Tag Archives: culture
What I love and take for granted in my community
In the last two weeks, I have conversed with an international consortium of dance enthusiasts.
Our conversations took place in a dance studio in the town of Madison, the county of Madison, the state of Alabama, the United States of America, Earth.
Countries of origin included the Philippines, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Mexico and the United States, of the ones specifically stated; heritage included unspecified European, African and Southeast Asian countries.
In some conversations, I was the “American” toward whom the comparison was made about ethnic/national meal preparation — I agreed that some cultures were known for watering down or making bland the spicy foods of other cultures, such that a Mexican or Italian restaurant in the U.S. was not “authentic”.
[this blog entry was interrupted so my wife and I could watch an episode of “SNAPPED” about the murder of a high school mate of mine, Jeffrey Freeman, one of the funniest guys I knew, an impersonator who was great at portraying Carnac the Magnificent, both Jeffrey and Johnny an inspiration for my humour then and now — my thought trail has been shifted as a result]
What I heard from every one of the people with whom I talked was their love for the variety of foods available from countries all over the world here in the U.S. — if there wasn’t a restaurant serving their favourite dishes, there was almost always a grocery store that carried the spices, fruits and vegetables of their home country with which they could cook their family secret recipes and share with friends/family.
Millions of people travel around the world, settling down in new places, rediscovering themselves and their subcultures.
In fact, it’s the story of the billions of us who’ve lived and wandered this planet to make a better life for ourselves.
I have learned a lot about myself in preparation for a dance showcase — rediscovering the joy of living with people of many different backgrounds just as important.
How people outside the state of Alabama see the people inside the state is a perception I don’t control. What I see is the thriving community around the Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal responsible for moon landings and solar system exploration, with all the ancillary occupations that give the community’s residents a healthy lifestyle.
I have taken my fulfilling life in Huntsville for granted. For that alone, I am thankful this beautiful autumn day, leaves falling on the driveway, and chipmunks, their cheeks filled with winter food, hopping across the flagstones surrounding the backyard pond.
Torn between two lovers, feeling like you can rely on the old man’s money
There’s always the misconception that the Mafia is either fake or real.
So we turn to a band’s name for identification purposes:
Charles Pettigrew died of cancer on 6 April 2001, at the age of 37.
[Eddie] Chacon is currently residing in Los Angeles and fronting the electronic duo, The Polyamorous Affair, with Sissy Sainte-Marie. In 2009, The Polyamorous Affair released their album, Bolshevik Disco.
Call forth the phrase, “Dagnabbit rabbit!”
Unobtanium beer is pulling a sentence out of a dream: “I want a case of pickled anger.”
Why? Because of a new storyline, a new personality that says, “Hey, you know what? I don’t need nobody to speak for me. You know why? Cause I own my own business. I’m what they call connected, like in ‘the mob,’ know what I’m sayin’? I’m puttin’ on a show wit’ my girlfriend ’cause that’s just what I wanna do, show her off, tellin’ you fellas that she’s off-limits. You wanna touch the merchandise? It ain’t for sale. She’s spoken for. Yeah, she says she polyamorous but you get close to her, you burn. You know what I’m sayin’. I don’t need to spell it out in frank’n’beans or nothin’, do I, Lee?”
But then, the dirigible crashed into the Alps, spilling Earhart and Lindbergh onto the icy peaks.
The Mad Hatter spilled his tea.
To get out of the oxygen-thin heights, the daredevil flyers decided to put on a dance, mixing the cream components of melted white caps into the overflowing chocolate rivers flooding the Bavarian valleys, creating three new flavours that the people had wished for but never seen — dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate — not to mention Bavarian cream cheese, creamier and cheesier than ovarian, Ovaltine or oval saltines.
Yeah, it’s a crazy night for mixed-up storylines, seeing as the dance rehearsals went well, as intended, throwing the scent off the trail and the hound dogs off their common sense, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle waiting for Conan the Barbarian and Conan O’Brien to share their opinions as constructive criticism disguised as front page news stories, as, as, as, pretending that Jay Leno has any intention to call up Rich Little or Benny Hill to serve a substitute role for Jimmy Fallon who wishes Phyllis Diller was not related to Matt Dillon, Marshall Dillon, dill pickles or pickled relish.
Shaking the pepper shaker out of the Shaker’s household of a head-hold on the no holds-barred barista barristers barred windows, Windows 8.1 claimed ownership of the UI of iOS 7 which laid claims on the gold rush of iPhone sales diverting our attention in the divertimento window of opportunity in opportune opera tunes out of tune with the times listed in the back section of the New York Times hidden behind paywalls that are walled-in nonwalls with narwhals and ne’er-do-wells in wishing wells and cockle shells.
Love is a four-letter word.
Word is a four-letter love.
Letters are words of love for is is is an a.
The typewriter rhythms of grandmothers with multiple mobile phones and boyfriends saying “meow meow meow” like dorks worried they’ll be forgotten when they leave the day before their birthday — what else is of importance when conversations become fermented in the likelihood that a man’s wife is disinclined to dance the blues when she has a costume to finish for her dancing husband, the mannequin, when drunk Jenga games turn skyscrapers into pick-up sticks?
Seduction is not the answer.
The madness of one’s thoughts rules all.
When one dives into the abyss, what is money or love or love of money?
The clock watches the watcher who counts the hours before the next dance practice, wondering if spaghetti dinners are more important than uninvited guests entering the bed chamber.
But a tired perspirer whose partners don’t make him a manwhore make the whole man slimmer, if not younger.
The tick-tock-tap of the plastic keys play songs that drummers and lead singers, even two-to-three weeks’ preggers, can feel the lead beat in one’s core bouncing into the floor rather than bouncing back on one’s heels.
Type, type, type, tap, tap, tap, the music paces itself out of nothingness, into existence and back into the background noise of a universe in flux.
Time lost to hair dye and leather straps, slapped wrists and insanity at the end of madness one step away from workplace report revisions and shoe holes.
Waves in oceans turning water molecules and colloidal suspension into conflict, resolution, drama, comedy and tragedy as atomic energy is recycled, the medium medium tasting like one’s breath fresh with the cigarette taste of a lover’s lips or the scent of bath gel.
The substitute role of a trumpet player or the renewed role of a professional’s professional plays into one’s hands on the keyboard of life.
Microcosmic cosmic revelations.
Word.
The fountain pen coin in the penny loafer on the other foot
Two news articles to prime the pump for future blog entries:
The difference between fun and work, if there is any
In this moment, looking at the internal vocabulary, searching for new ways to express myself without resorting to a thesaurus, listening to the replay of conversations, realising how many details I’ve forgotten that make stories more real, feeling my face and neck break out with small infected pores that are commonly called acne…
“Learning never ends.” [from a 15-cent stamp on an envelope dated 15 Sep 1980 sent from my father to his mother containing the following poem]
Lineage [for Evelyn]
Only moments agoOur only son
Gave his oath
To his country
As his grandfather
Did fifty-one years ago
As his father
Did twenty-six years ago next month
Ah, tears well in my eyes
A lump is in my throat
For him, for we three
Grandfather, father, son
For the why we each serve our country
For patriotism, love of country
For ____ why —-?
— RLH 9/15/80
A line whispered into my ear from a dance partner. “I flew to New York for the weekend. I walked 10 miles a day, wearing poor shoes for walking the first day, and my flats for the second day. This dancing tonight, bending my knees…phew! it’s killing me!”
Multiple storylines begging to be continued — the Martian tales, the Mad Hatter chronicles, the Wondering Wanderer, the Wandering Wondering, the thinker, the doer, the tinkerer, the inventor, the investor, the Kickstarter campaign…
If I don’t write them down, they don’t get lost, they simply never exist except in the vast universe of my imagination which entertains me for as long as I live with this stimuli-driven central nervous system of mine.
I finalised the West Coast Swing routine with Abi today — enough so that we can play with the routine and keep it in time with the music — that in itself would be celebration enough for a lifetime.
But a second routine, with Jenn, has not been finalised less than two days before our premiere performance on Saturday, with scant time to polish our moves.
There is much I have learned in the past two years of dance lessons with my wife. In our 27-plus years of marriage and 40 years of knowing each other we have aged together, aligning our storylines so that one of us cannot tell the tale of our lives without including the other.
In the past few months of dance lessons with Jenn and Abi, the learning has changed pace.
I could never have imagined that I would once again know a person whose physicality was without bounds, but that tangent will wait until another day…soon.
Tonight, as I prep my thoughts for trippy dreams, I look at the faces of my two dance partners and see their futures written in features that change with aging skin and graying hair.
When I danced with one, our connection running from her big toe through her foot, calf, thigh, ribs, shoulder, upper arm, forearm, wrist, and fingers, down through my fingers all the way to the floor, I felt the warmth of a loving mother, a powerful lover and an equal dance partner that, although we have danced untold times, I had never felt deep within myself like I did today, willing to share with my wife that I took on Abi as a new lover today but in a way that surpasses sex, in the way that Monica and I, who never kissed, could say we were lovers the night we melded our thought patterns and saw how our differences made us one an evening in Knoxville during the early 1980s. I felt Abi simultaneously as a child, a young adult, a middle-aged mother and an elderly grandmother fighting for every last breath before she dies.
Jenn, with whom how many dance partners can easily brag how much better they dance than I, our connection is like…being a kid all over again for the very first time.
I want to have fun all the time — Jenn is more willing to let me just be crazy with my dance moves when I shouldn’t be than Abi — I do them both a disservice by not taking our dance practice more seriously.
I know the two of them are not the same even if our goals for this week are.
Jenn and I are not lovers on the dance floor and I cannot predict a future where we will or will not be. I have not set a goal for such an event.
Instead, it is within the pure bubble of unadulterated fun that I want to place the memorised routine with Jenn.
She was willing to come to the studio tonight, tired after a trip out-of-town, to nail down our moves but I was outside myself with mirth, unable to concentrate but wanting to make her visit not be a total waste.
When I held Jenn in my arms, I felt an older woman and saw gray streaks in her hair — I heard the voice of her husband, Gilley, speaking through her, wondering if I also heard her father and mother, maybe even her grandparents find their way to me through her.
I used to keep these observations to myself, thinking I was crazy, sensing different personalities in the sight, sound and touch of other people, wondering how much mass media representations of ghost stories, ESP and other paranormal phenomena were imprinted in my thoughts as fuzzy labels upon my irrationally-explainable emotional states rather than scientifically-testable experiences.
But I remember I am a storyteller, a tall tale spinner, exaggeration my best feature rather than my facial profile or wishful hunk of a body.
Jenn sensed a mouse in me when we first started dancing, my feeling intimidated by the laughter welling up from inside my thoughts at the silliness I felt, unable to justify why I was standing with my childlike friend trying to take ourselves seriously as adults with little time for fun before our showcase routine in two days.
Abi demands that I first treat myself as a strong dance leader seriously, putting fun second after I’ve shown my dance partner, the follower, that she is the only connection I feel with the universe, the rhythm of the dance music our source of energy. Her demands I have given into reluctantly but willingly like a latent masochist, a glutton for punishment.
Jenn asks that I take command of the dance floor.
Every leader and follower is different.
Tonight, the older woman in Jenn needed her strong, lifelong male partner to hold her up and I failed to match that need.
My distraction was the leftover euphoria of discovering what a West Coast Swing connection with Abi truly means.
The world will not end because I was unable to settle myself down and concentrate on Jenn in a dance studio dominated by my wife, Abi, Chris and his dance partner.
Jenn and I have another hour, maybe two, three at the most, before we dance our Lindy Hop routine together.
For two years I wondered what dancing with Jenn would be like, seeing how well she matched up with other guys, some better skilled than I and some less skilled.
I have learned that Jenn’s strengths come from her deep knowledge of physical skills, including track-and-field events for which she spent long hours training.
I can neither compete against her dance partners nor against her years of physical training, or more recently, her hours of physical therapy recovering from car smashups.
I will dance with Jenn and Abi again after this weekend’s showcase. Of that I am certain.
What I have before me, in the next 40-plus hours and the next 40-plus years, is a challenge to discover what this 51-year old body can do as it gets older that it never learned to do at a younger age over many days, weeks and months of arduous practice, both for the sake of my wife and for the sake of any dance partner I walk out onto the floor.
The challenge for me with Abi is how fast can I learn from her the years of training she’s had with the best dancing instructors on this planet.
The challenge for me with Jenn is how fast can I learn from her the years of the aforesaid physical training, minus the pain and physical rehabilitation, if I can help it, and training she’s had with some of the best dancing instructors on this planet, including Abi.
The challenge for me with my wife is how patient I can be to help her improve her physical stamina to be just as much fun as Abi, Jenn or any number of dance partners that I encounter in this adventure that started what seems like yesterday.
How can I convince myself that focusing my attention on the art of dance moves is fun, rather than mundane work that I abhor in any endeavour?
What is life without challenges?
Text exchange of the day
(1 of 4) U move to the city to find work. Do you A) pay more than you can afford for your own apartment or or B) live in an apartment in the slums?
A
In the capital of Manila, one third of the 12 million residents live in the slums because they can’t afford to live elsewhere. Text 2 for question 2
2
(2 of 4) Ur boss is threatening to cut your wages, do u A) stay quiet & lose wages u can’t afford to lose or B)risk retaliation & join a local union to protest?
A
Now that you’re making less, you may not be able to afford food, becoming part of the 40% of Filipinos affected by hunger. Text 3 for question 3
3
(3 of 4) You’re making minimum wage & can’t cover all your expenses. Do you A) cut back on spending or B) take on a second job & work more hours?
B
In the Philippines, poor workers make less than half of what they need to live, forcing over 23% to resort to working in sweatshops. Text 4 for final question 4
4
(4 of 4) U worked 22 hrs & ur boss wants u to take a drug to stay awake. Do u A)take the drug & risk side effects or B) not take the drug but risk losing ur job
A
Workers are often offered drugs to stay awake, some even die of exhaustion. U made 4 difficult choices women make daily. U can help! Text FINISH to find out how
FINISH
DoSomething & Kiva.org have $$ to give to 25K real women in need! Share this experience w 6 friends & you get to select who gets the $! Txt your friend’s #s
Are you a Forrest Gump or a Walter Mitty?
Fellow soulful touchy-feely opposite friend,
The calendar is a benign measuring tool yet my anthropomorphising self thinks the countdown clock taunts me today:
13,378 days to go!
Dividing the illusion of self into seven-plus billion, using the illusion’s self-delusion as a form of divining rod, one allows oneself to dissolve in order to smell the wind.
Messages pulse through society like heartbeats, pumping health and filth at regular intervals, clogging the arteries of public opinions, creating cesspools, cancers, festering sores full of the disenfranchised losing or gaining energy, affecting the whole.
All for the sole entertainment of one person.
As the message goes, “As it is, as it should be.”
Street talk says a film starring the Big O herself was to blame for the latest “when all you have is a hammerlock, the only solution is gunpowder” message spoken by a costar, paraphrased, “for every one they kill, we kill two,” despite its negative connotation, or because of it, a cat o’ nine tails whipping the shipyards like convicts stuck in a bad performance of Les Miserables, their malice clear as day in their bloodshot eyes.
Every positive mental attitude teacher knows that you never include “not” or other negative subtext when encouraging or enlightening one’s students to improve their world image, for the “not” becomes a “Yes I can” in the thought patterns of the misaligned, maligned malcontents, the chaff wanting to be eaten at the same table as the wheat.
Yet, the world doesn’t go away.
In seven-plus billion is every one of us — the colours of the rainbow, the blind, the deaf, the happy, the sad, the brights, the conscienceless, the healers and the social arterial cloggers.
A subset of the superset of states of energy desires to be one with history, to walk amongst the cultural giants, to be what they feel they cannot be for reasons best left for them to explain, if they have a clue.
Humour is the key that unlocks the door to society’s medicine cabinet, which is fronted by a mirror we choose what to see of ourselves in the reflection looking back at us, left eye to reversed left eye, right eye to reversed right eye, unlike the reflection of ourselves we see in others, left eye to right eye, right eye to left eye, assuming the nominal operation of the symmetrical binary division of our body parts.
My thoughts for the day.
Bai read the text from Lee and wondered what he was trying to tell her. Had she not picked the song for him to read the title as straightforward an approach as she knew how, leaving room for playful teasing?: “Would I Lie To You?”
Bai basked in the glow of the previous weekend’s conference on self-improvement where she had served as the “touchy-feely” expert, providing free hugs and handshakes of love and encouragement for the attendees.
She knew how to handle the negative inner voice that wanted to dominate her thoughts sometimes — as a successful self-employed person, she had long ago put her internal and externalised views of the world into a positive light.
Bai had developed a love for others that allowed her to reach out without compromising herself in order to express to those around her that she loved them unconditionally, releasing the instantaneous fears of meeting strangers that made many others apprehensive in a crowd.
She only had a few hours with Lee to refine their dance routine for the upcoming showcase in two days.
But it was not just the dance routine that she wanted to work on. She wanted to make Lee a more open person, helping him forgive the images of important people in his thoughts, release the negative inner messages that twisted into passive-aggressive attitudes serving as an unnecessary shield between himself and the people around him who wanted his full love and attention undivided by inner doubts fed by fear of rejection.
Was it too much to ask of him?
Her life was also in turmoil but she was getting a good grip on her emotions, balancing the need to let her boyfriend go without losing him against her need for a steadying male presence in her life, sometimes served mainly by one person but more often served by a mix of personalities across several men — brother, father, confidante, lover, DJ competitor, dance partner — and sometimes served by the socially-defined male-like personality in women that varied by subculture.
She knew the only way to bring happiness into her life was to give happiness freely. Not everyone accepts gifts and that’s okay. She couldn’t control their behaviour, giving out hope and love in equal quality, the quantities depending on how much she felt the other person needed her — for one person, a smile; for another, a hug with no time limit.
She debated responding to Lee’s text. Instead, she was going to talk with him and ask him to open himself up to what he really wanted out of life besides dance lessons. Text messages were great when you couldn’t be with someone but not nearly as fulfilling as real conversation.
Better worst than no wurst verse at all
Why silence is often the best conversation a friend can offer
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/09/16/speech-conversation-debate-engagement-communication/:
Some thoughts on each. 1. As a general concept, freedom of speech includes the right to decide how and when to speak, and to whom.2. This freedom of speech also includes the right to choose not to speak, and not to speak to whomever, including to you.3. No one is obliged to have a conversation with you.4. If they are having a conversation with you, they are not obliged to give you the conversation you wanted or expected to have.5. If you challenge someone to a “debate,” they are not obliged to have a debate with you.6. If they do not debate you, this does not mean you win. You can’t win a debate the other party has not agreed to.7. Not all engagement is useful or fruitful, either for the participants or for the observers. Sometimes the best course of action is not to engage.8. If people do not engage you, it is not necessarily because they are afraid to engage you. Maybe they don’t have the time, or interest. Maybe they think you’re too ignorant to engage, either on the specific topic or in matters of rhetoric. Maybe they don’t want to either implicity or explicitly let you share in their credibility. Maybe they think you’re an asshole, and want nothing to do with you. Maybe it’s combination of some or all of the above. They may or may not tell you why.9. Communication is not always confrontation. Confrontation is not always communication. If you see communication as an opportunity to fight, you may find yourself without opponents. No, this doesn’t mean you “win,” either.10. People will communicate as they will. Outside of your own spaces, you have no power to control or compel them. Attempts to dictate the terms of their communication may be ignored. Attempts to demand they comply to your terms for communication will make you look like a child, stamping a foot.That should be enough for a start.
Blogging in bright sunlight
Yesterday: an auspicious beginning, the novel.
I exist in a thought bubble that illusion sometimes make [semi]permeable.
For decades now, as my acceptance of external cues that we call education has given me an internal workshop of sharpened tools, I’ve tried to figure out why I feel like I’m numb all the time, like there’s a pillowed barrier between me and whatever is not-me.
I don’t know how many people have told me, “Don’t you know what [he/she/they] said they think about you?”
I don’t feel special.
I feel unformed, my connectors created for a different set of receptors in my daily interactions.
Must I externalise my internal universe to show that I am and am not any different than every other person who lives solely as an imaginary being?
I am neither sane nor insane, learning long ago that sanity is a matter of conviction about your illusions/beliefs in relation to the generally acceptable set of illusions/beliefs professed by the people in your proximity.
I look straight ahead and see an image that makes perfect sense to me, a computer graphical representation of electromagnetic transformation in process that we call the change in the state of bits on a hard drive better known as a set of files being copied:
At the same time, images from yesterday flicker and change — Canada geese flying overhead, a turkey vulture circling a mobile phone tower, duck feathers floating on the surface of a pond inside which carp/koi drift, waiting for food,
a real spider web next to a roped spider web, temporarily capturing the captured image of an acquaintance…
![20130915_120426[1]](https://treetrunkproductions.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130915_1204261.jpg)
Is it insane to see a few pieces of rope tied together and imagine a spider web?
Is it crazy to move houses built in the 1800s into an enclave in order to preserve the appearance of a way of life that may or may not have existed the way we imagine?
“If image management is all you’ve got going for yourself, your only set of skills a desire to control your image by manipulating the [re]actions of people around you, are you any less out-of-your-league than a moth, its image well-camouflaged against a tree that about to be consumed in a large wildfire?” — that question bothered me every day I worked as a midlevel manager at a global corporation where I overheard employees below me in the corporate hierarchy complain about forces working against them (including conspiracies about the “Black Mafia” and the “Church of Christ clique” that I found little in the way of evidence to support), my going on to meetings with fellow managers about whom the employees had specifically complained and wondering why people complain about others — saying people in upper management only spend time managing their image instead of doing real work — rather than act in support of their personal self-respect and positive self-image that is reflected in their “real work,” which includes their voiced thoughts and opinions.
Is that last paragraph nonsensical?
I can only do what I can do, having not done a lot of things I haven’t done.
These set of thoughts in this blog represent my celebration of freedom, willing to write about behaviours that I would and wouldn’t do because the universe is much grander than our subcultural expectations — in the seven-plus billion of us, sanity is as much crazy as the illusion of the self.
For instance, should an atheist who believes we are truly only sets of states of energy in temporary confluence care at all about the concept of caring, saying that what is socially taboo, such as rape, incest, bestiality and paedophilia, is as perfectly normal as a comet indiscriminately destroying every ecosystem on Earth, all social concepts an illusion of proximity rather than immutable laws of the universe?
Yesterday, I showed up at a local civic center to join a group of people, some whose faces looked familiar but whose personal lives I knew nothing about, to jump around, somewhat in unison, in order for a person (or persons) to assemble a collection of motions captured in bits and bytes into a coherent story told in dance and music — a person’s “vision” turned into what our culture (and most subcultures) would call a sane, socially-acceptable reality.
No one is going to look at the resulting music video and accuse the director of witchcraft.
Should they?
treetrunkdings 