurance company accepts paypal.
TFG: nope.
S: okay. It's just that i think the old policy expires today. and we'll really screw over Alex if we can't insure the snarfler.

TFG peruses the screen, and steps up to leave the room. with a headache looming, S follows her. TFG pulls out a bank card out of her wallet.

TFG: here ya go. i'll cover the insurance until we can figure everything else out. we can pay the bill when we've got more money.

TFG wanders into the far bedroom and finalizes the insurance purchase with a moment at the screen. S realizes the cosmic erasure of worry that lives with him in his new home. it is her. she is the eraser. S catches a glimpse of something amazing. not outwardly, but inward. the fear has been banished by courage, and a touch of real-world crisis solution in action has unfolded in front of him. he's just seen an offhand display of trust and love. and instantaneous problem solving.

Later. S is goofing off in the driveway with TFG's son, TBB. TFG pulls up in the family van, and kills the engine. She, the eraser of worry, has arrived home from work early. laden with library books, animal welfare literature for TBB, she slings a pizza from the local NY pizza joint.

S slaps himself in the head. his realization -that this amazing person, this, the girl he loves, this beautiful woman who has chosen him to share her life with, this singular individual who is always mindful of the needs of her family- hits him months too late.

S drives 45 minutes to work a short time later. with the gift accompanying him.

*end scene*

the perfect gift for a worried pragmatist. a gift of serenity. of security. a gift of a lesson learned.

how odd, the universe, and the incomprehensible workings thereof.
thank you. for the whole damn thing. i'm loving it.

Communication is essential towards progression.

2007-10-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

some blurbs, for your perusal, from the only thought collective cult that's ever caught and held my fancy for any period of time. i've loosely followed the ideas behind this collective for ten years or more. the actual list has dissolved, but these people are still out there. and i'm still here. and i'm grateful for sharing myself with them, and learning from them. thanks to the Process for helping to wake a confused and directionless twentysomething all those years ago.

a statement of denial of power, and therefore, control:

The Process, as an entity, does not encourage the individuals who subscribe to its ideology to pay homage to the people who exist to organize and promote the Processian ideal. Worship of another diffuses the will of the individual.

a statement of the recognition of the state of the world's leading religions. pay special attention to the statement regarding bias:

On one level we can draw some relation to the Tibetan concept of The Path of No Distinction. Within most organized belief systems there tends to be a bias construct which leads the believer to regard his or her path as the one true path. We encourage that the belief system is not the issue, in this case, it is the 'purity of path' itself which garners the utmost importance. The individual is true to the self, his or her internal direction (self directed instinct). The path transcends definition by attaining 'purity of cause'. The categorization or attempt to define the structure is secondary to its purpose as an effective interpersonal vehicle.

on communication, which is the center of all focus for this widely scattered chorus of thinkers:

It is not the aim of The Process to cultivate a following. It is however, our desire to initiate a vast networked collaborative effort. An effort focused on multi-faceted philosophical studies and artistic interaction. We strongly believe in networking artists who are devoted to the promotion of 'Media Literacy', building effective, honest models of communication. Understanding and therefore defusing destructive commercial archetypes (know thine enemy).

on inclusion, and the denial of exclusion, regardless of one's gender, belief system, job, education level, or any other distinction box that people love to classify themselves into:

Pure science has typically been as segregated as the plethora of belief systems which exist on our planet. Telecommunications technology has a way of throwing a kind of monkey wrench into this academic machine. The ability to efficiently cross reference large amounts of data, from what may have traditionally been viewed as unrelated fields, has had a rather anarchistic effect on the political structures of academia. There is, and should be, a movement towards blending science with art, western medicine with eastern holistics, philosophy with physics....the list goes on. We have nothing to lose, but everything to gain by bringing strong minds from many intellectual fronts into the same arena. Although this concept in itself is not a new one, we now have far better tools to facilitate it.

on expansion of one's vision:

In the same way the Process realizes that different belief structures are indeed different models, or tools, which enable us to further ourselves in the interpersonal arena. Taking a multi-disciplinary stance at a philosophical level one opens the self to a variety of new concepts, structures and tools to further define one's own path.

some statements of those who have contributed, and why they still inspire me. to think, to question, to analyze. to listen. to share. to learn from others. to trust that they have pure intent, in the sharing of themselves before a non-judgemental group of fellow learners and listeners.

"act before you think, but always think, always analyze, and figure out how to improve your situation. As an artist I know the importance of instinct tempered with thought, as well as the importance of being able to critique your own life."

"Sometimes it's so easy to forget the past. To sit in the comfortable sanctuary of the present, so afraid of the future, with the past a dull throb in your head. I like the words of Father Malachi; 'No fear, except the fear of leaving...'"

"I consider myself to be a part of The Process as i dont believe in any set religion/belief system in particular ("No culture has a monopoly on beauty or value....Just as no religion has a monopoly on truth." --Voltaire), but i am aware of certain aspects from almost every reilgion/belief system that i apply to my daily life. but, if i had to pick one aspect that i use more than others, it would have to be the power of the mind and the wonders it can do when not subconsciously influeneced by various thought impediments-->ex. TV, the government, controlling people, etc, etc..."

"Its sum being greater than the parts, The Process serves as a sounding board for ideas, provoking thought which may under other circumstances never have been given the right "culture" in which to form and grow. Thus the The Process is a growing, living organism whose form is a result of the collection of "cells" within it, as in any biological organism. The analogy with the natural world is of direct significance. All life operates within a set environment or eco-system, but its very presence is an integral part of that system. If any one species grows it is at the cost of another, and if any "external force" is introduced the balance can be forever altered with the possibility of collapse (as in the demise of rainforest lands every day)"

why am i not surprised that the idea/conception of this group of thinkers had its genesis in Canada? man, i sure do love Canada and the lovely intellectual and cerebral people who live there.

...and, here it is.

2007-10-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

... the rainy season.

It's been raining for several days now. the locals tell me that it will continue, on and off, for months. we're now in the "rainy season". it has made the commute more interesting, seeing green in the fields of the Willamette Valley, rather than the golds and browns and the long, spirals of dust following the tractors in the fields that were so prevalent when i arrived. there are, even in the second week of October, enough colors to keep my sensory overload overloaded.
bright flashes of true reds, oranges, yellows, golds, and greens fill the senses. the greens! there are too many to describe, and too full is the palette to occur anywhere but in nature, and too poor is my vocabulary to attempt anything other than a bland, vanilla description. the air is clean. the weather we're experiencing today (80MPH winds at the coast) is what the station's meteorologist describes as the remnants of a cyclonic series of storms that recently affected China. very cool.

normally, i'm not affected emotionally by the weather (having received an education at the behest of the harsh prevailing northwest winds of the winter prairie). this week has been one of change, and all that encompasses it. things are new and exciting and joyful and fun and scary. we're learning how to live together, as this change in our environment has been more than an acid test to be viewed clinically, in a detached methodology.

i've been down for a few days. worries about life, love, ineptitude, and concern with money. i don't like to worry about money. or ineptitude. or anything. and trying to catch up financially is futile in the near-short term. we're going to be broke for a while. and that stinks. but what is thr root, really? what is it that a vacuum void of money removes? it's the short term lack of stability that really grinds against my sense of "everything's okay". TFG doesn't dwell on these worries. she lives in the now. there is no concern for tomorrow, as that day will take shape on its own and provide its own challenges and rewards. sometimes i wish i could be as ethereal.

instead, i proscribe for the reality of life around us. yesterday, today, and tomorrow. i understood on the cusp of this voyage and transport that life as i had known it would pretty much upend in its entirety. and now we're experiencing the lack of stability that living in one place for twenty years can provide. it's exciting, and fearful. it's probably what really living feels like, and it's most likely an unfamiliar feeling considering the previous stagnation. while i recognize that i am now in a position to make a series of fantastic changes in my life, part of me yet longs for the clarity of mindless repetition that living in the midwest brought forward. i'm on the verge of becoming a whole new me. and it's okay. it's just new and unnerving.

and sometimes, like today, it's depressing. we don't have a bed yet. so we sleep where ever we collapse. We've discussed our new bed, out there somewhere, hopefully not being manufactured in an asian nation where the employees are under the gun. this new bed will be the first 'luxury item' on our list of things to acquire and accomplish. something that will be top notch, carefully researched and paid for in full; and TFG doesn't even have to produce any healthy children for me to earn it. it's so very important to me to handle this for TFG and I. as much as gender roles chap my ass ( i'll delve into this concept deeply someday, and possibly provide some fodder for discussion, dear reader, of their pre-determined dead-end obsolecense in a world of thoughtful evolution rather than of unthinking brutish animalism and emotional regression), i find myself in conflict about this one.

Charles Ingalls provided a bed and a house for Caroline in the wilds of Minnesota. I should be able to provide the same for TFG. and i will. obsolete role modeling aside. this is something i can do for my new mate, and myself. if we were entirely androgynous, i would still do this for my partner. there! i've just tossed that conflict aside, right before your eyes, dear reader.

so, someday it will stop raining. (even if there's no such thing as tomorrow.)

someday, we'll have some fiscal freedom. (even if we have the things we need to survive today.)

someday, we'll sleep, warm in our new bed, while the cold wind blows outside. (even if we have to sleep on the floor in separate rooms during the now.)

my secret.

2007-10-09T00:16:00.000-07:00

i'm going to buy the new book from postsecret.
maybe i'll send them a card. maybe i already have. i'll never tell.

updates: TFG, TBB, and the Calico are alive, well, and travelling slowly. tonight they're at the top of the Montana Rockies, and at daylight will descend through Idaho and obnoxiously gorgeous Coeur D'alene. south of Spokane, friends are waiting to receive them, and give of their space and selves. thank you, friends.

the Calico is tolerating the travel well, minus pooping in TBB's Amish straw hat. the van is tolerating the travel well, minus a gasoline cap left in forgotyername, Montana. a group of people helped TFG navigate out from a near-jackknife maneouver in a gas station parking lot; they then applaud her as she successfully pilots out of the lot. man, i love this girl.

the next phase is along the mighty Columbia River Gorge.

the big transition

2007-10-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

as i write, The Fabulous Girlfriend and the Beautiful boy are on their way West, loaded down with three-plus' lifetimes worth of stuff. a family's worth of stuff. not counting the stuff we left behind, donated or threw away. a van, a trailer, treasured things, and three most important souls. my heart is on the road with them.

TFG and TBB did this loading, and are doing this moving. With a select few helpers ushering and cheerleading and humping boxes up the stairs, they are leaving their old lives behind to join me and dear friends here in the beautiful PNW. With the wind of your positive energy giving them the necessary tailwind to guide and drive us.

Thank you, to all of those of you who have helped us make this once-distant and highly improbable dream a reality. It is because of your encouragement and positivity and graciousness that we've been able to pull this whole thing off.

They'll arrive after a few days on the road. and then, we'll move into our new address; the three of Us, the Calico, and the Memories of those who couldn't make the move with us physically, and yet will be there nonetheless, alongside us. in a new physical environment which will be most conducive to our lives, free from the cynical judgement of our previous environment.

so, i'll post updates while they travel as they become available. and then they'll arrive. and then we'll start our new lives together. une famille nouveau.

merci.

Iowa, in the summertime

2007-09-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

...can be a multitude of different things. after perusing a fantastic blog of a beautiful family, and then finding a parallel in my own life, i wanted to share this with you, dear reader.

backstory, stage one: for reasons i never fully understood when i was little, my dad had this habit of finding antique tractors -sometimes mostly buried in a farmer's grove- and restoring them to nearly-factory specifications. models we found, bought and restored included the John Deere models D (1930), A, B, and G.

eventually, the old man acquired several diesel Models, one of which he used to transport crops and produce into town from the Amish farms in the vicinity (no steel wheels).

okay, backstory stage two: when we had these tractors, and they were ready for show, we would travel across iowa and south dakota during the summertime as exhibitors in antique horsepower shows. these are some of the happiest memories i have of my childhood! Giant Case, Hart-Parr, and other steam engine tractors, beyond description unless you've seen one leave three-inch-deep tracks as it slowly rumbles by, would fire off their whistles at 0500.

the scent of hay and coal smoke in the crisp morning air. the ho-down jamborees in the church on saturday night. the continual pop-pop-pop of enormous two-cylinder engines idling on kerosene. the burrrrrrrrrrrrrr of a multitude of stationary kerosene and steam power engines. horses. quiet farmers in straw hats and overalls (that was really how they dressed daily, not simply for the benefit of the curious town people.) the chaff flying through the hot air while farmers worked, quite seriously, on antique threshing rigs powered by dad's D.

these things are amazing. monstrous feats of engineering. i remember a quote from one of my dad's steam engine books, concerning the question of water quality for your boiler:

"if you wouldn't drink it, don't you dare put it into your boiler."

separating wheat from chaff is an ages old endeavour, and in the very early 20th century, required an immense amount of effort, equipment, patience, and determination.

i would spend hours stone-grinding non-gmo corn (there were farmers who eschewed gmo's in the seventies too, people!) with the assistance of a kindly exhibitor and his legion of small, kerosene powered stationary power engines. i would come back to the camper covered in fresh corn flour, much to the chagrin of my poor mother. she would come after me with a washcloth, and i would then retreat to a steam-powered carousel for a diversion.

enter today. and here are some photographs of my family, dear reader, to celebrate the timelessness of both family and steam traction.

and this one is special, just for a little guy also named Scotty who also has a fascination with all things steam engine. you have no idea who i am, but you and your enthusiasm just made my day. thank you.

yeah, i come from pretty good stock. meet andrew and larry peterson. good coupla guys.

Church, V.2.0

2007-09-23T04:37:00.000-07:00

i've been spending quite a bit of time in the car as of late. driving, circling the new city (sharking, as an old friend of mine called reconnoitering), looking for a place to put myself and the famille nouveau. that, plus my regular commute. don't get me wrong, i kind of like the commute... i've never had one before, and the stretch is straight, not too long, and offers quiet time with the mp3 player and my own brain for company.

i've discovered that moving into a college town at the beginning of semester can be:

1. expensive
2. irritating, as the availability/quality of housing can be really thin/picked over
3. exhausting.

i needed a break, with some real 'remove myself from it all' benefits. and the availability of a world city an hour away offered me exactly the suspension of disbelief that this old cynic required: an evening with Alan and Mimi.

i'm not quite sure where my fascination with Low came from. mostly, i'm thinking it has to do with the otherworldly vocal harmonies, used with surgical precision. if the surgeon was made of a misty cloud of water vapor. or something. this kind of music can only be authored and performed by people truly joined at the brain. Alan and Mimi have known each other since they were 9, were married, are raising (and i believe, home-schooling) their beautiful children, and throughout it all, have been making music together. for their whole lives.

a Low concert seems to be a nearly-spiritual event for those who attend. defying modern concert atmosphere conventions, there isn't any obnoxious behaviour. nobody's wasted. the audience is quiet, as to hear the music fully. enthusiastic, honest applause after songs. one could hear the bartenders, way at the back of the room, quietly talking to each other. this show was in an interesting club, very small, and i found that it was much more conducive to their alternately hushed and overdriven music. First Avenue in Minneapolis is big, fun, and loud, but it didn't seem like the kind of place that a band that regularly performs in church sanctuaries would fit best. from the softest harmonies to harsh and snarling overdriven guitars, the sound and atmosphere was perfect. thanks, Low.

when i was picking up some fresh schwag for the Beautiful Boy and The Fabulous Girlfriend, the merch guy saw my old twins cap, and quickly put his on as well. "even if the twins have given up, it doesn't mean that we have to, right?"

a twelve hour shift awaited me, after a 90 minute drive from portland to eugene. it didn't matter. i was, for lack of a better definition, spiritually recharged. now i'll find that house. and it will be.

a quick snapshot.

2007-09-21T16:03:00.001-07:00

and, another surprise. well, not really.

2007-09-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

although i've taken this test before, it was fun to refresh. if one will allow oneself a semi-safe-to-read-at-work between the lines, it's going to be reeeeeeeeally nice to see the Fabulous Girlfriend again. for more than you might want to know, read ahead, dear reader.

The Surprising Lover
(81% partner focus, 33% aggressiveness, 60% adventurousness)

"Based on the results of this test, it is highly likely that:

You prefer your romance and love to wild and daring rather than typical or boring, you would rather be pursued than do the pursuing and, when it comes to physical love, your satisfaction comes more from providing a wonderful time to your partner than simply seeking your own.

This places you in the Lover Style of: The Surprising Lover.

The Surprising Lover is a wonderful Lover Style, and, like the name implies, is often filled with hidden delights and talents that might not be apparent from a surface knowledge of the person. The Surprising Lover is rather like a geode--sometimes rough on the exterior, but filled with beauty and wonder. The Surprising Lover is thus a gem to find, though it can sometimes be difficult to do so because they often tend to be humble and unwilling to reveal their inner greatness unless they're in a rewarding relationship.

In terms of physical love, the Surprising Lover really shines, often highly imaginative and utterly devoted to bringing the heights of pleasure to the one that they truly love. Given a rewarding, reciprocative relationship, and the right lover, the Surprising Lover can be a delight in bed.

Best Compatibility can probably be found with: The Carnal Lover (most of all) or the Exotic Lover, or the Suave Lover. Or with Diana. Especially with Diana.

the left coast, in first-person.

2007-09-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ve arrived in the beautiful PNW. I’ve spent a little more than a week here, and I have to say, the atmosphere is simply amazing. My arrival was sweet, and bitter. I hope to explore both aspects here, for your introspection, Dear Reader.

I’ll begin with documenting the trip. Money was always an issue, as I had only a few hundred dollars to survive on, and feed the Snarfler on the way. I didn’t rush, to conserve fuel. I didn’t eat fast food. I pre-purchased a case of bottled water at a tent sale. Partly because of laziness, partly out of a need for efficiency, I made the decision that it would be okay to smoke in the car (as long as the windows are open, as long as I’m by myself) for the duration of the trip. My voyage across the western U.S. (and my first into the Pacific Northwest) was wonderful. The drive across South Dakota gave me a chance to say goodbye to the familiar vast farmlands of my youth. The Black Hills were beautiful, as always. Instead of heading south into the hills, as was my usual voyage, I elected to head north into Spearfish, and leave I-90 behind as I headed into Montana.

With the exception of Alaska and Texas, there isn’t a state that’s longer from east to west. And I drove through every inch of it. Eastern Montana’s Indian reservations were bleak and saddening to drive through. Gasoline came at a premium, and burned quickly. After the jump on the two-lane, it was back to the highway, where I would spend the rest of the voyage. Coming through the mountains at night really was an experience to remember. Seeing a glittering city in the bowl of a huge valley was really awe-inspiring. The air, crystal-clear, only added to the gorgeous visage.

The first night was spent at the top of the Rockies, at a beautiful rest stop outside of Missoula, Montana. The next morning was a long trip down the Rockies. Coeur D’Alene is stunningly beautiful. Fires were prevalent in the Rocky Mountain range, and firefighting helicopters were a common sight. All of my butts went into a water bottle! Through the bottleneck of Idaho and into Washington, traversing Oregon along the majestic Columbia River, and then south on busy I-5 to the destination: Eugene. Checking into the local hotel that the station had set up for me was a wonderful relief. The hotel offered nice suites, and after some much needed sleep, I drove in concentric circles around the neighborhood, familiarizing myself with the area immediately surrounding the station. Good local restaurants. The people are friendly. Driving rules and patterns are new and confusing to the newcomer. Gas is pumped for you. I haven’t quite figured out if one is supposed to tip for this service.

I made multiple trips into Corvallis during my decompress time, making friends with the local community service office person and plotting potential rentals on a map of the area with sticky notes and addresses. The magic coffee shop Sunnyside Up made a perfect base from which to plan. It’s going to be a lot of work to find the perfect place for us, but The Fabulous Girlfriend insists that it’s the place that is going to find us, not the other way around. She’s awfully intelligent and has an awful lot of Faith, so again, I find myself trusting her inherently with our lives. The city is small, quaint, beautifully situated in a lovely valley, and relatively easy to navigate. Free downtown parking makes me smile. The giant John Deere traveling down 4^th street at noon brought me comfort.

On Friday morning I called and checked in with the Chief Engineer, and after a quick introduction, we were off to the station for a tour and orientation. The station is a technological marvel, with no Production Assistants in the house to edit video, run the cameras and audio board, advance graphics sequences, and the like. Here, all is run by non-linear video editing, computer sequencing and robotics-controlled cameras. There are no tapes to be rolled during the show, as all digital video is stored in a sequence on an in-house set of servers. Microphone queues are automatic. High tech, yo!

During this breaking in period, I’m working in Master Control, which is something new for me. I’m now being paid to watch and baby-sit the Saturday morning cartoons that I lamented missing out on while I was helping Dad clear the grove of deadfall for our family’s winter heating. Lots of learning is happening. Photoshop is a new ally and enemy, rolled into one. Graphics requests are fulfilled quickly, in an extensively pre-planned workflow. I find myself wishing I could bypass this learning portion and simply pass Go, collect $200, and inherently understand everything. It’s annoying to suck at one’s job at the beginning. I’m confident enough in my abilities, but everything is so very new.

Through all of this, I’m finding that flip side of my treasured isolation time: feeling terribly lonely. Although I have my new co-workers and TFG’s extensive network of friends to coax me through this incredible period of transition, I still find myself uncomfortably alone sometimes. Bear in mind, I’ve received nothing but support (free housing, emotional support, food, anything essential that I need) from TFG’s friends. Thank you to the amazing Jon, Mary, their beautiful kids and happy-go-lucky dog. Thank you to the wonderfully cerebral Donna, for hosting a stranger. Thank you to the entire state of Oregon, for allowing a outlander to wander unmolested through your fair clime.

Currently, the Beautiful Boy and The Fabulous Girlfriend have departed the Unschooling conference in North Carolina. And on their return trip, they will have picked up my family’s monster van (circa 1978?) in which to load our lives’ worth of stuff and lug it out to Corvallis. I miss them. I also miss my friends and my band and my music. I understand fully that this is a choice that I’ve made, and that to enable this new reality, sacrifices have had to be made. Although I was willing to make them, I now am faced with the daily sadness of leaving loved ones behind, and the comfortable familiarity of my former daily life. This feeling-sorry-for-myself funk leaves as quickly as it arrives, when I breathe the non-meatpacking-plant air here, flavored by fir, pine, and oak.

Roger Waters once exhorted to anyone who would listen that ‘kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown, waiting for someone or something to show you the way’ is a wonderful, comfortable way of wasting one’s greatest gift: Time. Showing more maturity than a man his age should have shown in 1972, he continues: “And then, one day you find- ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.”

It took a lot of faith (my own, private ‘f-word) in the unknown to overcome twenty years of convincing myself that “I’ll never be able to make it elsewhere”. And this is from someone who proudly declares to this day to be a Doubting Thomas. I’m still one who needs to see, to have tactile contact with something to believe in it, or the inherent truth contained therein. I’m starting to understand that Belief, and Faith, are learned skills.

The night Hannah died, a hospital chaplain handed out ‘worry stones’ to those in attendance. Some months ago, TFG gave me one, decorated simply with a painted dragonfly, and it’s been with me ever since. It helps me, knowing that I’m able to conjure strength, possibly from her, when I find it in my hand (which happens multiple times throughout the day). This stone gives me the contact that I need, the physical, tactile contact that I want when I think about a Daughter and her Father. I keep a photo of Mitch and Hannah in my wallet, and when I’m missing The Beautiful Boy and The Fabulous Girlfriend, I pull out the photo, study it, and confirm why I’m here. It’s for them, and me. It’s for us.

I talk to both of them now and again, explaining that I really want to build the best life I’m able to with your wife, mother, son, and brother. I guess I’m not really alone out here after all. Thanks, Hannah-Bear. Thanks, Mitch. You’ve both been of great assistance to me throughout this entire life-altering and affirming series of events. I owe you big. I pledge to take the very best care of your beautiful Brother, Son, inspiring Mom and Wife that I know how to. I really think we’re going to be okay. I’m actually bordering on believing that it will be so.

Now if I can only figure out how to hard-time these commercial breaks during the upcoming round of the PGA Fed-Ex tournament. Oh wait, I can’t hard-time them. It’s a live event.

deer, shooting stars, and sasquatch

2007-08-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

The Fabulous Girlfriend, the Beautiful Son, and I are spending the weekend with friends in northern Minnesota. It's been wonderful, with sleeping in late, smelling actual oxygen (instead of the haze above fourteenth street, in which i normally find myself), good food, wine, campfires, and enjoying a home which is so beautifully constructed and placed that Tony Soprano Himself would give the joint a nod. The family we're staying with this weekend have elevated the term "Host" to above and beyond all previous definitions i've used before. beautiful family, in a beautiful setting.

Today i had my photograph taken with Babe the Big Blue Ox. Saw some minnesota lake seagulls (they don't look all that different from the French ones). talked with my mom over the phone. planned a stop by the family farm in northwest iowa on our way back home.

we talked about the move, dear reader. in a few short days, much planning comes to fruition as i move from one market to another. this move will have me on the west coast. i'll see the pacific ocean for the first time in my life. essentially, this is the beginning of our new lives together, TFG, TBS, and I. and Patches, the cat.

the logistics are probably pretty typical: i'll move out there first to establish a base of operations, while the family travel to the atlantic seaboard for a large unschooling convention. upon their return to the midwest, they'll pack up and move to the above said base of operations. with luck, skill, and cunning, it will be located in Corvallis, Oregon. the job is a short commute away, in Eugene.

many details have already been settled, more remain. it's been a busy time, dear reader. but, weekends in a paradise like this are just the recharge i need. ahead, the last week of work at the "old" NBC affiliate, the going away parties, the last week of rehearsals with my beloved band. the last regular show. a big campfire and cookout. loadout of the computer, board, synthesizer, and other miscellaneous stuff left at my little loft apartment downtown. cleanup.
pretty much, a complete walkaway from my life here for the last twenty years. i'm more than ready.

The PA and drums stay here with the band. the beloved air rifle stays here, with the beloved Wumpus Extremely Extreme Shooting League. the in-yo-face salsa garden stays here, with the beloved Wumpus Extremely Extreme Gardening League. my friends will stay here, as long as they can stand to. For three weeks, it will be me, this laptop, the Suburban Snarfler, and I out in the wilderness of western oregon. I miss TFG already.

wish us luck, dear reader.

RA: 05h 55m 10.3053s, D: +07° 24′ 25.426″

2007-08-09T01:41:00.000-07:00

One of the (very) few benefits of waking up in the middle of the night to go to work is the quiet moments i have with the sky. Just me and my old friend. Even in the moderate light pollution my small city provides, i have a beautiful view of most of the sky, while the rest of the city is asleep. And at 5:15 yesterday morning, I enjoyed the return of another old friend: Orion, the Hunter.

My fascination with the sky goes as far back as i can remember. I remember exactly where i was when my Dad explained how I could orient myself by finding one particular star. I knew the basics of celestial mechanics early in life, (unlike the Dogma-Grasping Pope Urban VII) and the concept of finding the Pole Star, the one which never moved in our sky, was easy for me to grasp. And I spiraled outwards from there, finding new friends like Ursa Major and Minor, Andromeda, Cepheus, and beautiful Draco, in the Southern Sky. Then, I focused on what formed the matrix for these constellations: Bellatrix. Izar. Diadem. Pollux. Wolf 357. Cyrra. Hydra. Mirrach. Rigel. Betelgeuse. Canis Major.

Each of these is more than a name: it is a place, and there, in these places, they are hopefully known by entirely different names.

Later, in HS physics, i learned the basics of thermonuclear fusion, and how a reaction can be held almost indefinitely by our brief flicker of time standard. I learned via the Theory of Relativity, and its inherent constraint on time and space, that simply because i could see the stars, it didn't mean that they were actually there anymore. The star itself could be gone, burned out or exploded, but the light that it sent out at 186K miles per second is still coming. it still moves constantly outward through the vacuum of Space, in a fully encompassing, expanding spherical movement.

...and it is this last concept that i love the most about the night sky. it's because i can place this concept - firmly rooted in exacting physical science - into other areas of my life. I may have real issues dealing with anything metaphysical, but here is one idea that might have a direct and real crossover: Just because something is gone physically does not mean that the light it once emitted isn't still on the way. this helps me when i think about my dear Hannah, who I never met, never hugged, never tucked in at night, and yet, still somehow, desperately miss and love.

Her birthday is approaching, and on her day, I'll find a moment to look into the night sky, locate a particular star (bonus points if you can ID the star given by the coordinates above), wonder if it is still actually there, and then, most likely I'll decide that it really doesn't matter. The light it gave off 500, 1000, or 150 million years ago is still on the way. and that is something. it isn't nothing. Light itself is an actual, physical, thing. And so is Love.

I miss you, Hannah. Happy Birthday, sweetie.

Jazzfest Week, and the Great Westward Expansion

2007-07-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

My sacred, and highly coveted quiet-and-alone time has steadily decreased. It's surprising, but, i find myself missing it much less than i imagined i would. For now, it's okay and good. This last weekend, i braved the masses, and entered the fray of our summertime free outdoor concert, Jazzfest. armed with an unending supply of bottled water, fifty-pound bags of ice, a golfcart and a supersoaker, i moved amongst the volunteers, paramedics and cops, keeping them hydrated.

it wasn't as hot as in previous years (this is the third year I've worked as the "water cowboy" for the event), and i actually found myself addressing strangers, saying things like "hi! thirsty?" and "greetings! have some cold water!" ...who am i becoming?

i left the event as soon as i was able, as i was deep in thought all afternoon, the result of an incredibly rewarding and soul-baring conversation with D. i simply needed to get back to her as soon as possible, to maybe reinforce what we had discussed. after a quick food-crisis for the Beautiful Boy was solved, i spent the rest of the evening with both of them.

we're at the beginning stages of planning a move. not just any move, but a wholly life-changing move, fifteen hundred miles or more away from my friends, my family, my music, and my life, here, as it is. so, there's a growing amount of anxiety at the horizon, and mostly of my own making. a lot of it is directly concerned with cold reality checks: how will we get our stuff there? will we be able to find affordable and acceptable housing? will a job in a nearby city be there, waiting for me? what will we leave behind? how much of my music gear should come with us, and what is destined for Ebay? how can we afford all of this, when it's difficult to simply make it by month to month? these are mostly technical logistics, easily solved if one applies oneself to the issues, one by one.

but where to begin? i'm finding myself easily overloaded when considering these technical logistics. we have a small, fuel-efficient car. this solves the transport of ourselves to our new home, and afterwards, the daily-commute to the small-market city south of our destination. there's four television stations there that i can easily pimp my skills at. another issue solved. transport and job/income. i can finish my mostly-finished degree at OSU's IT school. i have a beautiful family, who own a large transport van. if worse came to worst, we could bribe them to drive our stuff out, with us. when we dropped the 'moving' bomb on them, they expressed sincere interest and excitement.

as i write this, i can see that each issue has a solution, when each issue is compartmentalized. maybe it's simply the entirety, with all of the details wrapped into one confusing ball, which is overwhelming.

so, that's been the week. love is reaffirmed, daily. volunteering is good, and interaction won't actually kill me. planning for the future is logical (even when one doesn't think it is). i can still find quiet time. money doesn't care if i worry about it. i'm fat, happy, and growing less concerned with what "could" go wrong, every day.

sheesh. the old me would have kicked my ass by now.

up close and personal.

2007-07-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

being intimidated in social situations isn't as sexy as one may believe it should be; at least for me. yesterday and last night, TFG, the beautiful boy, and i attended a family wedding. All Lutheran jokes aside, it was... well, highly Lutheran in nature. (more on that someday)

the ceremony was mercifully short and to the point, with little fanfare and the like. it was incredibly hot here, on the high plains-so the worst physical part was wearing a monkey suit in the hundred-degree sunshine. i've gotten to the point, however, in social situations, that i was (self) relegated to finding TFG's highly interesting and mercifully quiet and pointed father, and clinging to him for dear life.

when in social situations, i find myself believing that i'm constantly under scrutiny of some sort. this isn't, i don't believe, out of any lack of confidence in who i am or what i can offer to those around me. i simply can't tolerate loud, inane chatter. i don't enjoy loud, crowded, and obnoxious. drunken mispronunciations and overcorrections drive me up a wall. i was only pressured to jump out on to the dance floor and perform for a mystical, midwestern wedding party ritual once or twice. both times, while under loud protest, i quietly declined.

TFG and the beautiful Boy were in their element, however. busy, people, moving, talking, yelling, laughing; it's their thing, much like quiet, calm, and introspective is mine. i tolerated as much as i could, and some beyond, before i explained over the barking of "old time rock -n-roll" over the hotel PA system, that i needed to leave. some protest. some searching for compromise. some questioning. but, mercifully, TFG quickly understood what was happening and gave me the necessary blessing to go. (with the request to please come back to their home instead of to my little loft apartment downtown)

and that was it. once i was in the car, alone, with familiar (and loved, and artistically relevant) music in the CD player, the stress was gone. like a set of dirty clothes. i found my way to the freeway, and lazily circled the city, going an extra exit or two beyond my destination simply to extend the moment. the solitude.

i found my way back to TFG's home, and curled up in her amazing bed with her affectionate cat. alone, quiet, and with some freshly scored weed, i threw on Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on audio, and fell asleep. an unknown time later, TFG arrived, loud and excited, and pissed about an affront that she and her immediate family had suffered at the hands of an uncaring wedding participant. i woke, tried to calm her down, and listened. i'm good with one-on-one communication, with those that i love and trust.

now, i realize the inherent dichotomy that this whole social anxiety thing is at direct odds with my hobby, which involves me getting in front of loud, drunken, obnoxious louts, and entertain them with loud, drunken, obnoxious music (custom crafted by and for idiots). somehow I've partitioned this into a "work" theme, where i can get onstage and play and count and remember breaks and quip self-effacing jokes and 'how does this song start again?' i don't get the telltale shivers of uncomfortability in live music situations, possibly because i'm up there with people that i love.

it's difficult to be split right down the middle sometimes. just ask TFG.

Kryptonite

2007-06-29T01:23:00.000-07:00

When intimacy equals Kryptonite, it is rarely a harbinger of anything good. TFG has been having a rough time of it lately. Life brings with it many distractions, disturbances, and odd coincidences, and any of these can naturally disturb any pre-existing drives we have. eating schedules can go out the window when one has no appetite. sleeping schedules can be turned on end when life's happenings force us to stay up late (or go to bed early). work schedules can -and do- change. Life happens, whether we choose to participate in it or not.

in my work, i do a lot of video editing, non-linear and otherwise. some of this involves "cutting promos", which is shorthand for programming in and out edit points, and throwing an audio tag and a graphic onto the video. it's mindless work, which i've labeled "EF Work", short for "eyes and fingers". one can successfully do this type of work with 95% of one's brain tied behind one's back. the positive upside of this type of work is that one can wander freely through multiple lines of thought while working. I love to think, sometimes only for the sake of thought, and this type of work (a polar opposite of directing a live news broadcast) gives me lots of free time to do so.

a lot of these promos i cut are from popular TV shows (everybody loves raymond, according to jim, etc.) where the male characters portrayed are simpering idiots at the mercy of their wives' whims. they have no say in
anything in their lives, essentially. especially their sex lives. they simply wait around until their fictional wives become bored and turn on the *i'm ready* and they and the studio audience see how long it takes for the idiots to figure it out. they're fictional characters, and yet, for ignorant, two-digit IQ men all over the world, they provide a role model. shut up and do as she says and maybe she'll give in and eventually give it up. but probably not (que the muted trumpet, Whaaaa whaaa whaaa, lead male character looks confusedly at camera). the writers and actors of these shows combine forces to represent everything i despise about men who refuse to allow themselves the opportunity to think, love, and be active within the construct of a relationship. i can't stand idiot men who do as they're told simply to get into the pants of their bored, uncaring wives two or three times a year.

this EF work also provides an opportunity to chase one's tail, and, if one has a pre-existing tendency for insecurities, they can chase you down. I do my very best to remain secure about myself, my life, my work, and my new relationship with TFG. I was (and am) determined to have this be the finest, most communicative, and most adult relationship i've had. i quite unexpectedly fell in love.

Like most thirtysomethings, i've done the kid relationship thing, with shitty communication skills adding to the eventual demise of the relationship. i've stood idly by and watched, with some detached-ness, as lovers lose interest and move on-only to happily swim in my own invented woe later. i've dropped out of relationship-building entirely, simply because it was easier emotionally and financially to be alone than to deal with the arcs encountered in a love relationship. I've made mistake after mistake after mistake.

i've never known a relationship to arc so quickly than this one with TFG. we simply fell in together, noted how vastly different we are from each other, and celebrated it. we moved very quickly, and fell in love hard and fast. through this, in the back of my mind, (and communicated as best as i was able) was the idea that i needed to work to keep it together. be the man she needs without erasing myself. show her that i care, and that i am lucky and honored to be with her and involved in her life. thank her for allowing me into her life, and to share myself with her and her beautiful son. express my love for her constantly. wanting to know about her past so we can go through and grieve for her family's terrible losses together. and above all, communicate. listen. talking about everything and anything. more listening. expressing myself. caring. doing my very best to understand. i want to get inside of her head and see through her eyes. she's incredibly intelligent, and her point of view, to see through her eyes, is an immense priveledge.

so, when intimacy is shut off, it's difficult to understand. when curling up in bed together (for snoozing or cuddling) is Kryptonite, i want to know why, both on an emotional and clinical level. what's wrong? it's something i'm doing wrong? what can i do to help? i understand that sometimes people simply don't want someone on top of them. i get it. easily. there's times that i don't want anyone on top of me, either. there's times that i don't want anyone around at all. but when a fully functional relationship remains fully functional without intimacy, it isn't fully functional. we're not firing on all cylinders. i want to reduce it to that, to make it appear as if a non functioning relationship is as easy to fix as a fouled-out distributer, but of course it isn't. and shouldn't be. we're people, not machines.

we're travelling this weekend, our first road trip together, just the three of us. i want it to be without worry, and to enjoy the travel and destination. when problems go unspoken, however, they rarely get better. just like an automotive issue. the car will rarely fix itself.

i wonder if we need a mechanic.

a brave new world.

2007-06-17T06:57:00.001-07:00

a year or more before i met TFG and her beautiful son, i saw this video and it broke/lightened my heart with its beauty and the care in which it was produced. things like this really raise the bar for those who take the short-clip music video medium seriously. the music, the underlying themematic, and the availability of interpretation (in both the language and topic) all lend to the finest piece of music video i've absorbed in a long, long time. without mentioning specifics, i'll say that this band has also produced several works that are far and above those who have preceded them. thanks, Sigur Ros.

fawning aside, i marveled at the freedom of the children portrayed. what must it be like for them and their families to harvest such raw freedom inside the normally-occurring constriction in "modern world" childrearing? and then i met TFG, and was introduced to the concept of Radical Unschooling. I had the typical, uneducated preconceptions of the world of homeschooled kids (antisociality, lack of patience, no concern for others, as they themselves are the center of the universe, etc.). these have all been bashed, as i am again reminded of why i chose to listen to a certain type of music in my youth and young adulthood: music as art, sent from those who would bash preconception. a lesson learned, and re-reminded.

i now see daily what it must be like to live like the children portrayed in the video. i see it in the beautiful son, his community of friends and family, and in the love of his mother, who i adore entirely. welcome to my eyes being opened.

Our own private Los Angeles

2007-06-14T01:45:00.000-07:00

The symptoms of the cold broke the other day. It's remarkable, the ability of one's body, however poorly one treats it, to re-stabilize and heal itself. Good piece of Evolution, we are. During my last cold, i felt the exact moment that my immune system achieved 50.0001% victory over the invading virus/germ combo. Just like that, i felt the fever break. This time, i was asleep during the moment of victory, but it was so very sweet to wake up sans pain and the accompanying annoyance.

to celebrate, i've spent the last couple of days with TFG, her beautiful son, and the twins. Not much sleep, not much quiet, and a whole lot of love. We ate very well, watched some interesting TV ( i don't own one, personally), lounged, talked, debated, and loved. And now, i'm ready for some privacy and quiet to balance against the loud voice of raw life and the constant kinetic motion of children.

I love kids. always have. i have taken pride in the fact that small children and animals have always trusted me. i felt, somehow, that a more true barometer of one's trustworthiness (?) is yet to be developed. i also need time away from them. i wonder what type of parent i'll evolve into: a reclusive one, approachable only in emergencies, or an available, gregarious one, outside of my own private nature ?

While enjoying the most recent episode of Hell's Kitchen, my inner sociologist marveled at the faces of those being served in the petri-dish of public fine dining (fully comped, we assumed). "Do the people in Los Angeles understand that they're the only people in the universe," i ask TFG. "Of course," she replies. A native of ten years or more in the Valley (a geologic formation she pointed out when we stilled the screen, explained in ever-confusing detail), she instantly understood my disparaging commentary of the singularly-minded in the world.
Yet, who among us isn't an Island, the exact center of our Universe? among who else can we draw our opinion of the world around us? can any of us ( the Dalai Lama aside) really understand the view through someone else's perspective? probably not. we can imagine, we can conjecture, we can impose our own view upon the supposition. but to really see? not this man. maybe you can, Dear Reader. help me understand the mythic, the plastic, the one-cell-deep exterior shown to us by the Only People. tell me that they're deeper than they appear. tell me the same thing about myself, Dear Reader.

Phil Leotardo had it comin'.

Once or twice a year...

2007-06-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

...i catch a cold. usually in either the spring or fall. this year, i'm lucky enough to have it when it's warm out. well, relatively warm, anyway. because these bouts happen so few and far between, the effects of an average cold or flu are somehow ...amplified, at least in my mind.

i spent the evening tossing and turning, alternately baking and freezing in my little loft apartment. i don't have any remedies at home, probably because of the infrequency of getting ill. so, i tried an experiment: i would clinically detach myself from my own perceived suffering, and coldly note the effects of the sickness. it was interesting for about four seconds. then, i went back to happily feeling sorry for myself : )

went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon. i'm lucky enough to live downtown in my small midwestern city, and the neighborhood grocery store is one block away. i shivered in the full sunlight on my walk there, and chose a nice, spiral cut ham and some fresh pineapple to go with the Jerk seasonings i purchased while TFG and i were out shopping the other day. Allspice. honey. scotch bonnet peppers. orange rind. carrots, and a handful of crushed/dried habanero from last year's garden. when i piled out of bed this morning, the crockpot was warm, the ham was done, the carrots were sweet, hot, and soft. and i couldn't smell any of it.

multivitamins and water. i brought some cokes in to work this morning, but they remain untouched. TFG is a big fan of CocaCola, so maybe i'll bring some over for her today. haven't seen her in a couple of days, but now it's probably for the better, as i wouldn't want to cross-infect the girl i love and her beautiful son.

if it doesn't get warmer soon, my tomatoes and peppers will suffer! wishing.

autonomy

2007-06-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

...is usually noted as the ability to direct one's self, or self-directing freedom. this is a concept that i cherish. from the emotional, to the spiritual, to the galactic. The Fabulous Girlfriend and i have had many, many discussions on concepts, situations, and share precursive opinions that we have on a myriad of subjects. yesterday's was a little different: the view of women, as a gender, through the cultural lens.

we have found a zillion subjects that we have mutual agreements on, where the same ideas and opinions ring true for the both of us. like most humans, we also find that we have differing, and indeed, polar views on some. we debated, back and forth, made our opinions known, and knowing the other's positon, set it aside. end of story. or is it?

i spent most of the day with TFG and her beautiful son, we went shopping, watched some tube, and briefly watched the Boy move through the incomprehensible universe of World of Warcraft. We laughed at the antics of the Best Rock Band in the World, and enjoyed some deli chicken and sushi. it was a great day. I went to bed early, as my schedule kind of fries me out post 2300 CDT.

and, for the second night running, i wake up alone and find TFG asleep in the living room. must be something i'm doing wrong, or my voiced opinions earlier in the day are still in effect, acting against harmony. maybe i should keep my mouth shut and nod and say "MmmHmm" whenever she espouses something i find to be the polar opposite of my own opinion. harmony through disharmony?

People.

2007-05-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

Misanthropic. Adjective.
Believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others [syn: cynical]

i don't necessarily fall under this category, but i'm a lot closer to it than most people that i know. and that's a good thing. my friends are intelligent, wise and silly, my family is loving and accepting of any new things i undertake, and even the casual acquaintences i have and develop are positive and sincere.

so, why then, should a simple, Gen-X post-slacker have a general mistrust of people? i can't say for sure. i poke fun at the normals. my life really hasn't been difficult, or with obstacles that i cannot move or simply move around. i enjoy life. i breathe deeply when it rains. i grow peppers. i listen to, record, and play music. i watch with scientific detachment as my hair falls out. i can make myself laugh at my own (and others') idiocy. i have a good life. i take moments to stare at the stars, appreciate how rare we must be in the cosmic scheme, and appreciate that i'm alive and have loved ones and friends around me.

i do know that i don't like scrutiny. maybe it's this flavor-filled little touch of paranoia that keeps me from trusting people. tonight i had to turn down a request from the fabulous girlfriend to attend a current pop-culture phenom film with her friends and her son. not because i had anything going on that couldn't be postponed, but because i cannot stand social situations that put me in close proximity to the public at large. the irritation i would have at those around me would far outweigh any joy i would receive from the film, and to a lesser extent, being with those that i love. it's something that's plagued me for most of my life. i did my best to politely decline, and hoped that i could make it up to the crew at a later point. i don't like parties or crowds. loud, obnoxious, emotional geocentrists fill the Hell which i'll probably fry in someday for my thought crimes and religious heresy. i can't tolerate knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who shlep through their life without giving any thought to who and where they are, and so i avoid them.

the concept of the precious gift of being alive (i won't address god's church here, maybe i'll offend you, dear reader, on this subject later) seems to be wasted on the vast majority of people, at least in the red state in which i live. this makes my brow furrow and my teeth grind. idiots who go through their lives without having a sense of community, without skimming the topic of being part of the whole, and finally and most importantly, view themselves as the exact and literal center of the universe seem to be keeping me from socially interacting more than i have. i've always been this way.

with this little insight, i'll leave you, dear reader, to ponder my psychic backlash with a short blurb on heliocentrism.

Day 8 of 19

2007-05-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

...at work. our little station works with three full-time technical directors, and when one of them is out, the other two take up the slack. this is done (this time) joyfully, as my good friend, the Damn Hippie, is in Europe, spending time with his family and seeing the sights for a few weeks.

so, i'm at work. again. and again. i need to keep reminding myself that all of this overtime is ...worth the removal of my life. hell, who am i to bitch? others have it much, much worse; even inside the confines of this very building. it's okay. i'm just tired.

my fabulous girlfriend is hosting a family of unschoolers over the next day or two, and at the same time, one of her very, very favorite artists is moving through the area while on tour. the family is from minnesota, where their children are instructed by interacting with the world around them. it's beautiful and awe-inspiring to witness the joy these children and their parents have in their lives. they are entirely intertwined, the parents and the children. it's a polar difference between the masses who send their children off to grade school and beyond, and leave the impressions and instructions their children absorb to a callous and cold institution.

the fabulous girlfriend raises her 8 year old son in the same fashion. his needs determine his learning. this was a strange new world for me, but i can't see the boy through any other lens at this point. the life that the boy and his mother are spending together is absolutely amazing to view, and for me, to play a small role in. magnifcent.

It's yer Birthday!

2007-05-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

"and many happy returns to you, my sweet, on this, the occasion of the Anniversary of your Birthday ! " ...is what i would have said to my entirely fabulous girlfriend if i had a chance to be with her today. Stupid work. Don't get me wrong, i really love my interesting job, but less so on sundays, and even less so on my Girlfriend's birthday.

I haven't introduced her to you yet, dear reader. but show patience, i shall divulge as the need arises. know that she's impossibly patient, incredibly apt and armed with a razor-sharp intellect. and, she's the prototypical smokin'-hot redhead. ...and, for some absurd reason, she's taken with me, with all my neuroses, sketchy behaviour, and smelly socks. the girl starts the fire.

she doesn't read this blog, as i've just started it mostly for myself, and haven't given away it's location to any of my friends or family yet. only you, dear reader, know of its' existance. so, i can't be accused of mining for affection from her. not outwardly, anyway.

love is grand. missing your love's birthday isn't. good thing for me she celebrates for a week. that should give me the time and space necessary to properly present her with her ...present.

another in a series of moments

2007-05-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

my parents drove in from out of state yesterday to visit my grandparents, shuttle grandkids (not mine, not yet!) and to meet their son's interesting and mysterious new girlfriend and her son. this is always a moment of some stress, is it not? will they have anything in common other than knowledge of their son?

they came bearing gifts and loud, happy, excited children. the fabulous girlfriend's boy, who i am absolutely in love with, tolerated the invasion of his space quite well, and sent my nephew, age 9, with a gift that truly imparts: a simpson's video game. such joy!

the amish baked goods are exquisite. the opportunity to sit with my parents and show them picture proof of my recent excursion to europe was wonderful. dinner at the local chinese restaurant with children oooing and aaahing over the huge koi fish in their huge tank was wonderful. the fabulous girlfriend and my old man trading dirty jokes? priceless.

Both Hands, Both Feet

2007-05-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

It's apparent that i enjoy reading about the lives of others, given the amount of time that i devote daily to perusing the blogs of said others. with that said, I'll jump into the mass exposure foray, with both hands and both feet. While i'm usually quite private, i'll divulge necessary exposition and backstory when it's called for. Enjoy, if you will, the ongoing story of a small-town over-thinker.

I live in a small city in the Midwest. In this small city, i have numerous roles that i fulfill; the usual Family / Hobby / Job combo being foremost. I have a loving and adorable new family, an old hobby which continually brings me much joy, and a very interesting new job. I'll keep you, dear reader, informed on these aspects, as they shall provide the main fodder for this online journal, and other thoughts about life, love, religion, idiots, thinkers, heroes, and villians.

welcome, dear reader, to a virtual celebration of the sacred and the mundane.