Tag Archives: family

The beauty of [inebriated? drunk?] confessions

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

In this state I’m in, at 12:54 a.m. on the 1st of January 2014, when what I know is what I know, but what I feel, what I truly believe, is the primary condition with which I express myself is the only reason I’m here in any way, whether writing, or drawing, or animating, is the raison d’être, the very core, the dried grape of the lightness of being that brings me here rather into the arms of my wife…

Does it make sense?

Damnation!  I’m hurting…and it’s not the hearing aids I wear while listening to the Pandora bluegrass channel centered on my favorite artist, Claire Lynch, with whom I want to spend three weeks al0ne with the two of us making whatever music we can in the moments between her tour life and my home life…

No, it’s the thought of another man’s [common law] wife with whom I want to spend time but can’t, knowing she has another set of conditions I don’t know about.

It’s more than that.

It’s a bearded fellow who has recently encouraged us guys to take on teenage brides…

It’s a dance floor of possibilities that I can’t shake out of my thoughts on a night of drinking Straight to Ale brew.

It’s meeting Eric and Judy of Moondust Jazz Band, friends of a friend named Jennifer Nye, a/k/a Guin, common law husband of Jerry Gilley, my new brother, that sets a line in the sand of the dunes of life.

Drifting…

I know what I want.

I know what I can’t get — children with Monica Guinn Prewitt, who read a poem I wrote her to her children with Dean, planting a formative years’ thought pattern within Christy, the child I didn’t have with my dear, sweet friend from forever, Monica, who once told me not to be confused, who lives with Dean in Singapore, last I knew, who has enjoyed a successful business career, much like Monica’s father at Eastman before he died in a Porsche 911 with a friend of his a few year ago…

Can you buy love?

My wife bought me hearing aids, which were fitted and software-adjusted for my ear earlier today.

My wife and I danced from 8:30 p.m. until after midnight at the warehouse where brewed hops in steel containers and wooden barrels produced Straight t0 Ale beers, where we ran into old friends Brandon and Caroline Dewberry whose son, like me, achieved his Eagle Scout rank.

How typical is my path through life, from Eagle Scout to now, many a diversion worth a written tale or two?

Je ne sais pas.

I hurt for a late night dance with Abi.

I ache for an unencumbered dance with Jenn, my new friend from forever.

I need to memorise chants with my new friend, Jenn’s [common law] husband, her partner, Jerry.

How much more do I need to delve into the difference, the commonalities, between the rational and the religious, the Christian/Buddhist/Hindu/Islamic/etc. and the Bright approach to the connection between sets of states of energy in the known universe?

At 1:14 a.m., I want to lay my head on a pillow without the world spinning, without the influence of the passage of fermented products from my stomach into my bloodstream making me naturally dizzy on New Year’s Eve.

I don’t always get what I want.

Oh well.

Time to say goodnight to the new sensations of the sound of my fingers clicking plastic keys on a laptop computer keyb0ard and give attention to a living being, my wife, if not our two Cornish Rex cats, wishing it was, instead, a last dance with Jenn or Abi.

Such is life.

We get some approximation of what we think we want.

I want two children to call my own.

How shall I accomplish that?

Wuth my fracking buddy, Neal and his daughter, Melissa?

If not her, then whom?

Shall I ask myself in the later light of day of this first calendral tick in 2014 not to read what I wrote when my inhibitions were questionably lowered?

Questions don’t always need answered.

When a man loves a woman’s business sense

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

A coworker looked at satellite imagery of neighbourhoods while shopping for a new house to buy, asking, “What are all those black dots in people’s backyards?”

Answer: trampolines.

The coworker didn’t believe that so many people would have trampolines, wanting, to him, a more logical explanation.

Sinkholes?  Satellite imagery glitches? Censored imagery? Black holes?  Wormholes?  Round roofs of backyard BBQ pit/hot tub enclosures?

Such is the quest of the domesticated animal known as Homo sapiens.

Billions of them migrating on a daily basis from their nests to their assigned hunting/gathering locations.

Seeking a successful path from birth [to procreation] to death, rarely aware that their deaths are automatically guaranteed to be successful.

In between two data points, the path is ours to choose.

We can, at any age, imagine what our futures will be — a spinster marrying a successful businessman, for instance.

We create film-length comitragedies that resemble nothing more than an SNL show loosely based on a Thurber short story:

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
by James Thurber 

“WE’RE going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!” . . .

“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”

“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”


Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes while I’m having my hair done,” she said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been all through that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young man any longer.” He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. “Pick it up, brother!” snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . “It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?” said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. “Hello, Mitty,” he said. `’We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.

In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.” “I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty. “Didn’t know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.” “You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new anesthetizer is giving away!” shouted an intern. “There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. “Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

“Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. “Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. “Gee. Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked “Exit Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of the car. “Hey, better leave the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged.

They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to town–he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Tooth paste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its- name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.

. . . “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” ho said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable cur!” . . .

“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. “He said ‘Puppy biscuit,'” she said to her companion. “That man said ‘Puppy biscuit’ to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I want some biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?” The greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on the box,” said Walter Mitty.

His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes’ Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel first, she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

. . . “The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up at him through tousled hair. “Get him to bed,” he said wearily, “with the others. I’ll fly alone.” “But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty carelessly. ‘The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty kilometers through hell, sir,” said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Aupres de Ma Blonde.” He turned and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said. . . .

Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” ‘I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,” she said.

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.” She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the handkerchief,” said Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

But generalising for the sake of pushing one’s (my) reality from oneself (myself) in order to prevent facing one’s (my) death…hmm…

What shall I accomplish in the next 13277 days?

Recently, my wife admitted that all along she knew she had wanted no children while I had wanted two children.  Which might mean she had wanted to bear no children for me while I might say the same, having never forced her to have unprotected sexual intercourse.

Friday night, we attended a local show called the Epic Comedy Hour, staying to watch the first four or five comedians, ranked in order from worst to best use of comedy timing and raunchiness.

My wife did not like the use of profanity for the sake of being profane and did not like the drug use references.  She thought it was simply because she’s a girl, surmising that purely rude, insulting/racist humour (i.e., no intelligence behind the scatological/sex/racism/fat/crippled jokes) was mainly a guy’s thing but noticed a lot of women around her were laughing heartily at the raunchy jokes, even making sly responsive jokes of their own.

The crowd, from an educated guess in the dark, seemed primarily composed of college-age adults, presumably in Huntsville while on Christmas holiday break between class semesters.

The comedians’ humour was no different than that I heard when I was a college-age adult, actually attending college (rather than goofing off during my 18-22 early adult years) in the early 1980s, which matched humour that a friend of mine had on LP records made in the 1950s.

The humour of this sort seems to appeal to those who are seeking an identity of their own, figuring out how much of their childhood they should keep or reassimilate.

Rebelliousness for the sake of rebelliousness is as old as self-awareness.

How many animals are pushed out of the nest and expected to repeat the life survival lessons taught them by their parents and/or extended family but create meme sets of their own while still hunting/gathering food?

Mockingbirds?  Jays?  Parrots?  Porpoises?

At 51 going on 52, is it too late for me to seek a life where I can still have two little ones to carry on my DNA, regardless of their offense at or desire for socially-unacceptable humour in their late teens and early twenties?

Moustache power

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

One of my nieces, Maggie, works volunteers for her university’s entertainment board.

Not too long ago, an actor from a popular American television show called “Parks and Recreation,” Nick Offerman, performed a comedy act at Maggie’s school.

Nick wanted a student to make fun of, someone easily embarrassed/intimidated.

Maggie’s fellow students volunteered her.

So, during Nick’s act, he asked for a student to step on stage.

“I’m looking for someone on Row 1…” Maggie thought it was neat he picked a row on which many of her entertainment board members sat.

“Seat A!”  Maggie screamed “No!” in her thoughts.  “Not me!  Not in front of 4000 people, especially students I know!  I’ll die!”

Her face as red as Santa’s cheeks after a few hundred million swigs of eggnog, Maggie reluctantly walked on stage, stumbling up the steps.

Nick motioned her to stand in front of him.

He stared at her with his humorously fierce look.

He held the mike in her face and asked her name.

“M…M…M…Ma…Maggie.”

“Well, Maggie, do you go to Appalachian?”

“Y…Y…Yes.”

“Uh-huh.  I see.  I want you to stay in school and do good.”

With that, he pushed her off the stage.

For weeks afterward, students came up to her and asked if she was the famous student who had been grilled by Nick Offerman.  She was shocked people recognised her.

However, that’s not all the story.

It’s her job to make sure the entertainer’s green room is set up before the show and then cleaned up after the show is over.

Maggie went to the green room to throw away food and trash.

She heard a sound and turned to see Nick walking back in.

“Oh, I get it.  You think you can just do anything now, huh?  Stalking me, are you?  Rummaging through my stuff and looking for something to steal?”

Maggie stammered.  “No, no!  I’m just throwing away old food.  Really!”

Nick nodded.  “Sure, sure.  Here, take these.”  He reached into the fridge and handed Maggie four Diet Coke cans.  “Just so you know, I stuck this one up my butt so it’s got my DNA if you want to clone me.”

Maggie, her face again red as a rabid beet, looked shocked even if it was Nick’s sense of humour.  He then signed her ticket and gave her an autographed picture.

Later, she was walking down the hall and heard someone whisper loudly, “Maggie…Maggie.”

She turned to see it was Nick. 

He smiled.  “You still following me around, are you?  Seriously, be good.  Seeya!”

Having never seen the TV show, I’m only familiar with the actor via osmosis, knowing him marginally as the Moustache Man.  However, Maggie, more in the demographic for the target audience, knows a lot about him.  In my day, Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy were gods of the university entertainment circuit just as the likes of Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart were the entertainers in my parents’ school days.

Guest post from Lesley Carter, of Bucket List Publications fame…

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Ever get the feeling someone can read your thoughts?  That’s the feeling these 30 things give me – time to start believing!:

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

I read this post this morning and loved it! I don’t often share the work of others on the blog but this post was definitely ”share-worthy”. Creating a bucket list lifestyle encompasses treating yourself right and learning from your mistakes. This post is a great reflection of those lessons.

Is there one of these that you do often? Are there several? Let’s let the good things catch up.

Written by marcandangel

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give
the right things a chance to catch you.

As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”  Nothing could be closer to the truth.  But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

  1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.  If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you.  You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.  Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.  And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
  2. Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on.  No, it won’t be easy.  There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them.  We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems.  That’s not how we’re made.  In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall.  Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time.  This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
  3. Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself.  Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves.  Read The Road Less Traveled.
  4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.  Yes, help others; but help yourself too.  If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.
  5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you likeeveryone else.  Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you.  Don’t change so people will like you.  Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.
  6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
  7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing.  Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success.  You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
  8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us.  We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.  But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.  Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.
  9. Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive.  But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.
  10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either.  You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else.  Read Stumbling on Happiness.
  11. Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place.  Evaluate situations and take decisive action.  You cannot change what you refuse to confront.  Making progress involves risk.  Period!  You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.
  12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises.  Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.
  13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely.  It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company.  There’s no need to rush.  If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
  14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet.  Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you.  But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.
  15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others are doing better than you.  Concentrate on beating your own records every day.  Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
  16. Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.  Ask yourself this:  “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”
  17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you.  You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough.  But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past.  You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation.  So smile!  Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.
  18. Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart.  You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate.  Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.”  It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.”  Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself!  And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too.  If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.
  19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.
  20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.  Just do what you know in your heart is right.
  21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it.  If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.  Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
  22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things.  The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
  23. Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done.  Read Getting Things Done.
  24. Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Do something extraordinary.
  25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while.  You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well.  You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears.  The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.
  26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life.  When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.
  27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out.  But making one person smile CAN change the world.  Maybe not the whole world, but their world.  So narrow your focus.
  28. Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy.  One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time?  Three years?  Five years?”  If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.
  29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen.  Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story.  If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
  30. Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life.  Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs.  Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Noon on Christmas Day

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

In this house, where memory markers are stored, sits a lighted Christmas tree under which a modest number of gifts covered in decorative wrapping paper and topped with shiny bows marks a moment in the future, a few hours from now if random interruptions do not distract our family from agreed-upon meeting times here.

Do you faithfully promote the traditions of your ancestors, not questioning the reasons they chose for the habits we have setting aside family time to celebrate holidays?

Are you happy with the rhythms of life recognised by others?

In the past two years I have experienced changes to the patterns to which I’d grown accustomed, a few of the changes themselves repetitious changes to patterns earlier in my life, like familiar concentric waves I once formed bouncing back toward me.

We reap what we sow.

Karma will get you.

Reminders of the fish that got away, the paths not taken, the opportunity costs and risks associated with choices I made.

Because I have more than enough material goods in my life, my wants and needs in that regard are greatly diminished from when I was younger and driven to accumulate as a bizarre twist on the innate nesting, hunting and social climbing drilled into my head by a conspicuous consumption culture.

Share the wealth.

I only had 50 Christmas days with my father to work out the details of a family tradition that changed as our family changed, 50 more days than some.  There were about 18,200 days which had no tradition tied to them that I could have spent with Dad learning about ancestral patterns.

In this house, my wife and my mother prepare food for our family Christmas dinner in a few hours, while my sister and her husband spend time with his family, my nieces and nephews spend time with their families.

On this day, people around the world, hundreds of millions of them, as the world turns, have set aside time with their families to repeat a pattern handed to them by their ancestors, a pattern that gives us a reason to share our wealth with each other.

Billions of us may or may not join in the celebration or don’t celebrate it for the same reason.

A week from now, our traditional calendar shows that a new year will begin on the 1st of January 2014.

I wonder if, on that day, I should move to a Martian calendar, no longer concerning myself with an Earth-centric one.

What about the other traditions handed down to me from my ancestors?

Points to ponder on Christmas Day…

Monopolised no more

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

I think it’s time we unplug the oil/petrol companies from the monopoly of market price fixing but I don’t know if I have all the facts.

In other words, if I have an oil well in Texas and supply petrol to gas stations in Tennessee, then I set my own prices at the pump, regardless of some arbitrary barrel price for crude oil that doesn’t reflect my economies of scale, right?

Same for corn, soybean, and other imaginary future prices…

It’s my supply-and-demand that puts food on the table because of my smart business practices, not at the whim of market speculators/manipulators who may not have me and my family/community’s best interest in their interest.

Sometimes, the simplistic viewpoint helps me make better decisions.

Hmm…

But I don’t want to take time to heal!

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Of two types of love — love acted upon and love written/spoken about — which is most important?

This afternoon, as the musical group named Committed sang the song, “Mary did you know?,” the large stage production called the Living Christmas Tree displayed behind them, I silently cried in the dark, tears running down my cheeks, unable to stop myself from remembering, as I go through some important changes in my life, that my father is not here to enjoy them with me, with my mother, with my family, with friends…

I don’t want to miss my father.

I want him to be here and continue the healing process that he and I were going through together as fellow adults, no longer father and young son.

Of course you can see I do not always get what I want.

I get what I need.

I need love.

Love is provided to me by all of you, some of you more personally connected to me than others just as you are more personally connected to other people.

As a node in the net, as a set of states of energy spinning fractally from the Sun, I am here accomplishing many goals.

I accomplish them because I have the woman with whom I’ve shared the major ups and downs in my life, the woman I legally call my wife — my friend, my companion, my partner.

I accomplish them because I have friends, new and old, from Mike to David to Abi to Jenn to Gilley to Richard to Joe to Tony to Cary to Sandy to Tobin to Sherman.

I want to feel independent of hurt and loneliness, not needing my friends and family to lean on.

As I said, I do not always get what I want.

I get what I need.

I need love.

I need to lean upon you guys for love and support right now during this time in my life, as blessed as I am with abundant, clean water to drink, a house to sleep in, a safe neighbourhood to live in, plenty of food to eat, and good roads to travel.

Help me realise it’s okay to say I’m human.

In my subculture, we celebrate the time around winter solstice by saying Merry Christmas.  I wish you well regardless of how you label the time when our planet is at this point in our orbit around the Sun, regardless of your assigning religious significance to such a celestial position or not.

Peace on Earth and good will toward all — that is as good a Christmas present as I can give you this year — may you give and receive the same to others!

No one can break the cycle but me

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

So, I have been able to hide from myself under the guise of my subculture for most of my life, the true self revealed in quiet, out-of-the-way moments, in foreign lands, under the influence of being under the influence.

It’s easy to sit in a cabin in the woods, free to let my true thoughts wander, find their way here, rather than have to face truth-or-consequences in society at large with my actions.

When I jumped back on Facebook for a day, reading the posts of people from my past — childhood friends, classmates, neighbours, workmates, etc. — I can only guess they are who they say they are.

I was never quite myself with them.  I was the people pleaser, seeking to perpetuate the image I was raised to project — a white, middle-class, monogamous Protestant American man/boy.

In my thoughts, though, that’s not who I am.

“Actions speak louder than words.”

True, I derive some comfort from seeing the subculture in which I was raised is still loved and cared for.

I admit affirmation of my external self is a form of comfort food.

But it only lasts so long until the internal selves are torn by the conflict.

There are only a few reactions between sets of states of energy that I expect to be shared on this planet and then only in the context of my safe, sheltered subculture — equal treatment of members of our species whilst recognising that competition for resources is inherently unequal (for many reasons, geography chief amongst them); that is, life is unfair.

Otherwise, I don’t personally practice any particular religious rituals except when needed to motivate people to accomplish tasks for the sake of populating the inner solar system; I don’t personally work for a military organisation that needs to demonise people in order to build market share but I benefit from those who do; I don’t personally have a stake in political officeholders but I once financially contributed to the campaign of one political party while at the same time was paid to deliver pamphlets for the opponent’s political party.

I am a people pleaser and I am an opportunist.  I am neither psychopath nor sociopath but can study their behaviours and act like one if it means we get a permanent Martian colony in return.

There are days when pretending to care about my subculture is a real drag, but I realise the alternatives can be much worse.

I often wonder why I stay married except I fear that if I, an Eagle Boy Scout who once received a U.S. Navy ROTC four-year scholarship to Georgia Tech, don’t believe in marriage, who will and if nobody does, what’s going to happen to the moral/ethical/religious fiber that we have said historically binds our subcultures together?

But then I look at our American society, which is supposedly composed of 46% of the population that is not married, and it’s doing all right.

Of course, it’s not the same as it once was.

Historically, the American Century was a geographical miracle of wars devastating foreign governments, creating global business competition which gave the impression that the American people (“give us your tired, your hungry, your poor”) were extra-special.

Having a monoculture that dominates the mass media (creating/perpetuating mass hypnosis) will give the impression that the monoculture’s unique traits are the ingredients that make people who they are; thus, premises can lead one to conclude that the American people were extra-special because the dominant monoculture was extra-special and the impression many had was the dominant monoculture was related to Judeo-Christian principles (and some would say it was 98% Christian and 2% Jewish (in fact, a few down here in the Deep South would shout it was 100% Christian but let’s not shout too loud just yet without the facts)).

I can only speak from experience and, in my five+ decades of living, I have observed that many who enjoy a relatively troublefree life of conformity to the Judeo-Christian subculture(s) are happy when they fully believe in and want to stay within the boundaries of those belief sets, regardless of small differences that have arisen over the years due to interpretation of the major religious texts and its various translations.

By extension, in larger subcultural subtextual context, we have belief sets associated with musical tastes; e.g., are you are Garth Brooks or Beyonce fan?  Is there any reason you can’t be both?

Can you be both a Christian and an atheist?

Does the way Miley Cyrus or Beyonce shakes her booty on stage teach feminist values better than a lifelong politician like Margaret Thatcher or Hillary Clinton?

In other words, our associative comparisons make us who we are.

By hiding here in the cabin in the woods, I can compare myself to the rest of the world and see I’m happy by comparison because I don’t have to do much to prove myself day after day.

In the 27+ years I have been married, there have only been two women who virtually held a mirror up to my face, asking me if being married to my childhood friend who has stood by me in my best and worst moments is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with: Brenda and Abi.  In both of them, there was never a request to divorce my wife and marry one of them, instead, so I have been able to safely and happily use their unspoken question about my relationship to my wife as not personally motivated by them.

Their lifestyles not associated with a church, free from many expectations of social conformity, were the mirrors.

Both have been married and are divorced.  One told me she loves women.  The other told me she recently discovered she’s polyamorous.

I, too, love women.  I, too, recently [re]discovered I am polyamorous.

Therefore, it behooves me to ask myself the question, if my marriage bed has grown cold, if monogamy has lost its meaning to me, why, except for perpetuating my subculture and its current/historical ties to society at large, except for the comfortable financial conveniences that marriage still affords, except for the fact that my wife and I have known each other since we’re 12 and are generally compatible, am I still married?

My wife wants me doing something that brings more income into our household.  The last time I was in that situation, I saw how much I could afford to separate myself from her and put my childhood community behind me…permanently.

I admit it scared me at the time, traveling and working internationally, how much I desired to cut [some but not all] ties with a subculture I no longer believed in but was willing to keep up appearances for friends and family of old because it really isn’t all that bad but I might disappoint a few people if I acted upon my beliefs and not theirs.

When I jumped back on Facebook, I realised that with the hundreds of people there, I was accepting of whatever changes they had made from when I lived in the same community with them — married, divorced, childless, grandparents, nonheterosexual, godless, etc.

In other words, what am I worried about?  Why this unfounded fear of one particular change in my life?

I can talk until I’m blue in the face or, as encouraged by a woman who whispered in my ear this week, I can act on the belief it’s time for me to step up and be a man.

Ultimately, all I want is for our species to expand into the universe.  The rest of this is forgotten jibberjabber.

If I spend time worrying about hurt feelings, I’ll never get anywhere fast.

Clueless in the countdown

Posted on by • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

I wander this planet in a fog, my thoughts in wonder, my eyes catching rays bouncing from stray objects that barely stand out from the background.

I contemplate the universe in imaginary silence, bounded by vibrations in the central nervous system, a repetitive process that my body interprets as rhythmic ringing inside my ears, surrounding me as in a fog.

I exist.

That truly suffices.

I do not see beyond the simplest gestures of friendliness that acknowledge my existence.

Saturday morning, a woman in my age range, say…oh, 40 to 60 years old, about five feet, five inches tall, shoulder-length black hair mixed with gray streaks, wearing glasses (reminding me of a friend from long ago, Deena Ramos), while helping to set up the food line for the marathon runners who would arrive shortly, struck up a conversation with me.

She seemed determined, as if she had a plan in her thoughts to complete in action that morning, with me as part of the plan.

She quickly gave me a rundown of her autobiography, letting me know she had three children who did not like her ex-husband (it took me a while to connect that he was their father (or “sperm donor,” as they told their mother they thought of him)), a man who divorced this woman on the grounds that she didn’t make the kids’ beds in the morning after they got up, which indicated to him she didn’t care for them, even though she fed them and handled all of the school homework assignment without his assistance.

The way she pounced on me and dwelled upon the divorce, I felt that she was trying to tell me something about men who choose to divorce and the thin excuses they use as the marriage dealmaker.

She was not a man basher or man hater — she clearly sought to keep our conversation going, or at least wanted me to listen to her, pushing aside interruptions from others with a wave of her hand.

I understood she wanted more than sympathy, which I supplied by recounting my sister’s divorce stories and the divorce stories of other people I knew.

She wanted empathy.

Hadn’t I just been in a similar situation with Bai a few weeks before?

When does fiction and reality mix?

I had abandoned the love story of my life, the tale of Guin and Lee on Mars, in order to return to Earth for some me time away from the future, and here I was, getting all I asked for, and more!

I interpreted the woman’s insistence on holding my attention as a side effect of my people-pleasing personality and had learned to accept the consequences long ago, forsaking the career of a priest in order to live amongst everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.

I am not a trained mental health professional — my interest in matters of thought sets are merely amateur curiosity.

As wax from a Scentsy burner, sold to me by Guin months ago, melts nearby, reminding me of what might have been and might still be, I know my journey is neither long nor short in the discovery of what only one body can experience in one lifetime.

I am humbled that any one person or persons would want to talk with me, their pure selves, being the only people they can ever be, standing before me in their personal glory, angelic vestiges of sets of states of energy in motion, exchanging energy states freely.

Thus, as the woman continued to talk with me, I sought to learn from her what in her life would make both of our lives better now and into the future.

I expanded my inquiry into what she wanted, what it was that would ease the perceived weight of the burdens she had carried as a single mother providing for her kids — from whom did she most need affirmation of herself?

Frequently, especially here in the heart of the Bible Belt, I discover the person in front of me has been well-trained to believe that straying from a childhood of religious training is perceived as a cause of one’s ills; if a person expresses that belief, then I help steer that person toward an internal forgiveness and permission to return to childhood beliefs that had been abandoned due to feeling no longer worthy.

This woman did not go in that direction.

She seemed to want something specifically from me and it wasn’t just forgiveness.

I was at a loss for words to keep her going.

She eventually just stood and looked at me, her eyes expressing a want I could not understand as I pulled grapes off of stems and put them in a bin to hand to marathon runners as nature’s free energy pills.

This went on for a few minutes, the woman glad to stand and watch me without saying a word.

I wasn’t familiar with the arrangement of her facial features but it seemed as if her face was not in tune with her thoughts; or, perhaps, her thoughts were mixed and her face reflected the puzzled mix.

Her mouth was slightly open, as if she was about to say something, her eyelids apart wide enough to give me the impression she was mulling over words to say to me, her body leaning against the food table and her arms folded across her chest.

I had no problem with her standing there if she wanted, because she had already completed her morning duties, so I kept working until the first marathon runners arrived, which forced her to move on to her work area around the corner in the hotel hallway.

We exchanged farewells and I added her to the list of hundreds of people I met the rest of the day who made my life so much more complete than the day before, thousands of insights into why I should never have given up writing about life on Mars with Guin.

On the countdown clock in front of me, 13,290 days remain until the Martian storyline goes into full swing.

Meanwhile, back here in regular domestic time, on the way home after the marathon, my wife inquired about the long conversation I had with the woman who watched me prepare grapes.

I told her what I could remember.

She told me that she had been about to go over and tell the woman that I was married and she was my wife, to back off, that just because I looked like a single man didn’t mean I was available.

She reminded me how many times this has happened, a woman digging into my life to find out my marriage status, and how many times she’s seen I haven’t stated for the record that I’m married.

Am I that clueless in real life?

Have I been so seemingly innocent, so lost in a fog of happy self-delusion that the universe is here simply to acknowledge my existence and nothing more, driving me into fictional tales in the moments I want to keep my thoughts going as if there is more, that I’ve missed when single, available women have been hitting on me?  Even if I had missed them hitting on me, what had I really missed?

I explained to my wife that I am an innocent flirt who has maintained a clear boundary between myself and others that has, for all but a couple of instances, kept me from becoming a dangerous flirt — marriage is as much a protection against sexually transmitted diseases as a social nesting habit — when I put on a wedding ring in 1986 in front of my wife, friends and family, I bound myself physically to the marriage contract that I understood meant my body belonged to my wife for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, till death do us part.

Otherwise, if that marriage contract has no validity then the society in which I was raised and the global economy in which it was supported has no validity.

And, by extension, if they have no validity, then the universe is a false front, a magician’s illusion.

If the latter, then what am I doing here writing this blog when there’s more to discover than reiterating historic falsehoods?

I did not speak with that woman at the marathon again so I didn’t get a chance to hear if she had learned as much about life in our brief conversation and the hours of conversation snippets with the runners as I had.

I hope she did.

Regardless of the number of days left in the Martian countdown, life is a learning experience, a way to maximise the exchange of sets of states of energy.

All I have is myself and these fingers that have learned to form callouses from tapping on plastic keys, a habit not anticipated by my ancestors thousands of years ago.

Yet, here I am.

I am alive, despite my worst habits.

As a person who assumes the godlike viewpoint of a writer determining the lives of fictional characters, I choose to go on with my stories regardless of how much they do or do not reflect the possibilities of a real future.

Where the writing leads me, I do not know with 100% certainty.

Uncertainty is my best friend.

Change is all I truly have to depend on.

Our short lives and civilisations based on inconsistent narratives give us an easy way to believe all sorts of forms of permanence, no matter how fleeting they really are.

Thank God.