Otherwise called making a spectacle of myself.
To make a short story long, I was helping my friend Jim move some stuff out of his house and realized late in the day that I'd misplaced my glasses. I had a spare pair in the truck, so I've been able to carry on with minimal trauma. I can read, therefore I can be. (Take that, Descartes.)
The very next day, I e-mailed Jim, who only had a million other things to take care of, and he suggested that I contact another friend of his who had helped schlep things away and who may have found my missing glasses. I e-mailed her, and lo and behold, she had found them in a box of office supplies. Going to retrieve them has proven to be a little complicated, as we both had other things to do after work and on the weekend, but something will work out, and in the meantime I have have my old prescription to get me by.
How exciting can losing one's glasses be? Unless it's a sign. A sign of what, I can't say, but everything is a sign of something, right? Everything of any significance at least. Otherwise, every thing is just what it is, and what fun is that? Semiotics is all about signs, symbols, symbol systems like languages, their use(s) and meaning(s), and it's all very complex, convoluted, and potentially confusing like a vast forest of interpretation.
Admittedly I look for signs everywhere. Isn't that half the point of watching this movie in which we're all cast, crew, writer, director, and audience? So I wondered, as I used my seven-year-old glasses to search for my one-year-old glasses, what this has to do with anything. Jim's move to New Mexico; my meeting his friends from Karma Thegsum Choling; standing in their meditation hall with its dazzling, colorful, mind-focusing images; hearing about the lineage of this center in relation to other Tibetan groups and ultimately to the Dalai Lama.
Juxtaposed with a long weekend of meetings at the Old North Church, it's hard not to compare the two communities. My modest (small U) unitarian universalist quest to integrate art and life, work and play, sacred and secular has taken root in a (big U) rural UU congregation, and that is the organization that I'm comfortable with. I don't see myself as a Buddhist, but I sure have been running into a lot of Buddhists lately. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Meanwhile, back at my desk compiling a list of discussion topics over a six-year period, I was rummaging through e-mail messages, and scribbled on the back of one was a book title, The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco. Serendipity strikes again, bringing this book to my attention, so I reserved it at the library and checked it out.
The protagonist, Roberto, is shipwrecked alone amid strangely familiar (but still strange) surroundings, little by little piecing together his observations with memories of other times and places. Remember the role of lenses and reading, libraries and coded message in Eco'sThe Name of the Rose? Maybe I'm making it all up, but even if I am, why shouldn't I? Everything has consequences, most of them unintended, so even the seemingly minuscule events will play out somehow, whether I or anyone else notices them or not.
This would-be epic will surely turn out to be unspectacular. I made an appointment for an eye exam the following Monday, and that went smoothly enough. Dr. Stein was his usual crusty, expert self, although he didn't seem to remember me from the last five times I've been to see him, which is understandable, since he's even older than me. I am sure my new glasses will work just fine, once I adjust to the new frames and the "progressive" no-line trifocals that supposedly will not require me to tilt my head to read the signs!
Heather, the lovely manager at Pearl Vision, showed me several nice frames and helped me make a decision on a style that would fit the large bridge of my large nose yet rest below my large brow. Wire-rimmed or plastic? Round or square? Rigid or flexible? With or without magnetic shades? How about titanium? I finally made a decision, but I won't get to see the results for a couple of weeks. If this is all about deferred gratification, I'm already disappointed.
To escape the mall I had to walk through Penney's, where there was a sale on jeans. Picking out two pairs of jeans (for $38) was a relatively simple matter. Straight-leg or boot-cut? Do they fit? Okie-dokie.
Returning to the office after my long lunch hour, I edit another chapter of a book on practical law. Soon my eyes need a break from the two-dimensional succession of black marks on a white page, so I go downstairs to breathe different air, move different muscles, behold different shapes and textures. The plants, stones, and iconic images decorating the inside of my cube make a huge difference, but it's not enough. Maybe office designers should construct translucent orbs with a desk and a chair inside, or little geodesic domicles instead of cubicles.
Today as I was purging old file drawers full of out-of-date page proofs, I put the headphones on and rocked out to Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (good stuff, and better after a few listenings) in order to screen out the other audible office phenomena. Maybe the office space of the near future will come with eye and ear implants, meaning nose and throat can't be far behind: a breathing tube so I don't have to go outside for fresh air, a blue-tooth phone attached to the larynx. Shirley Somebody has these devices already.
I managed to meet the finder of the lost lenses after work on Wednesday, so they're back in their habitual place on my face, where I hardly notice them. Reading the fine print and the computer screen is easy again, and my owlish face is back to normal. Kind of anticlimactic but I'll take it.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Five years and counting
If Chancellor Cheney, Kaiser George II, and the anointed successor Citizen McCain have their way, the Amerikan war machine has only begun its long military occupation of Iraq. At the present rate of 4,000 dead in five years since the beginning of this war of choice, we can expect the human cost to the empire to be about 800 per year for the next ten, twenty, or thirty years.
In terms of the profits made by the corporate entities directly or indirectly involved in extracting wealth from this imperial enterprise, those might be acceptable losses. It's a volunteer army, after all, and the training and educational benefits promised with enlistment carry a certain risk of becoming cannon fodder. As the recruiting posters don't say, Uncle Sam wants YOU to see the world, visit exotic places, learn valuable technical skills, blow things up, kill the bad and expendable foreign people, and come home in a bag.
I think it was an article by Ben Stein in the New York Times last Sunday that said of the impending recession, triggered by the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles: if you want to know the cause, just find out who made money on it. Like other cataclysms, many lost money and some lost a bundle, because someone else made an even bigger bundle.
If that political-economic logic can be applied to this war, many people are losing something and some people are losing everything, because someone else has hit the financial motherlode in Iraq. For them, the so-called surge really is working, and it is on their behalf that the war continues.
In terms of the profits made by the corporate entities directly or indirectly involved in extracting wealth from this imperial enterprise, those might be acceptable losses. It's a volunteer army, after all, and the training and educational benefits promised with enlistment carry a certain risk of becoming cannon fodder. As the recruiting posters don't say, Uncle Sam wants YOU to see the world, visit exotic places, learn valuable technical skills, blow things up, kill the bad and expendable foreign people, and come home in a bag.
I think it was an article by Ben Stein in the New York Times last Sunday that said of the impending recession, triggered by the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles: if you want to know the cause, just find out who made money on it. Like other cataclysms, many lost money and some lost a bundle, because someone else made an even bigger bundle.
If that political-economic logic can be applied to this war, many people are losing something and some people are losing everything, because someone else has hit the financial motherlode in Iraq. For them, the so-called surge really is working, and it is on their behalf that the war continues.
Friday, March 21, 2008
[bread, circuses, celestial orbs]
You know the worm has turned when, instead of puttering around all Saturday afternoon, taking the occasional look at the ballgame to see what's happening, you settle in on the couch and spend the day with the Hoosiers and the Razorbacks, the Boilermakers and the Musketeers, the Blue Devils and the Mountaineers, with an occasional stroll to stir the pea soup simmering in the kitchen, fetch wood from the woodpile, or Tuffy muffler to pick up the truck. Not a good sign in my quest for body-mind integration, a balanced life, and lower utility bills. Here I am watching TV while I should be building a greenhouse out of recycled Heineken bottles.
But this is what we do in my tribe, and after all these years, I guess I'm a member (if not exactly in good standing), to the extent that I watch the game, admire the nervy determination of the underdogs, and get excited at the amazing last-second heroics by the Hilltoppers. At one point I just had to go out to the garage and get an old ball, long idle from games in the driveway, so I could spin it from hand to hand while watching real players on a flat screen, so I could enjoy the tactile sensation of the round ball, feel the nubby texture, grip the seams.
Good players get into a rhythm, with or without the ball, and good teams find their collective rhythm, fanning out on the hardwood and converging on the basket, trying to keep it going for 40 minutes so they can live to play again. Give and go, pick and roll, box-out, throw the outlet, run the floor, fill the passing lanes, move your feet, a hand in his face, follow your shot. Whether they're playing above the rim or feet on the floor like Siemsma, Butch, and Krabbenhoff, the team that plays together like a good band is more fun to watch and more likely to win.
So it should have been a smooth transition from the living room to fellowship hall at the big church, where about 50 people were sitting in a circle chanting and drumming for the vernal equinox. It was a little disjointed but still worth going, and I got to contribute my share of woodblock viruosity while other folks dominated the djembe. That's okay, there was a good groove going for a while, and these things take time.
Sunday was the flip side. Most of the afternoon I pitched in to help a friend move a few pieces of furniture out of his house, and in the process got to meet some of his friends and see their meditation center downtown. The little green building is not much to look at from the outside, but inside it's stunning, with lots of beautiful iconic Buddhist art and vibrant color everywhere. I even scored a Tibetan T-shirt and a futon out of the deal.
Home sweet funky suburban home, glad it's not me who has pack up every single possession and either sell it, give it away, or take it to the new place. I got home in plenty of time to put a big, round loaf of sourdough in the oven and overbake it to a nice, tough crust while wrestling with putting the disassembled futon frame back together. Teamwork helped there, too.
But this is what we do in my tribe, and after all these years, I guess I'm a member (if not exactly in good standing), to the extent that I watch the game, admire the nervy determination of the underdogs, and get excited at the amazing last-second heroics by the Hilltoppers. At one point I just had to go out to the garage and get an old ball, long idle from games in the driveway, so I could spin it from hand to hand while watching real players on a flat screen, so I could enjoy the tactile sensation of the round ball, feel the nubby texture, grip the seams.
Good players get into a rhythm, with or without the ball, and good teams find their collective rhythm, fanning out on the hardwood and converging on the basket, trying to keep it going for 40 minutes so they can live to play again. Give and go, pick and roll, box-out, throw the outlet, run the floor, fill the passing lanes, move your feet, a hand in his face, follow your shot. Whether they're playing above the rim or feet on the floor like Siemsma, Butch, and Krabbenhoff, the team that plays together like a good band is more fun to watch and more likely to win.
So it should have been a smooth transition from the living room to fellowship hall at the big church, where about 50 people were sitting in a circle chanting and drumming for the vernal equinox. It was a little disjointed but still worth going, and I got to contribute my share of woodblock viruosity while other folks dominated the djembe. That's okay, there was a good groove going for a while, and these things take time.
Sunday was the flip side. Most of the afternoon I pitched in to help a friend move a few pieces of furniture out of his house, and in the process got to meet some of his friends and see their meditation center downtown. The little green building is not much to look at from the outside, but inside it's stunning, with lots of beautiful iconic Buddhist art and vibrant color everywhere. I even scored a Tibetan T-shirt and a futon out of the deal.
Home sweet funky suburban home, glad it's not me who has pack up every single possession and either sell it, give it away, or take it to the new place. I got home in plenty of time to put a big, round loaf of sourdough in the oven and overbake it to a nice, tough crust while wrestling with putting the disassembled futon frame back together. Teamwork helped there, too.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
March randomness
Stuff happens. Sometimes it happens in a coherent order with discernible causes and effects, and sometimes not. Usually not. Sometimes apparently unconnected things can be pieced together by an unrealistic, but active, imagination in order to make things make sense.
Or do things make sense all by themselves, and it just takes some of us a while to get it? Oops, metaphysical question.
By the way, this is not about basketball. It's about a largely undiagnosed malady I've discovered called Seasonal Psycho-Incongruity Neurosis (SPIN). Seasonal Affective Disorder is out. SPIN is the new SAD.
The other day, a friend of a friend asked me, on behalf of her student, what the company is really looking for in a new job opening. I've been a go-between when people have actually gotten jobs, for better or worse, and it's kind of fun serving as a link in that chain. That very day I heard about a new position in our department. I looked at the posting online and offered my two cents worth of interpretation. We'll see if it goes any further.
Three weeks ago, another friend asked me to write a reference letter for an MFA program in Oregon, but I waited until two days before the deadline to write it. I think it was a good letter. The friend replied that she had been laid off from her current job in the Northwest. Noticing that another job was posted, and it happened to be in that neck of the woods, I sent her the link, she applied, and we'll see if it goes any further.
Unrelated events are a matter of degree. How unrelated is 'unrelated'? One day last week I'm out on the patio doing a qigong form in the welcome sunshine, and I see animal tracks in the snow. One set of tracks could be a big dog, another could be a deer, and a third could be a large bird, but what do I know. I'm not a hunter or a birder and wasn't a boy scout. The next day somebody in the cafeteria saw a wild turkey just outside the windows, and we all watched him do his big, puffed-up display with wing and tail feathers spread out, and he was impressive. I didn't see a female nearby, but it must be the season.
A couple of days later, a cardinal was singing in the top of a maple tree in the back yard, loud and long in the late afternoon. This time I did see a female in a nearby tree, so the song apparently was having the desired effect. I'll expect to see eggs soon.
It took less than a week since the big storm of '08, and most of the snow has melted. It felt good to go outside and see the naked ground again. There's nothing so remarkable about snow melting in March, it just looked different to the eye, all that color and texture in the saturated ground.
Last Sunday was Palm Sunday in most churches, and at the Old North Church my friend Ken reminded us to lighten up and notice our connection with the Earth. This week there will be much ado about bread and wine, which I can understand and enjoy on some level. The office is festooned with tiny, fuzzy, yellow chicks that mysteriously appeared from somewhere. Someone in another department organized a breakfast potluck, and people are doing their spring thing in their own way.
There is a dinner I'm attending tonight where toasts and affirmations will be made, and a long-time member of our group will take his leave, his personal narrative spinning off from the group story, and we'll maintain a looser connection than meeting once a week. It's all good. I don't expect any washing of feet or transsubstantiation of sushi and saki into the body and blood of Jim as he completes the next stage of his journey from central swingstate to Santa Fe. But who the heck knows really. I do intend to ritualize the occasion, in a random sort of way, with a spontaneous I Ching reading to mark the moment, and we'll see if anything comes of that.
Another loose aggregation of folks is holding an explicitly equinox gathering this weekend, where there will be drums and incantations and maybe even dancing to mark the turning of the big wheel of the sky. Seeds will be blessed before they're planted in the ground, and we'll see if anything comes of that.
Or do things make sense all by themselves, and it just takes some of us a while to get it? Oops, metaphysical question.
By the way, this is not about basketball. It's about a largely undiagnosed malady I've discovered called Seasonal Psycho-Incongruity Neurosis (SPIN). Seasonal Affective Disorder is out. SPIN is the new SAD.
The other day, a friend of a friend asked me, on behalf of her student, what the company is really looking for in a new job opening. I've been a go-between when people have actually gotten jobs, for better or worse, and it's kind of fun serving as a link in that chain. That very day I heard about a new position in our department. I looked at the posting online and offered my two cents worth of interpretation. We'll see if it goes any further.
Three weeks ago, another friend asked me to write a reference letter for an MFA program in Oregon, but I waited until two days before the deadline to write it. I think it was a good letter. The friend replied that she had been laid off from her current job in the Northwest. Noticing that another job was posted, and it happened to be in that neck of the woods, I sent her the link, she applied, and we'll see if it goes any further.
Unrelated events are a matter of degree. How unrelated is 'unrelated'? One day last week I'm out on the patio doing a qigong form in the welcome sunshine, and I see animal tracks in the snow. One set of tracks could be a big dog, another could be a deer, and a third could be a large bird, but what do I know. I'm not a hunter or a birder and wasn't a boy scout. The next day somebody in the cafeteria saw a wild turkey just outside the windows, and we all watched him do his big, puffed-up display with wing and tail feathers spread out, and he was impressive. I didn't see a female nearby, but it must be the season.
A couple of days later, a cardinal was singing in the top of a maple tree in the back yard, loud and long in the late afternoon. This time I did see a female in a nearby tree, so the song apparently was having the desired effect. I'll expect to see eggs soon.
It took less than a week since the big storm of '08, and most of the snow has melted. It felt good to go outside and see the naked ground again. There's nothing so remarkable about snow melting in March, it just looked different to the eye, all that color and texture in the saturated ground.
Last Sunday was Palm Sunday in most churches, and at the Old North Church my friend Ken reminded us to lighten up and notice our connection with the Earth. This week there will be much ado about bread and wine, which I can understand and enjoy on some level. The office is festooned with tiny, fuzzy, yellow chicks that mysteriously appeared from somewhere. Someone in another department organized a breakfast potluck, and people are doing their spring thing in their own way.
There is a dinner I'm attending tonight where toasts and affirmations will be made, and a long-time member of our group will take his leave, his personal narrative spinning off from the group story, and we'll maintain a looser connection than meeting once a week. It's all good. I don't expect any washing of feet or transsubstantiation of sushi and saki into the body and blood of Jim as he completes the next stage of his journey from central swingstate to Santa Fe. But who the heck knows really. I do intend to ritualize the occasion, in a random sort of way, with a spontaneous I Ching reading to mark the moment, and we'll see if anything comes of that.
Another loose aggregation of folks is holding an explicitly equinox gathering this weekend, where there will be drums and incantations and maybe even dancing to mark the turning of the big wheel of the sky. Seeds will be blessed before they're planted in the ground, and we'll see if anything comes of that.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
[bubble, bubble]
Toil and trouble. There were several so-called bubble teams, such as the unfortunate (or untalented) Buckeyes, that stood only a slight chance of making it into the tournament. American University got in, Ohio State didn't. University of Maryland-Baltimore County got in, Virginia Tech didn't. Austin Peay got in, Arizona State didn't. Those are the breaks, coach.
Like needing a last-second three-pointer to force overtime because you missed your free throws in the first half, those "bubble" teams put themselves in that position, so let's not blame the selection committee. Still, the contrast was interesting between the Arizona State coach, who cited the multiple factors and criteria in determining the 64 most deserving teams and refused to be drawn into making a case for his guys, versus the Virginia Tech coach, who in the heat of the postgame interview said anyone who doesn't believe his team belongs in the tournament is "certifiably insane." See you next year, coach.
Now that the brackets are set, there are a few matchups that are like little bubbles within the big bubble of those that got in. Teams that are seeded 8 and 9, in the the middle of the pack in their region, are essentially a toss-up. I'm talking about Indiana and Arkansas, Kent State and Las Vegas, Mississippi State and Oregon, Brigham Young and Texas A&M. By all the criteria, they are as even as they can get.
Which begs the question, why do I care about the cultural geography of basketball? (Did I mention that this is about basketball?) Besides all the statistical factors used in deciding who is in and who is out - RPI rating, strength of schedule, overall record, conference record, regular-season standings, conference tournament outcome, what have you done for us lately - it's cool to see how a bunch of guys from unlike places match up - places like Bloomington and Fayetteville, Kent and Vegas, Starkville and Eugene, Provo and College Station.
Equally bubblicious are the potential upsets. One must tread cautiously when picking upsets, and don't bet more than you can afford to lose. Kansas State (seeded eleventh) and Southern California (seeded sixth) both have hot-shot freshmen. I'm guessing that Michael Beasley can carry K State better than O.J. Mayo can carry USC, but the match-up should be fun to watch.
Can Davidson oust Gonzaga for the privilege of losing to Georgetown? Will St. Joe'e bounce Oklahoma and move on to be crushed by Louisville? And above all, will Bo Ryan's Badgers prevail against the bad guys and represent the Big Ten with honor? You can cut the tension with a knife!
Like needing a last-second three-pointer to force overtime because you missed your free throws in the first half, those "bubble" teams put themselves in that position, so let's not blame the selection committee. Still, the contrast was interesting between the Arizona State coach, who cited the multiple factors and criteria in determining the 64 most deserving teams and refused to be drawn into making a case for his guys, versus the Virginia Tech coach, who in the heat of the postgame interview said anyone who doesn't believe his team belongs in the tournament is "certifiably insane." See you next year, coach.
Now that the brackets are set, there are a few matchups that are like little bubbles within the big bubble of those that got in. Teams that are seeded 8 and 9, in the the middle of the pack in their region, are essentially a toss-up. I'm talking about Indiana and Arkansas, Kent State and Las Vegas, Mississippi State and Oregon, Brigham Young and Texas A&M. By all the criteria, they are as even as they can get.
Which begs the question, why do I care about the cultural geography of basketball? (Did I mention that this is about basketball?) Besides all the statistical factors used in deciding who is in and who is out - RPI rating, strength of schedule, overall record, conference record, regular-season standings, conference tournament outcome, what have you done for us lately - it's cool to see how a bunch of guys from unlike places match up - places like Bloomington and Fayetteville, Kent and Vegas, Starkville and Eugene, Provo and College Station.
Equally bubblicious are the potential upsets. One must tread cautiously when picking upsets, and don't bet more than you can afford to lose. Kansas State (seeded eleventh) and Southern California (seeded sixth) both have hot-shot freshmen. I'm guessing that Michael Beasley can carry K State better than O.J. Mayo can carry USC, but the match-up should be fun to watch.
Can Davidson oust Gonzaga for the privilege of losing to Georgetown? Will St. Joe'e bounce Oklahoma and move on to be crushed by Louisville? And above all, will Bo Ryan's Badgers prevail against the bad guys and represent the Big Ten with honor? You can cut the tension with a knife!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
[mind your brackets]
To choose according to seedings or to go with your gut? The odds obviously are better to go by the numbers, but what's the fun in that? Maybe you just like the sound of Gonzaga?
To favor your favorites - your alma mater, home state, regional loyalty, or conference - or the flavor of the month in the national press? Memphis is having a really good year, but do I know them like I know Wisconsin?
To put you money on teams with a history of success - your UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, or your Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky - or to speculate on the next up-and-comer? Is Davidson for real? Can a MAC team make it past the first round? Who is the next Wally Szczerbiak?
And of course there will be upsets, but how many and how big? If they were predictable, they wouldn't be upsets.
You are your brackets. Your brackets reflect your character, your personality type, your values, and your identity. As that sage of the hardwood Socrates may or may not have said, the unexamined brackets are hardly worth filling in.
Your brackets, your self.
Oh, sorry. Did I mention this is about basketball? It's March, right? Of course it's about basketball!
To favor your favorites - your alma mater, home state, regional loyalty, or conference - or the flavor of the month in the national press? Memphis is having a really good year, but do I know them like I know Wisconsin?
To put you money on teams with a history of success - your UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, or your Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky - or to speculate on the next up-and-comer? Is Davidson for real? Can a MAC team make it past the first round? Who is the next Wally Szczerbiak?
And of course there will be upsets, but how many and how big? If they were predictable, they wouldn't be upsets.
You are your brackets. Your brackets reflect your character, your personality type, your values, and your identity. As that sage of the hardwood Socrates may or may not have said, the unexamined brackets are hardly worth filling in.
Your brackets, your self.
Oh, sorry. Did I mention this is about basketball? It's March, right? Of course it's about basketball!
Monday, March 10, 2008
In like a lamb
So the weather cleared, though it was only slightly above freezing on Saturday, and the fire in the back room felt good while the sunshine melted some of the snow, and I did mostly indoor work. It was the morning and the evening the first day of March, and it was good.
Sometimes I don't feel the need to go anywhere. Make breakfast, sweep, take out the trash and recycling, put on some music (it was a Michelle Shocked kind of day), and start moving things around in the 1970s-era addition to the 1880s-era architectual anomaly that is our humble abode. Why? Because I had the luxury of having the entire day "free," and the feng-shui was sucking the life out of me.
The bed moved from the north wall to the east (facing the new west window), a dresser moved from the south wall to the west wall, two tall shelves moved from diagonal to perpendicular lines separating bedroom from study; a loveseat moved from the study to the living room, swapping places with two matching chairs; four different mirrors moved all over the place to increase light and liven up dead spaces.
Sunday was beautiful. The weather warmed up to springlike temperatures, and I went for a two-hour bike ride while loaves of bread were rising, then enjoyed the endorphin rush with dinner, a glass of wine, and fresh sourdough. It was the morning and the evening of the second of March, and it was awesome.
This is all pretty unremarkable, so why even make note of it? Ordinary stuff. Such is life as we know it. Then on Friday a real bona fide snowstorm approacheth, and you'd think the sky was falling. The office empties out at 1:00, and I get some work done. I go to the bank, then to Kinko's (Open 24 hours, 7 days a week), which has closed due to falling sky, so I go home to spend a quiet evening by the fire.
I wouldn't call it a blizzard exactly, it just snowed slowly for about two days, which is rare enough in central swingstate, and left about a foot of snow on the ground. Gven made ratatouille and opened a bottle of red wine, and we watched a new David Duchovny show called "Californication" that was mildly amusing. I shoveled Friday night and again Saturday morning, which is easier than waiting till it stops and then doing it all at once, therefore I also got two moderate workouts instead of one. Plus I could enjoy the fleeting pleasure of a clean sidewalk.
Gven's Saturday morning class was canceled, but she and the warrior women in her Methodistville Posse walked to the cafe uptown for coffee. We sat by the stove part of the afternoon and read last week's New York Times. I know, it's a tough life.
I finally decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I cleaned and waxed my old skis and went for a walk on barrel staves a couple of miles up the bike trail to Maxtown and back. I started to compose a heroic couplet titled "Stopping by Kroger on a Snowy Evening," but I didn't have the energy. In spite of following MacKenzie's First Law, HOTH (headwind out, tailwind home), I was maxed out and glad I hadn't attempted fo go any farther. Just enough energy left to turn the clocks ahead an hour.
Sometimes I don't feel the need to go anywhere. Make breakfast, sweep, take out the trash and recycling, put on some music (it was a Michelle Shocked kind of day), and start moving things around in the 1970s-era addition to the 1880s-era architectual anomaly that is our humble abode. Why? Because I had the luxury of having the entire day "free," and the feng-shui was sucking the life out of me.
The bed moved from the north wall to the east (facing the new west window), a dresser moved from the south wall to the west wall, two tall shelves moved from diagonal to perpendicular lines separating bedroom from study; a loveseat moved from the study to the living room, swapping places with two matching chairs; four different mirrors moved all over the place to increase light and liven up dead spaces.
Sunday was beautiful. The weather warmed up to springlike temperatures, and I went for a two-hour bike ride while loaves of bread were rising, then enjoyed the endorphin rush with dinner, a glass of wine, and fresh sourdough. It was the morning and the evening of the second of March, and it was awesome.
This is all pretty unremarkable, so why even make note of it? Ordinary stuff. Such is life as we know it. Then on Friday a real bona fide snowstorm approacheth, and you'd think the sky was falling. The office empties out at 1:00, and I get some work done. I go to the bank, then to Kinko's (Open 24 hours, 7 days a week), which has closed due to falling sky, so I go home to spend a quiet evening by the fire.
I wouldn't call it a blizzard exactly, it just snowed slowly for about two days, which is rare enough in central swingstate, and left about a foot of snow on the ground. Gven made ratatouille and opened a bottle of red wine, and we watched a new David Duchovny show called "Californication" that was mildly amusing. I shoveled Friday night and again Saturday morning, which is easier than waiting till it stops and then doing it all at once, therefore I also got two moderate workouts instead of one. Plus I could enjoy the fleeting pleasure of a clean sidewalk.
Gven's Saturday morning class was canceled, but she and the warrior women in her Methodistville Posse walked to the cafe uptown for coffee. We sat by the stove part of the afternoon and read last week's New York Times. I know, it's a tough life.
I finally decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I cleaned and waxed my old skis and went for a walk on barrel staves a couple of miles up the bike trail to Maxtown and back. I started to compose a heroic couplet titled "Stopping by Kroger on a Snowy Evening," but I didn't have the energy. In spite of following MacKenzie's First Law, HOTH (headwind out, tailwind home), I was maxed out and glad I hadn't attempted fo go any farther. Just enough energy left to turn the clocks ahead an hour.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Prose
Prose or poetry? Among the metaphors employed in this most bizarre and media-driven campaign, one metaphor that both hits home and holds water (kids, try this at home) is the literary trope comparing Hillary and Obama.
Like yin and yang, she is prose and he is poetry. She is the seasoned and reasoned voice of experience, the tested and practical source of solutions to brass-tacks problems. He is the fresh and inspiring energy of youth, the promise of new thinking, new blood, and new hope.
It's an appealing combination on paper, and in many ways it's a good kind of problem to have. Either poetry or prose would be better than the illiterate we've got, eh? For all the progressives, small-D democrats, and liberals out there, it makes for grand entertainment on the big public stage in the big tent that is the big-D Democratic Party.
It's like high noon in Dodge City, and Sidney Poitier is facing Katherine Hepburn in the dust on Main Street, while Lee Marvin sips a cold one in the Long Branch, cleaning his six-shooter and waiting.
The country obviously needs both qualities, poetic and prosaic, and rarely do they come in the same package. Maybe Jefferson, maybe FDR. It would be a mistake to expect Obama's kind of energy from Hillary or Hillary's Washington savvy from Obama. Think of Angela Merkel, the reigning rock star of Deutschland, or the larger-than-life folk British folk hero Gordon Brown. Prose or poetry?
Personally I'm not voting for guru or artist-in-residence, I'm voting for city manager. If I was looking for inspiration (and I am), I can find other sources than the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government.
Like yin and yang, she is prose and he is poetry. She is the seasoned and reasoned voice of experience, the tested and practical source of solutions to brass-tacks problems. He is the fresh and inspiring energy of youth, the promise of new thinking, new blood, and new hope.
It's an appealing combination on paper, and in many ways it's a good kind of problem to have. Either poetry or prose would be better than the illiterate we've got, eh? For all the progressives, small-D democrats, and liberals out there, it makes for grand entertainment on the big public stage in the big tent that is the big-D Democratic Party.
It's like high noon in Dodge City, and Sidney Poitier is facing Katherine Hepburn in the dust on Main Street, while Lee Marvin sips a cold one in the Long Branch, cleaning his six-shooter and waiting.
The country obviously needs both qualities, poetic and prosaic, and rarely do they come in the same package. Maybe Jefferson, maybe FDR. It would be a mistake to expect Obama's kind of energy from Hillary or Hillary's Washington savvy from Obama. Think of Angela Merkel, the reigning rock star of Deutschland, or the larger-than-life folk British folk hero Gordon Brown. Prose or poetry?
Personally I'm not voting for guru or artist-in-residence, I'm voting for city manager. If I was looking for inspiration (and I am), I can find other sources than the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
See Ralph run.
I'm not sure how to feel about Ralph Nader's decision to run for president again. Should we be upset about his potential spoiler role, stealing a few votes here and there from (fill in presumptive Democratic candidate's name) in states where there are close contests? Are there enough Green/Socialist voters in swing states such as Ohio or Florida to make a difference? Will it be more than a symbolic statement just to get on the ballot as a third, largely rejected but hard to ignore, option?
Why, Ralph, why?
I have to admire anyone who has the cojones to turn everyone in the so-called center against him, not to mention everyone "left of center" and everyone "right of center," but wait, everyone is already against him, so what's to lose? Nader has a point in arguing that the debate needs to be pushed off its present course:
A tugboat candidacy, starring the little green tugboat that could.
Moderate, rational people say that Ralph the Good, fighter for consumer safety and corporate responsibility, has perhaps gone around the bend of reality. They say he's nuts, he's wack, he's an egomaniac. Wrong. He looked crazy when he took on General freakin' Motors in the 1960s too. Thank goodness for people crazy enough not to settle for being obedient corporate chattel.
I humbly propose an apples-to-oranges comparison. Are all the third-party candidates in England, Canada, France, and Germany monstrous traitors because they don't line up dutifully behind the standard bearer who has been anointed by the major party that is least repugnant? At what point does the lesser of two evils constitute just another power broker for the war machine?
Go, Ralph, go.
Why, Ralph, why?
I have to admire anyone who has the cojones to turn everyone in the so-called center against him, not to mention everyone "left of center" and everyone "right of center," but wait, everyone is already against him, so what's to lose? Nader has a point in arguing that the debate needs to be pushed off its present course:
"Let's put it this way. At a minimum, a tugboat candidacy can push the major parties closer to the harbor of the people and away from the harbor of giant corporations that are tearing the heart and soul out of this country."
A tugboat candidacy, starring the little green tugboat that could.
Moderate, rational people say that Ralph the Good, fighter for consumer safety and corporate responsibility, has perhaps gone around the bend of reality. They say he's nuts, he's wack, he's an egomaniac. Wrong. He looked crazy when he took on General freakin' Motors in the 1960s too. Thank goodness for people crazy enough not to settle for being obedient corporate chattel.
I humbly propose an apples-to-oranges comparison. Are all the third-party candidates in England, Canada, France, and Germany monstrous traitors because they don't line up dutifully behind the standard bearer who has been anointed by the major party that is least repugnant? At what point does the lesser of two evils constitute just another power broker for the war machine?
Go, Ralph, go.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
extended
My friend Mike is in the hospital recovering from surgery, so I went to visit him tonight. The top of his head is all stitched up along an incision that resembles a mohawk, but he looked calm and lucid sitting up in bed. We talked for about an hour; mostly he talked. He was quite animated; his girlfriend Marcia sat in the other chair. She was not so animated but was keeping her chin up.
It's all kind of surrealistic. Jim, a mutual friend, told me last week that Mike was in the hospital for the surgery. While driving home from work, I saw that the lights were on at the Taoist Tai Chi Society in uptown Methodistville, so I pulled in the alley and checked their sign. They were still open, so I went in and asked the two people there if they had any information on how Mike was doing.
They didn't know me, but they were kind enough to tell me what they knew of his prognosis, which was not very optimistic. Apparently this kind of cancer is treatable but not curable. I said I'd like to go see him, so they gave me a phone number and his room number at Dodd Hall, where he was doing some rehab. It's supposed to storm tomorrow, they said, so tonight might be a good time.
Although I never know how to act in such situations, I'm glad I went. Mike had a lot of positive things to say about the medical staff, both in the emergency room at St. Ann's and at the James cancer hospital at OSU. He said melanoma is a really aggressive cancer. He apparently had one on his back more than 20 years ago, then a recurrence on his neck about five years ago, but it's only speculation whether this new malignancy in the top part of his brain is a migration from the old cells or something entirely new.
Mike talked about his study of Buddhism over the last several years and the support he's getting from the KTC (Karma Thegsum Choling, i.e., Tibetan Buddhist) community downtown. It was clear that studying the dharma has given him a way to understand and cope with what he's going through. I got the impression that he is working really hard to process what he knows about his condition, what to expect, and what that means in the larger context. They showed me pictures of his daughter and grandson, and they asked about my kids and whether I'm still teaching.
Then I went home and did the things I normally do at home: eat supper, drink a vodka and OJ, read a couple of chapters of a novel I'm halfway through, work out a little, wind down, go to bed. But my dreams were very disturbing, and I only slept fitfully, with a Bob Dylan song running continuously, which I excerpt here:
It's kind of funny how these circles overlap. Jim knows Mike from KTC, and Jim is in my Wednesday night men's group at the big UU church in Clintonville. He recently gave a guest sermon at the small UU church in Delaware County. I got to know Mike when he worked in the art department at the publisher where I work in editorial, and later we practiced together for a while in a taiji class in German Village. He and Marcia have studied with the Taoist Tai Chi group for quite a few years.
I'm not sure where this story is going. I just wanted to write something down because that's how I process stuff. Down.
It's all kind of surrealistic. Jim, a mutual friend, told me last week that Mike was in the hospital for the surgery. While driving home from work, I saw that the lights were on at the Taoist Tai Chi Society in uptown Methodistville, so I pulled in the alley and checked their sign. They were still open, so I went in and asked the two people there if they had any information on how Mike was doing.
They didn't know me, but they were kind enough to tell me what they knew of his prognosis, which was not very optimistic. Apparently this kind of cancer is treatable but not curable. I said I'd like to go see him, so they gave me a phone number and his room number at Dodd Hall, where he was doing some rehab. It's supposed to storm tomorrow, they said, so tonight might be a good time.
Although I never know how to act in such situations, I'm glad I went. Mike had a lot of positive things to say about the medical staff, both in the emergency room at St. Ann's and at the James cancer hospital at OSU. He said melanoma is a really aggressive cancer. He apparently had one on his back more than 20 years ago, then a recurrence on his neck about five years ago, but it's only speculation whether this new malignancy in the top part of his brain is a migration from the old cells or something entirely new.
Mike talked about his study of Buddhism over the last several years and the support he's getting from the KTC (Karma Thegsum Choling, i.e., Tibetan Buddhist) community downtown. It was clear that studying the dharma has given him a way to understand and cope with what he's going through. I got the impression that he is working really hard to process what he knows about his condition, what to expect, and what that means in the larger context. They showed me pictures of his daughter and grandson, and they asked about my kids and whether I'm still teaching.
Then I went home and did the things I normally do at home: eat supper, drink a vodka and OJ, read a couple of chapters of a novel I'm halfway through, work out a little, wind down, go to bed. But my dreams were very disturbing, and I only slept fitfully, with a Bob Dylan song running continuously, which I excerpt here:
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.
. . .
Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb.
They all fall there so perfectly,
It all seems so well timed.
An' here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again.
It's kind of funny how these circles overlap. Jim knows Mike from KTC, and Jim is in my Wednesday night men's group at the big UU church in Clintonville. He recently gave a guest sermon at the small UU church in Delaware County. I got to know Mike when he worked in the art department at the publisher where I work in editorial, and later we practiced together for a while in a taiji class in German Village. He and Marcia have studied with the Taoist Tai Chi group for quite a few years.
I'm not sure where this story is going. I just wanted to write something down because that's how I process stuff. Down.
May all beings be happy and have the causes of happiness;
May they be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow;
May they have that great happiness which is sorrowlessness.
May they leave attachment to dear ones and aversion to others and live
Believing in the equality of all that lives.
- The Four Immeasurable Meditations
Monday, February 25, 2008
cable
Boldly we press onward, into the brave new world of the nineteenth century!
It's not that we're Luddites exactly. We drive cars, check our e-mail daily, carry cell phones, the usual stuff. We use power tools to saw lumber and drill holes, but only if the equivalent hand tool would take ridiculous amounts of time. I cut logs with a chainsaw and split them by hand with a maul. I still use a reel-type push mower to cut the tiny patch of lawn, and I'll use a leaf blower when they pry my cold, dead hands off my rake.
Okay, so there's a little resistance to doing everything with the newest gadgets. At least on my part.
Jessi and Zelda have been downloading music since the dawn of Napster, and Gven has had an iPod for a couple of years. I haven't gotten into it, so I listen to CDs. On the other hand, Jessi has taken to listening to vinyl records on a turntable once in a while, so the pendulum occasionally swings back.
When the kids were in middle school, the joke was that their friends thought we were Amish because we didn't have cable. We watched our share of TV and fought over which shows were acceptable, encouraged, and actually good, as any healthy Amerikan family would. In fact, we were probably more permissive than most, although the choices were limited to broadcast: NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Fox.
Our viewing habits ranged from X-Men to Soul Train to Bob Ross painting, and of course Sesame Street. Lots of Nature and Wild America on Sunday nights, lots of Mantis and X-Files on Friday nights. Family Ties, Thirty-something, ER, Seinfeld, and yes, even Friends. The horror. On our budget, we occasionally debated between buying a new TV or installing cable, which we resolved by doing neither.
There was one year, my first year out of graduate school with my first "real" job, when we did subscribe to basic cable. We lived in a subdivision in a small town halfway across the continent, and we decided to indulge. Long story short, the job didn't last very long and neither did our infatuation with cable.
Needless to say, a major part of Jessi's and Zelda's technological education has come outside our four walls. Gven and I aren't tech geeks by even the loosest definition, and the kids have been resourceful in navigating their own paths, each in their own way, through the electronic landscape.
Part of the story is simply my frugality, reinforced with a large dose of anticonsumer culturism. How many times did the three of them suffer through my tirade against the commercial conspiracy to brainwash us into buying more stuff we don't want or need? But that cuts both ways, so when the handwriting on the wall says we can bundle our Internet service with cable TV and actually save money, my resistance begins to wear down. And I can watch Big Ten basketball on Saturday. There's that too.
So the WOW guy came last week and installed the magic box in the living room, and suddenly we have like 200 channels, a remote that looks like the cockpit of a 747, and still there's nothing worth watching.
I sat there for two hours on Saturday afternoon - when I should have been outside making a yurt out of macrame - surfing through bad movie after bad movie, diet infomercial after evangelical jewelry shopping after NASCAR Disney sitcom after historical documentary cooking show before I figured out that there are four or five channels, instead of the usual two, that interest me. But all 200 come in sharp and clear!
Botton line, I'm succombing to the lure of the dominant culture's ability to suck me in by providing what I, just like other hungry consumers, like to watch. There was actually a track meet - the U.S. indoor national championships - on the tube yesterday. I haven't seen a track meet in years. The downside, of course, is that I only watched one race - the women's 800-meter finals, which was awesome - before I foolishly got up from the couch momentarily and someone else came in and changed the channel to a sappy chick flick. This could get ugly.
It's not that we're Luddites exactly. We drive cars, check our e-mail daily, carry cell phones, the usual stuff. We use power tools to saw lumber and drill holes, but only if the equivalent hand tool would take ridiculous amounts of time. I cut logs with a chainsaw and split them by hand with a maul. I still use a reel-type push mower to cut the tiny patch of lawn, and I'll use a leaf blower when they pry my cold, dead hands off my rake.
Okay, so there's a little resistance to doing everything with the newest gadgets. At least on my part.
Jessi and Zelda have been downloading music since the dawn of Napster, and Gven has had an iPod for a couple of years. I haven't gotten into it, so I listen to CDs. On the other hand, Jessi has taken to listening to vinyl records on a turntable once in a while, so the pendulum occasionally swings back.
When the kids were in middle school, the joke was that their friends thought we were Amish because we didn't have cable. We watched our share of TV and fought over which shows were acceptable, encouraged, and actually good, as any healthy Amerikan family would. In fact, we were probably more permissive than most, although the choices were limited to broadcast: NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Fox.
Our viewing habits ranged from X-Men to Soul Train to Bob Ross painting, and of course Sesame Street. Lots of Nature and Wild America on Sunday nights, lots of Mantis and X-Files on Friday nights. Family Ties, Thirty-something, ER, Seinfeld, and yes, even Friends. The horror. On our budget, we occasionally debated between buying a new TV or installing cable, which we resolved by doing neither.
There was one year, my first year out of graduate school with my first "real" job, when we did subscribe to basic cable. We lived in a subdivision in a small town halfway across the continent, and we decided to indulge. Long story short, the job didn't last very long and neither did our infatuation with cable.
Needless to say, a major part of Jessi's and Zelda's technological education has come outside our four walls. Gven and I aren't tech geeks by even the loosest definition, and the kids have been resourceful in navigating their own paths, each in their own way, through the electronic landscape.
Part of the story is simply my frugality, reinforced with a large dose of anticonsumer culturism. How many times did the three of them suffer through my tirade against the commercial conspiracy to brainwash us into buying more stuff we don't want or need? But that cuts both ways, so when the handwriting on the wall says we can bundle our Internet service with cable TV and actually save money, my resistance begins to wear down. And I can watch Big Ten basketball on Saturday. There's that too.
So the WOW guy came last week and installed the magic box in the living room, and suddenly we have like 200 channels, a remote that looks like the cockpit of a 747, and still there's nothing worth watching.
I sat there for two hours on Saturday afternoon - when I should have been outside making a yurt out of macrame - surfing through bad movie after bad movie, diet infomercial after evangelical jewelry shopping after NASCAR Disney sitcom after historical documentary cooking show before I figured out that there are four or five channels, instead of the usual two, that interest me. But all 200 come in sharp and clear!
Botton line, I'm succombing to the lure of the dominant culture's ability to suck me in by providing what I, just like other hungry consumers, like to watch. There was actually a track meet - the U.S. indoor national championships - on the tube yesterday. I haven't seen a track meet in years. The downside, of course, is that I only watched one race - the women's 800-meter finals, which was awesome - before I foolishly got up from the couch momentarily and someone else came in and changed the channel to a sappy chick flick. This could get ugly.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Ben Joins LeBron
There is a beacon of hope in anotherwise bleak landscape, friends and neighbors, and it doesn't involve primaries, caucuses, conventions, or superdelegates.
The erstwhile complacent Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry pulled off a major trade approximately one minute before the trading deadline on Thursday. The buzz has been that Cleveland needs a stronger supporting cast to give LeBron James some help going into the playoffs. At least on the surface, it looks like a brilliant move.
The Cavaliers get the defense and rebounding powerhouse Ben Wallace, journeyman forward Joe Smith, and a draft pick (from the Chicago Bulls), a reliable shooter Wally Szczerbiak and promising point guard Delonte West (from the Seattle Sonics).
They give up an adequate power forward Drew Gooden, talented but disappointing point guard Larry Hughes, and a couple of guys I've never heard of, Cedric Simmons and Shannon Brown (to the Bulls) and a couple of role players, Ira Newble and Donyell Marshall (to the Sonics).
Gain five (potential) impact players in exchange for six who helped out but didn't really deliver. Of course it's a gamble. Ben Wallace's best years with the championship Pistons are years behind him, and he'll never be the force he was then. But paired with Zydrunas Ilgauskas up front, he could - emphasize could - be the dominant rebounder the Cavalier need against the likes of Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Shaquille O'Neal, and Dirk Nowinski. Szczerbiak can hit a shot when everybody is triple-teaming LeBron (think John Paxson shooting threes for the Bulls when Michael Jordan kicked it out).
It's a poetic trade. The old, battered, blue-collar Wallace will go into battle alongside the young Greek godlike LeBron, and what's not to like about a lineup (in Cleveland!) that includes two white guys named Ilgauskas and Szczerbiak. And just in time. It's late February, and some of us need something to look forward to.
Did I mention that this is about basketball?
The erstwhile complacent Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry pulled off a major trade approximately one minute before the trading deadline on Thursday. The buzz has been that Cleveland needs a stronger supporting cast to give LeBron James some help going into the playoffs. At least on the surface, it looks like a brilliant move.
The Cavaliers get the defense and rebounding powerhouse Ben Wallace, journeyman forward Joe Smith, and a draft pick (from the Chicago Bulls), a reliable shooter Wally Szczerbiak and promising point guard Delonte West (from the Seattle Sonics).
They give up an adequate power forward Drew Gooden, talented but disappointing point guard Larry Hughes, and a couple of guys I've never heard of, Cedric Simmons and Shannon Brown (to the Bulls) and a couple of role players, Ira Newble and Donyell Marshall (to the Sonics).
Gain five (potential) impact players in exchange for six who helped out but didn't really deliver. Of course it's a gamble. Ben Wallace's best years with the championship Pistons are years behind him, and he'll never be the force he was then. But paired with Zydrunas Ilgauskas up front, he could - emphasize could - be the dominant rebounder the Cavalier need against the likes of Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, Shaquille O'Neal, and Dirk Nowinski. Szczerbiak can hit a shot when everybody is triple-teaming LeBron (think John Paxson shooting threes for the Bulls when Michael Jordan kicked it out).
It's a poetic trade. The old, battered, blue-collar Wallace will go into battle alongside the young Greek godlike LeBron, and what's not to like about a lineup (in Cleveland!) that includes two white guys named Ilgauskas and Szczerbiak. And just in time. It's late February, and some of us need something to look forward to.
Did I mention that this is about basketball?
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