Transition and Rebirth

Being by nature a dreamer, it's sad that I felt I had to suppress that part of me over recent years. I always had lofty dreams; they're what kept me going when I was younger as I struggled to keep body and mind together through a lifelong onslaught of domino-like traumas.

If my dreams didn't suffer being strangled at birth and were actually able to keep their footing, they were cruelly run over by hit-and-run circumstances and people. Eventually, it was just easier on my delicate nervous system to let them be stillborn, or to abort them altogether...

Same Time Last Year

I'm hoping against hope that we'll get a white Christmas again this year. Last year we got a blizzard on Christmas Eve and it was wonderful! It just seems to me that all this cold, ugly, leafless, brown landscape is pointless without snow.

See that bay window on the left of the porch? That's where I am whenever I'm on the web, or am writing.


November 29, 2001

It just doesn't seem possible that 9 years have passed since George Harrison slipped away so quietly and gracefully. I miss him, but because we share similar spiritual beliefs, I have confidence that he is not all that far away.



Sometimes, things strike me as very odd. Sometimes, I just stop and think about things that the rest of the world (or most of it anyway) seems to take for granted. Like laughing. Sometimes, I'll be sitting in a room with my friends and we'll all be laughing and having a good time, and it suddenly occurs to me how weird laughing is. Or the fact that every single person in the world goes to the toilet and has to use TP. I think of this especially when someone thinks they're really something special and other people worship them. Like celebrities and politicians. Yeah, they all have to use that roll of paper. But everyone thinks about that stuff anyway, don't they? And this entry is supposed to be about pants...


When the Women's Holiday Begins

Traditionally, it has been the women who work their asses off on Thanksgiving. It's a little better these days as men who enjoy cooking, or men who have wives who don't cook, have tied on the apron of honor and plunged themselves into the maelstrom of preparing a feast for the family. But generally, it's women who don't really get a holiday...


Lowrider's Keep

Our cat, whom I like to call "Lowrider" because I can't bring myself to call any animal "Sweetie" (and she has that belly flab that hangs nearly to the ground), has a clear case of OCD. Yeah, I know. All cats have it, but I've known a lot of cats in my lifetime and this one is seriously more cat than all of those cats put together.

One of Lowrider's quirks is that every Monday she starts a new routine, which includes when she goes in and out of the house, what times she eats, and where she sleeps. A few weeks ago she found a spot near the pedals on the piano. The next week it was in front of one of the stereo speakers. Last week she chose to sleep behind Nettl's knees (damned uncomfortable, I know, because she claimed that spot on me a few months ago). Other places have included the chair in the kitchen, on top of the porch light column, under the table, on Joel's bed, and behind the Morning Glories in the front flower bed. Today she claimed the bird bath in the front yard. When I opened the blinds I saw that the top had been knocked off and was lying upside-down on the grass. Crafty cat. I went out and put it back, but I didn't fill it. Later, I looked outside again and saw the her.

When you think of it, this isn't such a crazy idea. Talk about cat bliss. Up off the ground where she can keep an eye on her domain, and lying in a terra cotta bowl. Natural solar heat. I can guarantee you that's where she'll be until next Monday when she'll find another place.


Balancing Act

"Tight rope walkers live by a few rules. Never look down. Hold your arms out for balance. Do not wait for the rope to stop wobbling before you take another step. And then there is this one; Practice standing at first. When you are able to do so without wobbling too much, take a step, stand again, take a step, stand again, until you reach the end of the rope." (Found on The Red Bench)...


Stoned Again

Do you remember last July when I posted some pictures of the Rolling Stones? In that post I told you about a band I posed with, but I couldn't remember their name. Well, I found it, as well as some pictures of them and a video of them performing back in 1965.

Click here to read more (scroll down to the bottom of the entry).

My Kind of Film: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus



"Heath Ledger is a marvel, Christopher Plummer beyond anything he's ever done, Tom Waits as the Devil is a God, Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield, the very foundation, are spectacular, Verne Troyer simply kicks ass and as for my other cohorts, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, they most certainly did Master Ledger very proud, I salute them. Though the circumstances of my involvement are extremely heart-rending and unbelievably sad, I feel privileged to have been asked aboard to stand in on behalf of dear Heath." - Johnny Depp

No one could have said it any better. I just watched this film on Netflix InstantPlay and I loved it. Because we don't have cable and don't watch telly I hadn't heard of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. If you haven't seen it, do.


Knee Deep in Beautiful Dudu

I don’t usually make blog entries like this one, but through the research I continue to perform for my Sixties trilogy, I sometimes come across things that I either forgot about or never had a name for, and I want to share it. Photos enlarge when clicked.

In the late Sixties, while we in America wore flowers in our hair and frayed and bleached our Levis to look like gypsy glad rags, our counterparts in England had headed in an entirely opposite direction. While we went back to the earth in our natural fibers and our unkempt countrified look, they flashed back on the opulence and extravagance of better times...


Break Glass in Case of Emergency

That's the way it seems sometimes. Like I sweep up more glass on this blog than I actually write. Especially lately. Where once I posted once and sometimes twice a day, I now post only about three or four times a week.

Are we winding down? I mean those of us who've been at this for years now?...


Why Writers Should Be Avoided At All Costs

Sometimes when I'm up late, not feeling creative enough to write and I want to knock myself out so that I can sleep, I go to StumbleUpon and site hop. I always find something worth saving; last night I came across the following. It started out as a little meme about why you might want to hang out with or date a writer. Then someone else posted it, adding their own two cents why you would not want to do such a thing. I thought it was funny so here it is for you...


WTF Am I Doing?

This evening Nettl and I are driving down to Shawnee (only about an hour away) to spend the night. It's her alma mater's centennial reunion this weekend. That's Oklahoma Baptist University. Yes, I said Oklahoma. Baptist. University. Oklahoma... Baptist...


It's not as bad as it sounds though, because all the cool kids she hung out with and partied with back then are still cool, partying, drama and music major types. We got a block of rooms together at a hotel, where we'll be tippling a bit while the Tea Baggers other students are mentally dissing each other and bragging about their missionary kids. And when the cool kids go to events they understandably don't want to miss, I'll hide in our room.

There are some people I'm really looking forward to meeting. We've become friends in Facebook and they're my kind of people. These are the kids who were into Led Zeppelin and Blondie back then. I think we're going to have a great time! Think I'll bring a copy of Anne Frank to read.

My Brain Hurts!

Well, not really, but these questions, which RW posted to his blog yesterday, made me think a little left-of-center. I assume I can tell you to answer them as well,if you feel so inclined. He's called it, "What Would You Do?"

I lived next door to them once. Fortunately, they were very young and the noisiest part only lasted about a minute.

2. You've got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection. Plus the killing jar.
I'd wonder why I didn't know of it before, especially since I'm the one who cleans his room. I'd then explain why living butterflies are much better, and take him somewhere to see some.

I don't even know what a fingerbox is, so I guess I never had one. I survived. I seldom got the cool stuff the other kids got anyway, so it's no big deal.

4. You got a windfall of $100,000.
I'd bank it, pay off some debts, then stock the fridge and pantry, get the car running again, and buy a 12-string, as well as a new sofa. The rest would sit in the bank to be used very frugally.

5. The police had a warrant and confiscated your computer.
No big deal, although I'd contact my lawyer to find out why. I save everything externally on a regular basis so I wouldn't really lose anything. I don't have anything on it that's comporomising anyway. And we have another laptop and desktop that I could use.

The chances that anyone knows everything about me are really small since I hold a certain amount of myself in reserve. Besides, what does it matter what gender the person is? It would weird, regardless.

I'd wonder where THAT bank account is hidden.

8. You had it wrong all along.
I'd educate myself, just like I did when I was wrong a hundred times before. I'm used to having it all wrong. If marriage teaches you anything, it's that you're wrong. Always.

I'd ask a friend for the name of their favorite brand. I don't trust the opinions of a product's manufacturer.

10. Kenneth actually told you the frequency.
Who's Kenneth? Is he the guy who didn't give me a fingerbox when I was a kid?


Time Flies When You're Living

Sometimes I'm temped to believe some of those New Agers who say that the superior intellects they think run our universe like to muck about with time as we know it, speeding it up to help us evolve faster and slowing it down to allow us time to grown and learn. Now, I'm not going to get into all that Star Seed stuff, or even what the hell time is to begin with. I'll leave that to the visionaries and quantum physicists. My point is much simpler: Time is passing much too quickly for my liking.

When I was a kid time dragged. A term of school and waiting for Christmas each year took forever. In my twenties and early thirties, the passage of time seemed about right. I had enough of it ahead of me that I could party and still have enough of it left over to hold down a job and provide for my family. Then something happened. How quickly I got from 33 to 59 makes no sense at all, and how my body continues to age while the person inside--I--can remain at about 33 baffles me.

Something in my head keeps thinking that this is all just a really weird acid trip and that eventually I'll come down and I'll be 33 again. I'll be the wiser for the experience and I'll go on to make better choices. Then I have my first coffee of the day and I remember that this is just life.

I can't help it. In some ways I feel like life is starting to wind down for me now and that's why I've gone back to meditating. We of western civilization tend to think of time as a commodity that we must spend, rather than allow to pass. The former is the sign of a productive, contributing citizen after all, and the later is the sign of a slacker. But looking down the gun barrel of life, I reflect on what I've done with my brief run on this planet. I've raised children, I've worked, I've been a good parent and friend, I've put out a huge body of creative work, and I've probed the mysteries of life and am all the more spiritual for it. These aren't bragging points, they're reasons why I feel a little down time is due me.

So how the heck did I get to this age without recognizing what was looking back at me in the mirror? I'm fortunate that wrinkles don't run in our family. True, I have the Wolcotts' excess eyelid skin and the Wallers' ever-growing, already too-prominent proboscis, but other than those things, I really don't look any the worse for wear despite my fragile health. But finding myself at 60 (why bother with 59, which is just a semi-colon in the life sentence?) has taken me completely by surprise.

The good thing is that I'm finally learning how to live in the present. This doesn't mean that I don't still dream or set goals for myself, and it certainly doesn't mean that I've attained some level of enlightenment. It simply means that I'm too tired of chasing down goals to want to bother. To use an analogy. My life is like a park: I spent my youth running through it, my young adulthood jogging through it, and my mature adulthood walking through it. Now I'm sitting on a bench feeding the squirrels and enjoying the view. I watch the children in the playground and I watch, amused, at everyone else rushing by, too busy to notice what's going on around them.

It's a nice place to be. I just wish our stay here was longer or that the sensation of time didn't speed up the older we get. But maybe it will slow down for me now. Maybe living in the present is the key. Maybe we come full-circle and our so-called second childhood really is that: an opportunity to slow the clock down and live for each day again.

I'll let you know in about twenty years.


Ooh, Baby!

