Koan #002
Condition: vampire dogs from outer space.
Reminder: the healer has her own Home.
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July 30, 2005
July 29, 2005
The Opposite of All of This
In the final scene of my novel, A Strong Sense of Place, I use the phrase “Opposite of All of This”. In the book, it had to do with the cosmology of a polarized universe, a universe of paired-opposites. Right now, in my own house, in my own bed, in my own head and quite possibly out of my fucking mind, at long last (Inevitables should be a source of comfort, not fear) I arrive at my own internal yin and yang.
Face to face with a realization that threatens to halt my own internal Tic and Toc.
What if you wake up one day and realize that the opposite description of yourself, in the right light and from the right incident angle, suits you just as well as the original self-description? What if the bucolic spirit you've clung to for so long is just my internal City Mouse doing some dreaming? Contrapositively, what if my Urbane Man persona is hayseed trussed up in Prada because comfort comes to the simple in normalcy?
What if the Wisher is really just a Taker? The Dreamer just a Procrastinator?
What if mild-mannered-me is just high-strung-but-ethereally-so?
What if my Beginner's Mind exercises are really just templatized preambles to the same old mindset?
What if my nagging need for syncretization is just imperiousness disguised?
What if my believed-to-be-genuine desktop confessional is just an apposite form of special pleading, like Christian prayer?
And what is the apposite of all this?
Its opposite, I fear.
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July 28, 2005
Subverting to Utopia
We live in a time of Fear. Not because the world is inherently scary or bad—or good or joyous, for that matter—but because the prevailing politickers are solving for their own gain by subtracting from others. And the only way to rob emotionally is to play the vampire, using fear to snare, fear to compel, threat to swoon and then, prey immobilized, take from them all that you need to survive without ever putting something back into the system.
Multi-color alerts (bad guys are bad and imminent!), rainbow alerts (gay are bad!), amber alerts (the world is bad! we must protect the children as they are our main fund-raising, fear-raising mechanism!), soul alerts (we don't hate you, but we know you're going to hell!) all remind us that you can never be too frightened.
The be-afraiders want you to read books that spell out a future of gloom and doom. They've become parasitic to an End of Days kind of future because only that kind of future supports their current raison d'être.
Paint the future as a Wonder of the Possible, though, and you're a hippie or a communist or a—gasp!—liberal. Paint humanity as something that can achieve, that can find a balance and have respect and all that good stuff all on its own without the Republican Party's help or God's Help, and you're Evil. And they'll call you worse things as time goes on, make you lesser and lesser all the time, make themselves more and more superior all the time—for who isn't superior with god almighty on their side?—and eventually, they'll find a reason to call you soulless. Not human anymore.
That's why Utopian literature is so subversive. Isn't is so sad that things are so bad that utopian dreams are undermining to the establishment?
So, onward, christian lurkers and get thee to a bookstore to get
“The Fifth Sacred Thing” (Starhawk)
If you're not afraid of having your worldview disrupted.
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July 27, 2005
A Rove By Any Other Name
I love Gary Trudeau. He's one of those guys who knows that “nice” is different than “good”, that polite doesn't begin to make up for material transgressions, and that the stink of hate cannot be covered by a perfume of politesse.
Apparently a bunch of newspapers pulled Doonesbury because one of Trudeau's character's said that Karl Rove's nickname was “Turd Blossom”.
If Trudeau were a self-described Christian and 99 44/100% god-ridden and he'd aimed his intellect at us Evil Liberals, the conservatives would be praising him for using “words of strength” and “calling a spade a spade”.
Christians will tell you they don't hate you, they won't call you a “Turd Blossom”, but off they'll go, trying to hurt anyone who thinks or feels or believes different to what they tell you is god's honest truth.
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July 26, 2005
Eating Flowers
Were flowers ever a food-group for you? Ever a source of physical, gastrointestinal nourishment? A carbon-source?
Did it even occur to you, when you were small, that eating a flower was even something you'd consider?
I wonder now how many things in my white, suburban, christian (well, catholic, at least) upbringing were simply off-limits to the mindset. I'm not talking about questioning and being convinced. I'm not even talking about having questions shushed before you can get to the question-mark. I'm talking about normalcy. And Normalcy. And being guided into limits you didn't even know were there. Limits on the world indistinguishable from the world itself.
Who eats a flower? Well, there was the idea of eating the flowers from zucchini plants (only the male flowers) when I was a kid, but those were drowned in pancake batter and fried to hell. And they were an astonishment. Definitely Not Normal.
What else about the world do we just not sense because we've been trained that way? What senses—or sensibilities—do we lack that prevent us from seeing beyond red or purple, beyond taste and smell?
Why the discouragement to go where others are afraid to?
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July 25, 2005
Mary Chapin Carpenter
I am on a serious Mary Chapin Carpenter kick. I've always been a fan, but this is a new growth spurt (hehehe, I said “spurt”) in my appreciation of her lyrical talents.
Seriously, y'all have to listen. Especially to her new album. Especially to the song called My Heaven.
Hell, I even went out and bought (ok, Sam bought it for me)
“The Lovely Bones: A Novel” (Alice Sebold)
because the song is inspired by that novel.
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July 24, 2005
Koan #001
Q: Why me?
A: Because of your gifts.
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July 23, 2005
Not Really a Dog, But...
So even though I'd rather love a puppy than consider myself one, I do loves me some quizzes—especially when they're eerily spot-on.
And I loves me some eerie, except when its pH dips and it sours into creepy.
| You Are a German Shepherd Puppy |
|
July 20, 2005
Ame en la Época de la Vieja
Thinking.
Experiencing.
Feeling.
That is the order of things, from least difficult to most difficult to endure when adversity comes to your door, when Time Itself comes to collect the harvest.
Solemnity can mask the most dolorous mood. Dignity attends to itself, maintains. Truths are evident, blatant, suffer for the saying. Silence speaks without prompting. Caution takes the initiative.
Harvest time approaches here in Yerba Buena, a time of collection, a hopeful time of hoped-for bounty. It is also a dangerous time, the time of Fire, the time of Endings. The Time of the Reaper.
Her scythe cuts, signifying both ending and beginning, of giving up one for another, of surrendering to time, to the light. To renewal hoped for but not guaranteed. Who expects guarantees? No one who has lived through the Time of the Reaper.
Sowing is hard work, an act of faith and not merely a throw of the dice. It's not a gamble so much as a rhythm and a rhythm is nothing more or less than a cycle repeated. What is sown is not always what is collected; effort is not always rewarded. In the Time of the Reaper, what is collected is also shared-among, however, and thus goes the world.
But this is not the time for whistling past any graveyards; death only follows the Reaper, and while La Vieja remains among us, endings are not yet ended.
July 18, 2005
It's Alive
Ow. My head hurts. What a fun weekend.
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July 13, 2005
Paragon of Animals, My Ass
What is the color of the cloak of anonymity?
Is it green or orange, something of that jealous complexion?
Or red channeling an inner rage?
Is it blue and so very sad?
In any regard, it hides the face and certainly hides intent. It hides all those qualities in the coward that are considered fair play for castigating in others: hypocrisy is born.
So to all the anonymous, tendentious critics out there, a few teardrops is not an Ocean. My words are not my Self. An Aphorism isn't a Truth, no matter how catchy it is.
Perhaps the deeds of others incite flames inside you, but those flames may merely be illuminating parts of an inner world you have purposefully or subconsciously kept dark. And rather than satiating your own inner rage, walk away from this page and find someone who is qualified to help you.
Because I'm not.
And because you're not helping yourself.
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July 12, 2005
Why Walk When You Can Fly?
In a sky full of people,
only some want to fly.
Isn't that crazy?
— Seal
I'll never ever understand this one. Maybe it's all in the language. I hope so, because if it isn't in the language it almost certainly has to be in the DNA. And I don't want to ever be that hopeless about humanity.
I'm talking about the ability to lead vs. the need to follow.
There are so many out there, just around me, that possess great, if non-obvious, qualities which would make them great leaders. Leaders of people, leaders among piers, leaders of policy, of society, of our own humanity.
Now, it's likely that my anecdotal evidence isn't a random sample, that the people who collect around me, and with whom I congregate, possess this quality in particular, but even so, I can't help but give humanity the benefit of the doubt on this one.
So the world is peopled with leaders? But, Skippy, you say, don't too many cooks spoil the broth? Well, no. Leadership doesn't necessarily work that way. Power does. Power requires the energy of the faithful diverted to unseemly projects. Annihilation is different to predation.
Projects of Self, projects of violence, projects of nothing but gathering more power. Strength is something that doesn't require material traction, but when applied, leaves the world a better place, restoring a certain balance of energy to the system.
The pack mentality is something we've brought with us in our DNA, over the eons of evolving, and under the laws of physics in general about tendencies for objects with mass to minimize their own surface areas: we are more comfortable huddled and hunkered down with friendlies and we'd rather be in the middle instead of at the edges where the enemy can more easily pick us off.
Except that in most packs and herds in most other species, individuals tend not to claw over the backs of other friendlies just to get a better position for themselves.
Those who would claw and scrape and clamor over the backs of their fellow humans just to get a better seat in the pack of humanity, contrapositively, view lack of Power as weakness and just ignore Strength altogether. Deep down they have to know they're backing a charlatan. I hope.
A good leader is what distinguishes a gathering from a mob, and haven't we all had enough of the mob mentality? Clubs with cross-arms on them. Beaded nooses counting decade-and-a-lord's-prayer, decade-and-a-lord's-prayer. Abortifetuses on piked posters paraded around like saints or kings or chairmen (hard pressed to choose the greater obscenity there). Fear Factor: Children and The Future.
It's so much easier to follow, but you end up paying for ease. A debt collects and is collected. Your ease now is someone else's dis-ease sooner or later. A leader knows that. A leader keeps an eye on the bigger picture, the bigger need, the qualities that emerge from the collected-led. The things no single follower might even be able to notice.
Good leaders have Strength. Power is a parlor trick that conflates the user and the used and brings both to a firey end. Power makes demands. Strength creates a space for choosing.
The charlatans will tell you Choice is Bad as they remove your ability to choose. They know they can't continue if you continue to lead your own life and choose your own path. Those with Strength applaud your successes and buffer your failures, knowing full well that success is airborne, contagious.
Lead. Choose. And tell those Power wielders about your own Strength.
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July 11, 2005
My Totem Animal
You scored as Dragon. You are the Dragon. You store a lot of knowledge about everything. You are generally one who is good with personal growth and can regenerate yourself after a bad experience.
Which animal totem best suits you? created with QuizFarm.com |
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July 09, 2005
Awww, I'm the Dad!
Today is Transfer Student Orientation for Sam.
For the last hour-plus, I've been sitting in a too-warm room with too-burnt-orange carpeting in a low-ceilinged meeting room called the Rosa Parks Room. Earlier, Sam noted that we were sitting in the back.
I'd had to sit through a too-perky presentation with too-square cartoons cribbed and scanned and placed on an outdated PowerPoint presentation done up in canary yellow seriffed text on a light blue field.
Straight people, I swear, sometimes.
I'm here while Sam is at the student sessions two floors up in Jack Adams Hall. The man doing the preso is the director of the Career Center, and he's giving a big verbal chuck-on-the-chin to all the “other parents” in the room, encouraging their children to stay vigilant and take the initiative in learning how to be presentable.
Parents laughing at the silliness of haircuts, tattoos and piercings. I'd have to admit that there's no love lost between me and tattooing, but I'm more neutral than anything else. Piercings? Well, some people do look like they've fallen face-first into a tackle box, but a piercing isn't the end of the world.
I guess it's one of the things in not being a parent that makes me less affronted by body manipulation, or less adversarial to the “new generation” at all.
Though, come to think of it, I guess I can see why certain crazies come around here and call me categorically “old”. They've moved through their lives along a certain path that prevents them from being agonistic to “today's youth”: they draw a line at an arbitrary age difference and stand apart. They are old, themselves, no matter what the calendar says.
I'm not saying that chronological age doesn't figure; I'm just saying that culture plays a bigger part in affinity.
Besides, these parents are OLD!
Flipflops and a Miter
It's oddly comforting to know that even a Pope gets treated, in death, no differently than anyone else. First they make you a Saint (or a Devil) and take away your humanity. Nuance goes to black or to white. And then they pile portent and pith on what you've spoken, or they resuscitate what's settled in order to change the nature of the Truth that was Your Life.
When Allen died—it will have been ten years ago next Wednesday—he was canonized by friends and family. It pissed me off that all those subtleties, the thousand things he thought about, the million little nuances that annoyed and delighted me, were all gone with the absolute stamp of a monoclonal remembrance.
And so the Roman Catholic Church herself turns what I'm sure at one point was a somewhat nuanced and quite human creature and manufactures a new Saint. And on a more personal note, Cardinal Poopyhead Schönhorn reverses a clear statement by Pope John Paul II and attempts to refute clarify it in more triumphal formalist fideist politically-expedient hardline terms. Yes, folks, John Paul II, the Pope of the Papists Worldwide, was not hardline enough for today's Romans—and he just died a few months ago!
Evolution is what is at stake. Again. Good, strong Science is at stake. Again. God blessed Kansas with Holy Ignorance and the Church wants a piece of that Blessing for Herself. By drawing such a fine point on the entire matter, Schönhorn undoes what JP2 ostensibly infallibly set out to do—while preserving the ex cathedra infallability of the Office Itself. Pope Panzer must be proud, the Pernicious turned Perspicacious on his watch.
That's a lot of alliteration by a bald Barbose blogging by blathering balefully!
No matter. If I sound bitter, it is perhaps that I have been arguing the wrong side of science, assigning the absolutist moniker to the wrong team: look at the Catholics, the Conservative Christians! They are the real relativists, redefining Science Itself to mean what they want, stealing fact and shwagging it up as ideology, and taking ideology and peddling it as Truth. Except when it doesn't suit. Then they change the nature of Truth itself and call it Absolute while absolving themselves of their own arrogance—all in the name of Jesus.
Life is funny; there oughta be a two-drink minimum.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal - except my life, except my life.
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July 08, 2005
Sacrilicious!
I love Harper's magazine. This cartoon by Mr. Fish:
Oh, and I'm messing around with Technorati Tags.
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July 07, 2005
Hat. Brooch. Pterodactyl.
Sometimes you have to improvise, that much we all know. But sometimes, sometimes you choose to do it. Sometimes you improvise because you can, because you enjoy exercising your intellect or other talents. Sometimes you do it to entertain others. And sometimes you improvise out of love for another. You find ways to spin bad things into not-so-bad, or distract with the good things to give some breathing space to the bad things.
This past weekend was up at the River, with Fred, Donovan, Derek and Marcello. It was all for Marci's birthday, and you know what? I got more out of it than I ever expected. And I expected a lot.
Things have been rough eventful lately, and even up at the River all was not a good time for me, even in the midst of a 3-day-long Good Time Had By All. But my friends were there. Whatever conscious efforts they made on my behalf I'll never know. I just know that I was surrounded by amazing people who wouldn't let me fall too far those couple of times when I felt like I was falling off of the face of the earth.
God is a red balloon at a picnic.
But mostly it was a great time. I know Marci had a great time and that was the single most important thing. Never underestimate the inadvertent payoff of making someone else feel good while having no expectation of payoff.
At every moment when I had a chance, the question would cross my altered or unaltered mind: how did I get so lucky to have these people in my life?
I need to know; but I suspect I'll never know. I guess I'll have to improvise.
Well, How About That! (And That!)
Today in a review at the Macworld website of online photo printing, the software that I wrote (see the Ofoto Express link on the left side of this page) for Kodak EasyShare Gallery (née Ofoto) got a nod. It's an article mainly on print quality of these services but there's a very nice mention of the software:
To make uploading easier, Kodak, Mpix, PhotoWorks, Shutterfly, and Snapfish offer either stand-alone applications or browser plug-ins. Kodak, PhotoWorks, and Snapfish take the lead here; their well-designed upload tools let you simply drag and drop files from the Finder (see “Painless Uploads”).
I'm a star! Well, sort of. Well, ok, I'm a geeky star. But at least it's not about porn this time.
Update: the Macworld site just posted another article about photos, and the Ofoto Express software is given another, even better nod:
Several photo-sharing sites, however, offer terrific value and unlimited photo storage. Two of the best choices for Mac users (because they integrate easily with iPhoto) are Smugmug ($30 per year) and the Kodak EasyShare Gallery (free with at least one annual purchase of prints or other products).
They lick me, they really lick me!—wait, that was the porn.
London, New York, Al Qaeda
The best things in this world—or at least the most robust and resilient—seem to be those which arise or emerge, forming a new meta-space. Like the power of 10,000 voices all singing the same song. Like 10,000 people having a moment of silence, for that matter. Something arises from below, something new is born. And no single person or thing directed the creation of that something-new.
I remember when the Twin Towers were hit. I was sitting in my living room in San Francisco all day long after it happened. I was home in time to see the second plane hit in real-time. I watched and waited, as did we all. Even though it was in this country, it was still very far away. Even though it was in this country, it was more importantly awful that human beings—and not just American human beings—were hurt and killed.
I was a spectator, tuned into any one of a handful of cable news channels, at the whip-end of the reports. Nearly four years later, technology has made the event of the London Bombings much more of a human event, much less of an over-there event. Click on that link and you'll see what I mean.
Over Here is, of course, over here. But Over There is also over here when people all contribute. It's one world; we're all human beings; we all care in our own ways whether expressed or not.
That page at technorati.com is largely an emergent phenomenon. Technorati gave it presentability and a place to be, but it's an organic thing, growing into what it will not because technorati drives it, but instead from a bubbling up of individual contributions into something heartbreakingly sad, lovely in its humanity.
And humanity's loveliness and tenderness needs all the visibility it can get in horrific times like these.
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July 05, 2005
Elysium
What a ride.
Ups, downs, sideways glances. Askew, askance. Week ends. Weekends. Lows, HIGHS.
Break down, make up. Subordinate, coordinate. Equal sequel.
Obfuscatory stream of consciousness, like dipping into a raging river of thought with thanks to the rhino for the imagery.
Trying by doing; succeeding by failing to get in your own best way.
Sleep in order to be more awake. Stay awake so you don't miss the good stuff.
July 04, 2005
Lots of 'Cocksuckers'
No, I'm not talking about my weekend in Guerneville with the boys.
Just watching:
“Deadwood - The Complete First Season” ()
Lots of interesting anachronisms of idiom. Apparently we have the old west to blame for “cocksucker” being a bad thing! Clutches pearls. No wonder the show is called “dead wood”.
Hmmm...I wonder how they feel about reach-arounds.
July 02, 2005
Safeway Camping
A bunch of queens with easy-to-assemble tents, double-height, queen-sized air-mattresses (and other hyphenated-references as well!), 90 seconds away from a Safeway, all fighting to be next up on the portable speakers with their own iPods (it does an Apple body good), drinking cold beers and laughing our asses off.
In the middle (well, Northern Middle) of California, on a campsite that costs $222 per night, in a “resort” at the west end of the small town of Guerneville.
And here I sit in Coffee Bazaar (or, this weekend, Bizarre) with my little dream-catcher, sitting next to Marci at 7:30 in the morning drinking a latte made with rice milk.
You can take the boy out of the City—and now, apparently, he can bring the City with him.