If you ask me (and you'd HAVE to ask me, because I doubt many others would agree) I'm the soul of patience. 

Okay.  I just wanted to see what that looked like in print, as it were.  This is probably more accurate:  I can be patient when patience is demanded.  I'm not sure I've got it for the changes to Mindsay.

Change is good.  Love change.  Applaud change.  Even if it's forced.  But this is an architectural change that - planned?  accidental? - is informed by the community habits of the very young.  Mindsay isn't required to create a community - that's our job - but it's something else to put up obstacles.

And right now, I don't have patience.  Right now, in my humble opinion, there's a profound need for dialogue.  I had a visitor yesterday who shared the apparently in-vogue attitude:  those voting for Bush are going to vote for Bush no matter what.  Hm.  No point in persuading. 

Maybe.  I don't think I believe that.  I'm certainly not willing to accept that.  I'm not willing to let a young Republican embrace what he/she does not understand, particularly when it's a stupid point of view.  Frankly, the same holds true for young Democrats.  I'm afraid it's NOT enough to sling around abuse - it's tempting, but it is, as they say, polarizing. 

I'm not willing to accept that because it's MY community.  When they vote recklessly, they vote for something that affects me, too.  When they BELIEVE recklessly, they believe things that affect me, too. 

I'd love to think that anyone who heard or read what Vice President Cheney had to say yesterday would know better.  Yes, well ... I wasted an entire sentence writing that.   You know, in the real world you can spot a community that values dialogue, that values the exchange of ideas almost instantly.  England's pubs are a great example, if you need one.  We will create our way - suppress us and we will go samizdat. 

But the internet - the electronic community is a little different.  We can not catch each other's eyes on the street.  We can not run into each other at the market or the coffee shop.  We can't step outside for a cigarette.    We can't eavesdrop and slide our way into an argument.

In an electronic format, we have to look for the communities that give us as much access and as many 'alerts' to interesting conversations happening or interesting conversations WANTING to happen.  Mindsay has - currently - an architecture that provides this, as long as your conversations are among exactly the people you already know. 

Hm.  That's a lot like emailing my personal friends, none of whom - by the way - are Mindsay members. 

My will to blog has waned.  Right or wrong, I work best when things roll - rock and roll and stay real fluid.  I had a hard time warming to the raison d'etre of a blog, but warm I did but - at least for now, until all the brand spankin' new features are in place at mindsay, that reason's nearly evaporated.  There's just way too much time spent on administration and logistics and not enough immediate access to the flow.  The flow, the conversation, is just too important to me. 

As it is, I've only recently tuned back in to domestic politics and how they translate into our local cultures and personal affairs.  I spent way too long in Eastern Europe, the great laboratory where free market and the democratic process were tested before our eyes and well being.  In short, there was no yakking (although plenty did) -  you had to demonstrate what you believed in.  Demonstrate it.  It wasn't the Peace Corps 'growing experience' - not that there's anything wrong with that, but personally, I'm all about losing the halo and the compliments and creating sustainable programs.  Sustainable cultural programs.  Those depend - very much - on having access, on your ability to pay attention. 

Now, I feel like it's a forum for private journals.  I don't need or want a private journal.  I want the envelope pushed.  I might have nothing at all to contribute, but I want to read/hear it happening.  There are GREAT blogs at mindsay and I love reading them.  But I want to read any and all whenever I want.  I only read Ledaandtheswan after she left and my head couldn't help turning over (and over) how thrilling to consider being an economist, NOW, now when it has a chance to emerging from the silence of soft science into the big fat debate that the rest of the world has had to have without us.  Not that it's fun to think about doing a Couscescu (you know him, the Romanian fellow, the one who resolved to repay the World Bank (or maybe it was IMF) debt and so happily let his people live in amazing deprivation.  How lucky for them/their sciences that they enjoyed such a great relationship with Japan). 

Anyway, so I'm taking a break from writing.  Not from reading, but writing.  It's no great loss to anyone, and I'm not even pretending it is, I just want it said. 

Journalism's just not what it ought to be, but it might be because neither are the readers.

I didn't invent this, but I've definitely embraced it as one of the most powerful ideas for getting things done in the world:  It's NOT the answer that's so important, it's the question.  It's the quality of the question. 

Inexplicably, it's still popular to say there are no stupid questions.  This is, in my opinion and plain ol' observation, a stupid thing to say.  There ARE stupid questions, plenty of them, and no one should be surprised that their answers are their equal in stupidity.  I should know.  I've asked PLENTY of them.  

In normal life, I don't care at all whether someone chooses the bliss of ignorance - their life, not mine and usually, they know loads about something in detail.  But journalists are something else.  Of course, it's silly to expect more of them than they're capable of delivering; they are just people.  People I went to school with, people you went to school with.  Friends who know what they know.  I'd prefer people to practise 'pure' journalism - you know, the objective, informed, out to get information and deliver it to readers/viewers.  Well, it's not what happens any more.  Fine.  I personally accept that and get on with collecting my information from ... all over the place.  And then - although it's tough when you're as pathologically lazy as I am - I take responsiblity for sorting through it and making as many connections as I can.  All on my own.  Without the assistance of journalists.  

It's a silly example, but Arnold Schwartzenegger, who I was more than happy to see elected as my governor, told of his conversion to Republicanism at the RNC.  Short of it is that he'd experienced socialism and he was having none of that.  Sigh.  Yes, well, he'd also experienced the Austrian politics in general, and Austrian culture that still resonates of Habsburg and Metternich influences.  NOO ... not because I read it somewhere.  It's palpable.  So, no big deal, doesn't change anything, but it is sort of a different canvas to consider things from. 

So, ooh, ahhh, aren't I the brave little soldier?  No, I'm not.  I'm just doing what needs to be done and as election day approaches, I'd really like to see others doing the same thing.  As I never tire of saying:  I live here, too.  This is MY life being affected.  I've horrified - and I DO MEAN HORRIFIED - friends when I've imagined removing the vote from people who didn't know anything.  Gasps of deep dismay all around for a MOST un-democratic idea.  Yah, I  it is and, of course, would never happen.  But I can't tolerate someone voting their ... opinion.  What the hell is that?  

Oh.  Those friends?  The ones I appalled?  Well, one was a lawyer prosecuting the S&L scandal and later asked to be part of the Al Gore's anti-corruption agency, another was a woman named to head an international women's non-profit, two were administrators/consultants to EU education programs - stationed, as it were, in Moldova.  Liberals.  Deeply liberal.  I don't know.  I don't think it's too much to ask conservatives to give the process the same regard. 

We've been having a little chat about Stupidity and what qualifies and who gets to be the judge and well, pretty soon, it's pretty apparent that it's a story best left to science fiction writers.  Let 'em all vote (that way, I get to vote, too.  Wheee.) I want people to vote, I really truly do.  At hair-splitting time, I don't even think they have to know alot.  I just want them to think - a significantly different thing than having a strong opinion or having a battery of facts at their fingertips.

Have I spent too much time around lawyers and men with power?  UnDOUBTEDLY.  There's nothing like being around young men learning how-to-be lawyers for giving you a potent glimpse of things to come.  There's a secret they pick up in the halls of law school and they cozy right up to it:  get intellectually arrogant - it'll take you far.  And it probably does, as long as you have people willing to submit to it.  But here's my problem. Reeling off facts, having specialized information, isn't the same thing as thinking.  If I know something, does that make me smarter than you or just in possession of a fact.  I'm going to err on the side of the latter (although there is a nice fuzzy glow from the 'i'm smarter' part of the equation). 

My po' po' parents.  I could never wrap my head around math.  Hated math.  Hated my math teachers.  So the po' parents sat me down and made me take IQ tests.  Tests.  Plural because the results came in and of all the abstract reasoning thingies you get tested in, I seemed to have rather formidable abilities in ... math.  Ha.  yah, well, and ...?  I didn't improve.  in fact, I got worse.  In college, a football player friend and I 'split' attendance in math class.  Hours before our midterm, I learned he'd dropped the class.  I hadn't.  THAT is stupidity.  I didn't even know what a matrix was and since I had an Asian teacher with an impenetrable accent, I didn't even know that matrices were what she was talking about.  Let's have a group guess at how well I performed in that class. 

Well, luckily, I can do the math as long as it's simple.  I can NOT do the math on women who would vote for Bush.  Really.  It just doesn't add up for me.  Here are a few things I figure factor in:

Pro-choice/pro-life - I don't care which side you're on, I can't understand why a woman would want a government to decide. 

Jobs? And all that follows from having a good job?  No, no, please.  Don't even tell me that you haven't met the ol' boys network and can't see that its under the stewardship of Republicans.  I'm not much of a feminist myself - although I'm getting a wee bit more feverish about it.  I can't bother to be bothered - but do NOT tell me that sexism doesn't have an impact on everything.  Everything.  

Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage Between/betwixt (I can't tell the difference) a Man and Woman.  What day do you think that will be, when the government can guarantee that your husband will genuinely respect and help cultivate all of YOUR vision and creative impulse?  Exactly what is being protected?  What? 

Protecting You from Terrorists.  Hm.  (Here goes a paraphrase) I remarked on the irony of the republicans campaigning on BOTH the idea of Fear AND government staying out of people's lives. What is more invasive, has more tentacles than the idea that a federal government should enter my shivering little psychology and remove my anxieties. Stygius, who does one of my favorite jobs of contemplating the facts of the day, replied: The postmodern Republican Party has very successfully built an ethos that relies heavily on the gullibility of a voter who wants to both worship an authority icon and be against authority at the same time.    

Men made the rules.  Men guard their rules.  Lots of the rules are honorable and strong and good and have much to recommend them.  A whole lot of the remainder are really, truly ridiculous.  They are rules INVENTED.  By men.  I don't mind.  But be clear on it.   No.  I do not understand surrending any possibilities of mind, body or spirit.  Unless you're a fan of subtraction. 

... just a litttttle something's been ignited in me and I'm so excited about the blog I intend to write today.  LOL - this is NOT it.  I have to race like the wind to an outside gig - well, I ride a bike down the beautiful main street of Santa Barbara with its nine billion stoplights that make it easier for the tourists to get from one boutique to the next on the opposite side - so it's more like racing like a gentle breeze.  But still, to work I go.  I just wanted to assure any passers-by that I'm not quite as lazy a blogger as I appear and I will post later.  Wheeeee! 

They Might Be Giants' Why Does The Sun Shine.  Why? they ask and then, rather conveniently, go on to supply the answer:  The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a giantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen and helium (or some such gases ...) etc etc.  

This song has rescued any number of conversations that wanted to stall for lack of knowing the proper ingredients in the Sun Recipe.  Of course, its value is somewhat diminished if you've got physicists at the party, but most of those are at labs and Los Alamos, so ... in general, it's a catchy tune and plain old useful. 

I love this new Mindsay feature. 

A little bit later:  I realize that this entry is little proof of being at work, but consider that when I'm not animating or designing and writing Scary Fairy postcards, I make cash working for venture capitalists who chose this luxurious little spot on the California coast as a satellite office.  They might be Republicans (oh!  a recurring phrase o- the day!) but they're no fools.  Point is ...my job is to be poised to respond.  VC folk aren't about creating paperwork. 

Like many or any remotely interested in thse things, I trotted right on over to the conversative website that broke the CBS forgery scandal.  Good for them.  As an aside, it was collectively 'discovered' by their readers but what's a little credit-spreading when the spotlights are on? 

Anyway, once there, I spent way more time than I should have reading articles and following their recommended links.  Then, I'm the one that actually read Celestine Prophecy.  In its execrable entirety.  Because you just have to if you intend to lodge any criticisms.  My little personal rule. :)

My.  Oh my.  What to say when highly trained and clearly agile minds fix themselves on arch conservative philosophy and reasoning.  What to say when they knowingly, deliberately stir up racism and - yes - my big one - fear.  One of the blog's founders, an attorney, authored an article on religious tolerance and the obligations to a state.  His primary source, used to establish the legitimacy of his position, no, wait.  WORSE - in fact - his entire position rests on this source.  John Locke, one of the stars of the Enlightenment.  The Age of Reason.  He should be ashamed of himself.  Any conservative reader who puffs up with pride and thinks:  OOee, the guys on my side sure know what they're talking about would be well advised to educate themselves.  Cosmetically, I can't say I don't agree with Mister Attorney's point - that we should expect religious leaders who enjoy the protection of our form of government to not engage in sedition.  (Although, will you be surprised that Locke was perfectly willing to concede that under some circumstances, revolution is perfectly acceptable?  Well, maybe you would be surprised if you didn't know the contemporary history of England, the Reformation and Civil War, heading into the interesting 18th Century). 

As an entire piece, though, and considered in light of the oh-so-popular tasks they've set themselves to -  racial profiling - it is an argument of some dishonesty. 

I might agree to racial profiling if we also implement idiot-profiling, asshole-profiling, and men-who-can't-think their ways out of paper bags-profiling.  Hold on.  I'm not through.  I want liar profiling, I want greed profiling.  I want men with tiny dicks profiling.  I want women who only want to please their men profiling.  I want illiteracy profiling and I want got-there-by-your connections profiling.   I certainly want manipulation profiling - this is an outrageous example of people willing to seize their power from a constituency of the not very well educated.  And I think Mister Attorney should submit himself immediately to sophistry-profiling. 

This man was educated in the Socratic method.  You can be sure he knows what he's doing.  You can be sure he knows that his 'perfect' audience will not be asking questions and figuring it out for themselves.  If you're a Republican, it OUGHT to piss you off. 

Oh.  Whoops.  I never got to my new project.  When I do, though, it's a project inspired by the above, intolerable misleading. 

Fear's a sneaky thing, indeedy, and a lot more clever than you'd ever expect.  Long ago, it learned not to lumber down the street with its eyes wild and hair standing on crazy end, tongue stuck out and lashing about.   It learned that news travels fast and the folks at the far end of the street always had plenty of time to prepare.  Besides, just ... showing up?  Looking ... fearful.  There was no sport to it. 

So, it learned to tiptoe in and wiggle around corners and wrap itself around words and get into peoples' heads in the most - admittedly - ingenious ways.  It snuck in, one person at a time and to its delight, I'm sure, it actually got assistance - there were people willing to do its work.  How extraordinary is that? 

Oh yeah, it's sneaky - so sneaky, that many of the folk it invades don't even recognize its presence.  They're pretty convinced that fear is all on the outside and not a day goes by when they're not on the lookout for the wild eyes, crazy hair, and lashing tongue - a costume that only comes out on the big occasions. 

There are any number of ways to combat it; the best demand personal attention. 

My idea is not to bother trying to combat fear.  Bloody 'ell, half the folks infected will put up a fight to keep it - Stockholm syndrome indeed.  No, my idea is to patiently consider the things we sacrifice when we live and raise our children in fear.  Of course, I'm not so patient that I'd consider everything, so I'll stick with what's most valuable to me.  People.

Ooo.  Ick.  Yah, I can hear the faint roar: how sentimental!  Oh stop, stop it now.  There are plenty making the sentimental case for loving and appreciating all human beings.  This is about people I know,  met, or have been acquainted with, a record of the very swell things people do and think of and contribute.  But I can guarantee before I even begin that you wouldn't know they had so much exciting, fascinating stuff going on if you didn't talk with them.  If you didn't listen to them.  I don't mean passive listening.  I mean active listening, asking questions, wanting to know.   

Of course, your personal friends, your intimates, are the most wonderful people of all - they'll help you move, they've lend you cash, they'll come to your aid and provide shelter and kindness - but all the other people in the world serve their own delicious purpose.  I am sort of a collector of people, but not the people as much as the stories of what they do in the world, how they affect things.  Some of the least likely are some of the most extraordinary.  They test our ability to imagine and empathize.  They invite us in, give us the opportunity to trade ideas and visions, and we are challenged in a small way, to do it for our own ... satisfaction. 

We teach each other, we always have and we always will.  And if we choose to be taught by belligerent, power-hungry, fear-mongerers - then we choose that and not a beautiful kaleidoscopic experience. 

And it matters, because there's nothing like having the fearful in your midst to ruin all good potential. 

So, now I have to pick the person I'll start with. 

It's an alternative world, of memories and possibilities populated by people I've known.  They're not necessarily friends, just selections from the wide variety of fabulous folk.  The one rule is that we have had, at the very least, one real, liquid, creative, interesting conversation (this to prevent the bumping elbows at parties entries).  The kind of conversations that simply do not happen when you're in a state of fear or belligerence. 

Apparently, this exercise is mostly for me and I'm glad I invented it, and that's all I'm saying about that.

So.  On my very first day, I think I should pick two because it's just not right to stick a person into a world all by themselves, with no one to talk to. 

So, first, Sandra:  An author, humorist, performance artist and fairly new mother (although I wasn't around for the last part), Sandra was recently fired from an NPR affiliate station in LA for using profanity in a broadcast. Sort of sad, because 1) she expected the sound engineer to bleep it out and 2) it wasn't gratuitous profanity at all, not a toss-away expletive, but an oft-used word in the popular culture. 

Sandra's truly astonishing and highly educated mind absorbs everything and transforms it into seemingly innocent observational pieces.  Her writing, which appears all over the place, is easy and funny and has pinpoint accuracy.  Warm and cosy in person?  Gosh, I don't know about that and frankly, never expected it of her.  What for?  I would much rather she take care of her needs, whatever feeds and fuels her talents.  Who would want someone to siphon energy from a breathtaking vision? 

I think of Sandra surprisingly often, certainly whenever I'm in the company of women who complain that friends should be there for you, listening to your relentlessly long and recurring stories of heartbreak.  Support comes in entirely different forms and my taste runs to the kind of support that shows you what you could be doing with your passion.  That demonstrates it. 

And then, there's Dusan.  Our meeting kind of qualifies as One of the Curious Coincidi.  I was at a Film Festival in a foreign land newly emerged from Communism and - sigh - just in need of a little itty bit of American culture.  The only and I do mean only thing available was a McDonald's that was installed in a fabulous old train station.  New to them, it was THE place to go.  It could NOT have been more packed.  There was only one small table with an empty seat; I asked if I could join the gentleman sitting there.  And he was Dusan.  The head of the film director's union in Slovakia. And an old friend of the rather difficult (!) man I was about to go and interview in Prague, who'd replaced Vaclav Havel as director of a theater. 

We abandoned McDonalds and went for cocktails.  Our lengthy friendship had begun.  We probably shared about fifty of the same words in English and resorted to German and any other languages that the other MIGHT know.  Maybe.  And still, we managed to ... cover the most urgent, URGENT thing in his life.  It had been one thing, to create a film under communism, easy enough to tell a story with the expected metaphor.  Oh my god - they were like metaphor factories.  And the metaphors weren't even required to be particularly good - the audience was prepared to love, savor, applaud virtually anything.  Now, though, now ... it wouldn't do.  And Dusan was in search of a new narrative.  A way to access the new narrative, a way to coax a new narrative out of his old, old habits. 

The last film I saw of Dusan's was a television piece on the gypsies of Slovakia.  I still have a book I asked Louis Malle to sign for him, to him.   

So, it's late and you're one of the last at a party because you've come with a musician who will not leave and he plays a tune by Greg Brown.  No one quite seems to know who that is. So, we have to trot out the quick story and in the middle is mention of Iowa and at mention of Iowa, a fellow cozier-up-to-the-fire says, he went to school in Iowa.  Strangely, he went to school in Fairfield, home to the Transcendental Meditation- ists (?  can you be an Meditationist?  Well, one of them.) (Strangely, because Greg's got a great tune about Fairfield.) 

I ask if he's a 'ru.  I've known quite a few practitioners of TM, and a few gurus among them.  He is not a guru.   He wasn't in Fairfield long enough to become one. 

There was an awful lot of wild brawling.  Locals loved to pick fights with the peaceful students of meditation, but they seemed surprised that the hippies could beat the shit out of them.  Marshall snorts.  'I'm from New Jersey.'  Marshall transferred to University of Iowa, not too far away.

Which is where I making a little stab at one of the writing programs - expository writing - before I gave it all up to blog.  Anyway ... there's a nice little map of potential being drawn here:  Fairfield, Iowa City, same time frame....

I am wondering and he is wondering - circumstances being propitious - and just as I'm about to venture the question, "Did you know Rudy?", he asks, "Did you know Rudy?"

A lawn chair collapses in the sudden burst of ... whatever bursts when someone else on this planet, someone hanging on to the last minute of music at a party in Montecito, California, knows Rudy.   Person No. 3.

Rudy is a peek into the nature of poetry because too many words about Rudy get in the way of what Rudy was.  I don't know. Maybe he is poetry.  Crystal clear, tranquil, living in a state of curiosity.  Wise, not because he was out to be wise, but because - evidently - the world will give it up to someone patient enough and disinterested in being right. 

He was delightful and fun and impulsive.  An adorer of women, he was devoted to strippers, saw angels in the raw sensual stuff that makes some people nervous.  He was luminous, raw sensual stuff that made some people nervous and they would, oddly enough, steer clear of that glow.  What a strange act of self-deprivation.  Maybe they thought he looked too much the mad scientist.  Maybe they needed him to look more familiar. 

I don't know why.  I don't want to know why.  He was a great writer.  Some writers contrive a voice of spiritual wisdom.  They leave little bits all over the page that betray them, that announce:  I am SO full of shit, but what matters it that you believe me. 

I'm of the opinion that any one who knows any words can write.  The single most important ingredient to writing (again, in my opinion) is your contract with the world.  Your perspective.  All the words you could choose, the stories you could tell, are decided by your relationship with the truth.  And Rudy was the truth. 

Marshall and I - neither of us - have seen Rudy for years.  Maybe he's changed.  We seem to believe that he's still in Fairfield, being Rudy.  Which is no small act of grace.   

If I know - and I mean know - what men can be, it's because Rudy is that possibility.  If there is one man, then there is the possibility.  

i swiped my scary fairy, made a little e-card, tossed it up on an e-card site and then sent it to my mom.  and I suppose it reads pretty touchy-feely, ooey-gooey, but I don't care. 

http://www.scaryfairyfilms.com/images/birthday_magic2.jpg

(Oo.  I hope that link works).

Two years ago, she had just barely survived certain death (so it wasn't so certain after all and I'm thinking it should change its business card), she'd recently discovered that her husband of  40 years was a skunk (really, really, it's only in honor of her birthday that he gets 'skunk' and not something way more accurate) and ... well, that's enough. 

She's not on of my list of people you won't meet if you're busy being  a pawn of the Fear and Terror Propaganda Machine because she was a school psychologist and it was her job to be available. 

She is just my mom, playful and witty and honest. 

'A bunch o' bloody bastard do-gooders.'  I paraphrase.  A friend has expressed some concern that I intend to include only saintly folk of rarified ethics in my little world of people you'll meet only if you're ... fluid, yes fluid, of thought and belief.  It's hard to tell if he's complaining or lobbying for inclusion.  (I guess I could ask.)

My choices are random, but they certainly don't have to be well-behaved folks.  Although my little project's just in its infancy, I'm willing to even things out with a rascal.  Let it be ... Peter.  Sir Peter.  No. 4. 

Sir Peter.  oh my.  oh my.  (This fairy tale tone of voice has crept up on me; I can only trust that it will go away soon.  I think it made its appearance to replace my otherwise ... uh ... overly forthright vocabulary.  Ha!)  Anyway.  Peter's a sir because his great grandfather was Lord Mayor of London.  His  mother - no, maybe his grandmother - is depicted in a painting that hangs in the handsome, oldey-worldey Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, Ireland.  I expect it commemorates ... well, she rode her horse indecorously into the establishment.  Funny. 

I love to hear a Dublin-er say 9:30.  I have no explanation for it, I just do.  Noin-tirdy.  When I heard about the mother/grandmother story, I was really only paying attention to the Dublin connection, so I asked if she said noin-tirdy.  :) :)  He was aghast.  I am laughing at the memory of Peter's indignance.  "We," he said, his voice arching, starchy, "were aristocracy."  Indeed, Peter, exquisitely so. 

Anyway, he inherited piles of money and impeccable connections - a lucky coincidence because he rather set on squandering, which always requires something to squander. 

Then came the day when he got the news that he had an incurable disease.  He'd squandered before but now, NOW he squandered with abandon - road-racing 'round the world, dining and drinking only the finest (his doctor did tell him that Moet-Chandon was not doing him any good; he'd have to upgrade.  And so he did.)  I don't have the chronology quite right, but somewhere along the line, in the middle of an otherwise fairly civilized divorce, he started dallying with a gal in the village that neighbored his wife's home.  Oh, that pissed his wife off indeed.  So.  She famously - and I DO mean famously - calmly distributed his superior wine cellar to all of the mailboxes down all of the country lanes.  With equal calm, she took out his many Savile Row suits from the wardrobe and cut off the right arm of every one.  His new and glossy Jaguar got a new and glossy coat of white paint. 

There's no programme broadcast in England about women and revenge that doesn't feature Peter's wife.  The Bonking Baronet, the press took to calling him. 

He didn't seem to mind.  Well, until the doctors told him that the incurable disease - the one that inspired the race through every last cent of his fortune, that disease - was, in fact, suddenly curable. 

Life with Sir Peter always flirts a little with legend and, maybe, if he ever does write that book, it might - no.  No, it needs a little literary transformation, re-arranging, and inspiration.  These aren't the days of Evelyn Waugh, though, so Sir Peter might just languish in Thailand (unless he's gone to stay with Johnny in So. Africa), his rascally ways un-rewarded.   

My talent for refusing to admit I was wrong was dazzling, really.  I could say something very very stupid and a whirly-twirly dervishy thing would race through my head, nearly forcing me to not give in and say: Good god, what an idiot I am.  I made that up.  I didn't know. 

Now, after plenty of practice, I say just that and save myself all the problems of ... extricating myself from all the crap you have to create to defend your indefensible position. 

Po' Bush administration.  No place to go but deeper into their entrenched positions.  Unfortunately for them, the deeper they go, the more you can hear the echo: "We're making half this shit up, just to scare you and force you to be on our side."

President Bush said lots of things in the debate, but a few made me feel a special, almost protective  embarrassment for him.  As in, "No, no, don't say THAT!'

Like the - forgive the small paraphrase - 'I understand world leaders.'  He talks to them frequently.  It is true that one really should be present and witness the conversations before passing any judgement, but since the President sees fit to relax standards, well, I will, too.  He does NOT understand world leaders.  In fact, his world 'illiteracy' is broadcast naked nearly every day.  Even in the debate, he just cinched his figurative belt and told us that he told Putin, you bet he did. 

I'm sure he did, except that he also spoke with evidently NO comprehension of the profound Russian experience.  This is not the place for discussing archetypes and ancient habits, but ... short of it is, he does not understand world leaders.

I also relished (I really like ISH words. Rellllish).  Oh.  I relished him repeating Cheney's refrain from the RNC (coalition?  we don't need no stinkin' coalition!), the bit about us not asking anyone else's opinion on how to protect the US.  

You know, as a stand alone remark, that might be ... sort of forgiven as 'tough speak.'  But you mix it up with the President's excerpt from the new hymnal, "On the Offense We Will Go," and ... whooooeee!  I wonder how his big fat corporate buddies are taking it.  PLEASEEEEE.  Those are multi multi MULTI million dollar deals being negotiated all around the globe at any given time and ask anyone - anyone at all - who's done any kind of deals with any kind of country and get them to tell you how that affects the negotiations, that 'We're Setting the Rules' mentality.  Ha.  (Lotsa ha's.)

Of course, I liked the "Offense, Offense, Offense" cheer for an entirely different reason.  The more it's explained, the more it's de-mystified.  The mother who wants her children and their future protected - I don't know.  I suspect she's beginning to realize, recognize that ... that's not exactly how she expects her children to be raised.  That's not ... safety and freedom.  That's being poised, being always, at every moment, tense, ready for a fight, aggressive.  What the hell is THAT?  That's the oppposite of freedom. 

Oh yes.  I liked the debates very much indeedy.   Ren the Chihuahua was over to share some roast beefy dinner, so a grand time was had by all ...

It's not always fear in the strictest sense - shaking knees and sweating palms - that prevents the great conversation, but all the many little forms and by-products.

The fear that shuts down the curiosity, the fear that makes us refuse to entertain another idea (especially when it belongs to someone who seems like a show off), the fear that somehow seduces us into thinking we're quite ... fearless, actually, (as long as our pals are around to be on our side).  The fear that likes a slogan, because it makes it all seem more ... official and right.

Core values, for instance, the would-be slogan of our current President.  What is that?  I don't mind him saying it; I mind that is says, really, nothing. Nothing.  It's a big ol' rock of a thing to say, a HUGE boulder, that's easy to hide behind.  You can get loads of people tucked in its shadow and stir them to saying 'these are our core values' and anyone on the other side can't help being bemused.  "It's a rock. And I can see your feet sticking out."  Very Monty Python-ish. 

Oh, but back to how it works in our culture and conversations.  I did a little piece on it, a little scary fairy postcard; oh my gosh, I know how easy it is to just misjudge someone.  It's just too bad that misjudging so often means missing a gem of a human being. 

I'm adding a few of the ones I almost missed to my little world of people:

No. 5:  Kim, a Hollywood neighbor, a Penthouse pet, and inspiration for a Guns-n-Rose's tune ... I'll let you draw your own picture, but make sure you get the body as close as possible to impossibly astonishing.   She had this ... look, and this car and, well, this body ... that somehow gave my mind permission to think she was a dope.  I am happy to say that - wwhew! - there was no moralizing, just this lazy assumption.  And then she cut her hair, cleaned up her wardrobe and suddenly, her 'look' was more accessible.  We'd exchanged your usual neighbor-words before, but now I was willing to talk a little more. 

Hm.  How to describe the discovery of a thoughtful, contemplative woman with a cat named after a film director.  A woman of independence and resolve and ... oh my gosh, smart.  Here.  Imagine the opposite of what ever you'd expect (or rather, what I'd expect).  That was Kim.  A gem.

No. 6:  G. manages my little corner market.  If you picture a Piggley-Wiggley, you've pictured wrong.  It's small, but it's upscale.  But the kids who work there are cool and nice and friendly.  Ruling over this itsy bitsy empire is G.  In G's empire, women are - apparently - all prospective queens.  He is a tireless, generous flirt - almost larger than life and, pretty well known among women in town.  He often refuses to let them pay.  And they love it.  They love knowing that his heart was broken by tragedy (a genuine tragedy) when he was young, love guiding and advising him on relationships. 

A beautiful woman who has enjoyed his largesse for some time now, just this weekend shared her opinion on G.  I realized how easy it would be to describe him - no, THINK OF him in that way. She is pretty sure he is a sweet guy, but really messed up, ruined forever and a real relationship by the tragic loss he suffered so young.  Of course, she'd never consider him for a relationship - he's just too nearly insane.  Blah blah blah.  She's beautiful, but pathologically normal.  Normal, normal, normal. 

I have a different relationship with G.  Possibly because I have a supremely low tolerance for flirting.  Rather, I have a low tolerance for flirting as done by American men as encouraged by American women.  At any rate, the G. I know is - perhaps - still suffering from youthful tragedy, but no more so than any one.  Please.  There are about ten people I know who haven't suffered equally. 

No, the G. I know has east coast bold machismo and a brain like some kind of machine.  Maybe it seemed like a good idea, to settle him into a more intimate, friendly little scene, but his mind is biting at the bit, race-race-RACING like the wind.  G was one of the notorious (ah, yes, so notorious you might not have ever heard of them unless you read Harpers - doesn't everyone?) MOD.  Masters of Deception. 

There's been so much written and said about it, he's got the hacker's party line down - just in case he has to give it to your in sound-bite form - but he can slow down and talk about his mind's appetite.  Of course, he's still prevented from feeding that appetite and things have changed and the internet has changed things even more and well, now he's managing a market where many beautiful women come to shop.  And so they think his appetite is all for them.  And I don't doubt that a lot of it is.  But a lot of it isn't. 

a friend whined rather indelicately - considering they are on the Internet and perfectly capable of doing a google or any other search - that i didn't provide enough blah blah blah about Masters of Deception blah blah blah and so my people entry no. 6 (see a post I made ... eons ago.  Yesterday) lost some of his value. 

i do not believe this is true - because one, (see above) friend could've investigated it himself if he was really interested (I feel like I'm  the Jack Lalane of the Internet - let's do neck jumping jacks!). 

two, oh please.  it's just a little blog, which is phonetically so close to blah-blah-blah they're naturally confused for the same thing. 

and, there's a three and four, but it's way too early to bother when i could just as easily be elaborating enough on MOD to satisfy whining friend (who is really only trying to make me do busy work.)

So.  Masters of Deception was a cyber-gang, this before the Internet became THE INTERNET.  Back when - oh, remember that! - you had to know some DOS and Basic  to ... make stuff happen.  There were gangs in Europe and gangs in Texas, but MoD was a New York/NJ gang.  Because there was no internet to hack, they amused themselves with figuring out the phone systems.  All very Matrix-y.  The PR line goes:  they were just young kids with irrepressible curiosities and rather amazing abilities with computers.  They could hack their ways into all sorts of things - the phone company, government files.  Of course, they were the first ones to have the debates over the ethics of hacking. 

I don't know.  I think it was the debates that pushed them into the dodgiest activity.  They didn't rhave a real grasp of ethics, just the little promise they told themselves: we're not doing anything wrong, we're not doing anything wrong.  So, asked to intellectually defend themselves (no one in this particular forum knew their ages) their hormones/brains felt challenged, provoked.  And in a challenge to defend their positions, they read a dare.  Anyone with a kid, or around a kid of 16, 17, 18 years will know that as smart as they are, they are without a larger sense of the interconnectedness of the world and relationships.  :)  I'm told some call it being pathologically self-centered.  Yah.  That's another way of saying it. 

There.  That's it.  The short version of the Masters of Deception. 

Last night, the News Hour on PBS had a segment about military families who've slowly gathered their nerve to get together and protest.  Coverage was, of course, given to their critics.  One woman's criticisms have, apparently, lodged themselves in the softest part of head, because I just can't stop thinking about her.  She wasn't buying a bit of the protesters' argument, not one little bit. 

I'm going to have to paraphrase (which I typically do with abandon and no blinking, but I'd have liked to quote her accurately.)  Her principal criticisms were: "You can't say you support the troops if you don't support their mission." and (this one I'm really plastering together.  Sorry.)  Protesting Iraq really helps the terrorists.  So, yes, it's an act of treachery."

Bless her, I don't doubt that she believes this with her every fibre.  Heard enough times from an authority you admire and trust, rehearsed in every chat over coffee, and then accepted by your friends who not only agree but nod, just like you've said something very, very wise ... well, it's kind of hard for it not to become a belief.  

Unfortunately, it's more of an opinion, and the kind without much foundation.  It's the mistake of a college freshman, who adopts the position of her professor.  I had my share of profs who got pretty snippy indeed if there was any disputing their authority.  David Morell, who authored "Rambo," just out and out said he wouldn't brook argument.  He was, after all, the one who'd made millions. 

I'm concerned for this woman, not in a condescending, oh-I-know-better way, but in a ... gosh, you're snarling with nationalistic venom and contempt and, for what purpose.  You know, in that kind of way. 

I understand that it's critical that many of our military (I don't know, maybe all, but certainly Special Forces)  not ask questions, not indulge in the philosophy of it all - the right, the wrong, the subtle measurements of decision-making.  Makes sense to me. 

It also makes sense to me that the military should be able to count on their fellow citizens to ask the questions, engage in real dialogue, explore and test the public conscience.  The military, operating in a bit of a necessary vacuum, guards so much.  But citizens and the government have something to guard, too, and its equally precious.

Of course, I've heard elsewhere people say, well, maybe that's true, but NOT in times of war.  In times of war, we need to speak with one voice, act as one. 

I'm sorry.  Where did that come from?  According to ... who?  (It's probably 'whom' but I'm not feeling stuffy enough).  Having every one on the same page undoubtedly makes it easier, but ... people, regardless their nationality, are gifted with the ability to question, to be in a state of opposition.  To not just respect that, but to applaud the thoughtful opposition - oh my gosh, that's an experiment worth fighting for. 

But I have digressed.  Lots.  Because her real criticism of the protests was that they weakened our morale and gave terrorists assistance.  And I want to know how she knows this.  You can not just say it.  I want to know how she can imagine this.  It's not that difficult to understand her words.  I don't understand what experience she's speaking from.  I don't understand if she's relying on history, if she's relying on what she's seen in her local community - I don't understand her understanding of human nature or the terrorists. 

Ah, hell, I might as well add no. 8 to my people you just won't meet if you're talking jingo-ism.  This one's special.  Jerszy Stransky.  He was the president of PEN in Czech Republic a few years ago, a charming, handsome, and eerily placid chap.  He and I had a 'formal' conversation as part of a project I did.  His English was superb, if folksy - so it was easy to forget his pedigree.

His grandfather had been President of the Czech Republic.  The Nazis invaded and took up occupation.  Eventually, the Soviets invaded, rid the place of the Nazis and took up occupation.  The Soviets accused his grandfather of collaboration.  It was so rare as to never happen (well, not NEVER, obviously), but the Soviets soon had to retract the accusation.  Jerszy's grandfather was cleared of all charges.  You'd think things would be rosy for the Stransky family, but his father was imprisoned shortly thereafter.  His brother was imprisoned shortly thereafter.  There were quite a few unexplained imprisonments of Stransky men shortly thereafter, that's the point.  Jerszy, too, was imprisoned.  For nothing.  No subversion.  No resistance.  Nothing.  He was imprisoned twice for a total of eight years. 

So.  He was telling the story in a gentle, calm way and I was paying verrrry close attention.  In every small pause, I tossed out the predictable encouragements:  I understand, I understand, I know. 

As the conversation came to a close, he said, "You know, you can say "I understand" only because I tell you.  You understand the words, what I tell you."

No where the hell do you suppose I got this?   I don't know.  "No," I said, "I understand because I have an imagination.  It needs you to describe it, but ... you described what happened and reminded me of things I'm familiar with."

He nodded kindly, but shook his head kind of knowingly.  (Ha! I bet he didn't do it QUITE like that - the nodding and the shaking.  It was more like a nod at a diagonal.)  "You understand only what I tell you."  He was absolutely sure. 

Insulted?  No, not insulted, but I definitely felt a little underestimated.  Me and my imagination, you know.  I stepped out the door and it HIT ME.  Oh my gosh.  I didn't understand.  He was soooo right.  I didn't understand. My imagination could not go there.  It's part of the lure of the arts, for me at least- not just the catharsis, the vicarious experience, but because my imagination actually does not always lead me.  My imagination tends to process what I already know, what I've already experienced, what others share with me. 

It's funny.  I really did know that quickly how very wrong I was.  But I didn't turn back.  I waited a couple of months until I was in Prague again before I told him what had happened.  We ended up having mannnny conversations and corresponding and becoming friends. 

So.  He's no. 8 because, although you might be able to have a conversation with him fairly easily, you can NOT have a conversation without suspending your certainty and your pride. 

Had a boyfriend once who'd say 'I love you,' take a beat and add, "I'm only see what it feels like to say it."  It was a little cruel, but I kind of like the technique - when you're not quite ready to commit to an idea, sometimes it is good to check out the fit. 

It's how I feel about Santa Barbara.  Love it.  Hard not to.  But ... I wonder if it's not too protected. 

Kind of the opposite of Hollywood.  I was crazy about Hollywood.  I left for Europe - had to - when I went to mail some manuscripts.  I walked past a huge drug bust at our notorious 7-11, past a small but multiple car collision on Hollywood Boulevard (which is a mystery all on its own.  You can only go about 2 miles an hour) and arrived at the post Office as an ambulance pulled away from a pool of blood being hosed off the sidewalk.  I had to leave, because I realized once I was inside the Post Office, that none of it had really registered.  I was inured.  That's definitely time to go. 

Santa Barbara, in its little lovely bubble of privilege and beauty, is just so easy to relax into.  The people who've gravitated here, many with their fortunes already made, are fascinating folk with great adventure stories.  I just heard a story; a friend's band played at a little fish joint last Sunday.  His drummer was talking vinyl with an elderly couple and Chess Records was mentioned.  'Oh, yeah," the drummer said, "I think I have some Chess Records."  The couple corrected him.  "No, we are Chess Records."

It was a fun story.  What's weird about it is that Kenny Loggins was at the fish joint, too, apparently to see this little band and that gets 'second billing.' 

It just can't be good to sit in one place, stationary, letting the privilege and fame wash around you.  It's just not the same as doing things.  One life, I don't think I want to spend the rest of it admiring others for what they've done. 

Yesterday, a few of us wandered into the wild woods of Love and although I'm still picking burrs off my socks and sweater, I can't help but inching just a leeeetle bit further into the brambley mess where I'm almost sure a secret's hidden.  (Whoa.  Long sentence.)

In my little life, in my little world, men are regarded as coming equipped with a greater capacity for objectivity.  (ie.  they don't load tears and other emotional condiments onto their Hot Dog of Life).  They certainly seem to excel at dispassionate analysis and execution.  Even a casual observer - meaning the one who couldn't care less one way or the other - would have to say that the man who prides himself on his objectivity is a bigger snake and downright awful rat when he, in his dispassion, chooses to mislead, misinform, or play with those who are emotional.  (You know, like messing around with Fear as a motivator.)

We're all generally aware of the research in physical attraction and sexual allure (I'm totally making those research categories up and hoping you know what I mean).  Men like beauty.  Beauty likes power, etc. etc. etc.  Despite many exceptions, I'll just agree to say it's all true.  All true. 

But I'm interested in men.  Men, in proximity to power, holding power, wielding power - what's the correlation between their appetite for power and their personal, essential sexual selves? 

I've never thought too much about it, although it's flitted - fast- through my head whenever I've been - uh, involved - with a man with some power.  (Power being relative, of course.  Sometimes, men are powerful as long as they stay in their little towns of 500 pop.)  I had a two year, kind of languid affair - no, active, intense flirtation - with a World Bank lawyer, responsible for the region I lived in.  He also owned a ranch in Argentia (shorthand for 'he was wealthy').  And he was the consummate gentleman. 

Speaking of consummation, we finally met in Manhattan, where any reasonable person would've expected there to be sex.  Finally.  Except, I discovered that he was firmly married.  Ay ay ay.  His marital status isn't actually part of the story.  My side of the deal was off.  Simple.  He made a generous offer, but the deal. was. still. off.  More than a little annoyed (and so, I suppose he can be forgiven), he said- as clear as a bell - "I am an important man.  You're being foolish."  Yah, yah, yah.  He wasn't wearing a 3-piece custom-made suit and handmade shoes on this occasion.  He was a small, very slender (okay, skinny), getting-older-by-the-minute Argentian. 

To this day, I'm amazed at his understanding of what constituted sexual strength.  Prowess. 

In my experience, you know when a man aspires to having a good, full, rich life because he tends to be a good, full, rich man.  It shows up in his cocktail party conversation, in the way he plays a game of basketball, in the way he talks to his kids.  Yah, he can make plenty of mistakes of ego and arrogance - gee, who can't - but he's just not that far from his sexual self.  He's less apt to get lost. 

If sexual honesty erodes (and I mean the true, private honesty not honesty with another person) - does public honesty erode, too? 

One second, I'm chanting 'think, think, think!' and the very next, I realize that while it's a noble enterprise and generally highly regarded pursuit, 'listening' will put a whole other spin on all the stuff I've just been thinking.  Most would agree that listening is good, but for me, it's more than that - it's critical to thinking.  And it's hard to stop to give a good listen when you're in the middle of your thinking. 

Listening covers more than using those waggly, dangly things on the side of my head - it's about putting what I know on hold, telling it to pipe down, so I can give my free attention to what's outside what I think.  No, not paying attention just until I hear something that sparks an idea or an objection or my own much beloved opinion - you know how that works.  Someone's half way through their turn and you're already waiting to pounce on the conversation.  That is not listening. 

Ah, what a mess, what a mess indeed.  It's no wonder I prefer to polish what I already know.  Unfortunately, at this moment, I feel like I have quite a personal stake in how others are thinking.  How they might not be listening.  (Oh, please, I can't even stand myself being this coy.)  It's painfully clear they're not listening. 

I wonder if they've experienced the breathtaking view they can get - unexpected and in technicolor.  It can make for a long rest of the day, but there's nothing quite like waking up at 4:00 am with a sudden, vivid grasp of where we sit in the continuum of history.  Or being suddenly released from the spell of 'being right' - it's seductive (I used that word yesterday and I liked it so much, I thought I'd haul it out for an encore performance.  Seductive.)  The sensation of being right is seductive.  Men have fallen for it for ... oh, hell - ages.  I just deleted a long list of the many things men have been 'right about' - BIG FAT right - only to be proven wrong ... um, minutes later. 

I personally get a big kick out of being wrong.  Well, not when I'm in the middle of an argument.  THAT's just embarrassing.  Not to be wrong, but to be caught being wrong.   It's unpleasant.   

Of course, the person who's a fan of decisive action will say: we can't afford to be yapping about thinking/listening/paying attention.  The person who says that needs to listen/pay attention almost more than anyone else.  In my opinion.  An opinion earned by being a decisive action taker myself.  Oh, did you suppose that advocating 'thinking' necessarily meant it's all academic?  I actually have very low tolerance for inaction, ideas not fully explored and implemented.  (I can hear friends laughing at the truth of it.  Forgive the profanity, please, but I don't fuck around.) 

That's just it.  It's not about being right, it's about being as right as you can possibly be, using as much information as you can possibly collect.  Not just facts.  Facts?!  Facts are the easiest thing to assemble and whip into nice parade formation - one ruins the symmetry?  Yank it out.  A little sparse over here?  Tuck a few into the pockets. 

Oh.  It's late.  Back to work and what I already know.  :)

'Belonging' - like a whole lot of other big words like 'tolerance' and 'love' - probably deserves to be defined. 

My very first conscious stab at belonging didn't go well.  It was a sorority, one of the old ones, a bastion of beauty, elegancy, grace, other girlie virtues.  Even then, I wondered what they were thinking, inviting me in, but although my parents objected deeeeply, I hardly thought at all about what I was doing.  And then, I was one of them.  I belonged.  And the writing was on the wall. 

I figured out that any group that thinks of itself as a group often has a strong sense of ... well, what else to call it, except power - to include or exclude.   I've been told by people who seem to know that that's how it works.  No point in changing it.  It just is. 

But then, this Mindsay (and other blogging communities) thing happened.  There's not really a grop.  It's more like ... an agreement - to nurture (not always gently), but by paying attention, a forum for expression.  A forum. That's quite different from being able to express yourself in a private diary - that sort of suggests the one hand clapping in the woods phenomenon (??!! i don't really ever remember that zen-ish, koan thing right.  you know.  is it one hand clapping or ... if a tree falls and no one's around ... whatever.) 

I didn't really think the above about Mindsay until we had a local Mindsay bbq last night.  And I see that, at least for me, mindsay has provided a chance for a whole other kind of belonging than the sorority/country club experience. 

It was really wonderful to join people who'd already agreed - just by virtue of blogging - to put opinions out there, to discuss, to reveal, explore, even argue (okay, i'm the arguer.  what?  you think scary fairy is sheer invention? pft.)  Presumptuous - yes, because there were no rules and regulations handed out that said, "you can expect this" - but there you go.  I expected it anyway. 

It probably sounds like I'm making it up, that sensation of ... well, it's a little bit of freedom.  It makes me think of the first time I went to a gentlemen's club in England (the Bertie Wooster sort of club; they're still very popular in a country where being a gentleman is still very popular.)  I was braced for it to be a British sorority - well, fraternity - with a lot of stiff-upper lip snobbery. 

It was the perfect opposite.  (Gosh, I'm surprised I forgot this experience until this morning.)  There's quite an admissions process to joining a gentlemen's club - which I suppose is what made me think it would be full of those who were puffed up and proud to belong.  But I realized - even that first time (because as long as you're dressed appropriately, women are allowed inside now) - that while belonging to the group, the body - the physical club - was important, the MORE important thing was belonging to the agreement to - first - be a gentleman. 

So.  There you go.  That kind of belonging is pretty fun. 

Some days I care a lot.  And some days, I'm just willing to give in.  Today's one of those days.  Brought on by too much of stygius' blog, where he probes the possible thingies informing Scalia's decision and then (oh, yeah, he couldn't just leave it at that, no he had to go probing further) President Bush's sneaky assurance that - given any chance at all - he'd load the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

I yam sooo tired of wondering about the appeal of conservativism to conservatives.  I don't mean the obvious and easy: the monied desperate to keep their money and more desperate to keep government from bothering their business practices with regulations and rules and other bossy meddling.  That, I understand. 

But today, I do not care.  Today, I am sitting here, a confirmed agnostic that isn't lulled into anything by the lullaby that ours are God-given rights.  They can say it, I don't care.  I am sitting here, believing that liberty is too precious - way too precious - to be confused with some casual idea democracy.  Forget how it's put into service against other country's sovereign and historical interests. 

Today, in spite of all the claims that 'these things take a long time,' I don't even want to think about how long progress takes - for some reason, today I'm thinking that's just another story someone concocted to defend the general stubbornness.  It's a little like the phrase "Well, that's the way it works" - when it doesn't actually work at all (whatever "it" is), it's just a matter of habit and entrenchment.  These things take exactly as long as it takes for men to get off that page and get on to a new one. 

I do not care.  Not today.  Today, I will not even try to understand them.  I expect I'll be able to get back to work now. 

I have this head that just goes off on its own, without any regard at all for the fact that - uh, hello? I'm attached?  It's a glutton for concepts - bad enough - but then it's got a voracious appetite for knowing how we arrived at those concepts - the slow construction by men through history.  I'd much rather be shooting pool or watching Oprah or gardening.  Well, at least I think that's what I'd rather being doing, but I'm a slave to that head. 

And you don't reach my age without understanding that a whole lot of people aren't.  They have a much nicer relationship with their head and they can keep it from wandering away.  Of course, I'd like to be just like them.  But I'm not.  That's the deal. 

I'd leave it at that, except that because it's how my head likes to work, it will occasionally 'get' something, all on its own.  It doesn't care a bit, not at all, that it might be something I'm not interested in getting. I am irrelevant.

Which is how it happened that this morning, in the shower, I was forced to realize that there are maybe four people in the whole world - and I'm not one of them - who might recognize when they're being guided by fear or other ... less-than-great psychologies.  We've all got better things to do than examine our every little motivation. 

I've been building my little world of people worth having conversations with and saying it's unlikely to happen if fear's part of the equation - without ever once thinking: which person who'd let a 'fear consciousness' invade them would ever recognize it?  Every time I've ever submitted to fear, it took forever for me to admit it.  And I didn't even have to admit it TO anyone.  Just myself.  Geeeeze ...

So.  Now I realize it's more accurate to say that some of the most interesting people in the world take a liberal mind.  Not a politically liberal mind, but a mind that's as free from prejudice as possible, a mind that's not stuck in a particular position.  People won't give up their stories when you don't give them room.  Of course, the strongest won't give a damn if you want them to conduct themselves according to your little rules, according to what you think is right.  But there are a lot of people who'll submit.  You don't even have to scold them - just cast a censuring eye their way and they'll behave themselves. 

And, in truth, it IS a great way to get people to behave.  It's not a great way to give them creative freedom. 

It's just an accident of timing that Strength is such an issue in the looming election at exactly the same time that I'm working furiously on my small business.  I only need four more cards with Scary Fairy 'points of view' - I'm thinking they should be called 'Lapidary Scary Fairy' because she wouldn't mind having them carved in her tombstone.  Anyway, I've been steeping myself in the character's 'signature' position.  Strength's a big part of that. 

So, I write write write write (you get the picture) and it's just reached a stage where I can't ignore that somehow - really, mysteriously - 'strength' has been co-opted by the republican campaign.  And the idea's made its way into ... well, you see it all over blogs.  Strength is - momentarily - not considered to be a strong suit of liberals or progressives. 

I know plenty of Republicans who are strong.  That's not the issue.  (I might as well beat that word while I've got a strangehold on it: issue.  Ick.)  The issue is liberal/progressive strength.  My idea of strength and what strength requires.  The requirements are critical to me. Anyone can talk about it and some do it so well you can nearly hear the anthem in the background.  But people turn into invertebrates when called to personal action. 

Here's some blah blah blah (and, can you believe it?  It's a short version!), anticipating that no one in their right mind would read a treatise on Strength:

To me?  Strength requires balancing self-interest with commitment to the greater good. 

Strength demands not allowing small acts of injustice - not because you need to be nice and warm - but because injustice is poison and prevents people from bringing all they have to the table. 

Strength - real, big strength - turns and addresses a structure, an infrastructure.  It has to.  It recognizes that people, all around the world, are just people, and only a strong structure/infrastructure can survive the lapses. 

Anyway, it's a pity that anyone thinks the Republican administration and party has cornered the market on strength.  It is a pity that they're making me write twice as long and twice as hard.  It's not just a pity.  It pisses me off. 

A year ago, yesterday, an extraordinary young man of 33 died. Suddenly.  His heart had grown too big.  His partner, Deb, found him on the floor, their cat curled and sleeping against his body, a blissful smile on his face.  A young person's death will break hearts for all the promise and potential that's stopped.  Erik's death ... well, if you have a few minutes, I beg you to read this.  I will not tell the story well.  I'm still guarding it - not jealously, but there's something too pure, and luminous, in this.  It's a story that is greater than my talents.  And I apologize for that, but now is a very good time to tell it. 

I've known smarter men.  I've known more talented men.  I've known more accomplished men.  I have never known a man more whole, more authentically humble in the face of the mystery of the world. 

So, the shortest (promise!) biography:

He was just about to enter the seminary - he was the son of a Lutheran minister and a psychologist - when he made a very thoughtful decision to instead live among men.  His choice was to listen for the echoes of the ancient, to search for and be awake to the patterns that men recreate every day, following their deepest instincts.  A modern Viking himself - he was a huge Nordic man- he could feel whatever beckoned to the warrior, whatever pulse it was that the great pagans felt as a kind of tremble in their hearts. 

People will call that myth and magic and they'll drop in mention of 'shamanism' and it'll all be very interesting.  Erik - yes, he talked about it, but he ... had it.  He was it. 

During the week of mourning last year, people of all ages gathered to share stories of Erik as people will.  If I tell you that he'd been wise counsel and loyal friend - well, I suspect I'd be telling you what you were expecting to hear.  But imagine, for a moment, that person after person gave testimony to Erik's rare, rare willingness to listen to all, readiness to be present and share in whatever was interesting to that person.  There was not one person who spoke who didn't speak of Erik's strength.  One group 'elected' him their leader.  He tried to refuse but, as one fellow told it, "We said: Hm.  Too bad.  You're the only one qualified."

Erik's intellect and education made him able to talk with anyone.  His temperament and spirit felt like an embrace.  He was love, true love, to men and women alike. 

End of biography.  I didn't know any of the above.  Nope.  Not a bit.   Erik and I were friends - how to say this?  We were friends, independent of anyone else - just he and I, not because our circle overlapped, not because we even shared interests.  I don't remember how our friendship began, but we soon had this idea that he would illustrate and I would write and animate his work and we would create an online cartoon series. 

We met often and hardly made any progress at all.  Nope.  We just couldn't get past talking.  Nothing unusual in that.  People do it all the time.  But good god - no matter how innocently they began, our conversations just turned into teeth-sinking philosophical, god and love and the whole kitchen sink in our culture talks.  Erik had nothing less than a gargantuan appetite for the truth.  I have an appetite, but mine competes with the taste for Milky Way bars.  Truth.  It's the stuff that'll make a mind go numb, but he ... he needed it.  He was finding, closing in on, answers about his being.  And here's the most amazing thing.  No matter what we talked about, no matter what - always, reliably, and - to my mind - shockingly - full of sympathy for mankind.  

It was authentic sympathy, too.  Erik was, to be sure, deeply philosophical and incredibly well read, but he was also a martial arts student.  Hell, he'd been a bouncer.  Picture big.  Picture a man who could have led by force of physique alone.   He didn't care.  His body disappeared in our conversations. 

It's entirely my fault if you have a picture of someone just yapping about metaphysics.  He really was present, entirely present, and absorbing and sorting.   He shared - without preface, without extracting a promise from me that it would be 'just between us' - fears and doubts.  He asked me to discuss love and loyalty.   And I did.  It wasn't theatrical.  It was the contract between friends. 

In the week of mourning last year, people toyed with making Erik a legend.  They tried out "WWED" as a motto.  Someone had to explain to this agnostic that it came from What Would Jesus Do.  Of course, people couldn't help being people: self centered, jealous, mean.  It's life, after all. 

Well, here's the end of my story.  If you've read this far, please indulge me just a little bit more while I remind you: I never knew Erik's reputation.  I knew him in all his humanity and his struggles and it was easy to cherish him.   

At his wake, I introduced myself to his mother.  To my astonishment, she knew of me, knew of my close relationship with Erik.  Even then, I was instantly convinced that it wasn't me that Erik spoke of, but ... that small space of relief and safety where he could explore his weaknesses, his full doubts. 

And now I can put it all together.  Easily, a hundred people met a fire circle (one of the many ritual good-byes).  Over and over, people said they believed that in death, Erik had found what he'd been searching for.  Me?  I know he knew it here.  I know that's what was ... nearly too much. 

I understood -oh, SO briefly - but it was intense and clear for that brief moment - the need for a Christ. 

Erik did the work and the loving and the meditation/contemplation so many didn't have to.  I've spent a year, and I'll probably spend longer, trying to find a way to share with those he loved what I knew without breaking his confidence (the one he never he never asked me to pledge).  Deb who was his partner, his friends, the community that had his sympathy - oh my god, to have love like his.  He fought for that in the depths of his heart, in the highest reaches of his mind, in the furthest furthest edges of his spirit.  He didn't pray.  He went in, a fearless warrior, and met it.  I don't know what people imagine their Christ to be, but I have never and will never meet a man more Christ-like. 

He was brave in every small deed, with every small person.   

It's a bunch of words to you.  I'm sorry.  I can't do better.  At Erik's funeral, one of the men asked to do a reading, said of Erik the warrior, "If I were going into battle, I would have wanted Erik on my side.  Because he could not harm anyone." 

A couple months ago I was called to jury duty but when it came time for selection, I didn't even come close.  The voir dire was interesting though, especially for the moment when every prospective juror was asked if they believed in the concept of innocent until proven guilty.  'Yah, yah, yah' - that's what they might as well have said.  It was asked pretty casually and answered equally casually.  We're not idiots, after all.  We get it.  Now can we get on with it?

Except ...  I don't quite believe it.  This is one of those things that's just GOT to be subjective.  Who can possibly remark on someone else's ability to go in, free of prejudice. 

Wait.  I do believe that people believe in the concept.  The question is whether or not they can apply it, observe it. 

Well, this will have to be Part 1.  I didn't realize the time.  Part 2 :) -oh the joy of anticipation !! :) Part 2 will actually BE about civil rights at this time.  That probably sounds boring to you. 

But then, I bet you weren't subpoenaed for a grand jury.  And I was. 

I love Iowa, I really do, but it's cold, it's grey, it's Cedar Rapids.  Next time I'm subpoenaed, I hope it happens in, oh ... New Orleans.  But not during hurricane season.  It is strange to be in a swing state on the same day both candidates were swooping through.  A swing state sort of makes me feel like ... swinging.  With a flurry of fisties.  Surely there are better things to do with money.  Waste waste waste - there's a lot of waste going on.  I never blog very well, but I clearly don't blog well in a Business Center of a Cedar Rapids, Iowa 'luxury' hotel.   I think I'm working with dial-up.   

They swooped me in with a subpoena and a day and a half later, swooped me out with a headache, a back ache and now, a kind of numbing, pulsating MINDache- independent of any grand jury, but all because of being in Cedar Rapids on the eve of Cheney's arrival.

We don't like fancy-schmancy names in Iowa, so in the finest hotel to be found in Cedar Rapids, there's just one big 'Registration Desk' where anything and everything is handled.  We were checked out and storing our luggage until it was time to leave for the airport when we noticed that the young woman behind said Big Desk was wearing a Bush-Cheney 2004 button. 

Odd, to have someone in the service industry, wearing a button expressing any political affiliation.  Odder, when I asked, "are you really voting for Bush?"   Oh, no, she didn't know.  She wasn't very political.  She was only wearing it because Cheney's advance guard had arrived and, well, they gave it to her.  Hm. 

Under normal circumstances, I might have surprised, but these weren't normal circumstances.  I was at the end of a visit before a grand jury, one convened without ever having any obligation to say - expressly - what its purpose was.  I was already annoyed at the reach and the new, engorged (ha!) abilities of government agencies.  

So.  I don't care who she might vote for, but I care that she votes on the basis of having thought about it, having given it at least a fraction of her attention.  Well, we gave her the five minute tour of 'what's at stake' for a young woman and 'what she might want to consider' and how casually wearing a button at the front desk of a hotel sort of invites this kind of concern ...

And then we went off to the Cedar Rapids Art Museum - it's a tiny collection, but it's good.   The permanent collection features Grant Wood, of course, and Marvin Cones.  Wonderful, friendly, American-puffy 3D before there was 3D.  And there were a few Picassos.  Fumeur.  And a black and white Miro.  And a great Escher 'After Dark' capturing geese flying this-a-way and that-a-way. A Max Ernst.  And the ubiquitous Chagall.  I've gone off of Chagall - I might have seen one too many. 

We did the museum in 15 minutes because 1) that's all we had and 2) that's how we actually do museums.  Fast.  Like lightning.  It runs in our family, to not treat museums like cathedrals.  We talk.  Out loud.  It's fun.  Anyway, we went back to the hotel. 

And came in on a 'around the water cooler' scene.  The young woman pointed out her supervisor and said "You know what she told me I should say?," clearly referring to our/my dismay at her wearing the button. "It's a free country."

Huh.  It is.  Indeed.  Curious thing, this handy notion.  I couldn't agree more that freedom has its price.  It's not free.  I don't just agree with that, I know it to be true.  I know you have to participate, I know you have to contribute the best you have.  It's a participatory system.  Holding up the idea of 'freedom' to protect you from charges of neglect and stubborn and happy ignorance is one of the most bullshit things I've seen.  In a swing state.  With Cheney about to arrive. 

And so I told the young woman that she might want to remember while she was treating that idea so casually that she was potentially affecting my life and my rights with her cavalier choices.  And I would call her out on it.  I will hold her - well, you know, not HER, but the collective hers - responsible for their laziness. 

She can mess with her own life, but I draw the line at her messing with mine. 

As I wrap this up, let me assure you that she's just an illustration.  We had more than few conversations with young people in Iowa.  That's what will happen when you're in Cedar Rapids at such a time.  A little of the being in the wrong place at the wrong time ... They should be ashamed of themselves. 

I don't have one little thing going on in my head.  Maybe it's decided to take the holiday I can't afford to give it.  How very nice of me.

I am - soon, maybe - going to start an animation about an employment agency that palces people in jobs they truly desire and have a gift for.  Not the jobs that are stuffing for all the big, make-things-happen careers.  I haven't (or maybe that's pretty clear) developed the story :), so there's a possibility it's just a nice little idea with no place to go.  That possibility is almost a probability.

I had this idea to do a story about Ctrl-Z.  That's the keystroke that will take you one step backwards.  Some programs allow you multiple erases.  When I'm doing Photoshop or Flash work, I use it both religiously and obliviously (I might have made that one up).  When I have a project that takes hours and hours, I find I've developed such a strong habit that I try and use it in real life.  So far, it hasn't worked. 

I might have spent myself on my title.  I dabbled with a 'Surfeit of Passion' but I seemed to have swiped that from someplace I can't remember and am not in the mood to crack a dictionary and THEN I tried "an Excess of Passion Driving the Search for Bliss" but that was just too precious. 

There is no shortage of folks who will tell a person he or she's too passionate.  It's almost always a criticism, a small slap to say 'Oh, behave yourself, will you?" They are certainly entitled to keep their space calm and undisturbed, but it's interesting that passion is a measure of how much trouble someone's stirring up. 

It is not a measure of hysterical misinformation and emotion; you won't hear someone say to the person with the convoluted argument and the assortment of selected facts, "My, you're passionate."  No.  They'll say something like, "Oh my god - get your facts straight."  No.  In general, the remark about passion is reserved for the people who just won't relax and let things slide into their natural state of mediocrity.  This is a perfectly fair way of keeping the peace. 

Equally fair, however, is for the person with the passion (which so often doesn't feel like passion but more like a ...an appetite, a state of  being aware or alert) to ignore the sly little slap downs and get on with giving it whatever fuel it needs. 

Okay.  I'm ready to spill the truth.  I - me!! - have heard the passion thing my whole life.  I don't care, doesn't bother me, am not offended - take your pick.  I'm the one who's living my life, after all, and I have yet to meet the person who will promise to fix my regrets.  No, no, no.  Behaving myself - for them?  Oh, no.  That's WAY too high a price tag.

Oh.  I guess the above sounds like an apology for wild and crazy debauchery.  It's probably true, when the passionate are young and still learning how to reign it in and make it all work - debauchery's a good way to go. 

But then, the so-called passionate start giving their energy to the world, to projects and programs, to communities, to cocktail parties.  Others say things like 'thinking outside the box' - but it will be the passionate for whom that's just second nature.  Others know about pushing the envelope, but the passionate are already there, sometimes with one hand already clinging to the edge. 

I can't help that I woke up thinking about this.  Maybe it's because an election's moments away.  Maybe I'm preparing for the collective voice of my fellow Americans.  I don't know.  I just like reminding myself to not waste any of life closing doors, shutting windows, wrapping up in a big ol' blanket of promised security. 

I'm just going to pretend for a bit that I sit in a very lofty position and own an extreme amount of influence.  No.  More than influence.  Authority.  The ability to make things happen.  My job is to cultivate the national imagination, one by one.  I'm more than bi-partisan.  I'm ecumenical. 

With big things about to happen, and a parade of people knocking on my office door demanding at least a comment, I figure now's as good a time as any for someone who's head of these things to say a little something. 

So here I go.  Po' men in the halls of government - po' women, too.  Their imaginations have gone unattended for so long, they've atrophied.  One is not entirely sure they weren't sacrificed to their careers long ago.  There was not, you know, a very high premium placed on the imagination in the daily affairs of government - in fact, it was regarded as annoying little character flaw, this thing that would lead otherwise clear thinkers astray.  Nonlinear and flighty, that's what they called it and they spread the word, making sure they reached recruits as early as possible. 

Why, you couldn't walk through a meeting of young law or business students without hearing the snorts and sniffles - 'nonlinear, creative twits.'  Of course, they were so young and so eager to be admitted into the good offices of power that it never occurred to them that they were the twits.  They could not conceive of the day they'd be called to look at a big picture and imagine a solution, imagine the many parts and personalities. 

And now, we have a power structure that suffers woefully from feeble imagination and, occasionally, none at all.  They know the dates and names of history, but they can not feel the tug and the push that created the critical moments.  They can read detailed summaries compiled by underlings and subcontractors, but they can not envision what people, subject to regulations and rules of a program might do. 

They are not idiots, these civil servants.  They are not even incompetent.  They are just entirely without imagination.  And I am forced to warn the voting public - you can not expect something of a government when its members don't have it to give. 

uh-oh. Day dream's over.  I have to rush to work. 

Americans raised in an atmosphere of easy pop-psychology love to give advice to a troubled, even tortured friend.  We are quite good at pointing out exactly what the problem is (whatever it is) and then even better at telling them that they really have to get over it, get on with, accept it.  One of our favorite lines is:  You have a choice.   

We're a bunch of little saviors, aren't we?  Except a person in mid-crisis is one of the worst equipped for not only seeing the choices but for navigating them. 

 Ah, but anyway, the same sort of surgical strike analysis happens when we look at institutions.  It makes for a nice cottage industry in consulting and advising, but not a lot of success comes of it.   

In my imagined role as Secretary of the Imagination (yesterday's blog) I see that it's what I did:  No imagination is the problem, said I.  Pft.  What good is that?  And, further, what good's a Secretary of etc. etc. if I can't call for a study and make a bunch of good minds concentrate on coming up with a solution. 

Well, my office is badly funded.  In fact, no funds at all.  You know, they weren't enthusiastic about establishing this department in the first place and then they thought they were so damned clever with the bit, "Well, you're the one with the imagination.  Conjure up your own budget." 

Wits. 

Well, it's to be expected - wit often being confused with imagination. 

All the resources available to my office, then arrive at this:  there is no solution.  No solution at all to the current condition, short of mandating a whole new set of values and even that won't work because imagination can't be imposed or demanded. 

The imagination can survive an awful lot  - it can survive censorship and the most narrow boundaries.  It can survive a very littered mind.  It will not - can not -survive not being valued.  Oh stop.  Of course people SAY they value it.   What idiot would actually say an imagination wasn't important?  But the imagination wants to be valued as one of the essential pieces of a human machine. 

It wants to be fed with information.  Not facts, not figures - but sensual information.  And it's quite impossible to feed the imagination when the ego - that piece of the human machine that wants to be so important and so right - is sucking up everything. 

So.  There's no solution to the problem of no imagination in government.  The best we can do is make it important in our own homes, own neighborhoods, schools, communities.  In our own conversations.  Not say it's important - make it important.  Cultivate it.  Nourish it.  Celebrate it.  And by all means - defend it from the folks in power who will pretend to know better.  I assure you.  They don't.  They couldn't imagine what the power of imagination can do.

A whole lot of ink and hot breath's been spent on the gulf between what someone (eg. a presidential candidate) says and what someone (eg, again. a presidential candidate) does.  If only to damp down the nag-nag-nagging in my own head, I decided to speak to it:  I do not care.  Not at all.  Never have.  I don't have an issue with hypocrisy nor do I live poised to catch someone in a lie.  My little share of grey matter shivers when I hear that oh-so-popular line:  But that's not what you said. 

I'm not so much a cynic.  I don't start from the position that everyone's lying anyway.  In fact, I'm probably sitting on the whole other side of the spectrum.  My experience is that peole try to say their truth - at that moment, but language fails them.  Their language. The language of their audience.  Their distinctly different definitions of the same word. 

Oh, and then there's that little matter of Americans being woefully unskilled in the art of conversation.  Of course, in ideal circumstances, you'd want the speaker to have some skills of brevity and charm and focus, but brevity/charm/focus are no match for tiny attention spans, narrow interests and recurring interruptions.  And soon, the speaker has learned to cut to the chase, get to the point, do what ever it takes to keep that audience entertained - quick, before their eyes glaze. 

My first dinner party in England was strange and wonderful.  The host was the director of Margaret Thatcher's think tank.  The guests were all fabulous - which sort of begs the question of what I was doing there, but ... these things will happen.  Chat chat chat, talk talk talk. This and that.  It was wonderfully entertaining.  Eventually, it was my turn to say something or other and only a few words were out when I noticed: the entire table was giving me its attention.  It was entirely natural.  Clearly, it was just what one does. 

But - back to what I expect when someone says something.  I don't expect their words to handcuff them to a position.  I just don't believe that language, as we practice it, is up to the task. 

On the other hand, I care verrry much about what someone means. The vocabulary for expressing THAT is much more vast. 

Uh-oh.  I made the mistake of checking the clock.  To work.  Again.  Saturday.  Sorry to abandon this in mid-stride, but if you've read it this far, you might actually be grateful!! :) 

I know.  I KNOW. by the time the lottery jackpot's brimming over with a billion-trillion dollars and all the tabloid attention that goes with it, it's fair to guess that most of your neighbors have made a minor investment in that jackpot's future.  i GET IT.  still.  I've never purchased a lottery ticket without suffering a pretty serious delusion that mine - and mine alone - was the ticket that would waltz on into lottery headquarters and pick up the prize.  Don't know what the hell's wrong with my head - there's probably a small lottery lesion tucked under one of the lobes.  ick. 

I have never won the lottery.  I try to avoid even buying the tickets any more NOT because I haven't won, but because the delusion's just not worth it. 

Anyway.  We took our nicely completed ballots to the voting joint, handed them over and I asked: Did we win?  Of COURSE I knew they didn't know, but the second that little question was out I also knew I was going to be spending tomorrow juggling the truth-as-reported-by-major news networks and my lottery-delusion. 

Next time, I'm going to vote late. 

And now, both the media and engineers of the campaigns tell us it's time to restore unity.  It's time to heal the huge fracture caused by this campaign.  Now, it's time to reach across the divide and graciously accept that over half of the voting public made their choice based on ideas of exclusion, morality and fear? 

I can not be united with those values. 

Any number of people will say:  But that's the democratic process and you have to accept the majority's will in these things. 

And I do.  I accept it is the majority's will.  I even accept that it's the consequence of the process. 

But I do not accept that the process was treated with the same respect by the re-elected administration.  It was thick with reckless and inaccurate rhetoric.  It traded honesty for the votes of the religious conservatives.  It stirred fears and then promised sanctuary. 

It's wonderful that Republicans could have galvanized their base.  Good for them.  But I had access to way too much Republican literature.  It was inflammatory,distinctly apocalyptic, always - ALWAYS - fear mongering, and finally, it echoed President Bush's mockery of liberalism. 

And I do not accept that a society should be so illiterate that it can't interpret literature. 

In my voting lifetime, I have over and over voted for the greater good - with the exception of this election (and I might still argue that I was voting for the greater good).  But ... I made choices that weren't a reflection of my personal interests.  I might have taken the idea of the greater good a little too far, but I did it anyway.  I quietly accepted that things I care about are of little interest to the majority.  So.  I worked on my own time and definitely my own dime for those things. 

It was always my choice and remains my choice to contribute what I could, to participate whenever possible.

However, I am now invited to join with the voters who have traded the erosion of rights for a nebulous idea of security, refused the idea of full participation for gays, have eagerly accepted an administration's religious beliefs and hope to impose them on the nation at the same time they're happy if the government stays out of their business (what a curious line to draw, since business is traditionally a man's arena - pregnacy, traditionally, the arena of a woman) ...

I am now invited to unity with so many who voted with tiny self-interests, who believe the Republican platform not only without much question, but without scrutiny!!! 

No.  I stand in opposition.  I live in opposition.  And I pity the person who dares to even imply that my patriotism is lesser.  I pity the person who so stupidly throws out the line:  If you don't like it, leave. 

If it's even flitting across your mind, you should remember that people actually ARE mobile.  And they will take their contributions elsewhere. 

No one has to advise anyone that it's time to move on, get with the program.  People will.  They'll slide right back into their lives and disinterest -not because any unity or healing was achieved, but because it's what people do.  It's why we have a political theater in the first place - because the rest of us want to stay outside of it and live. 

What's interesting to me is the impulse to advise the above.  How extraordinary to think/hope/imagine that an election victory means that people who object to an administration's policies should climb on board in order to realize your vision.    It's ... extraordinary and hints at the very roots of opposition.  It's the opposition that is invariably on guard, watching the slow creep of change and the privileges of the party faithful - who in turn, of course, want those protected. 

'A mandate' - the word of the week, plastered all over the place now that it's been uttered by VP Cheney.  I suppose it's also a word that will find its way into talk shows and discussion groups and literature and - !! - blogs.  But you can't say mandate and just - poof!- make it so.  Actually, you can say mandate if you're willing to tamper with its meaning and its spirit and it's been pretty well demonstrated that modern presidency is more than willing to do that. 

Me?  You'll just have to forgive my lobbing it back-at-ya  - my backhand's my best shot, but I don't think that's called for :).  There's no question at all that loads and loads and loads of voters who ushered in this second term were virtually yanked from in front of their television sets - in fact, the Republican campaign's quite proud of it.  They tapped the Republican base, they ignited some concerns among the poor and poorly educated, and they got the numbers.  On what planet is a group of people who are only stirred to vote by demagoguery and not an educated or thoughtful grasp of the larger picture a real mandate?   

Further, I'm surprised that pundits and politicos are surprised that voters were speaking to cultural issues.  True, it's my job - as it were - to pay attention to cultural issues, but they were hardly lurking in the shadows or hiding in the tall grass.  Hell, all they had to do was read Mindsay blogs. 

Although people are allowed by our system to vote their morals and religious prejudices, just as they can vote in an administration that will advance those morals and religious prejudices I am not obliged in any way to accept those articles of philosophy interfering with governing. 

So.  Sheer numbers, yes.  Fair win, yes.  Respect for the majority opinion, well ... a reluctant yes. 

A mandate?  You can stop right now. 

So.  Get over it.  Get on with it?  

I'm sure it sounds soothing to the speaker's ears.  Or maybe they imagine the strains of the National Anthem behind it. 

Here's my reply.  No. 

I've never made a secret of my preference for thinking of myself as an American in an international community.  I guess I accidentally followed the bumper sticker cheer:  Think globally, act locally.  

Once upon a time, I actually thought I could not live without art.  Some people need a house, a late model vehicle, a - whatever.  Not only did I not share one of those needs, I didn't even understand them.  Art - all the arts - did it for me. 

Great films and filmmaking.  Sculpture.  Rodin's Torso Falling made my eyes tear.  Lautrec's painting of the woman in crimson descending the staircase made me stop - just stop.  And the pieces we hung and, after awhile, stacked in our own home, too, made every day grand. 

And books. A first editions of Henry Miller, a continental first edition of Mark Twain, Winnie the Pooh - ay, ay, ay.  Lights.  They were lights. 

Ballet and opera and theater.  Spartacus by the Bolshoi.  Carmen by the Royal Opera Company. Donizetti's Lucia di Lamemorre.  "Art" and "Copenhagen." 

These were productions and works that flung open brain-doors.  Sometimes for the sheer and breathtaking art of it all.  Sometimes because ... art confronts a person. 

 "Piss Christ" by Andre Serrano, for instance.  I was walking into a show/party at the Zero-One Gallery (which is a whole other story about John P.) and Andre Serrano was walking out and at exactly that moment, when our paths crossed, someone else said, "Hey.  Congratulations on the controversy."  I looked at him.  He at me.  And, after that fleeting glance, I was always able to forgive him a terrifically mediocre piece of photography because I knew that he didn't want it to be mediocre and while controversy did rage (it was also the time of Mapplethorpe/Corcoran - WOW.  I am amazed I can remember this!) ... well, never mind. 

Well.  My personal art collection was 'confiscated' by an ex-husband and sold off to pay for his Nascar hobby.  Yes, this is true and not a cheap shot.  My beloved books are almost all in England.  I married again, to a man that would make the conservatives proud.  We bought a house (oh, I might have to write a blog about that house!  I think I will.) once owned by Baden-Powell, or Mr. Boy Scouts to you.  The house was filled with 'acceptable' art.  The kind that kind of matches furniture.  The rooms that I got to "decorate" - well, you could spot those a mile away.  In the 600 yr old 'dining room' with the pre-Spanish Armada beams, I had a fabulous pedal organ and candelabras.  Brits, who do love a good sing-a-long, came over apres-pub and sang Motown tunes and Christmas songs (my favorites).  :))))  You should HEAR 'Goldfinger' on a pedal organ! 

So.  It's been proven that I can, in fact, live pretty well without art.  Oh, I still have some access.  I live with a musician and so, Live Music as a theme.  We just went to a 'Keep the Beat' show - proceeds going directly to schools to provide for music programs being cut from the budget. 

Wait.  I'm drifting.  I'm sorry.  It's not a matter of losing concentration.  I've become increasingly ... annoyed during the writing of this.  I just wanted to describe a landscape I once lived in and the landscape that's now been described FOR me. 

Awhile ago, there was a movement among writers of all genre to End Censorship.  I had plenty of 'chats' with folks in Hollywood - you know, the ones now being slapped down for being the Hollywood Elite.  I am, of course, not FOR censorship (and I say, of course, because I'm talking about ME.  You might be for censorship and that's your problem.) but I was also against Ending It.  :)  As if that's a real position.  :)  Censorship serves a purpose.  It's definitely an idea that gets creatives more creative.  It pinches and spits and pokes the artists - who are rarely the fools you think they are - until they ... SNAP back.  You don't want to fuck with a pissed off artist. 

I suppose some of the newly mobilized conservatives who, apparently, gave Bush his working capital (just like a lot of vc's who don't know a thing about what they're investing in; see:  the dot-com bubble) think artists are just responsible for 'entertainment'.  They seem to have no idea how an artist works.  None.  They have no problem believing that the Bible, written by men, was divinely inspired but ... are they under the impression that 'divine inspiration' lasted for the duration of just the bible-writing sessions.  Assuming a god DID intervene ... THAT was the one and ONLY intervention?

Silly, silly.  Self-righteous sillies.  You might want to keep an eye out for the backlash coming your way. 

A few years ago, my mother started giving us back all our 'creations' that mothers will collect.   She sent me some of my writing from, oh, around 4th grade. I pulled the papers from the envelope, without any rearranging, and started reading.  There's probably a single word to cover the embarrassment and shock and dismay I felt, but I don't feel like being a thesaurus today.  It was shit. Dull, pedestrian - and not just pedestrian, but the plodding, shuffling kind of pedestrian - crap.

I turned the page - which was surprising in itself since it's just as easy to destroy all evidence of a bad phase.  Glad I didn't.  A happy truth was revealed.  There was the first draft of the piece I'd just read - one big mess of red circles, courtesy of a good, good teacher out to rein me in and make me write properly. 

The happy part was that under each of those circles was the very same rhythm, the very same peculiar construction, the very same sensibility I still have.  To this day.  Now.  The quality and popularity of the writing was and remains irrelevant.  I just don't care about that.  I do care that my voice and perspective survived. 

I'm going to guess most people have survived similar episodes, although a piece of writing, on paper, takes the episode out of memory and puts it right there on the table.  Hard to argue that a teacher with a pretty grim idea of what made good writing did her damnedest to make me conform. 

Well, she wasn't the first and she sure wasn't the last.  Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.  Oh, I knew I was wrong at a very early age.  For them, for what they care about, for what motivates them. 

I can not tell you how useful it's been to understand that, accept it and settle it in my core. 

It's different than an argument about opinion or interpretation of the facts.  No.  THIS is about essential life view. 

I'm going to be playing with that idea for awhile here in blogland.  I expect to be looking with all the fingesr, tentacles, appendages I've got.  At this moment, I think there's something really great and powerful that comes from being made wrong.   And women are often made the most wrong of all. 

I'd like to explore that.  And I will.  Because I really really really think ... there's some simple something.  Ha!  But- maybe I'm wrong. :)

It's probably just a bad habit, but I tend to draw circles, trying to connect things. More often than not, the ends just won't meet. Sort of strange, because you'd expect ideas to be more malleable than metals and I can fix a bent earring hoop with no trouble, but ... those ideas put up all sorts of resistance.

Repeated failure to connect them doesn't stop me from trying, though. Maybe I like the exercise. And maybe I like the rare moments when the ends do - even briefly - touch. I also love baseball for the payoff, though.

I'm taking a look at the State of Being Wrong and how it has such great potential - I think - for ... well, right now, I don't know what to call it. Folks all over the place got really excited when 'paradigm shift' became popular. Oooh. Everyone got to dazzle each other with the multisyllabic - it took the place of 'hip,' if I remember correctly (and I probably don't. It's really early and this is how I play with stuff. It all gets put on paper - or screen, in this case - and I edit the hell out of it later.)

Of course, THEN people started slinging around 'thinking outside the box' and 'value-added' and I, for one and undoubtedly the only, thought 'what are you talking about?!' Yak-yak-yak. And more yak with so few results.

Oh. And 'politically correct'. There was a beauty I never took to.

Americans love our verbal secret handshakes - like Masonic pledges. We are not attached to half of what we say, but it sure fills in the spaces. Let's pretend someone's reading this, okay? Okay. And now I pretend that you say: How would you know? How could you speak about the 'we?' And now, I pretend to answer: Stop. Stop. Lucky you, if you have conversations and correspondence that are filled with pointed and careful and RICH language. Lucky you.

Because, my experience is that people can tolerate it for about ... oh ... half an hour. Tops.

I also know what I know because of that condition of Being Wrong. (See. I just lopped off a whole paragraph about the detachment that happens to those who are always Right. But this isn't about them. ha.)

I told A. last night that this was what I meant to be dabbling in for a while and he jumped all over it, politely, but still warning me that when you start talking about Being Right to Women who've Been Wrong, you're tempting a pendulum swing. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Politely, I jumped back. This isn't feminism. This is about art. Feminisim is someone else's job and it seems to me - if I'm measuring by a recent election - that they were off on holiday and before that, taking reallllly long lunches. Sharon and I had a chat recently about the women we've met - ooooh. The Sisterhood. - who corrupt the language, who set ridiculous terms of conversation, who make you pledge to be very very nice vs. honest and light and playful. If those women are happy, well - good for them. I'm going to guess that they haven't luxuriated in the Being Wrong condition, haven't really looked at what they're floating in.

I've typed for too many minutes and I barely made it half way around the circle. I read a great discussion over on champy's blog about morality and whether it's decided by science or some version of religion and there went my little antennae !!! - utterly sure that there was something there. And, of course, there is.

For the longest time, I believed that doing things right must be the most difficult thing.  I believed this because I'd never tried it. (and then a whole paragraph about running out of money at Lago di Como and having to go home) which is when I discovered that doing things right was the easiest thing I'd ever done. 

I tried it this way, too:  I finally decided to do the right thing.  And then I changed my mind. 

I started a book with these lines.  Same book, different starting times.  I've written a few pages beyond and that's it.  I don't write fiction any more, but that doesn't stop the story ideas.  Those just keep bubbling to the surface.  There's a whole part of my head that's swamp.  I had to move to higher ground to get away from the urge to write fiction but the oily little ideas still follow.

This particular story's been bugging me for about a year.  I don't know why because I've done my damnedest to suppress it.  I think it's a story I'd like to read - and I don't read much fiction any more.  Milan Kundera.  Steve Martin.  Yep.  That's it - the fiction that thrilled me in the last two years.  Umberto Ecco pisses me off.  A lot.  Arrogant bastard.  When the chappy who wrote 'The Da Vinci Code' delivered much friendlier writing.  The Da Vinci code doesn't count AT ALL as fiction for me, because he just lifted an entire body of scholarship and other work and tucked it into a just-oki-doki plot. 

Yah.  But back to my unwritten gem - If I were going to keep writing it (and I'm not), I know I'd eventually hack the hell out of the few pages I've got, but in the first draft, they stay - and they stay firmly, because I like to go back and remember how a character made a choice to say or do the thing that made the whole story change.  

It's my favorite part of fiction and play writing - and it's also the part that, over time, gives a writer that peculiar grasp of living philosophy.  If a writer sits in judgement of his/her characters, if a writer has decided at the very start that a character will stand in for something, well - that writer is a craftsman, not a philosopher.  But the writer who will create a scene and give it up to the characters (ha!  as if they have any choice at all!) - po' writer.  po' po' writer.  You should see what those characters will do to you.  You might really need them to say this very clever line, but that character's having none of it.  No way.  That character's going to say this and say this in this way.  You can argue, of course, and do it your way, but it will show your fingerprints all over it.  It will smack of the contrived. 

Alternatively, when the writer's willing to get jiggy and try everything and anything out - great things will come.  But it's a little like chaos theory.  The smallest shift here has big consequences there. 

And so, I let my character - who's telling this story - talk.  Over a year, I've noticed that no matter how many times I change the beginning (4, 5, 6 - maybe even more?) she will not let the next part change. 

Even if I think I'm starting an entirely different story, she will weasel her way in.  I have one that starts with a woman who's just moved to a farm being woken at dawn by a herd of escaped dairy cows who taken sanctuary on her lawn - which is a whole other setting and story than the one up above.  And still, that character takes over. 

She wants to tell her story of how she finally understands that the 'right way' is always decided by a group and as the group changes from community to community, from continent to continent, so does 'the right way' change.   I guess that's easy enough to get for some people.  Her story begins, though, when she not only understands that, but coincidentally understands and ... seizes - yep.  seizes the corollary - that she is her best and sole compass. 

And of course, that discovery depends so much on her long self-education from a position of (ooo!  surprise!) being wrong. 

More coffee for me, and a cigarette, too. 

Republicans are pretty lucky to have Mary Matalin speaking on their behalf.  She was on Meet the Press this a.m. - a joy to watch.  She usually is.  She's almost transparent in her own lust for power.  I suspect, if she could perfect the hip-check, she'd have Bush outa the way so she could deliver all the policy speeches. 

With all the big shot fundamentalists coming out of the woodwork to cheer the President on - oh, and giving notice to liberals in the same breath - we need spokespersons like Mary Matalin to translate for us.  And so she did.  She interpreted the 'cultural values' vote with barely concealed contempt for those of us who, in our progressive liberalism, misread it.  Actually, more specifically, she was phrasing it in contrast to the Democrats' 'platform' (for lack of a better word.)

Wait.  Wait.  I'm still using this blog to explore how the Wonderful Condition of Being Wrong can be invaluable in getting it right.  For me - maybe not for you - it's delicate, treacherous territory.  Being right is sooooo frickin' easy, especially when you keep company with 'like-minded' folk.  Being right is different than getting it right.  Reading it right.  Seeing it right.

And so I return to Ms. Matalin.  She was kind enough to illustrate how stupid we all were in our accusations of stupid intolerance winning the day.  (Those are my words and I'll stick with them, thank you.)  Oddly enough, her illustration swung verrrrry wide of anything to do with homosexuality or women's right to choose ... no.  She stuck with some safe stuff. 

She announced that the voters didn't hate the wealthy.  (Whereas some of us would say that the privileges extended to the wealthy were largely glossed over - sort of disguised - during the campaign.  So that, really, this illustration is pretty much irrelevant to anything right now.)  Anyway.  She went on to say that in reality, voters aspire to wealth.  The wealthy they know are the local construction company owners, the owners of car dealerships. 

Hm.  The implication being ... what?  WHAT?  If I imagine I'm a Republican, am I nodding along, thinking: yes, she's made a good point.  Wealth is within my reach.  I can be just like them - those construction company/car dealership owners. 

If I AM a Republican, nodding along, thinking the above, then I hope I also sign up for 'honesty therapy.'

I've lived in those small towns and I'm proud to say I have friends of all political persuasions and all ... how to say this ... levels of wealth and influence.  

Mary Matalin is wrong.  I could ease into it and set it all up, but that's the bottom line.  Maybe she's the victim of Washington insulation, but she could also just be one of those people who don't particularly care to understand the machinery of culture. 

There are other shades, of course, of COURSE.  But, in a smaller town or city, the ones without money tend to be 1) resentful 2) out-and-out jealous (to explain why you'll hear an AWFUL lot of analysis on someone else's success running to: Well.  They sure got lucky.) or 3) sycophants. 

Frankly, I don't care at all whether Mary Matalin gets it right.  Not at all. 

I care about what I get right.

A. announced that we were now officially hippies, then made me guess why.  I hate guessing games.  He gave me a hint: what things do I associate with hippies?  The only thing I could think of was patchouli - in my opinion alone (as most things are) - categorically the worst scent ever unleashed on the world.  About three minutes into his game, I thought of sandals. 

The answer was a VW bus.  He bought one.  He should have known to not ask me.  I'm notoriously bad at judging books by their covers.  I can see the cover, I can distinguish things on the cover, but judging them's just not one of my hobbies.  Defending either side - I realize as I write - IS one of my hobbies.  It's patently untrue that wealth is equal to shallow.  And relative poverty is the furthest thing from any guarantee of decency and depth. 

A. teases me, says I'm a 'high-falutin' hippy.'  'You are more hippy than ...' he begins but never has to finish because I'm busy objecting.  Yah, I have a big idea of participating in and contributing to the world, but a lot of people do. 

Nope.  No hippy.  I am unapologetic about preferring creative, economic development and following organic principles and designing projects for self-sustainability.  And I'm really REALLY unapologetic about dumping the halo.  Ooohs and ahhs and applause and publicity give me the heebie-jeebies. Still, those things are invaluable for soliciting financial support or sponsorship; it's a smart deal.  A company or corporation can just expect to be rewarded in some way for putting money in to a project that will serve a community.

I've never wondered about the motives of other people participating in the same project.  I've never had to.  They'll tell you.  I don't care about their motives, I care about the results.  I haven't contemplated this, not at all - I knew I was going to blog in this direction, but I haven't 'arrived at a conclusion.'  I am going to wonder ever so briefly what it would be like if I had their world view? 

Nope.  Enough of that.  I've seen too many bad projects, too much money wasted, all because  people are sooo quick to attribute saintly motives to the do-gooder.  And, indeed, their motives are often ... well, yes, pretty close to saintly.  So what?  Saintly motives don't translate in anyway into effectiveness. 

And saintly motives don't belong to liberals or conservatives, although Republicans have a tendency to believe that they are much better at running a non-profit project or charity.  Just in case you were wondering - they are not.  They are just as susceptible as anyone to wrapping themselves in that halo.  I imagine it's like me putting on a silver fox coat.  I don't care at all if it's supposed to be a bad thing.  I look raaaaaavishing in it.  Just like I belong in Doctor Zhivago. 

I've been busy walking around the idea of Being Wrong, but when it comes to actually applying it, it might be better to describe it this way.  Being something other than what's Locally Acceptable, Being utterly comfortable in not embracing what They Tell you is the right way ... yes, I think, gets me a lot closer to creating good projects and things. 

And it is sooo appropriate to the discussion of charitable projects where tradition/habit have resulted in spectacular black-tie fundraising events.  And not a lot else. 

Exactly one professor told me I'd make a good spy.  Sometimes, that's all it really takes - one person you admire seeing some quality in you.  Lucky for all concerned, it would've taken a lot more to get me to sign up for the circus. 

Still, the idea lodged itself (which might explain why I have to do so much sorting; an awful lot of ideas lodged themselves for future access that never happened). 

In hindsight, I think I would have made a great spy - if the emphasis was on intelligence gathering and analysis.  Even then, I'm pretty sure I'd have been yanked from the ranks without so much as an apology.  It seems to me that if you mix information with any kind of independent thinking and a little bit of envisioning-local-impact and THEN add general philosophy and put it in the shaker of personal principles - well, you're going to get a cocktail that lets off neon vapours.  And that won't do, will it, when secrecy's so important. 

A fellow who's name I've forgotten joined the state department in Eastern Europe and rumors instantly flew that he was a spy.  Eastern Europe invites those kinds of suspicions - it looks like it was built expressly for espionage.  I didn't see how he could possibly be a spy.  He wore a cravat and introduced himself as being 'on a diplomatic mission.'  He was ... cute, and well-groomed, but in a I-saw-it-in-a-catalogue and definitely not a James Bond-Savile Row-Jermyn Street- feeling a bit peckish so I'll stop in at Wilton's while they fix my french cuffs kind of way. 

He was entirely without sex appeal and I figure that's important to a spy - how can you possibly get anything out of anyone if you don't have the stuff of seduction?

I'm told that Jonathan was recruited to do a bit of the ol' spying by the Brits, an offer he declined.  Or so I'm told.  As a spy, J. would've done in a pinch.  His charm was and is immense and when you hear the phrase 'impeccable connections' it ought to conjure his picture.  He can hardly turn around in his family without crashing into some aristocratic heavweight.  My favorite is his uncle, the Marquess of Bath, who runs a safari at Longleat, his very stately home, and calls his many love affairs 'wifelets.'  I just love that, but then I'm an American.  Can't say how I'd feel if I was a British subject who knew this was a descendant of William the Conqueror. 

They're not all sweetly addled in J's family.   His father wrote the screenplay for one of the classics of American film. 

Yes, in a pinch, J. would do as a spy.  But really.  I like him and I still don't see how he could collect information that had (uh-oh.  here comes one of my favorites) context.  There's loads and loads of information available because people are virtually incapable of keeping secrets they're entrusted with to themselves.  It's not so much that they have to spill the info, it's that they nearly have to let someone know they were entrusted with the stuff.

But collecting the bits and having any idea at all how they might fit into a picture are totally different things.  Even if the information comes from the highest of the higher-ups, that doesn't necessarily make it accurate at implementation.  There are still people - with rival interests and personal concerns - who execute the policy. 

I'm tired of talking about spies.  I wish someone who was overhauling the CIA would pause in all their reformation gusto and ... ha!  do something that's completely out of character:  consider the global landscape and cultural subtleties.  Forget it.  I'm not wasting any wishes on the CIA. 

I have a friend who suffers his regrets quietly and in a lot of beer.  He's loving, well read, and very witty, but luck and local politics just haven't gone his way - which will happen when you never ever leave a small Midwestern town. 

A class reunion came to town and when I found him rather inebriated in early afternoon, I decided to become his companion for the rest of the day.  Just in case.  Which is how I ended up joining a few of his fraternity brothers for cocktails.  They all had the requisite good jobs, pretty families - standard stuff of reunions.  One, though, was the golden boy, undeniably accomplished and presumably, important.  To an admiring and adoring audience of frat brethren, he told the story of his meteoric rise (I don't know.  Are they ever just ... gentle?)  and somewhere in the middle of it, he said he'd spent 6 weeks in Russia. 

When my friend with the regrets - thoroughly lubricated by now - and I were finally alone again, he had plenty of yelling to do.  He was very angry with me and my refusal to say that the 6 weeks in Russia qualified as any expertise.  Nope.  A glimpse, yes, a snapshot even - those would've been fine by me.  But the golden boy had delivered quite a big you-can-consider-me-an-authority speech on the state of Russia.  After 6 weeks.  And I teased him, rather unmercifully when I saw how it was going - how the grown up men around him were lapping up his every word, his every interpretation.  Who - really -could have resisted?  Six weeks?  On what planet does six weeks allow you any kind of understanding of a culture sooooo layered and luxuriously byzantine as the Russian one? 

An experience, sure.  A six week, series of snapshots experience. 

Sigh.  But somehow, in spite of the ease of travel, we've become a whole lot sloppier.  Rebecca West's impressions of Yugoslavia (Black Lamb, Grey Falcon) are said to be just a little unreliable - seen through a thin, romantic haze.  Yeah, yeah.  Okay.  But by the time you get around to Balkan Ghosts - oh my god that book nearly made me crazy.  If I'd have been willing, I could have had a book published about eastern (now called Central) Europe and I guarantee you, it would have been JUST as full of lyrical, literary bullshit.  Just in case you're wondering what I could possibly mean, it would have been wrong. 

But those are just stray remarks, a little anecdote with no point other than to point out how easily we pass along mis-information about foreign and exotic lands. 

I plucked the following two excerpts from NY Times pieces on Connie Rice's nomination. 

"In the second term, he said, Ms. Rice knows that her success will depend in large part on mending the relationships with allies that were damaged, partly by her, in the first. "Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia," Ms. Rice was widely quoted as telling associates in the spring of 2003, when she and Mr. Bush were angry at the allies who had not backed them on the war."

and, this one actually pulls a quote from an interview with Dr. Rice a whole long year ago.  Although educated as a Russian specialist, with a cold war sensibility, she would ... well, change her mind. 

"The president likes to focus "on this issue of universal values and freedom," and after Sept. 11, she said, "I found myself seeing the value of that."

I wonder, really, if she sees the value of that.  Or if she sees the value of standing behind what President Bush sees as valuable. 

Supplemental income.  It's a sinuous expression , isn't it, with a nice little cadence - just enough to take the edge off of what it actually means.  Second job.  Sometimes, third.  I've become pretty friendly with the concept since moving to Santa Barbara. 

An excess of pride will get you nowhere in Santa Barbara.  It's the American Riviera.  Paradise, to the particularly loyal.  Like many luxury goods, there's no price tag on the thing.  No, no no no.  No.  As it should, million-and-billionaires are flattered by the refusal to speak of a BUDGET (which is not a pretty word, onomatopoeiatically-speaking.  Ick ick ick!)  I am neither billion-or-millionaire and sometimes wonder about hanging in the ranks of thousandaires - so.  Off to work I go.  I mean, off to work on the third job I go. 

You might recall (if you ever read this blog) that I'm selling Waterford Crystal for the holiday season.  I am a Selling Specialist.  In title only.  I am NOT a selling specialist.  I am, however, pretty good at talking with people about their ideas of beauty.  We talk about creating small rituals, and transforming habits into ... events.  We talk about life and heirlooms.  People love to tell me how much Waterford they already own but so often, too often, go on to say that they keep it under lock and key and bring it out only for the most special occasions.  Wheeee.

I am genuinely surprised.  I don't care if they ever buy another piece of crystal.  I don’t.  It's just that beauty and craftsmanship and art and luxury want to be part of life.  Lived. Used. 

Some eyes light up.  It’s a novel idea.  Some eyes don’t light up.  They’re busy wincing.  But if ... but if something breaks.  Yes.?  Things break.  Hot chocolate spills.  Kitty cats’ claws dart out.  Children and big men bump into the table. 

Or they don't wince at all.  They have a plan.  I'm giving it to my children. Oh yeah.  A plan indeed.  The ol' I inherited stuff that they say is valuable but I don't intend to use it, so maybe I'll just hold it and pass it on. 

We are having these chats in a department store, the architectural equivalent of ‘Super Size Me’ in which a normal guy discovers what damage can be done from  a month of dining at McDonald’s.  I am not a fan of department stores in the first place (with the exception of the perfume department; I love going in naturally scented, anointing myself with the very very best fragrances, and coming out smelling like a hooker.  Love it.  LOOOOVVE it.)  But what a perspective:  standing for uninterrupted hours, watching, bathing in it. 

It’s entirely without romance or glamour or anything good.  I can’t tell you how much crap surrounds me – and it’s not just the merchandise.  There are a few lovely and good humored people who work there, but in general, they are lazy, incompetent, disinterested, and vulgar.  And more than a few loathe the customers.  The curious discovery?  The customers are not awful and demanding.   Usually, they’re looking for something so simple as assistance. 

So.  It’s perfectly legitimate and ultimately none of my business if people want to save their treasures and hoard their belongings to pass on. 

Okay.  That was a pleasant lie.  It IS my business.  It is my world.  No one has to do anything I say – that’s not the point.  No one has to embrace MY vision and I actually don’t care one way or the other if they do.  But.  I certainly will not tolerate it in my private life. 

Our children might every well inherit loads of Waterford Crystal and sets of china and art collections and real estate and trust funds.  Hmm.

What will they do with them? 

From the New York Times today (20 November 200) “House and Senate negotiators have tucked a potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its business and adjourn for the year.”

And so the Christian conservatives concern themselves with their glittering centerpiece and ignore the way life is really lived.  Perhaps if they paused In their agenda and actually contributed to beauty and quality of life for all … we would create something of immeasurable value for our children to inherit. 

Oh my gosh – what we are capable of creating!

My first Thanksgiving in Santa Barbara was spent at the estate of the man who owned Kinko's and has since sold it to Fedex for buckets and buckets of cash.  It was a fabulous, casually chic affair.  I don't know why, but I've had quite a few of those Thanksgivings - a consequence, probably, of living in Hollywood. 

Anyway, for those who like these things in a nutshell - it was 'highly civilized.'  Everyone was gracious and warm and lovely, just lovely.  By the time we sat down to the al fresco, catered dinner, enough good will had accumulated to talk of what a wonderful thing it was, to be American.  I just listened (which you'll think is uncharacteristic, but isn't at all) - the real topic was what corporate wealth - well, private wealth, for that matter - could do in the world.  It's a little hard to participate in a talk that seems to be about theory and is really - considering you have the ones actually affected in the room - about practice. 

My next Thanksgiving was small, cozy family affair - half our family was gone, but we piled into their rented and rather glamorous house for its kitchen appeal.  We dined at the long table with the view on to the Italian villa gardens.  One of our friends, an editor at the local newspaper, had to return to work - the news waits for no holiday - and come back for pie and movies on the plasma tv.  It was an odd day, with borrowed luxuries and - to borrow a Japanese concept (I'm told) - borrowed views. 

Yesterday, we helped serve Thanksgiving dinners to anyone who wanted it, an event sponsored by a local church and held in the beautiful Goleta Community Center.  It was, without question, the most magnificent Thanksgiving I've ever had. 

The  tables were beautifully decorated, the food was extraordinary!! – made with real, fresh ingredients and cooked by a chef who’s temporarily homeless.  Even the coffee came with exotic names and nice, thick aromas.  All of it contributed to an atmosphere that celebrated abundance and prosperity.  But the magnificent part was the almost complete absence of the kiss of ‘charity.’  This was created and executed in the spirit of community sharing, not bestowing. 

Anyone in the business of non-profit help knows to not bother with the motives.  Any one who volunteers, donates, gives, helps – oh, please – it’s all good for whatever the reasons, whatever the circumstances. 

Or is it?  Well, there’s no speaking to every individual.  I’ve done my share of helping on a false impulse or after a cocktail or two.  I’ve worked for people who hid their motives and allowed the public to believe they were nearly angels.  The ends, though, are greater than the means.  Well, I don’t think so.  I’ve seen silent damage done.  You’ve seen silent damage done.  

In the design  and execution of programs, the motives and the goals do matter.  Of course, that comes from someone who believes deeply in self-sustainable programs, the ones that aim for detaching the organizers and allowing the people it benefits to run things themselves.  Before ever aiming for self-sustainability, though, I’m for aiming at the organic – the project that pays attention to the values of the local culture.  I am not interested in negotiating that point.  It’s not to say it can’t be argued – it is all the time – I’m just not interested in arguing it.  From my point of view and experience – it’s about being effective and creative and aiming for anything less is silly.   Not just silly.  It wastes valuable human resources.  

Maybe you know someone, saddled with gratitude, who can still move lightly and creatively and love the world for its possibilities.  I don’t.  Never met them.  Extending dignity to someone, allowing them to accept help without obligation or debt, giving them whatever resources they really need and can sustain themselves with  – all those things can be built into NOT just a mission statement, but the mission itself. 

But that program design demands people who start with dignity and joy not as a goal, but as … well, the starting point.  It’s really an extraordinary experience.    

The Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Goleta, California created just that yesterday.  Fellowship. I can't be more honored to have been included.   

I just plain ol' copied, then pasted this selection of letters from The Spectator, a weekly English magazine.  Even when the topic's acutely local and incomprehensible, you can almost always depend on high literacy, irony and wit.  

Wheatcroft on hunting

I think it’s a bit much that Geoffrey Wheatcroft should, rather hysterically, grind his fascist wellyboot into my face, comparing me to a paedophile merely because I oppose fox-hunting while enjoying fishing (‘Death to Iraqis, not to foxes’, 20 November). My opposition to hunting with dogs is based on the conviction that it is cruel and barbarous to encourage animals to fight to the death. My enjoyment of fishing is based on the prospect of eating my catch. Mackerel bought at the fishmonger’s just doesn’t taste as good as those caught fresh from the beach.

If he is so sure that he speaks for England, perhaps Wheatcroft ought to spend some time trying to convince Michael Howard to fight the election on the issue of fox-hunting. Failing that, he might consider joining me in campaigning for a written constitution that would genuinely protect the rights of all minorities.
Billy Bragg
Burton Bradstock, Dorset

I am writing to congratulate you and Geoffrey Wheatcroft on one of the best articles I have ever read. I am in a bit of an emotional state anyway after hunting was banned, having fought long and hard against that for the last seven years. I was moved to tears by his words and am still thinking about them several days later.

The passion and eloquence of his writing were very stirring, and every word rang true.
Jane Manley
Hereford

Geoffrey Wheatcroft suggests that ‘the utterly risible’ Eric Joyce is the only present Labour MP to have done military service. He forgets the Father of the House, the MP for Linlithgow. Tam Dalyell, an able chronicler of National Service in the Independent obituaries columns, himself served in Germany for two years with the regiment his ancestor raised, the Royal Scots Greys.
James Fergusson
Obituaries editor, The Independent, London E14

Geoffrey Wheatcroft may be interested to know that Abraham Lincoln did serve in uniform. He was a captain of a volunteer company in Black Hawk’s war (1832). By all accounts he was an extremely bad officer. His company were a hard set of men who shouted ‘Go to hell!’ to his first order. They got thoroughly out of hand, and Lincoln was ordered by a court martial to carry a wooden sword for two days because he had been unable to prevent them robbing the regimental whisky cache and getting drunk. Later, when he was in Congress, he made a speech ridiculing his military experience and his pretensions to command. According to at least one historian, the experience may have been one of the most important of his life. Because of it, he understood the million and a half young men he called into service for the Union during the Civil War.
Reuben Bouverie
Slindon, West Sussex

Braggadocio

What splendid news! Indeed a beacon of light in a dark world. The constitutional expert and political consultant Mr Billy Bragg (who is also a ‘songwriter’) has written new words to replace those of the formerly much-loved hymn ‘I vow to thee, my country’. In it he vows to share his wealth with the poor, the sick, the disabled, those suffering discrimination by reason of birth, disability, sex, race or creed. I hope that every charity working on behalf of such people will write to the very wealthy Mr Bragg asking him to share his wealth with those for whom they care. I am sure Mr Bragg would rather accept poverty for himself than be shown up as a braggart rather than a Bragg.
Tebbit
House of Lords, London SW1

Plato in general and the Republic in particular are favorites o’ mine – at the very least because that old Socratic method is just a kick to pick through.  Restraint’s a popular Platonic idea.  There was a time when  restraint was not only baffling, but seemed impossible for someone of my temperament to achieve.

I don’t exactly envy those who come with natural restraint, but I’ve occasionally thought: gosh, that seems like a pretty swell deal.  Moi?  It’s needed practice, practice and MORE practice.  Even now - when, in my estimation, I’ve been a model of restraint - I can’t help but take a break and reward myself.  Which, coincidentally, comes recommended by Socratic authority (which has nothing to do with anything, except that when you need an excuse, any will do.)

So.  Yesterday was all about those rewards. 

I made a twinkly Christmas thingie even though it’s way too early.  I do not care.  I felt like making twinkly things. And anway, even though I was indulging myself, I managed to show a little restraint. I edited out the scary fairy making all the sparkles happen.

I got a just a leeeetle sassy at my crystal selling post.  I show pieces of crystal that are meant to entice passersby into Waterford land and yesterday, I chose the Christmas bell with its crystal-perfect ring and stood beside several pieces of art glass – two big, deep orange bowls.  I made a fine Waterford Salvation Army gal.  Three whole customers gave me big BIG hugs and a fine afternoon was had by all. 

And finally, we went to the beautiful Lobero Theater for Warren Miller’s Impact.  Even the memory (all of 12 hours old) is exciting!!! Wheeeeeee! We got free passes to Heavenly!!!   I’m sure Miller’s flicks benefit from skiing expertise, but … I went skiing for my very very first time last year and that’s all it took.  We’re working on growing the seed of the idea (?!?  - well, it’s a slow process, considering I just started skiing) to live on a mountain.  I’m an idiot for a lot of reasons, but one of the best is that I’ve been to some of the finest skiing areas in the world and never considered giving it a shot. 

Oh yes, restraint is good for the rewards that derive from it.  But the rewards of letting restraint lapse … THOSE are sometimes better. 

Of course, restraint – like any good and big idea – is complex.  It wants to be considered from a few angles (well, if you like Platonic consideration, it does).  I plucked the following from the LA Times Editorial section this morning.  It’s a much longer piece about the chipping away at Roe v. Wade. 

The gag order Bush imposed through executive order on his third day in office remains in effect, withholding U.S. aid from foreign health clinics if a worker in such places as India or Africa even mentions the abortion option. The spending-bill amendment allows health corporations to slap that same gag order on U.S. doctors and nurses. Physicians who oppose abortion already are not compelled by law to perform one. But now a hospital chief who opposes abortion could silence every doctor and nurse in his or her employ. In rural communities with few hospitals and health-plan choices, the measure could effectively end legal abortions. And that's the point.

Plato’s Republic has something to say about justice and governing, too. 

It's more like fiddling than work - borrowing parts from other characters, adding a pair of baby blue cons, generally testing whether I can possibly live with developing her: JoJo Booda.

The work is in giving her a story.  She was supposed to be one thing, but she's turning out to be something else - a sweeeeet little thang with a singular talent for catching adults trying to pawn off their stories on unsuspecting kids.  She's too young to know anything, but she can spot irony a city-block away.  This, of course, neatly saves me - or rather, her - from ever having to come up with the 'right answer.'  And, after all, she's not required to know anything since adults are supposed to do the teaching. 

That'd scare the hell out of me, if I was her.   

here you go:   

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde

Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

There are plenty more where those came from, but I'm obligated for only 5 more interminably longgggg shifts in my cozy little department store corner.  In my hardly-there free time, I see that some folks are making a big to do over Christian shopping.  Ask me - no.  no, don't ask me.  I intend to write this anyway; they are ignoring more fundamental, more important issues. 

In my little corner of Christmas shopping heaven, I get to see people ostensibly out shopping for loved ones, secretaries (who are, occasionally, loved ones), employees.  Ours should probably be a relationship without sentiment.  Me, I'm nothing more than a clerk, there to serve them the proper box for that vase or bowl.  Them, they're ... well, they're the customer.  It's sort of simple. 

One out of every 10 is satisfied with that kind of relationship.  The rest ...  I'm talking with the lonely, to people with stories that don't get told enough or, more likely, don't get listened to enough.  Men whose wives and women whose husbands died a last year at this time, or several years ago.  The woman who struggled really really hard and wishes, just a little bit, she'd had the foresight to marry a wealthier, more reliable man.  The man, deep into retirement, who regrets his choices.  The woman who is so, SO bursting with need, she corners me for 45 minutes to tell every single detail (well, as many as you can fit in 45 minutes) of her daughter's meteoric rise to success as an advertising exec, One (being me) considers advising her that there are blogs for just that purpose. 

What a pity that any time's spent worrying where someone shops, when there are all those shoppers that could stand being worried about. 

Maybe I will, now that mall-duty's nearly over, dabble a little more vigorously in fiction.  And maybe I won't.  I gave up fiction long ago, but as I've already admitted, I still make little messes all over my notebooks.  Except for emails and blogs, I have to write long hand.  I just do.  It's a rhythm thang.  And sometimes, often, the rhythm sort of gets slinky with a few lines of dialogue here, a character there. 

It's not enough to dedicate myself to a story, though.  "Have a little faith in fiction," elizabeth (elizabethsrealm) cheered recently.  I laughed.  A little faith is about all I have.  :)  My first writing was in film, then theater, and eventually, I wandered over to fiction ... I think because the people hanging around the fiction section of life were a whole lot less melodramatic.  Please.  I was an athlete, living with football players. 

But fiction was just a big pain in the ass - the business of fiction, mostly, but also the direction of American fiction.  Storytelling went out of style, replaced by fiction that was ... well, not storytelling.  Educational.  Researched to death.  Short stories became the preserve of folks who liked ambiguous endings.  Bloody hell.  How many of those can a reader read?  And readers became extra, extra lazy.  Chicken. Egg. I don't know. Maybe it's just what was bound to happen.  Or maybe they just became less literate.  They started bringing less to the reading experience.  The burden on the writer was not just to create a wonderful world, but to populate it with all the explanations and history.  And for me, and possibly me alone, it all got really ... not interesting.  And certainly not interesting to write.  Especially because I didn't know anything.  I could explain weird and useless shit OR, alternatively, things that had nothing at all to do with the story. 

I don't know, I wasn't paying attention, but maybe the above explains the explosion of chick lit.  Not the evocative, magical storytelling of Alice Walker, but the Chicks Hunting for Rich Dick and a Flick Contract While We're At it lit.  I tried just last week to read Helen Fielding's latest.  Crap. 

Anyway, I was lucky to have profs at a writing program beg, bully, yell - anything - to keep me away from the fiction program with its precious, in-bred methods.  I was easy back then.  I shifted to expository writing.  Smartest thing that I ever did for myself.  I evolved into a much better editor than writer (don't bother using this blog as proof.)

Like a good translator, a good editor does NOT tamper with the voice or the style, but coaxes it into its best shape and knows when to meet the writer's ego head on with a firm 'Delete This' - because it robs the writing, drains the writing, somehow messes with the rhythm of reading.  Of course, it all begins with knowing/understanding/hearing the story. 

Being a good editor, though, has not made me less of a writer.  Neither are titles - not to me.  Both belong to a lifestyle.  A way of living life, I mean, not a lifestyle 'look.'  It might explain why there are so few good editors.  All by myself, I know quite a few writers who would be really GOOD writers if only a good editor would march all over their work and crack a whip in a few plump spots (?!?! ).  If I know quite a few, and you know quite a few ... well, do the math.  There's some great great writing out there, waiting to happen.

And if it happened, if the writing business improved, maybe the readers' literacy would improve ... I don't know.  It sounds like fiction, doesn't it? 

and to the bitter end, the Department Store was packed with slightly less than cheerful Christmas shoppers.  creatures stirring, indeed.  Lesson Learned:  supplemental income = good, department stores in malls = bad, very very very bad for someone like me. 

and now it's time to ease on in to the eve.  wheeeee!  lots and lots of lovely champagne, courtesy of my champagne loving brother.  we've barely survived previous champagne episodes.  we walked home from their house one night and cut through alice keck park - or at least that was the plan.  when we eventually emerged (it's not all THAT hard.  it's a garden.  on a block.) we were on exactly the same side we started.  huh. 

anyway, before the champagne, we'll go to the Unitarian Society to hear my sister in law sing.  the big finale is a song I've never heard of, originally written for a men's quartet, but nudged up a notch on the scale for ... whatever women's voices are.  Okay.  She's definitely not an alto.  She's ... one of those high voices, the angel ones.  She was Cosette in Les Miserables, in both LA and San Francisco.  She's got one of those Cosette/Sara Brightman voices.  we hear this production's out to rival Les Miz.  It comes with (eeeek!) interpretive dance.  Yup.  No christmas pageant's complete without interpretive dance.  :)

further, my brother emails that "the choir is one potential gigantic train wreck. I don't know how such a widely varied group of people can create such a singular lack of pitch, but hey, it's just my opinion."

it will be great fun.  with lots and lots of champagne to soothe any disturbed nerves.  I hope everyone and i mean EVERY one has an equally wonderful eve. 

merry CHRISTMAS!!!!!! love, cris

I'll leave it to everyone else to get indignant and compile numbers in the face of UN criticism.  We're a terrifically generous country - yeah, rah.  We also have an awful lot of 'helping' agencies out there wasting a hell of a lot of money.  Badly run ngo's, poorly informed administrators, etc.  You can wear a halo and it still won't make you effective. 

But then there's Direct Relief.  Happy to say it's based in Santa Barbara.  Superbly run with an impressive absence of waste and an even more impressive mission statement and execution.  It's just a kick ass organization. 

Here you go:

Direct Relief has offered medical assistance to aid victims of the massive Southeast Asian earthquake. Initial reports indicate that the resulting tsunami and tidal surges have killed thousands and destroyed property throughout the coastal areas of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and the Maldives.

Direct Relief has been in contact with partner organizations in India and Sri Lanka, other private U.S. nonprofit organizations, US government officials coordinating official aid, and corporate partners.

FedEx today offered to transport material aid without charge to the region, and Direct Relief is developing both material lists and logistics plans.

In India, Direct Relief is joining with New York-based American Jewish World Service to assist Indian nongovernmental organizations in Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh - both of which suffered extensive damage in densely populated coastal areas.

In Sri Lanka, Direct Relief has received the first consolidated needs list for medical items, which are being prepared for shipment from current inventories.

Direct Relief has allocated two disaster modules, donated by Johnson and Johnson, for the relief effort.

Direct Relief CEO Thomas Tighe served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Thai coastal town of Langu, approximately 120 miles south of the resort island of Phuket, where scores of deaths have been reported.

"As in any such natural disaster, the first priority is on search and rescue of victims," said Tighe. "Direct Relief will provide medical material aid that is needed, but we recognize that shelter, food, water, and other basic needs also are essential, so we will work with the other response agencies to ensure that the response is properly targeted."

Direct Relief provides medical assistance in response to emergencies and on an ongoing basis to underserved areas in developing countries. This year, Direct Relief has provided aid to Hurricane-affected areas in the Caribbean and to Bam, Iran, where a severe earthquake occurred exactly one year ago on December 26, 2003.

Direct Relief is accepting donations to assist in this emergency. Donations can be made either online at www.directrelief.org or by calling (805) 964-4767. To designate contributions only for earthquake relief, please write "asia quake" in the memo/comment field.

End of the first quarter, Vikings  lead the Packers 17-3. 

In the pre-game show, Randy Moss was severely criticized for his - well, let me paraphrase: on-going, self-centered, adolescent behavior.  To a one, our favorite NFL football commentators were unamused, unsympathetic, and just full of criticism.  Randy Moss was a rat. 

And then the first quarter started ticking down.  Randy Moss scored.  Now I quote (I think) the same commentators:  Randy Moss has redeemed himself!!  

Well, hell yes.   

Wheeee.  It's my favorite sensation, having a very relaxed, supple head and right now, I'm luxuriating in it.  For me, it's better than the usual conditions people crave - love, victory, coziness, success, importance, general happiness.  I've tried all those and they're all pleasant, occasionally exhilerating, but supple headitude - that's the best.  Besides, a head like that tends to create the perfect conditions to achieve the others.  For me, at least. 

I've enjoyed long periods of a loose head before - in Hollywood and Budapest - but life can do some damage.  No.  I take that back.  It's not life.  It's concessions and compromises and the accumulation of tiny little adjustments to keep the peace in the face of life that do the damage.  I'm all for peace - in general, but it's useful to know who's running things and deciding the terms.  There are plenty of peaceful situations that, frankly, aren't worth the sacrific to conscience or vision.  The only ones who get relaxed, supple heads out of those deals are the ones in charge.  I suspect even their heads are a little anxious, always on the lookout for anyone who might start a mutiny. 

This sensation/condition arrives at a good time.  I start taking Scary Fairy Stationery on the road, as it were, this week - representing, marketing, promoting, selling it.  The trick, I imagine, will be to nurture and protect my head.  It really is like concocting a great dish, though - or one of those moments when all things conspire and you get a perfect insight.  The moment you have it - poof!  It nearly disappears.  It's amazing how easy it is to forget the ingredients.  I'm going to try and pay a little closer attention this time.  Ha. 

Dammit.  Mindsay ate my post.  Luckily for all with loads of time on their hands :)))) I'm a happy re-constructor of stuff.  I don't care if I remember any of what I wrote.  I remember what I meant.  So here's the short version:    There's a lot of pain and suffering going around.  There's a little acoustic instruments shop in Santa Barbara - an enchanted little joint run by a pair of women who inspire those films the critics call 'a gem of a movie'.  They lived in La Conchita and are both hospitalized - mowed down by one ferocious mudslide. 

Already, plans are in motion for a benefit gig.  Of course, with my mandolin and repertoir of Tennessee Waltz and Christmas songs, I expect I'll be able to best help by threatening to play/sing unless folks cough up some hard cash.  Fast.  It's a fundraising technique, indeed. 

As the tsunami continues to demonstrate, we are a nation of people that want to help, that want to ease suffering, that are willing to live up to the job of being strong so that others can be weak in safety.  We do stutter, though, in the face of psychic pain and emotional suffering.  There's a lot of that going around, too.  On Mindsay.  That'll happen when you collect a lot of people who make a habit of writing.  That'll happen if even it's just ... you who makes a habit of writing.  There's just something about the word.  On the page.  Naked, full of meaning, ready to tell a truth to you even if you've got way better things to do. 

The good news, for those in pain, for those suffering, is that we who live in luxury-loaded supremacy can be strong and allow the weak to heal.  A friend of ours was in a horrible bike accident.  We got ourselves busy and had a benefit and started a nonprofit 'Back in the Race' - good name, huh? - and  my brother designed a bike jersey that read: You may not remember the time you let me go first. Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go. Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up. You may not remember any of those, but I do & this is what I have to say to you: today, no matter what it takes, we ride home together.

And sometimes, that's all it takes to ease the pain and suffering - knowing, remembering that we do it together. 

I woke up this morning thinking of Brad.  Oops.  Not true.  I woke up, surprised I woke up, since at 3 am, I'd have put money on sleep not happening.  I get insomnia only occasionally now - no big deal - but for years, me and sleep deprivation - we were pals.  So.  I woke up, told myself to stop thinking next time, and THEN I thought of Brad.

Brad's blind.  Bradley was teaching history at the private Lutheran college until he finished his master's thesis on the role of pubs in Irish independence.  I love scholarship from interesting vantages - American Scholar is the best journal- so it was always - yah, this is true - exciting to hear how things were developing.  Anyone who's worked on a thesis knows things develop prettttty darned slowly, especially when your topic's pubs.  Especially when your pub topic coincides with a fondness for pubs. 

Bradley was more than pubs, of course.  Is more.  He is a fine musician (although it takes getting through his attachment to Celtic tunage in general and the Pogues specifically to realize it.)  He's oh-so-frickin' witty - the dry kind of reply being his specialty.  He's always ready for adventure - which, in combination with that love o' pubs, is a littttle hazardous.  He had to go to a conference in Poland, but .... let's say he missed his scheduled ride to the airport.  A friend was called, a friend came to the rescue and drove like the wind (in the frozen midwest plains, that's pretty fucking fast which is why some of us move as quickly as possible to the west coast where it only rains like the worst monsoons and has the occasional earthquake) ... point of that Polish bit is that he missed everything by 15 minutes, even his ride from Warsaw to the small university town. 

Oh, it was so much fun with Bradley.  I had a hard time remembering he was blind.  He had to quit going for walks with me because I'd forget to tell him that a tree branch was up ahead.  And, twenty yards later, I'd forget again.  He'd get smacked tens times, easily, on one little walk. 

If I had to choose, I'd choose my ability to not register blindness or other disabilities.  It's not quite forgetting, it just ...doesn't really register much with me.  I don't know what the hell I'm paying attention to, but it's not the disability.  This is infinitely preferable to registering a disability or a disadvantage, doing a quick sort of the responses at your disposal and coming up with: pity.  Worse than pity is (there ought to be one word, and probably IS one word for this, but I don't know that word so I'll write it out) the tendency to make the disabled more noble.  Oh. I guess that's just another version of pity. 

Somewhere in between, though, is the courtesy of recognizing that a little good assistance can go a long ways towards ... enabling the blind.  You know, sort of removing the 'dis' to the abilities.  There are loads of little things, like walking with your friend, giving him your arm.  In my experience?  You'll get where you're going a hell of a lot faster (unless you're wacking trees enroute and pausing for recovery).   Of course, most people are happy to provide physical assistance, but there's also something valuable in ...

Well.  I thought of Brad this morning because Brad has insomnia.  Badly.  I forget the technically 'why', although I can make something up.  And will.  No.  I won't.  It's enough that the insomnia is directly related to his blindness.  Day after day after day, he's getting by and being wonderful and witty and a lot of other great things with very little sleep.  He mentions it, that's all.  There's no appeal to sympathy, no asking for anything.  Good thing, because he wouldn't get it. 

But what would it take to just be conscious of it?  I don't know.  I'm sleep deprived myself today. 

I've loved a lot of sports for that sweet spot you hit when all the mechanics and timing come together and it doesn't matter so much if you win, just that you're sort of - soaring through the moment.  Skiing's the cream, though.  If you can dig up any stress after a day of skiing, you've got Olympian reserves.  But beyond burning out the stress bubbles, that bright, thin mountain air - oh, so short on the oxygen - just makes a person stupid.  There's not a lot of point in fighting it - what for?  It is deeelicious! 

We spent the week at Mammoth, feasting on that stupidity - which came in mighty handy considering that our skiing coincided with the confirmation hearings for Dr. Rice and the inauguration ceremonies that included a public inauguration of Cheney.  Oh considering those coincidinks were shared with a trio of largely lethargic teenagers.  Intellectually lethargic, I should say. They can rattle off dialogue from thirty seriously stupid flicks, but political opinion?  I'm going to guess that if you want to know where their parents stand, you only have to listen to teenagers.  Which is strange, since they're otherwise dedicated to being pretty snippy rebels. 

Anyway, it was interesting because the teenagers had to arrive at some of their own conclusions, watching Barbara Boxer ask some pointed questions of Rice, watching Rice wield indignation and - what? - her self description.  That alone deserved harder scrutiny - unless you're not a fan of transparency.  Anyone, in any party, in any government who expects their self description to carry more weight than their record has missed a serious point.  Blah blah blah. 

I didn't know or particularly care if the teenage boys were watching.  They were, it seems, but without an adult commentary, without any discussion to pluck their 'own' opinion from, they had nothing to say.  I'm guessing that's what happened, because when we turned on The Daily Show and got some nice satirical treatment, the boys were alllll over it. 

It's not just a teenage problem, is it? Wayyyy  too many adults have decided wayyyyy too many important political thingies on the sheer basis of what someone told them.  I'd like to think they toddled back to their own homes and turned things over, but the truth is, in numerous conversations, you can still hear an adult ... well, repeat something.  Just repeat it.   And THEN get indignant when you hint that you think they're idiots.  Back to that indignation thing - it's not an argument. 

We couldn't ski one more hour - no way - so we packed up, I traded ski boots for flip-flops (it's a good, good thing, to be on a mountain wearing flip-flops) and down the mountain we flew.  Not far from Mammoth, in the middle of a desolate valley (desolate, but with a pretty spectacular view), we passed Manzanar.  Well, the last bits and pieces of Manzanar.  More like a vague outline of Manzanar.  There's probably more wood and material in the signposts along the highway announcing Manzanar than there is any of Manzanar left. 

We pointed it out, as adults will to teenagers.  I paraphrase their teenage reply:  who cares?  Wait.  Who cares, dude?  Oh, for fucksake.  Good thing was, we were back in oxygen and had plenty to say about why they might want to get off their lazy brain-asses and start paying attention to these things, these things like Japanese internment camps. 

I have way better things to do than be a 'people person' but I really value them for covering territory I couldn't and wouldn't try to reach.  People know things and think things and read things and do things and if you're just a little bit pleasant, they'll share them so you don't have to know/think/read/do them yourself.  They can shove you into experiences you'd otherwise miss (although many times, I'd have been happier for missing them, but ... it's a crap shoot. Funny thing to say since I have NO idea what a crap shoot is.)   

Mitch got tickets to the Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was just about to retire.  I wasn't particularly interested in going, but I understood that it was ... well, a last opportunity.  Although, frankly, almost any opportunity has potential for being the 'last,' I went along.  I also got tickets to David Letterman.  I did not want to go to that show, either, but the tickets were in my name so my attendance was obligatory if my friends wanted to be in the audience.  And they DID want to be in the audience. 

I remember nothing about the Letterman show.  At least I remember that Amanda Plummer was Johnny Carson's guest.  And I remember that she was a little too odd for him - he was visibly relieved when they went to commercial and he didn't have to labor through conversation.   

I do not wish I understood how Johnny Carson got his glow on.  There are a lot of things I don't understand that don't particularly bother me.  I love travel, love traveling by myself, love the little razors of fear that nick at you when everything's entirely new but I do not understand the kind of travel inspired by wanting to 'see' the big attractions: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc d'Triomphe, the Acropolis, the palace in London - what's that place called? - oh, I can't remember.  Big Ben, the rocks the Druids built.  I've seen a lot of the attractions, but most of my site-seeing was by accident, by being in the vicinity, taking a turn and running smack into a cathedral. 

I can't help it.  It's just a way of traveling and living that I'm most comfortable with.  I've made some terrible mistakes, doing it this way.  I lived in Budapest a whole year before I gave in and went to the turkish baths.  I deserved a good crack upside the head for that one.  It took me way too many trips to count before I went to the Louvre (although I can hit any city that has Rodin and be there by first day's end.)  

Of course, it's not a phenomenon, that we are each of us attracted to different things, tourists fixed on different experiences.  Tourists with different techniques for even choosing their experiences.  Nope, not a phenomenon at all, but it is surprisingly easy to miss the value of it.   

Amazing, isn't it, how quickly you can travel when you're having a great conversation?  There must be a name for what happens when your head doesn't measure the miles or the time but is concentrated on an idea and its exploration.  It doesn't need travel to achieve it, but travel - with its beginning and its end - does provide a pretty good discreet way to measure it. 

We just traveled 6 hours in - woooooosh! - hardly any time at all.  Talking about - stay tuned for the thrilling topic - Aesthetic Development.  I know there are some people whose very viscera get tied up in knots at such phrases, but you've gotta call these things something ... makes it so much easier to leave a phone message.  Aesthetic Development refers to - ha! - the stages that one's - oh shit.  I am really laughing out loud.  There are five stages - ranging from thinking something's beautiful because the theme is a 'beautiful one' - kitties, little ponies,  posies - to appreciating a piece of art for the art's sake.  One of the stages is an aesthetic that takes its cues, that relies on cues from the culture.  ie.  if my friends, neighbors and family think it's beautiful, then me too. 

I didn't know there was such a thing, such a field of study, but there is.  My travel companion was/is one of those terrifically, almost crazy well read people, the kind you do NOT want to play any trivia game with because it's as good as cheating (a charge that's always the first resort of us not-so-well-read folk).  We didn't set out to talk about Aesthetic Development.  We were talking about ... wow.  What were ... oh.  The Pearblossom Highway collage.  The increasingly 'unbrave' artistic/creative sensibility in America.  'Unbrave' because it's not cowardly.  It's just ... become uninteresting.  It seems to me that it's not going to be interesting until artists get brave in their heads. 

Oh PLEASE do not assume we were luxuriating in ivory-tower-aren't we -rightness?  If that's the first place you go when you hear mention of an idea being discussed - go away.  Read a book.  Fashion some objectivity for yourself.  ... In fact, it was obligatory on our parts to explore whether or if it's always been 'this way', whether our new-found ability to reach all around the globe has allowed us to recognize it.  I don't think so.  There's a little economic history and history in general and the written record on my side. 

Ultimately, though, how we reached this and that we're even here isn't so important to me.  What is important is steering clear of it.  Steering clear.  No.  That's not right.  I'm not interested in avoiding it.  Quite the opposite.  Confronting it.  Not confrontationally, but creatively.   So, more like ... just standing firm and not tip-toeing backwards, just to appear nice and agreeable. 

It's really one of the great benefits of the direction our country's heading.  It's a good opportunity to explore thinking in opposition.  Of course, that's not always easy to do in real life.  It helps to get in a vehicle, drive a long ways and just travel at the speed of your good idea. 

Fifty billion soft and fluffy dreamy things to wake up to and I get 'education.'  4 frickin' 30 am.  How is that possible?!  Oh.  There's a question not worth asking.  Education, it is.  I'm not entirely sure why - hence the waking up and turning it over and poking it a few times - but I'm prone to believing that education is not the solution to many things.  Maybe I need terms defined.  Maybe it's formal education I object to.  And I don't really object to it.  I just believe it's not effective, and occasionally wasted energy. 

But THAT's not pinpoint accurate, either.  It's not the education.  It's the idea that information alone will solve, rescue, or transform. 

Of course, it can.  It's kind of how cognitive dissonance works and I'm happy to give testimony to how effective that is.  There have been plenty of times when I sat comfy cozy with what I knew, and one leeeeetle bit of information was all it took to catapult me off my perch.  I tend to believe most people have experienced it which is why I'm perpetually fascinated by anyone embracing an absolute philosophy.  I don't know how they do it, when they surely must have experienced the EASE of discovering just how wrong they were.  Oh well, that's their problem, not mine and since they don't consider it a problem, we're probably all pretty happy. 

But education.  Education's the first place people go when concocting schemes to end racism, for instance.  Popular wisdom has it  ... HA.  Mindsay interrupted me with yet another of those runtime bug-like error popup things.  On returning, I find that the above is all that was left.  Mindsay's a cruel editor.  Believe you me, the part that got bit off and thrown away was THE BEST.  Oh you can't believe how beautifully - almost ... elegantly - I expressed the dangers - as I see them - of relying on the idea of education. You can't believe it.  You probably shouldn't believe it (particularly if you've ever read how i make a case!) .  That's sort of how I feel about what education promises. 

Cheney made quite a statement yesterday.  And my friend J is beside himself over it.  Up in arms.  Oh no.  Too many bodies and parts.  Ironically, I am sitting here quietly, laboring over the idea of others' perceptions of us - not opinions, but perceptions and how they affect our ability to be effective.  I have to work through this idea and get something pithy, even charming out of it.  Ha.  It's a good thing I have no fear of just dumping something. 

At any rate, J. called.  J emailed.  J's upset.  J and I share a belief that our relationship with Europe and the UK matters.  Which makes Cheney's choice of dress a little disturbing.  The pictures aren't pretty - well, unless you're a ski bum (and even those guys can style it.)  The ski cap features the legend ' Staff 2001', stitched prominently across the brow.   

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Vice President Dick Cheney raised eyebrows on Friday for wearing an olive-drab parka, hiking boots and knit ski cap to represent the United States at a solemn ceremony remembering the liberation of Auschwitz.

Other leaders at the event in Poland on Thursday marking the 60th anniversary of the death camp's liberation, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wore dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots.

I wonder if party loyalty runs so deep that this can be excused.  It can't, of course.  We call episodes like these 'inexcusable'. 

Not without a hitch, quite a few lost lives, and significant swaths of non-participation, but the elections in Iraq seem to have been pulled off.  I'm happy for those who could to have experienced the democratic process. Now there's just that little nagging issue of whether this will translate into democracy. 

Anyone who's had occasion to struggle for a genuine conversation (not just the 'ou sont les toilettes?' variety) with a non-native English speaker knows how difficult it is to weed idioms out of your repertoire.  It's frickin' amazing, how littered our speech is with the things.  Just when you nip one in the bud, you discover you've got three of them standing in line and damn if you can think of an alternative way of saying the same thing. 

Some of the same crap gets in the way of our public conversation with other countries about democracy. For people just getting aquainted with the system - not everyone is a student of Greek history - it's difficult to sort out what's democracy, what's the democratic process, what's free market and which has the most value.  To them.  We have a little trouble sorting out the concepts ourselves, but that doesn't seem to stop us from waltzing in and educating folks. 

And education's great.  In theory.  In theory, the finest teachers go where no man has gone (this kind of yapping deserves anthem-like phrases, don't you think?) with near perfect objectivity, with no agenda other than pure education. 

I'd even take leading by example - skip the education.  But here's what happens on the ground; westerners can't keep their motives straight and their self-important hands off anything that glitters. Westerners can't quit yapping about how grand it all is at the very same time they can't bring themselves to demonstrate it.  It's hard.  It takes discipline.  Ethical discipline.  From all political persuasions and temperaments.  From the greedy, business-y bastards, of course.  But from the sensitive, bleeding hearts, too.  In the effort to defend the natives from American colonization, the sentimental are prone to going straight for the "let us decide what's good and bad, what ruins their culture for them" line of reasoning.  As it were.  Referring to the reasoning. 

The administrators of funds with lofty names, the imported corporate expertise, and a good portion of our state department are prone to name-dropping 'democracy.'  And then not demonstrating it. 

One doesn't get that many chances to watch the democratic process with any detachment.  It's a good chance to pay attention. 

ha.  i expect, if I was trapped on an island and my rescue hinged on describing the difference between a parable, an analogy, a simile (i had to pause for a correction; i wrote 'smilie' first and I CAN'T explain the  emoticons, no way, although they're handy little critters) and a metaphor, I could do it.  Probably.  But in general, it's not a big deal to me.  I tend to do most of my thinking, as it were, before I write so whatever spews out, spews. 

i don't think this will prove to be a parable.  i'll be happy if i manage to make a point.  i suspect that's a built in hazard of saying anything about words.  Words.  They're unbelievably unreliable, sometimes even meaningless, even when they're used in the service of Very Meaningful Expression.  They depreciate faster than (well, I've never owned a new car, so I can't make a ... oh, hell.  Comparison.)  No, no, no.  It takes a whole lot of words from one single source before I start believing there's a correlation between the words and the whole story.  OH NO.  Did you hear me write that I don’t trust people?  No.  I don’t trust their words.  I figure the more valuable exercise is paying attention to what they mean.  Besides, a whole LOT of people are busy being other things than wordsmiths, so I don’t quite see the point of insisting they master the subtleties of word meanings. 

on the other hand, I'm crazy about what words represent.  The huge, shifting ideas that come packed into one leeeelte thingie made up of a few syllables.  okay, or one syllable.  I remember the first time I heard the word 'surrogate.' It never became part of my vocabulary - I don't seem to have a lot of use for it - but it introduced an entirely new idea to me. 

Recently (eeek.  it might've been yesterday!) I wrote 'universal approbation' – it tripped way too easily off my fingertips.  I didn’t really know what it meant and said so – and of course, SAYING so, made me look it up where I discovered that it was a completely different shape than the little hole I was trying to squeeze it into.  Polar opposite.  I solved that little problem by striking the whole paragraph. 

I can imagine someone who’s read this blog for awhile (a long suffering reader, indeedy) thinking: liar, liar.  You flipped out when Cheney ridiculed – what’s his name.  Kerry.  – Kerry for saying he’d run a more ‘sensitive war.’  Yeah, I did.  And I’d do it again, because Cheney was fucking with the IDEA of what words mean. 

Anyway.  Oh.  I think I’ve arrived at the point!  Whee.  Ideas, in my estimation, are the jewels of … ha.  Everything.  And words can put those ideas in the hands of anyone.  Words are a most democratic tool available to anyone who can speak or write. 

No one on Mindsay is crafting international policy (and if they are, I’d like a word).  We hardly trading in classified material (and I if we are, send me your non-disclosure agreement. )  We’re trading IDEAS.  (Well, most are).  I, for one, believe that writing those words – those unreliable, wispy things that just float around, doing jack shit, until we shape them into what they mean – is the finest way of prying open an idea.  For ourselves.  Maybe for someone else, if we’re really lucky.  We all edit ourselves enough in real life.

Awhile ago, I was accused of being pretentious - I’m sure he meant in general, but specifically for using the expression ‘organic principle(s)’  (I think.  I’m not looking it up.)  Well.  There you go.  He’s entitled.  I don’t care.  Pretty simple.  Organic thinking’s a powerful idea that builds powerful infrastructures and – as an added feature to dazzle – acts as its own litmus test.  Run a project or proposal through the organic ‘rules and regulations’ and you’ll know whether or not you got it.  It’s contributed to important architecture and social welfare programs and … well, lots of stuff.  Imagine that.  All in one little word.  Okay.  Two of them. 

The morning is still thick with jasmine but I'm doing my best to cover the scent with my first cigarette.  I doubt smoking is doing much to help get rid of my inner ear infection, but it's one of the few things on a short list of "what I can do without getting seasick.'  Handing out advice against contracting an inner ear infection - there's another thing. 

I doubt anyone ever wants a cautionary tale.  Maybe you have to live under extreme circumstances - a system with weasely informers posing as neighbors and terrible penalties for daring to disagree with The Authorities - before there's any chance of relishing a story that urges you to pay attention.  I bet any warning I have against inner ear stuff will fall on deaf - ha.  well.  you get it. 

back in side, where it's toasty warm and out of jasmine's way ... I'm susceptible to iei's (ooo.  my first anacronym!)  because i flew with a bad cold.  ow.  the lovely folk at Amsterdam's airport took care of me. 

In an astonishing lapse of memory, I did it again a year or so later.  Flew to London - bad enough - but then traveled to Bond Street on the Tube.  Boo hoo hoo in the middle of Brits Against Boo Hoo Hooing.  Ay.  Arrived at the office and finally got my much needed sympathy.  Well, as good as they could give, after recoiling.  They tucked me in a taxi and dispatched me to the hotel.  There are some kick ass hotels in London - and the Lanesboro, built as a hospital, is one of them.  Even a visit to its website is like an itsy bitsy holiday.  I cannot rave enough about the bar - a gentleman's club library.  Oh yeah.  The ear. 

The room wasn't ready.  I spent a portion of my childhood living in a hotel.  I get 'the room isn't ready' clause.  Strange thing about having your head split apart from the inside - you just don't feel much like standing on ceremony.  My journey on the tube was just a bunch of sniffles compared to the wails that erupted from me at the front desk.  Inconsolable, that's what I was. 

They found a room pretttty quickly.  And you won't be surprised it was a massive upgrade - from room to suite in one short exploding head.  It really didn't matter how fabulous it all was, though.  There's not a lot of whatever it takes to appreciate anything.  And you can't just snuggle in for a long nap, trusting that when you wake, it'll all be better.  For some reason, excrutiating head pain spikes into utterly intolerable head pain when now you lay it down to sleep.  It's kind of a tricky bitch that way. 

No.  No napping.  Better to take a soothing bath in the gorgeous cherry wood and fine marble bath with a billion little copper nozzle-faucety things.  I made that up.  I don't remember what kind of wood or what kind of anything was in that room.  A hotel bathroom looks like a hotel bathroom.  It was nice. What i DO remember was the Molton Brown condiments.  (As an aside, it's my recommended measure of a hotel room.  The bathroom condiments are key.)  The Lanesboro doesn't give you little baby versions of anything.  Noooo.  You get huge pots of stuff to dip into, just as if you were at your luxurious, marble-outfitted own home.  So.  A bath with a cup, maybe two, of the honey colored, better than jasmine-dreamy scented (yah.  that's where the jasmine comes back in.  ha.  no smoking guns forgotten here.)  bath gel. 

I settled back, as one will when one's trying to take a soothing bath.  And then I fiddled with a few of those knobs and things, as one will when one's trying to take a bath in a tub with ... well, you get it.  I pushed the button that was going to bring the jacuzzi jets to life.  And it did.  Just that.  Jacuzzi jets.  With lots and lots - and lots - of bath gel to work with.  And because someone who pushes buttons recklessly after pouring way more than their share of bath foam deserves this - the button would NOT turn the jets off.  Of course, they didn't operate because of user error, but when you're being consumed - when an entire bathroom is being consumed - by huge bubbling billows - it's just hard to get a grip on panic. 

And that's the whole of my cautionary tale.  Don't push buttons that start something if you're incapable of pushing buttons to stop it. 

Personally, I thought there were better cautionary tales to tell today.   There was a good program on PBS last night about that every-tricky credit card industry and its enabler, the Comptroller of the (I forget.  The treasury.  No.  Currency.  That's it.)  But no one wants to know those small details capable of ruining entire lives - those small details are ALWAYS what the other guy, the idiot, fails to notice.  He gets what he deserves. 

And there's just a good, simple look at Social Security at jamesN's blog.  Does that sound too snoozy? 

You know, maybe the deal with cautionary tales is that they just about all have the same lesson.  So.  Heard one, you've heard 'em all. 

There's a lot of stuff to not know.  Every time I run into yet another thing I never heard of, barely considered, have no experience of, I'm guaranteed a kick.  Almost a thrill.  I've probably been able to sustain this habit-cum-addiction because the thrill of discovery has never translated into a need to fix that ignorance.   I mean really fix the ignorance. Ignorance isn't all bliss - it's sometimes a function of how much time there is in a day and life.  The things I DO know were built slowly; they accumulated and connected and supported each other.  yap yap yap. 

The environment.  There's a topic I know nothing about.  I might have already told you about the first time we had an eagle soar over the farm house in Iowa.  Ooooo, I raced like the wind to Walmart and got myself a gourmet birdfeeder (I DID - I DID tell this. Sorry. ) Who knew they only liked fresh kill? Maybe eagles aren't even a category of The Environment.  Windmills are, though, aren't they?

If I know anything at all about windmills, it's because I knew a guy who - go figure - is one of the premier windmill guys.  I bet they have a title with a little more gravitas.  He travels the country doing what windmill guys do.  He installed the windmill at my brother's house - an envelope deal that collects solar energy and heats accordingly - the whole thing's off the grid.

I know a little about water from living in California.  And organic farming, from knowing some serious organic farmers.  Um.  What else?  Oh.  I read John Kenneth Galbraith a long time ago.  And I used to love reading the editor of Natural History whose name I can't remember right now.  And I watch NOVA. Ohohohoh.  AND I took a class on survival plants in the many habitats we have around here - crazy about that class.  It was one thing I didn't know after another.  Amazing, just amazing.  For weeks, every Saturday afternoon was spent winding down from all the adrenaline I was shot with during the morning field trips.   

You see, it all adds up to nothing. Which was no good at all during all that campaigning last year, when the administration's record on the Environment became a talking point.  I didn't need to talk, but neither could I listen when I knew nothing. 

Months later, I still know nothing.  I don't have enough of a foundation to understand the little education I gave myself.  I use the word 'education' pretty loosely - I still haven't finished reading Robert S. Devine's 'Bush versus the Environment.'  Still, there's a simple enough point made that even I got it (probably because it was made quick, before too much information stacked up):  the hydrogen-powered cars that are the poster children of his policy can get their hydrogen from renewable-energy sources.  OR they can get their hydrogen from the fossil fuel and nuclear guys.  I might as well quote, okay, in case you thought I was capable of explaining it (LOLLLLL):  'Experts predict that producing hydrogen from these dirty sources would create so much pollution .... that it would negate most of the gains realized by having hydrogen-powered cars.' 

No.  I know nothing about the environment and I am not setting out to repair that.  I just want to know enough to detect when there's some manipulation afoot. 

than read a tsunami update, but if you DON'T and are vaguely interested in a model of relief work that's just plain old effective, i've copied and pasted an email I received this morning.   No.  Just a portion of that email - the relevant part:   

For the many new subscribers to this email update who made contributions in connection with the tsunami, rest assured we will not jam your inbox with updates or appeals for financial assistance. Our hope is that, with monthly or so updates, we can inform people who have invested their money with us what we are doing with it to help people and why. More frequent updates are posted on our website - about the tsunami and activities throughout the world.

The enormous human tragedy caused by the tsunami generated a level of generosity that has been both inspiring and humbling for all of us at Direct Relief to witness. We work in a warehouse - not the natural focus of such intense, heartfelt, and genuine compassion by tens of thousands of people.

As we have received financial support that, for us, is unprecedented, it has been clear that the money designated for the tsunami was not for our organization simply to do what we always do - but rather for the people who have suffered such tragic loss. That is why we have completely segregated tsunami contributions, and we will spend 100% of it only on new expenses directly related to assisting people in Asia. We will pay all administrative expenses out of other organizational resources, including our reserves if necessary.

People have made significant personal sacrifice to not do other things with their money in sending us contributions for the tsunami, and we believe it is right for our organization to do the same. We wish it were possible to convey to each person the depth of compassion that we've been privileged to witness and also the profoundly gracious thanks that we receive from people we help. That thanks is properly directed at those of you whose financial contributions make every activity of Direct Relief possible.

TSUNAMI ACTIVITIES SUMMARY: Direct Relief has provided over 43 tons of specifically requested medical material aid to tsunami-affected areas over the past five weeks. The wholesale value of these materials is over $10.6 million. To see the most recent update of activity, including how tsunami-designated funds are being spent, detailed lists of what aid is being furnished, and photos from Sri Lanka, click here.

PRODUCT CONTRIBUTIONS: Companies large and small have provided funding support and substantial product donations to address tsunami victims current health problems and anticipated problems. Over the past five weeks, Direct Relief has received over $57 million wholesale in product contributions from healthcare companies. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, BD (Becton Dickinson), Abbott, Alcon Laboratories, 3M Pharmaceuticals, Kendall Healthcare, Tyco, and Merck have each made substantial product contributions. To see all the companies that have made product contributions, click here.

POLICY REGARDING OUR USE OF DESIGNATED TSUNAMI FUNDS: As noted above, Direct Relief adopted, over one month ago, a strict policy regarding the use of designated tsunami funds. To read the detailed description of how our organization will treat any money designated by the donor as for tsunami assistance, click here.

Thank you.

I know that it's not true that everything's sort of circular - a mobius chain of ideas and incidents - and, so, eventually connected - I know, I know, I know - but you'd be surprised how that doesn't stop me from working it, anyway.  I'm armed with conceptual tape and staples, always at the ready to MAKE little stray ends stick together.  Of course, they put up plenty of resistance and defeat me easily.  They just won't do it, they will not let themselves be tidied up.  Unless there is a connection, unless there's one part that leads to another part that opens up a whole other way to consider the matter.   So, that's why I do it - because sometimes they do connect.    

An exciting example in real time follows (ha.):  This morning, I just can't decide what to think about. I woke up thinking about guerilla marketing and writing a few cards for Special Occasions - sympathy, birthday.  Just those two.  Hardly the full spectrum.  I tried Valentine's Day cards, but Scary Fairy's got a particular attitude about that love thang.  (If you trot over to scaryfairyland, the love ones begin with .. ! 'love')

Then my attention got side-tracked by the potential - only potential- for a Koran-ian constitution in Iraq that bars the participation of women.  Which made me think of Erzebet Bathory, the Blood Countess, of Hungary.  And the misterghoulie had a really good clip about Ann Coulter's phenomenal refusal to just frickin' say she was wrong.

Clearly, the theme is women. It's not exactly how i want to start my monday, but I'm kind of personally, philosophically opposed to not following my head (although the tape and staples could be put to good use if that were to happen). 

But the theme is not REALLY women.  I don't think.  It's cultural currents.  Tiny traditions we hold to, we invest in.  I don't know at all how Iraqi women might feel about the prospect of such a constitution.   Women find great comfort in social rules that are remarkably different from the rules Western women like to observe. Oh hell, we can barely agree on the rules, the traditions that work for us. 

And, if one felt like arguing this early in the morning, it could be argued that Erzsebet Bathory was a flawless expression of her age.  (lol because i'm refusing - RE.FU.SING - to give in to the impulse to elaborate.  Me?  I'm crazy about Hungarian/Habsburg Empire/Transylvanian history.)

Ann Coulter?  Well, she was the only piece that could've been taped to another.  (I'm totally making this up.  I do not know.  The temptation is way too strong to make a circle of Ann Coulter and the conservative arrogance that evidently can not say: We're wrong.  We made a mistake.  We're not stupid, we just made a mistake.  Like people do.)

So.  Not much satisfaction there.  There hardly ever is on first try.  But, like any good arts-and-crafts gal, I keep my material.  You never know when you'll need it.  

Long before the plumbers arrived yesterday morning, we knew it was going to be ugly.  The landlord, who keeps an office in the front of the house, likes to scold us when our cooking smells drift out of our apartment.  I finally had to send him a note - just days ago - with a sigh, reminding him that short of installing industrial ventilation, smells will wander freely in a Victorian house and while it wouldn't occur to me/us to complain about it (part of the charm), it was nevertheless a fact.  This little episode promised to be ... big, that's how thick and toxic and bubbly smelling it was. 

And when the plumbers uncapped the drain, we had an eruption.  A geyser.  I managed an old building in Hollywood with 1) a network of aging pipes and 2) an owner who preferred the monitor-it/do-as-little-as possible plumbing technique (oh yeah.  THAT works), so I've seen some ... eruptions.  This one was unparalleled in memory. 

The plumbers said they were glad I was there, a witness to their snaking the pipes.*so much suspense, then  - gasp!* They found girlie paraphenalia. Couldn't have been more disgusted.  They were so full of shit.   

We had ourselves a bit of a standoff.  I get it.  Pipe after pipe after pipe, they see nothing but evidence of people who imagine that a toilet or sink or disposal can - poooof! - make things magically disappear.  But it's kind of hard to look two men in the face who've developed that much contempt for the tampon.  It wasn't just the tampon.  They were on a roll about the stupid women. 

Which isn't to say that there aren't stupid women, just that it's a leap indeedy to go from using tampons straight to stupid.   

Later, long after the poo had dried, Sharon and I talked.  She told me about archaeological discoveries that covered an entire arc of Eastern Europe, discoveries that indicate matriarchal societies originally populated the area.  It's controversial.  Me, I don't get it.  Sharon patiently (and I do mean patiently) tried to explain both the controversy and the why of the controversy. 

I'm overly familiar with the heresies and closely related topics, but I have a silly hard time understanding how the modern mind, with all the tools of reason and libraries at its disposal, can reject the idea of a goddess-worshiping society.  I just don't understand.  Really.  Sharon tried - oh she tried - to explain something about the church and fear (honest, she got way more subtle than that, but when you can't wrap your head around the subtleties, well single syllable concepts are first resort).  I did not understand.  I understand intellectually, of course - it's not very hard, after all - but ... that's it. 

We hung up.  I gave A. the synopsis of the conversation and repeated my dopey, "I don't understand.  I don't understand what's so at risk to the church." 

"I don't think it's so much the church that rejects it," A said, A of the way too much testosterone for one body/brain.  "I think it's men." 

Edited:  Oh please oh please go read sharon (who started all this.  well.  after the poo incident).  She explains all, perfectly. 

Andiamo a italia.  Six of us, together, are going to Italy.  Two of the six are home-schooled teenagers, so the idea is to weave an education into the trip.  My brother, the artist, gets Art.  His wife, the singer, gets Music.  A, the musician, gets (oh, tell me THIS is fair) Pop Culture.  I got left with History.  Italian History.  I have the qualifications of a doorknob. 

It's all relative, I guess.  I know a hell of a lot more than they do - a consequence of traveling often to Italy and having a general fascination with European history.  No.  More than fascination.  I have an unquenchable appetite (can i do that?  use 'quench' for appetite?  or does it only go with thirst?  oh.  you know what i mean) ... I have one of those - those appetites - for the strange behavior of history.  The ingredients, the chemistry, the recording ... Honestly, privately, for ME, I consider it one of the most valuable parts of my makeup.   But ... how to convey that?   Especially when I already know that this group has a only the tiniest interest in history. 

I had a little zen moment at dawn.  (LOL.  it wasn't zen at all - only the first thing I thought of when I woke up.)  I love knowing Mussolini was captured on Lake Como, trying to tippy-toe outa there, quick.  They hauled him back to Milan and - pft. Hung him.  

I do not love knowing it because it's something to sling around, a good party tid-bit.  Those go down as well as cocktail weenies - fast, and then they just sit there, waiting for evacuation.  (I'm on a poo roll.) 

I love that it's another little incident - a story - that pins down a woooshy-swooshy billowing sheet we think of as the Shared Human Experience.  (Oooh.  Ick.  THIS is why I can't stand metaphor.  Ick ick ick.)  Mussolini's capture - in my head - plays along side a few seemingly unrelated things, like Lake Como's reputation as the most beautiful place on earth, and the Nazi theft of art works which was strangely organized and required careful transport, and Ceausescu's capture in 1989 - and the last Czar's execution and the policy of brutally - almost stupid with brutality - hunting down Jews. 

But - at dawn - it  came to me.  That 'fact' means nothing.  For me, it's wonderful.  It's an active ingredient, helps keep my head supple.  But it means nothing at all.  By itself, nothing.  Without context, nothing.  Hell, even with context, nothing. 

And I'm not going to waste any energy at all trying to make it mean something, trying to turn anyone on to loving history's bits and pieces.  I'm going to continue to indulge MY appetite, though, and live and travel and think into every corner I can get.  And if my travel companions want to join me in that conceptual adventure ... they're welcome.  Otherwise, the best I can do to change their experience is to permit them access to mine. 

Would that it were true, but men are not alike.  This makes it difficult for women in the throes of wild complaining - just when you want most to sort of huff and spit out 'men!', a little stop sign pops up in the head.  I can't count the number of times I've nearly choked on what would otherwise be a very satisfying ... burst.  Sigh.  Unfortunately, the truth'll slap that spit right back at you.  I know as many pathologically tidy men as I know unrepentant slobs, for instance.  Men who are far kinder and patient than most of the women I know. 

I just asked A. if he could think of other stereotypes or things women can usually agree to complain about.  He rattled off a list so fast, I couldn't even put them in the same format as above: men who won't ask directions, men who won't read instructions, men with the alpha-dog big-penis (I paraphrased) waving syndrome, men who work the sensitive new age attitude when, in reality, only doing what it tales to get laid, men who insist on playing mr. fix-it but have no idea what they're doing. 

The speed of his reply just made me laugh.  (I'm still laughing as I type this because the list comes dangerously close to being pretty ... accurate. Ha.)

There's no purpose to this other than to start the process of examining it.  We've (not just me, but a 'we')started thinking of thinking about  (oh yeah ... no rushing into these things) whether any men who've ... 'messed up' something in a relationship would ever seek outside help in repairing whatever they messed up.  A. says no, it's not how men think (yah, well, I assure you - it's not how HE thinks which accounts for the loonnnnnnggg, long time it takes him between fucking up and finally fixing it with any permanence.) 

I don't know.  It's hard to say about men.  It's hard for men to say anything about men.  Isn't that strange?  How even the most articulate can go single syllabic when the topic comes up? 

ay.  you can't turn around in the new economy without finding someone urging everyone else to jump on in, start an online business.  You don't have to have a product.  You don't have to offer a service.  You don't actually have to offer much of anything - a webpage will do.  That's where you assemble all the products and services that other people offer.   

it honestly took me a long time to figure out why I rarely got anything useful when I did a search.  I just wanted genuine information, believed that genuine information was available, but before I could ever get to the primary source material, FIRST there were twenty sites that catalogued information and then THAT information catalogued more information and ... it took forever to get to the root.  I just didn't understand that there were hundreds of front men.  I didn't know they were devoting hours and hours to figuring out keywords and fiddling with search engine optimization just so their pages popped up front and center.  Who knew you had to learn how to do an effective search?

Anyway, one of the things the online business pundits recommend - highly - is offering a newsletter.  The principle aim of the newsletter is to promote your own expertise.  Apparently, you don't have to actually have expertise - just promote it.  The implications are loud and clear: if you say you're an expert, if you claim expertise, someone will believe it. 

So, I turned the idea over.  And then over again.  Brushed out the wrinkles.  Studied it.  Turned it over once more and decided I couldn't do it.  I just don't have any of it.  Expertise.  I get the point - if nothing else, become a clearinghouse for others' expertise.  So that, you're essentially an expert in collection.  *hmm.  she mulls this one over*  Nope.  I can't get over that 'expert' thing.  Yes, yes, there's no room for a defeatist in this new economy, I should just step aside and give up my cyberspot to the next one in line. 

But it's trueeeee!  Just about anything I know is 1) only valuable in context, 2) generally, all in my own head and 3) plain old doesn't count as expertise.  Being marginally (and often, accidentally) better at something than the next person can't possible qualify as expertise. 

I'm reminded of my short stint designing the front ends of websites.  I'd only offered my services as a provider of editorial content.  That's it.  More, I openly confessed to knowing nothing at all about graphics.  I didn't.  But four years ago, in our little nook of American, neither did anyone else.  And there it was, web design expertise, thrust on me. 

And so, I wonder, which came first: the need for expertise, the need for someone to be an authority or the expert who needed to spread the word? 

Yeah, well, when you need a title, any will do.  5:01.  Let's see how long it takes to blog this bit of useless babbling.

A mere two days ago, I was solo brainstorming, actually entertaining the idea of starting a newsletter, but  trying - desperately - to think what the hell I could fake anyone out about when it came to Expertise because evidently one can't have a newsletter without being an expert in something. 

I'm thinking I could be Editor in Chief of a newsletter devoted to Finding Spiritual Strength Without Metaphysics.  Easily half of the people I'm close to are, if not card carrying members, habitues of the New Age club, able to waltz right in without anyone batting an eye.  Alarms go off, metal detecting wands get brandished, people glare if I so much as step into the line.  That's okay.  Someone has to unenlightened.  It might as well be me. 

Unenlightened doesn't mean I don't have ideas - nosirreebob.  (I never say that, I never even think it: nosirreebob.  Another one of life's little mysteries.) 

I just had to lop off an entire paragraph for violating my Editorial Policy - and a newsletter doesn't even exist.  Enough.  I'm wasting all my expertise.  ha. 

I'm not nor have I ever been a sickly 'un, but I do suffer from the leftover of a full military whiplash and the creeping power of sensitive sinuses.  Wheeee.  They were always a little dodgy, but a year spent in a Suffolk farmhouse surrounded by rape fields and lavender and the occasional breeze from the local sugar beet factory did 'em in (to sort of, badly, paraphrase Eliza Doolittle.)

Santa Barbara, with its ocean view and daily marine layer, hands out ferocious headaches to anyone with even a baby sinus condition.  Oaw.  Oooaaaawww.  I'm cranky to begin with, but these headaches that won't dissolve until the weather changes are ... not helpful.  There you go.  Not helpful. 

A headache, courtesy of a lovely community in enlightened (it's apparently my word of the week, in one form or another: enlightened) American, is nothing.  There are about nine billion trillion resources to relieve my brain of the burden of performance: a fabulous land line by voice ip, cel phone, cable internet, a blog community of thoughtful folk, books, PBS (and The West Wing) on tv, a great public library, two big ol' bookstores within walking distance, kickass copy centers ...  Well, you get the point.  I have no business complaining.  And I'm not. 

I'm taking the opportunity to remember that entire countries - the ones we're so eager to get on the same damn democratic page - suffer way more compromise to their health than we do.  (I've blogged about this before, I'll probably blog about it in the future.  I don't expect to get tired of it.)  Good for us, lucky us.  They'll eventually get their health care up to speed.

The thing that attracts me to the idea, over and over and over, is not the specifics of their health care.  Nor is it the simple truth that their collective decision making and participation is compromised by compromised health (although, I'll admit, I do like toying with that.  Who doesn't know what a pain in the ass it is to go to the ER or a clinic and have to fill out legal forms and documentation and HISTORIES.  At exactly the time when you're feeling reallllly rotten and only want to sleep.)

Nope.  I am most attracted by what it means to that nation's or people's idea of life.  The preciousness of life.  Quality of life.  Liberty and freedom versus the state's responsibility. 

We're seeing Jared Diamon at UCSB tonight.  Maybe he'll pick up where my aching head can't be bothered to go today.   

Right or wrong is of no concern to me – it’s just true, that people will decide the quality of our character by what we look like.  I returned to the states with a European wardrobe, jewelry, and makeup, but in the most idiotic of moves, I didn’t return to a city.  I went to a small Midwestern town that prides itself on its alternative … well, all-around alternativity. 

One woman, of the earthy, no-makeup school, who joined us in the local bar only occasionally because her boyfriend was one of the group, could barely conceal her opinion that I was silly, spoiled, and shallow.   All of those. I probably am, but she decided it without benefit of … well, anything.  No big deal, just one story among many. 

Eventually, she joined us when the women were all sitting at one end of the table, discussing (wow!  I remember!) science’s grip on the American mind because P.  was a certified energy healer.  It was an appropriate time to tell them of the Hungarian scientists I worked with (not as a scientist, but writer).  At that time, Eastern European scientists did not work under the publish or perish rule and it was perfectly ordinary to be literate in multiple disciplines.  The soft sciences and soft methodology are – well, were – highly regarded.  Although they were short on lab money and often worked in their garages, their science was creative and fluid and exciting.  One group had been able to replicate – but not explain – an experiment in reducing mass (heavy mass, I think.  I don’t remember) by up to 10%.  Theoretically.  In practice, they were able to replicate a 2% reduction. 

Another scientist claimed to have refuted Einstein’s second principle.  Law.  Whatever.  He’d already managed to recreate T Henry Morray’s radiant energy.  Of course, I was enchanted with the experiment.  He used Christmas tree lights.  But, he was also fiddling with old, incomplete notes of Tesla – apparently, deliberately left incomplete – when he had his own ‘Eureka’ moment. 

Anyway.  The earthy, no-makeup woman transformed before my very eyes.  It was not hard to see that she’d never entertained the possibility that I was anything more than nifty, swifty clothes and Italian shoes.  (EDITED:  I didn't have nifty swifty clothes.  Just Italian shoes.  My wardrobe was chic relative to overalls.)

It was ironic, really, that she was won over by a story that could have only been in my arsenal because I was intellectually available.  No one gets access to that kind of thinking and those experiments because of chic clothes and good perfume.   But I was also … um … well, my imagination was available.  I had NO background at all in science.  None.  So I didn’t persist in the project to satisfy some scientific ambition.  A year and a half of 3 visits a week – each of them hours and hours long, with way too much palinka (eeek.  Plum brandy) and the inevitable palinka headache, a drained bank account, an excruciatingly difficult conversation … what?  You think that’s fun and promises fame and fortune?  Go on.  You try it. 

This whole long blog reared its head because Jared Diamond spoke at UC Santa Barbara the other night.  I was disappointed.  Really disappointed.  Nothing like a little disappointment to make you waste the next three days trying to figure out whether it matters at all that it was a book tour and not a lecture, that in the interest of seducing his target audience of under-25-year olds, he got jiggy with the hard stuff and professed a naivete I can’t believe he possessed, that in spite of a scheduled Q&A session, he had only the most superficial replies: Vote.  Vote with your pocket book.  Donate your money to good causes. 

I don’t suppose it does matter.  To anyone else.  Fine.  Just fine.  But it matters to me and right now, that’s what matters.  He had the opportunity to use his influence – oh yeah, the man’s a star – and talk to everyone in that hall about the power of learning.  Not the power of the information that gets collected.  They can buy your fucking book and read that.  And not the power of knowledge.  Yah.  We all know that one.  Get a little knowledge, a little expertise and that’s great for dueling.  Just great.  But learning. 

I guess it’s interesting to me that his topic was Collapse of societies.  Maybe you have to buy the book to get the bit about the way we learn, the reasons we learn, our entrenched learning habits. 

I can not play volleyball. 

And I can't do rapid fire puns.  I love when pals and acquaintance play it, but that moment when they expect me to take my turn is ugly.  A. says my mind works like a lawnmower getting stuck in deep, wet grass. 

He's way too good at it.  He plays music for Jesus every Sunday.  Played drums, now guitar for a local Lutheran church.  He told the two ministers about a theologian who was given a choice between advanced students and beginners and elected to teach the latter.  He wanted to move on to greener pastors. 

This morning, he told me about the woman who lost her interest in delivering babies.  She was having a midwife crisis. 

This is new, these little stories.  He usually just plays with the long list of words while I wait, wait, WAIT for just one - even a little one - to come to me.  Po' A.  He loves hanging with the rest of my family - they can sling puns til the cows come home.  I used to wonder how it could be, how I alone could be without any talent, but I ended up deciding I made a pretty good audience.  The puns get better when someone gets the puns.  It's a fine arrangement. 

So there was this idea and a plan grew and now I've taken action. 

It's been just plain good fortune to have always known people who could manufacture ideas like crazy.  It fell to me to become the one who implemented.  To the casual observer, it will seem I'm too cautious, but I've actually been the polar opposite and just learned to run any idea through my own screening system (which doesn't mean it's right - just accumulated experiences).  Anyway, my own ideas get vetted, too, and over and over, get tossed out. 

But not this one.  A newsletter from JoJo Booda for kids - girls - survived.  Encouraged by one of mindsay's own dear men, a pretend newsletter grew some legs.  I worked it (and after animating the hell out of it, actually went right back to the original animation.  sigh.  Loading time, you know.)

If you've got kids - girls, in particular - or have an interest in girls having a few tools for participating in their future, I'd love to hear your remarks, ideas, criticism - whatever.  I've put up a basic web page here.

(It should open in its own window so you don't have to leave the comfort of mindsay.  If it doesn't ... whoops.  sorry.)

There'll be no religion talk, no politics.  (Huh.  Written, it reads awfullllllly safe ... well, that's the point, I guess.  it's enough to expect kids to be learning the stuff that'll always keep them happy.)  And no psychologizing without it getting looked at by mia madre and her cohorts (school psychologists, all). 

And that's it.  Thanks.  And, if you've read this whole post and are making noises at what a big waste of time it was, sorry.  Oooooooohhhhossooooooo sorrrrrrry.  (and I meant it, too.) :)

Being an American is difficult.  Being an American alert to all things and always developing an opinion is impossible.  My own personal technique is to simply not have an opinion on many issues and just accept that a little curiosity, if I can muster even that, is good enough. 

This technique wasn't invented as an excuse.  The moment came when I realized I just honestly didn't care about some things.  It's hard to care when you don't know anything, when you don't have a clear enough perspective and (oooh. my favorite word.) context to make any sense of it. 

I am not the only one who suffers this.  And Americans are not the only nation that suffers this.  It's been observed that an outsider - an objective foreigner - can see the affairs of a country or culture much better than the ones who make up the country/culture.  It's more than a casual observation.  It's an archetype.  Men as different as de Tocqueville and Twain (and women like Rebecca West) have assumed the role and given us still-pertinent and valuable insights. 

It's a useful exercise, to look at another country/culture objectively, to consider its habits and social mechanisms.  Oh hell.  I could go on and on about why it's useful, but it's self evident.  So there. 

Now, every once in awhile, I check in with the English language newspapers in Budapest.  Today, I wanted to read what someone, anyone had to say about the Bratislava meeting. 

The Saudi ambassador seems to have been recalled after the Hungarian prime minister called the Saudi football/soccer team 'terrorists.'

Tilos Radio is off the air for 25 days - its license suspended after one of its hosts, drunk (a pretty easy condition to achieve in Hungary), said Christians should be killed.

There's a big public debate about whether a list of Communist-era informers (sometimes collaborators - which explains why you still don't want to use the word 'collaborate' in former satellite countries, sometimes spies) should be made public.

Farmers from all over the country have been gathering in the capital for big fat farmers' protests - they want EU subsidies and transparency and I forget what else, but they've been screwed so many times, I think they should demand anything they damned well want. 

Yep.  That's what's happening in a country that's still learning about democracy and the free market. 

I wonder what's happening here.  I tried to check in at The Spectator-UK, but all their essays are about Charles' wedding and those frickin' meddling constitutional historians. I just need a report from a good outsider. 

Apropos of nothing at all, I thought of Martin Luther King’s gorgeous sermon to a nation:  I had a dream.  ‘Thought’ is the wrong word; it flickered, for just a moment, big and powerful, then – poof – was gone.  A smack (and not a light one, either.  It left a mark.) I had a dream. 

A man calls people to join him, to share a vision.  A simple vision, a vision almost impossible not to appreciate.  And, of course, most did appreciate it – and many of those flipped into high gear, trying to beat the vision down.

I know we like to think that racism’s about ignorance and fear, but I’ve always thought that embracing that explanation meant we missed the part where the racists are working with the weight of their own psychologies.  Adding a heap of scorn and loathing on to the other side of the scale starts feeling like you’ve balanced things. 

The activist believes the racist is being stubborn in ignoring anything that conflicts with his or her ideas and so the received wisdom is to coax, coax, coax them into the fold with promises of education: come to us and we’ll remove your fear. 

I think the racist isn’t being stubborn.  I think there’s little in our culture that teaches how to empathize, or how to probe the subtleties of human … being, and if someone doesn’t know how, if someone only hears: Do it.  You’ll like it.  Um … yeah, well, thanks.  That’s a lot like telling me that I can do amazing things if only I code the hell out of a webpage, pass a few variables, add an extraordinary backend.  Yeah.  I know.  I don’t know how.  And the billion tutorials seem to think I’m far more advanced than I am.

So.  When faced with a racist, I like considering that a man’s head is so focused on keeping his place in line and fending off any rivals, he just isn’t interested in any pot o’ gold under the surface.  Further, I suspect he wouldn’t know how to get beneath the surface, even if you loaded him up with all the tools.  All of which explains why I refuse to exercise patience in the face of racism.  (Doesn’t it?  Doesn’t it explain why?  Oh, you don’t care.  That’s not the point.)    

Racism’s not getting a lot of coverage these days.  No.  We’re busy restoring a better relationship with Europe. 

President Bush has now toured the EU and most of the media gives him high points for the reconciliation.  It’s my own opinion that it was almost entirely ceremony.  That’s all.  But I guess the ceremonial works, too.

I wonder what portion of the American public is confused.  During the campaign, many MANY were encouraged to polish up their disdain for any stinkin’ Europe.  OH STOP IT.  I’m not suggesting that contempt for European opinion is in any way racist – but the tools for understanding and working with ‘the other’ – the one that threatens your own psychology – are certainly similar.   Collectively, we do not have them. 

a few of the mindsay nice-meisters invented the birthday blog, a very nice invention indeed.  this morning, i dipped into blog land to find a nice little collection of birthday greetings.  good wishes and good cheer - their potency is amazing. 

i like my birthday as well as anyone likes their birthday, but i LOVE other people's birthdays.  i love singing happy birthday primarily, i think, because i know all the words.  and it's a waltz.  i love the opportunity to just ... celebrate the person (and usually, it has nothing to do with a party, because most of my friends live far, far FAR away).  celebrate your friendship on any OTHER day and it's a wee bit (for someone like me) melodramatic.  I'm sure plenty of my friends feel neglected, but ... I hope not.  I hope they know how their stories and lives weave through mine, how they're genuinely included and (yah, true) cherished. 

i have one friend in particular who does not know this - he has complained about it numerous times and numerous times, I've tried to explain.  he needed something more than i could give, i guess.  two years ago, he wrote a very snippy email, indignantly calling an end to our friendship because of my lack of attention.  i flirted with the idea of calling him instantly and making all the repairs, but the truth was/is ... that i DID cherish him, he was a constant focus and I provided the best kind of friendship I was capable of - considering he's a doctor of some consequence, courted world-wide, and always enroute to a speaking engagement.  When he's not running the lab at a premier research hospital. 

he sent another email recently.  he had no recollection of his friendship-severing note. 

i think i will call him today, because of the greetings I found here and in my email account.  It's the beauty of the domino effect - it's that easy to start the day with good will and simple generosity. 

thank you.

i just skipped part 1 and 2, not being in the business of educating the completely ignorant. 

It's a sign of something, I'm told, that the ranks of the self employed have grown dramatically in the last few years.  (oh my god, that was even boring to WRITE).  And when they get around to doing pie-charts, it's women who represent the biggest slice. 

I'd like to think that lots of those women in that big slice are creating product and services that are part of the infrastructure: health care programs, bits of pieces of bio-technology, software development, machinery.  I don't care if they are or not, I'd just like to think they could. 

There are probably stats on who's doing what, but when as a newly minted card writer/designer, I wander around the internet, I find that an awful lot of those women filling the pie slice are also involved in crafts: jewelry-purse-soap-accessories making.  A lot are peddling gift baskets.  Another lot have jumped on affiliate marketing websites.

And all are seeking encouragement and advice from each other.  It's heartwarming.

And explains why there's so much struggle and whimpering and fear.  Here's my completely informal, unofficial, wholly unscientific take on it: women are too frickin' nice to each other - even when someone's requested serious criticism/help.  Even when we see that women are perfectly capable of absorbing thoughtful criticism and applying it to good effect.  Even then, women will cooo and ooooh and ahhh. 

I'm not suggesting it's not sincere.  Not at all.  Nor am i suggesting that women should be harsh.  Good god, no.  No one does better work after harsh criticism - well, no one I've ever met. 

But - what a sacrifice.  We're so damned nice, we barely help each other. 

I might be fairly new to pushing my own product, but I've been an independent contractor nearly my whole working life.  Freelancer, not maker-of-original product.  If it was written, I wrote it: business plans, press releases, scripts and treatments.  If it was a creative marketing campaign, I designed and delivered it (and did all the writing in between).  I worked for clients with a lot invested, a lot at stake; my fondness for organic design/work became more than a useful tool - it became critical.  It's only the very biggest boys with enough money in the marketing/advertising budget to correct badly conceived message and strategy. 

Nice doesn't enter into it.  Considered criticism, OF COURSE delivered with style, rules.

An interesting commentary on Republican complaints about the fibiluster.  That's all.   

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050321&s=legum

I know there are several mindsay bloggers who're becoming increasingly cranky as they discover that work actually interferes with their posting and web-wandering time.  This, I think, might be someone's salvation:  I just received an email alert - clearly, they're marketing this to EVERYONE if I got it. CMT's looking for someone to blog about The Dukes of Hazard.  The pay is $100,000.  visit www.cmt.com. 

ah.  Sunday morning.  (I'm sorry.  This one has an itsy bit of profanity). 

Sunday morning, and I'm wondering when do we decide that we could stand to explain ourselves? 

The Italians are a leeetle dissatisfied with the story, as it stands, for shooting Guiliana Sgrena's rescue vehicle and killing her body guard.  

And then there was that little episode at the UN where we tried to tell the assembled conference what position the world should take on abortions - which, curiously enough, isn't even close to the position I'd have expected us to lobby for. 

At a glance, they look like fundamentally different situations.  And they are, I think, if the question is confined to explaining.  But the idea of explaining oneself/ourselves belongs in a bigger arena - how much understanding do we share in the first place?  How much of appreciation do we have of the people we mean to influence, want to do business with, expect to join us in our campaign for world democracy.

We have very little.  

We persist, stubbornly, in not bothering to understand the rest of the world's point of view.  Somehow, that strikes us as requiring touchy-feely patience.  Even those among us who start out with more than their share of touchy-feely patience can still deliver it from a firm belief that we own superior everything. 

Well, now, there's an attitude that works well.   In our zeal for spreading the good news about America, we continue to miss - I mean MISS - that our system, our much-mentioned way of life is never going to look appealing to people who don't value the same thing.  Shit.  How hard is that to understand?  

No, no, don't tell me that we get it.  We say it.  We don't get it.  Reading a frickin' travel book that gives a capsule version of 'what the people are like' just isn't the same thing.  It takes applying the imagination.  And in an administration notorious for rewarding loyalty over merit ... you'd really have to persuade me that Condoleeza Rice had an imagination.  Wolfowitz heading up the World Bank?!!  STOP.  STOP.  I hope every country that needed the World Bank's infusions would reject them and fucking principle. 

Oh, this isn't about party lines.  I've seen junkets during Clinton's administration.  For chrissake.  What the hell are they trotting around for without ANY skills of ... absorption?  Our state department on the ground is so insulated and tethered to Washington ... no.  Don't tell me they've got any idea, either. 

So.  Since we can't be bothered to devote some serious resources to understanding the rest of the world, we at least better get our explanation skills up to speed.  Oh, yeah, I know there are a few who instantly pump up snarly at the idea of explaining America to the rest of the world.  If I could, I'd say to them, go.  Go pump up in the corner.  You can have your inflated ego, but the rest of us are watching economic alliances shift dramatically, and aren't we lucky that global economy depends on people being nice to our dollar. 

That alone, our economic survival, coupled with that global security thing, are enough to suggest we might want to try just a little harder to explain what the hell we're doing.  We already DO explain ourselves.  Over and over.  And over.  Because we never bothered to do it right the first time. 

I wonder what the hell I'm doing - not in a crisis kind of way (I'm not prone to crises), but in a 'what -?  what -?  what just happened?' kind of way.

It can be traced directly to the terribly romantic appeal of old-fashioned economies.  That's not a Luddite talking - I'm crazy about technology.  I just like sooooo much the idea of people inventing thingies, manufacturing thingies, building a marketplace of thingies that we all genuinely need. 

Which is how I get to that 'what the hell am I doing?' moment. And yet, as much as I'd like one, I don't own an inventor's head.  And while I am your dream typical shopper in habits and impulses, my tastes are totally a-typical, so there's not much chance I could anticipate what the market needs. 

I fix the petit-problem by remembering that I, personally, and honestly, would curl up and get seriously maniacal if you took away the arts or strictly intellectual pursuits.  It's been proven that I don't have to have original art or my library in my possession, but remove my access to them and I'll get pissed off. 

I don't represent much of a market, but if you add all of us up, we're reason enough for people to keep creating things that it looks like no one needs. 

I finally had something to blog about today: it's always been entertaining to me, how individually, caught in our moments of self-righteousness, each of us is the only one who does the work, the only one who sees the big picture, the only one who's not incompetent, lazy, stupid.  Everyone else on the job or team is deficient in some preeeetty big ways.  lol.  I love it. 

I've had several great and long conversations with friends in the last several weeks, those sorts of conversations that end with 'well, there you have it.  We're right.  They're wrong.  Now all they have to do is pay us."  (Because, of course, you're not REALLY right until there's a paycheck involved.)

So, there I was, all set to poke that idea around (although I did manage to slap it on the table, didn't I?  I'm one of the worst pot-lucker I've ever met, and know it, but I still want people to eat the stupid salad I brought) when I stopped by champy's howl against attempts to undermine the study of science, to sacrifice scientific method.  i paraphrase.  :)  uh-oh.  i'm going to further paraphrase.  'faith is easy to ' ... um.  i forget.  explain or understand.  well, you'll have to go read his blog if you want precision. 

The point that snagged my attention was the faith bit.  The faith being the essential ingredient of the Christian.  This, I do not understand. 

I'm curious - what benefits derive from being a Christian.  I'm afraid the Rapture Advocates don't fall under the scope of that question.  I get what benefits they figure they'll derive. 

And I don't ask what any particular church believes.  I don't care what any particular church believes.  I care what an individual believes.  I care about what ... sustains the individual.  Benefits.  Is that how it works?   Rewards.  Points.  Mercy?  Something given or bestowed on you for maintaining a faith? 

Or is it a trusted set of rules/guidelines for behavior? 

I am still an agnostic (and if you trust one of those quizzes, am edging towards aetheism) - but I come with a strong (HUGE) impulse for justice.  Never mind - I was going to list my measurable virtues - :) (some of which require a very small measuring device).  My point of listing them would have been to say: and what difference would it make to embrace Christianity. 

Without knowing what feeds and restores and nurtures your faith - in truth, not platitude, not litany - I do not understand what benefits the Christian, other than that fun moment one gets to create with pals: Well, there you have it.  We're right.  They're wrong."

pretty good, in the end, but mostly I just needed a title.  I loathe title-creation.  Once, it was a bit of an art and then, with the advent  of email, a requirement.  Of course, there IS the option of no title at all, signing up to the pick-a-word-any-word school of thought ... but there's some old, engrained need to give it a serious try.  Well, there's a recipe for loathing. 

Oh.  The point.  Yesterday was a blog driven by a small but sincere impulse to examine the mechanics of faith.  People were kind enough to reply with equal sincerity - and I do mean kind, because it could have so easily been perceived as a call to defend their faith and frankly, in personal matters, I don't think anyone has to defend anything.  (I feel quite differently when it comes to policy or public affairs that affect me, this is true.)

ANYWAY ... the entire day was accidentally steeped in a brew of spiritual vs. secular world government.  Can you imagine how FUN that is?  Wheeee.  (Well, actually, fun's the wrong word.  Fascinating.  To me, of course, not to any one else.  A day, scatter-shot with little ideas.)

It was tuckering (lol.  Ten years ago, I don't think I'd have seen myself conjugating 'to tucker' - but there you go - things change!)  so instead of watching my regular PBS Newshour (which does tend to aggravate my head), we watched 'What the Bleep Do We Know?'

It can't be recommended highly enough.  Quantum physics illustrated, applied to consciousness, to spirituality.  To life.  The film is a wispy but powerful idea, ABOUT wispy, powerful ideas. 

About science and religion.  So you see - what ARE the chances?  Pretty good.  But that's a whole other blog (that's been blogged before - about how I can still know spiritual phenomenon without embracing New Age stuff at all.)

I just added the parenthetical to keep pushing the spirituality button for onewhodreams. :)  (On the other hand, it probably does exercise the spirit, to confront the idea of thieving bastards.)

yesterday's blog began with a complaint about titles and ended with a reply from a fine fellow, i'm sure, who's great title was swiped by someone's far less worthy product. 

I mis-wrote.  I enjoy title-making - just not on demand.  I've come up with some fantastic titles (sure, in my lonely opinion) - but too often, just the title.  The title alone.  Nothing to attach to the title.  Worse, on way too many occasions, with my great title in hand and nothing to tuck underneath, I've gone and invented something.  Now what would make a person DO that?! 

When, for want of a little documentation, I wasn't allowed to work in England, entrepreneurial habits kicked in and the many antiques I'd won at auction (won.  isn't that sweet?  makes it sound like a small fortune wasn't wasted on teaching my hand to STAY DOWN. i was too excitable.) became my first website:  auctionheroes.  Then I put up thespiderwriter to promote editorial content for the web.  then came Steam Media.  It's been downhill ever since (not a very steep grade or distance, that's true). 

Really -what the hell was I thinking with Almost There Studio?  (well, I was thinking of animated travelogues.)  I also bought Travelosopher (which I continue to love because I think there are some godawful travelers out there who go with expectations and no skills).  Scary Fairy required that I come up with a frickin' scary fairy.  I just liked that scary fairy rhymed. 

Along the way, I discovered there were plenty of others who invented titles, but didn't suffer from any need at all to put them to use.  Nope.  They hoarded.  I bought a title just to protect it from the hoarders but find I'm hoarding it myself.  Accidentally.  I don't want to.  But it's a great great title with great possibilities and I've had to shoo people off of it when I thought they weren't likely to use it to its fullest potential. 

It's not a pretty position to be in, that of guardian/owner/big shot.  FOR ME, it's not a pretty position to be in.  I've cultivated the opposite in my life and head, so that now, I can feel a poverty consciousness coming on faster than I can feel a cold (but then I smoke, so that explains THAT) - and it gets stamped out.  I'm fully aware that an onlooker might take a look at my output, my creative work and think: po' girl.  Perhaps she should ask the poverty consciousness back.  She needs to be just a littttttle more jealous of what little quality appears in her work. 

But I digress.  Of course, there are numerous ideas with a single author, but the single author rarely - if ever - created his or her idea independently.  If nothing else, there have been ideas swirling around cafes and coffee houses, correspondence, conversations. 

I think I'll just cut to the chase here.  I could babble for at least another four paragraphs, but I'd arrive at this:  that regardless of what an author of an idea does at the end, it's hazardous to an idea to guard it jealously during its growth and development.  I just don't see or believe that the idea benefits. 

Which is why I object to Wolfowitz being named as president of the World Bank. 

Rule One:  If you don't know what satire is, if satire gives you a little ache - right there, in between your lengthy eyebrows, if you squeezed your ass onto the politically correct bandwagon, but don't have the faintest clue where it's going ...

DO NOT visit this site.  There's plenty of proof on the site itself that, left to their own devices, without help, people will actually trot their single digit iq's out in public.  fair enough.  I just don't want to see them. 

Rule Two: No big fat analysis allowed.  Because ... it's satire. 

Ready? 

Shit. i can't believe i had to spend all that time on provisos and disclaimers and ... www.blackpeopleloveus.com

We caught Dick Proenneker's autobio-documentary on PBS last night, a record of the house and life he built in the Alaskan wilderness.  A fantastic story, heady (even to watch) - a man literally building a life of undeniable serenity.  With ax and chisel and mallet (and nails and saw), he MADE himself a cabin.  And utensils.  And hardware.  It didn't happen by accident - he brought well honed skills, the idea of preparedness, and unwaivering awareness of his environment and experience. 

Too bad, too too bad that his story is not what's being promoted in the lovingly-crafted Ownership Society program. 

I don't doubt that it's a consequence of my lifestyle choices - as in, I never signed up for that program and so never got the benefits, but property ownership doesn't appeal to me.  It never has.  We were probably the only people who ever regularly and religiously walked in Hollywood - up, through the hills, back and forth along the curly, narrow streets, and no matter what route we took, there was no neighborhood, not one, where homes matched.  In any way.  A cottage sat beside an italianate villa beside an art deco or moderne joint beside a ranch house beside a tudor beside a castle beside an all glass and stucco etc etc.  We played the game 'wouldn't it be fun if someone gave us one of these?' and invariably, I could think of more reasons why I'd want to give it right back.   Taxes, utilities, maintenance.  It never occured to me to say: Ooooeee! We could turn around and sell it. 

I'm missing that ownership gene.  I gave home ownership a shot.  In England.  In the wonderful town of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, East Anglia.  Famous for its Abby where some fellas met to decide to create the Magna Carta.  (I STILLLLLL think that's funny.  Famed for being the place where an idea was first whispered.)  Anyway, the Norman invasion had its influence and Bury got some gridded streets.  We bought a house on one of them  - the cellar was a thousand years old, the fireplace easily 500 years, the walls were pre-Elizabethan and full of wattle, and just in case you doubted the age, the beams in the front sitting room were clearly pre-Spanish Armada ... you get the picture.  Old. 

Our house was a segment of a much larger house that ... oh, I forget his name.  The guy who invented started the Boy Scouts.  Baden-Powell.  That's it.  It was Baden-Powell's home and was nothing less than a stately home in town.  Of course, in smaller compartments, divided into three, we got a very skinny, very tall portion with a wonderful staircase that ran all the way up and required us to discard half the treasures I'd found at auction.  You can want, you can will, you can shove, but that damned piano's not going anywhere and once you've squeezed your really excellent objects for which you have any affection at all into a house that old, they take on an entirely different look.  Those book cases that are supposed to stand, simple and elegant, side by side, are now tilted at ridiculous angles away from each other.  I

I launched into all the projects you get to launch into with home ownership.  Only, historic buildings in England - understandably - have a kind of protective bubble around them that prevents homeowners from fiddling too much with ... anything, frankly.  The bits and pieces that can be tampered with are best tampered with from a cozy fortune.  In the absence of a cozy fortune, I invented my own solutions - solutions that mystified friends with slightly more traditional tastes. 

A great time was had by all (that's the royal all - it was just me).  And, when my projects were done, when I'd outfitted the house with an interior life ... that was that.  Although there's temporary gratification in creating a theater, I could not have imagined making it my permanent home. 

I understand the ambition to own from my owning the opposite ambition.  Yes, the tax/legal benefits are inarguable ... but they are benefits only in the context of participating in the bigger system.  Equally inarguable is the correlation between property ownership and ownership of spiritual health.  

I made that up.  I think there is a correlation, but I've only just started to consider it.  In the end, there might be no correlation at all, just a big mess.  But right now, I suspect that ownership in modern America is insidious, and the administration might be capitalizing on an inarticulated fear by offering Ownership as a reward.  Owning will be less a refuge than a fortification, less a haven of calm than a storage unit for weapons to keep out all the needy, not-as-clever folk.  Owning will not serve as security so that you can bravely explore the spiritual frontier.  It will describe the limits of your frontier. 

Where the hell do I get this idea?  The Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case. 

Hours and hours and hours were spent brainstorming yesterday.  Brainstorming never fails to amaze - dazzling ideas are swarming around us, nearly begging to be chosen.  The hard work is in rejecting them. 

We were out to invent a legend.  Motto.  For a t-shirt.  Not an 'I'm with Stupid' t-shirt, but ... the other kind.  LOL.  (I myself am not much of a t-shirt wearer.  I had a t-shirt around the invasion of Richard Gere episode:  So many gerbils, so little time.  I loved that shirt and actually wore it.   I also bought a shirt in Prague that was supposed to say 'Intellectual in Praha' but intellectual was misspelled.  I never wore it.  Oh.  And I had a t-shirt from The Hollywood Athletic Club because it had the best pool tables in Hollywood and great tunes to play by.  I never wore it, either.) 

So, I'm not particularly qualified to decide what goes on a t-shirt unless it's a shirt with some subtle sex appeal.  And that there's the plan:  very soon, Scary Fairy will appear on a chic little tee near you.  And on wholesome (and so, apparently, sexy) underwear.  And on a few other thingies. 

We went through about five billion lines.  Some were reallllly funny.  To us.  Some smacked of requiring an advanced degree.  More than a few should have gone straight to hallmark and a few to the man-hater's club.  Those we all nipped in the bud, but I'm afraid we also wandered into some mighty raunchy territory.  This will happen when you're brainstorming with A. who's a good and honest man, but heavy on the testosterone and prone to forgetting: I am not one of the guys.  So.  A started it.  But I finished it. 

It started innocently enough with the predictable 'smart is sexy' theme.  This, I hear, is debatable.  At any rate, off on a roll we went until A. was startled by what was coming out of my mouth.  See, I think that's what happens when you give someone a free forum, without penalties, to say what they want to say. 

But even I know it won't do to have a t-shirt that reads 'f**k my mind', will it? 

Here's what we came up with instead. (relax, it opens in a separate window) What do you think?  Should we reject it?

We are inveterate crammers in my family.  A few weeks away from going to Europe, we thought it might be useful to join the Italian conversation group that meets at a local cafe.  It's a mystery, but that brother of mine is funny in multiple languages.  Droll.  It helps that his Italian is really really good but I think his Italian is good because his Spanish is good and his French isn't bad either.  And he's no slouch in the English department. 

Me, I'm notorious in any language for leaving out prepositions and pronouns and those words that are like staples between clauses.  I have what we call una lingua immaginaria.  My favorite language is half English, half French, half Hungarian and inside any of those portions, are more than a few words of my own invention. 

I guess I'm perfectly capable of learning all the grammatical rules and their application, but in my head, they're only little roadblocks to the flow of communication.  It's true, that speaking with me probably requires a whole lot of extra effort - if only to fill in all my gaps - but the unimpeded conversation so often, too often, doesn't ask for/require attention.  As the 'art of reading is judicious skipping' (one of the two quotes I can remember), the art of conversation is judicious listening. 

But I digress.  ! We'd just arrived, and hadn't warmed up, when someone asked a question.  I struggled to reply - an easssssy breezy reply - when the waitress appeared.  I surrendered and admitted that all that was coming to me was Hungarian.  (I am not fluent in Hungarian.  I just know a lot.)  The waitress was like, Oooh, you speak Hungarian?  (LOLOLOL.  I wanted to see what it felt like to write "she was, like".  We didn't do well, 'like' and me, me and 'like.') 

She lived briefly in Budapest, in the ninth district.  Her landmark was the big marketplace.  I'd have used the Szabadsag Bridge if I'd lived in the 9th, but that's because I'm crazy about that bridge.  It was a favorite to take suicidal leaps from.  There was a time when Hungary had the highest suicide rate - suicide being a romantic, perfectly legitimate way to go.  The bridge - Freedom Bridge - is an ornate and moody piece of work - less an impressive engineering feat and more ... seductive.  Distinctly Hungarian.  Perfect for the dramatic exit. 

Well, we had a nice several-minute chat, with both of us moo-ing about how we missed the city, and then it was back to our whole reason for being there.  Italian. 

I like Italy.  A lot.  We are going to Venice, Florence and Rome.  These are great cities. Rome, in particular.  And Venice has grown on me.  I can now say I really like Venice. 

But I woke up this morning, knowing that my life ... my head, my temperament, my internal rhythms all fit with Budapest.  From our very first meeting. 

A love affair with a city is nothing new and Budapest is hardly the only city I love - but it has a particular power for me.  Perhaps it's because I was there when there was no avoiding it: the future had to be designed.  Immediately.  Cultural triage was a necessity.  No one - and I mean no one - had any tolerance for the distractions of little personal dramas. And you'd be surprised how few personal dramas there were because of it.  Relative to the US, life was hard, resources at a minimum and expensive, and corruption built in to every little transaction.  An entire infrastructure needed to be rebuilt and revived. 

And still ... people lived the life.  It was intensely sensual. 

Sigh.   

'Should' has been known to inspire more tirades in men than discovering improvements have been made to their favorite classic car. 'Should' - barely whispered - is apparently the equivalent of brandishing a firecracker in the testicular area and they will react with lightning speed, those men. 

Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 separate episodes (and it's earrrrly) featuring otherwise sane and admirable men.  'Should' was said.  They flipped out.

In women's vocabularies, 'should' is oki-doki. (In general).  It's been approved by the Cheerleading, I'm-on-your-side, I Believe in You Commission.  Rarely does a woman hear in 'should': you know, you're a flipping idiot and I've got a much better plan for you because you couldn't possibly have a plan for yourself. 

Anyway, I don't actually think men should care about women's rhetoric specifically. 

But men who swell up at the idea of 'should' have the evidence before them, how powerful it can be at the very same time it's looking innocent.  It is not just words.  Rhetoric is a huge system of ideas that get turned into habit and cultural rules - and there's nothing quite as fun as standing by helplessly while those rules - those sneaky little, innocent rules - press and crowd and cramp your style and your instincts. 

The fan of nice and tidy social order will complain.  That sounds so self-centered. 

Yeah, well, I suppose it does when you're regarding it from through that lens that's got all those rhetorical smudges on it.  How exactly can you tell, when you can't see it clearly? 

Sit yourself down with any man and regardless his politics, his social rank, his financial condition, his career, his sexual orientation - he will know the difference between the welfare of his community and his personal welfare.  And he'll have no problem separating the two.  He is not confused when it's HIS personal psychology up for discussion. 

How does a person participate, contribute when they're busy trying to sort through the rhetoric, because after all, that's where the rules are hidden. Well, of course, they participate and contribute by their vote and tax dollar. 

Whee.  That feels good.  Are you fricking kidding? Pick an issue, any issue, the issue that pisses you off, the issue that pisses me off (pick one of those, please) and remind me of how someone reconciles that with the rhetoric they've subscribed to.  It does cast a spell and that spell's not easily broken until you explore what's actually being said. 

We modern Americans flatter ourselves sooooo advanced and so aware, but you can't turn around for crashing into some bigger, fatter, blob of rhetoric.  Men, bless 'em, still can't - not really - stand the idea of women in charge.  Maybe it's the goddess talk that creeps them out.  Or maybe they've pretty much accepted the 'things are changing, not quickly, but they're changing.'  Changing?  What?  In what way?  Where? 

Other centuries, other places managed to survive a Queen Elizabeth, a Catherine the Great (although ... the jury's still out on her reign), a Maria Theresa.  Yes, yes, Maria Theresa was not a picture book mother (she was Marie Antoinette's mummy), but she was, after all, busy keeping Austria afloat.  Maria Theresa reformed Hapsburg Austria and although she trots around in our historical imagination as the Empress Maria Theresa, she never was.  She ascended to the throne under the Pragmatic Sanction.  Meaning she had to cut deals left and right and change the rules a little bit.  Oh.  And marry a man who could be Emperor.  She inherited a shit situation and ... Austria, for godsake ... and did pretty darned good. 

I bet one of her advisors said:  You know what you should do?  And she did it.  The rhetoric of European courts and monarchies and empire was certainly as strong, and certainly more rigid, than any rhetoric we've got going.  But once you know it, you can work with it.  And make shit happen. 

dammit.  i am technologically impaired.  I had this idea - ooh - that I'd have a journal - not a blog and, actually, not really even a journal for that matter, but more a journal than a blog (!!!!! eeek.  well, imagine what it's like for ME to listen to myself think.  eeek, again.)  It's meant to be dedicated to One Idea at a Time so that women in particular and men if they're interested, can read very short interviews of people who made something great happen.  The point is to focus on one choice they had to make and HOW they made it and, if they're pithy enough, how they then executed it. 

Naturally :), I thought it would be good to have it on my website and so, off I trotted to blogger.com.  It was a disaster - not an unmitigated one, no - not as good as that.  In the end, they let me post it to the blogger community.  Well, why the hell would I want to do THAT?  I'd have put it at Mindsay. 

Which is what I'm going to do.  Because, although I'm entirely comfortable messing with html and shoving things around with FTP, I just can't wrap my head around the big problem with this.   The irony is that that's exactly what my first post was about - how there are just some things I'd like a simple tutorial for:  Do A.  Then B.  Get C.  Voila.   (www.thescaryfairy.blogger.com)  You don't have to read it.  i'm just going to copy and paste it to the blog I set up at mindsay.  dammit. 

These things should be easy.  Fair enough, that it's hard developing JoJo Booda (especially the first 'issue') but a simple little journal?!?!?!?!?! 

Well, I'm not sure if that was cathartic or not.  I'll give it a few hours.  :)

After a particularly long day, we got ourselves lazy on the couch to watch a little tv last night.  I was all for fluffy, but Nova's Wave of the Future (PBS) won out, which worked out fine because I got to look pretty agreeable and still get something fluffy. 

Of course, in order to talk about tsunamis, they had to talk about the history of tsunamis and the global effect (I guess that's what they had to do because that's what they did. ) The re-enactment of Krakatoa's epic eruption in 1883 was just plain old good entertainment.  Good timing, too.  People got busy after the tsunami last December, not just in replying to the horrible devastation, but in facing an imperative: money had to be spent on education and early warning systems.  And then, tsunami stuff got pushed off the table by other stuff.  The earthquake a few days ago was good - really good - for reviving any subsiding interest, but nothing beats a re-enactment for making us see what needs to be done. 

What needs to be done.  Only because I'm all for a blog doing double duty as a PSA, here's what an individual can do to save himself: 1.  pay attention to the earthquake itself,  2. listen for a huge roar in the ocean and 3.  race his silly ass to high ground if that ocean mysteriously retreats. 

The program had a long segment about the records of global phenomenon after Krakatoa, collected by the ever vigilant scientific community in England.  An English gentleman faithfully did watercolors of the sky for a hell of a long time.  He got high marks for his observational skills.  I got a small headache from hearing about them.  Really.  He lived in England.  It's a fricking island.  The weather, the sky - not even a blind man can ignore the weather.  It is an acutely present drama, and - although I risk getting dramatic LOL - it's a deafening reminder that a man CAN be an island, but the world will not be ignored.

The whole proposition of early warnings of natural phenomena is ... bothersome/interesting to me.  Yes, yes, it's good to have a plan to save lives.  Yes yes yes. 

We are so desperate to save ourselves from natural phenomena and so disinterested in saving ourselves from disasters of our own creation.  No.  That's not true.  We are - individually - very interested in saving ourself from disasters humans created.  We are miserably bad at doing much preventive work.  Early warnings, all around, and we just don't want to heed them.  Maybe we're all practising our watercolors, so we can record the fallout and get lots of applause for our observational skills.  After the fact.   That's really useful. 

Oh well. 

lifted straight from the oped pages of the International Herald Tribune.  very easy reading (even for those who know the IHT is owned by the New York Times and that's just too suspicious and proves blah blah liberal bullshit bias blah blah.  yeah.  well, except on this one.)  you'll dazzle them over cocktail parties tonight.

(I decided NOT to lift it but link it). Even MORE easy! (and i'll target it in a popup window so you don't have navigate back and forth and up and down).  http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/29/opinion/edfilibuster.html

 the administration will be reminding us of the awful threat of terrorism and the straying lambs will trot quickly, quickly with shivering fleece, back to the fold.  so.  an article, copied in its entirety from the spectator (UK) just because it's a very useful perspective.  the brits are not fond of big baby blubbering - but then, they've actually had to put up with a nanny state while we're just getting used to one:

The good news about terrorism

by Paul Robinson

‘We are facing the gravest threat that this nation has ever faced.’ Elizabeth I, speaking of the Spanish Armada? Winston Churchill, in the aftermath of Dunkirk? No. Home Office minister Baroness Scotland on Newsnight, justifying the new Prevention of Terrorism Act by reference to the threat from al-Qa’eda.

‘Hang on,’ I said to myself on hearing the Baroness, ‘that can’t be right.’ My mum can remember lying in bed hearing bombs drop, and she once saw a V1 go over and heard the engine cut out as she watched. As an army officer a decade ago I used to have to check under my car for IRA bombs every time I went out. Army officers don’t have to do that any more. The gravest threat ever? Surely not.

But as an academic, I am loath to scoff without investigating the facts. Since my speciality is international security, I attend many conferences with and about the military-industrial establishment. With a few exceptions, I hear the same view with monotonous regularity — the world is more dangerous than ever before, the threat from Islamist terrorism is unlike anything we have ever known, our way of life and our very existence are menaced. Challenge this accepted wisdom and everybody looks at you as if you are an idiot. What is it they know that I don’t?

Not a lot, as it turns out. Vested interests are involved. Ever since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact eliminated the need for 90 per cent of our armed forces, the defence establishment has been working overtime to justify its continued existence. Similarly, ever since the disintegration of the USSR ended the threats from Soviet subversion and KGB espionage and put most of MI5 out of a job, the security service has brilliantly re-invented itself as an anti-terrorist agency. Over the past 15 years military planners, the intelligence and security services and security experts in academia have pulled off a brilliant confidence trick, convincing the public that, despite the visible signs of peace breaking out, the world is actually growing ever more dangerous.

Their basic thesis is that during the Cold War there was a degree of stability which kept a lid on conflicts, and provided some certainty in the sphere of international relations. After 1991 these Good Old Days came to an end. Now we face not one stolid and predictable enemy, but numerous insane and suicidal ones. We can only wish to be as safe as my mother wondering where that V1 was going to land. If we haven’t evacuated our children, it is because there is no safe place on the planet to send them.

Alas for the experts, but luckily for us, the facts do not back this up. Far from being more dangerous, the world is safer now than ever before; and far from being an ever-growing problem, terrorism has been in sharp decline for over a decade. This is not a matter of opinion. It is provable.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) and Canada’s Project Ploughshares both annually track the number of armed conflicts taking place worldwide. Sipri counts only those which result in 1,000 deaths or more in a given year, so its figures are slightly lower. Even so, it agrees with Project Ploughshares that the amount of fighting on the planet is declining. According to Sipri, there were only 19 conflicts in 2003, down from 33 in 1991. With its broader definition, Project Ploughshares reports a decline to 36 in 2003 from a peak of 44 in 1995.

More good news follows, I’m afraid. Battle-related deaths rose slightly from 15,000 in 2002 to 20,000 in 2003 because of the Iraq war, but even these figures are substantially down from the annual tolls of 40,000 to 100,000 during the Cold War. Global military expenditure also fell by 11 per cent in real terms between 1992 and 2000, and the Congressional Research Service in Washington notes that international arms sales fell from £22.8 billion in 2000 to £14.3 billion in 2003. In short, there are fewer wars, fewer arms sales and fewer people dying, each year, than at any time since the second world war.

So much for the idea that the world is becoming more unstable. What of the second thesis — that global terrorism poses a new and unprecedented threat to our security? Again, the concept turns out to be unsound. I recommend that the fearful visit the excellent website of the Rand Corporation’s MIPT (Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism) database and try out its ‘Incident Analysis Wizard’ (www.tkb.org/ChartModule.jsp). However you fiddle MIPT’s figures, the chart always ends up looking roughly the same — a big peak in terrorism in the late 1970s and early ’80s, followed by a steady reduction ever since. During the 1980s, the number of international terrorist incidents worldwide averaged about 360 a year. By the year 2000, it was down to just 100. In Western Europe, the number has declined from about 200 in the mid-1980s to under 30 in 2004. Even more strikingly, in North America the number of attacks has fallen from over 40 a year in the mid-1970s to under five every year for the past ten years, with the sole exception of 2001.

Doubters can also turn to the US State Department’s yearly analyses of international terrorism. These display exactly the same picture. It is sometimes argued that terrorist attacks nowadays cause more deaths than in the past, but even that does not add up — except in the case of 2001. The statistics for worldwide fatalities from terrorism show the same decline as the number of attacks. For every Bali or Madrid bombing now, there was a Beirut, an Air India or a Lockerbie in the past. We seem to have very short memories. Remember the FLQ, the Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction, the Baader-Meinhof group, and all the rest of them? All defunct. Even Eta haven’t killed anybody for a couple of years. Bluntly, terrorism is a declining problem, despite our best efforts to provoke it.

The reason for all this is simple. The Cold War was not the mythologised happy time of stable co-existence at all. At one point during the Cuban Missile Crisis, only one political officer stood between a Soviet submarine commander and his desire to launch a nuclear torpedo. The Cold War was a period of dangerous instability, with endless proxy wars, coups, insurgencies, revolutions, counter-revolutions, and state-sponsored terrorism. When communism fell, most of these activities came to an end. True, some new wars erupted as the old order crumbled away, and some new terror groups came to the fore, but nothing on the scale of the past.

At this point in the argument, people often interrupt me and say, ‘Yes, but what if...?!’ What if rogue states develop weapons of mass destruction, and what if they give them to terrorists, and what if the terrorists find some means to disseminate them, and what if the moon were made of green cheese? And this, it seems, is what the whole of British defence and security policy now comes down to. We didn’t invade Iraq because we knew it had weapons of mass destruction and links with terrorists, but because we didn’t know that it didn’t, and ‘what if...?’ And we are clamping control orders on those now released from Belmarsh not because we know that they are terrorists (if we had enough evidence to know, we’d be able to arrest them properly) but because we don’t know that they aren’t and, again, ‘what if...?’

But what if we are wrong? We imagine that it can’t hurt to assume the worst, and that only inaction has a cost. But that is not true. Our leaders were wrong about Iraq and the cost so far is tens of thousands dead (including 80 British soldiers), and an entire city the size of Cardiff (Fallujah) depopulated and in ruins. Every mistake we make ruins lives.

In October 1955 General Douglas MacArthur told the cadets of West Point: ‘The next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets.’ The cadets must have wondered which planet MacArthur himself was from, but his fears were no more far-fetched than the current government-fed paranoia that millions of us are about to be murdered in our beds by Islamofascist superbiotoxins kept at 45 minutes’ readiness in a bedsit in Tipton and activated by psychotic double-amputees.

In fact, considering the news last autumn of possible alien communications reaching us from somewhere between the constellations of Pisces and Aries, there appears to be more scientific evidence for bug-eyed space monsters than for the famous Iraqi WMD. ‘If’ the Little Green Men attack with their weapons of alien mass destruction, the carnage would be terrible. Why are we not doing something? What if MacArthur was right? What if indeed.

I've always liked playing the 'circumstances of your death' game.  There's no risk at all involved and it can be an easy measure of whether you're living the life you want/need to live.  Last night's curry dinner was not the way I wanted to go. 

We have the theory that Indian food must have the same properties as hash - it just swells in volume and potency over the next twelve hours and really, you can only wait it out.  So far, that theory's hasn't been proven wrong, so it's my fault entirely that after a refreshing five hours of sleep, I woke to the sensation of curry working itself into suffocating force.  Every window was opened in the nick of time, that's what I think. 

My personal version of the game was usually a little different.  I never cared so much about the exact circumstances, just the life I was in and so, it's hasn't been a particularly awful prospect.  You know, when you're satisfied you're taking advantage of as many opportunities as possible or, better, than you're creating as many opportunities to take advantage of, how bad can it be?  But those are the rules of my game and I know they don't work for ... oh, tons and tons and tons of other people. 

Which makes me wonder why they still play it that way.  I've given their rules a shot - this curry incident is proof - and it's awful, without any redeeming features.  That's not true.  I'm glad to have it to judge by. 

A mere two and a half years ago - which shows how quickly you can drift away from a perfectly good life philosophy - we were walking home from the Press Room, a tiny Santa Barbara pub, in the early evening.  October.  It was dark.  And - oh yeah - we were a nation poised to wack anyone.  Paralyzed, too.  Well, that's a strange picture.  Poised and paralyzed.  That's just a statue, isn't it?  ANYWAY ... me, I'm antitalented in the 'spotting things in the natural world' - it takes more energy than it's worth for me to catch sight of a passing bird or thingie with wings.  So it was A. who saw the pretty-hard-to-miss ball of light in the night sky. 

It was unusual - small, but intense, with spooky halos emanating from it.  It took longer to write that sentence than it took to see it and admire its eeriness.  Yeah, well, that admiration slid immediately into awe because the orb was growing and awe flipped into alarm because it was clearly heading our way.  ('clearly' based on 'doesn't everything revolve around us' syndrome). 

Within ten, fifteen seconds, it had become a huge, nuclear extravaganza.  We were bummed.  Scared. 

And then, we weren't.  It would have been nice if we were surrounded by everyone we knew and loved, if we'd repaired broken friendships and promises, if we'd had one more bottle of Montrachet (okay, that's something I'd have liked because I'm a shallow wine liker), if we'd had one more chance for long slinky sex ... but we didn't.  It was enough we were there, together, and okay with how we were living. 

Well, nothing happened.  Vandenburg Airbase had launched a test missile-or-something thingie.  Fifty miles away.  Which is still pretty close.  For those who like to keep a library of terrifying facts, Ellwood Beach is the only bit of mainland US that was hit in the second world war.  Of course, it's only terrifying if you're terrified by those things. 

Oh, how interesting (to me.)  Possibilities, to my ear, speaks of all the places your imagination and head and fingers and feet can go.  But it can just as easily mean the many many little scary things that could happen and so need a plan of protection.  Now.  Huh.  Well, that'll teach me. 

Anyway, in the end, it's not the curry I'd mind waking up dead to.  I mind discovering that I'm measuring by my immediate circumstances and not the whole big living it life. 

I had my hair colored yesterday.  Yah, that's something I won't be repeating any time soon.  Hours.  Hours spent achieving a beautiful dark brown with some highlighty stuff that's supposed to bring out the blue of my eyes.  The worst of it was the chit chat. I am an unhappy chit-chatter.  Give me a whole long tale of adventure or woe, an argument about any idea on the planet, a lecture about the finer points of growing orchids - but chit-chat and I'm almost instantly miserable.

She: (lacquering my hair with stuff)  So.  What made you decide to do it now?
Me:  (not paying attention) What?
She:  Your hair.  You said you hadn't had it done in awhile. 
Me:  (thinking: awhile?  I've had it done once and only after I turned my own head a luxurious shade of jade.  It seemed a good investment, to turn the hair repair over to professionals.)  We're going to Italy.
She:  Oooooh.  When?
Me:  Um.  This weekend, sometime.  (I went home and checked.  Saturday.  We're leaving Saturday).
She:  Oh.  You are so lucky.  You'll be there for history!

She, of course, is not the first to say so, but she was the first I had to reply to.

Me:  I guess so. 

Here's the truth, being dumped on a blog just to clear the air in my own head.  I do not guess so at all.  I get the event is a big one, that it signals the potential for big changes in the Catholic world.  I get that a sort of vaccuum's been created by this Pope's death, famously beloved during his popedom, and it will be filled and what it's filled with stands as an historical event.  I get that the sheer number of mourners - their numbers swollen by those making pilgrimages - must be magnificent to see, and important to be a part of.  I get get get get GET it.  But it's another little passage in the books, not History. 

I love history.  I love the swoooooosh of history.  And I can spend wayyy too much time admiring the little episodes, the parts of the whole. But I just don't tend at all to think of it ... um ... how to say this.  An episode just doesn't stand as History for me.  We've had this chat on mindsay before.  The always provocative champy writes my favorite blogs when he explores the huge spread of life and time and notes how we, leaving now, occupy nothing.  We are hilariously insignificant. 

Except few (if any) of us believe that. 

Vlad Dracula, you know - that guy renowned as an insanely cruel impaler of folk? - emerges as something else entirely when you poke around in the historical trunk.  He was imprisoned for twelve years - twelve! (okay, maybe 13.  I forget) - until he agreed to convert to Catholicism and start repelling the Turks again.  So what?  Nothing.  Nothing, except it's another one of those arrangements that ... propelled - that's it - propelled history.  It was a big deal, then.  And about four of us in the whole world even think about it now (and one of the four can't even be bothered to remember accurately - 12 or 13 years.  Yah.  12.  "What is 12? Alex")

I err on the side of thinking we are always in the middle of history.  We are it, making it - not watching it happen.  Yes, yes, yes, yes.   The Heisenberg Principle is a handy explanation; we're incapable of seeing it until it's happened, but that doesn't mean we incapable of participating in it.  We do not have to be onlookers.  Pilgrims. 

I suspect my idea of history accounts for why I tend to pay so much attention to the episodes of our culture.  My idea is that it's very possible to interfere with the course, to act as a little pebble in the big flow.  The famous people?  They're not a whole lot more than bigger pebbles. 

but I'm convinced that if I pass it on, the curse will be broken. You move him with your mouse (just in case you couldn't figure that one out) - but your cursor's made invisible.  (I might burst into flame, before I even get to my accommodations, this is SUCH a totally waste of a person's time).  Apparently, the big high score is 88.  I made it to 75, but that's because I use a wacom tablet pen - it makes all those total-waste of time games quantum times easier.  (I will add a target so it opens in a new window). 

http://www.wagenschenke.ch/

i'm sorry. 

I didn't exactly burst into tears, but it was not a happy day when the Spectator UK Online announced it was becoming subscription based.  I like a lot of other magazines and quite a few others are indispensable for getting through the lines at the Piggly Wiggly - I want to know what broke up Brad and ... what's her name ... Jennifer - as much as anyone.  But the Spectator ... the Spectator is a treasure - astonishing wit and writing, dazzling displays of education outa the ivory tower and put in the ring - ooooh, it's hard to beat a public argument between British opinion makers.  

Unfortunately, the budget didn't permit, as they say.  That's not true.  If they'd cut me off entirely, we'd have found a way.  They didn't.  Being British, and way, way more democratic about sharing information than we are, they left a few columns totally accessible and - best of all - allowed us a few paragraphs of the 'Premium Content' before shutting the door politely in our face. 

A few paragraphs is all it takes to ignite the head. 

Of course, it's wonderful to have the entire article, to be fed the whole idea/argument/position so I can waddle my fat ass away, thinking I'll just let that meal settle before trying anything too vigorous.  Yep, I like that a lot. 

But, that sneaky peeky version, with the ... the ignition, those minutes where everything's firing and sparking ...  I'm not kidding.  It's exciting.  I'd have to say it gets a lot closer to the Creative. 

* after having the blog mysteriously, accidentally, weirdly published without my permission. not once but about forty five times.  okay.  that's a lie.  about five. I should just quit.  Right now.  But first a cigarette.  Okay.  Cigarette smoked.  I am not restored.   Another cigarette.*

I would have written about how a tight budget will force you to be creative.  This is generally held to be true. But it's not true, not at all, when the creativity is put into service in acquisition, in achieving creature comforts.  Okay, it's creative, but it's not the unleashed, ballsy, I am living in every way I want to be living creativity.  It's very nice, to decorate a room, and be pleased with the results, but it's all measured by something on the outside, not by the electrical surges on the inside. 

I'm only really thinking of this because of - I am SOOOOO sorry to bring this up one more time - traveling with family that has a far ... uh ... bigger budget, yep, a bigger budget. 

You could not have lived on a more slender thread of a budget than I did in Europe.  I honestly think it would be impossible.  Shoestring?  Wow, that would have doubled what I was operating on.  (Eventually, my multiple gigs paid off and I was paid handsomely.  But for - let's see.  Three or four years, I was pooooor.)   If I wanted to go to the Opera - and I did - I waltzed in through the Porter's door.  I made appointments with the heads of museums for no other purpose than to get inside the museum.  I did an entire project with the Nyugati train station so I could hang out in the Emperor's Suite.

I refuse to list the many many techniques for living well because more than a few dance on the edges of larceny.  LOL. 

And then I came back to America, where we are frankly, embarrassed of each other for our failure to look successful.  Even the hippies of my acquaintance measure it.  Bad enough, I'm sure.  What's easily missed is the how easily we start asking our own creative cores to meet the same criteria.  One second, our inner eye's racing all over the place, scribbling on the walls, knocking things over but having a wild time of it.  The next, we're begging it to behave and look okay.  Stand up straight.  Pass inspection.  Our OWN fucking creative core.  What the hell.  What a crushing, grinding (add a bunch of other violent words) thing to put one's creativity through.   (Okay.  That's what happens with mine, not yours. Mine.)

I'm glad I thought of this.  It's too easy to forget. 

We're back from Italy, crawling out of jet lag.  Somewhere beteen Florence and Rome, I decided - or maybe just discovered - that I was ready to write again.  Fiction.  It wasn't inspired, I wasn't soggy or sobby with the Romance of It All (although Italy is one big stew of romance).  I think I just reminded myself of how good a story can be. 

There's no particular requirement to deliver a philosophy or cathartic blueprint.  The world is NOT going to hold its breath waiting for most of our works and that's a good thing, too, or there'd be a few seizures. 

Oh, now I remember.  It stirred to life in Venice, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.  She had an agenda - with calculation, she created a great, great collection of modern art (as opposed to choosing art that she liked.  There's a difference.)  Ohmygosh - her former home, a partially finished palazzo on the Grand Canal, serves as the museum and every room is lavishly appointed with kick ass art.  Magritte (sorry.  I like Magritte), and Kandinsky (yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, a bunch of those), Picasso (of course, but not Picassos I liked),  Klee, and Calder and the inescapable Chagall (is there NO corner of the globe that isn't plastered with Chagalllllllll?) and Max Ernst, also of course, but more of course than Picasso because Max Ernst was married to the Peggy. 

The story goes that Peggy Guggenheim would buy your art if you slept with Peggy Guggenheim, which just goes to show that artists can be such whores. 

Anyway, in the middle of all the wonderful, thrilling stuff, my head and heart were ... really ... bewitched by Joseph Cornell's 'Scene for a Fairytale.'  That might not be the exact title, but it's close enough.  Cornell was apparently responsible for the 'art in a box' movement (who knew there was one?).  It's a sweet little diorama kind of thing, with a winter cityscape - New York, 5th Avenue, maybe.  Beautiful.  I would not have guessed that it would captivate me so much, but it did and there you have it.  And I think that's when I remembered that a story, that a mere IDEA of a story, is a wonderful thing to have.   

So.  Time to write.  The future looks even less (if that's possible) financially stable.  I couldn't be happier at the prospect.  We're off to squeeze in skiing next week.  It's terrifically irresponsible.  Might as well plunge a sword into our last shreds of security.  DIE, bank account, DIE!!!  lol.  I'll sing a dirge when every cent is exhausted.  Probably before then, because bills DO have to be paid and that tends to remind one that while a story's wonderful, so are lights and cable internet access.  :)

I don't remember the circumstances (although I'd be happy to invent them), but I do remember hearing for the first time, "Even a blind pig will occasionally find a truffle."  Who knew?  It was a novel idea and amazing that people knew it.  My friend said his father, a senator or congressman from Michigan, used to say it.  I thought that was interesting, too.  Something about a representative of the people saying such a thing remains, to this day, entertaining.  A little Jeffersonian.  Realistic. 

Most who take a three week break from their daily routine will have some catching up to do.  What to catch up with first, while new things are getting in line, ah ... there's a problem.  There are bills and Scary Fairy Stationery to replenish - you wouldn't expect it, but between folded greeting cards and postcards, it's the postcards that are selling really well (you know how that goes - all the industry figures insist that you MUST sell greeting cards with a sentiment inside or not sell at all). 

I don't have a To Do list, but maybe I should whip one up, quickly.  I think I won't.  There are always things To Do and they hardly ever coincide with things that, sort of, feel delicious, you know?  Practising Italian, for instance, is not a good use of my time, but - for me - it's great great fun to know enough Italian to be able to invent the rest. 

While it's okay to read about the elections in England, it's not particularly useful to read about $100 million lost in Iraq and neither topics should be even glanced at until I hunker down and read everything I can about the EU.  Unfortunately, I'd rather watch 'Sideways' and write my little writing. 

I should be dashing off a Mother's Day card, but it's way more interesting to really contemplate motherhood and what mothers create in the world - not just children, but a whole big, resonating ... thingie.  

The most pressing and genuinely serious issue at hand is a Job.  A job that provides a little more than supplemental income so that I can write.  I'm told that this is confusing; if I mean to write, wouldn't I ... NOT work?  I can't really dissect my method, but I've always worked for someone else when I wrote.  Explains half the gigs that show up on my resume.  I love working for someone else's goal and vision and bringing everything I have to the table to achieve whatever they're after.  Somehow, it's worked like this:  I'm left with just the stuff that's good for writing. 

Anyway, I should be pursuing this job with sobriety and the rest of the stuff that people want prospective employeees to have.  I know what they're accustomed to hearing and reading and I should agree to do it just that way.  Oh well.  I can't.  I've actually never been good at that.  There's something in me that has to write the flippy cover letter, to add a line at the end of my resume, something on the order of "Oh please.  Enough." 

Maybe I'll behave better in a few weeks when I'm still without job.  I've had replies and interest but, so far, those jobs are not a good fit and I'm sure, as candidates go, I am not what they're looking for.  A job that's a good fit is the one that's in Paris.  Or Budapest.  Or even Amsterdam.  I've only been looking for four days or so and have found some fantastic jobs abroad - not for me, not yet, but they're still fantastic.  An institute in the Netherlands is seeking a Tibetan Monk.  I figure that if someone will advertise for a Tibetan Monk, then someone else will surely advertise for a Scary Fairy. 

We will find each other, that job and me, just as a blind pig will find a truffle.

Reform needs balls, that's for sure, even in little measures.

I called because the job description was attractive.  A position in a pre-production film/commercial company. To the many recent film school graduates, I'm sure it read like a fantastic opportunity.  Emphasis on opportunity.  Opportunity, the story goes, demands a period of apprenticeship, when you prove your dedication to the film industry and willingness to work for contacts instead of money.  It's all on spec, baby, all on spec.

It's bullshit.  Within hours of talking to the company owner and nicely declining any further discussion (my very low bottom line price was too high), I got a call asking if I'd at least help out this week. Because income is income, I agreed to a few days. 

What a disaster of a place to work.   It's not worth detailing the numerous conditions contributing to the disaster; it's enough to say the preferred management style is to insult at will.  The actual job was easy enough for me, although the office procedures were convoluted and depended on ridiculous duplication.  I've had similar gigs. I've worked virtually every job Hollywood has on offer for some of the touchiest personalities in town, so the abrasive-nearing-abusive environment was a good way to clear out my stockpile of profanity.  The rest of the staff, though ... there's no accounting for them.  The office veteran, who's survived five weeks, defended his endurance.  He's a teacher and at least this was a chance for him to see how business work.  I laughed, out loud, and broke the news:  business does not work this way. 

The owner finally arrived in the office.  She was under some very wrong impression that I would stay.  Permanently.  We cleared that one up, quickly, and while I was at it, I let her know- without ever saying so - that all that insult she heaped on her staff was wrongly placed.  She was a bad manager and a micromanager at that.  She was paying embarrassingly low wages and pretending that was industry practice.  The list was long, but accurate.  I gave it to her in the sweetest little package of spin possible.  It kind of hinges on being able to demonstrate a more effective method.  The result?  She asked me to consult on changes.   

And that's how reform works in real life.  It needs balls, yes.  It needs empathy and information and context more.  It needs it whether it's in a small office in California or a ministry in some European country or the UN. 

I don't care what the Bush administration says.  Reform isn't a word to spout.  It's a process.  Fucking re-form.  It's easy enough to take a swipe at John Bolton; but I'm interested in the reasoning that persuades someone that contempt for an organization equips a man with the proper cast of mind to reform.  Oh, yes, we all know that he's said some fairly harsh, probably accurate things about the UN.  That's not the organization I meant - although it's yet to be adequately defended, in my opinion. 

No, no, no.  What about Bolton's recent reply to John Kerry about established procedure.  Bolton wrote (and I quote from the International Herald's quote because you just can't get enough of those things :) - "A policy official may state his own reading of the intelligence (assuming the information is cleared for release as a policy matter) as long as he does not purport to speak for the intelligence community."

Okay.  That's sort of helpful.  Sounds - sort of - fair enough.  Of course, another released memorandum (2002), issued by an intelligence officer in Latin America, remarked on a little bitty controversy that sat between Bolton's office and the intelligence agency.  You see, Bolton had instructed (ooooh!  MORE quotes!) "his aides not to solicit substantive objections to the assertions he planned to make." (Those would be that Cuba had a biological weapons program). 

This was never about how blunt and insulting Bolton could be.  That's arguable only by nitwits.  And what - you think other member ambassadors are clinging to illusions?  Oh, don't kid yourself.  They don't think they're in a Sound of Music revival.  Their countires have seen UN resolutions applied and UN studies conducted and UN this and that and the other frickin' thing and still - still - they have to apply to the US (or, if they're lucky, hope one of the Scandanavian countries comes swooping in).  No, this is about a man and the vision he represents.  The Bush administration doesn't have one.  It's got its wearisome rhetoric.  It's got an ass kissing Condoleeza Rice.  It's got talk of vim and vigor - but it has the vision of a doorknob. 

And now, it doesn't even have balls.  The Senate committee Republicans who voted to send Bolton's nomination to the full Senate should be ashamed of themselves.  They knew better.  

At 5:30 am I thought of the man with the above mentioned member.  I figure this is what blogs are for (on occasion) - to rid myself of nagging ideas that have no other place to go. 

I had the briefest relationship with this man; it lasted maybe a month.  We met a few nights before Christmas, in a toasty Irish pub when a lavish snow fell on the city.  The pub served as an office - people tracking me down invariably called there (if you're a pub person, you know how that goes and if you're not - well, then - it's probably better that way.)  I felt perfectly at home.  I was reviewing some work and swearing up a storm and he sidled up beside me.  A midwestern man, the swearing was a siren's song.  It was all very romantic.  For that night and that night alone, it was romantic.  The glow had evaporated by the next time we met. 

He was a fine looking fellow, but the sort who'd do the double-cluck and point his finger like a pistol.  Evidence mounted in the first evening that he hadn't read a book since, oh ... high school.  He didn't care about sports, and wasn't an athlete, although he'd tried skiing.  He had no interest in current events (and we were in the thick of them, so it was an unusual declaration).  He had no interest in past events, either.  Frankly, if it smacked of being interesting, he wasn't interested. 

Naturally, I wondered what he was doing there.  He worked for the telecoms company, installing hardware.  Like so many other men who do contract work abroad, he was not only paid an obscene salary (among expats, the topic does come up and not a one of them's embarrassed) but was provided a palatial joint in the suburbs.   It was a ridiculous house, with 12 bathrooms and an underground swimming pool.  I could write 'ridiculous' about ten times and it still wouldn't crack the surface of how ridiculous the house was. 

So, how to account for the month I did give up to this - oh, hell.  I'm just going to call it a relationship, and save my head for something else.  Well.  I think it was the miniscule penis.  To describe it would give it more volume than it had.  

It wasn't a big factor - so to speak - in our relationship.  Looks and body parts have never been particularly high on my list of what matters.  I didn't care.  I really didn't.  I didn't race back to friends and tell.  It was a non-issue.  Sort of.  I really thought he was an unparalleled dope with so few - in my estimation - so FEW redeeming qualities, I ... I just didn't want him to think I ended it because of the penis discovery. 

Eventually, I got over it and we parted ways without incident.  And here's why I think it poked its head into my consciousness.  The theme of the story I'm working on/writing is romance.  It's not the story and it's not the plot.  Just the theme.  Not love romance, but life romance - the way we can negotiate with the world to live it with all cylinders firing.  Or something like that.  Something less automotive would be better. :)

You see, the timing of our affair was such that few in a city of gossip-hungry knew about it.  But, once someone's entered your world, the tend to show again, don't they, at least on the periphery.  Over the next year, I got to see several women I knew become involved with the man, and all three brought back stories of spectacular dinners in his spectacular house.  Everything was spectacular.  They raved about him, the man of dreams.  I don't know.  I had to assume they meant his conspicuous and oft-mentioned wealth, because honest-to-god - he wasn't witty or charming or sophisticated.  He spoke one language and not very well.  I just didn't understand what the hell they were talking about.  Not one little word was ever said about the penis.  I could hardly mention it without - essentially - calling their entire story into question. 

I'm pretty sure it's out to illustrate that we have an astonishing ability to invest more in convincing ourselves/others we're living beautifully than in living the much less glamorous but authentic romance.  Yes, that's what I think. 

I think. 

If you wait long enough - let the evidence accumulate - you can eventually discover ... i'll call them 'interesting things' - yep, interesting things about yourself.  Like a fondness for subtitles and captions (which further suggests a fondness for discovering only the fairly innocent, slightly eccentric things and none of the awful). 

This household has a pretty lazy habit of switching on the television captions. I was watching the PBS Newshour last week with the captions on - it never crossed my mind to turn them off because they were flying through discussions of the Koran, and the so-called nuclear option and the Senate's apparent desire to protect the traditional bonhomie.  Besides, why would I turn them off when 'mediocre' appeared as 'immediate oak' and 'comity' appeared as ....wait ... wait.  whoops.  Nothing at all.  They skipped it. 

I know nothing about captioning services, but off the top of my head, I'd guess they were either performed by humans or automated, a reverse tts (you know, that Bell labs stuff, text to speech.  I love using tts demos.)  If it was automated, though, 'comity' would have shown up as 'comedy' - wouldn't it? 

Anyway, that was last week, but because I'm me, I've toyed with the thing ever since.  This can't be good, that blogging has become a kind of excorcism.  exorcism.  yah.  that looks right.  expel, expel, expunge - out, out damned idea that's bugging me.  get thee to a bloggery.

Enough of that pretend apologizing. 

One of the strangest, almost useless joys of being a wee bit multilingual is reading the subtitles. Of course, it's always entertaining when characters talk, uninterrupted, for two minutes and the English appears on screen: We have a problem.  The problem is that one minute and fifty seconds of dialogue's been ignored.  No,the joy is not in the translation, but the ... the idea, the truth briefly revealed, the door to the treasure suddenly opening a leeeetle bit.  You don't have to actually think about it, but this great perception grows that we're set up to be satisfied with the basics - the gist.  The basics are fine when you're the one with the limited attention span, but when you're the one that has something more delicate, more layered, to express ...

England eliminated captioning interviews with Northerners and the Scots (and probably the Irish) - it seemed to those in charge of the airwaves that it was insulting to provide a running transcript to the English language, however incomprehensible it might be.  I don't doubt that their reasoning ran along the lines of, 'hell, we'd better re-train the public to listen.'  A noble cause (although I was pretty well screwed by it.  In a pub, over a pint, someone like me can say: What?  Say that again?  A television just won't respond.  I've tried.).

Well, isn't this odd?  I've run out.  Or rather, I'm sitting here, fingers poised, recognizing a few different directions I could go - our international 'strategy' that is, apparently, characterized by a belligerent indifference to listening, our general illiteracy, my illiteracy (I'm reading Pat Buchanan's book on how the Right went wrong and my first, my very first Dean Koontz book because sandyquill and champy like him and I can't believe I'm such an idiot and never read him before.  idiot, idiot, idiot.), and work.  I'm going that last path. 

The travel editor of the local newspaper is a friend which explains my ploughing through digital pix of It'ly first thing this morning to meet his deadline.  Apparently, local newspaper features those things - snapshots of travel. 

If I got to take photos just for myself, I'd take pictures of things I like - pictures of industry, pictures of decay, pictures of irony.  One of my favorites is a picture in a metro station that had a checkerboard tile floor - black and white squares.  It was late and the janitorial crew was mopping the floor.  The white squares.  Only the white squares. 

I would love to be a good photographer.  hell, I'd love to be an okay photographer.  Sometimes, I can fake people out because architecture is usually photogenic. 

Some like to sniff with contempt at photo takers.  Yes, I'm sure there are people who never take their eye from the lens and so miss the life.  Blah blah blah.  If I was less irritable, I'd probably be more patient with the ones who think that. Who say that.  I figure when they demonstrate to me that they have a reliable, keen eye and insight and background, then I'll consider their remarks.  

In general, the criticism is such bullshit, it's tempting to ignore it altogether.  There's an art in collecting allllllll the impressions and ideas you possibly can.  Champy, sojourner - there are people on mindsay whose photography and writing are eloquent arguments.   

Anyway, it doesn't matter to me.  I figured out long ago that I will not only need but I'll want the photos.  I will want to be reminded.  I will want the snapshot of a particular moment in my consciousness.  A few weeks in Italy don't count - there was no consciousness that wasn't drippy with jetlag or focused on gelato and a nice Montepulciano or Brunello. 

But in the course of life, those snapshots are perfect for recalling.  Snapshots, more often than not, aren't photos at all, but a moment I locked in.  In the last few days, I've found myself retrieving a few of them, turning them over, trying to decide if I was really - really? - that happy.  I guess that happens when a job search goes into high gear. 

Accidentally - because I sure as hell didn't plan it - I built a career around writing for creative economic/cultural development.  There's some yakkety-yakking.  lol.  I am drawn to the non-profit, the programs that aren't messing around - they're changing things.  I like corporations very much and believe in their potential for accomplishing good things, for investing in infrastructure, for supporting cultural programs.  I like business for not having time or inclination to dawdle around getting nothing done.  But the organization that harnesses all of its resources, and seeks out more, to create programs that answer a need - I can't help it.  It will make me excited, as long as it's not full of do-gooders spending more time positioning their haloes than doing the work. 

I'm actually considering submitting a resume to an organization that works on behalf of gypsies.  I like gypsies.  Not the ones who maim their children, not the ones who make a business of begging, but those are not all gypsies. I have friends who do not like gypsies.  That's the way it works - some are for, some against. 

Someone once said that I like gypsies because I lived in a neighborhood for a long time and became friendly with some of them.  They protected me.  Issue of loyalty.

It's a strange thing, the timeline of perception.  I have a snapshot, though, and so I know that any fictional protection (not true), any friendliness grew from a starting place of mutual regard.  I wish I could submit a photo of that.     

Mostly I think it'd be too much work, but today I wouldn't mind at all being one of those huge creatures that sits up in the pantheon with weapon on choice on one side (bing cherry pits) and a bucket of bon bons on the other (i guess they'd have to be chocolate covered bing cherries).  if cloture's invoked and the right of filibuster's denied, I would be launching a BIG and furious barrage - first on Frist's office - smug little pricks - and then wherever the hell I felt like it (but nowhere where there'd be ANY collateral damage; I'd be a tidy and courteous demi-god that way). 

Tyranny of the minority?  Oh for chrissake.  Take a look at the sitting president and his nasty little team of neocons.  Oh, but that's probably not what Frist means.  Not THAT minority. 

No, he means that anyone standing in opposition has a stronger duty to concede to the majority - forget conscience, forget doing what's right for the people they represent - than duty to being the opposition.  Bloody hell - let's not imagine how infinitely more awful world history would have been for longer periods without opposition.  Without men (and women) who had the balls to be the opposition. 

Tyranny of the minority supposes that the majority ought to have sweeping power.  In fact, it's not that hard to find spokesmen and women in the Republican party who will express just that.  "We won.  Now we should act like we won," I recall seeing the head of some republican women's group saying last week.  (wait.  I had to swear a lot.  I'm still not done.  Okay.  Now I am.)  Is the idea of the public good, the greater good, really so beyond them? 

After the presidential election last year there were mindsayers who said to those of us who did not vote for Bush that if we'd won, we'd be doing the same thing.  I didn't spend a lifetime voting for the greater good at expense of programs that would have benefited me to hear that. 

I haven't felt this insulted as an American citizen in a long time. 

Action, adventure, execrable dialogue.  Yes, we survived the filthy Silthy coup.  I've never been a crazy Star Wars fan, ever since people started finding traces of Joseph Campbell and myth revivals and secrets to the universe in them.  It had nothing to do with principle - I'm just not good at getting on bandwagons.  i don't like crowds that much and someone's always wearing patchouli.  Ick. 

I wish I'd read a review before I invested three hours of my life.  It's always a little sad when ambition exceeds ability but it's outright embarrassing when it applies to George Lucas.  The producer Rick McCallum, called 'straight talking' for scolding the French about digitalizing movies, obviously had a failure of straight talkitude.  Who else should have told him his dialogue was crap?  Maybe his friends, his peers - obviously none of the crew was willing to risk their positions in the Star Wars dynasty. 

Crap, did I say?  No, worse than that.  Awful, awful, lazy and shit.  The worst kind of dialogue imaginable.  Dialogue from an Expository Writing for PreTeens session.  The formula goes something like this:  A remark is made - not a particularly significant remark, no.  No, THAT would require some craft, some touch.  Just an average remark.  Now, have the second character say:  What do you mean?  That's it.  That's all.  You couldn't ask for a better excuse to elaborate, could you?  "What do I mean?  Well, now that you ask, let me tell ya ... " 

What the hell?!?!   

And that's the point worth despairing over.  This Star Wars is out to be a political metaphor. It wears its intent on a tool belt - apparently someone thought a mallet was called for.  I do not, can not, will not believe there was no one affiliated with this film, no one who saw an early draft - forget that - even the FINAL draft of this screenplay and didn't march right into Lucas' office and say: you are squandering the possibilities.  You are lowering the bar.  You are sacrificing film and story to special effects.  You are proving that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely because you haven't invited careful criticism of this film in pre-production. 

(That last one was a little tricky because, if someone did have the creative integrity and literacy to approach him then it wouldn't have been so absolute, but I'm not going to worry about it if George Lucas can whip out two and a half hours of really bad sentences.)

Sigh.  Another good reason to hate metaphors. 

one of life's mysteries, how one hour spent wine-tasting can yield eight hours of the nagging sensation of having been poisoned... Last night was the annual arts and wine tour of Santa Barbara, although the arts were largely ignored for the wine.  And the wine was ... good.  Anyone who knows anything about the movie 'Sideways' now knows there's wine in the hills of the central coast.  Well, grapes. 

I love wine.  Table wine is comforting.  Good wine is - well, exhilerating.  And superb wine.  Superb wine is why I'll never understand an existential crisis.  Even a good wine is answer enough to the quivering lipped 'What's the point of it all?'  but a superb wine.  That is the point of it all.  Unless all the wine cellars and reserves are suddenly exhausted, a superb wine is one big fat celebration of possibility.  There is always - always - another glass from another bottle that will make the senses rejoice - rejoice, indeedy - and force the mind to just ... quit.  relax.  That's what it is, I guess.  A triumph of the senses - but you need the wine to get there. 

I hope that everyone has some thing that provides them that - opportunity to leap, easily away from all the stuff our heads invent.  It occurs to me, however, that unless the head's engaged and wrestling with the world, that opportunity might not look like an opportunity at all.  Maybe it seems like nothing more than a lull in the babble.  Kind of works the same way with baseball.  You commit to the game and you earn the great moments.

I guess it's not worth it to a lot of people, not if all they can expect out of the deal is a great glass of wine. 

My mother has worked her entire life.  She was one of the generation of Midwestern women who thought marriage lasted forever, who didn't value chic or sophistication, who were willing to be just a little naive in order to raise children and help support her husband's hair-brained schemes, the ones he called 'entrepreneurial ventures.'  (yes, well, that's a whole other story).  She went to college to get her teaching credentials and taught special ed and then she went back and got her masters so she could be a school psychologist.  She was not - by any stretch of the imagination - your postcard liberal.  She used to give me soooo much shit for my bleeding heart yapping.  She saw - up close - the consequences of lazy parenting and ... other ills and of course, communities paid for it, but more importantly - the children did. 

My mother sent me this.  I really love my mother. 

Take the Long Way Home

By William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.org
Posted on May 26, 2005, Printed on May 27, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/22107/I'm very tired. etc. etc. etc.

Any ocean view is likely to be very pleasant if you like that sort of thing; the view of the Pacific from Santa Barbara can ... enthrall.  The Channel Islands lie in the misty distance, an enchanted kingdom for those who like their enchanted kingdoms with a necklace of oil rigs.  The shoreline curls cozy into a bay that makes a nice little marine theater in the round where dolphins regularly go on parade.  Pretty pretty pretty.  The enthralling part, though, the part that can fascinate, that can literally excite the attention, is that the ocean lies to the south east.  Not the West.  The South East. 

It's a simple and entirely safe little game and it can entertain for years. There are a few fixed compasses hidden around the town.  They never fail to - really - amaze and confuse and kick you out of your expectations. 

At the very least, it's peculiar.  The peculiar's good, well, unless the peculiar bothers you, unless you're against being enthralled by these sorts of things, unless playing inside your own imagination seems like too much work for too little return.  There are people who refuse - out of habit, maybe, or some advanced case of peer pressure - to go there.  It's not like they're changing religions or anything.  They're not flirting with the fringe. 

Maybe someone should give guided tours, group lessons in Approaching the Slightly Peculiar Concept. 

A little practice, a little preparation for Arlington West. 

Every Sunday, for the last 18 months, an 'Arlington West' has been fashioned on this shoreline, this already impossibly positioned shoreline.  Fashioned, carefully and thoughtfully, for the duration of a day.  Small white, wooden crosses are planted in the sand in perfect, beautiful order - each with the name, the age, and the rank of a soldier killed in Iraq and how that soldier was killed. 

A single day, every week, of simple wooden crosses, in sands that shift, on a beach visited by tourists and day visitors, yards from an ocean that lies to the south east.  It's exquisitely temporary and profoundly - profoundly -enduring.  Each cross is a memory.  Each cross is created and detailed consciously.   Each cross is preserves and protects a moment - no, an occasion.  that's it - an occasion for public intimacy. 

The crosses now number 1656.  If the number of crosses never changed, Arlington West would be a quiet and beautiful tribute, repeated, re-created, re-considered every week.  But the numbers do change.  The crosses now number 1656.  The weekly additions, the simple dedication and tender care of contemplation that new deaths demand ... it's eloquent. 

One thousand six hundred and fifty six simple white crosses, planted in the silent sand, are eloquent -mores so because they come and they go, and the idea haunts and the whole time, the ocean talks on and on and over and over again of eternity, stupidly unaware of the lives that are honored at its shores.  The ocean that lies to the south east hasn't wrestled with the idea and so doesn't understand that as inconsequential as we humans seem to be, we are its stewards. 

We are so puny and too powerful. 

The expression is 'follow your bliss.'  It sounds vaguely precise - ha!, on the order of one of those not-to-scale maps, instructions that you can trust at least a little.  Mine must be an earlier model because it doesn't operate like that at all. 

My bliss is ... not lazy, but it will dawdle and even if it didn't, it tends to blend with the landscape.  I was going to say it was opaque, but I never remember what opaque means.  Transparent, I know.  Not opaque.  Impenetrable by light. Not reflecting light; dull.  Obtuse.  Dense.  No wonder I never remember it.  I do better with words that have some onomatopoeic oomph, you know?  Opaque sounds like it should be ... a little gauzey.  I think it's the que that does me in. 

But bliss.  That's the point.  The thing. 

I'm on pretty good terms with my bliss and honestly don't mind at all that it's not user friendly.  I had a '65 Mustang fastback.  The one with the medieval steering system.  Well, they don't make cars like that any more, no sirree.  The consumer's gone off cars that double as weight loss programs.  What a joy to park.  In LA.  In the middle of summer.  The interior was black. 

You wouldn't have met me and thought: oh, there's a woman who drives a muscle car.  I didn't actually know it was a muscle car.  I didn't like it at first, not at all, but we developed a good working relationship.  A respect?  I don't think so.  We didn't have to worry about respect.  We just had to accept each other's habits, appreciate each other's style. 

And so it is with my bliss.  I'd like very much - hell, who wouldn't? -if it revealed itself in sequins and feathers and belting out a - well, I'm not really a fan of belting, but I'd be okay if it was a Neil Young tune.  I'd like it very much if my bliss carried a bullhorn and one of those flags that tour group guides wave around to keep their peoples on the right path.  I'd even be happy if my bliss was connected to 'Things I Like to Do.' 

It's not.  It's a strange - even delicate - balance between my head and my instincts and then, maybe, my heart - but it's not a requirement.  I like it like this (which is a good thing, because it's what I get).  My bliss waits around to see if I'll make a commitment, if I'll do what it takes to make something happen.  And then, when its satisfied that I've measured an idea against the resources against the possibilities against my skills and whatever talents ... then and only then does it stir. 

It'd be grand, just grand, to follow my bliss, but it's okay to have to lead it around, too. 

It's probably my favorite part of growing up and getting older - the perspective.  Even the most oblivious dope can hardly avoid accumulating a little bit of history and putting it into some kind of order, if only to explain to himself how he arrived at this ... curious place. 

'Oh yeah. Yeah,' he remembers.  'This manager came in, made some changes, fired a few people and so i got nervous and so five years later, I'm pretty good at databases.'

or, 'I can't speak for Helen, but I got married for forever, and I'd still be married if it wasn't for the Kinnekies.  Damn Kinnekies,' he snarls.  'The Kinnekies sold their house to those people who were okay at first until they painted the place a bright orange and adopted a bunch of kids from weird countries and started cooking food that you could smell three blocks away and that's why i started having my cocktails at Flippy's Tavern and forgot to come home so Helen filed for divorce last month'. 

Yep.  Any historical perspective's sweet, but it's three star fine dining when your perspective is rich with detail, rich with ... gosh, how to say this ... well, rich with perception. 

The trick, I guess, is how to do that.  Few of us can spend all day long poring over information and gathering notes and going to places and events and anticipating what might - MIGHT - factor in to some distant future.  Even those who are recognized experts in some field typically have had to sacrifice some other part of the picture; there's just not enough time to live AND collect information. 

So, a lot of it happens just by being generally alert and welcoming in ... anything. 

Somewhere, first thing this am, I read that the American Family Association's boycott of Ford for its sympathetic treatment of homosexuals was called off.  Hell, they just called for the boycott a week ago or so.  Naturally, I had to trot right over to the website subtitled: Promoting Traditional Family Values.  It's easy for a liberal to dismiss, but this is another conservative website that deserves the same scrutiny it believes it should subject everyone else to.  Promoting Traditional Family Values.  

In fact, it doesn't appear to promote values at all, but instead, harnesses its considerable rhetorical power in the service of inciting/undermining/boycotting and generally feeding pre-existing prejudices (is that the plural of prejudice? lol) True, I didn't examine every single page, but I read an awful lot of them for an early Wednesday morning.  There was nothing creative and good for families being offered.  Nothing.  You know how people misuse 'cynical' to mean a project that doesn't deliver anything of true value, but just taps into the prevailing fears and anxieties to get what they want?  Well, that's the AFA.  It's just thinly veiled empire building.

At the same time, GM is letting 22% of its blue collar work force go.  The problem isn't with the ones let go.  In corporate restructuring, the ones who actually suffer most are the ones not let go.  Fear and anxiety escalates. 

And then there's the Downing Street memo.

They seem, today, disconnected events, isolated news items.  But I'm wondering if in five years, we'll see the dovetailing of parts and pieces.  

I'm finishing 'Silent Snow' (Martha Cone) about the astonishing cumulative contamination of the Arctic.  The toxins and pollutants and crap we generate down here in toastier climes (and getting toastier by the day), head straight north where they find the best environment to get all stable in.  The average idiot (me) assumes those toxins and poisons become diluted.  No no no no no.  Nope.  They actually accumulate and concentrate as they go up the food chain. 

This has been going on quite awhile.  Po' polar bears, po' Inuits.  Po' po' polar thingies.  And yet, startling education, impossible to ignore. 

We create our history, not just by our deliberate strategies, but by our negligence and refusal to pay attention to the web.  Five, ten years from now, we'll have a feast of a perspective.  We always do.  I don't doubt it will look good, but I wonder if the dishes at this one will all have that strange aftertaste of consequences.  

One of my favorite friends and I were having a reunion this weekend.  Her visit just got cancelled, but for a few days, we were excited.  She's a Wharton School grad, a beautiful, witty woman with a mind like a whip, but we weren't business acquaintances.  Nope.  Our friendship flourished in Hollywood, in the clubs and art galleries.  The scene is famed for being full of unreliable nuts, always working it, but most of the people I knew were sincere, really sincere.  They were also all ambitious and that tends to make people appear less ... cuddly.  People with ambitions can't afford to pretend that droopy, easy relationships are of much use. 

Anyway, we were going to meet at a party in Malibu.  'You can wear your tiara,' she said, shorthand for pushing my cartoon thangs - Scary Fairy and Jo Jo Booda - among the Hollywood crowd. 

Now, I ask you, what IS the likelihood?  I just bought my first tiara.  Ha.  The bridal shop on State Street with my favorite windows in the whole town is going out of business.  I stopped in to thank them for ... well, delighting me on a weekly basis.  They dressed their windows with classic lines and colors and designs that were breathtakingly handsome.  Not the usual word you want to throw around when you're talking weddings, but it's true.  So there.  Anyway, the tiaras were twinkling and I'm a sucker for twinkles and an even BIGGER sucker for twinkles that are handwoven and on massive sale and the Scary Fairy wears one and ... crap.  There you go.   

So.  R. said what she said and I said I actually HAD a tiara and she said 'Wear it!  I'll wear mine, too and we'll get a picture' and I said "ppppfpft' but not because of wearing a tiara - oh please, do you reaaalllly think I'm so terribly worried about being seen in a tiara?  (although it hurts like hell).  I said pffft, because it's not a real tiara.  R's is.  She was Junior Miss something or Other of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia.  Miss Junior?  No.  Junior Miss. 

'Not real?  You mean, 'you didn't earn it?' she asked.  Exactly.  That was exactly my point.  'Ah.  You mean you didn't turn, smile, turn?'  Well ... exactly.  'You've earned it,' she assured me.  It was a promise. 

I loved her so much for that.  I've recently remembered a moment with another friend who said I was a good listener.  It was impossible not to laugh.  I was under the impression that a good listener is measured by the length of their silence.  Silent, I am not.  She corrected me.  "You're an active listener.  You talk about what I care about."

Long anecdotes, but I've been working on/exploring Friendship for the part of my website that's for young girls.  It needs some graceful working - at least for me.  Easy enough to spit out platitudes - oh, god, would that I could! - but I can't. 

How to touch on the points of friendship that actually ... um ... feed a child, fuel her as opposed to the points of friendship that make her worry about being accepted, about the politics of popularity, about whether she's worthy or not.  How to teach a child that friendship isn't all about what she gets in return for her loyalty, but is equally about what she's willing to accept. 

A friend that can, that wants to see and appreciate your virtues is invaluable.  A friend that won't just invent some greeting card affirmation - ooh, you're a goddess, oooh you're a fricking princess, oh your sock puppets ought to be on Oprah (even if they should)- but will SEE you and find real joy in what you are - that friend is invaluable.  

It's a given that they can also see your flaws, but the friend that wants to take on the job of being the critic who'll share the news, who'll be the arbiter of good taste and conduct is someone working a power angle.  If I was in charge of teaching children about that kind of friend, I'd say - No, no, NO.  Our job is to give you the skills to decide for yourself about YOURSELF.  Do not give it up to someone else to tell you whether you're valuable or not.  No NO NOOOO.

If I was in charge of teaching children, I'd teach them to be thrilled to death that peole are so strange and complex and wild, that it's a big fat miracle that all of that stuff can fit inside one person and every person.  Anyone who's traveled alot, moved a lot, knows for an absolute fact that one man's virtue (as used above), is another man's eccentricity.  Who wants their child to measure their worth according to the community they happen to be in?

Maybe it reads like a platitude-filled agenda after all.  I took a class once, a baby beginning writing class because I could - lol. - and I needed the credits.  First class (kind of surprising that I actually went.  I wasn't good at going to classes), the teacher announced her philosophy/our guiding principle.  When we critiqued work, we wouldn't criticize.  We would NOT point out the writer's failures.  We would focus on the writer's successes.  I sniffed.  Another pffft.  (I guess I've been slinging those for a few years. ha.  Sorry.)  This was not how it was done. 

No.  It wasn't.  And it was exquisitely effective.  How hard can it be to nurture the strengths in a child? 

typical - and wise - response to a virus is to run away run awayyyyyy.  unless it's a mind virus.  unless it's a meme.  those virii (i'm guessing the plural of virus is viruses, but virii's way more fun to say) ... THOSE virii are good, itsy bitsy sit-ups for the gray matter.  Which is way better exercise than, say, a marathon.  Ick. 

So.  A MOVIE MEME, passed from stygius, formerly of Mindsay, now of typepad.  I am happy to pass it on to anyone who swings by.  We like our quizzes around Mindsay; this is just another version. 

TOTAL Number of Films I own:  Three.  Yep.  Three.  And only three, because Ruth just sent me one yesterday.  Honest to god, just yesterday.  They are, in order of ownership, Garden State, Valhalla (a short by Jacob Strunk, an emerging filmmaker with one of those eyes and some of those ears that one day will, well ... step aside Jim Jarmusch) and What the Bleep Do We Know?

Last Film I Bought:  Garden State

Last Film I Watched:  My First Mister. great flick. 

Five Favorite Films: No way. My head will accept the meme challenge, but it has to make its modifications.  I have favorite films for the moviemaking-ness/beautiful scriptitude/acting and then I have favorite films for the rush of gratitude I feel/the cool kick they've given.  And their favorite-ness is also subject to change. 

Still, what's the point if you don't give it a shot.  So.  For the movie-ness:

1.  San Francisco.  an oldey-worldey movie with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracey about ... well, SF.  It's so good, you don't even need it recommended. 
2.  Witness for the Prosecution
3.  Lonely Are the Brave
4.  My Fair Lady
5.  Farewell My Concubine
6.  Le Bossu

For the 'thanks' factor:

1.  Rushmore
2.  25th Hour
3.  Moonsoon Wedding
4.  Big Lebowski
5.  Dinner Rush
6.  My First Mister
7.  waiiiiit!  I'm not through!!!  The Station Agent

sigh.  fair enough.  now,  go on, movie meme.  go out and multiply. 

We sailed out to the Channel Islands yesterday on a beautiful 50 foot boat under the clearest of blue skies and the brightest of suns.  You just can't paint a picture good enough to describe bob bob bobbing along among a platoon of porpoises and tacking around enORmous tankers and dipping up and down along swells. It was swell.  Spectacular, of course, but exhausting, too. 

Big surprise, since I didn't do a thing.  Not one thing - which was very good since I didn't know what to do.  I'd never been sailing before.  I didn't know anything, didn't expect anything, didn't anticipate anything.  By the time we returned, I understood the basics of sails - the adjustments to the main and the jib and the need to create a kind of ... what is that?  a suction stream?, the nifty swifty goings on when tacking, the elaborate network of ropes ... the list is long of what a person gets introduced to in six hours. 

My friend L. - an architect, a map maker, and a potter - and her partner D. sailed to Australia - where she's currently doing what she needs to do to get a visa.  My friend R., abandoned corporate life to go to sushi school and took a chef's job on a vessel going to the Caribbean. 

Those two experiences - not mine at all, but friends' who've supplied endless anecdotes - created loads of questions:  how does one sail from America to Australia, who sleeps and when, what happens when there's a storm, how big of a craft does it take to have a cook on board and how does one cook when being tossed not stirred? 

Our captain and crew couldn't have been more generous with information and answers.  Even as we approached the harbor, and the sails came down, Peter happily entertained my "Why now?  Why not at the mouth of the harbor?" (because I'm lazy that way and thought it was a fine idea to wait til the last possible second). 

Back on terra firma, back in Santa Barbara, we had a little dinner and champagne at my brother's place.  My nephew had just returned from the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference.  He'd won a scholarship to attend, one of six for young people.  I read the piece he'd submitted.  He's a good writer, his style ... crisp. 

And yet, he missed on something critical - something he didn't have to miss on.  He missed on something that was ... essential and his writing couldn't possibly make up for it.  His teacher likes to go through his work and attend to the grammar issues, the consistency of tenses, the structure of any single sentence.  Fair enough.  It's important to know the technical basics well. 

As important as it is to know the technical basics of sailing a boat.   But sailing a boat is clearly more than just an exercise in making a boat move.  It so obviously benefits from reading the environment - the wind (at the very least), the other vessels and their courses - and from reading your own intentions.  You can drift or you can aim.  It's sooooo great, but even a dope like me can see that you absolutely participate in the experience. 

Writing, too.  Maybe my nephew needs a more generous teacher.  But then, that's a whole other question:  if someone's giving up everything they know, isn't that generosity?  Maybe generosity demands, depends on someone probing for answers, for information, not just probing for approval. 

Oh, I like that.  I wonder if it's true.  

I couldn't tell the difference between solstice and my elbow if they didn't tell me.  I'd like to think that if I was an ancient and spent long winter months waddling around with bunny fur and deer hide taped to my feets I'd sure as hell be up for a big celebration.  Now, it's another day for a parade. 

We like our parades in these parts (in theory).  A parade a week will do wonders to kill an appetite.  We live on the street that's used most often for parade prep.  Well, not really prep.  Parade loitering.  All those people who prance down the street have to loiter in a traffic jam first.  We're the traffic jam center.  This job will take the glow off even the most spectacular parade.  The happy news is that the solstice parade starts in the opposite direction, so we get to park like normal people. 

A. was asked to play on the first float, but he declined.  The parade theme is 'Wild Thing' so the lead guitarist for the Troggs (I only added the second 'g' because who'd be in a band called the Trogs?) will play the-song-of-that-name.  Over and over again.  And over.  An hour and a half of Wild Thing.  I asked, gently, if A. still didn't want to play with Mr. Troggs.  He's playing a gig at Soho, so it was a non-issue. 

Back home, A. wandered easy among musicians.  And there are some great ones in the Midwest, thank you.  But celebrity?  Well, that's something else.  After three years of being in California A's now been in the company of some dazzling celebrity - as a guitarist, as sound man, as tech, as fellow guest at backyard parteee.  It's one of those small but powerful things a person carries with them; the ability to admire a talent, admire an achievement, and - in fact, honestly celebrate another person's gift - without jealousy or resentment or the cheapest of cheap - passive aggressive treachery and reputation-ruining.  (I made that technique up, but I bet there's a cure for it, anyway.)  

I'm reminded of an episode in that same Midwest, just before we made our quick escape.  Billy Bob Thornton came to town.  He was going out with a local beauty who'd moved to Hollywood and that's what they do when they're doing that.  They come to town. 

Ay ay ay.  Celebrity does amazing things to some people.  You'll forgive me not having any sympathy at all for the anthropological position on these things (I'm assuming there's one - everything can be explained by our primitive selves and impulses.)  And I don't care if you forgive me or not but I, personally, never recovered from seeing people I actually liked transformed into people I loathed.  Some ugly thing was unleashed and I saw people give into some huge need to meet, touch, speak with, become false friends with celebrity. It was not so different from a communal fever, the kind of hysteria that slaps you with 'Salem Witch Trials'/'The Crucible' fame. I'm imagining it works this way because people can come with little jealous silly putty minds that have more stretch than restraint.

No.  I'm thinking I should be nicer about it.  Can't.  It's bullshit and sloppy and revealing and inexcusable.  It's why you let your thirteen year old go crazy and dream of being a rock star's girlfriend, so you can help her through it and teach her that all the things she imagines being solved or fabulously changed, the magic she figures will come to her by association ... those are the very things she wants to seek for herself.  It's a rotten thing, Americans do to celebrities.  It's rotten because they're not taking care of the shit themselves. 

For some mysterious reason, people believe things best when 1: they're in print and 2: they come from the wealthy.  Steve Job's commencement address.  This one's worth it.  And you don't even have to be a Stanford graduate to get it:

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of
the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that
when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it
out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally
spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma,
whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well- worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well,
as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was
gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another
company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is
for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and
better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here inMenlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters,
scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

there's no such thing.  i mean, it doesn't work; even if you twist and turn and wring out all your rags of figurative speech, you still can't make "pre-emptive apology" mean anything.  still, i kind of like the way it sounds and i don't see why i can't have a sound byte. 

oh.  but the apology.  i haven't been blogging.  not much reason to and i've discovered a huge pleasure in spending my writing time reading instead.  (that looks like it needs some punctuation, but none occurs to me and i'll just hope, if anyone's made it this far, they scanned their way.)  where was i?

the apology.  oh yeah.  i had to start another blog.  business-y stuff.  it stinks because i really can't make myself care about it.  every time i have an idea that might actually be useful, i spit it out in the first sentence or two and head straight for my signature babbling about how it all fits in to the big picture. 

but NOW Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resigned.  Now it starts.  I expect to have a few days of unbridled ... mmm ... how to say ... I expect to be mad.  And I'm sorry.  I know people don't like negativity.  LOL.   

Let us Africans do the Talking

by Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme The New York Times

Saturday July 16, 2005

Yaounde, Cameroon:  Live8, that extraordinary media event that some people of good intentions in the West just orchestrated, would have left us Africans indifferent if we hadn't realized that it was an insult both to us and to common sense ...."

an op-ed piece from the International Herald Tribune  (it should open in a different window)

not me.  Westmoreland.  The principal architect of Viet Nam strategy.  Became contrite in his old age.  Offered himself up to the documentary-makers.  Remember him?  The Fog of War (maybe that's the title.  I forget) has been highly recommended here several times.  I recall Jim Schweizer recommending it, too.  Hell, what more do you need to run out and rent it?  :) 

Best thing in above flick, which catalogues the Big Lessons Westmoreland learned: Empathy for the enemy.  As in genuinely, truly understanding what motivates the po' bastards.   ANYWAYYYYYYY:

I swiped this from the International Herald Tribune and they swiped it from the Boston Globe. 

The Westmoreland Mindset

by Derrick Z. Jackson
The Boston Globe
Friday, July 22, 2005

BOSTON None of the many newspaper obituaries about General William Westmoreland exhumed one of the most important things he ever said:

'The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient."

Westmoreland said that in the Oscar-winning 1974 Vietnam documentary "Hearts and Minds." The quote so stunned director Peter Davis that he gave Westmoreland a chance to clean it up. In a 1997 guest letter to The Washington Post in response to criticism that he cherry-picked the quote to push his antiwar agenda, Davis said, "When we filmed the interview, Westmoreland paused after making that statement, yelled 'Cut!' and said he wanted a retake because that wasn't how he meant to express himself.

"In the second take, the general began saying exactly the same thing but we ran out of film. We then gave him a third chance to amend his remarks - much the way Ted Koppel gave Al Campanis of the Los Angeles Dodgers a chance to change what he was saying about nonwhite baseball players lacking the 'necessities' to be managers - and Westmoreland repeated the statement about the 'Oriental.' I used the third take, since the statement was most complete."

The quote was important because it spoke to a military and White House that assumed in Vietnam they would overpower an inferior people. Assumptions of cheap life in the East led to bombing without a conscience by the West, admitting no mistakes along the way. President Lyndon Johnson boasted in 1967 that everything was moving along nicely as we Americans were outkilling the North Vietnamese forces 10-1. Ultimately, it was the American people who decided that the price was too high for the war to continue.

Westmoreland is dead, but he lives on in our invasion and occupation of Iraq. President George W. Bush makes no sweeping statements that Arabs or Iraqis do not put the same high price on life as Americans. But he makes Americans into unassailable saints.

"We're dealing with an enemy that has no conscience," Bush said on the campaign trail last year. "Today, if you noticed, there was a car bomb near a school. These people are brutal. They - they're the exact opposite of Americans. We value life and human dignity. They don't care about life and human dignity. We believe in freedom. They have an ideology of hate. And they're tough, but not as tough as America."

This righteousness became twisted paternalism. We originally invaded Iraq to save ourselves from a future attack by Saddam Hussein using his weapons of mass destruction. We learned quickly that they did not exist. The White House switched to saying the invasion was to save the Iraqi people from Saddam.

That was ironic, since we have bombed and killed thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Iraqi civilians to "save" them. The right wing loves to hound liberals and the left, claiming that they ignored Saddam's prior carnage to his people. But two years after the invasion, the hawks have still not answered why two massacres - however careful our soldiers tried to be - make a right.

It is clear that the real reason we switched to the bomb-the-Iraqis-to-save-the-Iraqis excuse was because, as we keep learning, the White House knew well before the war that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was far too skimpy to merit Bush's claim that Saddam was buying uranium from Niger for nukes. It was too thin to warrant Vice President Dick Cheney telling America before the war: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, our allies, and against us."

We will never admit it, but our bombs spoke Westmoreland's words. The administration believed Iraqi life was cheap and plentiful enough so the people left standing would not complain about those lowered into the grave. This was best expressed in Cheney's boast the Sunday before the invasion that "we will be greeted as liberators." That was the same day that Cheney also said the White House believed Saddam had reconstituted nuclear weapons, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said there were none.

Exaggerated claims for war. Bombing the innocent to defeat our opposites. Westmoreland failed in Vietnam, playing the enemy for cheap. Iraq is failing, with Americans discovering how cheaply their president played them. There is yet no director in this remake to yell, "Cut!"

The USS Reagan was in the bay this weekend.  We hauled the nephews out of their weekend lethargy, stuffed them in a car and drove up to foothills to get a big picture on the harbor.  The boat, it was big.  Huge.  Bigger than huge.  Then we drove down to the beach boulevard to get a closer look.  Funny thing, that closer look.  The big huge bigger than huge ship sort of shrunk at eye level.  Without perspective, you know, it just looked like an oki-doki sized ship.  Still, it was anchored pretty far off the coast which invited the speculation on how the sailors got off and into town.  We are military idiots and know nothing of these things.  Of course (maybe), they had to come in on leeetle boats.  But how did they get down to the leeeetle boats.  Ladders?  An elevator? 

A. was sure he had the answer. 'You said it was a war ship,' he coaxed the youngest nephew.  'It's probably got an escalator.' Oh, I laughed and laughed and then realized that youngest nephew, the thirteen year old who was full of loathing for all things military and war-like, didn't get it.  So, we had to stop laughing and explain that escalation was an oft-used expression in military campaigns, blah blah blah blah blah. 

Like many kids, he mimicks his parents - their vocabulary, their opinions - and like many parents, they can't hear the forest for the trees.  They're often delighted at their child's astonishingly keen insight.  Some mechanism that might otherwise demand to know reasoning and support of opinion fails when that opinion is so curiously just like their own.  I guess it's always exciting to have someone agree with you. 

But that's kind of the point.    When it comes to Iraq - our engagement, our disengagement, our threatened divorce ... I can't tell what anyone's reaalllllly thinking.  To my long ago last entry randomrealities (who's a queen of dispassionate thinking) replied with multi-approach consideration (I bet that's not really a method, but it's what it read like).  If I'd had to write it, I'd have thought it was difficult. 

I didn't reply back, but I considered sharing a think piece/exercise, this before Cindy Sheehan.  I'd just oh-dee-oh-doh-doh been going along with conventional wisdom on how we had to stay in Iraq.  Okay, that's not entirely true, that I was that careless about it, but I did accept that prevailing view without a whole lot of thought.  And then, at a party, someone I admire asked it, point blank:  Why couldn't we just leave?  (Wait a second.  i'll count the syllables, even though those contractions always mess me up on the syllable count.  Six.  Six simple syllables.)  I knew it wasn't a throw away remark that like-minded people could cheer to.  It was a genuine question. 

Of course, I had no answers, but it was a fascinating thing (for me) to really really consider carefully.  Exactly what WOULD happen if we just left? 

The same simple scrutiny could stand to be given by those who support the Bush policy.  In the last week or so, whenever there's discussion about Cindy Sheehan's movement, there's a supporter sitting in and - invariably - full of contempt.  The consensus is that 1. we'll send the wrong message to the enemy and 2. that abandoning Iraq will bring the insurgency and/or terrorists to our shores. 

How do they know?  What do they know?  Exactly how do they figure?  When DID they become expert in terrorist strategy - in the last several years?  Point is, to my mind, their authority is highly suspect. 

We have, all of us, become way too comfortable, agreeing with those we agree with.  I look forward to that moment when we actually can think again. 

oooh!  a sequel! 

My favorite joke of all time isn't a joke, but a little story about a joke that's funnier than the joke.  Which was really funny.  It's a measure of the regard I have for most of mindsayers I know that I'll share this; it's one of those stories you just want to hold close for private viewing. 

So.  Doug and I were sitting at the bar of our favorite little pub in Budapest, chuckling about ... oh, isn't this weird?  We were chuckling about the very same thing. NOT the joke, but the story of the joke.  Sitting just around the bend of the bar was a chappy from - well, it doesn't matter where he was from (even though he was from Canada).  It was only good manners to explain ourselves. 

We had two Irish friends (both named Niall) - unstoppable joke tellers with a particularly good one in their repertoire.  They challenged anyone, everyone to give them a name (alot like this:  Give us a name, then) and they'd sing a song using the name.  If someone said 'Mathilda,' they'd sing 'Waltzing Mathilda.'  Jean, Roxanne, Louise ... aye!  A lot of names were covered. 

People set themselves to stumping the Nialls, and invented names.  Maxiloxious, for instance. 

The Nialls exchanged a glance; it was clear they were scanning their huge catalogue.  They took a breath and began.  "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you ..."

The song finished.  And too often, the people set on stumping them would give it another shot.  "Okay.  Okay."   Eyes would dart around the room, looking for a clue.  "Um.  Stella Artois."

The Nialls exchanged a glance; it was clear they were etc etc.  "Happy Birthday to you, Happy ..."

Oh my gosh.  We HOWLED.  End of our story.

The fellow sitting around the bend in the bar squinted.  "What about ... ?" and he named the beer he was drinking. 

Oh look.  I'm feeling nostalgic.  Po' me. 

I've been a little haunted by this joke for the last couple of days.  I was forced to guess that it's just a variation on a theme: the question of what we hear, what filters/expectations we hear it through. 

It's not much of a limb I go out on to suggest that how think about the world/iraq is only as good as our ability to see the world, hear the world.  Better, only as good as our ability to hear ourselves, see ourselves. 

And we are really really bad at it.  Certainly, I hope others have experience only of sweetness and joy, but in the world I shuffled around in, it seems that we are people on a daily basis driven by the most petty crap.  We want we want we want and we'll happily take it from our neighbors and friends if we don't have enough.  We are jealous, we wish failure on the next, we will sacrifice harmony to have a smidgen of the spotlight.  We ache for our own fates and circumstances, we claw to find anything like satisfaction and weep for ourselves.  

In short, it seems to moi (and moi, alone) that we, who have more resources and liberty and diversity, are not very good at just loving it.   

There's a possibility that we can't even hear a joke if it was told to us. 

I've told this leeetle story before, but it has a new context.   Mere weeks afer 9/11, a friend suffered a terrible cycling accident.  In the end, we created a non profit and a gorgeous bike jersey ( I can't seem to bring up the image!!!)  Anyway, you might remember the story on said jersey:

 You may not remember the time you let me go first.
Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go.
Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up.
You may not remember any of those, but I do
& this is what I have to say to you:
today, no matter what it takes,
                                           we ride home together.  
Riding Home

The jersey was a gorgeous sentiment.  But sentiment does not translate into action.  And sentiment will not sustain people.  I've done this too many times, been involved in too many projects, designed many of them and here's the truth.  We will get tired.  Our attention will drift.  It will happen, not because we're rotten people, but because we're people.  

However, if we recognize what will happen, we can create a structure that incorporates that.  We can create something that plays to our strengths and doesn't wait for our weaknesses to prevail.   

I had to have a Scary Fairy card, all proceeds going to Baton Rouge services.  And so, I wrote:  Power impresses, but she cherishes strength instead.  Strength can be shared.  Strength will change lives. 

Flashy?  No.  As true as true as true as I knew?  Absolutely. 

Money money money is critical right now and people are giving giving giving. 

We're not the idiots we act sometimes.  We know it will take more.  We know our gifts are helping only the immediate need.  This is a need that will endure. 

Mindsay folks are in an incredibly unique position to help.  We're fabulously computer literate.  We're also, for the most part, fabulously literate.  We come from various regions.  And we represent a wider circle - we are a huger network than appears online.  And, we're self contained.  We have the ability to remind ourselves of our progress. 

You don't need to know Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to know that the victims of Katrina will soon have needs beyond shelter, food and basic safety.  (Aren't we relieved that they finally got some of that?)  Even now, it deserves saying that stimulation, too, belongs to the most basic of needs and when people live in 'refugee status' ... stimulation and peaceful sleep aren't the priorities of relief agencies.  

War refugees, political refugees, regime refugees might be poor, might be in need, might seem incapable of contribution but we make a huge mistake to ignore the future, our shared future, our shared possibilities.   

Anyway.  I did a fast storyboard, illustrating what Mindsay might do- CAN do - as a long term project.  It is ONLY a 'concept' - based on aiming towards self sufficiency and sustainability. 

We have the ability to administer/maintain it.

We have the ability to measure it.

We have the ability to solicit corporate and business partnership for tasks. 

We have the ability to be strong, to share our strength.  

If anyone's interested in developing this, let me know. 

Otherwise, I'm happy to have tossed it out there. 

an addendum to yesterday's post.  i love addendums. too bad you can't write an addendum first.  wait a second.  on the other, weird hand, because blogging puts posts in a particular order, this addendum actually does come first.  eeek.  well, there you have it.  you can have what you wish for!  but, back to the point.  i thought i'd elaborate just a wee bit.  a little context, a little explanation, a little tightening, refining and cleaning up. 

forgive me the yapping, but i'm not accustomed to detailing my thinking (as it were) process.  i've had to show up, the thinking already done (and believe me, it's never been a solo act.  that thinking has me consulting with the very best folk I know around the world).  anyway, THIS idea that i grow more and more committed to, is entirely about marshalling resources (the phrase of the day.  i get those, but it's usually just a word that pops up over and over again.  and again.)  and strengths of the Mindsay community so that, when we pass them over, they're ... developed.  it's about effectively managing strength.  no, it doesn't sound so glamorous, does it? 

well, we expect a lot when we expect the agencies helping to not exhaust their creative capital.  and it's ridiculous to expect Katrina's victims to be thinking well for themselves. 

THIS is what we can do.  originally, i threw everything marginally related into the mix, but happy, happy - we all see that there are projects dedicated to supplying items for personal use.  (see knapsacksofhope) 

I'm still all for The Virtual House as a unifying theme.  I'm sure there are other Big Categories that fit in a house, but I thought of Self-Sufficiency, Restoring Possessions and Reclaiming the Joy of Life.  It's my taste alone that runs to concentrate on ideas that can contribute to self-sufficient homes.   We might even think of it as a clearing house of skills, talents, resources.  No.  It probably wants a slightly more narrow mission statement.  

So.  How does an idea get translated into action?

I only know a smidgen of Mindsay folk (some, only by reputation) and I know there are a variety of professions.  But talents and skills - ayyyyyy!  We have artists, thinkers, writers, photographers, gardeners. 

Imagine we had three sections:  an idea, a discussion/brainstorming section on implementing and then a section where people could help execute it. 

Easiest is a garden.  Let's try a slightly more difficult one.  Someone puts up an idea about postcards or greeting cards.  Fundraising.  Me?  I'd suggest that, if we were aiming towards self-sufficiency, perhaps we could develop a program that solicited pictures from Katrina's children.  We could split up the jobs between us, the 1.  getting the pictures, 2.  approaching printing companies about contributing printing costs, 3.  approaching companies who buy their greeting cards (Christmas IS upon us) 4.  creating a simple way for the victims to get the cards in their hands and fulfill orders themselves. 

Anyway.  That's where I am today.  There's plenty of time.  If anyone's still interested, if anyone wants to brainstorm online, ... yeah.  The first respondents yesterday, causticpoonanny and sharonrevolving, made my head nearly explode.  I can not think of people better equipped to think well and fluidly and creatively.  Because Katrina's victims and those busy protecting and serving them can't. 

yesterday seemed like a good time to do this.  the cheating is all about the last scene.  first, i animated it, but i got tired and turned it into a still. 

(anyway, because i'd like to post this on a live page, for kids, any comments that help clear up the message are sooooo welcome, i can't even tell you.

today/tonight/tomorrow, i'll get up a 'proposed model' for a Mindsay Clearing House of Help Towards Self Sufficiency and Sustainability because there's another thing i seem to excel at:  Big, Incomprehensible Titles.  In my defense, anyone can do it if they just throw capital letters around the place. 

I once worked for a wonderful woman who was something of a pro at fundraising.  Man, she could crank out a pamphlet that made money - poof! - appear.  "Guilt 'em" she said. "Cut to the chase and guilt 'em.  It works."

It never quite ... sat right with me, no matter what kind of success she had with it.  It doesn't feel right and it can't be sustained. 

Whether I understood it in the beginning or learned it, I definitely get that people don't care about the stuff I do.  That's fine.  But that doesn't mean that they can't contribute. Sometimes, many times, they'll contribute if you give them a way, show them the way.  Will it cost them?  Sure.  Will they get something in return?  Almost always. Which leads me to business. 

I like big business.  Rather, I like what big business can get done.  I like what big business can get done when it's doing good business.  I like what big business can get done when it sees the value of supporting local initiatives and cultural programs.  I don't care why they do it - the flip side of not caring whether or not they care.  Thoreau called it right the first time:  you just can't expect a corporation to have a conscience.  Only the men in it.  blah blah blah. 

You CAN expect a corporation to see that contributing or participating in 'noble' stuff is good for them.  Good public relations.  Good for their own employees and upper management to create a civilized society they can live in (the civil society's someone else's gig). Good because they often have the materials and resources in house, gathering dust. 

Oddly, people usually have to approach business (big or medium) with a good idea.  Take that back.  Not oddly at all.  The folks they have on staff- their marketing team - are busy doing businessy stuff.  It's not their job to imagine a different way.  The company I'm currently working at has offered to double employee contributions until December of this year and, after that, match them until December of next.  It's not a shabby plan.  But for petessake (I am SO proud of me for avoiding profanity) - surely, SURELY, someone can think of something besides putting out a jar for coin. 

Nope.  Nope, that's the sort of thing we can do.  If we want. 

Anyway, it's a valuable thing to consider when we consider what Mindsay can create collectively towards helping Katrina's victims:  business can be a partner.   

I'm a dope.  Let's see if this works.  If it does, wheeeeeeeee!  If it doesn't, I'll just keep on typing.  :)

COOOOOL.  html - what a charm!

Anyway.  I went simple simple (although it could be even MORE simple since anything and everything I threw into the map above can be managed on a blog.)

Of course, I made it up.  And it can be re-made-up.  Or made over.  The "Three Categories" (wait, I had to stop to clap with a sorry bit of glee.  I'm not kidding, using capital letters is my new favorite trick) - as nebulous/vague as they appear - are fairly useful. 

The Body allows anyone to work on gathering the stuff (and finding the land) for gardens.

The Mind allows anyone to work on simple tutorial things, on .... well, for instance, it wasn't that hard to think what could be done if some of the sterling photography talents around here (some who already own photos of New Orleans) assembled those photos and they were matched with 'reflections of New Orleans' by those now living in sanctuary cities and THOSE were turned into ibooks or ... something that could be sold.

Sandyquill, in sandyquill's inimitable way, is already researching greeting cards that we could help the displaced create and sell. 

The Heart/Spirit allows for things like ... well, like musicians and music techs to take portable recording gear to sites and get music and burn those into cd's ... and graphic artists can design labels and and and and ... another thing for the displaced to create and sell. 

Anyway. 

That's it.  Sketched. 

I like the way I give directions.  A. thinks my direction-giving hovers in the pile of poo territory.  This is because, if we're looking at the same map, at the same time, I tend to think he'll take a ... well, a mental picture of the abstract.  He asks:  where next?  I answer: up and over.  He says:  Up and over?  UP and OVER?  where the hell's THAT?  I answer:  Up.  And over.  What?  Were you blind?

I don't care how many times he ridicules me, I still think they're damned good directions.  lol.  (Of course, when he starts telling others what he suffers through with me (he calls me a nagivator), he's good enough to add the time we were heading to Memphis and somewhere in ... oh, Arkansas, I think.  Let's pretend it was Arkansas - well, wherever it was, interstate traffic was so bad, we thought we'd take back roads.  He'd just finished yelling at me about my 'down and over' directions when he glanced at a sign and saw 'Mississippi.'  He was apoplectic.  "Mississippi!  You got us to MISSISSIPPPPPPPPI?  How???! etc etc etc etc."  I was, it's true, a little bewildered myself.

It was Mississippi County. 

I forget why I'm writing.  Oh.  It's because last post was a project map.  No place to fill anything in or out.  So, I put up a blog and tried to organize it so information and progress and ideas could be traded more easily. 

There are quite a few blanks to fill in and I'll do that in the next few days.  But you're welcome to do it, too.  And, actually, you're just as welcome to do nothing.  A small demonstration of what self-sustainability is. 

OOOPS.  it's at http://helpfactory.mindsay.com

a frisson of fear (tiny)/panic (baby) is running through the room because there's a widespread power outage in LA.  of course, not in ALL of LA because power's up in parts of Hollywood, but in enough of LA. 

it's interesting how information flows, picking up flotsam and jetsom, even in one small office.  in the absence of no real information, we'll make it up.  what strange times and places to get creative.  :) 

frankly, there should be guidelines for the ones who blog with non-linear wandering-ness (ones like me.) and they should be made available through the good offices of a better blogging bureau. 

i figured out that i'd have to do the occasional (okay, even daily) tiny blog over at helpfactory just to give the thing an occasional cyber-bump.  but i just spent all my blogging time yacking away about being impulsive/living creatively and the lessons of the 18th century - which have a long way to go before anyone thinks: oooh. THAT sounds an entertaining read!

a better blogging bureau would have a page with bullets of Do's and Don'ts - both which I habitually ignore, but STILL ... to have a starting place.  to have someone who knows these things say:  two, three paragraphs tops.  that's what people can stomach. 

well, isn't this odd?  the one bureaucratic agency i can think of a use for and I'm already sniffing: oh shut up with your rules!

still.  Po' po' scaryfairy blog.  In the best of times, it didn't get my finest attention. 

There's no shortage of folks ready and willing to examine the how and why of what happened to New Orleans.  Yesterday, a mindsay blog tendered the idea that it was God's Judgment; this morning, someone emailed me an article from The Intellectual Activist (it developed into a thread, but they sent only one piece).  A journalist credited his wife with the idea - she'd gone to school near the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago and, while watching Fox broadcasting, was struck by the similarities - the crime, the squalor, the sordidness of housing projects.  (I paraphrase.  But not much.)  "The man-made disaster is the welfare state," is what Robert Tracinski  pronounced. 

His last paragraphs are as follows: 

I woke up with something on my mind and instantly thought of a perfect way to illustrate it.  And then I instantly forgot what it was supposed to illustrate.  It was 5.30 am.   My illustration distracted me.  Basketball. 

I loved playing basketball - not real basketball, but pick-up. I grew up in Chicago, where my dad coached a team of guys, half who'd go on to be stars. A girl who runs track, whose boyfriend is the Catholic League's best quarterback and who's around a lot of hot but shy basketball players - she'll play basketball. Except, no matter where I played or who I played with, they had to play by my rules.

Please. I was about five yards shorter than most of them. As long as the ball was below the 'invisible' waistline, it was basketball as usual. If, however, I got to take a shot, they had to step away and keep their big ol' hands out of the way. No defense on my shots.

Now, where would I get the idea that that was right? I don't know, but I did it from day one and if any one had an objection, I never heard it. It was one of those rules that just ... comes to you, a way to level the playing field. An equalizer without making all the heat of the game evaporate. Like shooting pool against a lesser opponent who's still making a serious effort; it's good to change the rules. In that case, you agree to bank the 8-ball.

It's not "nice." It's a way to keep the game going and keep it as competitive and exciting and fun as possible. People playing sports will adjust - anything to keep that game going. Anything to keep a game that's GOOD going.

No, no, it's not nice at all. "Nice" is when a guy's trying to get laid, so he lets the girl giggle a lot without even trying to learn how to hold a cue stick, throw the ball, step into the shot, swing the racquet. There are penalties for being "nice" - the patience will eventually wear very thin. (Which raises a whole other question - whose fault is it that someone wanted to get laid enough to let the game go bad?)

Well, you can be sure the above was meant to illustrate something very specific, but I forgot what that was almost instantly. I came out, made coffee, had a cigarette - and still, it didn't reappear. So I sat down to type the above and it's not all that hard to see the obvious, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that obvious. Or maybe it was. Hard to say when you don't remember. Oh hell. it's not going to kill me- I'll stick with the obvious.

Every year I try to participate in an Italian web animation competition.  They propose a Big and Important Social Theme and artists who'd otherwise animate 'gags' - however entertaining - actually concentrate on delivering a story. 

The judging criteria are ... curious.  One year, I won the International Prize. Of course, that was the year I thought their judgment was impeccable.  :)  But really, there's a happy kind of tendency to not demand particularly strong 'answers' - as long as the animation kind of, sort of, a little bit looks like it's been thinking about the Theme, everyone's happy.  Oh please.  It's Italy. 

Anyway.  THIS year, the theme was announced:  The Culture of War|The Culture of Peace. 

Well, that's a crowd silencer.  At least the crowd in MY head shut up.  It's not that hard to guess what the animated replies will be, or even what, on some level, they'll expect.  (see:  Italy's reluctant participation in Iraq and imminent withdrawal of troops, Berlosconi's popularity "problems," the country's Mussolini-memory, the strength of the Communist party, etc etc). 

This is an occasion when I might actually be able to deliver what they're sort of/kind of expecting and that's ecause I haven't thought carefully about it at all.  An opinion?  Oh, THAT I can crank out in about 10 seconds, but it's mighty slippery and terrifically hollow.  See for yourself.  (It opens in a separate window.)

I started with a rough, but I don't have a lot of places to go.  My guy in front (the local representative for the "Culture of Peace") will lay down to contemplate the skies and maybe drift off into dreamy world.  My little agitated guy in back will build - very quickly - his empire - and then, trying to defend it, will take a bullet and drop and he'll be in the same pose as the slumbering fellow in front. 

It says nothing, means nothing, reveals nothing.  It just takes up space.

I'm thinking I should send my regrets and admit I just haven't thought about it enough. 

I used to measure my place in the world and the passing of time by Pruitt.  Actually, 'measured' is the wrong word.  I lived lived lived, did did did and then, suddenly, there'd be Pruitt - in the present, pinning that particular moment to the past.  Pruitt was very special to me.  

Pruitt was exquisitely ... alert.  Very clear and honest.  But gentle and generous, too.  Mostly, he was a card carrying misanthrope.  I mean, really.  He wasn't cranky.  I'm cranky.  He truly didn't like people.  And he did NOT like going out in public.  He didn't drive.  He'd drop by my apartment with chicoree coffee and tapes and a play he was working on - things you HAD to go out to deliver, but mostly, we talked on the phone.  Even though we lived in the same building. 

And then the dynamic changed when his wife took over the friendship.  That will happen.  She and I had the stuff of good friendship, too, but ... anyway.  The dynamic really changed when I left the country.  That, for sure, will happen. 

But Pruitt didn't leave me.  Ever.  

By circumstance and choice, I was without many of the things many find comfort in, things they describe the quality of their lives by.  (yah. I know.  A mess of a sentence.)  Pruitt was my comfort.  Pruitt anchored me to my entire history.  The anchor - that's a big, beautiful idea to me.  As long as I could see a movie, Pruitt gave me that.  Pruitt is a character actor.  In the middle of some flick that I was watching somewhere half way around the globe, Pruitt kept a promise he never made to keep something intact. 

So.  It's been awhile since I've blogged.  I've spent more time resisting than actually writing to a blog.

But yesterday, I had quite a long talk with the default director of the Arts Council of Baton Rouge about programs for Katrina victims.  With limited budget and limited staff, they're doing what they can do.  We were on the same page: while there's an inarguable need for dealing with the trauma of loss and displacement and intense fear, you can hardly offer expertise you don't have.  But possibilities?  Oh.  Oh, THAT we can offer. 

And the need for that is becoming increasingly evident on the ground.  Parents are breaking. Kids are breaking.  The popular take on it is that, well, of course, people break when they've lost everything.  I don't believe that and even if I did, it's just not helpful to subscribe to the idea that we are what we own.  What IS helpful - to me - is becoming very clear on how valuable it is to be connected to the course of your own life.  To be anchored - not TO a thing, but to the history of your possibilities.  Not to the stuff of history, but to those moments when you went easily into the future. 

Pruitt marked those moments for me.  I hope everyone has something that anchors them as well as he did.

Yah, well, I don't doubt at all that I didn't say it well.  These things that float through our hearts and imaginations have better things to do than wait around while I try and fit them on a blog. 

I can't juggle.  Don't want to even try to juggle.  Maybe I'm afraid that if I learned to juggle, I'd wake up and be a mime.  Eek.  Minor terror in that picture.  But ...if juggling works like other athletic, acrobatic skills (even mind acrobatics)  I'm guessing that you have to learn the parts, master the mechanics slowly.  I'm guessing you have to suffer through the awkward, stuttering stages when it feels very much like the parts will never ever come together.  And then, they do.  And the whole thing becomes fluid.  There's still an eeek factor, but it's a less ... squeeky eek. 

Some people are easily frustrated by the process of mastering the mechanics.  I'm not.  No matter how bad I am at a thingie, I've just seen the results too many times.  The small skills will come together. 

And that's how this project for victims o' Katrina is working.  It might not have captured Mindsay's imagination.  I admit, that surprised me.  That's okay.  I'm not in the business of inspiring anyone.  But I'm glad that Mindsay gave me a platform.  I juggle slowly.  Some parts are coming together beautifully.  Other parts have to be discarded. 

But I know that they will soon work smoothly.  That's neither false confidence or denial.  The work is being done.  It's not back-or-mind breaking work.  It's just slow.  And it's ... really - something to marvel at as the parts fall into place and people can see the possibilities in motion.   Extraordinary, to hear the habit of no turn easily, so easily into yes.  Yes, I can see that.  I can do that.  We can do this. 

We can.  We do.  Juggle.  I borrow a phrase sharonevolving said to me:  it's the juice. 

Meet a less-than-sterling quality on the street and you'll find plenty of people ready to explain it with, "human nature."  In my most unscientific study of Mindsay reasoning, 'human nature' gets the most points for why we do anything and everything even a little bit rotten. 

I have yet to read that without my forehead scrunching and eyes squinting (this is, I suspect,my signature expression ) and thinking: what are you talking about?  What is that?  Why is that?  I'm not trying to be an idiot, but when I hear/read 'human nature,' I hear/read 'human nature.'  Two words, four syllables, and that's it. 

Behind every human being I've known, particularly the ones who are most easily labeled, are a multitude - LOTS and LOTS - of competing motives and private myths and stuff.  Human nature says nothing at all about their past and definitely nothing about their future. 

I've been steeped in a few projects the last few months that depend on - essentially - not agreeing in any way to the idea of 'human nature.' I obviously don't have to work very hard at it, at shrugging it off, since it doesn't have any weight with me anyway, but I discover - over and over - the fathomless, unconquerable - uh oh.  I can't think of a word good enough to describe the powerful imagination that shows itself.  If you're reading this, invent one for yourself.  It's the polar opposite of some limiting, tidy little expression like 'human nature.' 

This morning, I opened a few email attachments from a friend, a medical doctor of some repute (repute he worked very very hard for).  Long ago, he read the culture and realized he'd better do it the 'right' way before he wandered into the territory that was really interesting.  So, now he's a big shot.  And now, he's using his big shottitude to tap tap tap on the hard shell of western medicine.  Crack it, but gently.  So no one gets hurt. 

It's not easy.  I know it's not easy.  It can't be.  The introduction to one of the pieces, submitted to medical journals, of course (presumably published.  He gets published a lot.) reads:  "Recent studies involving intercessory prayer (a bunch of footnotes) profoundly challenge a variety of assumptions in medicine and science, particularly the belief that thoughts and intentions cannot act remotely outside the individual body.  Equally challenging is the possibility, raised by several investigators, (another bunch of footnotes) that human intentions and perceptions may act outside the present. What if prayer actually influences the person to whom it is directed, no matter how far removed they may be? And what if prayer offered today affects an event in the past?"

Those are, for the most part, rhetorical questions.  The article really takes issue with the reductio ad absurdum cast of mind standing in for the open, genuinely curious scientific mind.  It is a great, provocative article.  In the end, the article asks (I do paraphrase because it doesn't actually ask this at all):  What the hell happened to WHY? 

If I sighed, 'it's human nature,' I suppose some people might be satisfied. 

every once in awhile, and sometimes more often, i run into a popular phrase, a phrase that seems loaded with meaning, that seems to have genuine meaning behind it.  however, after hearing it bandied about long enough, one (me) realizes that whatever meaning it has is ... well, that's the point of blogging today.  this morning, i'm interested in what happens to the person who uses the expression. 

the tolerant (a group to which I do not belong) explain the phrases as:  simple passwords, things we say to each other as shortcuts so we all have an idea of our reference points, so we all know we're on the same page.  I made that up.  I don't know if that's how the explain them at all.  If I was tolerant, though, and felt like defending them, that's what I'd say.  Oh!  I'd ALSO say that the phrase is a landmark, a signpost, that allows the interested to head safely in the direction of a deeper meaning.  :)  I would.  I'd say that.  I'd say that because I love semiology. 

I can't stand the argot of business or graduate school specialties.  The list of phrases and expressions is pretty long.  I just deleted a paragraph because even writing them was making me surly.  

At least the businessy and professional phrases are contained inside the businessy and professional world.  It's pop culture and sub-culture expressions that concern me.  Not 'worry' concern me.  Not 'make me furious' concern me.  But 'interest' concern me.  Fair enough if they're markers for what we really mean; but lately, they've become what we really mean.  Know what I mean?  lol. 

Sub-cultures - even families - tolerate popular expressions of breathtaking ... vacuous - vacuosity?  vacuousness?  One of those.  There's nothing really wrong with them except, from my point of view, they lull people into a shared vocabulary that's pushing empty of meaning.  armed with a vocabulary of catch phrases, exactly what vocabulary does a person turn to to really say something? 

I know some who would (and do) argue that lots of people don't need a vocabulary because they don't think with precision anyway.  My experience is that they sure as hell want to think with precision when they're talking about themselves and some big personal issue.  I have never met anyone who wasn't pretty happy with a more subtle, more pointed study of their situation or problem.  Never.  I'm no fan of pop psychology, barely care at all about the gossipy details and am not all that sympathetic.  But help someone out with their vocabulary, help them re-phrase their understanding, read the language of the parties involved and something good happens. 

Oh!  You know how people say - speaking of phrases - only bother with what you can change?  I think that's what happens when you talk in terms of vocabulary.  The way you think, the way you speak about a situation - THAT you can change.  That you can claim.  That's some power.   

There.  Good enough for now. 

Always, when people say/sigh that we'll just have to teach our kids differently, something shivers in my head.  I think it strikes me as a kind of ... refusal to address our crap.  Of course, it doesn't matter how it strikes me - not at all.  If adults aren't going to do it, they're not going to do it.  We're not going to do it. 

I suppose accepting that factored into the evolution of a new product line.  I love Scary Fairy, I really do.  She's a cynic in the truest sense, but a cynic with confidence in peole.  JoJo Booda's ... well, she's JoJo Booda.  But now I've added one more character to my stable of little spokespeople:  Booda Baby

What do you think? 

how the stick people became extinct ....

i'm so happy for email. 

'you're opinionated'  has so little currency with me, i can't even describe to you how little currency it has.  i've mentioned it to death here, but having an opinion that couldn't be defended was and is, in my family, an invitation to ridicule.  way before we had any arguments about differences of opinion, there was first test:  where the hell did you GET the opinion and can you support it with any thing of any substance.   

to this day, i get as rattled by the one who'll easily agree, without any contemplation, as by the one who won't. 

the above - i think - explains why i don't have a very big inventory of opinions.  i just don't.  i think i devoted my spare time to whatever skills seemed to be necessary for sorting through other's opinions and extracting stuff. 

as a weird aside, THAT probably explains why i like the idea of mining and drilling and whipstocks and even exceptions in legal title that allow you to buy property but not the oil, gas, minerals and hydrocarbon substances below a depth of 500 feet below the surface. eeeeeeeeeek. 

anyway. today, ravager  posted a link about karl rove who none of us who like a little transparency and forthrightness can tolerate.  somewhere else (wow - how did i get there? i think champy ), i ended up reading a bit by rush limbaugh on how the wealthiest 1% of our country pay a hugely disproportionate percentage of personal income tax., which i really need to submit is ... i'm thinking about not wasting my head to come up with a way to say how sloppy and cheap his reasoning was and how sloppy and cheap an opinion based on that is ... That's all I'm going to give up to that.   

And then I trotted over to the UK's Spectator - my magazine of choice to read Mark Steyn's article "A lot of fuss about nothing" - which essentially attempts to transform current events into a tempest in a teapot.  Wait.  It's just easier to copy and paste - at least the first few paragraphs:

"The ‘Ding Dong, The Bush Is Dead’ fever rages on, disappointments notwithstanding. Hurricane Katrina was, at best, a wash. The more looters and welfare deadbeats who went on TV to whine that Bush wasn’t doing enough, the more most Americans remembered that New Orleans is a nice place to have a margarita with a topless transsexual but they wouldn’t want to live there and they don’t see why they should pay a gazillion dollars to those who do.

But in the wake of Katrina came a string of Category One or Two storms which the Democratic base and the media figure they can huff and puff into Category Four and total the White House. Tom DeLay has been indicted in Texas! Bill Frist is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission! Scooter Libby is up before the most zealous Federal prosecutor in the country! Can the impeachment of the President be far behind?

Look, you’re a well-informed Spectator reader: have you heard of any of these guys? Well, nor have most Americans." 

Oh, I have great faith in the Spectator reader.  As a demographic, they have a kind of profile that will slap down this very cheap seduction almost as reflex.  i'm confident that they, as I would, will be insulted by the idea that their opinion can be purchased on the strength (oh, a very liberal application of that word) of an essay that simply tells them what their opinion should be. 

yeah, well, my confidence has been misplaced before. 

not 'you' you, but the general you.  the anyone-you.  okay.  the me-you.  I don't mind being stupid, as long as it's not a settle-down-for-a-long-winter's-nap kind of stupid, oblivious stupid, pretty satisfied stupid.  In fact, in my life, it's sometimes a requirement:  first, you've got to be stupid in order to have a starting point for getting at least a little smarter. 

it does look like an idea invented just to excuse myself, doesn't it?  and maybe it is.  of course, ask me, it's an idea that allows me to get over it and on with it and fix the stupid instead of protecting and defending it til death.  it's an idea that gives me room to get some benefit from my worst habit.  it's nothing new; one of my first scary fairy cards spoke straight to the point.

i got reacquainted with my stupidity this weekend.  Last night, just on the eve of prime time television, PBS aired a half hour program about the 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott.  Introduced me to Rev. TJ Jemison and the story of a boycott that preceded Montgomery and Brown v. the Board of Education, the story of a boycott that was resolved by compromise that disappointed many, but tested and tried and encouraged civil rights activists and the heroes of Montgomery. 

It was a great short documentary.  Great.  and i'm grateful, as always, to PBS for airing it. 

But I had not even a small idea.  There wasn't a little piece of information floating somewhere in my memory.  there was nothing.  In theory, i'm pretty well aware that cultural 'moments' and cultural 'shifts' don't often happen randomly.  episodes are rarely isolated and out of context.  whether anyone's kept track or there's been press doesn't mean there's not groundswell. 

but it didn't occur to me. 

and that's stupid. 

I've had a serious case of insomnia this last week.  I don't want to know why, don't want to guess why although I hear there's a big ol' Spiritual Shift in the Universe making the rounds. That would, of course, explain a lot.  Not sure if it would explain insomnia, but it'd explain ... a lot. 

Unfortunately, I had some important-for-me business to attend to this week.  Insomnia's a nice excuse, but the folks who approve documents and merchant accounts really don't care.  Although I had only a weeee bit of concentration to start with, I actually siphoned some off  - not to do anything useful, but to worry about how well I'd be able to perform.   Fortunately, I was too tired to stay focused and within minutes, I drifted on to something else.  ha. 

Because I had to, I forged ahead.  And, now, on Friday morning, I can say that I was entirely successful.  It's tempting to say that I'm really surprised, but I'm not.  I wish wish wish I could remember to allow some of this go-by-instinct, automated response into my usual waking hours. 

I'm sure from the outside, it looks like I can turn on a dime.  On the inside, it's more liquid.  i bob around. 

I was reminded last night of an episode that took place in the middle of my insomnia.  It did happen, but then I forgot.  i must have taken the next wave.  :)

To hear someone else tell it, I solved a problem we were having with a hospital.  I solved it with the kind of ferocity that only the people whose problems are being solved like. 

But here's the strange/odd thing.  From my point of view, it wasn't ferocious at all.  I think I anticipated the corporate story I was going to hear and started from a position of refusing it.  Businesses come with policies and protocols - got it, yes, I do, thank you very much, I appreciate it - I just won't accept 'policy' as a distraction.  When 'policy' is hauled out as an obstacle, or worse, as a mindless (v. mindful) technique for avoiding accountability or responsibility, I'm all about slapping it down with every thing at my disposal. 

Oh yes, plenty of people with different temperaments than mine will advise honey to attract bees or some other sticky method.  I don't doubt that works, but I don't see the point when we're starting with an unacceptable situation created by incompetence, particularly institutionalized incompetence.  If your impression is that I yell at the person on the phone, then your impression is wrong.  I understand they're reciting the script to the best of their ability and, really, they have no decision making power anyway.  No.  That's not what I do.  What I do is skip the story and get to the decision maker. 

However, when i get the decision maker on the phone, and the decision maker asks, "now, did the gal explain to you ..." Oh yeah, THEN i'm all over it.  "I don't need anything explained to me.  I get that you can explain to me.  I don't want it explained.  i want it addressed.  i expect it addressed.  This is unacceptable.  Let's fix it.  Let's not explain it." 

And, there you have it.  Presumably, they hang up the phone and share their opinion of me with their colleagues.  I do not care at all and, frankly, I believe that most of their colleagues, no matter how sympathetically they nod along, are thinking: well, you DID do a second-rate job on that.  You did drop the ball.  You always avoid responsibility. 

It's weird.  We say so much shit we don't mean and don't think about and so many things that could really change the way an environment works go left unsaid.   

My brother was on Extreme Makeover last night, one of those shows that transforms the home of a good and deserving citizen into ... well, apparently, something they deserve. Some of my brother's art has very special meaning to the woman whose home was enjoying improvements (hereinafter referred to as TWWHWEI) and so he was enlisted.

We watched the 'live debate' on West Wing instead. We didn't not watch (ooh. gcghk. too many negatives.) anyway, we didn't not watch because we're so cavalier, but 1. we get three television stations and that network isn't one of them, 2. we were interested in how a 'live debate' would be produced and, frankly, that needs watching in real time to appreciate it. at least in theory, it does. and 3. it's television. i'm tossing it onto a blog because of no. 3: it's television. no matter how invisible the hand of editing, it IS a hand and it IS contrived. There are human beings behind productions.

With a flick of a wrist, a push of the button, a flourish of a pen on a script - everything's subject to ... um ... improvement.  Context is changed, history deleted, reasoning lopped off. 

My brother missed the show, too.  He was flying somewhere.  He was philosophical.  He knew (as I wrote a mindsay pal o' mine) that it could go either way.  Anyone who's even been interviewed knows the phenomenon; your great and eloquent insight, nestled in the middle of a paragraph, suddenly sounds like you barely made it out of third grade. 

I know, I KNOW, that people know this.  I KNOW I'm saying nothing new.  Except that, for all of our media sophistication, we're still prone to forgetting - sometimes eagerly - that there's ... human intervention.  Manipulation.  Shaping. 

I watched the West Wing episode - our alternative viewing choice - with that in mind.  (I was probably watching through a fine film of guilt.  lol.)  The 'live debate' was really televised theater, the debate entirely scripted.  Much of the drama hinged on the two presidential candidates agreeing - right there, to the 'surprise' of the moderator - to dispense with the rules and have a real debate. 

But that's the point.  It wasn't.  It was a script.  I imagine the west wing writing staff had a ball, putting real political issues through a theatrical treatment.  But it was a treatment.  Crafted, you know.  (HA!  The irony!  I came back and edited this.)

And that's the other point.  We whine, incessantly, about the age of the sound bite and the flimsy excuses for substance, but we're the ones who listen  We tune in.  We talk about the political remarks as if they aren't scripted and sculpted.  We aren't just the audience, we're the ... binding agent. 

I just have to quit there.  

I'd like to make up public service announcements. I mean, I'd like to have a cozy little office in the PSA division of a major network.  I'd like a powdered sugar donut and great coffee every morning and then I'd like them to leave me alone while I cooked up a few good ideas and dialled the numbers of actors I like, asking them to be a spokesperson.  We could meet at Fred Segals for a little lunch.

I have this idea that the folks who fill our airwaves are required to give up a little bit of time to a little bit of something useful.  I don't know where I got this idea.  The EU requires that a significant percentage of broadcasts must be produced in-country.  I always think that anyone making a film ought to consider partnering with a foreign production company for that reason alone.  For the longest time, if PBS announced a documentary, chances were pretty good that it belonged to Ken Burns.  I like Ken Burns.  Hard not to, but there wasn't much space left over for other documentary filmmakers, now was there?  No.  The EU is a good way to go.  Oh!  There!  A PSA.  It's easy, it's so easy. 

Actually, I only thought of PSA's because we left a wonderful wonderful performance by the Adaskin String Trio last night.  I made it through only half an hour of their program, through Beethoven's Serenade for Violin and ... well, obviously, two other instruments.  stringie thingies.  Visit your local thesaurus for words that have something to do with 'quietly breathtaking.'  I was DYING to clap with glee between movements/parts, but nononononono.  They were so fun, their bows swinging and swooping and leaping. 

But I was very tired and I'd used up my burst of adrenalin on other things.  The audience around us was shocked - shocked, I tell you - that we'd leave.  The murmurs were the tsk-tsk, pity, pity kind.  Well, the audience around us - in fact, most of the audience - was (were?) older, wealthy retired Santa Barbarians.  In Santa Barbara, you can tell those things at a glance. 

It would have been very nice to go into my PSA office this morning and draft one of them for immediate release.  Someone who didn't know me might think it would be:  Don't Judge a Person Leaving a Concert Because You Never Know What Sleep Deprivation They've Suffered for a Week, Not to Mention the Hours They've Put in at a Job That's Loathesome. 

But MY psa would be:  Etiquette and courtesy are good thngs, but they're bad guards to post at the door of the arts.  They tend to appeal to people who mistake the look of prestige and refinement for appreciation and joy.  And we all end up with potential art lovers who think you have to whisper in art museums and fake knowledge.  We end up with people who worry a little more about posture than appetite. 

I'm about as far down on the evolutionary scale of music-theory-formal-appreciation scale as you can get, but I can't imagine anyone being more ... thrilled, thrillllllled - seeing the Bolshoi Ballet dance Spartacus or ... oh crap, forget it.  I can't even start the list of performances of music, opera, ballet or the paintings and sculptures that took the stuff in my head and my heart and shook them all up, into a big old fizzy froth, and when they settled, - poof! - I had a whole other view.  Wheeeeeee. 

Yes.  That'd be a good psa.  Ease up.  Give art and the people who might love it a little breathing room. 

right now, at this moment, i'm convinced that change is not a choice, but thrust on us.  forced on us.  always. 

my own life, plotted out, is an etch-a-sketch gone bad: this way, that way, overlapping and underlapping.  more than a few have believed that change and i are the best of friends, that we reach for the other's hand and waltz merrily into the future. 

this is not true.  in the first place, it's not really change if it's part of the route, no matter how curly and wacked that route might be.  i mean, it's not change if it's just a leg of my personal evolution.  it's change if every little nook and cranny of your body and brain squeeze themselves tight, huddling, anything to keep the intruder out.  OUT, OUT!

i'm making this up, but i think that if you ignore that intruder and stay solid in your resolve, it will go away.  the chance for change.  the threat of change. 

i suspect i have a back window with a pane of glass missing, because the intruder ALWAYS gets in.  always.  and i'm not happy about it, no i'm NOT. 

this morning is a case in point. 

i've just spent three long, long hours trying to become just a little bit acquainted with a new program (it's more of an application) that i don't understand.  bad enough that the program's new and not understanable to me, but in order to customize the new program, i also have to become a lot bit acquainted with CSS.  quickly. 

all i want is a little shopping cart on a little website so i can put up little pictures of little items and people can give up little credit card details and we all go to sleep happy. 

that's what i want.  to get what i want needs an education and i do NOT want that.  i do not want to add to what i know.  rather, i do not want to have to learn something else when there are way more interesting things already waiting for my attention.  i do not i do not i do not.  i do not want to make room, pry open, rearrange or adjust in any other way.  and I definitely do NOT want to learn any new words and the concepts they refer to JUST so i can navigate Help Forums, forget actually applying any of it. 

THIS is change. 

Two hours in to my introduction, I was thinking: so why can't I hire someone else to do it?  A desperate attempt to patch that broken window pane. 

But it was in.  And I know from the changes before that it's not so much that I'll learn something new or that I'll have a little more control or that I'll be a little more self-sufficient.  That's NOT the reward of change for me.  Those are benefits, of course, but it's not the reward.  The reward is the elasticity, the suppleness that appears in my thinking.  (No, YOU probably can't see it, but I can.  Well.  I can't see it, but I feel it.)

So back to figure out zen cart and CSS.  with little breaks for a cigarette and a chant:  i'll be rewarded, i'll be rewarded.  fucking change. 

Last week, I was offered a job in Ireland.  In theory, Ireland's a wonderful place to go. Theory, though, has very little to do with life on the ground. 

Luckily, before I even had to reply, before I had to decline and appear ungrateful, the ones making the offer realized that a few details had been neglected.  It was a relief.

People can get giddy when they imagine a life abroad.  They've barely landed before they're announcing that they 'live' here or there.  It's glorious freedom to them - a chance to throw off the whatever the hell's holding them back in America, I guess.  After a year, after six months - in spite of having all of their paperwork and documentation handled by a corporation or a school, in spite of not really participating in the local economy - they often have no problem at all believing (and publishing in letters home) they're now qualified experts who've penetrated the culture more deeply than anyone before them.  I think I can not stand one more story of someone who's been mistaken for a local; the story almost always goes one of two ways.  Either they confess they don't speak French or Italian OR they nod and point - anything to avoid having their language betray them. 

Yah, I figure I've heard that story about a billion times.  From friends of mine. 

I'm all for living abroad.  I'm all for steeping yourself in every situation that becomes available.  I'm all for participating and building friendships and experiencing everything.  I truly think it's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself - to speak in a variety of languages, or rather - to try and speak in a variety of languages. 

But the story that living abroad alone gives a person great and wonderful insight, that living abroad alone makes one more sophisticated - well, it's just a little lie.  A little lie that has a willing audience, to be sure, but it's a lie nonetheless.   

What do I care?  On another day, I care because some people who are the least qualified spread cultural rumors.  And others believe them.   

Today, though, I care because we'd rather tell the little lie than face our own stagnation.  We're finding romance not in the romantic, but in the idea of the romantic.  ... And actually, I guess I don't care.  It's not my life.  I don't have to go to Ireland. 

Regardless your political affiliation, which is my own pretty lazy way of saying, "even if you're a Republican," you will admit, won't you, that ... well, as The Nation online article reads:   "Over the past few decades, the radical right has engaged in a well-funded, self-conscious program of Orwellian doublespeak, transforming the American political discourse to suit its ends."  (This discourse is) ..." a veritable code of encrypted language that twists common usage to deceive the public for the Republicans' purposes."

So The Nation staff (or maybe it was just one person) got busy straightening up some of those twists and soon they invited everyone to join in.  I've excerpted my personal favorites.  I did this because I have nothing else to post today. 

alternative energy sources n. New locations to drill for gas and oil [Peter Scholz, Fort Collins, Colo.].

bankruptcy n. A punishable crime when committed by poor people but not corporations [Beth Thielen, Studio City, Calif.].

class warfare n. Any attempt to raise the minimum wage [Don Zweir, Grayslake, Ill.].

compassionate conservatism n. Poignant concern for the very wealthy [Lawrence Sandek, Twin Peaks, Calif.].

creationism n. Pseudoscience that claims George W. Bush's resemblance to a chimpanzee is totally coincidental [Brian Sweeney, Providence, RI].

DeLay, Tom n. 1. Past tense of De Lie [Rick Rodstrom, Los Angeles, Calif.]. 2. Patronage saint [Andrew Magni, Nonatum, Mass.].

democracy n. A product so extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted [Michael Schwartz, unknown].

extraordinary rendition n. Outsourcing torture [Milton Feldon, Laguna Woods, Calif.].

faith n. The stubborn belief that God approves of Republican moral values despite the preponderance of textual evidence to the contrary [Matthew Polly, Topeka, Kans.].

Fox News fict. Faux news [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

free markets n. Halliburton no-bid contracts at taxpayer expense [Sean O'Brian, Chicago, Ill.].

girly men n. Males who do not grope women inappropriately [Nick Gill, Newton, Mass.].

God n. Senior presidential adviser [Martin Richard, Belgrade, Mont.].

habeas corpus n. Archaic. (Lat.) Legal term no longer in use (See Patriot Act) [Josh Wanstreet, Nutter Fort, WV].

honesty n. Lies told in simple declarative sentences--e.g., "Freedom is on the march" [Katrina vanden Heuvel, New York, NY].

laziness n. When the poor are not working [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

leisure time n. When the wealthy are not working [Justin Rezzonico, Keene, Ohio].

liberal(s) n. Followers of the Antichrist [Ann Wegher, Montello, Wisc.].

neoconservatives n. Nerds with Napoleonic complexes [Matthew Polly, Topeka, Kans.].

9/11 n. Tragedy used to justify any administrative policy, especially if unrelated (See Deficit, Iraq War) [Dan Mason, Durham, NH].

No Child Left Behind riff. 1. v. There are always jobs in the military [Ann Klopp, Princeton, NJ]. 2. n. The rapture [Samantha Hess, Cottonwood, Ariz.].

Patriot Act n. 1. The pre-emptive strike on American freedoms to prevent the terrorists from destroying them first. 2. The elimination of one of the reasons why they hate us [Michael Thomas, Socorro, NM].

pro-life adj. Valuing human life up until birth [Kevin Weaver, San Francisco, Calif.].

stuff happens interj. Slang. Donald Rumsfeld as master historian [Sheila and Chalmers Johnson, San Diego, Calif.].

Wal-Mart n. The nation-state, future tense [Rebecca Solnit, San Francisco, Calif.].

I think if you asked me if I believed in messages from the cosmos and/or universe, I'd handily (I just wanted to say that: handily.  I don't think I'll use it again.  Fun in theory, unwieldy in practise) ... oh.  I'd handily say: nope. 

If you were aking the first question, I imagine you'd then be a little annoyed with the swift reply and you'd follow up with: are you serious?  i thought you were more enlightened.   You really don't feel like there are some kind of ... I don't know ... post-it notes being stuck on your spiritual refrigerator?

And then I'd say, after I pffft-ed: no.  I really don't.  enlightened schmitened. 

I'm pretty sure you'd walk away thinking  that I had about as much sensitivity as a brick which is probably very true.  I wouldn't want to suggest that you should probe any further, because that would turn into an actual conversation instead of a lecture on superior metaphysical technique (I do sort of belong to the crayola school) ... but if you DID ask about what i DID think or believe, this is what I'd say. 

(aren't we happy for blogs and the space they provide for yacking away?)

It ALL wants our attention.  if there's a message, it's of our own invention. (that's what I think, no one else has to, but it's what i think.)  i think it's a consequence of sorting through the mass of impressions and insights and awesome experience.  it's almost our way of defending what we choose to make important.  a chip of color?  well that's all it is, but when it's viewed in a kaleidoscope and it's multiplied and becomes the predominant theme, well, then it's guidance.  but the original chip of color is still extraordinary and beautiful and ... well, you get the point.  all on its own. 

i've never made a secret of my own silly tendency to try and make order.  i go for the circular.  even when it's a rectangel and insists on being a rectangle, I'll work up a sweat making it a circle.  sigh.  at least it's exercise. 

So.  I heard a sad tale from a friend.  The day after Christmas, a phone call came in from a woman they'd spent Christmas with.  Her call interrupted another one.  In a moment of stubborness (and irritation), that interruption was ignored.  An hour later, the woman and her daughter were dead, killed in a head on collision. 

There's grief going on.  Big, huge grief.  And spiritual despair.  And a great swell of questions and doubts and philosophizings.  In the middle of it, it's monumentally heartbreaking and frightening.  And so sad. 

It tempts the howl of the forsaken, the bitterness of the betrayed:  there is no meaning.  there is no sense. 

Life is barely tolerable. 

But if you live in my head (which I do), you can't help but thinking it's the same thing: something we've invented.  It doesn't mean the ache isn't real, that the loss isn't bigger than big.  But somehow, our tendency to measure value when there's loss or when there's gain (messages.  those are gain), our tendency to let that become our belief system, seduces us out of the beauty and joy of every single moment.  we mourn all those lost opportunities, but how, exactly, would we have recognized them in the first place when we're waiting for meaning to appear, for value to show itself. 

To say so, earns the sayer the criticism (one I've heard numerous times):  you're so clinical. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I hate when we get competitive about who's sadder than who - it's the stuff of a Jane Austen novel. 

On the other hand, the clinical one (me) also has heard: you're so easily amused.  you're a cheap date.  I am.  I am made happy by what makes me happy.  And if it ceases to make me happy, then I try to not do it. 

I'm not waiting for a message.  Maybe, because I'm in the middle of living it.  (I made that up.  I don't know.)

Told you.  You'd have been way better off skipping this and making yourself a cheese sandwich. 

It all starts with an impulse.  I turned a little drawing into a page for someone's coloring book last week.  Just trying to avoid real work.  It was a stunning success and you know what that breeds.  More real work avoiding.  Next thing, I was cooking up a little story of the little drawing for an upcoming nephew.  This, I think, could be a career, this narrowly escaping gainful employment. 

The above is Henry the Dragon.  In a bathtub.  "Cute." someone said, because cute's what you say about stuff for kids. "What's the message?" I was asked this yesterday, point blank.  I read a few lines of the goofy-stuff-in-progress.  "Oh.  He learns it's okay to be different.  That'll be nice." 

Well, I didn't have either the heart or the interest to correct the above.  Sometimes, under the best circumstances, I get really tired of explaining myself, which explains my not yet patented but should be:  Read a book, you lazy git! because most of my best ideas aren't my ideas at all, but a big ol' compilation. 

But this is a children's story.  Full of single syllables.  (Okay, that's not true. But they're all easy words.)  Is it really so hard to listen for a slightly ... different story?  

And then we watched 'Crash.'   And I realized it is.  It's very hard to listen for a different story.  An extraordinary movie in every way. 

sigh.  I've been interrupted about thirty billion times. So I'll get straight to the point. 

No.  I won't.  I tried to get straight to the point, but I don't feel like it.  So I just edited (wait let me replace them and count ... 5 paragraphs) 5 paragraphs out.  maybe I'll use them to shape the story about Henry the Dragon. 

velvetdreams asked so very very nicely, so even though 10 random facts about me have to be nothing you want to know, it's a game it's a game it's a game and today's a good day to play it.

1.  I love caviar. 

2.  I had to give my kitty kat, Dracula, away because it was the right thing to do and I still wish I'd been way more selfish because I really am but not at the right times.  

3.  I can cook, but don't enjoy it.  At all.

4.  I rarely drive and always get a little tense when I have to merge.  Bad idea to talk to me while I'm driving.

5.  Even when I'm in the mood for total silence, I'm really happy about Zeppelin 2 and/or Dvorak's New World Symphony.

6.  I've been married twice.

7.  I pay way more attention than people think I do, but I pretend I don't, but I'm going to stop that. 

8.  I love to walk, not for the exercise, but it's kind of easy breezy meditation and I get little theater productions in my head.  Which reminds me that I used to talk ALOT to myself in England just so I could hear someone NOT be posh and polite. 

9.   (I think I had two random facts above, but in case that doesn't qualify ...) I can throw a nice spiral.

10.  I can do traditional upholstery on antique furniture.   

am i supposed to tag someone?  velvetdreams was sooooo nice and nice is persuasive, but the best I can do is say IF you want to, IF you're in the revealing mood, 10 random thingies about you - champy mindspew mrcarlisle fabri perrye 

The situation needed monitoring.  My computer was commandeered yesterday afternoon to keep the closest watch possible for breaking news and incoming emails. 

Mandy had posted it to the Free section of the local craigslist, which is apparently already closely monitored in our household.  We call the local thrift shop, the one that has its own name, The Andy Store.  He furnishes his life with some remarkable, barely used items discarded by the very wealthy.  I'm a little bewildered that Santa Barbara tourists have the Mission and a break at one of the billion Starbucks on their itineraries, but not a pass through the Andy Store. ANYWAY, if anyone's guarding the Free Section closely, it's A.

Yesterday, Mandy was angry.  Angry Mandy from Montecito, home to the uber rich.  Her post title was "Help me teach my asshole husband a lesson."  

She felt, strongly, that her husband cared more about his toys than her and she was absolutely clear that those priorities made him a prick.  And so, she was giving away, among other things, his late model Vespa, his plasma tv, Bose entertainment system, vintage guitars.  The guitars sucked the A. in.  He longs for a '63 Les Paul.  If anyone was giving away a Les Paul, it would be a deranged by fury wife in Montecito. 

Angry Mandy wasn't just giving them away.  She also wanted the whole thing recorded, publicly.  She wanted to be able to show him the posting.  A little like a blog. 

I couldn't help a concern for Mandy.  Isn't it a little strange, that people would devote so much attention to what others have, what others own.  The line's blurry, but it's definitely there - this is okay to own, but that?  That's just obscene.  That's just excessive.  That's showing off.  Naturally, what we ourselves own  is oki-doki - but they're clearly spoiled and self indulgent.  Whole villages could be fed, bridges built, children educated for the cost of whatever they spent on something we regard as superfluous. 

Mandy knew what was valuable.  Imagine it - a woman shaking with fury and smackin' the keyboard.  Not a lot of editing of profanity going on (and I know what that takes. lol) so I'm thinking she had instant recall of all those high end, luxury items.  

It's a curious soup, isn't it? 

We can't stand the detachment, disinterest, arrogance of the wealthy, but we encourage it in them.  We measure their value by the very same things we imagine they measure themselves by.  Even those of us who treat the rich and celebrated with huge disdain - I don't know.  It strikes me as coming from the same place. 

I chose to imagine Mandy as a woman who wanted all the benefits of wealth and accumultation and then was dismayed that she lost contact with the stuff that made her feel good.  I don't really see the difference for any of us.  Not so much revenge of the rich, but revenge on the rich.  You can see how some might think we deserve it.   

We're in the middle of it, a week of programming dedicated to ushering in a kinder gentler bunch of children.  It's probably a good idea.  Wait a second.  I'm going to minimize this page while I ...There.  I'm about to copy and paste and that's always fun/annoying since there's usually loads of html crap that comes along with it. 

These are some of the snooziest ideas I can imagine someone coming up with which is undoubtedly why they've remained popular since first outlined in 2004.  The antiseptic, cotton-y nudginess of it all is the least of my problems with it.  Which is undoubtedly why it's remained popular etc. etc. and I'm just ... me. 

Well, here they are:  10 Simple Ways to Celebrate No Name Calling Week in Your School. 

I can hardly get the title out without damping down the urge to do a little name calling.  What's that device called?  The super duper tricky one that repels any criticism.  I forget, but it's the same one halo-wearers do almost instinctively.  Good gosh, they're doing such a nice thing, please don't remark in any way that might be perceived as critical. 

ANYWAY ....

And now I quote: 

"Resource created on:
Nov 05, 2004

There are many easy, time-saving ways to share the No Name-Calling Week message with your students. Here’s a sampler of no-fuss activities which require little planning and classroom time.

1. Enter the No Name-Calling Week Student Expression Contest.
   Use a class period for a creative writing assignment, or encourage students to submit poems, essays, and artwork for extra credit—and for a chance to win exciting prizes.
2. Hold a poster contest.
   Use an art class to create anti-bullying posters, or plan an after-school poster making session. Decorate the hallways with the images and slogans students create.
3. Spread the message in your morning announcements.
   Remind the school community of the significance of the week by advertising events and sharing student essays or poetry during morning announcements.
4. Develop a classroom anti-slur policy.
   Work with students to outline rules and expectations about classroom language, and display your anti-slur policy prominently.
5. Write an article for the school newspapers.
   Encourage your student news hounds to cover No Name-Calling Week in your school publications and local newspaper.
6. Create a library display.
   Ask your school librarian to create an eye-catching display of books that deal with name-calling and bullying.
7. Discuss sportsmanship in physical education classes.
   Since so much bullying occurs on the field and in the locker room, ask physical education teachers to take a few minutes to discuss the values of sportsmanship and respect in athletics.
8. Screen the No Name-Calling Week video. The 27-minute video available in the No Name-Calling Week kit features young people talking about their experiences with name-calling, vignettes from The Misfits, name-calling scenarios, and effective anti-bullying strategies from a social worker.
9. Share tips with parents and staff.
   Reproduceable tip sheets for parents and school personnel are available in the Resources section of this site. The No Name-Calling Week kit features additional advice for families, administrators, and health and safety professionals.
10. Wear No Name-Calling Week stickers.
    Faculty, administrators, and support staff can all show their dedication to ending verbal bullying by wearing or displaying No Name-Calling Week stickers. 

End of copying and pasting. 

I think they should skip the kids and go straight to the parents.  And as long as I'm advising on stuff that no one will ever pay attention to, I think they should skip the 'name calling' symptom and go straight to the ... well, not quite disease, but the source. 

You'd think I'd elaborate (and good god, it looks like i could do that with my eyes closed on this one, but then I'm the one that can't tolerate the word 'tolerance' for the built in superiority of it.  It was one of the biggest problems I had in England - that it's steeped in the British culture to think in terms of 'charity.' )  But back to why I won't elaborate.  many ha's.  I figure if anyone's reading this, then I'd just be talking to the choir. 

And if I'm not?  Well, the short version: the burden's on you to contemplate, to consider, to explore, to test, to argue, to wonder and shift and set your tiny mind free.  And if you won't?  Oh look!  That was fun.  I called you a name and then erased it.  Now I get to make a poster.

we kept letting ourselves get interrupted, so the plan to go for a hike in the foothills got changed to a plan to go for a walk on one of the beaches and THAT finally got changed to a plan to at least walk through the neighborhood up to the Mission.  and that wasn't so much of a plan as a 'let's just get this over with' idea. 

even then, we didn't get very far. we kept running into the last shreds of yard sales.  i don't know much about yard sales, but it seems that there are always books left over.  in the last boxes of the last yard sale on the last leg of our ridiculously truncated walk, i found a few big fat books. The Kama Sutra.  The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court.  

I flipped through the pages.  Names, cases, thingies with short explanations of each entry.  Cliff notes to the Supreme Court.  for $3, the book was ours.   

A was willing to take the Kama Sutra off their hands, but only if it, too, came in the cliff notes version. 

i'm going to start googling.   

It's fairly unavoidable.  You have a business online, you have a blog.  Nothing sneaky about it - you're trying to lure them back.   easy breezy.  give them something useful, and they'll return. 

well, there's a nightmare waiting to happen.  i don't know anything useful to more than four people  (i've expanded my circle of influence.  it used to be three, but i think it's only fair to assume that there's at least one more person now that doesn't, for instance, know flash as well as i do.) 

the business, the website is for booda babies.  t-shirts.  i posted the designs a few months ago, and blah blah blah, next thing you know, they were a business.  a division of scary fairy.  :)  i'm such a little corporation.  anyway, they're kind of wearable American karma.  i don't know.  you'd think there'd be a lot of wiggle room in there, what with the whole smacking of spiritualty for purchase theme.  me, i REALLY can't stand platitudes, though, so ... i got myself a problem.

i fix my problem.  not well, but at least to my satisfaction.  work with your strengths, cris, work with your strengths.  i decided to make my business blog a little diary of how someone like me finds a little serenity in modern America. 

for me, that IS the point.  i'm cranky.  absolutely.  but not as a lifestyle.  i'm cranky in doses, spells.  flashes.  and i'm not always cranky with someone else (unless they're neocons who think politics are a mirror of their morality.  man, i just feel bad for them and what it must take to defend that moral high ground.)  mostly, i'm cranky with myself. 

but there's nothing - and i'm pretty sure this is really true - NOTHING i value more than that sweet spot you find when you've got balance between your head and your creative core.  you know what if feels like if you've had perfect sex.  or you've found a spectacular world vista that lets your head drain. 

wait.  where was i?  oh.  so that's what i decided my blog would be about.  in the next weeks leading up to valentine's day, i thought i'd blog about the romantic life.  not romance with another person, but romance with life.  if you're reading this, then you might as well know that, in general, i'm certainly not suggesting that anyone here doesn't have a grand grasp of it.  maybe it's the high incidence of writerly personalities, but among the folks I know at mindsay, i'd have to say there are some folks who live in an acute place of romance. 

i wouldn't go so far as to say i agonized, but i definitely turned it over.  and over again.  i'm not better at a romantic life than anyone else, not at all.  no no no.  but if there's a choice?  I would say I'm better at making it.  I'm a lot less concerned about what I've got to lose than what I've got to gain. 

but the question remains:  how useful it that for anyone else?

i don't know.  I live, along with several other mindsay peoples, in a town that's celebrated as something approaching paradise.  The American Riveria.  Celebrity studded.  in fact, this week's the Film Festival, so - in its particular fashion - the town's now got its collective eye out for sitings - Selma Hayek, George Clooney.  Someone else.  Oh.  Naomi Watts.  

but there's a whole other violent thing under the surface.  a woman of substantial wealth in Montecito rages on craigslist.  i mentioned her furious attempt at lesson-teaching awhile ago.  seven people murdered in a post office last week.

yah.  i think balance is key.  i don't know about anyone else, but i have to work at it.  and when i have it, i have to protect the hell out of it. 

but I'm thinking i'll have to practice WRITING about it here.  but that's balance, too.  here, i'm scary fairy.  there, i'm booda baby.  yin yang.  wheeee. 

  Last time I visited this blog ... wait, let me do the math - well, it was a long time ago - I was threatening to start spilling drafts of 'How Someone Like Me Manages the Romantic Life.'  Hard.  Harder than hard.  Well, not THAT hard, but the point of working on a draft was so I could spill it all here, where people are generally forgiving, clean it all up and post it, put it on display as if - poof! - it came like that.  Revision is my friend.  Revision is important.  Revision, i'm thinking, is more important than romance. 

Well, I realized I didn't really want to keep another blog.  It seemed much smarter to keep a few articles tucked away somewhere on my site, adding to them occasionally.  Actually, now that I write it here, it doesn't LOOK smart.  It just looks like I wanted to avoid writing another blog.  ha.  At any rate, articles - with shapely beginnings, middles and ends - aren't a whole lot easier than blogs.  They do, however, come out all nice and rosey-glowey after a good above-mentioned revision bath. 

In the meantime, I still have to blog.  no, i really have to blog.  i whipped out a press release (oh, you did NOT believe me capable of such spin doctoring, I know you didn't.).  there's nothing at all newsworthy about another little line of t-shirts for babies.  i'm very clear on this.  but ... imagine that i positioned booda baby cartoons, that advocate peace and good - wearable karma - against those other, dastardly cartoons NOW turned into t-shirts and violence.  sigh.  sometimes, i'm just too cunning for my own good.  lol. 

well.  so up and out it went on press release distribution services.  and THEN i remembered the damned blog.  and how it probably needed an update.  and so i gave it one.  i'm about to copy and paste, so you, too, can enjoy a good shake of your head.  what the HELL am i thinking?  i think i'm thinking that it's just a fucking blog. 

GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY

(and then I remind them to go buy booda baby because - what the hell - do they think they get these gems for free.  where's my emoticon showing me clapping with loads of gleeeeee?)

two birds, one bush.  wait - what's that saying?  when you get two things done for the price of one effort?  two birds, one stone.  whatever.  I have a problem to solve and a blog to write.  why not, she thinks, do them at the same time?  so ... a glimpse into scaryfairy operating in real time, real life.  frankly, i can't think of anything at all more entertaining. 

you'd probably be surprised that i help anyone.  i'm not much of a sympathizer.  My nature, instead, is to empathize and solve a problem.  Maybe it's not my nature.  Maybe it's learned.  either way, it's what I do.  Or rather, it's what I try to do.  I try to help for no other reason than honest to god, I believe so firmly that we learn from each other and it's just a simple debt.  my help is almost always offered under these conditions - here, here's a way of thinking about how to harness your resources and put them to good use so you don't have to rely on anyone in the future. 

so.  i participate in a marketing forum, populated by an awful lot of professional marketers who haven't quite made that leap into the new economy and worse, in my estimation, tend to insist that a huge budget will do wonders.  i, of course, tend to insist on something else and then am obliged to demonstrate it.  i've been doing this since ... sigh.  i met a man on a flight to budapest once.  He was a expert on strokes, well positioned in the NIH and was returning to Hungary to take a high profile job in the Ministry of Health.  Oh my gosh, he just couldn't imagine how to blah blah blah.  Blah blah.  By the end of that flight, I'd gone and promised to ... yes, demonstrate.  So off I trotted to do a whole storyboard for what would essentially be a series of PSAs.  Little cartoon animations that 're-educated' an already re-educated to death country about health. 

Anyway.  I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't help myself.  So.  where was I?  happy happy am i for the scrolling mechanism.  The marketing thing.  A woman asked for some assistance.   She sold bakery items to her local farmers market and just wanted to expand a little bit.  She had the website from hell.  So, I offered quick help and agreed to take some of her baked goods in trade. 

I reviewed her god awful website and patiently (really, for me, I was a PARAGON of patience!) guided her through how to explore her story, how to TELL her story, how to arrange her story, how to discern a new market, how to speak to a new market.  I waited, with equal patience, for my baked treats to arrive.  I didn't really care, but you know ... when someone writes that a package is on its way, a sliver of the memory keeps its beady eye out.  It didn't arrive. 

In the meantime, I did a logo.  Then I polished the logo up.  Then I worked on a new name for her sadly named company.  Then I did a mockup - again, to demonstrate.   I wanted her to see that a simple graphic, a color scheme that spoke a little more of coffee and cream and cozy other scents could really give her something to ...well, elaborate on.  oh hell.  here:  you can see what i meant to illustrate (can't you? lol)  

Within a week, I realized the poor woman had some problems that had nothing to do with her business.   She was the polar opposite of fearless.  Me, being me, gently (ha! but it's TRUE) pointed out that I could only suggest methods for mining the magic in her business.  I could not create it FOR her. 

And so ... the denouement.  She hadn't sent the baked goods.  I emailed my disappointment that my assistance was apparently not valuable enough to etc etc and she promptly wrote a note saying NOW the package was on its way.  I'm not an idiot and it's very hard to read someone's transparent lie.  My disappointment in her got a little more solid. 

The package arrived. 
My problem began.  Oh, one wants baked goods sold at a farmers market to be concoctions of every sweet memory one ever had (even if you have to imagine them - the memories).  One wants to them to be so delicious, they're tempted to never tell a soul so the secret is theirs alone.  One wants.  One does not always get.  These are ... how to say it ... not the baked goods described above. 

if I was the sort that tears came to easily, I'd be dabbing them away right now. 

what does someone say?  nothing, of course.  no.  nothing.  but what a strange thing to face:  in spite of my warning her that I could NOT create her magic ...  in fact, I'd been willing to do just that. 

and the thing is, I couldn't create any magic.  I wasn't working with source material.  i was stirring it up from the outside.  it wasn't organic, it wasn't anything useful at all.  MY BIG FAT BAD. 

well, this didn't solve a thing, except to put the blame for mediocrity exactly where it belongs.  shit.  i just HATE when that happens.  :)  i do not.  it's okay.  

oh, but i got blog done, too!

A few days ago, fabri and i wandered off into the shortest of contemplations about the slow creep of wholesomeness.  No, it was the slow creep of hypocrisy, disguised as wholesomeness.  I mentioned the frog that gets boiled alive (or at least I tried to mention it.  I might have only managed to hint at mentioning it.  it was a particularly bad 'fill in the blanks, will you?' day.)

It was my brother, explaining to me how incredibly interesting, wonderful people can slide into small town ridiculousness when they live in a small town, who first told me about the frog.  Everybody else probably already knows the story:  the frog's stuck in a pot of water.  the heat is turned up in the tiniest of increments until the water's eventually boiling.  and the po' frog's been cooked to death, without ever even noticing. 

I wouldn't want to go putting money on the scientific accuracy of this little word experiment, but it's occasionally useful. 

My friend Raven gave me a nice (abbreviated, but still ...) education in cults the other night.  Not just the small, suffocating and dangerous religious cults, but the Any Cults - cult of personality, cult of corporate culture, cult of Washington, cult of political party.  You get the picture. 

It didn't quite work for me.  I just did not understand how a mind with any reserves of critical skills - any at all - wouldn't rear up occasionally.  I didn't understand how ... well, for instance, memory - how memory wouldn't pop up and quietly dispute whatever 'they' were telling a person.

Raven is very gracious and kindly went through it AGAIN.  It's almost an invisible process.  Apparently, it's more likely to happen when someone's in transition - NOT when they're actively in need.  And, frankly, it wouldn't happen at all if there wasn't FIRST a power issue.  (I'm paraphrasing.)  There are people who see power in terms of Up and Down.  (As in, when I'm UP, you've got to be Down and there.  Now, that's nice and tidy.  Stay there.)  And there are the people who see power in terms of an ensemble effort: let's get something done.  It's the first people - the Up and Down ones - who'll happily create a cult.

Essentially, frog.  Pot.  Boiled to death without noticing. 

So all this is to say:  I like technology.  I really do.  But it's something to wonder about, if young people aren't those frogs in the pot of technology. 

Not talking about the ubiquitious cel phones and the scenes that just make me laugh - you know, when they're not having conversations with the people they're with, when they're totally out of their environment and the moment and walking along talking about what a bitch she was, how - no, like, i thought we were like friends, but like ... No. 

They're finding instant guidance.  Instant influence.  They're seeking it.  Give me an opinion, they ask.  But they're apparently incapable of distinguishing between an opinion that brings anything with it and a fucking popularity contest.  Give me an opinion (and now it's a bleet) and the opinions pour.  If the opinion sounds like/reads like applause, all the better. 

Oh, no.  They moan.  What a quandary. 

What the fuck.  What quandary?  How can you not know enough to know anything? 

That, I'd say, is rhetorical. 

A. got free tickets to Los Lobos last night at the Majestic Ventura Theater for what was less of a concert and more of the old Hollywood club scene.  The seats were torn out, the art deco cush and gilded drip still in.  Meant for acoustic performances - at best - the sound bounced, BIG, like crazy, although the band opted for small amps.  The whole show as devoted to Kiko - a release from - I don't know - 1995?  96? 

It was hard for a gal like me to not - well, not exactly reminisce.  But I was definitely getting slapped around by visions, little visions, of a time when you had to pay attention, when you had to be present for the great moments.  (Yes, this is a theme that's been gathering for me.)  

Everyone's always been able to read an announcement in the paper of choice, buy a ticket, and go.  But what separates being in the audience from being in the scene? 

Our friend, Jake, who I've mentioned here before, is a breathtakingly gifted filmmaker.  I'm sure I've also mentioned that his subject matter might not be for everyone, but that's neither here nor there in a developing filmmaker.  He's young, but his dialogue is nearly flawless.  He's still working out the kinks of directing vs. casting, but ... oh my god, how he can coax out an emotional story.  He's so  good.  His choice of stories HAS made people leave theaters, but ...  

there's a screening of his short films on Sunday, February 26, 7:00 pm at the Pioneer Theater (155 E. 3rd, New York City).  Wait.  here are the blurbs on Jake. 

'Strunk portrays tragic, yet simple sorrows shrouded in undeniable beauty.'  That's from some Warren Etheredge:  The Warren Report.  Teller, the small, quieter half of Penn and Teller, says, "A genuine creep with a great eye." 

There.  That's as close as I can come to describing a time, a period in someone's creative life when there's an actual dialogue with the culture.  Later, after success, there's more of a lecture series.  :)  (oh i like that.) 

Jake's had a HELL of a year.  if it was lose-able, he lost it.  if there was a promise that could fall through, it did.  if there was a glimmer of success, it got extinguished.  if ... well, you get the picture, don't you?  in his inimitable style, he emailed the obligatory: 'well, this is what happened in the last three months' without so much as a note of panic.  and that wasn't just youth talking.  there were disastrous career moments that even the youngest, most oblivious, will recognize as having the potential for stopping them in their tracks. 

depending on your perspective, it was a little worse than grim.  or it was just SO great to be steeping in the life.  it's easy - really, really easy - to do the things that get approval.  it's easy to take the standard path that looks, a little, like it's edgy.  you know?  people like the look.  the look'll do. 

it's a whole other thing to LIVE it.  but living it.  you come out with unassailable ... not quite 'character' and not quite 'vision' - but something in there. 

and that's what an evening at the Majestic Ventura Theater reminded me of.  the incredible, wonderful line between recommendations/being steered and ... doing the steering. 

of course, you're way better off going to readmrcarlisle on the same theme but WAY more literate. 

another cut and paste job, a little like a public confession. as long as i still have to blog-for-business, i've been trying, really hard, to be a calming influence.  a leeeetle beacon of soothing light.  that's what booda baby do. (booda baby, the plural.  only, without the s. actually, it would've been easier to move my cursor back a few notches and just re-write the word - baby to 'babies' but i guess i'm too busy forging ahead.) 

yeah, well.  it's not going well.  Baby t-shirts hardly fall into the Fashion category, but since they have to fall somewhere, that's it.  Fashion.  and so, I'm obliged to know more than I wanted to (which wasn't that much to begin with.)  Now I know a little too much about fashionistas - apparently something women aspire to. 

hm.  so i wrote the following - and I'm posting it on a Sunday when no one's around and no one will read but I'll still get all the advantages of having shared my terrible exercise in diplomacy.  I honestly do like clothes and extras - it's great personal theater.  But I can just as easily step out in jeans and t-shirt as decking myself out in Dolce & Gabbana.  in fact, i only wear my cool clothes when A., ever so gently, says: um ... hey.  why don't you wear something else.  HA.  no point in circling me - a good whack'll do it:

I like clothes.  A lot.  I like accessories.  Also, a lot.  But ...I've got low tolerance of the fashionista phenomenon. 

Maybe it's because I have such a strong point of view, but me and 'What's Hot' - we've just don't quite get a long.  The salesclerk that tells me 'this is our most popular' whatever has made me instantly distrust her.  What do I care what's the most popular?  Here's what I care about: does it look perfect for me?  Does it flatter me?  Does it work with me.  ME ME ME.  Yah, it's all about ME. 

Oh, awhile ago - eight years, nine years? - I was in a little shop on a little side street in Paris- a Tibetan imports shop - and I found the softest shawl and scarf.  Great classic colors, too.  No one, no magazine, no columnist to guide me -imagine that - and I'd discovered the wonders of pashmina.  Within a year, they were the hottest things and then, what with every one studying how to toss them with a certain insouciance over the shoulder according to Oprah - they fell from fashion grace.  Gotta tell you - they're STILL great and STILL lightweight and warm. And, worn right, they have classic, flattering lines.  Worn right. 

I'm NOT prescient.  I'm not taking credit for a trend (ick, no way).  I just think that when you're led by your own style, ... you have style.  It's got to be something you face in private though - don't go asking your best friend or sister-in-law. 

Oh, is this SO obvious to you?  I don't know.  I know a lot of women, wealthy and not so wealthy.  Women who shop fairly exlusively in Saks and high end boutiques and women who can mine the hell out of a thrift store.  It's not about the money you have at your disposal. 

I was at a sale at Brown's (a great, but uber-pricey store in London) and a woman in town from Wales was trying on a  ... a concoction.  A fabulously expensive concoction.  (Me, too, actually.  I walked out of there with 2 Jil Sanders dresses and one of the most expensive sweaters I'd ever even contemplated.  I still have it, though.) But - back to the concoction. The lovely Welsh woman did not look anything like the belle of the ball.  She looked like the ball.  The whole nine yards of swirling BALL.  It was hideous. 

And that saleswoman  hovered over her with her lying-through-the-teeth assurances.

Oh no no no nono.  Not on MY watch.  Saleswoman and I had a staredown.  If you're looking for someone to feel bad about ruining your commission?  it won't be me. 

No, money does not protect you.  I think it's ... what to call it?  Technique.  Technique protects you. 

Out of time, but I think technique's a good thing to elaborate on.  Oh.  Here.  I'm going to try out a few illustrations.  

or, rather, pass on a great piece by Laurie Garret, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Also, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Coming Plague." 

But why would I do that when I have these to share? 

And, if you're in the mood to consider what's required of us in a strategic battle against the inevitable spread of avian flu (but NOT the inevitability of it hitting mankind) ... (it should open in a separate window, one that you can close really quick if it's too boring)  http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/26/opinion/edgarrett.php

Very early on this birthday morning, I enjoyed/suffered a frisson of  ... something.  Not fear, not panic, but something in that territory.  It just shivered through my insomniacical, fragile grip on sleep and kept me up for the next hour. 

I am not, in any way, afraid of an age, afraid of getting older, afraid of my increasingly cosier relationship with death. I'm not because ... I'm just not.  But something else was going on.  It almost never fails - anything I start pondering at three am will look like dog poo at 6 - no matter how much it looks like the Answer that All of Mankind Needs the first time around. 

This, though, is worth sharing just ... because.  I'm such a sharer that way.  :) 

You know, the ones who've always, always fascinated me are the Ones Who Know Something Really Really Well, the ones who are dedicated to really knowing the material, then digging, digging, unearthing, revealing, defining the difficult.  Without the material they unlodge and put on display, without a consciousness of the materials and their taste for understanding what role any material plays ... I'm not sure there would be any creating going on.  (I 've always liked that French educational theory: little anomaly, little anomaly, one more anomaly and - POOF! - big new understanding.) 

I might have wished I was like them, but I just did not come with the same stuff.  it's just a bunch of words on a blog, but ... I was impulsive to the extreme, living free form and utterly oblivious to 'what i was supposed to do.'  I lost friends, but I made others.  Does it sound like a self-centered life?  Well, it was, sort of, except that, without an agenda that was aimed at power, prestige and influence, I could afford to focus whatever talents I had in service to whatever I believed in.  And I believed in a lot of things.  I still do. 

it's fair to say that I put everything on the line, always.  i don't know what that will teach a person, but i must have learned half the stuff I know from somewhere.  (don't you think?)  The question - at 2:30 in the a.m. - is whether half the stuff I know has any value. 

I don't have much of a purpose in life except to have perspective. In the literature of modern spirituality, you're basically screwed if you don't have a purpose.  If you don't know your purpose.  Perspective isn't much of a purpose, is it, but there you go.  That's what I'm stuck with. 

Here's an absolute I know.  You can release someone from their distress, relieve them from some strange belief that they're damned by the circumstances, with a shift in perspective.  Plenty of people are happy to cling to their melodrama.  Fine, they can.  I don't care.  that's their deal and their time and their life.  I just know that 'liberation' (if you will) is possible.  And, once I got that it was possible for others, it wasn't THAT hard to see that - ooh!  I could give that to MYself. 

But.  2:30.  AM.  I wake up thinking of an episode of several months ago.  A woman called and instantly began a lecture on what I should do.  She herself had been planning to do it, but - for various reasons, couldn't.  She was startled when I said "no."  (Does it matter what it was?  I ended up doing it, very reluctantly, and without a whole lot of benefit to anyone involved, by the way.  Except for the 'appearance' - the appearance of devotion was kept intact.)  But, back to the No.  Apparently, my 'no' was not acceptable an the lecture began in EARNEST.  (isn't that strange?  that you can get a MORE lecture-y lecture?)  And that's when I got just a little annoyed.

And that's when SHE said, "You know, maybe you should get over that.  A woman your age shouldn't yell."

Same woman sported an immense and fairly valuable solitaire stone from Thailand on her hand during the holidays.  It was very fun, and very twinkly, but she was a bit embarrassed.  It was a little - not just over the top, but garishly conspicuous.  It was no bit of costume jewelry, but the real deal, tilting the scales at about 6, 7 carats?  HUGE.  How, you probably aren't asking, was she persuaded to buy this super-turbo Hummer of a ring?  Her friend, a billionaire, told her:  "You're a grown up, now.  You need a grown up ring." 

And that's the territory I found myself navigating.  I hope the woman above is happy happy HAPPY with what flows through her life and where she goes in her heart and head to collect it.  She's apparently found the set of rules she wants to live by and decorate herself by and ... I guess it would be comforting if the rest of the world (or at least me) would climb on board and agree to the same criteria. 

I am a grown up now.  I am afraid I'll hear more and more of those rules.  I'll overhear, read, see them in action.  I don't know how it really works.  I don't know if there's just a line and suddenly, everyone embraces those rules.  I don't doubt they'll be slapped down on me.  "Behave this way."  And, when I don't, I expect I'll get more lectures.  Or ... any other number of penalties. 

I think that I will have to keep shrugging them off and keep cultivating perspective.  it's not much, but it represents - to me - all of freedom and all of beauty.   That's just my birthday gift to me, the promise to keep living. 

... Thank you!  THANK you!  for all your birthday greetings.  It was such a great way to start the day!!

i re-wrote that subject title four times, just because I couldn't decide which was the more interesting part of it:  the how to, the why it's impossible to or the whether a person ought to even be conscious of ....

Well, I'm pretty sure that the above was NOT a wise use of my minutes.  But somehow, first thing this am, neither was the scrolling through '1001 things to Do with Liquid Nitrogen.'  Was only following a link in an email and, next thing, there it was - easily - the 30th idea before I could manage to just Ctl + C, as if it was somehow important to prove the utter waste of minutes.  Here:

"no comment on the following suggestion by Edward Lin (California

Since yesterday, what I wanted to do with my minutes and what I HAD to do with them were totally different things.  of course.  The want was really big and high priority:  post some pictures of the beautiful birthday flowers perrye sent.  They had to be divided and spread around, they were so many.  (I LOVE tulips.  Tulips.  We could manage it - to give everyone tulips every year, but only if they promised to behave themselves, ... they'd shape up pretty damned quickly.  well, you can see how they would, can't you?  Easily as effective as that naughty or nice thing that, evidently, no one's falling for any more.)  

Every minute spent here the other day was perfect.  Just perfect.  I won't bore anyone by reciting ONCE MORE my favorite measure of a conversation, but it's swiped directly from Goethe.  Those Left Bank bohos loved it too, which is how you get 'Being Geniuses Together' by Robert McAlman.  Hard to remember if the book was even good - I think not - but that wasn't the point. 

And then flowers arrived - they were such a surprise, such a ... surprise.  A day of small wonders (much like any other day, of course, but I was allowing myself to loiter and linger among them - wait.  loiter.  linger.  are those the same things, just spelled differently?)  And the flowers arrived. 

You know I can't remember the word.  Not embodiment, and not incarnate ... those need a human figure (don't they?)  - but they were emblematic of the many minutes I enjoyed here.  They were Perrye, here for at least the afternoon, for a glass or two of old vine Zin on the back porch (quantum times more affordable than a Santa Barbara cafe.)  Conjured up.  It really was magic. 

Well, I think you can almost see for yourself.  But I couldn't attend to the picture-posting yesterday.  I had a press kit to create out of the thinnest of air.  It's not even close to done.  I, too, would have like to be able to conuure.  I'm wondering if I send flowers ...  

here's a very fun thing to work on when you've got nothing better to do.  NOT that you've got nothing else to do, just nothing better.  http://www.newyorker.com/captioncontest/ (opens in separate window)

it's the best i've got to offer at the moment.  i ask you - what's a woman to do when she wants to blog, suspects she needs to blog (come on.  south dakota went and made abortion illegal?  okay, they're sort of entitled, but I watched - too much - the reasoning of that state's legislators and frankly, they really want a smack upside their heads.) but can not blog.  time is not on this blogger's side.  this blogger wishes, occasionally, she was better at phone-talking than writing (can you believe it?!  i'm WORSE on the phone?!).  but she's not, so, instead of writing what she'd LIKE to write, she has to fashion correspondence.  she has to fashion position papers. 

the least she can do is point you in the direction of minor fame and fortune.  (actually, i don't think there's any fortune involved.  and the fame isn't such a big deal, either.)  but it looks like it'd be entertaining. 

if we weren't always ready to work the booda?

sigh.  the truth is, this has nothing at all to do with any broke, back or moutain.  this has to do with a household that's SUPPOSEd to be working but seizes on every opportunity to not.  A boutique in Texas asked for products for a new shop.  of course, we have none but that did not stop us, no it did not, from pretending we did. 

This is not good.  I should be ashamed.  I should be ashamed that I'm not ashamed.  I don't care.  It was fun. 

I just dashed over to Cantwell's, our neighborhood incredibly pricey but wonderful little corner market.  Cigarettes, a Sanpellegrino Limonata (in case you had to know how I sustain myself). 

A high school student's taken over the first booth and as I'm walking out of line, he apparently figures I'm friendly enough to ask.   Something.  I don't hear his question, I just hear that he's asking one.   

'Do you know this word? he repeats himself shyly.

'What?'

'Seldom.'

I nod.  Of course.  And take a breath.  But I stop.  I have to ask it.  'How do you not know that word?'

He shrugs.  A little embarrassed.  "It doesn't come up that often."

I laugh.  And then get kinder.  I tell him what it means.  I don't have time to teach.  Not today.   

(swiped, in its entirety from booda blog, but that's because i meant to write something very very short and then come over here, but ... tick tick tick tick tick. Time flies.  I've got  no choice but to fill up my cyber pot hole with already-written-elsewhere stuff)

I like dabbling in other languages – who doesn’t? :) – and I LOVE inserting a strange phrase in conversation. Trick is to find the strange phrase. (oh, and learn to pronounce it with a certain, oh, casual attitude. ) There’s a little café on the Iles-de-France –they serve a nice Guinness – that has a mural on the inside wall with ‘Encroyable mais vrais’ – after “Je suis une jeune fille” it was my first Frenchie phrase and particularly good for spicing up an otherwise lackluster-single-syllable conversation. Incredible but true. Oh. And ‘oui’ – turned into ‘wheeeee’ – that’s pretty good, too.

Nem, nem soha’s good in Hungarian. It was the banner cry after the Versailles Treaty, when Royal Hungary was chopped apart: no, no never. Well, there you go. Protest all you want, and they’ll still go and do it. Can you imagine spending your life on irredentism? That’s that Italian invention, that insistence that territory that used to belong to you be returned to you, even though you could hardly take care of it the first time around. What the hell do people really need with more territory? Oh. Minerals. Natural resources. Water access. That’s right.

Anyway, early this morning, cui bono popped into my head. (I’d link you to the brilliant blogger who reminds me of this regularly, but he’s tragically not available for public consumption. If you sign up at mindsay, though, please don’t miss mrcarlisle . I don’t use ‘brilliant’ lightly.) But back to cui bono. I haven’t written Italian for awhile, although as recently as a year ago, I was learning it in earnest. I love Italian, not because it’s so beautiful, but … it’s playful. I don’t know. It’s pretty easy to have fun in Italian – there’s a lot to work with, you know?

Although an Italian dictionary sits on a shelf all of … wait … it’s an arm length and a couple inches behind me … it was early and I only had the light of my computer screen to work by. Po’ Abe-Lincoln me. I just thought I’d do a little search for how to pronounce it. ‘Ci’ is easy. ‘Cui’ – well, that extra ‘u’ just confuses.

Good god. I can’t believe people use the internet exclusively for their information. I’m not too bad at fashioning a search that gives up results, but it took me about ten tries and by the time I found it, I could hardly remember why I was looking. I landed on one page that had a really entertaining list of other Latin phrases, including si minor plus est ergo nihil sunt omnia or ‘if less is more than nothing is everything’ which isn’t exactly entertaining as kind of spooky, oracle-ish-ness just because it’s in Latin. Ubi est caupona bona or ‘where’s a good tavern?’ was entertaining.

People who won’t get off line and learn anything, who have no interest in getting as close to source material as possible, not only mystify me, they annoy me. They’re great at finding a forum and asking a question without having done ANY of their own research. Oh please – you can spot the lazy bastards a mile away. What? Do they think the people with the answers were struck by Answer Lightning? I’m tired of them. But now that I couldn’t make myself swivel all of 45 degrees and reach for a book … I might have to rethink my position. I don’t know. I’m looking for the easiest solution here. Ubi est caupona bona?

I might have issues with Oprah, which frankly aren't really her fault but more a consequence of our relentless and ridiculous hunt for someone to advise us ... she's done her damnedest to peddle independence and ends up being the voice so many depend on (uh oh.... me and those parenthetical phrases. you'd think i'd wait until the second or third paragraph, at least).  I'll try it again. 

If I handed out the big important awards, and I mean the noble Nobel stuff, I'd hand one out to Oprah specifically for her public championing of girls' rights to their own future. s.  (I think I had one too many plurals in that one.) 

A lot of people work under the radar to give girls the stuff that will make them shine in their lives - mothers, teachers, community activists - but I'm thinking that Oprah's turned the whispered secrets into currency.  You can nearly buy yourself that Hermes bag with the information and point of view she shares. 

I woke up at 3.30 in the am yesterday and at 4 pm, i just shut down - not gracefully, either.  I shuffled straight off to tv-land.  When you don't have cable, choices are few.  I chose Oprah (just to explain how I got there.)  The show was devoted to 'a survey of concerns of young girls.' 

What shows up on a blog is not always an accurate indication of what anyone's really thinking about, is it? 

You commit to a topic (okay, I do) and often, before I'm even half way through, something else is tugging at my attention.  Today, for instance, I'm really fascinated by the Milosevic death and analysis.  I'm fascinated by how suddenly articulate we become when we refused to find even a few words to toss in the direction of Bosnia-Hercegovina for the longest time. 

I'm fascinated by how isolated the case seems to be, although Balkan affairs - since they began - have always  resonated in the West.  (You know, I just made that up, but a quick review of history encourages me to say:  ooh.  that's true.) 

I continue to be fascinated by the resilience of neocon-speak, particularly that recurring line that's crept into a defense of our presence in Iraq: 'defending our freedom.'  There are a lot of much better excuses for being there.  'Defending our freedom' boggles my mind. 

but today I'm convinced that Oprah's dedication to young girls is one of the most important things on the table of items that glitter and want attention. 

I don't think that needs any elaboration. 

you can figure out the breathtakingly bad misreading/mishandling of Iran all on your own.  (really, though.  Can't the Bush administration reign it IN?!  what the hell's wrong with them?)

Oh.  here's the treat.  Mastercard Indecent Proposal.  I dont' think i know any young and overly tender ones (oh.  that's a lie.  If you're young and tender, don't click.  Okay?)  http://thatvideosite.com/view/24.html

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, accused of copyright infringement, is saying, without a blush, that he did not - NO WAY - swipe anything other than your regular, run of the mill research.   

Thomas Wagner (AP) wrote, "Asked about passages from "The Da Vinci Code" that were similar to those in "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," Brown acknowledged "reworking of the passage - that's how you incorporate research into a novel.""

Brown was pretty happy to admit that he and his wife, Blythe Brown, read the book while doing 'Da Vinci' research, but it was one of many other books and a bunch of documents.  Dan Brown's taking the position that the disputed book wasn't crucial to his work.   In fact, if he recalls correctly, he didn't even read Holy etc. until after he submitted his proposal. 

Tolle lege, tolle lege - that was Augustine's excuse in his Confessions:  pick it up and read, pick it up and read.  I don't know any more Augustine than your average person.  This little beauty showed up when I was looking for a pronunciation guide to Latin. 

Not only do I not believe Dan Brown, I find his refusal to confess ... bothersome.  If the court of popular opinon was even remotely interested in integrity, truth (and a little justice), it would have to say that the story - which undoubtedly was Dan Brown's - wasn't what captured the imagination at all.  It was the disputed 'research' that did. 

I'm sorry to be neither an occultist or conspiracy theorist and still, as I've overly-mentioned, the Albegensians, those heretics of Languedoc, the Crusades and the Knights Templar have long fascinated me.  There's a wonderful web of related cultural material that remains sturdy and has bounce today.  Besides that, you have to visit Renne le Chateau to appreciate - really - how extraordinary a place it is. 

It took me forever to read The Da Vinci Code.  I wasn't reading fiction then.  You wouldn't guess it from my own runaway writing, but I'm fairly sensitive to an author's voice, cadence, natural vocabulary.  And reasoning.  I recognized the 'lifted material' almost immediately.  I'm happy to say I didn't bother investigating.  In fact, I thought it was kind of great that The Da Vinci Code put an argument, a history, an idea into the main stream. 

Unfortunately, because we're the laziest sons of bitches, most Da Vinci Code fans I've met, didn't do any further study other than buying up the new books that argued every point of the text of the Da Vinci Code. 

I'd like Dan Brown to pay for that.  Not his fault, but I'd like someone to pay.  Tolle lege couldn't possibly have been trivialized to refer to airport paperbacks. 

I was feeling a leeetle bad about my earlier blog that was not only testy, but so abbreviated as to make no sense.  Not that I ever do, but ... I know that very few people could possibly care about heresies and the curious development of Europe around the Catholic church, but I do ... blah blah blah. 

But then, after four days, our negligent landlord finally got someone in to repair the heat and I got a little less testy.  But THEN I wandered over to the women in business forum.  People who make products are convinced that if they end up in a celebrity's hands, it's good - and so, we get the swag bag industry. 

I'm a hold out from the above, not out of principle, but out of knowing celebrities.  I GET it.  If someone named Britney is photographed carrying your bag, many good things will happen.  Maybe.  If Oprah (wow.  she's showing up a lot around here) if Oprah holds up your ... what does she hold up?  your velvet socks - nine million of those disciples of hers will race out and buy them.  GOT IT. 

exactly how fucked is that? 

Anyway, so there's a thread about how much those Oscar swag bags are worth and one woman said the obvious, that it's we, the adoring, drooling public put those celebrities on their pedestals. 

The replies were instant:  not ME.  I don't think they're better. 

Except ... the REST of the thread was devoted to stories about Keanu Reeves and George Clooney.  The first, apparently, refuses to accept gifts or bags.  The second donated his to a fundraising effort. 

Naturally.  A movie star who doesn't accept lavish gifts - yah.  I can see that.  It's fabulous.  Much more fabulous than if, say, one of us refused them. 

So here, I am, back to testy.  

You can't have a product with a tag line 'karma & cotton' without explaining something about the karma. 

And so I did. 

'what goes around, comes around’

That’s pop culture karma, almost always invoked when someone’s done us wrong. They’ll pay for it. Eventually. We hope.

Booda Baby doesn’t subscribe to that particular view. We think karma is pretty simple: pay attention to the world, participate in it, give up your talents and skills and ideas. Be available. Thoroughly.

We imagine some might be willing to allow that this view isn’t about paybacks, but ...where are the rewards? We understand. Abundance is the new black. If you ask, the world will provide.

Well, we’re all about abundance. But a lot hinges on the asking part. In our experience (and we’re so blessed to have plenty of it), karma isn’t a promise and it’s definitely not a guarantee. That’s the most excellent thing about it. No guarantee - which extends to a situation that looks like it’s only got misery attached. No guarantees at all. Just the full range of possibilities.

Of course, none of this is easily explained. We’re not sure it’s meant to be explained.  

*    *   * 

And the rest is ... the rest.   

It looks like it's over, PBS' long, mind-numbing pledge drive (necessary, but still ...).  Tonight, I get Nova.  This is good, because I'm not sure I could have faced another evening of Andrea Bocelli's love songs.  Rather, I couldn't have faced another evening avoiding Andrea Bocelli's love songs.  Except, if I hadn't been avoiding Andrea Bocelli's love songs, I wouldn't have watched 'Second Best' with Joe Pantoliano.  The DVD case is plastered with lovey-dovey messages from critics:  "...intelligent and witty" and  "... funny, bitter understanding of male competition and ego.  Smart enough to make you squirm comedy..." 

The choice was between an Oscar nominated animated film or this flick with the most persuasive recommendation of all - "Pantoliano's rants fascinate."  So.  'Second Best' it was. 

Schadenfreude's the big theme - taking quiet, smug pleasure in another's pain or misfortune.  The whip of joy at hearing harm or failure's been visited on someone else.  For some reason, maybe not quite sure an American audience would get or admit or face the idea of schadenfreude, the film wrapped it all up into the idea of 'jealousy.'

Some would say that it's a word we would have had to invent - like the UN.  Perhaps,  perhaps.  Maybe jealousy and it's more reasonable cousin, envy, are natural to us.  If you know me at all, you know I'm going to say we've made it legitimate, we've slowly slowly made it a minor religion.  We toss it out as an explanation - jealousy or intimidation, those are the popular choices - and make it perfectly reasonable. 

Once more, I have to give my father some credit.  Hard to guess what his motives were.  Now, I suspect he was ravaged by jealousy himself and just wanted to spare us, but ... whatever the motives, we were not allowed to even consider jealousy an option.   Jealousy was replaced by the idea of skills and education.  Jealousy was robbed of any usefulness. 

I don't know exactly what it's done for me - maybe nothing measurable from the outside looking in, but I do know I've largely enjoyed the absence of resentment.  I know I can delight in someone else's success.  I know I don't hinge any of my plans on luck and ... well, lots of little agonies that I've seen others suffer don't usually occur to me. 

Which brings me to the character of Karen on Will and Grace.  Karen is Megan Mullaley.  We were at Northwestern at the same time.  I've known or been acquainted with a lot of filmy-tv-celebrity folks, but she's my hands down favorite of all time and I don't think we ever had a conversation. 

I went through the sorority rush system because I was very young and fairly stupid and profoundly high the entire time.  It took me the longest time to 'get' it - that this was a system of inclusion/exclusion.  Against all odds, I was selected for inclusion in what one of the ... 'elite' sororities.  A place o' pedigree and charm schooled beauties.  What, you ask, was I invited for?  Well, I'm thinking, as I thought then, they were trying to become a little more democratic, sort of stretch themselves.  

I actually moved into the sorority house.  I learned to follow sorority house rules.  It was good for me.  I think.  I'd never been around so many smart women from such wealth and privilege.  I was lucky, however, to have a smart ass boyfriend - not your average smart-ass, either, but world class and South Side of Chicago down-to-earth without wacked social ambitions smart ass.  The girls loved him and his football player friends.  He thought they were completely full of shit.  He couldn't get over their preference for superlatives.  'Everything with them's 'the best, the cutest, the -est.' 

And then, the new rush season began. 

As usual, they thought I wasn't paying attention.  How could I not, though?  I'd never seen anything like it - young women.  YOUNG - given the power to reject other young women on the basis of - oh, you just can't believe it.   And it was impossible to miss that each of us had been discussed in the same way.  I don't know how I thought you got in, but it wasn't like this. 

Megan Mullaley had, apparently, been through rush at the same time I had.  They'd declined to extend her an invitation the first time and dammit, they'd decline again.  I watched silently, horrified, as objections accumulated.  Very few of the supplicants/applicants were so vigorously opposed.   I might have been young, naive and stoned, but I could tell a group lie as well as the next. 

You could feel the jealousy.  None of the objections had to do with anything ... well, objectionable.  They were all in that frightening, acid-ugly territory of 'not for us.'

Oh, what a strange thing to hear when you know that you are 'not for them.'  And so, Megan, who achieved a small sorority-reputation, for being invited into no sorority at all, became a little hero of mine. 

I have always hoped that no part of her, not even a little part, ever shrunk in disappointment, in hurt, in embarrassment that she was not included.  There is nothing good for the core, the spirit, the heart that comes from being included by those criteria.  Nothing.   

What are the chances that the refrigerator would start making squeeeeeeky noises the very day I woke up at 4 am and had nothing but sleep deprivation to look forward to?  Some people who get up at 4 am are wrapping up a management buy out.  Me, I'm thinking about Phoenicians.  And animating a baby.  Just to see if it could be done.  (yes, yes, I know I skipped one or two frames.  I thought it might be nice if it came in under a billion megabytes). 

  Wait a second. Damn. Now I have to go put it on a web page. Here.

Oh, I had to change that link.  Photobucket can't be trusted to keep it at a reasonable size.  BIG babies is creeepy.  So. Here's the new, tinier thingie. 

HA!  This can't be good, that I'm spending time doing this.

Drive up the foothills and over the pass, you'll find a little tavern built on the old stagecoach route beside a canyon creek that still lights its fireplaces and opens its doors for travelers.  It's grown into a few buildings, with a bar and a weekend of music. 

You have to duck off the highway and onto a winding, canyon road to get to Cold Spring's rustic, original charm.  It's not all that remote and it's not all that hidden, but there's something about the physical departure from the easy, beaten path that makes the place magical. 

Just ask anyone who's ever there.  It's the kind of joint that inspires everyone to feel self congratulatory.  Kind of pioneery.  Cowboy earthy.  And spiritual.  People from the suburbs, the ones who saved Harley's ass by buying them, are particularly susceptible.  They can't get enough of being 'accepted' by the locals and the locals, for their part, are pretty crazy about doing the accepting. 

Anyway, it's cold up there.  Down there.  Wherever it is.  It's not like it doesn't warn you.  Cold Spring.  I've yet to figure out how to dress.  This weekend, I thought I did pretty good.  A gang of Santa Barbara musicians had one of those 'every body plays' fests up there.  It probably had something to do with sitting in front of the open door, but I was freezing my butt off. 

Luckily, there's always a fire pit cooking outside the front door, except in the dead of summer (although, now that I think about it, there's sometimes one going then, too.)  I took my beer outside and stood as close to that blazing, smoking bucket as I could stand, joining a little circle of men. 

It has happened every single time I've gone up to see music and am, esssentially, solo.  The spiritual 'test' begins.  As soon as they found out I was from Santa Barbara, the sport begins.  I don't think it's meant to be sport.  It's sincere enough, it's just ... well,  it began this time with The Most Handsome Ringleader's 'Let me ask you a question.'  Short version of the test was "what would you want people to say at your funeral?"  Gosh.  I didn't know. 

The praise was lavished.  "That's wonderful.  That's a great answer!!" he assured me, promised me.  "When you don't know?  It's a really good sign of your humility."

I laughed, and assured him in return that I didn't have a whole lot of humility.

He loved that one.  The humble, apparently, never know that they're humble. 

We played a few of those games.  I won every time, even though I wasn't trying.  Pretty soon, all those locals, 'persuaded' that I had some serious spiritual mettle, were telling me of their own spiritual powers.  Living over the pass, and in the truly magnificent Santa Ynez valley, kept them close to nature and to the truth. 

It was delicious!  There's nothing like watching a seduction in action.  The seduction wasn't sexual.  It was ... it was spiritual.  It was, for reasons I do not know but have seen before, incredibly important to them to own the superior spirituality, the rock solid morality. 

Cars were leaving.  You want to catch your sober ride while you can.  I was left talking to Mike, the bouncer. Mike was missing some of the physical sex appeal of the other men.  Pushing sixty, he's cultivated the trailer park aesthetic.  He's a mechanic by trade, an electrician by talent, tends to wells in the area and has recently become passionate about conversions to solar power.  His first wife was killed in a car accident, his second wife became a junkie.  He raised his kids by himself. 

While his cohorts were yapping about the spiritual, Mike and I were bonding over our agreement that good, bad, great luck, terrible episodes - they're all The Life and, frankly, all worth embracing.  Left alone to talk and huddle by the fire, we didn't exchange one more word about spirituality.  But I heard the story of a man who's connected in every way possible with every thing that's ever been made available.  Every way. 

It was the warmest night I've ever had at Cold Spring. 

I've mentioned it before, but - despite the plethora of peoples who know everything around here -  no one just gave up the answer. 

We lived in a sweet little farmhouse in a pretty little village outside of Bury St. Edmunds (a period of my life that accounts for a small education in the Reformation, Catholic underground/the Gunpowder Plot (currently enjoying a little V for Vendetta spotlight), the Domesday Book and Norman invasion and ... oh, other things.) 

Anyway, Suffolk is one of England's best secrets and ought to stay that way.  It's as charming as the Cotswolds, but without any of the publicity.  Rolly-polly landscape is threaded with itsy bitsy curly-cue-y lanes (that seem to be laid out, suspiciously, in concentric circles.  Really.  How else to explain how you can head out in one direction, and end up nearly exactly in the same place half an hour later?) 

I had no problem driving on the left hand side of the road and round-abouts are the single most clever traffic-management invention of all time, but those narrow lanes nearly done me in.  In my defense, I was driving either a SUV (small, but still ... an SUV - courtesy of The Company) or a Jag and those are kind of wide.  When I got to town, I had no problem pulling up beside my intended parking spot, getting out of the car and asking a passing pedestrian to park it for me. 

But there's no one who'll do the driving from, say, Hawstead to Ipswich - most of the route - country lanes, not the Motorway - provided room on the road for, if you asked me, precisely one and a half vehicles.  As long as there was no one else around me, I was fine.  I just cranked up the stereo and flewwwwww.   It wasn't the actual driving that made me nervous.  God, no. 

It was the passing.  Not passing someone ahead.  Passing someone going in the opposite direction. When the roads were full of other vehicles, something gripped me and I could NOT drive fast.  There's probably a better strategy for getting over that fear of having a quarter of your car sheared off, but ... I picked the slowing down option.  Not a little slowing down.  A LOT.  I'm very sorry for anyone who ever got stuck behind me, but those Britishy people are pretty hard to rile up.  Hard to say whether it bothered them very much. 

Oh.  But this was about bunnies.  When you're driving slowwwwly, you'll see things you couldn't see otherwise.  I learned a lot about the wildlife that prances around the English countryside from roadkill. Most people, I'm guessing, don't take the time to consider them.  There are no long approaches on country lanes, you see.  You come around one bend and shoot off on the next.  Not me.  Not when you're going uber-pokey.

So, THAT's how I saw the bunny or hare that was so squashed, he was one with the road.  Except for the two long ears, like bunny antennae.  You can imagine, there's not a lot of swerving-to-avoid them room and yet, they survived. 

HOW did that work?  Do bunny ears have spring loaded action? 

It's amazing what you can learn about the job market when you're looking for jobs. 

I eventually wandered to Monster dot com and under Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations in Santa Barbara, there's a nice job title: Language and Cultural Specialist.  Employer?  National Guard.

Job description? Unbelievable.  

But not really.  This remains my problem with whatever stands for our strategy in this war-like time, our utter incompetence in understanding and implementing anything in another culture.  Still, STILL, supporters of our being in Iraq blithely celebrate an election, as they have in Afghanistan.  The government installed by the machinery of democracy is the polar opposite.  It's not a secret.  The most brutal warlords are in power. 

I'm suggesting that we do not, in fact, have a whole lot of people on board who could/can anticipate cultural subtleties and issues.  It's not about cultural sensitivity.  You mean to manipulate a culture, you ought to know what you're manipulating.  I'm willing to doubt out loud that you can learn anything in a six weeks. 

I quote:
 
The Army National Guard is looking for motivated individuals to become Language and Cultural Specialists.   As a Specialist, you will be part of a team whose leaders will rely on your expertise in the regional culture and your fluency in an Arabic and/or Southwest Asian language or dialect to:
 
• Interpret conversations among Soldiers and members of the local community;

• Advise commanders on issues of cultural relevance during interactions with foreign officials;

• Assist the Public Affairs Office during local media events; 

• Utilize language and cultural expertise to support military checkpoints;

• Translate materials from English to the select language and vice versa; and

• Assist a military contracting officer with local purchases. 
 

Then they detail the requirements for joining the National Guard.  
 
If you qualify for Guard membership and are interested in the Language and Cultural Specialist program, you must exhibit fluency in any of the following languages or dialects:
 
• Arabic (Algerian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Libyan, Modern Standard, Moroccan, Saudi, Sudanese, Syrian, Tunisian and/or Yemeni);

• Kurdish (Behdini and/or Sorani); 

• Persian (Afghan and/or Iranian); or

• Pushtu (Afghan and/or Pashto). 

And finally, they elaborate (a little) on training:   
 
Individuals entering the Language and Cultural Specialist program may attend Pre-Basic Training to improve English language skills and to prepare mentally and physically for the next steps in becoming a Soldier.  Next you will attend nine weeks of Basic Training, where you learn essential skills all Soldiers must know.  Lastly, you must complete a six-week course on the fundamentals of translating and interpreting, before becoming a Language and Cultural Specialist.   

I'm the worst photographer I know (well, with the exception of A.  I don't understand how he can own SUCH a groove and still have such a crap eye.)  Still, I took a picture this morning and blogged about it elsewhere and then thought I might as well mine it for all its worth, which isn't much.  Still, it's interesting, how it provides a metaphor. 

I hate metaphors.  But there's a lot I hate that seems to be perfectly okay with everyone else. 

Here's an equally bad picture of a storm in Iowa.  I like a good storm.  I did not like a good storm in our piece of shit farmhouse.  I still get minor brain seizures every time I remember all the fake hippies who got all soggy hearted when they found out I was living in a farm house with milk snakes and bunches of farm animals and two wood burning stoves and - oh yeah ... holes everywhere that kept us oh-so-close to nature.  What the fuck.  You are not a better person for living in those circumstances.  Oh.  The picture. 

I just found a nook on the web dedicated to 'Creativity.'  These things get rated and it got five stars out of five.  Mystified, I am.  Mystified.  Whoever's running this little corner compiled a list of books and little exercises and nifty tricks - apparently, if you're patient enough and dedicated enough, you, too, can find creative release. 

I do not care if you think I'm creative.  Not at all.  I figure the second you're getting scored and believing it, you've lost your grip on the creative.  So, obviously, this is an opinion, my opinion and I'm just recording it because I want to.  Creativity is an experience, an entirely internal, self gauging thing that's going on. 

See that sentence, the penultimate one in the paragraph above?  The one that's a disclaimer-kind-of?  Yah, well, that's a really good way to compromise yourself.  Fuck yourself.  Stop in mid-flow and apologize and you've made a shift. 

Circumstances definitely prevented it but so did my nature/temperament and to this day, the whole business of 'finding oneself,' of exploring a personal psychology just doesn't appeal.  What for?  I think.  Really.  What for?  I can understand, objectively, intellectually, the appeal.   Please.  You only have to following its history. 

A little Freud unleashed on Europeans who were crazy CRAZY yoked by social order.  Vienna explains a whole lot.  If you were a fan of soulless bureaucracy and doing your duty for the empire - Vienna was your mecca.  Even a glimpse of the subjects of the Hapsburg empire tells you a lot:  poster children for bourgeouis pigdom.  And why not?  Nothing else was going on.  (On the other hand, I like Jung.  How can you not if you care about finding the cultural wave and riding it wildly?)   

I've been really busy the last couple of days.  Any one who's got their own little business will be, on occasion and we are glad.  We are not complaining.  But, for some entirely unexplained reason, I re-wrote a woman's press release (she's got a little business in New Orleans and was completely ignoring all the potential. )  Then, I did something else.  Blah blah blah. 

So, someone emailed me, all agog and full of OMG's and you know - all that oohing and ahhing.  Yes, yes, it was nice to read someone's admiration or whatever it was.  How to explain that I would not do it if it didn't feed or some how trigger some chemical thingie in me?  When you're on a roll ... If I did it for oohs and ahhs (and I have done things for that reason.  Sports.  Taught to perform, I'm forever fucked because I can hardly separate the doing from the 'who's watching me doing'. ) anyway, the moment that 'audience' is allowed in to the 'doing' part ...

Well, that's how you end up with people swearing they're perfectionists.  Yah.  It's a very bad thing for the head.  It's not good for creativity, either. 

It happens.  You wander around through your life and cities and a few continents and a few years later, you remember - !! - ooh, I haven't talked to Samir in a long time.  He somehow became the sole owner, with a little mafia help, of a chain of youth hostels, one of them notorious. Notorious because, apparently, word spreads quickly through backpacking community. Sigh.  We had some really good laughs about it, the young, coming for guaranteed ... what? 

And I'll remember Ruth or Jane.  Or Gerald.  I miss Gerald.  Long after he returned to Canada, he very bravely confessed that he was, after all, gay.  And soon, our correspondence dwindled.  I guess that will happen when someone's in the throes of Big Romance. 

Yes, it's probably a very ordinary thing to do: remember people from our past and try to connect with them. 

People have made the effort to reconnect with me, too.  It's not always a mystery.  

One friend sailed to Australia and had GORGEOUS adventures and super cool observations of local flora and fauna - that's the kind of material that begs to be shared.  She application for immigration was long and hard and I guess I was a good one to understand. 

Another friend, after treating me cruelly, persisted in spite of my post-cruelty coolness until I understood the big soup of terrible circumstances he'd been in.  Now, I love him even more deeply for believing in my ability to be his friend. 

Recently, though, someone's been working for a reconnection and this one ... tests.  I didn't reply to an email for a week and my new-old friend felt terrifically neglected.   Wondered, out loud, if this newly resurrected relationship was going to be the same as our last, when I just ignored him.  His very first note to me was odd; he said his wife would divorce him if she knew he was writing.   Since we weren't even a little bit romantically involved, I had to wonder about it.  He reminded me of his slavish devotion.  No, he openly confessed - :) - I wasn't his girlfriend, but ...

So, we nipped that one before it even thought about being a bud.  Still, there's something else.  Something ... mid-life crisis-y-ish.  That said, it's just wrong to send an old friend on their way, it's inhospitable, even when you suspect - strongly - that they're looking for something you can't provide. 

This morning, a theory (a little one) came to me.  I'm thinking that this friend has chosen me to represent the other side, with the greener grass.  We have quite a few mutual friends, but they're all men being professionals and making money and buying homes and building decks on their weekends and going to regular volleyball games and taking yearly vacations.  That's not the 'other side with greener grass.'  That's the same side he's on.  I'm thinking he thinks I've got an inside track on the ... I don't know. 

I really don't know.  He hasn't complained.  In fact, I don't think he's thinking of it as anything to complain about.  He and his family do things and he tells me about them.  

The problem is when he asks what I'm doing, what I've done.  And I tell him.  He will not hear that it's just normal.  He will not. 

Yesterday, I spent all day filling an order and doing graphics work and flipping out about a website.  Then we watched Will and Grace.  Then we decided to drive to a cool little bar in Goleta that has country music every Thursday.  Then we came hom and we went to hear another band and I watched the production notes on Capote. 

There you go.  That's what I did last night.  The same stuff any one does.  Probably a lot less interesting than anything on his to-do list. 

Of course, it's true, that the romance of any one's life is not in what you do - ever.  It's in how you do it.  It's in your ability to be in it.  The question is how to measure that for yourself, isn't it? 

Ooh.  Tomorrow I'll give myself a treat and work on the tale of the woman who goes to one of the best cities in Europe, buys a book in English, and sits in her rented apartment reading about the best city in Europe. 

People make the place.  I've heard it, too, and accept that it's probably true.  Not for me, though.  I love the people who populate my life for being interesting and curious and intense and provocative and witty and ... you get.  A lot of things.  But really, I have a separate relationship with a city. 

The idea that a piece of architecture, a public structure, is sort of haunted, that it will always command a space - even when it's torn down wormed its way into the popular literature around the time the Berlin Wall was torn down.  Oh, I was glad.  I was glad there was some ... truth to it.  We do hate to be alone, don't we? 

The big ones:  Omaha Beach, the Jewish Cemetery in Prague (or any Jewish district), Szabadsag Ter in Budapest where Soviet tanks took aim.  I hear the Twin Towers site is potent. 

Those are the horrifying, haunted places.  But there are places of amazing joy, too, they're just not so overwhelming.  You have to listen for, listen to them.  I mentioned recently Rennes le Chateau that's currently enjoying some notoriety because of the Priory of Sion and the Da Vinci Code.  If you can divorce your head from the conspiracy stuff and appreciate the strange, masonic/engineering feats ... it's fantastic. 

Mountain ranges, wilderness vistas - those have a vibe, too.  Not just the 'ooh and ahh what a great picture' vibe. There's nothing like that glimpse of massive upheavals or the deep glacial massage.  Glimpse is wrong.  What's a word that means you're, even for the splittiest split of a second, in the monumental moment?  I don't know.  There must be a word for that. 

Oh.  But all of this is because I walked home from a  meeting yesterday, through Santa Barbara, up State Street, zig zagging to do a little business along the way and by the time I arrived home, I just knew:  me and Santa Barbara, the city, the devotion to Disneyland architecture, we're incompatible. 

I can't hear the click of my footsteps.  I can only feel the antiseptic smooth.  There's crime, and plenty of it, in Santa Barbara.  But it's ... 'over there.'  It's way too easily navigated away from.  And when it's there, under your nose, in your face, it's got the worst, charming look to it.  The ancient hooker with the concrete layer of makeup. 

It works for a lot of people, but so do suburbs. 

I've never had to make a relationship with a city work.  Instead, I've moved.  We've been here almost four years and despite its beauty and resources, I have yet to have one walk that thrilled me as much as any through the Communist wasteland edges of Budapest or through the sidestreets of Hollywood that scare the hell out of tourists. 

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but I don't think I've got time to get it right.  I'm not sure what value there is in staying in a place because you're there. 

Yesterday morning, I read it in the local paper.  Cindy Sheehan would speak at Arlington West, the memorial cemetery recreated every Sunday on a Santa Barbara beach.  A. asked why I wanted to go, a question that surprised me.  “The fame factor?” he asked. 

Fame?  No.  No.  It’s something extraordinary, when people stand publicly for something.  Whether or not you agree with their purpose or message, whether they embarrass or move you, it’s such a simple instance of bravery … it’s foolish to not experience it, to measure it for yourself.  Do not think I don’t know this extends to a few historical figures who, even in contemporary analysis, inflamed the worst of passions.   That’s life.  That’s history. 

At any rate, A. agreed to join me.  He suggested I give her a Booda Baby t-shirt:  peace, baby.  I was so happy he thought of it.  He just shook his head, pitying me my skills of self-promotion. 

It is a problem, you see:  choosing between something you believe in very very much and not really wanting to press it on people too hard.   Imagine waiting for people to decide not that an idea’s valuable but your presentation is.  Does it match the décor?  Will my friends love it? 

When we were en route to the beach, A. told me it was the anniversary of her son’s death.  I was nervous, nervous for her.  Nervous for the possibility of some disappointment.   I haven’t followed Cindy Sheehan’s story religiously or politically so I applied my own expectations. 

Several hundred people were gathered around the sand platform.  Most had taken positions along the wharf and she faced them.  We stood behind, to the side.  Some people stood even further, near the wooden crosses.  Tourists passed between us the whole time; fairly, of course, more interested in getting every last minute of their Santa Barbara experience in. 

Cindy’s political reasoning may or may not appeal to you.  It’s simple:  we were lied to.  This war is being conducted on the basis of a lie.  Thousands upon thousands of people are dying for a lie.  I happen to agree with parts of her position; others, I don’t agree with. 

The reasoning of her heart, though, transcends all.  The message of her heart is so pure, so profoundly true, it can not be touched by political contempt.  It can not. 

That message is this (and I definitely paraphrase):  Do you want peace?  Do you choose peace.  Do you give up your young, your children for anything other than peace? 

Cindy tells us that the family name, Sheehan, means ‘peace’ in Gaelic.  She reads the poem her daughter wrote, the poem that challenged her to step up and out of her grief and demonstrate what it takes to achieve peace.  You give up your anonymity, you subject yourself to nation-wide criticism on the one hand and suffer what it needs to be an emblem on the other. 

She tells us she’s heard a Buddhist proverb, that you die twice – once, when you expire, and twice, when the last person who remembers you dies.  She’s set herself the simple goal of ensuring that her son will not die his second death for a long long time. 

She’s made herself a shield from all of the above bits and pieces and she marches into our national consciousness with that shield as her only protection. 

It’s not hard to imagine what her detractors have to say.  They say it to everyone:  naïve.  Political pawns.  They’ve actually implied that her public presence gives some kind of comfort to the enemy.  They’ve certainly said that it’s idiotic to miss that we’re under some kind of attack. 

Well, that does make a horse race doesn’t it?

Once more, because I have asked it before, how do you figure?  You make big, sweeping pronouncements about what will happen, I want to know how you know.  I want to know when the last time you were involved in delicate negotiations.  I want to know about your track record of empathy.  I want to know whether you’ve come to believe that economic power makes right, I want to know what you know about history.  I want to know what you know about any culture. 

I want to know if you have ever created something and if, in creating it, you went deep.  No … deep. 

The speeches were over.  It was time to deliver our t-shirt gift.   The swarm to be near Cindy Sheehan was instant.  I had to laugh at how absolutely unprepared for it I was. 

She was spun this way, she was spun that way.  She spoke to this reporter, and that reporter, and then another.  And, in between, the people approached her. 

Of course, they were grateful.  But wait.  What does that mean, the ‘of course’?  Grateful for what?  A voice.  A spokesman, a woman very calmly howling to the world every week:  LISTEN to heartache.  It’s as reliable as your unreliable intelligence.  Listen to the heartache that never needed to be!! 

I stood, waiting for my turn in minor embarrassment, knowing I only wanted to dump a t-shirt and run away.  I found myself next to her sister.  Let me tell you something and you imagine:  a woman who wasn’t lecturing, who wasn’t telling stories, entertaining us.  She looked me in the eyes and was ready to talk.  To talk with.  Not to.  Paying attention.  The same thing Cindy was doing.  Not just fielding story after story.  Listening.  Hearing.  Replying to a sob, replying to a blessing. 

This is demonstration. 

People around me, seeing the t-shirt in my hand, seeing the t-shirt I wore, were so kind.  Delighted.  And then it was my turn, to step up, to tell Cindy we made these, these were ours.  We thought she might enjoy having one.   And then I spun her, for a photo op, thanked her and hurried away. 

And she stayed on, to embrace every single person who needed embracing. 

Peace, baby.  You can't be shy about promoting it. 

Europeans have this lovely habit of talking about the general nature of things.  Of course, you hear it in English, so it has some of the charm of patois:  English words, European spirit.  "In general," they say, and then begin their description. 

It's we Americans, especially when we're in a particular phase (uh ... youth.  lol) that bark:  Don't generalize.  It seems strange when it's got so much give and possibility to it.  Of course, not every generalization is equal. 

Once, when I was meaning to offer an example, I mentioned a woman who'd spent a year in Hungary, in a small town, teaching English.  We were at the same party and she didn't know me.  I knew her boyfriend, which is how I knew her brief history.  But, that history wouldn't have mattered.  When she said:  this is how the Hungarian people are, this is how they feel about Americans, it was instantly revealed.  Her generalization was wrong. 

Someone in our little party said of my remark, 'but yours is a generalization, too.  What makes yours right?'  I laughed.  Fair enough.  Sort of.  Mine is not right.  But ... how to say.  Just as opinions are not all equal because some are informed by no substance or by a lot, so it is with generalization.  To generalize well - and I'm not saying I've mastered it, good god no, but I've had some serious lessons - is to choose your strokes carefully, to prowl around in a lot of places, to listen to a lot of people and to their themes, to listen for their galvanizing phrases - and then try to name the common thread, the recurring ingredients. 

What was wrong with her generalization.  You don't want to know specifics, but it had to do with her saying one thing and everything in the culture, beneath the surface, in the developing economy, in the developing laws, saying something quite different.  If you have a few pals in a small town and you drink coke-and-wine cocktails every night and they slobber you with affection, it's a great and true story.  But it does not describe Hungarians.  Every incident does not translate into a microcosm. 

What I know of this technique,  I learned in Europe.  From those European intellectuals.  If you don't dig in and learn it, they will discard you in a moment.  As they should.   It's learned.  Learned.  I didn't have much of a choice because they were why I went in the first place.  You want to have a conversation that yields something, anything, you sort of have to develop a common vocabulary.  I didn't have it.  But after six, seven years ... I got better. 

ANYWAY.  Last night, Bernard Henri Levy, the French author/philosopher, spoke at UCSB on the new anti-semitism in Europe.  He began with a firm - very firm - warning: in his estimation, anti-semitism is not the most important thing happening, it is not a focal point nor should it be.  It's not one of our hot issue.  Nor should it be.  Darfur.  That is our hot issue. 

Well.  Somewhere, it's a hot issue.  Not around these parts. 

Anyway, his preliminary remarks over, he launched into his review of modern Europe.  Which needed a little review of ancient Europe.  The 'in generals' flew - long, twisting ribbons of ideas being tossed around while he danced through the ages and the popular forms of anti-Semitism.  Finally, he arrived at the new and offered the three principles.  Pillars.  If all three were to become strong, prominent and sort of self-supporting - at the same time - then we would have our new anti-semitism.  The three?  First, the demonization of the Zionist State.  Second, the competition for victim status.  And third, the new revisionism, the rejection of the Holocaust story. 

These three are peculiar to the European sensibility.  In cramped quarters, with intimately shared histories and, more importantly, in my humble opinion, shared conceptual struggles, Europeans feel these things without even having to know them.   

The final minutes of his lecture were spent speaking to his student audience.  I'm guessing they were fatigued.  As usual, many of them were required to be there and the second the lecture was over, the sorority girls and their dog-boyfriends made a dash.  It was hard, to hear through the French accent, to hear words that probably weren't even in their English vocabulary. 

But anyway:  he tried to illustrate for them the possibility of these things playing out in America.  The demonization of Israel, for instance, could be found in a recent paper by Harvard faculty, a criticque of the US government's special relationship with Israel. 

The lecture ended.  The question and answer session began.  This is the best time.  This is the ninth inning.  This is what you invest your attention for.  This is when, given a general view, a question can coax out a specific, fabulous ... something. 

Time was very short.  Only seven or eight questions were allowed.  And here's the whole big point.   One.  One question out of them all was ... superb.  I'm guessing he was a graduate student.  Raised in New York, raised under the press of the Holocaust cloud, he admitted a super-consciousness.  Now, he wanted to know any remarks about the blurring of experiences.  Holocaust victims - targeted for quite separate reasons - were blurred.  This student saw, post 9-11, a new blurring in America;  in light of the remarks about competition between victims, he wanted to know what that heralded. 

Every other question should signs of having been crafted, scripted, prepared before.  They were breathtakingly irrelevant.  Two - two! - asked his opinion of our involvement in Iraq.   One woman essentially demanded to know why Israel wasn't taking a leadership role in resolving Darfur. 

And that's the story.  But not a story, more of an observation.  Because we could have gone from generalization to - maybe - one stunning specific.  And we didn't.  And I wonder how it is that only one - one! of us knew the power of a question. 

Are we really that bad at listening? 

That's a generalization. 

Every once in awhile, I think of a book I'd like to read or a movie I'd like to see.  I try not to think of the actual work of writing the book or movie.  Too inconvienent.  I just want the story.  It might be something left over from an earlier life, when everything was a potential story.  It was so much fun, then, to imagine the thing in its entirety and then, without having lifted a pen, discard it. 

Today, I'd like to hear the story of a woman who picks up and gets her lazy, fat ass to Austin.  Or San Antonio.  Oooh.  Or even, better, New Orleans.  On the edge of another hurricane season.  

These are all places I could discard in a second.  I know there are much better places for lazy, fat ass woman to go.  This is what happens when you watch a program on the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square, when you remember the time when you just didn't believe the analysis you were hearing and you just dropped everything to go figure it out yourself.  

But now some insane squawky bird is outside my window and if I'm concentrating on ANYTHING, it's on not marching out and pulling every tail feather outa that sonofabitch.  Not the same thing, is it?

I'm so sorry to do this to you.  No, really.  But it was 4.30 pm and some random remark in our household made me see what I could get done by 5.00 pm. 

And what, I ask you, am I supposed to do with it besides show you?  Here.  Yes, yes, it opens in a separate window. 

Just for the record, I decided to use it for a rotating campaign for the KIPP schools - a non-profit, tuition-free school system that's out to rock and roll and hip and hop all over failing system of education.  We want our children to have peace, we can't leave them hanging with third rate minds and worse habits.  So, every month, I'll change the deal.  $5 of every sale one month, 10% the next, etc etc. 

what would you do? That's the whole point to this little game.  I love it, although I admit, no one ever seems to like playing it as much as I do.  You don't really win anything.

We played it last night.  I was talking to someone with no sympathy, not even a little, for illegal immigrants.  She told me about a group of women taking ESL classes who complained about missing home.  When asked why they didn't consider the upcoming school vacations as a chance for a holiday, they said they couldn't.  They were illegal and afraid they wouldn't make it back in to the country. 

My friend was DISgusted, that they'd take advantage of the language lessons in order to take advantage of community opportunities, but then send their money back to Mexico.  You know.  To help families. 

I had no opinion.  I don't.  I'm one of those dopes that thinks we're looking at the wrong thing when we're looking at the illegals.  Anyway.  That's when I said:  I don't know.  I think that if I lived in a country with an impoverished treasury in spite of natural resources - which DOES beg the question of who's managing what, if I lived in a country with a history of staggering corruption, etc etc etc.  ... I think I'd happily be an illegal.  Not to say that describes Mexico, but take your pick of countries around the world and the circumstances anyone is born into.  What would you do if you lived in a small country, and its leaders were notoriously - obviously -corrupt?  What would you do in the face of an occupation?  In the face of martial law? 

I like playing that game.  It only has one rule, but you HAVE  to observe it, otherwise ... well, it's no fun.  Your answer has to be what you'd really do.  Really, truly.  

Everywhere else, people are celebrating the flurry of birdy activity, the spring revival.  mrcarlisle has butterflies to report on.  misshap went the Door county route and caught herself some cranes on camera.  Me?  I get that damned bluejay, the bird from hell, who just can NOT shut up when there's a kitty cat anywhere in the vicinity and, naturally, there are quite a few of those to set off the alarm.  There.  That's when alarm gets onomatopoeic, as long as you say it with a shrill squawk.  Alarm.  Alarm.  Alarmalarmararlalrmalnragn.  Eeeeeeeek. 

And of course NOW I feel like throwing a little anthropomorphizing in - what's with all the whiney hell raising?  You've got wings.  Move.  Take a few shots at the prowling kitties.  DO something, don't just sit and do that drunken blue jay chattering. 

I hate blue jays.  I'm sure they're very nice birds, but I hate them.  And that's that.    

Added to/Edited because I felt like it wasn't the smartest thing, to start out a Monday feeling like cracking a bluejay over the head:    some lacquered paper earrings jen lowie made out of one of my logos.    

And, oh my gosh, this woman needed some graphics and I couldn't COULDN'T resist playing (no intention of this being what she'd use ...)  But that's the point.  It's the most wonderful thing to do - play, just to play and create without commercial purpose. 

Oh good.  I feel much better after reminding myself to play.  After I shoot the damned bluejay, of course. 

One second, you're just getting on with your life, the next, you find yourself with a hobby.  I'm hoping I'll avoid it.  It's hard to make these choices:  reading, thinking, researching, weighing?  So, yesterday, I dabbled in them all and ended up with very little to say today except the below and then, one last bird thang.  That's the theme that threatens to become a hobby.  Eeek.  But first, before the bird ...

I started yesterday reading  mrcarlisle 's contemplation of Rev. Moon's sex instructions and then the article that inspired his piece and then I spent time being pretty darned annoyed at South Dakota and then velvetdreams  pointed me to another blog about Planned Parenthood's funding of an MTV commercial that was overly - really - overly sexual and some one should have slapped them with a rein it in, you idiots, but what was way more interesting was the other blog's ultimate mission: to get readers in a campaign to cut off any federal monies to Planned Parenthood which made me very interested in the federal monies an operation like, say, American Family Association gets, or any conservative non-profit which often gets money, but the MOST interesting part of it all was reading the numerous comments on the above mentioned blog, the comments from outraged parents, parents outraged that their 12 year old might see this oh-so-shy of sexually explicit commercial in the middle of watching MTV and, honestly, honestly, while I'd never want my 12 year old seeing the commercial, I'd first be making very sure my 12 year old wasn't sitting on her 12 year old curious with the world before her ass watching MTV.   

Oh.  And now the bird.  We got this in an email:

You know how it goes: one day, an idea comes to you and for awhile it serves as a magnifying glass?  No?  A. hates driving with me.  He calls me the 'nagivator.'  Yeah, well, maybe, one day, my 'will you SLOWWW down?' will have an effect.  Probably not.  He'll always think my direction-giving technique is insane. 

I don't mind being nagged by an idea.  I don't know why.  I don't.  Although I will fall asleep during the middle of it.  Which is what I did last night, during a PBS program about the Holy Warriors - Richard the Lion Hearted and Saladin.  (In my defense, I'd started the day at 4.00 am)  To make it more topical, maybe, the program began with a 'positioning statement' about how, after 9-11, the Third Crusade was invoked by both the Bush administration and the world with any sympathy towards Osama bin Laden. 

The ten or fifteen minutes I watched were pleasant enough, but ...

I watch and love many programs on PBS.  I read and like many articles on the web (I see from my stumble upon stats that I tend to choose Alternative Media pages).  But I don't think of it as an education at all.  An introduction, at best.  A few sweeeet ideas that might tempt me to study further. 

I'm going to guess that most people would say the same thing.  God no, they'd swear.  I'd never leave it at that.  I'd never trust a program or an article.  A lot of those people?  They're lying through their teeth.  Have a conversation with them, that's really all that's required. 

Maybe you're much better equipped than I am to take it all in at one sitting and put it in context and call it an education.  Maybe you learn at the speed of light.  Maybe you have such a talent for re-locating yourself from modern sensibilities to the contemporary ones of an historical period  with all the cultural extra ingredients to go along.  Bless your brilliant heart - that kind of absorption and focus and grasp of the huge canvas astonishes and impresses me.  I couldn't do that in a billion years. 

I need information to appear, I need to file it in my little head library, I need to work slowly on my puzzle.  At least, that's how it's been.  Richard the Lion Hearted, for instance. 

I started with a pretty firm foundation in Hapsburg history. But that's backwards you say!  (Well, you ought to, because the Habsburgs - but no one spells it like that anymore - didn't have any real power til a few centuries later).  Well, this collection and understanding stuff isn't a linear thing with me.   Then, I went trudging back into Hungarian history and as I've mentioned/nagged to death here, that included Vlad Dracul and the battles against Turkish/Ottoman advances into Europe.  Which didn't work.  But, during the time the Ottoman Empire sat its turbaned butt onto Royal Hungary, it did a gorgeous job of building baths and a taste of justice. 

So, there's a nice kind of solid landscape to start putting up little museums of knick-knacky information.  Tidbits about the first crusade made way more sense.  It was a bloody frickin' disaster:  the real first crusade. 

Make your way to England, and the success of William the Conqueror and the yoking by marriage of the England lands and Frenchies and it's a hell of a lot easier to imagine how the 'empires' were shifting by alliances and connections with Rome.  It's a whole lot easier - for me - to understand things like the Inquisition and the slight difference between defending the Christian faith and defending the territories from foreign rule. 

All this stuff happened over the course of 500 years, but - as they say and I've come to believe - things change and stay the same.   Richard the Lionhearted trotted off to the Crusades and left his brother John in charge.  It's disputed, that Richard was gay and here, right here, on this page, it seems like a question of 'what does it matter?' and I don't know.  It's just interesting.  During his actual rule, he spent less than three months on the Britishy isle. 

His heart is purported to be buried in Rouen - it's in one of those nifty cathedrals.  This is the same Norman city where Joan of Arc was burned.  The same Norman city that has a fabulous cemetery devoted to victims of the plague. 

We spent a few days in the Durnstein, in the Wachau Valley north of Vienna.  I've waxed lyrical about it before here.  Just for fun, to test it out (which is what MADE me write this damned thing in the first place), I googled our hotel:  Schloss Durnstein.  A beautiful little castle perched on the Danube in a wine growing valley.  Well, there you go.  If you dug really reallly reallly hard, you might find out that Richard was imprisoned at Durnstein by Leopold of Austria.  A little royal bitch slapping, you think?  But not on Schloss Durnstein's page. 

The history of the ruins - ! - according to them is that they've always been ruins.  :) 

Which reminds me of sitting in a pub in some countryside in England.  How many times can I tell this story?  It STILL makes me laugh.  Called the 7 Bells, I asked the waitress why (since there wasn't a bell in/on site.)  'I don't know' she said, pretending to actually think it over.  'It's been called that since I've been working here.'

Nag nag nag.  I'd kind of hate to think anyone learning their stuff from the Internet was borrowing that line, but ...

Writing used to be my principle occupation - meaning I wrote anything and everything for anyone: grant proposals, a lot of business plans, pilot and film treatments, press releases and press kit material, advertising and marketing copy and letters. 

Then, when I said I was a writer, people almost always heard in their imaginations, Writer.  Absinthe and opium dabbling, lounging about on chaise longues with champagne and sex breaks.  Fantastic, poetic discussions about what-I-don't-know in hot and fragrant (never one without the other) little joints on the side streets of Hollywood.  Some of it was true, but never all of it. 

It's true, I took my stabs at fiction for life.  I wrote novels until I'd learned the novel form and then I guess I got tired of what it took to write.  That might have been a mistake. 

When I wrote fiction, I never once woke up in the middle of the night, never had insomnia with its engine of thinking and figuring it all out churning away until I got up at 3 or 4.  The insomnia only started happening when I wasn't writing. 

For all of the well deserved ridicule that, in my opinion, ought to be dumped on the theatrical, pseudo-arteestic 'truth seekers', the truth - ha! - is that writing demands that you work with the truth.  Aim for the truth.  Miss it and it's painfully apparent.  

Although I don't write any more, I still dabble.  It's kind of a tic.  I have to do it.  It's nothing like a blog.  I rattle happily away on a blog.  But writing even a paragraph of fiction - it stops me, right at the start, and essentially warns:  Don't even start if you're not going to be working the real stuff.   Don't even bother because you might be out of shape, but you've been trained to not use fiction as propaganda or a tool or a weapon. If you're not going to write this paragraph in service to the truth, forget it. 

Can you believe what a stickler that fucker is?  But it's true. 

For two weeks - TWO WEEKS - I've been accumulating paragraphs on a window.  A window.  A new psych has moved into the office directly above mine and her bay window looks out on to a small porch.  This porch is not wonderful at all, it has no charm, no view, but it represents my sanctuary.  It's the place I take phone conversations and cigarettes.  She moved in a month, maybe two, ago and began to leave the window open.  All the way open, even when it was pouring rain.  Occasionally, she'd also forget to turn the light off in the room. 

And now, I'm writing just to resolve my ... issues with this.  She's not even there and I feel the intrusion.  I can't smoke when I think it might drift into her office space.   Writing it is proving to be a little difficult.  It's kind of comedic, but I want to cast her as the oblivious villain.  A villain because she's oblivious.  Treating her patients' psychic disorders when she's obviously insensitive to ... what?  My psychic comfort.  Turn the damned light off, at least.  And if you're gone for three days in a row and it's raining, shut the frickin' window so you don't disturb the meaning it OUGHT to have.  A window, open, is a sign of occupancy.  A signal. 

I'd love to write it and resolve it in my head, but I'm out of practice and instead of concentrating on the fun and magic, I just find myself getting straight to the point.  Straight to the point, so she's bad and my character's - not good, but back in control.  I can do this, but only if I'm willing to make it happen.  Force it to happen. 

And a lot of years of writing roll their eyes and call me bad, bad names under their breath.  I think they're trying to tell me:  if you can't do it right, go away. 

sigh.  But I am not a quitter, it's not good to be a quitter, don't quit, don't quit ... (I wonder if chanting that long enough will put me to sleep?  At least solve a little insomnia ...)

"See you in another decade" was his parting shot, his way of gingerly complaining about the number of times we've been in the same spot at the same time.  For the record, it was six years ago, and we met in Italy.  He wasn't coming to England and I wasn't going to Chicago, so there you have it - the place in between.  Sort of. 

 Every once in awhile, someone complains about what kind of friend I am.  I'd probably complain about me, too, if I wasn't me.  Oh yes, there are about a billion criticisms you could lay on my doorstep.  Thing is, I'd probably take the back door.  I wouldn't think you're wrong, unfair, misunderstanding me (although you probably are. lol)  I'd probably - on kind of an impulse - decide to take a route that gets me somewhere.  You step out the front door into that shit, you're dedicating a whole lot of time to cleaning it all up and making it all lovely again. 

After six years, we met this weekend in Santa Monica.  For three hours.  We've had phone conversations, but three hours was the only window we could both squeeze through. 

I've mentioned him here before.  He's a world renowned electrocardiologist whose research is so superb, he's a director of a department in a hospital famed for its cardiology staff.  When he felt the time was propitious (now HOW does that work?  How is it I know what propitious means with some precision, but not some easier, casual word?  Oh well.  Doesn't matter.)  When he felt the time was right, he began to push the boundaries of his brief, as it were, and expand into the field and practice of mind-body medicine.  Complementary medicine. 

He's aggressively intellectual and spiritual and has always had the greatest appetite for examing ideas - NOT in some holy, ivory tower let's-waste-time kind of way, but in their real world application.  Really.  He's a New York Jew, educated at a Midwestern liberal arts college, who wanted desperately for the Kabbalah (perfect occasion to drop a link in ) to ... I don't know.  Answer, bring solace, bring at least  a connection?

Well, it didn't, apparently, because he lives in this American world.  He lives in this world that, in the last 10, 5 years?  has - rather happily - become anti-intellectual, has chosen job security and family over the material that feeds a rich, engaged culture. 

It's a difficult path he finds himself on.  He's absolutely on the outside, dangerous (which has, in other ways, been good for his career.  He's an astonishingly well paid consultant, brought in especially to attack a new drug, for instance.)   The staff at his hospital all took a sort of personality test, the results of which were supposed to help in better administration and management.  The test accurately identified him as quite unique, having a public and private persona that were identical and were best described as a kind of bossy, creative, passionate temperament.  Most of his colleagues were identified as being followers. 

By the end of three hours, a lot of words were spent in bemoaning our languishing culture.  No argument here.  None.   In fact, total agreement.   Even more agreement that we're possibly in a write-off period.  If we're still a happening planet in a couple of hundred years, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we were that 'age between' interesting movements. 

We've got shit going on.  And of course, no one wants to belong to an easily forgotten age.  Please.  It sort of flies in the face of 'what we're here for.'  But ... point is, that's ego talking.  History barely pays attention.   

So, what to say to a friend who feels neglected in the middle of a neglectful, disinterested world?  I don't know.  You work it, based on your own experience.  You dig deep and try and give him a perspective that you couldn't possibly give if you were in his life every single day, tending to the ups and downs and reviews of restaurants.  You tell him that you suspect that changes never ever happened in the general population.  That you suspect, quick quick take on history, that there's always been one, two, a handful of people with the creative, intellectual balls to march ahead, sacrificing their security. 

I don't know, have no idea, but I wonder if Brunelleschi had concerns, unveiling perspective on a fairly well documented one dimensional world.  Oh, isn't that interesting?  I bet someone's done a great great study of how Machiavelli couldn't have possibly, possibly written anything - maybe not even perceived it - without the conceptual perspective.  (Well, if they HAVEN'T done an essay on it, they OUGHT to.) 

Oh.  But back to the balls.  While the culture gets sloppy and decays and turns into 18th c. Viennese society that has to have little orderly rules placed on it and lots of bureaucracy because hardly anyone's that creative (yet again I haul out little Hapbsurg history)  the big danger? 

The big danger is when the unique, the individual good thinkers, the creatives start waiting for the rest of the culture to do the work.  When the unique, creatives - the exciting scientists, the kick ass writers, the thinkers - decide to protect their own security, develop their own propaganda to explain why they're not stepping up and being a leader - well.  Just saying.  The burden really lies with them. 

It wasn't much in three hours, but - in retrospect, it wasn't bad either.   When a friend who would change the whole infrastructure wants to shrug off his cape, you have to move very very carefully.   You have to sneak up behind, catch it before it falls to the floor and onto your cigarette butts, and put it back on, without him noticing.  We like the people who influence us to look snappy. 

I HAD TO EDIT.  Like every household, we have our own habits of talking.  Neither of us are fans of or good at general chit-chat.  Bores the hell out of us.  (Which makes us really really bad at your average cocktail party.)  A., though, is exceptionally good at puns, so he can hang.  Me, I just have to hang on and hope I survive. 

We were attempting to relax the other night and A. mentioned that he'd learned that anyone who's a quarter Chumash starts getting $30,000 a month - a MONTH - from the federal government at the age of eighteen.** NOT FROM THE GOVT.  From the tribe.  From gaming.  Sigh.  I guess I wasn't listening too closely.  :)  (Chumash being the original Indian tribe that owned the Southern-Central Coast of California).  Once you get past the shocking number and consider ... well, it's probably a reasonable figure considering what was robbed and what resources the Chumash were deprived of over time.

I was tired, though, and thought that, if things were fair, that it would be nice if that $30,000 was spread among a few more of the Indian nations. 

Andy said:  How?

I started, "Well -"

He laughed and because he kind of likes me, just said:  Okay.  Stop. 

Of course, in the three days since, he's told everyone - not just for the pun, but for the part when I went merrily on my way.  lol.  

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/politics/2006/04/30/colbert_press/index.html (They'll let you sign in as a Salon guest.)

Transcript at jimschweizer, but the video is ... priceless. 

From my point of view, Monday's kind-of-walk-out was successful.  The leaf-blowing crew next door, the one that starts every Monday morning, promptly at 7 am, didn't.  Sweetness, to sleep.  Of course, it's Tuesday.  7.15 and they've returned. 

Except for the part of the immigration bill that ever proposed making an immigrant and those who'd offer refuge felons - a part I personally think speaks to a diminished character - yes, I do - I remain without much of an opinion.  I do, however, have a big sympathy for any group that will focus themselves, focus their voices and SAY something.   And when a group will demonstrate - really demonstrate and not just spew more rhetoric?  I'm obliged to be on their side.  Even conservatives.  You demonstrate a fix?  That's not rhetoric?  I'm obliged to be on your side, too.  (Which is why - as a for instance - that little number you pulled in South Dakota, where you manipulated and openly ignored and spinned science to push your agenda?  That's not demonstrating a fix.  That's pouring all the resources into defending the rhetoric.)

Howard Zinn.  If you don't know Howard Zinn, you might want to.  If you don't want to, fine.  We'll keep whatever chats we have limited to the weather and what we think about these last episodes of Will & Grace.

If you do know Howard Zinn, then I've said enough by mentioning him. 

Historian.  Political because it's our intellectual obligation to be.  Simple. 

Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" - I copied and pasted that.  For the record. 

Clearly, there are people who are feeling pretty damned righteous about exposing her.  I don't care what motivates them or what justice they feel they set into motion - but I do really truly find it immensely entertaining that they do.  

I read a nice piece that took issue, not with the author, but with the packaging because, after all, she was thrust into the scheme.  But that article had nothing to say about what kind of novel we should have expected of a young girl. 

It's not that hard to find a great writing talent in a seventeen year old.  But, sustaining that?  For the length of a novel?  Please.  Who ARE you kidding?  That's why they invented short stories (not really) ... but it's ridiculous to even expect.  She had some newswriting experience.  That's like asking someone who religiously blogs - two, three paragraphs at a time - to crank out a novel.  There are wonderful novelists who blog.  The jury's out on whether wonderful bloggers can etc etc.

I'm thinking that critics are having a hard time really really condemning her - oooh, they want to - just like Oprah smacked her seal of disapproval.  They want some standards, they don't want to be painted with the same broad brush.  Boo hoo.  Thing is, we are responsible.  We've let this become an Open Source generation and because god forbid we apply critical standards to each other, decadence rules.  Decay.  Cooool. 

We learn from each other, we just do (oooh!  An added irony!  Too lazy to write a whole OTHER blog, I copied and pasted THIS for my businessy one, deleting the more abrasive-I'm-sure language.  And then I realized that THIS one could use a qualifier.  So here it is:  and it's great.  I  love Open Source for exciting generosity, for teaching us to share our knowledge.)  But Open Source has some how morphed into a landscape where only a handful of people bother to do the work.  The principle activity is copying and modifying and few people can even detect the difference. 

The sweetest irony is the media industry.  Mediabistro's founder wrote a satirical blog dedicated to this topic.  She professes sympathy with our beleaguered author because she, too, gets so steeped in the details of other's lives that she finds herself 'stealing' their actual life.  (I'm sorry to give such a poor synopsis, but it's second rate satire, at best).  Isn't that fucking amazing?  Mediabistro, home to writers of all stripes, but mostly marketing, advertising and short articles - they would take high ground? 

Among marketing writers, swiping and unoriginal copy and perspective is endemic.  Pop culture magazines?  Stop.  Once there's a hip new phrase book that comes out, everyone's using the same language, same rhythm, same snarky attitude.  And no one's saying: shut up!  Shut the fuck up until you've got something remotely unique to say.  I don't know why.  Apparently, we don't want to be perceived as ... I don't know. 

Forums and blogs are big fat petri dishes.  Plenty of exceptions and, in all honesty and with huge pleasure, I'd have to say that most people on my network are those exceptions. 

But in general, we're the ones letting it all go.  It just kills us to have our bullshit revealed, doesn't it? 

Oh yes.  We've met Miss Viswanathan.  And she's us. 

adieu, lovely people, interesting people, thoughtful, witty, edgy, kind and gifted people.  quiet, gentle people.  It's been a pleasure, but I've got a booda baby and the yin to attend to and a tale to write. 

I'm sure I'll drop in to read your fantastic musings and observations, so I'll keep this blog (such security measures). 

I wish you all genuine happiness and passion and action.  Being totally engaged in your life. 

Adieu.  Peace.  And a great deal of respect.