It was all decided before it began

The size of your prefrontal cortex, the physical space the bones in your skull allow your brain to occupy, the spacing of your eyes, the fullness of your lips, the proportionality of the sum of the parts that constitute you...Everything that makes you smart, attractive, and likable have nothing to do with anything but cells and how they combined to become you. It's not all bad, you're not a sea cucumber nor a virus, but neither was the elephant man, yet he was destined to become a conversation piece owned by Michael Jackson, who was destined to become a cautionary tale for both obsessive parents and the negligent parents of prepubescent boys.
Thousands of years into "Man," "Mankind," or the currently accepted "Humankind," and we are exactly where we were when written history began. Everyone is trying to figure out what it's all about and how there's more available to us somewhere, presumably somewhere in the sky. The sky may just be a randomly chosen place for the heavens, because it is not here nor is it "below," which is clearly a bad location for heaven. I digress, which is something I do remarkably well. So, thousands of years later and we are all still convinced that this all has something to do with us and our "eternal souls."
Enter a cell, with interesting spirals of information so eager to spread their knowledge that they duplicate themselves over and over, but each time the newest cell has a slightly different purpose than the previous one. Two becomes four and eight and millions, and as the prefrontal cortex develops, it knows. It knows that it is not the biggest and not the smallest, but it is just big enough to understand that it will always be just less than it would like, and there's nothing that can be done about it. If all goes well, the mass of cells may someday be represented in, wait for it...Heaven! "Yeah" goes the medulla oblongata, always unaware of the prefrontal cortex's genetic limitations and happy to keep the heart pumping. Somehow all of these billions of cells in all of these billions of people were created by a creative force that has a plan for each of us, a force that also saw fit to apply this tremendous power and all-seeingness to have a guy carve some rules in a stone for us to follow... If he had waited until now to lay down the law, a quad core processor would have held some really in-depth rules and really clear cut paths to heaven that wouldn't need an entire sector of society that doesn't pay taxes to interpret them for us every Sunday.
So, a mass of cells that was always going to be whatever they are sets out into the world and slowly discovers that they are limited by God. Well that's not a good plan at all, shouldn't the cells have unlimited capacity if they live correctly? Well no, because the damned prefrontal cortex was always only going to be what it is, and if your not Einstein, it's not enough. So, if you dangle your baby over a balcony for the world to see, or you limp around awkwardly because your cells performed poorly, that's always who you were going to be, and if you had been born thousands of years ago, nothing would be different. Cheers!

Kitty plays the piano

Kitty walked across the open piano keyboard. The random rhythm of the softly stroked keys was eerily musical…Plink, Pliink, Pleenk, Plink.

“Hey!”  Mrs. Dooofus exclaimed, “Kitty is playing the piano!”

Plink, Pliink, Pleenk went Kitty across the keyboard, smiling to herself as she made music.

“For the love of God, Please help me!” She randomly exclaimed.

“Son of a bitch!” Doofus called out. “Get that damn varmint off the piano!”

Plink, Pliink,Pleenk, went Kitty as she eyeballed Doofus.

“I think we should send Kitty to piano lessons,” Mrs Doofus said excitedly. “She is trying to play Mozart!”

“How about a little night music?” Kitty wondered. Plink, Pliink, Pleenk went the piano. “For the love of God, Please help me!” She said, unable to stop herself.

The next day Mrs. Doofus arranged for Kitty to take her first piano lesson. Mrs. Alotte came to Kitty’s house to give the lesson, because she feared that the crumbly, blue litter would get into the cracks between the keys if she allowed Kitty to play the piano in her own home.

When Mrs. Alotte rang the door bell, Kitty was draped peacefully over Doofus’ shoulder, napping. The bell sent Kitty into survival mode, and she quickly grabbed Doofus by the cheek bones and vaulted herself over the top of his head and down behind the sofa to safety.

“Son of a bitch!” Doofus exclaimed, dabbing the fresh blood that oozed from the puncture wounds on his cheeks. “How the hell did pioneers overlook cats when they were making fur coats?”  he wondered aloud.

Kitty poked her head around the sofa and smiled.

Doofus threw the remote at Kitty and knocked over a glass of water on the coffee table. Kitty chased her tail in a couple tight circles and rolled over, barely able to keep from laughing as the water ran across the magazines and bills lying on the coffee table.

Mrs. Allote came in and eyed the situation skeptically. She had run up quite a bar tab over the last two weeks and desperately needed the money, but teaching piano to a “savant cat” should be beneath her, it really should.

Kitty finally caught its tail and took a bite at it. “For the love of God please save me,” she screeched.

Now it was Doofus’ turn to laugh. “Stupid cat!” he yelled out.

Kitty ran over to the nick-knack case and quickly jumped up to the third shelf, where the expensive things were kept. Looking over her shoulder, she winked at Doofus and knocked an antique tea cup off onto the floor.

“Aw, son of a bitch!” Doofus called out and jumped up.

Kitty waited until Doofus was within arm’s reach before knocking one more cup off and then jumping down in the other direction.

Doofus’ slow brain debated grabbing Kitty, before realizing the cup was more important and caught it just before it crashed into the other one on the floor.

Kitty was impressed and called out “For the love of God please help me!”  “That is not what I meant to say at all,” Kitty thought.

Mrs. Alotte watched all of this and wished for a strong scotch. “So this is the talented Kitty,” she said, her pride audibly forced down her throat.

Mrs. Doofus quickly grabbed Kitty and set her on the piano.

Kitty stretched her front legs out and showed everyone her hind end.

“Cover the damn pooh hole!” Doofus yelled.

Kitty stood up and played Beethoven…Plink plink pleenk.

Mrs Alotte watched and considered what to say. She finally started to cry and turned silently toward the door , mumbling, “ I just can’t do this.”

Kitty sprang off the piano, knocking a nearby picture over on the way. “For the love of God…”  was all she could screech before Doofus sprang at her.

“I’ve had all I can take from that damn cat!" Doofus yelled.

“No you haven’t,” kitty thought as she sprinted to the far corner of the living room and hacked up a slimy fur ball, “but your closer now.”

Golden Pandas

China owes us Pandas, not the bamboo chewing cute ones but two solid gold, life-sized Pandas. Right now they are brushing aside their normal preoccupation with receiving mammoth quantities of dirt-cheap US raw materials and then adding some lead and bacteria to them before returning them to us as tainted goods that we can buy at reasonable, rolled-back prices, because they are salivating over our interest in Syria and need to wipe away some drool.
The only thing better than selling the US sub-par products is loaning the US money to keep the world safe. China wants a safe world like we all do, and they are happy to help out with some relatively low interest humanitarian loans to the world's police, aka the USA.
If the UN says no, then the answer is no. Yes it's horrible that there are still governments that use chemical weapons on their own citizens, let alone on anyone else, but we can't afford to spend hundreds of millions of China's dollars in Syria.
How is it that the world says that we should all stay out of Syria and continue to allow the government to poison its citizens? I don't know, but I do know that it's the worlds responsibility to move forward in humanitarian terms, and not simply the USA's.

What's More Important?

The sun simply went out.
"Pfffftttt" echoed through the vast emptiness.
For the next 8.3 minutes seven billion people dreamed, played, helped, harmed, and in general thought the sun was there for them. As the last of the suns warming rays of energy sped toward earth, they also sped in a billion different directions, warming and illuminating everything in their path without preference.
     On a hot day in the middle of nowhere a sweaty, red-faced human spoke ill of the sun, saying, "Good God but I hate these hot sunny days." And they truly hated the sun, many times having wished to live in Alaska or some other miserably cold place, and as they voiced their dislike of the sun now, it was not without irony, foreshadowing or some other literary device that a hint was given as to what may come their way. In an ill-fated attempt to prove the point they also said, " I would give my right testicle to be rid of this heat!" As luck would have it, they would not need to part with a testicle.
     Just a few minutes left now, and an enormous pile topped by Pythagoras and Einstein but also containing Hippocrates, Socrates and Hitler stole the last few beams of the suns energy from a much smaller pile topped by Mother Theresa and Gandhi. In fact, they were the only two in the pile. But where is Lincoln you might ask. Ah, there he his, just beneath Hitler in the big pile; the preservation of the union wasn't really a humanitarian act at all, because he would have made the small pile if his motives had been pure. But then his final moments in posterity would have been spent in the cold and lonely small pile, and at least the big pile would be warm and well illuminated until the end.
     Suddenly a mournful wail let out from the top of the big pile, " But I didn't know!"
     "You knew Einstein," said to the actual memory of Einstein and not to derogatorily malign someone who had done something stupid. "You knew..." Truman repeated, trailing off as the realization set in that he too had known.
     The emphatic punctuation of the reverberating "Pffffttt" never made it through space and its lack of substance, but Einstein and a few others in the big pile knew it must have been present when the sun went out. For mother Theresa and Gandhi, the world just suddenly went dark, perhaps mercifully.
     "It's so peaceful," Gandhi said to Mother Theresa.
     "Ohhhhh crap!" Was all that Hitler could manage.

Kitty takes a whiz

The first installment of a playful series of kids books regarding Kitty's life...?!@?

It was a bright, sunny summer morning, and Kitty had slept longer than usual. The sun had been in the sky for twelve or thirteen minutes, and both of the clock’s hands were on the five. Kitty usually woke everyone up at 3:45am, but this morning she waited until 5:25am, a time that was late enough in the morning that no one would be able to get back to sleep, though they desperately needed it.

Kitty shook herself all over and meowed annoyingly, to let everyone know it was time for her to eat. The man who controlled the food, whom Kitty liked to call Doofus or Doo-dittly-oofus if she was feeling playfully poetic, just lay there in denial, acting as if he were asleep. Kitty made her way to the faux-wood blinds hanging in the window near Doofus’ head and pulled gently on the slat that was directly in line between the morning sun and Doofus’ eyes. When the blinds were pulled away from the window, and a ray of sunlight pierced Doofus’ eyelid, Kitty paused for just a moment, enjoying how tightly Doofus squeezed his eyes shut. Just as he grew accustomed to the sun and started to relax, kitty released the blinds; their faux-wood make-up made them heavy, and they made quite a clatter as they crashed into the window.  

Doofus eyes flew open, and he looked at the clock and quickly processed the information, realizing with a sigh that there would be no more sleep for him today. Kitty smiled, enjoying watching Doofus’ mind realize how screwed he was. Kitty hopped down to the floor, and with a screech-like meow darted behind the mirror leaning against the wall.

Doofus sat up on the edge of the bed, and kitty poked her head out from behind the mirror and screeched again, “For the love of God! Someone please help me!!” she called out, over and over.

Doofus hated that particular tone and swooped down to grab Kitty just as she disappeared behind the mirror again.

“Really? You suck!” Doofus whispered, so as not disturb Mrs. Doofus, who somehow managed to sleep peacefully through it all.

“Screw you then,” Doofus said and sat back down. He was about to lay down again, when he realized that Puppy had quickly moved up and taken over his spot and was now laying on his pillow and licking her privates.

“ You suck too!” Doofus said quietly to Puppy. “I should have left you both at the humane society!” he said and chuckled, pleased that even in the throes of sleep deprivation he was able to come up with such scathing remark. Puppy rolled over, and her tail thumped the pillow rhythmically, the insult soaring by far above her.

Just then Kitty hopped up to the window and reached for the blinds, one eye on Doofus all the while.

Doofus  lashed out and grabbed kitty, only getting one front leg. The other front leg and both back legs ran in place as Kitty tried to get away, launching everything from the night stand onto the floor. Mrs. Doofus made a small noise and rolled over, quickly finding deeper sleep again.

Doofus picked up Kitty and headed to the pantry to feed her. Kitty still had half a bowl of food and began purring in anticipation of eating it.

“Son of a bitch!” Doofus exclaimed. “You already have food…why don’t you come look before you start crying about how tough you have it!”

Kitty stood patiently by her bowl and waited for additional food to be added before she began eating. Doofus was taking his sweet time, so she screeched at him again, “For the love of God, Please help me!”

Doofus added breakfast to the remnants of dinner and turned to walk away, now fully awake. Kitty hopped down and ran after him, darting between his legs and causing him to stumble into the edge of the counter top.

“Really? Now you’re not hungry?”

Kitty sprinted ahead of Doofus and ran into the bathroom. She knew he was way passed sleep now, so if he was headed this way it was to take a whiz. Kitty briefly rued the fact that she was unable to close and lock the door, and then sprang into her litter box. After making a shallow depression in a “clean” patch of litter, Kitty squatted and whizzed. She quickly filled the small depression, and the excess ran out under her rear paws. She clawed at the sides of the box, the nearby wall and a dirty shirt on the floor…anything but the actual litter that was designed specifically for the purpose of covering whiz. As Kitty wandered around in the box, some litter stuck to her urine soaked paws and they looked as if they had been dipped in crumbly blue sprinkles. When she jumped out of the litter box, the sticky litter broke free and scattered across the floor.

Sure enough, Doofus followed her into the bathroom to whiz himself. When he finished and Kitty had danced around and flung litter all about her, Doofus went to the sink to brush his teeth. Kitty quickly sprang back into the box and made a new depression in the litter, and as Doofus bent over the sink just a few feet away, Kitty put her front paws on the edge of the box and stood tall, her business-end centered over the depression. Kitty squeezed and glared at Doofus, and as the foul stench floated up around Doofus and his tooth brush, kitty began to claw at the wall, box and dirty clothes. All the while, the small mountain of dookie lay unearthed and fuming.

Doofus quickly grabbed the litter scoop and covered everything in the box, gagging slightly at both the visual and aromatic presence of both whiz and dookie.

Kitty seemed pleased and darted off toward the pantry, the few remaining pieces of litter flying off her paws as she went. With a look back at Doofus she called out annoyingly, “For the love of god, Please help me!”

All you have to do is...

In these trying times, when faith in the government and in American ingenuity are waning, the problems we face are apparently much simpler to resolve than the state of things would indicate. If politicians only had the insight that many people I know seem to have. Almost daily, I hear simple fixes for our problems that usually begin with, "All you have to do is..."

To remedy an overwhelming national debt, all you have to do is institute a flat income tax, with no loopholes; everyone pays 10% of what they make. The IRS disappears, because the taxes are taken out of paychecks and turned over to the treasury. No more charitable-contribution-deductions, which for most of us translates directly into no more charitable-contributions. An unexpected benefit might be that people have to face their true feelings regarding charitable acts, resulting in a renewed commitment to helping those who need help...

To stimulate jobs, all you have to do is drug test people on welfare. These freeloaders would lose there funding and be forced to go to work to get money for their next "fix." Easy-peasey, no more welfare-state. An unexpected benefit might be that people earning their own money wouldn't want to give it away so freely, but there is also the distinct possibility that they aren't all drug addicts, and drug testing might not eliminate the program at all and only add great expense.

To bring jobs back to America, all you have to do is stop buying products made in China. Try it, it's not possible. There is really no reason to delve any further into this one to discredit it. They really should celebrate the 4th of July and Lincoln's birthday in China. Imagine celebrating those holidays here in America without China's contributions...no napkins, plates, utensils, balls and bats or Frisbees, no invitations to send out for your bbq, no grill...what would we do without China? It seems that we're rather ungrateful to the country that's keeping us afloat. OR, maybe we could actually stop shopping at Satan's store (you know the one I mean...they're everywhere) and instead of wanting to only pay 59 cents for a thousand paper plates, we could pay a buck for a hundred made right here in America.

Any social remedy that begins with "All you have to do is...," inevitably leads down a convoluted path that requires the kind of personal sacrifice that we seem to have lost the taste for. When deciding if we can do without a product that a carefully produced ad makes apparent that everyone else has, our introspective rarely goes past step one of the flow chart... 1. Do I want it?

On a lighter note, I saw a t-shirt that said "In dog beers I've only had two."

Team Work

"American deaths in Afghanistan hits 2,000"

     What a headline to start my Sunday morning with. I guess the headline would be too long that reads "They don't want us there, we don't want to be there, people are dying for no reason, nothing has changed there...so why are we still there?"
     The troubling thing is that there is no cause to believe in, no way of looking at our presence in Afghanistan that makes you either patriotic or not. There's a team goal here that most of the team doesn't understand, and it is completely unachievable even if you do get it.
     There was a show on TV about a group of US military explosive experts that had the job of clearing a one mile section of dirt road in Afghanistan, to provide access to a bridge. After 5 days and the loss of many vehicles to explosive devices, the detonator of which was hiding out in nearby dwellings, they had only "cleared" 800 yards of road.
     It's just discouraging to be part of something that you don't believe in, yet there is nothing you can do about it. I feel a letter to my Senators and Representatives coming on...those are always so productive. Maybe if we all told them how we feel? I haven't spoken with anyone who thought we should be in Afghanistan or any other part of the Middle East, so I think the feedback they would receive would be that the people they represent and who elected them want our military to be removed from the Middle East.
     Here's a headline...
"America's presence in countries that would collectively prefer to strap on a continental sized underwear bomb and destroy the US reaches zero."

If Iran developing nuclear weapons threatens world peace, which it does, then the world needs to step up. The US...I mean the UN (including all of its members, even France) needs to protect world peace.
    

Assembling the pieces

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out"

Sometimes I didn't even know I was following a wall, and I wasn't always on the same side of it. Some things that were kept on the other side were limits and some were fears, but either way they were only partially accessible...much like like Wilson on Home Improvements, always partially obscured.

The wall allowed for "what if?" and enjoyable dreams, where denied opportunities were replaced by the delightfully sweet rewards that were showered down on imaginary greatness, as it was finally revealed. Like winning a huge powerball jackpot...almost impossible but wonderful to think about.

Once the command goes out to "tear down the wall!" and all of the unjust repression and constraints are removed, the lines of expectations and reality mix, and things are not so clear..."Wilson!"
As a kid in high school, Pink Floyd tapped into my teenage angst, and the wall was a protective barrier..."hey teacher, leave those kids alone!" As long as things were unfair, then there was always a reason why you had to protect yourself.

The other day someone very wise told me that it was great that I finally got to do something I loved...
What? I reached all around me and couldn't find even one brick from the wall...dammit, where are the self imposed limits when you need them? What do I love? Ohhhh, this was going to hurt. I was simply running from something, hoping that the where-to would resolve itself along the way.

Robert Frost makes it sound so innocent..."What was I walling in or walling out?"
Really? Can't anything just be easy. Now I have to figure out the endgame, because I have reached the point where the moves make no sense and cost a lot of money without a purpose.
Small pieces, small pieces, small pieces...
Okay, who am I?

Batteries

     It’s always something small that carries subtle enough meaning to get deep in my head and slowly start retrieving little memories and assembling them into feelings that eat at me silently. When the moment comes where I remember the subtle prodding that started it all, I’m always amazed at the complex path my mind took in recognizing the importance of that small moment. What ultimately became dreams of the west coast and a longing to be nearer my kids and the days when we were all together started with an innocent request.


     Some friends came over recently with their two young kids, like they have many times. I always dig out the video games and search for batteries to replace the ones that slowly died since the last time the kids were over and used the games. And then a very serious, earnest request came when I failed to find enough fresh batteries to power more than one controller. “You know how you can never find enough batteries? Before we come over again, can you buy a big pack of batteries?”

     That was weeks ago, and as I sat here drinking my coffee this morning that request went through my head again.

     When my kids left home, they took the need for batteries with them. There are so many things that kids keep alive with their presence….what a void their absence creates. There is a definite peace and sense of completeness that the old days are wrapped in. Life goes on and finds new direction, and everything is unknown and unfamiliar again. As thrilling as that can be, it can also be very stressful and trying.

     Sometimes it would be nice to just be the guy again who always had a box of batteries and was ridiculed while losing at video games...

“You’re so old dad.”
"Aw, come here and give me a hug you little rascal."

Peace and the Underwear Bomb

It seems that the terrorists of the world have perfected the underwear bomb, and the martyrs are lining up to step into a pair. How is it possible that the world will ever be okay when there are those who are willing to wear explosive tighty whities? Who wears exploding underwear? It seems like a self-loathing way to end it all, a throw back to the ancient belief that sex equals sin...the ultimate dichotomy; the human race can't continue without reproduction, and sexuality is the expression of sin.
It takes a twisted sort of bravery to wear doomsday briefs...the first thing wearing an underwear bomb takes is cajones, followed by the rest of your privates.
I'm so tired of people inflicting harm on others in the name of a cause that supposedly has faith in God at its center. Really? Christians, Pagans and Muslims have been slaughtering each other to no avail since before the crusades, but here we are in 2012 sporting the recently perfected underwear bomb.
I think we should cast those willing to wear an underwear bomb into a lake, and if they don't drown they are guilty and should wear an underwear bomb into the forest. The obvious question is if no innocents are killed by an underwear bomb in the forest, does it make a sound?

The Sky Lightens, Just as it Did Yesterday

If you hold your hand out in front of you at arms length and look down over the top of it, it looks as though your fingers are all cut off at the knuckle. It's more effective with one eye closed. When it looks like your fingers are gone, it's much easier to imagine how you would get by without them; life would definitely be different, but you would adapt.

When I tried to imagine retiring and not having the stable life I have had for so long, there was no way to simulate the loss of the glue that held our family together since I was 24. And for my last moments at work, I imagined that certain things would be significant and meaningful...symbolic.

I thought the final time that I passed through the turnstile, that always seemed to shake violently closed behind me as I entered work each morning, would possibly bring a tear to my eye as it shook to a stop, this last time with me on the outside; but I'm not sure it even made a noise as I left. I got in my car, drove away and didn't look back. I thought of pulling over near the freeway for one last look at the mammoth building I had worked in, but I decided that it felt like an empty gesture, and I put on my turn signal and drove down into traffic.

The whole thing just ended, and the only meaningful moments were, surprisingly, when I logged off of my computer for the last time, windows chiming as the screen went dark, and after I went through the turnstile for the last time and realized that I couldn't go back into the secured area if I wanted to.

My life looks different than I imagined it would, and until this morning I didn't really understand...I am poor. People keep asking me how retirement is, and I keep saying I'm not really retired, because my life is going to get a lot tougher. The truth is, I am retired and now able to do exactly what I want to do...grow up.

A time to reflect

The end should be sad, I think, but it's the beginning that is truly so.

The end is often expected, sometimes welcomed, while the middle is lost in survival, but the beginning is a constant, recurring reminder that more is on the way, and everything is replaceable.

In spring, the trees are all covered with blossoms and bright-green leaves; the cycle renews itself no matter the length or severity of the winter and without regard for those who didn't survive. Everything that will survive moves forward by successfully repeating the process of existence until it no longer can, at which time it will simply be replaced by something that can.

The best parts of life are the individual interpretations of events and emotions and the memories of those times, created of their own volition. No two recollections of a given moment are identical, and the way the past survives in someones mind is a collection of significant moments that define them as an individual.

The loss of the twin towers as buildings doesn't mean much to me, but the loss of what lived in so many minds, which simply disappeared that day, is heart-breaking, and the idea of simply starting the cycle over and losing forever what went before is a profoundly sad concept.

I suppose the massive beams of light penetrating the New York skyline, in tribute to the absent twin towers, are helpful to some on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, but there is a gimmicky feel to it that bothers me. I can't watch many of the tribute shows that relive the agony of the family members left behind, because it feels wrong to "peek" into the windows of their suffering. There are so many horrible and tragic stories of loss, in New York, Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's time to stop adding to them.

I was working on my deck, listening to my favorite music on a sunny morning in Washington state when the planes flew into the towers, and I fully supported doing something as a nation, not just to exact revenge but to prevent future disasters of a similar nature...a giant, symbolic putting-down of our foot. But somehow, like the giant beams of light designed to unite the survivors in New York, the heroic words "lets roll," spoken by doomed passengers who refused to let terrorists define their ending, were stolen by the government to seize a partially open door and permanently tear it from its hinges, to make way for an endless flow of U.S. citizens and resources to solve unsolvable world issues. Our president used the sentiment openly in speeches, while encouraging us to "stay the course," though the course was undefined.

Ten years later, we have a 592 million dollar embassy in Iraq, the lowest congressional approval rating ever, historic unemployment and a tired, exploited patriotism.

I'm going to have some t-shirts made to help renew America's commitment to our greatness, and they will simply say:

WWFDRD?

As I look at that, I realize that the acronym isn't so clear, and I may have to spell it out.

What Would FDR Do?

The back will have the seal of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

It's all about perspective

Fourteen trillion dollars...
I can't even imagine the enormity of that number, let alone that my country's outstanding debt is represented by that figure.

On a sweltering August morning in Georgia, the heat and humidity were both approaching triple digits, or so it seemed. Feeling close to swooning, I entered a restroom where I work. The calming blue tiles of the floor and walls made the air-conditioned restroom seem heavenly. Not two full strides into the room and the sounds of a successful bowel movement reverberated through the walls of the stalls. The smell of success was sure to be close behind...,so I did an about-face and walked back out into the jungle-like heat. I was glad to draw in a hot, humid, unsoiled breath, but I was no closer to understanding life in general...

-Each dollar bill is 5 thousandths of an inch thick.
-200 hundred of them stack up to an inch.
-2400 make a foot tall pile.
-12,672,000 make a mile, rather quickly it turns out.
-And 14,578,478,000,000 of them make the trip to the moon four and a half times, while at the same time wonderfully exhibiting the greedy excesses of mankind.

I don't like to use public restrooms, but I always carry a set of earplugs which, if employed in time, makes them bearable. Yes, it's all still going on around me, but the ear plugs give me plausible deniability. I contemplated, okay...I actually tried nose plugs too, but the truth is that my nose has a built in filtration system for larger particles which my mouth and taste buds lack, so I abandoned them.

The rather crudely arrived at point is that sometimes I just don't need to know everything that is going on around me, especially the things that I have absolutely no control over.

While free-falling towards earth I discover that instead of a simple rip-cord, my parachute has a complex puzzle that must be solved in order to deploy it. Oh, how I long for a simple rip cord...
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (angelic chorus showing enlightenment, not a panicked scream over the lack of a rip-cord)

It hits me. There is no spoon! There is no parachute and no fourteen trillion dollars. With a handshake and some understanding, it all disappears; it doesn't really exist...With no cars, Ipods, facebook, American idol and Tom Cruise (his involvement is less obvious, but the world has been going downhill since Top Gun), we go back to growing most of what we need and trading for the rest.

Sure, some people start kidnapping others, forcing them toil over their crops, and some people simply take over their neighbor's property, but only if God wants them to and indirectly speaks to them about it through their government.

Poof! I abruptly slow and start swaying side to side as my parachute deploys. Dammit! There is a parachute. A whack on the head from a large spoon forces me to look down, where earth slowly melts as I inch toward it amid tall green columns. A rapidly developing column races by on its way to the moon, nearly penetrating my parachute. I kick at the nearby column, but my foot passes right through it. IS there a spoon or not? Whack! Dammit! There is a spoon, and I don't like it anymore, but there doesn't seem to be a real column.

How do you know what is worth worrying about?
WHACK! Whack! Whackity-whack!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (angelic enlightenment chorus and a wail of frustration, both keeping time with the rhythmic thumping of the spoon)
The spoon has my full attention as I settle back to earth.

My boss exits the restroom...
"Hey, how's it going just-an-average-runner who was formerly known as Marathonman?"
"Okay I guess. Sorry, I can't shake hands...don't want to spread germs...you understand."

The gradually expanding foam plugs fill my ear canals, blocking out the outside world.
Swoosh! A near miss of the spoon as I re-enter the heavenly blue coolness of the restroom.

"And would it have been worth it, afterall"

"Would it have been worthwhile?"

There are certain truths in life and in literature that seem to always define the bottom line. Cleverly phrased axioms become so universal as to be trite, though their beginnings were pure and, as previously mentioned, cleverly phrased. "The sun also rises" is one of my favorites, narrowly edging out the lesser known "I knowed you done had it" (a southern colloquialism that implies that someone knew someone else had or indeed may still have something).
I choose to interpret the "the sun also rises" as the idea that no matter what happened previously, tomorrow represents a fresh start. This is important, because sometimes things change, and no amount of reason or rationale can make them how they used to be...what cannot be unfelt.

In crooked distance disappearing, forgotten imagined or unaware.
What satisfied so completely, neatly vanished in thin air.
In air that holds so many secrets, swallowed whole then whisked away.
In deluded haze it is I reprised, half-heartedly replayed.


At midnight last night, the deadline for my withdrawal from early retirement came and went. This morning feels like the day I committed to running my first marathon; without fear, there is the realization that there is no where to hide and the outcome will only be determined by me.

My last entry here in November ended with the idea that maybe is wasn't too late to make a difference...and so, "the sun also rises."

Allegro or Largo

In the olde days, "without a moment to spare" implied that something had happened just in the nick of time. It now means that everyone is so busy that a wound has to be potentially fatal before it gets the emergency room doctor's attention, and then, the life can be saved in the nick of time. Someone actually sat in the emergency room waiting area and died from a stabbing wound. The last words they heard?
"Sir! We all think our "emergency" is the most important one. The doctor will be with you shortly."
Sometimes it's not as blatantly obvious that the needs of humanity are blurring into the background. Sometimes the things that we don't have time for are things that really are important, maybe not life threatening but unbelievably worthwhile, given their moment. Someone recently told me they are biding their time, hating their job, until they can retire... oh wait, that was me, but as I watched a large redheaded woodpecker out the window this morning, working so hard to find what it needed to survive, I thought of how comforting and wonderful the nurses were for my Grandma after her stroke last week. Next, I thought how offensive it is to just exist when there are people who need others to help them and still others who dedicate their lives to providing this help.
I checked my investments and did a little calculating to decide when I'll be able to move on to retirement and ...and what? Waiting to die? Sometimes I have a hard time seeing the whole scope of things, and when my view involuntarily expands to include a larger part of the world around me, it's pretty scary how shallow my existence is. Perhaps there's something that can be done about it. Sometimes facing things is more painful than numbly ignoring them, but sometimes, given their moment, these things lead you to where you really want to be anyway.
I do a lot of things pretty well; I do nothing great. The people that helped Grandma feel good the last hours of her life did something great. My hat is off to them. I don't wear hats because they lead to premature male patern baldness, and I already have enough genetic strikes against me, so this is a metaphorical tipping of the hat.
As I watched Grandma bravely await whatever came next for her, and was mistaken for an angel by her, I realized that I have many genetic advantages on my side...I hope that i can live up to them. I felt very happy that Grandma knew what awaited her and welcomed it.
Having her look at me and ask me if I was there for her, because she was ready, was a life changing moment that I can't possibly explain.
There's a view of life that is so large that I can't possibly comprehend it, but Grandma did and wanted me to also. I'm such a disappointment.
Part venting, part grieving, part...ridge in a pear tree...
What? It can't all be morose.

Ready for Spring

This has been the worst winter since moving here. In recent weeks we've hit 70 a few times, but much like today, we slide back into the low 60's with full cloud coverage and probably rain. When it rains here, it isn't like "tap dancing in small puddles on the sidewalk with a tiny umbrella and a big smile" rain. There is usually a high probability that the storm will kill you through drowning, lightning strikes, tornadoes and in the worst case, your house gets carried away and kills someone else when it lands. That last one can be the best case depending upon which side of the foundation you are on.
So, this winter has me thinking negative thoughts, with only depressing things to write about, leaving me usually doing nothing. I want to write happy things, with bright, colorful descriptions and happy subjects that inspire comments like "jeepers that's swell," or "tee hee hee." I let my mind wander through "happy" mine fields, avoiding stepping on anything that might only be disguised as "happy". I've said it before and I'll say it now, Dr. Seuss was a bastard... oops "boom!"
Why did he take so many good ideas, leaving the rest of us with only sinewy leftovers that require so much picking through to get to anything good?
And then it hits me:
Young Samuel is playing in a bright green meadow, among brilliant red and yellow tulips. He wears royal blue shorts and a shirt the color of the sun. Samuel stops and marvels at the sound of the majestic eagle screeching overhead, high up in the endless blue sky. As he lays back in the lush green grass, he hears the hum of nearby bees and humming bird wings. Samuel is an outcast in his world, because while he hears so many wonderful things, the rest of the world hears nothing. People stopped listening to the things that mattered so long ago, that they gradually lost the ability to process any sounds except the answers to direct questions. Whenever Samuel would point out the sounds of nature, the response was always the same; the person would cup a hand behind their ear and snap at him "What?"
The end result is that, through some miracle that isn't clear to me yet, Samuel gets the world to hear the things that matter. I'll call it "Samuel hears a what?"

I have shared this with those closest to me, and no one seems to find it as funny as I do. I don't need them, I don't need anyone.
Maybe Samuel snaps and tackles someone, shrieking hysterically and slapping them until they can hear the wonders of nature again, which is followed by a chain reaction of shrieking and slapping that brings the world back to nature. The end.
"Good night kids, sleep tight."

Valentine's day

I have taken out a modest loan and am about to unveil the ultimate Valentine's weekend. Jewelry? A tropical vacation? No.


Cinderella the ballet, accommodations and a nice steak dinner. I was excited planning it and have been looking forward to it, but now that the day is here, I am wondering if it really matters. We could have done this any weekend..given enough advance notice to take a loan against my 401K ...but on Valentine's day, the day for lovers, maybe there was a better plan. Maybe a trip to the gulf coast was in order. There is something so natural and healthy about sunrise on the beach; not the face down, mouthful of sand, morning after kind of sunrise, but the kind of sunrise that has you walking with a pleasantly full belly, a hot cup of coffee and not even the slightest trace of a headache, hand in hand with the one you love. If there are porpoises in the surf it's even better, but just a moment without the noise and expectations of human life, surrounded by birds scurrying to evade waves and little bugs digging to evade birds always feels more personal and intimate than the most carefully planned night on the town. I guess my existing plans will do for the moment, but maybe my weekend will include the promise of a quiet sunrise walk on the beach at some point in the near future. Now that I think of it, I am the one who likes sunrise...maybe the promise of a quiet sunset walk on the beach. Ahhh, the beach......





If I ever disappear, I will be somewhere in a small cabin with a one-lane dirt road that leads to the beach and another that leads to a small town. The cabin doesn't have windows, just square openings in the walls with light curtains that stir in the breeze and shutters that are latched open to the outside walls. A sunrise run takes me through the small town, where someone rakes the dirt in a small courtyard to create the clean, simple image I need. Maybe it's in the Florida Keys, and it's Ernest Hemingway raking the sunrise sand as he spits out the last few grains from his own morning on the beach. "Hello," he says, "I like raking this sand, sand that leads to the snow-white beach with grey-green clumps of grass that hold onto the small dunes, trying to keep together the image that the world is withstanding the forces of time and nature, not washing into the pristine blue waters of the gulf and further down to fill great rifts in the earth's crust that accept the fresh sand and absorb it, only to compress and heat it, pushing it up to create new lands somewhere else," as only Hemingway could say and somehow still obey the laws of grammar. In the distance a bell rings, the sun rises and an old man catches a giant swordfish on only a handful of string and a hook. Back at the cottage it's February 14th, and I head out hand in hand for a walk on the beach with the one I love.

Pavlov was a doofus

You towel off some amniotic fluid, look around and start trying to line up the pieces of life's mysteries. Many clues fit in several different places, so placement is critical. You twist the knobs and create a jagged silvery line that sort of shows how you got where you are, and then, for those unfortunate enough to have faulty equipment, the screen shakes violently and...poof...no more map. You clean off whatever mess has replaced amniotic fluid and start over. Eventually you have several individual scenarios that, when superimposed over one another, show a plot that would have been the best case scenario. This Utopian path is, of course, completely out of reach because you only live once; you are only young once, only old once, and only once at that fork in the road that leads where you are headed. As time wears away the edges, some slightly blurred pieces fit better in the wrong spots, and whose to say they don't belong there? And it's okay, because the moment you stop looking for reverse is where the real map begins anyway.

This didn't really go where I intended. I was sitting here thinking that some things need to last a lifetime, things like the feeling of walking on a warm sidewalk on a summer evening, barefoot and shirtless. The dusty smell of desert plants on a light, warm breeze. The feeling of being completely engulfed in a hug.
This led down the path to becoming an adult, transitioning from pajamas hanging loosely over a lithe body to pajamas riding up on various "cushioned" areas. When you once couldn't eat enough to keep up with calorie needs, failing to realize it was a temporary phenomenon, you developed a love for pizza, chocolate and bear claws. Instead of stapling your stomach, your taste buds should be removed. Or, someone could follow you around and whap you on the head in the spirit of Pavlov; whenever you thought of pizza... At this point, the stream of consciousness took a slightly negative turn, and I wondered how, from toweling off the amniotic fluid to thoughts of scraping taste buds off, we all take a very different emotional journey through very similar circumstances.
I'm going to make a computerized hat with an electric hammer that responds to voice prompts. "Pizza"...whap! "Chocolate"...whap! "Celery"...whap!
"Hey!"..whap! whap! whap! hahahahaha
I hate computers.

The Cyan Letter

The less initiative or capability to succeed you have, the less you are expected to accomplish. Conversely, some may say perversely, the more you are capable of and work for, the more you are expected to carry the load for others. This system works in the NBA, and we all love Michael Jordan. This system does not work in society, but that is where we are headed. FDR had the ideal plan, and I don't know why it's not still in use. The Civilian Conservation Corps. Yes, people without jobs who were going to sit at home and collect money from the government were given jobs that improved America. They built roads and fish hatcheries and earned the money the government was giving them. Self-esteem and national pride go up, obesity and dissension go down...everyone wins.

Instead, we tax those that make more to the limit they can take, and give their money (AKA the earned income credit) to those who don't make much. Now, some people don't make much because they have limitations and that's okay; dole out some EIC. However, those lazy so-and-so's (that's old-time speak for lazy bastards) who play the system and do as little as possible, they get zip. The difficulty is distinguishing one from the other; the same difficulty applies to sifting out the blue-bloods from those who actually worked hard to accumulate their wealth and deserve to hold onto as much of it as possible. Which leads to the point...

Young Barrack of Loxley sat atop his trusty steed and surveyed the forest he presided over. At his side, atop nice steeds themselves, if somewhat inferior to Barrackin hood's, sat Little Joe Biden and Friar Hillary. They observed those that appeared to have more than their share and indiscriminately took some of their wealth and gave it to those having less. Sometimes they had to shake the indigents awake and knock the empty mad-dog bottles aside in order to give them the wealth that others had earned. One day a small crowd happened to be loitering near one of Barrack's robberies, which was disguised as altruism, and knowing the target of the robbery, the crowd was incensed and spoke loudly of their disapproval. "Get the hell away from them," they said.
"Good people," Barrack of Loxley said as smoothly and eloquently as 'good people' can be said. "I am Barrackin Hood, and I requisition from the undeserving rich and generously re-appropriate to the deserving poor," he ever so eloquently continued.

"But she worked 18 hours a day for 20 years to make her business successful before selling it and retiring with her well deserved wealth," the angry mob called out in a surprisingly unified and chorus-like voice.

"Good people..."
"Save it! We know you only read everything from the teleprompter!"
"Well what the hell, I'm on the road all the time and have lots of issues to stay on top of," Barrackin Hood confessed in a Howard Dean like display of emotion the bordered on hysteria.
"You should not take money from people who give their all to earn it!"
"But how do I tell who's who?"
Silence fell over the usually unruly and raucous , though illegally assembled crowd.

"Roll up their sleeves," a small voice arose from the crowd.
"What could that possibly prove?"
"If they have pale skin and visible blue veins, than they are blue bloods who were given their wealth and deserve to have it re-appropriated under your existing system."
"Hmmmmmmmm." Young Barrack wondered aloud, at a rare loss for words as the single h followed by many m's streamed across the teleprompter.
"If the skin is weathered and scarred, and the muscles developed from scratching out an existence overshadow the blueness of the veins hidden beneath them, then leave them alone."
"Hmmmmmmm," he continued as he subtly reached out and tapped the edge of the monitor before him.
"But, am I to roll up their sleeves every time I see them?"
"No, once their orientation is determined, you could make the blue bloods sew a blue B onto their shirts so they are easily identified."
"I like it." And with the sure and swift judgement that modern electronics allowed him, Barrackin Hood decreed that the "Cyan rule" be passed into law, and all those displaying blue b's be robbed blind.
Some of the indigents awoke briefly and mumbled sounds of approval before vomiting upon themselves and rolling over in the gutter, assured that they would continue to be taken care of.

The Buzzards are Circling

Some days you wake up, look up at the simple, honest blue of the sky, and it all makes sense. The thousands of years that have passed with us eager to wipe each other out over differences in geographic locations, religious beliefs, skin color, or a multitude of entirely valid genocidal motivations all seem insignificant. Yes, the election in Iraq seems fishy, but other than a handful of protesters dying for their cause, is it really any different than what we had during the Bush-Gore fiasco? Forget about em...they've been there a lot longer than we've been here, and we have plenty of areas in our country where worse things happen daily.

Who cares? I have a thousand moths on my porch that aren't even aware that the human world is falling apart. In fact, other than human-erosion, the world is doing pretty well: volcanoes and earthquakes equalize the internal pressure, droughts come and go, regulating populations, the mountains grow and slowly wash back into the sea, squirrels and rabbits whistle as they help with Cinderella's gown...remove man-made strife and the earth is a well oiled machine. It's no wonder it's faltering; we keep taking all of its oil.

Anyway, back to it all making sense. We're supposed to borrow eggs or a cup of sugar from each other when we run short while baking apple pie; we're supposed to help out the broken down car on the freeway, or stop texting long enough to wave to them as we drive by, thankful that it's not us. We're supposed to breath the morning air, look up at the simple beauty of the blue sky and be glad that we're here.

The trouble is that I've seen the show where the machine cuts down a tree and pulls the whole thing through a series of grinding and cutting tools to remove all the limbs and bark before cutting it into precise lengths to be made into lumber. We need the lumber to build more buildings, and we need really cool machines to make it happen faster, because we are billions strong now and show no signs of slowing down.

North Korea wants to wipe us off the map; we've wiped people off the map...it all comes down to maps and Billy Joel lyrics, "We will all go down together ..."

The dog is barking; someone probably wants to borrow something. Shhhhhh, they'll go away; they always do.