So, how far does one go to test one’s personal development?

I’ve just been discussing with a friend, a same gender friend, the logic of us sharing a house. This house. This house that has at long last become what I think of as my first home. Not that it really is my first home, of course. But it is the first time I’ve felt this ‘at home’.

While we are talking about it, the idea makes so much sense. When we’re not sitting and yakking over a cup of coffee or three, I get quite freaked out. Then I realize, to my chagrin that I have not only let, but encouraged, several useless, lying, cheating, scheming, boyfriends move into my space, my home, without much, if any, thought of whether it was the best idea for me. Huh. . .

Personal development? Maturity? Sanity? I don’t have a clue. Or maybe I do have a clue but to admit this new approach, this weighing of pros and cons, IS a definite sign that, in those past mishaps I was in need of personality development, and, heaven help us, immature. Just can’t accept the implications of sanity issue. Excuse me while I go put my head back firmly in the sand.

An exercise in self-discipline. Give it up.

I’m ready for another round of one of my personal favorite exercises in self something-or-other. Self control, self discipline, self knowledge. Whatever. It’s all about me. And you?

Every once in a while I take a shot at giving up wanting. I desire a break from desiring anything. Yeah, I know, you get thirsty, you desire a drink of water. You get hungry, you desire something to eat. I mean the other stuff. ALL the other stuff. It seems to build up, doesn’t it? More socks, no big deal. A new shirt, no problem. But sometimes it’s just new for the sake of it. More for the sake of it. Then you feel like you aren’t really alive unless you’re wanting, and you’re really wanting to feel alive.

I enjoy these breaks. Always amazed, once I start conscientiously brushing aside the first hint of a want coming on, how many times in an average day a want thought starts to form in my mind. Also amazed, when I’ve promised myself not to act on these desires for a while, at how often I can’t even remember what the heck it was I thought I wanted an hour or a day ago. 

Amazing how we carry our ancestors crapola . . .

I don't know if this is so obvious as to be inane but anyone who follows this knows that's not going to stop me going on and on. Here's the thing. We are so, make that SOOO, influenced by the way our families of origin felt about all kinds of basic stuff.

 I have to tell you about a conversation my friend and I had yesterday. We're both old enough to have squealed over the Beatles. We each have made our own way in the world quite competently. Neither of us give ourselves much credit.

We started talking about the experiences we've had with past partners, well, husband and husbandishes. Both of us have either worked and contributed to the 'marriage', or been the sole breadwinner. And we have both found that even when we're the only contributor, money wise, there's been an underlying opinion that the money we make is somehow trivial. Inconsequential. It's sometimes subtle, sometimes not. So, what the heck, we're wondering now, was that all about. Neither of us, at this point in our lives, would put up with that shit for a minute.

So, why did we put up with it then. When we got further into that, it became obvious we'd carried the tendency to put up with that shit from our very beginnings. Not only put up with, but carry, or carried, the very attitudes that drove us up the wall. In my case, we lived on a farm. My father farmed. My mother farmed right along with him. She worked as hard and as long as he did, day in and day out. But, she didn't work. That was the myth. He worked, she didn't.

In my friends case, I can't remember what her father did but he 'worked hard' at whatever. My friend said her mother had 'done a bit of teaching.' Whoa. I could not let that pass. And, bless her, she heard me, when I pointed out what she'd said. There's a whole lot of difference between saying, 'Mom did a bit of teaching,' and saying 'Mom was a teacher.'  Or 'did a bit of teaching', and 'taught school'. Whatever, the attitude was picked up decades ago and brought forward by us, with us, and to our detriment. And we have to acknowledge, I feel, the root of this stuff before we can really change it. Oh, yeah, blame the parents. NO. That's not the point at all. If we carry that stuff it's our own stuff and we have to deal with it. But we have to recognize it, admit to it, and then change it. 

I have the ability to be a jerk, worldwide

For the first time in my life I have a passport. Really didn't seem like anything I would ever need. I am not quite so rigid about need as I have been. This is a very interesting transition.

As per my last entry here, I never had any desire to be a tourist. In fact, I could say I had an aversion to being a tourist. But my stubborn determination not to be one of 'those' people is starting to look a little silly, even to me. Probably looked silly to a lot of people for a long time. Like, who cares. The thing is, when friends say they're going down to the states for the day, would I like to come along. I haven't been able to do that for a few years now. No passport.

So, heads up to anyone who was only asking because they knew I couldn't take them up on it. Ha.

Travel is so broadening? Show me the evidence.

I was raised in a place that people came to in the summer. Tourists. The locals welcomed them at the beginning of the summer and celebrated their departure on the first Tuesday of September.  One thing I didn’t want to be when I grew up is a tourist.

We’ve all heard it over and over and over again. Travelling is broadening. Travelling makes you a better person. Travel, travel, travel, babble babble babble. I personally haven’t seen any evidence to support this point of view.

Case in point. I was watching the Oprah show, maybe a year ago. The woman was on who wrote a book called ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. I haven’t read the book. I know I would have twenty years ago, but we change. I’m sure it’s very worthwhile reading. I read ‘Women who love too much’ not once but twice. Changed everything. But I digress.

At some point in the interview she was talking about flying to the other side of the world to talk with a man who had never been out of his village. Actually, I think she said he’d never been off his front porch but that seems so unlikely I can’t be sure that’s what I heard. I was only listening with one ear to that point. But isn’t that something else. This woman who was seeking enlightenment, guidance, and all that good stuff was going to TRAVEL to the other side of the world to seek guidance from a guy that had blossomed where he was planted. An extreme example but . . .

There’s a really goofy reason I’m going on about this. I can’t admit it today. Tomorrow, for sure. I’ll be able to tell the goofy truth tomorrow.

The contentment conundrum

It’s bound to happen. Things I say come back to bite me. I found myself cringing earlier when I was talking to a dear woman who is in that age category that I would call ‘young’ and she would call anything but.  Young is probably fifteen or more years younger than however old we are at the time.

She’s thirty something and talking about being content. Yikes. I wonder how that works. I remember being thirty something and at this sixty something stage I am really glad I wasn’t approaching anything like contentment. I was striving, I was driven, I was working hard and playing hard. I was reading a lot of books that helped in the quest for eventual contentment. But I thank my lucky stars I had only brief glimpses of anything approaching the real thing.

That isn’t to say I wasn’t reasonable happy a lot of the time. Maybe we all have our own idea of what contentment means. I’m going to try to stop using the word. Let’s see. Where did I put my Thesaurus.

OOPS. I said ‘try’. Okay. There’s the seed for my next blog entry. But right now I’m not content to have a leaking roof on the shop. Off to the builders supply.

Love my friends, love my kitchen, and together, well. . .

There's a clarity when I’m sitting in my kitchen sharing a meal with friends. I know the why of this. I’m pretty awkward when I’m out of my own environment. So, at home, I’m more receptive to really hearing not only what guests are saying, but what I’m saying also. No kidding.

For the most part I don’t run into people whose lives are anything like mine. Recently I met someone who really has lived a life that is a lot like my life. AND we are the same age, we both live in modest houses, are single, and have about the same income.

In conversation my friend said very matter of factly (Yeah, well, spell check doesn’t like factly but I do) that since she doesn’t have anything she doesn’t worry about loosing everything.  Okay, on the one hand, how Zen. On the other hand, ARE YOU KIDDING ME.  Here we are in virtually the same circumstance and one of us is walking around thinking we have so much and the other is under the impression she has nothing. Another blatant example of that fine line I’ve talked about before. The smidgeon of difference between content and dis. It never fails to fascinate me.

And here’s the great thing. We’re both right. And who doesn’t like being right. 

Well, the English debate wasn’t exciting but . . .

I am an incurable optomist BUT I do believe, right at this moment, that the results of May 2 election may be surprising. Why? Because I believe there may be a lot of people who have seldom, or never, voted, going to the polls this time round. What a great thing that would be.

I had a friend over for lunch yesterday and I almost fell off my stool when this woman said she votes for the last party I would have expected. Her reason, her father voted that way. And heaven help us, she shrugged and said, ‘that’s the way it is in most families, isn’t it?’

Good Grief. So, while I was chopping things I sat her down at the computer, brought up Vote Compass    www.cbcnews.ca/votecompass    and when she had gone through the process and saw what party most represented her views she was in shock. What a good thing that is. What a revelation. What a revolution.

I’m no expert on things political but I’m astonished sometimes that people can get close to that three score and ten in this country without bothering to acquire even the most basic understanding of what their political parties stand for.

So, young or old, use this magnificent information/research Hal thingy for gathering the info you need to vote for the party that will best represent you. The cute videos of kittens can wait till May 3 when a whole bunch of us will need the diversion. That’s democracy. Let’s all talk about it.

So now they tell us. Greed rules.

I was floored, again, when I heard a short news item the other day about nuclear energy. ‘Oh yeah’, the expert was saying, ‘there is another fuel that creates a much less earth destroying waste material.’ Apparently it’s been there all along. AND it’s abundant. AND it’s cheap.

Well, call me a cynic but you see something happening often enough and you do get cynical. There are cheap abundant forms of energy. Enough to keep everyone comfortable and at less cost than we’re paying now. But, that’s the problem. Once we cogs have been conned into paying a certain amount off the top of our allowances (yes, allowances: what big daddy gives us for doing our chores), it would take an all out revolution to bring that amount down. The ideas of scarcity and hence, high prices, is essential to what we’ve accepted as our way of life. It’s just not necessarily so. It’s a bunch of yaddah yaddah. Speaking of yaddah yaddah. Did you see the English language debate. How come the French language debate was so much more, well, interesting?

Finally got the skinny on dieting. From Margaret Trudeau.

It seems like there are so many people ready to give you an answer to your every dilemma these days. It comes so easy. I know I do it all the time. "I have a problem with..." "Oh, you should..."  Take this herb, do this exercise, buy this product, go to this place, therapist, mechanic.

 SSSSSSo, I'm a life long dieter and I was listening to Margaret Trudeau being interviewed about mental illness. It was a great interview. But what I heard loudest and clearest was a tidbit in the middle of some really deep and meaningful stuff.

She said, about controlling her weight, "oh, I just remind myself I'd rather be slim than eat that."

Found a message in my mush

I was having oatmeal porridge for breakfast and was struck by something. First, I’ll have to say, I can’t even think of  eating porridge without brown sugar on top. But over time I’ve been using less and less without noticing it, really. Now, it’s perfectly satisfying and it’s ridiculous how little sugar I bother to put on my wee bowl of gruel.

So, I’m wondering, what other things have I unconsciously applied this less and less practice to, and indeed, what other aspects of my day to day life might benefit from…

Huh.

Let’s face it. I live a fairly sparse life by North American standards as it is, so I’d better keep in check. 

Oh, no. It's Sunday. Already.

I've arrived. I am the old fart that goes on and on about time passing so fast. It's Sunday, and I'd swear we had one of those just a couple of days ago.

For most of my life Sunday held little significance. A few years ago I started to take it quite seriously. It was to be a day when I bought, if not nothing, at least very little. I wouldn't work on Sunday (I was still potting full time then). I would evaluate, for want of a better word, my actions of the past week, and, as casually as possible, consider what I might accomplish in the coming week. And it was a good thing. A very good thing. Until now.

Today I woke up with more energy than I've had in ages. Oh, my. What a delicious dilemma. I can justify pushing the freshly fallen snow around. Yes. Snow. We had a dump of the white stuff yesterday. Six or more inches. And it's officially spring. Ha.

Closed curtains and depression. Is there a connection.

A casual observation.  A lot of people keep their curtains drawn. I don’t get it. Is it a fear of being seen or a fear of what you’ll see? Or is it a social status thing? Am I uncool with my open curtains?

If you know me and see my curtains are closed tight over my windows please check on me. I’m either dead or extremely depressed. We can assume that opening your curtains isn’t a cure for death, but may it help with depression?

There’s a house across the street from me. It stands on a knoll and there are big windows that, if the curtains weren’t closed, would look out on a gorgeous vista of the Rockie Mountains. In the eleven years I’ve lived here I’ve never seen those windows unshrouded. It’s none of my business but good grief. I just don’t get it. It’s depressing.

Maybe shrinks should start telling people to open their drapes instead of handing out prescriptions for more pills. Wonder if there have been studies done on this. 

Again. Standing back far enough to see a bigger picture

I was listening to some of the comments of ‘ordinary people’ after the release of the Canadian government’s budget yesterday. These ‘ordinary’ Canadians were, of course, citizens who were plugged in enough to be hanging around parliament waiting for said budget to be announced. What struck me was how they, and I dare say, we, respond to what directly affects us personally.

I would be feeling a lot more optimistic today about our degree of enlightenment as a society if even a few students were concerned with the elderly, if health care workers were concerned with, let’s say, the sick. Wouldn’t it be great if someone, anyone, spoke to the plight of the physically disabled who had no one in their life who was disabled. If, and now I know how silly this seems, someone with buckets of money said THEY should be given LESS tax breaks.

Ah, yes. I am a dreamer. Am I the only one?

Changing my low down ways. This is not easy. Yikes!

I can’t help but be amused by my own seeming inability to REALLY change. I’ve blogged about this before, I know. This blog helps me, sometimes, really get it, whatever ‘it’ I happen to be obsessing over at the moment. But this ‘it’ just came barreling through here a few minutes ago. Again.

A couple of guys at the door asking if I still do pottery. They noticed the sign wasn’t there anymore but…  I can’t honestly say I no longer do pottery so I fessed up but asked what it was they were looking for. Well, could they see the pottery. I knew in my heart of hearts that this was going to be one of those instances where I go out the back,  open the shed, spend ten to twenty minutes answering questions then get hit with the thing they really wanted. But I said, okay I’ll meet you out the back.

Did all the ‘where do you get your clay,’ ‘it comes from Medicine Hat’ stuff and 15 or 20 minutes later they described this horrible sounding lamp, fountain, wine jug thing they’d bought in Mexico that they would like replicated. So, another five minutes telling them how I could but don’t want to and why. And I sycked them on another potter (sorry), locked up the shed and wished them a nice day. 

But here’s the thing, I knew we could do what needed to be done on the front stoop but I don’t know how to stand my ground and get folks to come out with the weird project they have in mind without the phoney trip to the shop. I’m not getting that. And I’m still saying the same blah blah stuff over and over and that’s what I semi-retired to get away from. Only now the blah blah is that I’m still doing pottery but I’m doing it for the people who want what I do, not for people who want me to recreate their souvenir of Mexico, or whatever.

And times and people are different now. Was a time when these guys would have realized they’d taken a half hour of my time, annoyed the hell out of me in the process of finally getting to their point, and would have bought a mug, or something. That’s no longer the way of the world. I’m talking generalities now, of course. But really, I don’t have a freakin’ clue how this is going to resolve itself. I don’t know. I’m shouting now. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

Ah, that feels better.

How would you describe yourself. Yeah, right.

Today, I’d say I am a person who looks up often. I am a person who rarely uses a flashlight when walking in the night in the country. I am a person who knows that sadness subsides and joy is fleeting and can, while in the midst of those and most human emotions, appreciate that we humans have a range of emotions.

Sounds good, eh. Well, this too shall pass and who knows, tomorrow I may feel as screwed up as I felt yesterday. Long and short, I’m going through a moody patch. As the folks at the Dead Dog Café used to say, ‘Be brave, stay calm and watch for the signs.’ I sure do miss that show.

 ‘Watch for the signs’ is the part I really relate to, having always been an omen woman. That’s probably because, as I’ve said, I’m a person who looks up. If you’re looking up you’re bound to see something flying overhead just before you trip over a curb in the city or a rock in the country and whatever you saw will be the omen that precedes the owie and it was always thus, sayeth this sunny day seer. Two crows, three crows, a circling hawk. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just grab hold of whatever works for us and appreciate ourselves and others as pretty interesting creatures. Whatever keep us clear enough to see the big picture.

There’s so many words floating around all the time that it gets hard to discipline ourselves to shut it down for a bit. One of the things I heard lately, really heard through the mess of info, was that the Neuro types have recently found that if we humans don’t have down time to process events in our lives we don’t form memories. Good grief. That makes so much sense, doesn’t it.  Good thing so many people are tweeting and blogging their little hearts out. Only thing is, how many of us are being very real about it. How much of what we’ll find, if we look for what would have been memories had we taken the time out to actually develop memories, will just be spin that our shallow little twenty first century selves thought would put us in a better light than our personal truth would. Like this. 

Is anyone else fed up with all the ass covering?

I just bought a new printer/scanner/copier and I can’t believe how much crap came with it. I mean, really. I take my organic cotton bags to the grocery store. This one purchase has undone any positive effects of that exercise for the next decade, or the past decade, take your pick.

And don’t get me started on the instructions. I actually read most of the instructions. I just don’t do that usually but it was minus 17 C with a 15 km wind so what the heck. It was a book, with staples, filled with garbage designed solely to make the purchaser the problem if there should be any problems with the product. Doesn’t really give a person a great feeling about the product itself, or the pervasive effect of the threat of the lawsuit. Good grief.

That aside. All the crap I’ve got lying around as a result of this purchase has forced me to see all the crap that was already lying around before the purchase. It’s a last straw situation. I knew my environment was ‘silting up’, and would need to be dealt with soon but soon has turned into now. And my now is fuzzy. I’m still trying to sort out what my now looks like.

Beading stuff. I haven’t been making jewelry for a while but does that mean I don’t want to, ever. Same with sewing. Same with painting. Same with pottery, for that matter, although I do know that I’ll be doing that again, and soon. But all the things I do have all this stuff that goes with the activity and I’ve got to figure this out. I live in a house that would take some creative measuring to top 700 square feet. What do I need? What do I even want.

I have a friend who I talk to on the phone four or five times a week. She’s forever telling me about her latest shuffling of all her stuff. I sooo don’t want that to be my life that I put off my own shuffling until it’s overwhelming. Well, maybe not OVERwhelming, but whelming, for sure.

It all boils down to fear, doesn’t it? FEAR. We fear admitting that we are afraid. That we are fearful. What’s that all about?

My fears around this need to throw things out is the same as the fears expressed by the dyed-in-the-wool hoarders featured on those ghoulish television shows. The fear that I’m going to throw it out then wish I hadn’t at some later date. And when I really have a good look at that it boils down to a lack of faith in my future abilities to provide for my ongoing needs.

That’s what I have to change.

I’m going to throw out some stuff today AND I’m going to do some inner work on my confidence. And if I have any time left over I’ll try to figure out how I went from a new printer to whatever this is.

The rickety bandwagon still attracts many jumper-onners.

Are we getting further away from actual thinking with all this info at the tip of our bony little fingers? Is there a valid case now for a statement like: there are two kinds of people in the world, those who decide how they feel by how few people 'liked' this and those who prefer to side with the many who 'liked' this. (If you had to read that sentence more than once to make any sense of it, my job here is done).

Pathologically cheap or pathologically generous, take your pick.

There are two kinds of people in the world. (I know how stupid that is). The generous and the really cheap. They have cute little names for the way they walk through the world. They say they are thrifty. That sounds nifty. They say they’re frugal. Just a couple of days ago a woman sitting in my living room called herself Scotch, and she didn’t blink an eye. (I’m not kidding). But they’re cheap. And it’s weird. Creepy weird. I’ve been looking after a neighbour’s dog and she didn’t bring enough dog food for the ten day stay but no problem, I bought some. Then she needed to go into the hospital for an operation. I brought her things, went to see her every day, plugging coins into the pay parking of course, and I am going to get to the point. Sunday morning she was discharged from the hospital and phoned me to pick her up. Okay, here’s the thing. On the way back from the hospital she was telling me how disgusted she was that the pay telephone would have cost her 50 cents for a local call. She’d used the phone at the nursing station instead. I apologized for not making sure she had some coins for such things. I had thought of it but then forgot. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I had the quarters but I refuse to spend 50 cents on a local call.’  She was phoning for a free ride home from the hospital. How can you live like that. I just don’t get it. How the heck does that feel. What a bloody waste of time, of energy, of life.

         Same woman has said several times that she ‘should pay me for the dog food.’ She never says it while passing me a tenner. The problem, for me, is that this is a problem for me. I end up feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed even. So, instead of just cringing through this I’m making a conscious effort to work through it, once and for all.

         So, I’ve admitted to feeling uncomfortable, feeling embarrassed. What else am I feeling. Sucked in. I feel sucked into something I don’t want any part of. So, resentment. What started out as me simply offering to look after the dog, and help through surgery, none of which was any particular problem for me, has become a problem because of this weird concern over a couple of cans of dog food. Now the three mentions, ‘I should pay you for the dog food’, has grown to four mentions. A telephone call, the sole message being, ‘I forgot to pay you for the dog food when you were over here to walk the dog.’ She asked me to, by all means, remind her to pay me for the stinking dog food. I can’t believe this.

Okay, the saga continues. A friend from the coast phoned to wish me a happy bday. We’re chatting away and I stupidly tell her about the cheap neighbour and she tells me she is studying a revolutionary new therapy and we spend the next ten minutes having me think this and tap my forehead and saying peace a lot. Okay, and I tell her I’m all better now and thank her and get the heck off the phone. In her new found professional opinion she also advised me to ask the neighbour for the stinking five bucks. I could care less about the five bucks but I’m looking at the possibility of it not being so much an issue of cheap neighbour (the other) but passive aggressive bullshit neighbour (could that be me).

I don’t really see it but it’s worth exploring. Thing is, I never would have thought a thing about the dog food if cheap neighbour, from this point forward referred to as CN, had not brought it up. I suspect she brought it up because she was fully aware she had not brought enough food for the dog for a ten day stay. But there you go. Who cares, right?

I think no good can come of this but when I’m driving CN around to pick up dog from the vet and out to the pharmacy to fill her prescription, she said, ‘I should pay you for gas.’ (Here we go again. Not here are a few bucks for gas, but I should pay you for gas. Experience shows that this would be repeated three or four times in the near future.) So, I said, ‘No thanks, I’m enjoying this, but you can pay me for the dog food.’ Well, that did change everything. As feared, I became the tight fisted asshole who was worrying about a few bucks spent on a sick neighbour’s dog. I glanced over just in time to see the self satisfied smirk. I have drawn some conclusions.

Accept cheap people for who they are.

Don’t take advice from forehead tapping gurus.

Don’t be one of those cheap people.

Go back to your old standard, ‘don’t worry about it’, when someone says ‘they should. . .’

Shut up and walk the dog.

Well, it’s a start.

The task of choosing leadership. Democracy’s big problem

I wonder what’s really going on in the minds of leaders of the pseudo democracies. The young Egyptians have just shown all of us what can be accomplished when you use these electronic things everyone carries around for something other than telling each other what we had for lunch.

I’m certainly not up to speed on any of this but the root of the rebellion seems to be people getting fed up to the teeth with having less and less and working harder and harder just to stay alive while the powerful get richer and richer and if that doesn’t ring a bell, well, bless your little heart.

The western media is awash with folks talking as if they, we, have it all figured out and democracy means doing what we’re doing, and blah blah blah . . .  But look at the problems we have finding and keeping decent leaders. And when someone comes along that is performing the role not too badly the opposition comes up with some, often bogus, scandal and instead of the electorate saying ‘who cares’, everyone jumps on their self righteous high horses, gasps in horror, and switches teams. Good grief.

I hope the people in Egypt come up with a really great leader.

I found this definition of a leader and thought, hmm, there’s a start.

LEADERS ARE PEOPLE WHO RAISE THE STANDARDS BY WHICH THEY JUDGE THEMSELVES AND BY WHICH THEY ARE WILLING TO BE JUDGED. THE GOAL CHOSEN, THE OBJECTIVE SELECTED, THE REQUIREMENTS IMPOSED,ARE NOT MAINLY FOR THEIR FOLLOWERS ALONE.THEY DEVELOP WITH CONSUMMATE ENERGY AND DEVOTION THEIR OWN SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE IN ORDER TO REACH THE STANDARDS THEY THEMSELVES HAVE SET.THIS WHOLE-HEARTED ACCEPTANCE OF THE DEMANDS IMPOSED BY EVEN HIGHER STANDARDS IS THE BASIS OF ALL HUMAN PROGRESS.A LOVE OF HIGHER QUALITY WE MUST REMEMBER,IS ESSENTIAL IN A LEADER.THE TRUE LEADER IS ONE WHO REALIZED BY FAITH THAT HE IS AN INSTRUMENT IN THE HANDS OF GOD,AND DEDICATED HIMSELF TO BE A GUIDE AND INSPIRER OF THE NOBLER SENTIMENTS AND ASPIRATIONS OF THE PEOPLE." Rastafarian definition from

www. Angelfire.com / rasta   

Angelfire.com is really worth checking out, in my opinion. All this stuff is 'in my opinion'. I must start using that phrase more, in my opinion. Oops, I just burned my toast. Have a good day. 

You have to see the fine line before you can cross it

I think there’s probably a very fine line between content and dis. Discontent, that is. There’s a fine line between being bummed out with all the laundry and being ecstatic that you have so many clothes, towels, sheets.

There’s a fine line between feeling put upon that you have to clean up the dishes after a meal and appreciating the fact that you have dirty dishes because you’ve just enjoyed a good meal.

Usually there’s a fine line between being happy and not so much.

When there’s a choice, why not choose to be content. I know how simplistic this is. I know shit happens. I’m just talking about those times in life when there’s nothing going on that’s really shitty.

I’ll blame the dog if I want to. So there.

Conversation is hard to come by these days. People are speaking in media phrases. It drives me up the wall. A woman was in my kitchen not long ago telling me about a dog that had chewed off a little girls arm in her hometown. Her response to my horror, ‘well, you can’t blame the dog.’ You can’t blame the dog. What the heck does that even mean. The people involved had apparently done what they could, short of not having a dog that was bred to chew apart small living things. The dog was behind a chain link fence. The children had adult supervision. The child had simply wiggled her hand through the chain links to pet the doggy. To say you can’t blame the dog is to say you can’t blame a serial killer for the deaths of all those women. He had a bad experience with his third grade teacher? Yeah, right.

Regular folk use standard media phrases now, all the time, when faced with a camera and a microphone. When some grieving widow whose husband has just killed himself charging around in an avalanche zone on a small tank of a skidoo sniffles, ‘well, I take comfort that he died doing what he loved,’ I want to scream. It’s really none of my business, I know, but it makes it my business to some extent because it is being pumped into my living on the evening news.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear that widow indulge in a good healthy rant. ‘I’m so mad I could scream,’ she might say. ‘I wanted us to spend the day skating with the kids, but no, he had a case of beer and buddies in a truck in the driveway. That bloody skidoo. From day one I hated that thing. We were barely keeping up with the mortgage and he goes out and buys that . . .

Solid evidence, wrong decision

I just glanced at the clock in the living. About two minutes to four. It’s actually just past two p.m. I remembered last glancing at that same clock yesterday afternoon and thinking, ‘that’s odd, I thought it wasn’t working.’

It just happened that it was almost four when I glanced at the clock yesterday. I didn’t change the battery. It wasn’t working then, it isn’t working now.

How many times does this happen in my life. How many times has this happened. I had evidence that action was not indicated, in this instance. But quite the opposite was true. I made an observation. The clock was working. It wasn’t working. I walked away. My looking at the clock at precisely the time it had stopped, albeit perhaps a week later, was what we used to call a coincidence. Now that it’s considered smart to say, ‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ and ‘there’s no such thing as coincidence,’ I’m sure as hell not going to say it actually was a coincidence.

We have to find a word now for all those occurrences we used to call coincidences. A word we can use without being deemed stupid enough to believe in coincidence. Ah, the tyranny of the talk show hosts.

Guess all this is naval gazing if I don't go, right now, and change the battery in the clock. Aha

I know better but don’t always act on what I know

It matters not one bit what the issues were but today cleared up a whole lot of things that had been hanging over my head. Business things, personal things, day to day life things. But here’s the thing. Today I decided to clean house, so to speak. I made those phone calls that resulted in an hour in push 1, push 3, push 2 hell, all the time hitting the 0 periodically just in case I could bring up an actual person. But I stuck it out, eventually got in one case the answer, in another the agent who provided the answer. Then off to insurance office the website said would fix a problem only to find the website is wrong. Then off to fix another licensing problem and finding out it has to be sorted in another city, but here’s the thing.

It really was fun. I’ve worked at home forever, or in a shop right behind home, and had enough experience sitting in offices to know I couldn’t do it. I guess that’s left me with a certain appreciation for those who can do that office thing. Bless their hearts: everyone I encountered today was doing such a splendid job.

It took a day to sort out these things but it took me two point five weeks of procrastination to get to the day. And I can’t believe how good I feel right now. And I could have felt this good two point five days ago. One of big bad challenges of the governmental beaurocracy type pertained to a change in the rules that I thought made things worse and apparently make things better. How weird is that.

So, in procrastinating was I just waiting till I could do these things with enough grace (too strong a word probably but..) that it would all go smoothly. And if that’s the case is it really procrastination or something more like insight?

I’ve had a lifetime of experiences like this.  Times when I’ve thought, ‘when it comes to procrastination, this time I’ve got the message.’   But this time I mean it.

What do you think? What are the odds?

Religion can be so boring

I’d been online gazing at pictures of super novas and had followed links to the coolest images of deep space. The kind of stuff that makes up a little for the light tortured night sky of the city and it’s paltry star show. The phone rang.

It was a neighbour.  That first minute that tells the tale suggested she just needed to chat so after the weather discussion she asked what I was doing and I told her what I had been doing. I do know better, but only after the fact. Anyway, I quickly realized images of super novas weren’t her cup of tea and I probably sounded like a lunatic since I really don’t know anything about them, or deep space, or black holes and my neighbour doesn’t own a computer and may well be right about the trouble with the world these days coming down to people staring at computer screens when they should be reading the bible. Who knows.

Anyway. I thought I may be able to bring it down a notch and sound like less of a nut (I mean we are neighbours and who wants to live next door to a nut) so I said something about the moon and the tides and how that was somewhere we could really see and experience the relationship between where we are and influences from out there. Then of course I realized that didn’t make me sound less of a nut, I might be making things worse. So finally I got it that I should just shut up and she said…

           “But God created the universe ____ years ago. . .”    Can’t remember the number but it was, like, a minute or two in the whole scheme of things.

There’s not much you can say after that , is there? Where's the wonder?

I can’t believe I’m watching the Bachelor AGAIN

Is this not one of the creepiest shows? Imagine visitors from another galaxy judging earthling society on the basis of ‘Criminal Minds’ and ‘The Bachelor’.  What the heck does this say about our society. That a show like this would go on season after season. Good grief. And what does it say about me that I sit here and watch it and laugh myself silly and make wretching noises and roll my eyes and say, ‘Oh, PLEEZE’, when there’s no one else in the room.  Oops, commercials over. Back to Brad and the girls. Yuk. (eye roll)

I think this volunteer thing has gotten out of hand

Let’s stand back far enough to have a good long look at this rah rah volunteer era.  Can we acknowledge, at this point, that the gap turned chasm between the rich and the poor, and the increased pressure on the poor and what’s left of the middle to work for no pay, is not coincidental.

Every time a well meaning person takes a volunteer position that should be a paid job, they’re contributing to the widening of the gap. It’s been a subtle transition. It used to be the wealthy, the ‘idle rich’, who, having not much of any consequence to do with their days, left the day to day maintenance of their home to the servants and spent a few hours volunteering. Great. But now there are armies of people that either don’t have jobs, or are working but poor, who are volunteering to do work that needs to be done for the good of our society.  If it needs to be done, it’s a job that should be a paid position. Period.

How in the world can I be so crass as to speak out against volunteering.

Well, if you can knock the jobs off the bottom and have them performed as volunteer positions you have more money to pay the people who already have lots of money. And those people can pay less taxes because many of these ‘jobs’ would be paid for with tax dollars. The people who don’t make enough to live comfortably have been sucked into thinking that paying less taxes is a good thing. Trouble is, the people who should be paying less or no taxes are paying the most taxes. The people who should be paying lots of taxes are paying so little taxes that the poor are proudly marching off to volunteer to do jobs that would be paid positions if the rich were paying taxes proportionally to the rest of us poor sots.

The money that the less-than-adequately-paid aren’t taking home to spend in their communities is instead being bunched up by the billions and shipped off to tax havens and businesses get boarded up and towns dry up and blow away and so it goes.

Then look what happens. Some outrageous character (that would be me) ends up having to do the unthinkable and write a blog knocking volunteerism. Yikes. What is wrong with this picture.

Miracles, UFO’s, past life memories

All that kind of stuff.  The stuff that people who have jobs and want to keep them don’t talk about having any knowledge of. You know, the stuff that experts with letters in caps after their names are paid to call something other than what the person having the experience would call it.

That’s the thing, they just haven’t had the experience. Or if they have, they’re sure as hell not going to tell anyone. Admit to anything.  In the seventies there was a lot of UFO activity where I lived. I used to spend a lot of time outside at night in those days. I loved taking long walks at night. It was an island, I’d been raised there, no problem. Well, that all came to a stop once city folk started buying five acres in what to them was the boonies. Loonies in the boonies. They were so freaked out by actually finding themselves in the very situation they had so coveted when living in downtown where ever that they had to have at least one killer dog. And seeing as how there weren’t any streetlights they couldn’t be expected to actually walk ‘Killer’. So they’d just let them out at night. Whoa. Anyway, I digress.

So, where was I. Oh yeah. One night I was walking with a buttoned down college professor who was, I’m sure, spending time with a local arty type to round out his vacation story. Lo and behold, we were hiking up a hill behind my place and came around a sharp corner in the road and there was a standard run of the mill UFO right there. Just stayed there. My inner experience and my ‘friend’s’, I’m sure, in the moment, were quite different. I was having a visit with/from something familiar. I can only imagine what he was experiencing. But when it zipped off  at 30 degree angle from it’s incoming route, I looked up at the stunned, open-mouthed face of this fella and he said, “I didn’t see anything.’

Attempts to chat about our shared experience only produced the same phrase, over and over. ‘I didn’t see anything.’ Interesting, eh.

So, getting back to experts. How the heck can you trust the word of someone whose social and professional position depends on them having an unwavering singular point of view. I mean, how can an unwavering singular point of view have any validity in an ever changing dynamic life, earth, universe. 

Capital D Dysfunctional

I used the D word the other day in a conversation with a friend. He said  he really didn’t know what that meant.   That was great because I’ve been using that word quite freely. It is one of those things that so many of us say, ‘dysfunctional family, dysfunctional relationship’ dada dumdum. I knew what it meant to me before this conversation. Afterward, I have to admit, I’m not so sure.

But I’ve been thinking about it off and on for a couple of days. Right now, here’s what I’m thinking. I think I do know what a dysfunctional relationship is because I KNOW I’ve been in a number of them. The first one I was born into so I take very little responsibility or the first part of it. I’ll take a certain amount of responsibility for participating full out well into my forties.

So here’s the thing… if a relationship is all about one person’s life and everyone else is playing a bit part, that’s dysfunctional. My opinion. After my last really bad relationship it took me two years before I could put myself in the picture re the previous four years. The guy I lived with was a planet and I wasn’t even a moon: more a grain of sand in one of the planet’s several deserts. Ah well, years later I was volunteering in a soup kitchen and guess who showed up for a meal. I’m all better now. But the wonder of karma aside, if we’re talking about adults, I do think the dysfunction relationship requires participation by all the participants. Just like fixing it. Or running from it. Or ignoring it. Just kidding. Now that's dysfunction. 

What I don’t see

I believe in the importance of standing back from our ego center. Standing far enough back to be able to see if not all, at least more, of the picture. And now a new element has been added.

My almost square television set doesn’t let me see the whole picture. Well, how about that. In the words of Gilda Radnor, ‘it’s always something.’  I was just watching my almost square television; I’m so old I call it ‘the tube’, it’s so old it probably has tubes.  Strong bold letters spelled the word ‘dentity’ and I thought, what the heck?  I was getting up to find the dictionary when a booming voice spelled it out for me, so to speak.  IDENTITY. Thank goodness for voiceovers because the next graphic, off centered to the right, was ‘strengt’ but I’m sharpened up by now so when big voice said STRENGTH, I was smugly all knowing.

This is what happens when I skip my meds for a couple of days. Meditation that is. Off to my funny little stool. The days are getting longer in this hemisphere. Hang in there.

Where would we be by now if . . .

I wonder what the world would be like by now if, when we blobs of atoms came to the point of consciousness where we needed God concept, we had decided that we were it. That there wasn’t a ‘being’ separate but the consciousness that had evolved to the point of needing it was it. We’d sure be treating each other better, wouldn’t we.

A New Year Wish for us all

This year may we save our criticism for those who deserve it and let the folks who are, like ourselves, just trying to live life in the best way we know how, make the mistakes they need to make and carry on with our blessing.

Criticizing others, let’s face it, has become THE North American sport. We spend so much of our time either listening to or being involved in people bashing that it has to affect our own ability to do what we need to do to fulfill our own lives. I mean, if we’re hearing about, or talking about how stupid someone else is to have done this or that, we’re not likely to risk being the next person who is being bashed.

So, may we all get out there and sing that song, paint that picture, take that homeless person to lunch in a nice restaurant. And may we all not give a shit if we’re singing off key, not painting by the rules, or seen by someone we know having lunch with someone they wouldn’t nod a hello to on the street corner. We talk a lot about freedom then willing give up big chunks of it without much thought. Let's not do that anymore. 

 Happy New Year.

Making a case for discontent (ment?)

When people say, ‘my cup runneth over,’ my immediate thought is, ‘what a waste.’

Truth be told, I think I’ve always been that person. I can’t always see what the lesson is in the hard times, but I can usually hold on to the possibility of a glimmer of insight somewhere down the road. It’s not all good, but 60:40 would be great.

It’s been a couple of months since I came out of what I was calling a period of contentment. What a relief to have that over with. I’m back. That’s not to say I’m wallowing in discontent, just not experience ongoing contentment. Never ending dumbed down hohum ah well contentment. In retrospect I’m ready to admit it just might have been a reaction to more heavy duty life stuff than I could handle with any kind of grace. What I was calling contentment I could have termed an emotional coma. Hmm . . .

Don't ask, don't tell repealed in the US of A

Well, here we are, 2010 not quite over and the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy is repealed. Nothing funny there, just a sense of 'yeah, well, 'bout time.' But here's something hilarious. The Military's response. THIS WILL TAKE TIME TO IMPLEMENT.  Let's all think about that. This will take time to implement. What the heck does that mean. What the heck does that say. What the heck.

Non News . . . this is ridiculous

Listening to the ‘news’ last night. There was a piece briefly describing the latest brilliant idea from the right. Give a shot of alcohol every ninety minutes to chronic alcoholics. Wow. Brilliant. A lot cheaper than providing rehab facilities I’m sure. Not only that but they may not live as long thus cutting the expense of medical care. AND it may also keep the chronically homeless from complaining about the lack of affordable housing. What a win win win, for the rich rich rich .

Right after this bombshell, which, by the way, took up less than a minute of ‘the news’, there was a piece, complete with live coverage video, of a santa cutout that was stolen from someone’s front yard. Now that’s news. 

This SEX thing, it never ceases to amaze

Young women, apparently, are still wanting, longing, to get involved with self-centered, narcissistic  man-boys. When you’re old like me, you can look back and wonder at how freaking stupid you were about the choices you made when it came to who you chose to get involved with, in a ‘romantic’ sense.

A young friend has just been by for a visit. I really enjoy our visits. I venture to say we both do. But I feel he should be wearing a sign warning young women that he may not have their best interests at heart if they ‘hook up’. We’ve been friends for years so I’ve heard it all before when it comes to his tales of love gone amuck.

Okay, here’s the thing. Apparently a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement is getting more serious for the dear girl. Well, that happens. But just a minute, she’s known him long enough to know that this guy, at this point in his life, is not a good candidate for a real relationship. Come on ladies, get with the program. Start wanting relationships with guys who want to treat you well, treat you with respect, make your life better. Generous guys, considerate guys. I could go on. I shouldn’t need to. Don’t let your hormones fool you. Stay awake, pay attention, watch for the signs. You know what I’m talking about.

Isn't that the point

A couple of days ago a friend lamented that he 'just didn't know what was going to happen next.' He was obviously so distraught that I didn't have the heart to ask if that wasn't the point. Maybe that's another discussion topic for kindergarten, just before nap time perhaps. 'Life is about being full of wonder about what's going to happen next.'  Oh, no, that wouldn't do any good. In kindergarten we know that, don't we.

Pianos stay relevant

I’m not the only one who’s baffled. How did we get in such a freakin’ mess. We’re freaking out because we have too much stuff and stressed out because we want more stuff. As I’ve mentioned here, I don’t consider myself a rampaging consumer by any stretch, but I wanted a new IPod within a week or two of getting an IPod. Yikes. But here’s the thing.

There are things that used to be in most people’s houses. Now there are computers and televisions. At one time there were pianos and radios. A piano (or a guitar, banjo, whatever) didn’t become outdated and need to be replaced in six months or even six years. Same with the radio. The piano needed tuning once in a while. The radio needed a new tube now and then (really, I’m not joking, radios had tubes). By the time a board game wears out the kids are off and running. And all of these things require a level, a type, of concentration, involvement, that doesn’t apply to the stuff that has replaced them.

I’m sitting on the couch, laptop on lap, watching the Amazing Race on television. Yikes.

We’re each having our own experience

Further to the tile order. (Oct 23 post) The disastrous (kind of) tile order. It’s finally funny. I sometimes have to wait a long time before I can see the humor. You can’t know what the other person’s experience is. The one thing we can be sure of, if there is what appears to be a conflict, your experience is different than the person who is on the other side of it. In this case, I’m bewildered and she’s apparently resentful. Of something. It’s really none of my business. All I know is, when I got an email oozing with resentment to say the least, my mouth dropped open at the moment, then I burst out laughing. You gotta laugh. Certainly reinforced the sense I have that the promise I’d made myself to not take orders needs to be taken seriously.

You never know what else is going on in a persons life, do you. The way this played out, when I look back on it, I can’t but wonder if this young woman is not being greatly influenced by the people around her. On the surface her actions seem so calculated and manipulative, but if she’s surrounded, and I don’t know if any of this is so, by people who are urging her to not only show none of her original enthusiasm, but to not even follow through with her obligations, like paying her bill, well, she’s young. And that sometimes is an excuse. Not necessarily a good one, but hey. . .

What happened in the 70’s?

If I were an anthropologist I’d be invested in studying the changes to North American society since the seventies with a view to putting my right index finger on the one thing, or the short list of things, that initiated the upheaval. Like most things in life we can’t get a clear view of it until we’re standing back a bit.  Something clicked over back then and corporate heads got it that they could stop setting price points on the basis of cost of production and start pricing based on the max that the market would bear. Match that up with a message through advertising that clearly identifies the owners of the product as superior to those who haven’t purchased the now overpriced whatsit, and voila, the spiral is in motion.

But here’s what I don’t get. How have so many people been convinced to just shut up and consume. How did it come to be that corporate heads could skim millions at a shot off the top of the profit pile without a massive stockholder revolt. How did we collectively become convinced that we were less if we didn’t own more. Why do we feel reverence toward those who live simply and display restraint with regard to possessions while feeling a frantic need to accumulate.  And I’m not talking about accumulating the stuff that provides us a cushion against the hard edge of day to day living on this big rock. I mean the stuff that is just that. Stuff meant to show that we have the stuff. A bigger screen when the old one was, let’s face it, just fine. The faster, the bigger, the brighter.  I wanted a different iPod within a week of purchasing my iPod and I hardly ever use the thing. How weird is that.

We are culpable when we see the graph (and wow, if you haven’t seen it Google it now) showing the gap between the bottom 90 and the top 10 percent.  Somehow, I think it could be tied to regular folks going from doing things to watching other people doing things. And now we’ve taken it so much further by not wanting to bother doing things unless it’s being filmed so other people who aren’t doing anything but watch can watch us. Whoa, Nelly. 

When in doubt, toss it

This exercise (or exorcise) I'm currently attempting is turning out to be more than the futile shuffling of extraneous matter that I feared it might.

Stuff is making it's way out the door. I'm not rethinking the decision to 'get rid' at the Sally Ann drop off as often as I was. I am enjoying the process and the results more than ever, and I still have a long way to go.

Today, while clearing off an old desk that had long ago become, let's face it, a shelf, I came across five colourful stamps. They were roughly torn from the corners of envelopes and like fossils in a dig provided evidence of the era in which that strata of bills, lists and novel ideas came into being. I put the stamps aside and shredded or recycled the rest.

So I was left with five colourful stamps. I know I'll find a lot more when I excavate other middens. So I'll take some part of today to decide where old stamps go. My rationalization being that stamps are becoming a thing of the past. They're not to be taken lightly.

This reminds me of being in therapy. Learning to view an old mind tape, Super 8, and put it in its' place. Acknowledging the emotions attached to it, categorizing it , 'that's mine', that's not mine,' 'that's so old everyone at fault is dead, that'll teach 'em,' 'Oh,oh, that was definitely my fault but one of these days I'll wake up dead. That'll teach me.' So, I'll find a place for the stamps and burn the old journals. Hmm...

Promises, promises, promises

I’ve just had a lesson in keeping promises. This time it’s about keeping promises to myself. And about taking seriously the promises I make to myself. After a pretty serious period of contemplation I had promised myself that yes, I would like to continue making pottery but from now on I was going to make what I wanted to make, put it for sale in the shed and let the chips fall where they may. No more jumping through hoops. No more taking to heart a request for something ‘just like this only half an inch wider with one more bird in the design.’

Right on the heels of this decision the universe sent a delightful woman with a request for a series of tiles in relief depicting various elements. Rain, wind, water, fire, butterflies, fish, etc. Out went my promise to myself. I spent a lot of time making these tiles and, after 40 years of pottery making, I can only say I have never had such a disastrous final outcome. It was so bad it was funny. I was all excited about opening the kiln yesterday afternoon. The top couple of shelves were filled with big bowls that came out looking beautiful. Then I got to the tiles. First four were gorgeous. Then it was one after another of tiles split into two and three pieces, other with huge jagged cracks. It was weird. But here’s the thing.

I’d only made a few of the tiles, four I think, when the woman who had ordered them came to see them. She liked three of them but one, water, was a combination of a native symbol and mandarin character that fit together beautifully. She said, ‘oh, we don’t like that.’ WE. Hmm..  Now, If I was looking after myself at all, that would have been the end of the project. No harm, no foul. And more importantly not too much time and money invested on my part. But no, I carried on. Then when I was going to take them out of the first kiln she phoned and I invited her to come over to see them come out of the kiln. She did and her initial enthusiasm over this project had gone completely. It was a beautiful sunny day and the light coming through the translucent kiln shed roof really showed them off to full advantage. The light and shadows, the relief, it was perfect. And her reaction, completely underwhelming. It reminded me of those people who are looking to buy a house and think that they won’t get as good a deal if they show they like it. Okay.  But did I quit. Did I get it. NO . I carried on. I glazed, highlighted with oxides, and high fired the whole works. More time, more expense, and then half of them didn’t make it but the good news is, I get it. Keep your promises to yourself. I hadn’t made the decision to no longer do orders lightly. It was well thought out. It had to be taken seriously. By me. So, I promise myself to take promises to myself seriously from now on. Good grief.

Very symbolic that the tile she didn’t like, or WE didn’t like (whatever that means), was the water depiction. Like the ancients told us, you change the river forever when you throw a pebble into it.  Be the river, be the pebble. Who was the river, who threw the pebble. This is making my head hurt. (just kidding. I love it. ) 

Pay attention, pay attention.

On the other hand

Well, it turns out that people who don’t want to reveal themselves don’t want others to reveal themselves either.  Maybe that’s the popular culture position. It’s all about the shallows and the surfaces. Hmm…  That’s fine. It’s all tying together.  Wait a minute. Don’t be embarrassed for ME and my insane decision to re-explore the stream that is my consciousness.

Like any other stream it’s not the same as it was yesterday and it’s certainly not what it will be tomorrow.

This exploration of the meaning of culture comes about partly from a need to check in with myself and ask some tough questions  So, Val, what do you like to do with your time. What books do you like these days?. How ya doin’, really?  Are there things you are doing, and thinking that are simply being done, thought, because that’s the way you do, and think.

Loosing Depth

A small puddle after a brief rain. Ask any kid. How satisfying is it to splash through that. Not nearly as great as a mini-lake after a good old-fashioned downpour.

And that is why I’m having a trouble to adjusting to facebook and texting as a means of communicating with friends. It seems so shallow. Oh, it’s fun to get a message from Mike a month after our last coffee conversation, when he’s out in the boonies somewhere.  “How U doin’ sugar”. What sixty something wouldn’t grin getting a message like that from a young whipper-snapper.  Or  dropping into someone’s facebook page to see the latest pics of their kids, it’s great to see the little dears, but let’s face it. It’s not a substantive conversation. You don’t really know what’s going on in a person’s life. The conversations Marilyn & I have are life altering. I feel like I’ve gone through a personal growth spurt when we hang up the phone after an hour or so. But I need a course in understanding a text message. Generally, I just don’t get it. I went to plug the kettle in this morning because I was sure the text meant she was on the road and would be here soon. Took a couple more texts to get it that she was asking about whether or not it had snowed. Arg. I don’t generally think of myself as being that thick but when it comes to texting I’m at least two planks.

I think it might have been on the cbc  show “spark” that I heard the three most common reasons people are unfriended on Facebook. They shocked the heck out of me because they all seemed to involve actually communicating. Now there’s an ‘OMG’ 4 U.

The culture thing continued. . .

Yesterday was yester, today is too

While watching miner's emerging from their unimaginable, well, cry worthy, speechless. Anyway, the news broadcaster, when talking about the name on the cylinder that brought them to the surface,( Fenix,
right), said, 'if you are a fan of Harry Potter, you'll understand the reference.'  I'm not making this up. That's what she said. So, that speaks to our culture, right. That's current, that's culture. Or I guess that may be a 'popular culture' reference. But on the CBC news channel. It blew my mind. Or maybe it's only old farts that would 'get' a reference to the phoenix of Middle Eastern mythology. Harry Potter, eh. Wonder if I have to read all the books in order to get with the program. I remember feeling this boggled when I got back to watching TV after being away for a decade or so.

Culture, eh

Let’s start  drawing a line between culture and cultural history. I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about their ‘culture’ lately.. According to my Funk and Wagnel’s  culture is ‘the ideas, customs, and art of a particular society’. The ideas, customs, and art of the our current society is, in my experience, very different than it was a couple of decades ago. The constant threat of being conned in one way or another is new, for instance. Yes, of course, there were hucksters and snake oil salesman out and about for all time. But we didn’t have to educate ourselves to NOT open certain emails and not press ONE when you answer the phone and a recording is telling you you’ll win a trip to Lordknowswhere.  In the past you might have ended up paying way too much for a vacuum cleaner but your identity would remain your own, and your bank account, albeit lighter, wouldn’t be cleaned out completely.

So, let’s dress up once in a while in the costumes of our ancesters, all the while being acutely aware that our everyday actions, and those of the people we come in contact with, the ideas we currently express, the books we read, the movies we watch, all constitute the society we build daily. If I can hold that thought for more than a minute I’m sure I’ll be less frustrated, less disappointed, less downright indignant, with. . . what. . . LIFE maybe.  

Oh! the horror!

I was watching a tv show called ‘criminal minds’ last night. Not the first time I’ve seen it but it’s the first time I’ve had an ah ha. At some point in the show the youngest member of, (lower your inner voice), the investigative team, admitted to one of his cohorts that he was having nightmares. Throughout the show this came up. At the end the head honcho talked to the lad saying that they all experienced nightmares because of the horrific things they encountered in their work. It was all much more scientific and psycho babblicious than I’m managing to remember here but it tied the hour long drama together and was a solid ending to the show.

Here’s the thing. Of course someone who walked into  rooms where blood covered the walls and bodies were strewn about hacked to pieces would have nightmares. So why the heck would anyone watch this shit without getting paid to do so. It’s not like I have the excuse for subjecting myself to this gruesome imagery  that I’m ,( lower your inner voice again), keeping these monsters off the street.

It’s amazing what we blithely subject our precious grey matter to. OOPs that’s a sentence that needs a reno. I’ll tear it apart and repair it when I get the bathroom finished. 

HOLIDAYS. BAH HUMBUG

The things we know on one level can completely boggle us on another. I know that well-adjusted loving family units are so rare that documentaries are made of their lives. I know the Brady Bunch were fictional . I know that everyone but me isn’t really sitting down with twelve or more people who love each other every long weekend. But that doesn’t stop me from going into a ‘woe is me’ state whenever a holiday comes along.

There was a time when the family gathering was a very big part of my life. One by one the illusions dropped away and the folks that were the glue passed away. Now there is a new reality and most of the time I’m fine with that. I just experienced a few months of what I was calling contentment.  You’ll note the past tense. So, what shall I call the current phase.

Yesterday I may have called it despair. But I woke up this morning feeling like I’m back to a place I rather enjoy being. A place where I analyze, wonder, question, and evaluate. It’s not nearly as cozy as contentment, but it sure beats the hell out of indifference.  It’s been a long journey to get to the place where friends and family are people living their own distinct lives, making their own personal journeys. Hopefully, I'm able to let my 'self' go long enough to give them a hand when I can, and wish them well when there's nothing much I can do to help. 

My mother  and father were people who were living their individual lives, having their individual experiences, involved in their ridiculous, violent, discordant, messed up marriage.  (I am grinning as I write that. How sick is that.)  But finally, I can see that in the middle of all that was going on with them, they had some kids, and that was just part of the mix. We are just part of someone else’s mix when we are children. Now, as adults, there seems to be little point in running ‘if only’ tapes about some fictional childhood we might have had, ‘if only’.  If only what?

Next days seed task

One of my tricks for keeping the self-employed thing going for decades was to always know what i'm going to do first the following day. Worked for me. It was the last thing I'd do before I locked up the shop. Okay, in the morning I'll stir the glaze, oil the pugger, whatever.

I think I'm going to have to employ that technique to home renos if i'm going to keep ripping my house apart. Right now, I have no idea where to start today AND the bathroom doesn't seem like it was really THAT bad. Why did I think I had to completely demolish it.

Anything to avoid inertia. There's a woman who walks about town pushing a cart. We stop and talk often.
She was disgusted with me one day when I said something about feeling quite content at the moment. I made it clear that 'this too shall pass'. Her take, being discontent is being alive. It's the striving for more that keeps us going. NEVER tell Flora you're feeling content.     Maybe she had a point. Obviously my feeling of content did pass. I ripped my bathroom apart, didn't. Now I won't be content til it's all put back together, and let's face it. It's only a matter of time before I won't be content with the new improved version.

What's next

Realizing that I’ve spent much of my life in a panic. I think that’s why my druggy phase was so essential. I didn’t feel that panic when I was stoned. HOLD IT. I’m not saying that’s a good plan. It’s just that at that point in my life going into therapy wasn’t, or didn’t seem, an option. And all those books hadn’t been written yet. John Bradshaw and Deepak were still drunks and the Dwyer’s were venting their egos elsewhere.

Okay, the sense of panic. I can remember the first time I didn’t feel it, AND I wasn’t stoned. I was probably 45, 46 maybe. I was sitting at the wheel and suddenly stopped. Something was wrong, or at least different. Was I having a stroke? It was a little frightening to feel that something was fundamentally different with my very core. I did have the good sense to get up from the wheel and sit on another stool, not work related. I can’t remember how long I sat there before I realized what was happening.

Picture yourself having just heard or seen something that causes you to breathe in forcefully and bring your left hand to your chest. Where your hand falls, that’s where I had had a patch of panic. All my life, as far as I can remember. And that day, in my mid to late forties, it was gone.

It comes back from time to time. Until quite recently it has scared the begeesus out of me. Oh no, not this again. But lately I’ve been able to just acknowledge it and stay with it until it fades away. So, the chronic aspect has dissipated. Whew. But there is a residue. A way of being in the world that I am not finding satisfactory or even appropriate. It’s always some bloody thing, and now this. The quest for a whole new way of being.

I see a whole new kind of busy coming. Busy not franticly doing. Ha.

An Apple a day

I am understanding more and more why people, myself included, say they want an Apple and go out and buy yet another PC. But I finally did it. I think this is computer five or maybe six but this time it is an Apple and it's taking a bit of getting used to.   Getting used to things. I think a lot about that lately.

I'm on one of my 'kick it up a notch kicks'. This has nothing to do with computers, by the way. It has to do with things just staying as they are in my every day environs. And I don't mean the sofa being where the sofa has always been. I mean the screwdriver and hammer being on the top of the shoe rack by the door. I mean those things being there for two months after I finished the project that brought them into the house in the first place. There are little piles of nonsense everywhere. The place is really silting up as it does from time to time then it's TIME. Time to kick it up a notch. I'm realizing through this process, this time, that I really do love making things of wood. I especially love it if I'm using up stuff that I have lying around. There's something so satisfying about turning scraps into something functional. Case in point. The bathroom cabinet I just made for about 30 bucks has a super-dooper hairdryer holder made of a piece of drainage tile. I'll try to figure out how to import some pictures. This is getting us nowhere, really. Ah well, can't always make some earth shattering, mind blowing revelations out of what's happening. This feels pretty good actually, Om.

a moving experience

i moved from where i'd always been when i was just past 50. There have been times in the last fifteen years when it was obvious that i'd made a terrible mistake. There have been more times when i've been convinced it was the best thing i could possibly have done. So, what just prompted this reflective moment. Well, I'm sitting in macdonald's using their wifi again, and eating salty fries. Make that VERY salty fries. It occurred to me that i didn't eat fries for decades. None. Probably three decades. Now, this is the second time i've eaten fried this week. And not gourmet fries cut before your eyes and cooked in nice fresh canola oil. No. Macdonalds fries. Twice.

Here's the thing. When I lived where I lived I wouldn't have been caught dead eating fries. Only really stupid people ate fries. Here the vast majority of people think only stupid people DON"T  eat fries. When I moved from lala land I said I never wanted to live in a theme park again. Well, maybe where ever people bunch up becomes a theme park of sorts, but this 'who the hell cares' town really suits me fine for the most part.    Well, except when it comes to hiring the trades, but that's another story.

Everyone should read this book

Sometimes you come across a book that you really wish you'd read decades before. Such is, 'When the body says no' by Gabor Mate. But I feel a lot better about not getting to it decades ago now that I see it's fairly recent. But what a valuable book. Well worth the effort. It's not an easy read at times.

largely untidy

I tell myself that I watch programs about obesity and hoarding because I'm empathetic and it's a way of somehow supporting these poor souls who stand before the cameras and spill their hearts out. What a load of crap. There's definitely a little devil in me saying, 'well, at least I'm not that fat. I'm not that untidy.'


These have been my obsessive plights for as long as I can remember. When it comes to being a lousy housekeeper, I can really get into cleaning but when I've finished the designated project, I turn around and it seems I've just shifted the mess to another area. It's almost supernatural. I know when you see these perfectly uncluttered and spiffy clean households on television interview shows, for instance, that these folks cleaned up for the cameras. But let's face it, I know people, real people, who seem to live in ordered environs.

Perhaps it’s one of those identity issues. If I got this straight what would fill that space in my daily life that was, for freakin’ ever, one of the major concerns of my day. I hate to think that a slim and organized version of myself would be a lesser me, albeit less bulky. I guess there’s only one way to find out.

What I really want to 'get' , once and for all, is that really, it just doesn't matter.

Magical thinking???

I was raised in a household where at least one of us was a ghost, spirit, body-free entity, whatever. The pragmatics of this world just seem a little simple to most of us. It's not like there's anything wrong with thinking (knowing emphatically) that there is no such thing as a soul without a body. It's just an indication that the person is ignorant of that particular truth, usually through lack of having had certain experiences. I get it. But here's the thing.

If you've had a lot of perfectly natural experiences that much of the world calls supernatural, your sense of humour can seem a tad warped.

A funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. I think they call it life. I have a news flash. It's not the only life.

When I moved into the house I'm presently occupying someone was already there. I'd looked at a lot of houses, a couple were a probably a better deal than the one I bought but there was a presence there that was freakin' miserable. The woman who was in my house was pleasant enough, I thought, and sure enough we got along just fine and she left within a couple of months. OOPs.  Gotta go, will continue

You can't get there from here

I'm an ancient. I did drugs in the seventies. I wasn't alone. Here's what I want to know? Why are the people I know who are roughly my age so anxious to give the impression, if not adamantly declare, that they've never even dabbled.  The 'drugs are terrible' attitude that developed as a result of the gross over consumption and abuse of drugs is really sad. I'm quite sure I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't done drugs. And yes, I'm talking about the illicit ones. (I'm one of those 'yeah, but I've never done heroine' people. I only bring that up to admit to being a hypocrite myself).

I know there are other ways to get there from here but if your life situation doesn't make sitting in a monastery chanting for forty years  seem like a viable option, a hit of good clean acid now and then just might be a good thing. I'm just sayin'.

help!

protection, security, insurance, caution

Not a thing wrong with any of it as long as we realize it's all an illusion. Car alarms. Seemed like a good idea when they first came out, right?  But just now I was 50 feet from the front door of the library and an alarm starting blaring from a car across the road. I did glance over, saw all the headlights and taillights flashing, rolled my eyes (and generally I'm not an eye roller) and never missing a step continued on. That's when it dawned on me that it may be time to 'forget about it'...   There was a guy inside the car frantically rummaging around and I didn't immediately think 'OMG, that SOB is trying to steal that car.'   They don't work any more so why bother.

On a similar note, my next door neighbour got a dog. From puppyhood he trained the dog to bark it's fool head off at anything that moves within a two block radius. We live in the city. Somethings always moving. Trouble is he bought the dog because he's got kids. They're at that awkward age. Too old for a baby sitter but not quite old enough for a parent to feel really comfortable leaving them alone. But now, instead of having a big dog (puppies do grow up) with a big loud bark that would warn of danger, he's got a big dog that is just like a car alarm. We neighbour's don't respond by making sure the kids are okay. We cover our ears and groan.    

There was another way, another day

Yes, I'm having another fogey moment. Just ordered some stuff online, but here's the thing. There seems to be a sleaze factor everywhere these days. You fill out the this and the that and it takes for-freakin-ever, then at the last minute you find that it's going to cost you more than you bargained for for one reason or other. It's like those promos you get from Shaw Cable. The one's offering the great deal and heaven help you if you don't read the fine print at the bottom of the page that informs you it's only 2.95 for the first week or month then it's 36.95. That kind of thing. Well, my lovelies, I know it's hard to believe, but it wasn't always so. Really. And that's the rub. How does someone in their twenties know this is anything but normal business practices.

Oh, wait a minute. It is normal business practice. I'm just that out of touch. Thanks for helping me through this. I see a shaky dim light.

Really now

A fellow knocked on the door about 10 o'clock on Sunday morning. I had just been going to roll myself a smoke to go with my second coffee. Even as I write this I know that if I actually had any readers most if not all would be rolling their beadys, some over 'smoke', some over 'coffee' (was it free trade?), some both. Anywho, this guy spotted the cigarette paper, did a sneer/tisk combo, and said, 'I hope you're not going to roll a cigarette with that.'   

Now, wait a minute. This guy's at MY door. It's Sunday morning. He hopes I'm not going to roll a cigarette.

My question is, when the hell did society get to this point. Is this really appropriate behavior. Funny part is, he was there to ask me to make a new base (pottery) for his hooka. And oh, he made sure to tell me, he's a doctor, which for him somehow justified his initial rudeness.

And yeahyeah, I know, second hand smoke kills. I can't help but wonder how much healthier the sneering, iriate, uptight, bitchy, superior, judgemental, outraged and outrageous non-smoking fanatics would be if let it go. Let it go.