the complacent traitor

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Looking back, historically or personally, it may seem that it was the traitor who had things right -- the rapscallion who whispered or roared against the corruptions of complacency, the one who found sometimes egregious flaws in a status quo and then set out to correct them.

Last night, on TV, a much-wrinkled man who had lived through the Dust Bowl in America's farmland, issued a summing up of his survival when he said, more or less, "I swore I never wanted to be a farmer or broke. Well, I'm not a farmer and I'm not broke."

How hard the wealthy may have striven to become wealthy. How hard the uneducated may have worked for an education. How hard the enslaved may have fought to become free. How hard the football player may have worked ... or the father or mother or ... well, make your own laundry list.

Worked and sweat, sobbed and moved forward, experienced uncounted wounds and remained determined. Within and without, trying to change this and improve that so that then ... then ... then what? Isn't it true that whatever the implicit or explicit goal, it was the traitor who lit the fuse -- the one who knew first-hand the flaws of what was and worked hard for what might be?

Out of the dulling complacency and into the vibrant and bouncy light ... all thanks to that rambunctious traitor.

And yet is there anything more dispiriting than the complacent traitor ... the one who has mistaken, like his complacent forbears, his own bouncy complacency for peace? Endlessly, dullingly, complacently in a state of rebellion. Endlessly right ... the kind of right that by its nature must continue to set up and nourish the wrong. Or, for the complacent, vice versa... the war-mongers who call it peace when they return victorious and lay down their arms; the kind of peace that simply relies on and inspires another war.

The white picket fences of peace. The white picket fences of war. 

"Complacent," says an Internet dictionary, means

too confident and relaxed because you think you can deal with something easily, even though this may not be true

The traitor, within or without, rises up against the white-picket-fences of the past ... wonders in whispers, perhaps, or roars with indignation. Where there was "yes," a "no" asserts itself; where there was "no," a "yes" asserts itself. Complacency is not peace: It is too smug by half and too wounding in its smugness. To arms! To arms!

Blessings on the traitors in our lives. Blessings on our very own tree-shakers and limit-destroyers and iconoclasts. Is it not they who show the way? I think they do ... and yet too ...

Complacency is not peace and a lack of complacency is not peace and so these wondrous barbarians -- these traitors -- are required to go further still if peace is what they desire. A traitor faces the very real necessity of betraying the role of a traitor. Not only is the complacency of the socially-acceptable not acceptable ... the complacency of the socially unacceptable is wearying and wounding as well.

Intellectually, this is all pretty kool. But of course the intellect, like the emotions, cannot really hold a candle to the experience of the matter ... the fear, the determination, the courage and cowardice.

What would anyone sacrifice for peace?

Who says something needs to be sacrificed?

Such questions require some first-class traitors.

Or maybe not.

I don't know.
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the incense fairy

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Flabbergasted!!!

Several days ago, I wrote a blog post whining about the fact that I really didn't have the disposable income to afford more incense for the zendo and the house. It's pricey stuff and I live on a limited income.

Yesterday, I received a package containing a box of a new kind of incense -- very fine, but new to my nose -- from a friend.

Today, I received a largish box from the incense company I have patronized in the past, Shoyeido. Three plump boxes of my favored incense were within ... and no saying who footed the bill. I called the company and wheedled like a street urchin until they coughed up the name... another recently-made friend.

How very, very nice ....

I am as touched by the thoughts as I am by the gifts themselves.

And flabbergasted.
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Dust Bowl lifestyle

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Documentary film maker Ken Burns' "The Dust Bowl" was on TV last night. I had thought I might want to watch this history lesson on the decade-long, man-made ecological disaster that struck America's bread-basket states in the 1930's, a time attended by the double-whammy of the economic Depression.

As always with Burns' stuff, what I saw was careful and touching, but then this lesson in sadness was too much and I turned it off. Carelessness, ignorance and greed blew much of the topsoil in the southern Great Plains into the Atlantic Ocean more than 1,000 miles to the east; 100,000,000 acres were affected; and thousands of people, people whose very air could prove fatal, suffered. I knew much, if not all, of the tale ... I knew how it ended. I didn't want to be sad about something I knew would make me sad.

How many things are like that ... you know it's too good to be true, but you do it anyway, hoping against hope that this time there will be a happy, less painful ending?

Sort of like the old limerick:

There was a young lady from Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

I'm not trying to suggest with a smug 20/20 hindsight that the Dust Bowl might have been avoided. The confluence of need and greed and ignorance is always pretty compelling. I am only trying to say that last night I did not want to be saddened by the compulsion. As I sat in front of the TV, it seemed that there was already enough Dust Bowl to contend with.

Yesterday, my younger son drove north to pick up his older brother at college in New Hampshire. The two of them came back in preparation for the wake and burial of their cousin Matt, 23, in New Jersey. Matt died after a car crash last Friday and my wife went down to be with her sister and Matt's mother and the rest of a riven family. Gob-stopping grief ... a time when even the air you breathe seems to do nothing more than nourish an all-around-you sorrow. There must be a way out, mustn't there ... but the tiger just smiles.

As the boys gathered at the house here, my wife drove back from New Jersey for a doctor's appointment today and then a return trip to New Jersey and the dust bowl of silent anguish. Tiring drive, exhausting situation.

On top of this, my younger son rolled out of bed early today to return to the military base where wants to complete a test that will allow him to become part of the Army National Guard. His decision to sign on the dotted line sends up billows of mixed emotion. He is the last of my three children to chart a course and leave the nest in one sense. It is a death of sorts ... where childhood finds a demarcation point and steps across it and ... well, things will never be the same.

I remain embarrassed and on the fringes of this wracking situation. It affects people I love, but my weaknesses of age mean that if I were to travel to New Jersey, I would probably be another burden in a burdened situation. I wish I could go and lend whatever support I might, but making things worse does not appeal to me.

And then, as a footnote to the current sandstorm, the stove went on the fritz and there is a fellow coming today to see if he can fix it. The damned thing just stopped working as I cooked some brownies. How and why I haven't got a clue, but somehow the dilapidation of things seemed to enjoy a minor uptick. Where is the good news? There must be a way out, mustn't there?

I am not trying to suggest that my Dust Bowl is greater or more worthy of attention than anyone else's. I'm just another blind man in a sea of blindness. But I do think that the instructive potential of the very real dust storms that come along is probably just this: Act with care and responsibility. Even when that care and responsibility seem to be ill-rewarded, act with care and responsibility. There is no guaranteed happy ending, but at least when the laughter arrives it will be less encumbered.

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Mark Twain's father

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Mark Twain wrote:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

I wonder if it's true: Where parents or friends try to instill what is based on experience, there is a chance for a good result. But where they try to instill what is based on belief, calamity is bound to follow.
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hell -- the final frontier

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It used to flabbergast me, in spiritual adventure, that others would not be interested in getting to the bottom of things -- to quit flapping their theological gums and find-the-fuck-out. Since I imagined myself to have crossed that line, it was unthinkable that others might not want to do the same. Talk about hubris!

And today, reading a news story about a Roman Catholic bishop, I could feel the old flabbergastery raising its head, lazy as a cat curled up by a warm fire. On and on and on and on ... all that parsing and dissecting and theologizing and improving and dissenting and consenting and worshiping and disdaining and ....

Well hell, I did it too -- read books and collected arguments, ingested wise observations and countered them with other wise observations ... on and on and on and on.

And I wonder today what bit of good (of perhaps insane) fortune eventually suggested to me that talking the talk just couldn't hack it, that walking the walk (whatever the hell that meant) was the only real option, assuming I took what I claimed to take seriously seriously.

Really -- look at the people who go to their graves have used vast and grave amounts of time devoted to believing in stuff they never really checked out. How did I get so lucky or go so insane?

I honestly don't know. I'm not especially proud of it. I just know there was some imperative that grew up inside and said, "put up or shut up: Either find out if it's true or stop flapping your gums. Either way, cut the crap."

Hell ... "the final frontier."

These days, I am mildly conflicted. On the one hand, jumping off a cliff simply can't be helped. The cards are dealt and you play the hand. On the other hand, my flabbergastery still wonders incredulously, "But don't you want to know!?" "Don't you want to know in a way that does not rely on the wisdom of others?!" "Don't you want to know in a way that dispenses with theology and spiritual formats?!" "Seriously, don't you want to know?" Wouldn't a Christian want to get "God" straight? Wouldn't a Buddhist want to be clear and rest easy about "enlightenment?" Isn't there a time to put up or shut up?

These days, the cat by the warm fire puts his head back down after surveying the scene. He may wonder a bit about the comings and goings in his neighborhood, but the fire is warm and sleep seems to be on the agenda.

Find-the-fuck-out about what?

Relax.

A warm fire doesn't come along every day of the week.

And a good snooze is hard to beat.
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eclipse

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A rare total solar eclipse, as seen in Northern Australia on Wednesday. Enjoy it, the next one we’ll see will be in March 2015. (Copyright: Getty Images) 

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playing dress-up

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Hope adorns the uncertain waif ...

Belief decks out the hag of doubt ...

What a long-standing habit, playing dress-up.

I wonder if others notice as well ... that time after time the hopes and beliefs once firmly held ... and then acted upon ... never turn into the exact reality once held so tight. Sometimes the reality is much. much better. Sometimes it is much, much worse. But whatever the case -- better or worse or just simply different -- hope and belief never come exactly true.

Marriage, kids, job, travels, money, spiritual adventures ... the doubt and uncertainty once gaily dressed becomes a reality ... maybe a delight, maybe a disaster, maybe a mixture ... but in any case, whatever it becomes, it is sui generis, entirely itself, naked as a jay bird ... awaiting the next period of dress-up.

Over and over again, the children of our lives gather at the toy box and agree: "Let's play dress-up."

It's not bad or good, virtuous or craven ... it just seems to be what happens.

But with enough experience, perhaps there is time to wonder a little ... is this really necessary? How well does it compute? Is "something else" really something else? Does dress-up lose its peppy wiles? Of course even nudists bring their adornments to a Saturday-night party ... but isn't the party the point? Isn't there a time to stop asserting uncertainty by positing hope; isn't there a time to stop underscoring doubt with belief? Aren't circumstances enough?

I don't know. It just strikes me as worth considering.
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when even police protest ... ?

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Some 5,000 people in Madrid joined a protest aimed at austerity measures that have hit not just average citizens but police departments as well.

When everyone else seeks economic redress by sometimes violent and always raucous protests, it's one thing.

But when the police protest...?
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bling alert!

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Dress for success? Maybe so, but keep your bling in check:

 A Southern California man was arrested at Oakland International Airport after security officers found him wearing an unusual watch they said could be used to make a timing device for a bomb, authorities said Friday.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/16/ca-man-with-weird-watch-arrested-at-oakland-airport-charged-with-having-bomb/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2CUEBYiAf

OAKLAND, Calif. -- A Southern California man was arrested at Oakland International Airport after security officers found him wearing an unusual watch they said could be used to make a timing device for a bomb, authorities said Friday.

 And never forget how wisely your tax dollars are being spent.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/16/ca-man-with-weird-watch-arrested-at-oakland-airport-charged-with-having-bomb/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2CUE6txS7

and just like that ...

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Matt, my sister-in-law's son, was killed in a car accident yesterday.

He is not someone I knew well, but I know and like his parents.

Just like that ... Matt is dead.

My sons, Matt's cousins, are alive.

Matt was 23.

An unspeakable knife in the heart.

Joining the majority.
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gargoyle memorials

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A statue, a bust, a park, a hospital, an athletic field, a bridge, a highway ... naming such things in memory of notables and philanthropists is not unusual.

Milan's Duomo cathedral

But if I had philanthropic money to toss around and wanted "to be remembered" for something, I think I would buy in to the main cathedral in Milan where, for a requisite 100,000-euro donation, I could have my name chiseled under a gargoyle. Milan's Duomo, the fourth largest cathedral in the world, is in need of repairs.

Gargoyles are fantastic carved representations that were and are used to convey water away from the structures they adorn. In church mythology, they were intended, as well, to convey a sense of evil to a largely illiterate audience: Evil was kept outside the church ... and you'd better remember that evil is waiting to pounce, in this life of the next ... and put some money in the collection plate.

Gargoyles have sass. Tombstones do not. If I were going "to be remembered," I would rather be remembered for sass than gravitas.
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the temples of sniveling

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How many of what are sometimes called "houses of worship" are treated as little more than "temples of sniveling?" And how many of the spiritually-inclined build such temples in their minds and hearts, hoping and conniving in an effort to win favor from a world of wisdom they claim to esteem but do not dare to attain ... begging for scraps, weeping for improvements, clinging to belief, praising with an incontinence that would do an old-age home proud?

"Sniveling" -- a word used with disdain, but worth considering as a mere descriptive. Can I do it? You bet I can. But what warning does it send? I think its warning is quite simple ... stop sniveling.

The word "sniveling" is partly defined by an Internet dictionary as:

to speak or act in a whining, sniffling, tearful, or weakly emotional manner

In spiritual life, sniveling is often tricked out in wondrous clothing -- intellectually and emotionally bedecked -- book after book -- and yet loud and clear in its foundation ... sniveling:  Creating something else as a goal, begging scraps from the lord's richly-heaped table, anointing everything in sight, hoping against hope, and begging a world of wonders to tarry a while and notice me with something other than a jaundiced eye. How could anyone hope to realize the riches of spiritual life with such a mewling, miching, self-serving approach? It's not so much that sniveling is unattractive: What is more important is that it simply doesn't work... imagining that there is an ethereal ass to kiss and that kissing it will assure ethereal rewards ... I suppose there are people who lie on their death beds with this approach ... but it simply misses the mark.

Death ... stop sniveling.
Enlightenment ... stop sniveling.
Heaven or hell ... stop sniveling.
God ... stop sniveling.
Love ... stop sniveling.
Virtue ... stop sniveling.
Compassion ... stop sniveling.
Emptiness ... stop sniveling.
Freedom ... stop sniveling.
Joy ... stop sniveling.
Sorrow ... stop sniveling.
Relief and release ... stop sniveling.
Serenity ... stop sniveling.
Attachment ... stop sniveling.
Making nice or nasty ... stop sniveling.
Peace ... stop sniveling.
Sniveling ... stop sniveling.

 As an alternative to "stop sniveling," there is this possibility:

Stand in the sun, cast no shadow, and really...

Snivel.
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returning to the place you never left

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Perhaps it is the same for others as well: Putting out a lot of effort and a lot of concentration on a given course and then, after the fact, needing some time to decompress, to come down from whatever heights or depths, to return to more normal climes.

For me, that's the way it is when writing ... pedal to the metal; shutting out other concerns; focusing; feeling the flow and then extending it; pushing the limits that arise ... further and further and further into the project at hand and then ... it's over and I need some time to decompress; to loosen reins that had been tightened; to sit on the porch and sip coffee and have a smoke or play a game or two of machine-generated solitaire; to...

What an odd duck -- to return to the place you never left.
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the lessons of victory

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I guess everyone has done it and if they haven't, you kind of wonder why they haven't -- thrown caution to the wind and stood up four-square for what they believed in. Win, lose, or draw ... fuck it! Do it!

In college, all language majors were required to take a course called "Germanic Literature." I was a French major at the time and so ended up sitting in the Germanic Literature class, listening to a professor who pissed me off worse and worse and worse as time went by. The man was elderly and used the same notes this year that he had last year ... and the year before that and the year before that. Perhaps he was simply spent or lazy. I didn't know and I didn't care: To my student mind, the guy was a fraud as a teacher.

My righteous anger built and built. I really wanted to nail this guy to the wall and eventually I got my chance.

Henrik Ibsen

It came in the form of an assignment to write a paper. The assignment arrived on a mimeographed sheet of possible topics from which to choose. One of those choices was the Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, whose plays I had mostly consumed as a matter of pleasure in the past. No way was I going to do any original research for this nitwit teacher, so I chose to do my paper on Ibsen because I pretty much knew the material... an easy-peasy ten pages, or whatever the required length was.

But as I sat down to write the paper, my anger with the teacher bubbled up all over again. I'd show the son-of-a-bitch or go down in flames trying.

It was a pretty-well-crafted paper, as I recall. The quotations that I cited in support of whatever thesis I had chosen were all real -- they all came from the actual plays. But the secondary source material -- the supporting wisdom of those who had written their own published critiques of Ibsen -- was all entirely bogus. I made up the names of the authors; I made up the quotes attributed to them; I made up the pages on which those quotes appeared; I even made up the publishing houses that had published the secondary-source critiques and I manufactured the publication dates. Naturally, all of my phantom authors agreed with my thesis for the paper.

I might have gotten an F.

Instead, I got an A-minus ... and the only reason I hadn't gotten an A, I was convinced, was because I wasn't one of the goodie-two-shoes girls who sat in the front row of the class and dotted their I's with little circles.

When I saw the grade, I was chagrined. There was something so disheartening about being right that it overwhelmed my youthful outrage about the teacher's being wrong.

There's nothing like victory to teach some valuable lessons about 'victory.'
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how and why and when people eat

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The Romans ate one meal a day out of concern for the digestive tract.

There was a time when the word and the actual event called "lunch" did not exist.

A BBC article parses how and why and when people eat.
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no more Twinkies???!!!

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No more Twinkies????!!!!!!!

How will the cops survive?

Hostess Brands, the manufacturer of this scrumptious and nutritionally-worthless product, has announced plans to close up shop and put 18,500 workers out of work. The company blames a workers' strike for the decision.

For the cops, who are often forced to eat on the run, I can imagine that the announcement is akin to excising Jesus from Christianity. How the hell are they supposed to survive?!

Well, I guess there's always Dunkin' Donuts.
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letter to the editor ...good joooob!

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Can I keep my mouth shut? Of course not ... and so I wrote the following letter-to-the-editor of the local paper yesterday:

"GOOD JOOOOOOB!" ... NOT

When my kids were little, one of the schoolyard activities that used to drive me nuts was the careless and disrespectful encouragement offered by some teachers, coaches and monitors: "Good jooooob!" This apparent praise was frequently offered in a sing-songy, Mr.-Rogers tone as if the poor darlings were not equipped for any other instruction.

As it seemed to me, some instructors grew addicted to their own approbation and encouragement as if, but constantly saying "good joooooob!" they themselves were doing a good job. Well, from my point of view, the repetitive use of the expression showed little more than an unwillingness or inability to give more concrete and informative instruction.

Don't get me wrong. I love kids and think they deserve to be praised. But I also think that what is good can always be better and the best instructors I have had in life were the ones who took the time and energy to point this out. When everything is a "good jooooob," the chances for anything to be a good job are sharply diminished. And the kids know it.

It is in this regard that I take my hat off to Betsy Dinger, interim principal of Amherst Regional Middle School, who took some time recently (Gazette, 11/15/12) to outline to seventh-graders the need for persistence and focus and time with their school work.

She couched the encouragements in terms of "success," but the baseline argument struck me as more interesting than that -- more respectful and honest: Everyone is dumb to one extent or another, just as everyone is smart. But dumb and smart can both benefit from improvement, from taking the next step, from not basking in some mindless "good joooooob" but rather in using whatever tools are in hand (smart or dumb) to widen and sharpen the understandings that an educational setting can offer.

In professional baseball, a player who bats .300 is considered to be a very good batter indeed. "Good joooooob!" But, as I used to tell my bat-swinging kids when they grew depressed after striking out, the very best batters -- the ones hitting .300 -- are the same batters who fail to hit the ball two-thirds of the time.

Will kids strike out? Sure. Will they get a hit? Sure. And is there a need for improvement either way? Sure. But let's dial back the applause meter a little and encourage the courage and persistence it takes to put one foot in front of the other.

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joining the army

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Today, perhaps even as I write, my younger son, Ives, 18, is busy taking the preliminary steps that will make him a member of the Army National Guard. There will be paperwork and a physical exam and by the end of the day a swearing-in. There will also be some decision as to when he will go to do eight weeks of basic training and some subsequent training in a specific job or MOS (Military Occupational Specialty).

I have mixed reactions, but, as usual, the world does not care much what my reactions are. The world is more interesting than that. Still, in no special order ....

-- Which is better? -- to have someone else do your dirty work or to do it yourself? The question is not as easy as it appears on the surface. Since everyone allows or insists on others' doing their dirty work, the question becomes, in part, what are you missing? And the answer is often ... quite a lot.

-- The military is in the business of killing others for profit and power. I do wish with all my heart that my son will not have to kill others (especially, given these hard economic times, his own countrymen). But you can't get to the west by traveling east and there is no avoiding the bloody potential built into military life ... my blood, your blood, our blood ... for profit and power.

-- Eighteen seems an impossibly young age at which to make serious decisions, but that is just an old man talking... an old man who loves his son and would chop off an arm to keep him safe. But the world is more interesting than old men ... or young ones either.

-- My father was surprised and opposed when I joined the army at a time when there was no choice ... or rather, there was a choice, but there was a draft and the only way to avoid it was to run away to Canada, get pregnant, or go for an advanced academic degree. My father thought I was a "sensible" and "intelligent" young man, so why in the world would I join the army? A couple of years before I joined up, I had talked my way out of compulsory ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) at the college I attended: I told the commanding officer in no uncertain terms that I was opposed to the military and he seemed to credit my arguments because I was not forced to take the classes. But two years later, I had decided more or less that I preferred "experience to virtue" and signed on the dotted line. I wasn't wrong and I was fortunate enough not to have to kill anyone for the benefit of those seeking profit or power, but, looking back, that didn't excuse me. I was in for three years, hanging around with the single most intelligent group of people I have ever been associated with. Linguists with sometimes weird and wonderful backgrounds.

-- Did I try to talk my son out of the military as an aspect of his life? Yes, I did. But at 18 it is hard to hear the arguments that run counter to your own fixed notions. Love, glory, patriotism, honor, testosterone, a fixed and (in some quarters) acceptable framework in which to express your life ... who has not made such choices only to find out later what you could not know in the first place? Marriage, profession, clothing ... everyone makes choices with an eye to a future that simply cannot be known.

-- Do the Buddhist nostrums and experience of the past whisper in my mental ears? Sure, but the situation is more compelling to me than "Buddhism."

-- The Army National Guard is not the regular army. The Guard provides basic training and MOS training and then, over a period of six years, it asks for two weeks (I think that's right) of summer training and one weekend a month. The Guard has been sent to war zones in recent years ... mostly because politicians haven't got the balls to institute a draft in which their children might be caught up or be forced to evade. The Guard is not the regular, full-time, 24/7 army, but it is close enough to satisfy in-a-pinch needs.

-- Life is sometimes likened to a kaleidoscope ... one small shift of the tube, and the colored scenery changes in ways that seem minute and yet the entire universe is not the same. The only trouble with this simile is that there is an orderliness to what is on display. Things have discernible edges that can be pleasingly parsed as the on-looker says, "Oh look! It's just like...." But of course it is not "just like" anything whatsoever. And a kaleidoscope is too convenient an analogy by half ... too self-serving and self-anointing. Beautiful and ugly, joy and sorrow, correct and incorrect ... there are no points of convenient differentiation. People make their choices and, voila! -- what was good becomes better ... or perhaps worse ... or perhaps indescribably itself ... which doesn't mean the effort to describe it is diminished.

-- When my daughter was little, she fell off her tricycle and split a front tooth. Half of it was gone from top to bottom. Once the doctors determined she hadn't swallowed the missing half, we had to take her to the dentist to have the remaining half pulled. I took her into the dental chamber and fully expected to sit with her while the dentist performed the deed. But before he went to work, he and his nurse firmly excused me from the room. I was not to be allowed to be with my daughter. Intellectually, I could see their point. But when I got into the waiting room, I balled like a kid. I was wracked with tears: Someone had my child and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help her, to comfort her, to encourage her, to love her. They had my baby!!!!

-- I am afraid for my son. I am happy for my son. I will entertain no revisions to my mish-mosh of brightly-colored thought. I am pleased to see my son make his choice, even if it is a choice I can disagree with or praise or see from another perspective. I would like him to grow into a happy man, but there is no guarantee ... and I can purely hate that. I can pray like a Christian or I can curse like a sailor ... the world doesn't mind. The world is more interesting than my caring or caterwauling.

-- Bottom line: I love my son and that's all there is to it.
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"the poorest president in the world"

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Passed along in email came this BBC article about "the poorest president in the world:"

"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more," he says.

"This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself," he says.

"I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice."

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news notes

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No snow as yet, but there is a new-normal daily frost on the windshields of cars parked on our street and the tree of the hanging squirrels, as I have dubbed it, is now denuded of both leaves and squirrels.

Mexico City has suffered a 6.0 earthquake and there was another temblor of 5.6 off the Aleutian Islands. Israel is sharpening its knives to go after Hamas, a group that has sent rockets out of Gaza and into Israel, the country that treats Palestinians like shit and wants to make sure they keep swallowing it. The fires of the Middle East seem to be spreading out of Syria and into lands where dry tinder awaits.

In the United States, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, former general David Petraeus, has quit because of an affair with his biographer. There is talk about the possible compromising of secret documents (no one has said precisely how sensitive any of them might be and the government is notoriously given to over-classifying information), but basically the interest in this prurient country is the infidelity and the sex-sex-sex. It reminds me of a stand-up comedian I once saw in the wake of President Bill Clinton's dalliance with his aide, Monica Lewinsky. Why, the comedian asked, shouldn't the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world and a guy who works exceptionally long hours, get an occasional and perhaps much-needed blow job? It was a pretty funny riff that threw America's love-hate affair with sex into relief.

When he was still alive, my brother-in-law Tony once asked me why there shouldn't be a newspaper that depicted the good news. I was still working as a newspaper reporter at the time and answered him by quoting former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite: "News isn't about how many cats did not get up on the garage roof."

At the time, I thought Tony's question was ludicrous and a bit smarmy. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. Bad news is easy to find and can be overbearing ... sapping to the soul. Nowadays, I'm happy to hear of the cats that did not go astray.
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lasers of discontent

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Funny how things come along all by themselves and take center stage. A day progressing more or less without incident can suddenly be consumed by a splinter in the finger or a stubbed toe, a kiss or some really good chocolate.

Suddenly, all else takes a back-seat status as a laser of attention comes to bear. Good news, bad news ... same laser.

Yesterday, I began taking a prescribed medication to lower cholesterol. I have tried several in the past and each has resulted in some pretty severe muscle aches and other flu-like symptoms so today I have a hard time not wondering how soon the bad reactions will occur. Like some professional hypochondriac, I fidget and fuss and imagine until there's no telling what is a real reaction and what is a self-induced one: Do I ache because I actually ache or because I am expecting to ache?

Common sense says, "stop thinking about it and see what actually happens." But common sense can't hold a torch to the laser-like attention. So there is a retreat to the second line of common-sensical defense: If you can't escape it, then go with it ... fidget and fuss and imagine and see how well that works.

With luck, someone will send me a dirty joke or some other diverting bit of information -- as for example the clip of a woman who found Satan in her toaster -- and I can forget about my beloved anxieties and lasers.

On the other hand, is there a situation -- even on a day progressing more or less without incident -- that does not turn on the lasers? And if every situation is a laser, who's this boob who insists on turning the laser on?

The Zen Buddhist phrase wafts softly back into this fidget-prone mind ... "blue heaped on blue."
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the dangers of expertise

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Sitting at the feet of the master may engender a warming glow, but have you ever hung around with someone whose expertise is the extent of his or her capacities, who basks in little else and who is plainly incapable of addressing other human concerns? In-sufferable!

On the one hand, it is such a delight to find someone who knows a lot about what I know a little about and yet would like to know more. Wowsers!

But when these accomplishments seem to convince and immure the one who accomplished them, when the discussion of spiritual adventure, for example, seems incapable of telling a good dirty joke or admitting a deep love of chocolate or expressing an unencumbered desire for a date ... how limited! how self-centered! how borrrrrring! And the same is true for dancers or academics or successful businessmen.

But it is instructive since it is so human. Expertise and accomplishment may be what anyone might seek, but when the one who actually achieved them is convinced by his or her achievement, when the best they can do is bask and rest and claim some elevated position ... well, isn't that the height of foolishness?

No one who has actually achieved something after long and arduous effort imagines s/he has accomplished anything. The new-normal of expertise is just the new-normal ... and the important part with expertise is that it is never the end of the trail. When it is the end of the trail, then something is missing.

From this I think it is fair to deduce that what anyone knows is not nearly as instructive as what they don't.

Here is a BBC posting that addresses the 10,000-hour rule of thumb for expertise.
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treason and terrorism

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Russia has approved an expanded and vaguely-worded law that targets "treason:"

Under the new law, anyone possessing information deemed secret - whether a politician, a journalist, an environmentalist or a union leader - could potentially be jailed for up to 20 years for espionage.

It is hard not to think of this law as being the next and most logical step in the wake of a worldwide governmental embrace of the word "terrorism."

Other western governments may bridle and snicker at the Russian heavy-handedness:

"We're way kooler than that!"

What they neglect, however, is a careful look in the "terrorist" mirror.
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no more compromise

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No more compromise.

Am I wrong to think that spiritual longing and endeavor finds a foundation -- if not the foundation -- in these three words?

And further, am I wrong to think that spiritual longing and endeavor, in pursuit of such a heart-felt certainty, willingly submits to endless compromises ... vastly ornate confections that seem to promise that at long last the time will come and the place will arrive where there is no...more...compromise?

A compromise with death.

A compromise with calamity.

A compromise with uncertainty and doubt.

A compromise with love that lies just out of reach.

Through the forests and thickets of this life, through the brambled undergrowth up ahead, now and then there is a glimpse of what it might be like ... a unicorn seen briefly ... a flank, perhaps, or tail or peeking face ... no more compromise. Yes, it does exist ... it does for sure ... I have seen it in brief moments and am assured that this strange, insistent longing is no joke or fairy tale.

No more compromise. No more toys. No more restful pretense. Pure and simple and ... well ... no more compromise. No more bending of the knee to "freedom" or "enlightenment" or "compassion" or "joy" or "heaven" or "hell" or "sickness" or "health." No more "lies" or even "truth."

Zen Buddhism

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Zen Buddhism

Zen Buddhism

Zen Buddhism

Zen Buddhism

Zen Buddhism

Zen Buddhism...

OK, there's my nod to "Zen Buddhism" for the day.
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man and his beasts

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A mahout cleans the nails of a chained elephant before the start of an annual temple festival at Tripunithura in the southern Indian state of Kerala November 12, 2012. The eight-day-long temple festival features a colourful procession of decorated elephants, and drum concerts.
REUTERS/Sivaram V

An Afghan man sits with a cage of quails on a hill in Kabul November 12, 2012.
REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail 

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petitions seek secession from U.S.

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And, following hard on the heels of the "omnishambles" universe in which we all seem to live, there is this story from the BBC:

Twenty states have petitioned to secede from the United States.

Most voted for Mitt Romney, the Republican who lost the presidential election to Barack Obama last week.

The last time states officially seceded, the US Civil War followed.

In proportion to the population, the Civil War was America's most costly war ... hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
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"omnishambles"

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"Omnishambles" has been named word of the year by the Oxford English dictionary.

The word - meaning a situation which is shambolic [very badly organized] from every possible angle - was coined in 2009 by the writers of BBC political satire The Thick of It.

The word strikes me as peculiarly British in its ascendancy -- assuming a level of intelligence and wit and a vague, literary clumsiness that I doubt would be seen at, for example, Merriam Webster in this country. The belly laughs of The Washington Post's "Mensa Invitational" is more American.

I do imagine that if the Occupy movement is ever resurrected, "omnishambles" might become its spoken or unspoken motto.
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the wish-mobile

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I wish, as once I wished, that I had taken the overnight ferry from Brindisi to Greece and sat in the cheap seats, on the open deck, with the farmers and their flocks, drinking raw red wine from goat skins and dancing until dawn and their destination arrived.

I wish, as once I wished, I had seen things through and gone around the world 'backwards' -- from east to west -- for the then lordly airfare sum of $900. The complete air ticket allowed you to travel in one direction only -- no doubling back -- but it made allowances for stopovers. I wanted to stop in Japan until I heard that orange juice was $3 per glass and the diffident and distant distances of what I understood the culture to be like pushed me away. So I would skip Japan and go to Vladivostok and catch the Trans-Siberian Railway heading east ... and perhaps see or be robbed by bandits along the route.

I wish, as once I wished, I had gotten to Tierra del Fuego and seen the Atlantic and Pacific oceans embrace.

Or Afghanistan, the eastern terminus of the Silk Route and a place once clamorous in the myriad cultures brought together by riches and accepting of many forms of art and religion and language and not yet demeaned by small men incapable of limiting their rigidities to their penises.

I wish I had ...........................I wish I hadn't

1. ______..........................................1. _______
2. ______..........................................2. _______
3. ______..........................................3. _______  
4. ______..........................................4. _______

How long is this list and how pervasive! If travel were the half of it, everyone would be in clover. Sins of commission and sins of omission, as the Christians say. Travels taken and travels missed -- how could they be as compelling as the clawing, smothering, beckoning, and wondrous thoughts and words and deeds and emotions in other, less obvious realms? God, how I can wish!

Perhaps when the wish-factory has ceased its endlessendlessendless production ... perhaps then I can be ready to answer the only question that makes much honest sense:

Now what?
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twice-told tale

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Once upon a time in my favorite bar in Berlin, a young American sat down at my table. He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and although I was not much older than he, still, perhaps because I was in the army, I felt older.

The young man bubbled and gushed with his adventures traveling around Europe on his parents' unacknowledged largesse. He was a good kid and one tale he told me as we drank our beer in the early 1960's was a keeper.

He was traveling in back-country Greece, hitch-hiking and walking through the mountains with no certain destination. He had no money, but still he kept going. And as time passed, he realized he was hungry. Not just a little hungry, but very, very hungry. Famished. The road led up one hill and down the next and must lead somewhere, an yet he saw no town ahead and he was alone with his hunger.

Finally, he came to a small town and down the main street, he saw a cafe or well-worn restaurant. His hunger leapt up redoubled ... salvation was at hand. He sat down at a table and, because he spoke and read no Greek, ordered literally everything on the small menu. The food came and, dish by dish, he wolfed it down.

But as his stomach filled and the insane one-pointedness of hunger retreated, he was able to take notice of his situation and surroundings. The more he ate, the more he became aware that he had no way to pay. And more, he became aware of the eight or ten men scattered around the cantina -- seasoned men with mustaches and hawk-still eyes, men as browned and fit as he was pink and out of his depth. And the more he ate, the more he could see that these men who were comfortable and at home were ... looking at him.

His now-full stomach began to trouble him in new ways. There was panic, and the panic was not reduced as he saw two of the men approaching his table. Somehow, he imagined, they knew he was a moocher and a thief and were going to beat the crap out of him for it.

The men stopped and stood over him and suddenly the young man saw something else in their demeanor and eyes ... these men were inexplicably shy.

At last, in halting English, one of the men made it clear they were not there to beat the crap out of this young American. What they wanted ... if he were amenable ... if he would consent ... if he would be so kind ... if he would take pity on their ignorance ... if he would accede to their small petition ...

What they wanted from this young American was ... to dance. They hoped he would teach them the American dances they had heard about on the radio but didn't know how to perform ... the twist, perhaps. Everyone in the room loved to dance and in Greece, men dance together ... but they did not know what this pink American knew.

And everyone danced ... and the food was on the house ... and ....
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