The Tales of Accumulate Man

The mothballed 5 and dime

2010-02-24T09:56:00.000-08:00

When I was a wee lad my grandfather Tata would take me to the local five and dime store there on Pico, not too far off of Vermont. It was a different neighborhood back in those days, a whole different LA. The store was run by another little old immigrant guy, that much I remember. He and my grandfather were pals, comfortable in the way that older working class men on equal footing can be. While the two old friends talked (maybe not so old back then) I would be given the run of the store. Back in those days, with those three year old arms, I could only carry so much stuff. The toys I chose were all inexpensive, cheaply made stuff for the moment. For my grandfather it was about pleasing the boy and that made the experience a good one for both of us.

I've been fortunate. My life is filled with many possessions, but let me tell you, I would give up any number of them just to have one of those little pieces of joy that came from the heart of my grandfather.

Accumulate Man has been alot like that, like a small shop filled with overflowing abundance, filled with lots of little pieces of joy. It's probably not too much different of an experience than what those two old men shared. It's been comfortable place for me to sit down and share stories with you. Sure, they've been on the most part fairly personal, a big scoop of stuff off the top of my life, a dip into the old memory bin, but it's also been a place to share bits and pieces of cool stuff, newspaper articles, all that, that have popped up along the way. It was fun for a long time, even after the Tengu Spirits of my old workplace came along and trashed the joint. I came back, straightened things up, went at it full force there for awhile but somehow I think I've either outgrown this place or just knew it was time to move on. To that end my stories about and for Jane will continue to spill forth over at the old "LFW" site, and Futon Cinema, as scattershot as it's been, will be, for the unforeseen future, the best place to find me and the further adventures of Accumulate Man.

Yeah, this was certainly "the place" to be there for awhile, but things change. Life on this end has changed dramatically from the days when you, my old team mates, awarded this spot "Best Blog". I have gone from full employment to being a economic statistic, from being wacked out and broken hearted to being fairly well along the road to spiritual recovery and happiness. I am living through the biggest historical event since the Great Depression as a soldier on the ground, and like the Joads I'll soon find myself along with all my possessions heading off down the road into some uncertain sunset. These days, instead of chatting with patrons from behind a desk I find myself spending alot of time chatting with my new old friend, talking man talk with him and all his customers while he sets up and slings his dogs.

There are a lot of us out here testing new waters, you know? I see them all the time in line at Helpline, and work with a few who are casualities of the great banking crash. There are a quite a number of folks who are turning inventive, too, taking their old skill sets and applying them in ways they never really thought of before. For instance, a few weeks ago, while running an errand, I met a gal, a newly minted personal chef, another soul inbetween positions, and told her about the Hot Dog King and his up-on-the-hill dog cart business. I introduced the two of them and starting next week she'll be making salads for his concession. She considers the upcoming venture to be some sort of great adventure. When I come back from my interview down south I'm thinking maybe I'll buy a portable restaurant grill and start up a branch business alongside my old buddy. Taqueria style Mexican food. What a great thing to do until my ship comes in.

Right now I have no idea what kind of ship I'm waiting for. Years ago when I was younger, much cockier, I thought of myself as being fairly bullet proof. I don't think I would have considered myself untested, but I really don't think, looking back on that old life, that I was really truly tested at all. Slowly but surely, layer by layer, I am being stripped down to my lowest common denominator. I am being pared down like a crisp Bartlett pear, peeled back like a Vidalia onion. I am getting down to the core of my being, finding out who my friends really are, discovering once and for all what my true values are all about. In the coming months I hope to see how to best apply those values, where they'll take me, who I can count on to help me see them through. What's great is that the party on the other end will be small, compact and filled with real people, real friends. Real. Wow, what a concept.

So, let's just say that this old five and dime of memories and stories needs to be shuttered for awhile. What you might see here, instead, are a lot of older pieces popping up, posts put into hibernation long ago. Not too much unlike Captain EO was at Disneyland. Think of what's coming up as a "greatest hits" tour. An anthology of Accumulate Man's best stuff. An airing out of the closet.

Okay, until I land let's just say that I'll see you all later. I think I'll go and trip the light fantastic with Jane for awhile, watch a few more movies and hang out a bit with my fellow unemployed foodie pals. Wish us all luck, the bold travelers and the rocket testers, the edge seekers and the great unwashed, yeah good luck and God's speed,all that. Right now, even with everything that we have going for us, we're going to need it. See at you at sunset!

Salud!

A beautifully written food article!

2010-01-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

Some things are worth sharing. I could mention it and hope you find it but I think it's worth reading just for the sake of the author's language and style. Vegetarian or not, I think you'll love the imagery this piece evokes!

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24food-t-000.html?hpw

Storm passes

2010-01-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

When I saw this reader photo posted by dyslexicspeedreader in the LA Times today I suddenly was washed over by an extremely large wave of nostalgia. I remember those sorts of cloudy days in Orange County, days, after a storm would pass, that smelled of ozone and wet sage and far too many chemicals freshly washed from the air. I saw that photo and realized how far away from home I am, and what truly constitutes home in the heart. As much as I have become and embraced being a "Northwesterner" I will always be a Californio, a man made of sea water, Joshua trees and orange groves, of asphalt, high end malls and flakes of magic shed from the auras of movie stars. I will always be closer to this scene above...one filled with sky, sand and surf...than I will ever be of the beauty that lies before me any time I wish to look out my window and revell in it..a scene filled with farway mountains, snow and a sun that falls into some faraway ocean that I rarely get to see.

Salud!

Cooking with Jane: Saved by Conjunto!

2010-01-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

I lucked out on my way to store the other day. I only wanted to bag a bunch of cilantro, a couple, three avocados at the discount grocer. See, I had some turkey left over from a bird I roasted the other day and had a hankering for turkey taquitos, something that every red blooded, wild half Mexican boy can use to help him grow up to be big and strong. But I was way laid, pulled into Goodwill by promise of good sales and such. Had to see what was lurking in the cookbook aisle before I went off and hit the grocery store.

Well, I did find a few cookbooks, even a nifty Mexican cookbook written by a full out Mexican woman living in London! But what thrilled me even more than that was discovering, just as I was heading to the checkout stand, a pristine, still sealed in it's wrapper collection of Tex-Mex Conjunto classics compiled by Arhoolie! I am telling you, I could have set everything else down at the moment and been happy as a clam (or whatever bi-valve you fancy!) I practically skipped out of the store and damn near forgot my original mission. I pretty much ran down the sidewalk to Save a Lot and got the rest of my shopping out of the way, just so I could get home and pop that new disk into my cd player. Do you know how rare it is to come across that kind of music in a second hand store? Rare, baby, rare, just the way I like my lamb chops!

So, I played that album again this morning and was thankful for it. I pulled together a nice omelet, too, and am getting ready for another work day at Helpline. I think of music, cooking and a good day's work and think, man, if it wasn't for that immortal triad I wouldn't have an excuse to get out of bed most mornings. Oh, never mind, scratch that. The cat would make sure I was up and out of bed, if only just to feed him and let him out into the world.

But today I had another excuse to be out in the world myself and it is spelled Conjunto! Go grab some, buddy and tell me if that music doesn't cure what ails you!

Salud!

Saving the world...

2010-01-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

...one dog at a time! It's one thing to walk on down the sidewalk and peek at the "atmosphere", it's another thing entirely to work it, to be that smiling face under the umbrella shiling the goods.
I sat around the courthouse with my pal the Hot Dog King afternoons through most of the summer. Those days were filled with plenty of highs and lows. He was a good ear and a pal and helped me get through some hairy and uncertain times and for that I will be forever grateful. He, in turn, has been wading through his own personal swamp of uncertainty and I returned the favor of being an ear and good buddy. Turned out that it's all worked out to our best advantage.

He needed a weekend compatriot and I needed some cash flow. I already knew food, already had a good idea from hanging out forever at the cart what the spiel was. One day's worth of "training" turned into a weekend "career". We catch a lot return customers from his courthouse gig, but a lot folks gracing our stand are new customers, some as far away as the HDK's home state of Nuuu Yaaawk. Today I had my photo taken with a little girh and dog under the canopy of yellow and blue. In my eyes I am now a Sabrett's dog seller, some guy selling dogs who is going to land in somebodies scrap book. How cool is that?

At Uptown Mike's we turn folk's understand about the wonders and glories of hot dog around one dog at a time. I am more than happy to educate you about the wonderfulness of a Sabrett dog. Come on by and I'll show you how great a dog from NY can be!

Salud!

Sabrett's official site!
http://www.sabrett.com/condiments.cfm

Off to a new and somewhat different sandbox

2010-01-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

I have strayed, but what else is new?

I love to write, caring not a wit whether or not my writing gets me into hot water. But we can't make soup without hot water. Well, I suppose I could, but I'm not a fan of ceviche.

So, I'm onto other things. I love this spot, I do. I love writing tales here in Tales and I suppose that every once in awhile I'll drop a post. But things change and new world beckon. And hey, this hasn't always been the only show in town. The food blog, Cooks Talk!, was a hoot to minister to and wa a pretty useful tool for showing off that old library collection of mine. That one I knew I had to set it down because it wasn't mine to add to anymore. And that ode to that old time flame of mine? Well, it was fun and meaningful and heartfelt to write, but I knew it had finally served it's purpose. I was done with it and needed to set it down, put it away, say goodbye.

So, instead of limiting my play to this sandbox alone I've decided that it was time to try out something new again. I've picked up my toys and writing pad and stories and have moved them to a new location. Sure, it's still Accumulate Man talking, but over there the stories will be tinged with a touch of cinema. Same kind of format, tales and fact mixed with a bit of fiction and a touch of memoir. Come see me there and be sure to bring your love of film, your love of life. It's been fun hanging out here, but like the tales that I wrote to my fifth wife, this is old territory. It's time to light out to a place where film, passion and life intersect.

See you there!

Accumulate Man

http://www.futoncinema.blogspot.com/

Hold the phone

2010-01-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

This week will be one for the books. A couple days pushing dogs, an afternoon spent learning all there is to know about food safety, another afternoon culling together the remainders of a failed restaurant's emptied refrigerator, another moment or two spent calling in the mortgage and then, to top it all off, not just one but two phone interviews. At this point I really don't care if either one of those agencies offer me a job. What matters most to me at this point is that someone cares enough to call, gives a hoot enough to have me hanging onto my phone for an hour or so on Thursday and for an additional bit of time on Friday, too. With those calls under my belt I know with complete certainty that I can handle the stress of waiting, of wondering, of thinking too much in the dead of night. Just knowing that a call is coming in is about uplifting as a finding a five dollar bill on the sidewalk at lunch time. I now know where my path lies, and it is once again in the world of public libraries. Huzzah!

Salud!

The joy of working the dogs

2010-01-11T11:23:00.001-08:00

I spent the weekend helping out the Hot Dog King, but maybe it was a case of the Hot Dog King helping me out, instead. It's been a mutual admiration society we've been running for awhile now. Both of us being foodies and fans of the Three Stooges is a plus, but having a pal who is also unemployed AND a natural born hustler makes it even better.

It wasn't rocket science running that cart, that's for sure. Basic mathematics was required for counting cash. Customer service skills I have in spades. Watching the number of dogs in the wells, well, that was easy, about as easy as fishing them out and applying toppings according the wishes and desires of my patrons. It was the waiting and the thinking inbetween customers that made it tedious at times. Otherwise it was fun and easy, and that, my friends, is what work should be all about.

I stood there, under the eve of the Sedgewick Albertsons, soaking in the strange balminess of the weather, the pleasantness of the customers and the comraderie of a pal. The work I was doing this weekend gave me a different kind of thrill than the satisfaction I get when I work at Helpline. It was a different kind of fatigue at the end of the day, too, a delicious sort that said to me that I worked, not just for the sake and survival of the community, but this time, for it's pleasure, too.

It was an ephiphany, then, for me, to discover what it was that work really meant to me: a bit of delicious fatigue at the end of the day delivered up because I spent the day entertaining, nuturing and participating in the growth and well being of my community. If only work in my profession could be as simple, easy and as fun as serving up that humble dog.

But, you know, applying topping to wursts is not where I am going. The destination remains a mystery, somewhat like the ingredients of those dogs I was slinging. And that mystery will continue up until the day my ship comes in, and that day, children, is the day I set my hot dog tongs down.

Salud!

I am part of the ten percent

2010-01-08T06:03:00.000-08:00

I wake up early most days, not early as in six or seven, not early the way many folks do as they prepare for another work day. I'm not waking up early to watch the sunrise, take a walk or hit the gym. When I say I wake up early it's usually two or three in the morning. If I'm lucky it's closer to four like today, and for that I can blame the cat.

No, I've been waking up at one or two or three in the a.m., sometimes with indigestion, sometimes due to bad dreams, sometimes because I forgot to brush my teeth or turn out the light, but usually it's a combo pack featuring all of the above items, all laced together with a dollop of anxiety thrown in for good measure. I usually wake and wonder "what the hell", wonder how a humanities-based, soulful Mexican man could end up an economic statistic at age fifty-two. I do more than wonder, sometimes, as I know that my proclivities and appetites and passions have had alot more to do with my status than the economy ever could. But still.

So I wake up knowing that I could use some lettuce and not some coffee and pad around the house worrying about my dwindling bank account and the steady pace of my debts. I look around me and know that the holidays are over and done with but wonder why I still can't seem to motivate myself to put away the boxes still sitting around my living room. I have irons in the fire and am thankful for a good solid work record but all the same I would rather be doing something rather than nothing so I look towards the dawn and the rest of the day in order to fill it up with meaningful activity.

These days meaningful activity falls into several categories. I knock out three days a week at the foodbank, which I am forever thankful for. I kill time hanging out with The Hot Dog King, and, to keep my soul intact, make chili for the man once a week. Starting this weekend I'll be learning how to peddle dogs, but even that seems about as much of a stretch for me as that projector work I was attempting a while back. I still write, but not as much as before, and have a new film blog lifting slowly lifting off the ground to prove it. The only time I feel release from the bondage of uncertainity is when I go second handing or take a walk. At least walking is free.

I know that plenty of sleep and water and exercise would help me out more than anything else, but I would rather watch movies and drink coffee and cook instead, all the while wondering when I can stop being a statistic. I suppose someday I will be able to look back at this and know that I weathered a remarkable storm, that I came out of it with more than a t-shirt. I will come out of this travail an entirely different man, in a completely new part of the world, without debts, without a house. A man without anchors. A man with brand new wings.

And baby, in the end I will still have my soul. Unlike some folks I know I never ever had to sell it in order to be where I am at or give it away in order to go where I am going.

Maybe instead of waking up and worrying I need to get up in the morning and write country/western songs, instead.

Salud!

The last few lines of this piece are my story in a nutshell:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/business/economy/09jobs.html?hp

Push pin city

2009-12-31T20:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, kids, time to get out the old National Geographic United States map and all your colored push pins and mark where Accumulate Man has sent off applications these last few months....

Boise, ID
Fern Ridge, OR
Issaquah, WA
Ridgedge, CO
Santa Clara, CA
Puyallup, WA
Prineville, OR
Pueblo, CO
Twin Falls, ID
Nampa, ID
Pocatello, ID
Lakewood, WA
New York, NY
Spokane, WA
Silverdale, WA
Los Angeles, CA
Port Orchard, WA
Pasco, WA
Caldwell, ID
Eugene, OR
Prossor, ID
Woodland, WA
Moscow, ID
Tacoma, WA
Seattle, WA

Some of those cities have called for multiple applications. Some apps coming up include Stevens County, Washington, Bakersfield, San Diego and a little town outside of Chicago called Glendale Heights. I've even considered Louisana. For the gumbo? No, for work.

It's been one grand geography lesson. Know that I just might end up anywhere which is fine by me. Anywhere has a paycheck. PO? Well, let's just say it's been swell.

Salud!

Sideways moment

2009-12-30T21:20:00.001-08:00

Forget the Terminator or Transformer sequels. Sideways was my favorite movie this last summer. I have this bad habit of catching up with movies long after their release date and this was one of them, but gosh, what a film. It has the potential of making me weep every time I see it. Great actors, great script, helluva story. Plus, it's made me a mad man for Pinot Noir. If you haven't seen it, see it, then go take a road trip out to the wine country here in Washington with a good friend. Sip, breathe, enjoy. Just try not to crash the car, ok?

Salud!

A fellow tip-of-the-hat to Sideways:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/popcornprejudiceamovieblog/2010638403_looking_backwards_at_sideways.html

52 things

2009-12-30T09:56:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

New Year's resolutions? No, instead I make lists. What's written dowm on my old lists doesn't matter a wit and my new list only has power over me while I'm writing it down. The variables of life change so fast, heck, they can change the moment you set down your pen. These lists I post here annually are alot like those little pieces of paper that the Japanese hang on trees on New Year's Day or like the messages to the ancestors that the ancients would toss into the bonfires on the Solstice. For me they've been an annual laundry list of dreams and wishes and desires to send off to the gods, to the ancestors, to the universe. As a "pie in the sky" exercise goes it's not a bad thing. These lists are clarification tools, grand things-to-do lists, action plans, packages of hopes to lay my head down on at night before I go to sleep. So, find below the latest list, circa 2009. Let's see where it goes.

Happy New Year to those of you who follow this heartfelt blog and may all your hopes, wishes, dreams and desires come to pass!

My 2009 list of 52:

1. Strive to be happy regardless of what life brings to my doorstep.
2. In the midst of that happiness, remind myself to appreciate and find joy in what I have.
3. Walk more.
4. Buy less.
5. Concentrate on finding work in the library sector no matter where it lands me.
6. Sell the house, and if it doesn't sell, rent it out.
7. Find my way back to selling online and unload all the old toy soldier stock.
8. Buy a couple turntable needles and play my old records.
9. Get back to three new recipes a week.
10. Renew my WA sellers license.
11. Look into that lithographed box thing so Nathan and I can have something to work on together.
12. Continue to polish up my resume.
13. Get that darn new Kitchen Aid mixer out of the box and make something with it!
14. Make a file of all the movies that I own and then strke that list of films against those that I have watched.
15. Take good car of my children, my car, my friends, my body, my heart and my health.
16. Make good on all those FB connections I've made and renew friendships with those folks who have reached out to me.
17.Get back to writing my book.
18. Say goodbye to the Professora and mean it.
19. Make the drive to Boise at least once a month to see the kids until my ship comes in.
20. Continue to work with the foodbank even after I find paid employment.
21. Finish the painting and tiling projects before spring.
22. Drive to San Francisco to see my oldest. Be prepared for the wrath and renew that relationship if at all possible.
23. Take Spanish lessons and put them to use daily.
24. Ride the new lightrail in Seattle all the way to the airport.
25. Pay off all my old debts to friends and creditors alike.
26. Go to Seattle at least once a month just for the hell of it (and for Dick's burgers, too).
27. Watch more sunrises.
28. Breathe.
29. Put those weights and barbells in the backyard to use.
30. Embrace gardening once again.
31. If I find a job that turns out to be local, figure out how to love this house all over again.
32. Find a companion for my cat.
33. Find one relatively unknown band, director and writer to champion and learn all there is to know about them.
34. Make more Vietnamese, regional Mexican and North African foods.
35. Buy and learn to operate (safely!) a chain saw.
36. Continue to don costumes and play.
37. Find a way to get down Ren Faire in Northern California this coming fall.
38. Go see the swifts in Portland with Punkin.
39. Get down on the floor more often with Thomas.
40. Look into my old LA movie contacts for Will.
41. Find a cat for my Estranged One to replace Louis (can that ever be possible?)
42. Embrace the fine art of letting go.
43. Get a passport and then try it out.
44. Make up my mind on this last name thing and then stick with it.
45. Get a tattoo.
46. Learn to love again.
47. Laugh more often.
48. Make love more often.
49. Fight less.
50. Worry less.
51. Get more sleep.

and

52. Live today like there's no tomorrow.

Love, Accumulate Man

A grand award for a great ex-librarian

2009-12-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

Some of us, not all of us, in the library business dream of someday finding our own works on the shelves of our local branch library. I know for I started a book not too long ago. I hoped it would shake up the literary world and send those who sent me packing to the local big box store to pick up a copy of their own. Hasn't happened yet. All the same it's great to read stories about colleagues who share that love of reading and writing and storytelling and, in turn that love into published books. Ms Patron did one better: she turned her imaginative work into a Newberry Award. How wonderful is that?

Nice story. Now it's time to find a copy of the book. See you at Barnes and Noble.

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez30-2009dec30,0,5078340.column

NY Times reader's photographs of the decade!

2009-12-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the best photographers are the ones who aren't getting paid to pay attention to the world at large. They're just normal folks like you and me out there taking "pichers". Take a look at these snaps. Some ruly wonderful and wooly and tragic stuff captured in those photos. This was our decade. Be sure to post some of your own.

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/2009-decade.html?hp

Holiday greetings!

2009-12-22T21:34:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas one and all!

May your day be a wonderful one!

Love, Accumulate Man

Brutal, relentless, beautiful

2009-12-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

Michael Mann's Public Enemies, right along side Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and the Coen Brother's Miller's Crossing, is the quintessential gangster flick. It has all the trademark features of a Mann film that you've come to know and love: lush cinematography, incredible set and costume design, fantastic acting, a rousing score, roaring action sequences, all of it. It is one outrageously mesmerizing film, but, as a reviewer put it, one without humor or let up. You start the movie, take a breath and finally breathe out two hours later. How good was it? Okay, I don't usually watch a movie twice in the span of twenty four hours these days, as I have too many movies backed up and only have so much time in the day to watch them. But this one? I didn't have to think twice about what film would be my kick off flick for the evening. And I look forward to seeing it again soon.

Incredible stuff, Public Enemies. Watching Johnny Depp play Dillinger will wipe away all those images you might have of him playing that simpering Jack Sparrow character for Disney and have you believing in him and his acting abilities once again. Check it out and be sure to bring an oxygen mask, you'll need it.

Salud!

Roger Ebert's review:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090629/REVIEWS/906299997

DVD Verdict review:

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/publicenemies.php

Old to me, new to you

2009-12-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

Digital thinking. Hmm. I don't know if jacking plugs into card reader boards counts but I've been into computerized employment since the mid-seventies. Let's blame it on that darn typing class I took in high school. If I hadn't struggled through that elective I might of ended up sorting mail on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I have to wonder where I'd be right now if I had gone that route.

No, computer work then was nothing like the "geek squad" kinds of things they want kids to get into now. My kid has already been taking game building classes in high school, but hey, codes a drag and I have to wonder if, in the end, that'll be his passion. I don't think that all of us out here utilizing computers in our daily work lives need to cosy up to hardware repair or software building but I do think we need to demystify the beast and make everyone comfortable working with computers, or, at the very least, have the courage to challenge them when they get ornery. But I have to admit when I worked at the desk I would see very few internet issues with the young breeds. It seems to be almost instinctual these days. Now if we can only transfer that comfort level into paid employment.

So here's to the new science and computer learning initiatives. I'm always happy when someone gets excited about something new, even if that something is pretty old hat to me. I suppose I felt the same way about the movie Jaws when I first watched it, almost twenty years after it's release. What's new to me can be very,very old to you. Good to go on that.

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/technology/21nerds.html?_r=1

Governor Moonbeam's rock

2009-12-20T12:14:00.000-08:00

I always's thought that Pat's boy was the man to beat. California's Attorney General Jerry Brown has always been a stand up guy. As governor was beyond bright, spiritual, economically frugal, dated a beautiful singer, liberal, progressive and just an all around nice guy, a man who was not just part of the machine but occupied the soul of it, too. So after I read the story posted below I was a bit sad. It wasn't because of the sculptors' timerity. Sure, he dodged a bullet, or played it save, whatever, by carving the visage of John Wayne instead of Jerry Brown. And sure, when folks go to Christian University library where the rock is stored they go to see the face of a great movie star, not the image of a long time politico.

But still.

Maybe that was the moment where things turned. Maybe when that rock was denied a great face Governor Moonbeam's shot at being president all went away. We all say silly things out loud, but I suppose when you are living in the public eye those things take on a life of their own. Pity. Life would have been a heck of lot better with Jerry Brown in the White House.

So, let's go out and find that man another rock. Better late than never. Yeah, Jerry Brown for governor (here we go again!)

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-then20-2009dec20,0,2486738.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

Buzz words of 2009

2009-12-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

News stories generate new words, and I'm a sucker for new words. Sometimes,when I can't find a good book to read, I'll pick up a dictionary and cruise the pages for some new term or phrase to bandy about, to laugh over, to use over and over again until I'm completely and totally bored with it. Today I stumbled on this nifty article and thought that maybe, until the 2010 edition comes out,that this list needs to be printed out and pasted into whatever slang dictionary is handiest. Fun stuff. Yeah. thank goodness for new words. Life would be much too boring without them.

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/weekinreview/20buzz.html?_r=1&hp

Writing and books at the end of the decade

2009-12-19T16:21:00.000-08:00

I cannot see a life spent without books. My house is saturated with them. I have them by my bed, on shelves in every room, in the car (breakdowns!) and sometimes, for the hell of it, small ones tucked away in pockets of coats. There hasn't been a time where books haven't been part of my collecting mania. As a boy it was all about war comics and Mad magazine, Famous Monsters of Movieland and Cracked. The book jones was always salted with the pulp I couldn't buy but could always borrow from the library. That was the place where all the serious stuff was found, where all the classic literature and heavy paper art books and interesting illustrated stuff dwelled. I couldn't have made it without the library in my life.

It's no small wonder that I got into the profession that I did, that all my truly close friends are writers or artists or collectors of books in some capacity or another. I can't go out into the land of commerce without wanting to come back with some kind of printed matter or another, be it a pamphlet or a bookmark or yet another cookbook to add to my collection. And while I don't necessarily find the world of big box bookstores my favorite kind of place to buy books, they're always a port in a storm when I'm out and about and want to escape the madness of the crowds at the mall.

So these days I mostly settle in with light stuff. I haven't read a novel in months, and printed matter mostly comes into my life across the screen or throughy recipes in the kitchen. But when I read the opinion post below I had to wonder about that new Sophie book technology he mentioned. I've always dreamed of a device that would let you not only dive into a great piece of literature but would also allow you to take off down various alleys of thought and ideas as they came up or were inspired by what you were reading. I love the idea of not having to set down a book to check out a fact or see a visual reference or a painting or hear a piece of music, to have the reading experience be more than something that's only taking place in your head.

I love books and reading if only because of the interconnectivity with life I find in them. My favorite novels, my favorite cookbooks, my favorite reference resources have always taken me deeper into the things I love, or want to know more about. Call it literate one stop shopping if you will, but reading about Sophie got me excited about books and reading all over again. This is technology waay past Kindle and that lot. We're on the verge of something truly grand., damn near mystical in it's level of excitement. Just can't wait.

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-decade-books20-2009dec20,0,6874483.story

One grand vampire flick

2009-12-18T22:02:00.000-08:00

"Let the Right One In". Not too hard to find, Hollywood Video foreign film section. A true coming of age bloodsucker of a film that will leave you breathless in the end. Wow. In an age where vampires are cool and chic a la Twilight this one will rock your world in a way that Universal's old b/w film did to 30's audiences, the way that Hammer's Christopher Lee films did to 60's horror fans and the way that Near Dark did to the genre twenty some odd years ago. A new fable for a new age. Timeless horror, grand cinema, great vampires..catch it now, and watch it in the dark.

Salud!

http://www.allmovie.com/work/let-the-right-one-in-430230

Need some serious laughs?

2009-12-18T17:33:00.000-08:00

This definitely falls under the joys of "pratfalls" or "slapstick" (not endured, just watched). Think Chaplin or Keaton or any of those great old Keystone cop silents. Impaled ninjas in Seattle,who would have guessed?

Salud!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2010286564_police_would-be_ninja_impaled.html

Panic Attack!

2009-12-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

Just read the story on Yahoo and then watched (to the best of my computer's ability) one sweet little sci-fi piece out of Uraguay. Seems the director made the film for 300 dollars and now is in the midst of bidding war for his services to the tune of, what, 30 million? What a great return on his investment! But still, you can't buy talent in the software department of Costco. This guy has it in spades. Check it out!

Salud!

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/buzzlog-uruguay-to-hollywood.html

A quote of the day that was meant for me to find...

2009-12-16T15:36:00.001-08:00

"I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable." Stephen Fry

Christmas in Vietnam and other interesting holiday blog pieces

2009-12-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

Just a few interesting holiday posts and blogs I stumbled upon looking up images of Old Saint Nick:

Operation Santa, including a great link to NORAD's Christmas Eve Santa tracking device:

http://www.operationlettertosanta.com/index.htm

The Tropic Lightning newspaper, circa 1969:

http://www.25thida.org/TLN/tln4-51.htm

An overview of the real St Nicholas:

http://www.stnicholassociety.com/Office/

Santa "primitives" from Kentucky and then some:

http://www.kentuckyprimitives.com/

Old St Nick and Old Nick in cahoots:

http://krampus.xanga.com/

The story of Coca-Cola's take on Santa Claus:

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html

Lastly, a strange and wacky little blog, this post featuring an old Mexican lobby card:
http://thoughtviper.com/inexob/arch67.html

Great chart..now what to do with the info but wait!

2009-12-14T03:22:00.000-08:00

"I'm not an old man, I'm not an old man..."

Love and life in America..when your 57-85. So far, so good. Come the end of the year I will inch ever closer to being a statistic on this chart. I figure I might as well live well until then and then see where the chips fall. Right now the chips (rather, mashed potatoes and roasted chicken) have me up at three in the morning with a bit of indigestion. I've seen more of that in recent months than I have my entire life. I'll just chalk it up to fiscal worries and financial anxieties. Hmmm. Funny. I didn't see that small malady on the chart, but then again I didn't see stats listed for fifty one year old unemployed men whose partners and children live five hundred miles away. Maybe I need to get out my glasses and look at the fine print about living and loving large.

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/14/opinion/20091214_opart.html

SantaCon 2009

2009-12-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, somehow I've missed out on what seems to be the biggest and most fun Christmas party happening out there. Can you imagine a convention hall full of Santas, Santas of every shape, size and description, all having the time of their lives? But then again I have to wonder how many "ho, ho, ho's" a person can stand!

I stumbled upon the photo spread posted below in this morning's LA Times. Man, I need to sign up for that. It'll give me a legitimate reason to grow a beard (that is, outside of the costume needs of the annual Pirate gig here in PO), to go out and find a Santa Claus suit, and, best of all, I won't have to tear down all my Christmas decorations after the holiday. I could consider it a matter of getting in the right mindset!

I can see it now, this somewhat Scroogy ol' Papa Bear being transformed into a jolly man of mirth and giving and happiness once again. Sounds like too much fun. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! Hundreds of them! Thousands of them! Yeah, time to gather up the candy canes and fire up the sleigh, a SantaCon is happening in Boise next week!

Salud!

This photospread may have changed my life...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santacon13-pictures,0,882145.photogallery

General info..

http://santacon.info/

Strange doings in Vancouver: http://burningvan.org/santacon/index_files/2004Tri.SantaCon.jpg

The scrolling Flickr show on this official site is worth a few moments of your time, believe me...

http://santarchy.com/

Sushi and Tacos and BBQ, oh my!

2009-12-12T07:48:00.000-08:00

I hang out with The Hot Dog King for a few minutes most days Monday through Friday. Those few minutes coming and going from the foodbank are a far cry from the hours I was burning up there back in September. Not that that was a bad thing. No, it was alot like Outland's Man's Couch strips san guys sitting around in their underware. Lot's of hairy chested bantering, all too much commentary. The best part about hanging out with him though was talking food, well, food talk in-between customers and all the mandatory NY style banter that goes on.

We've talked of all the foods that we've known and dreamed up menus and then every once in a while turn that pie in the sky into a slice of reality. If it wasn't for all that chit chat about Tommy's burgers and Coney Island dogs we would have never gotten Chili Dog Tuesdays (and Thursdays!) off the ground. We did a beta test on tamales a few weeks back and have been looking for proper restaurant gear to keep bao and fried rice at a proper temp. Asian food Mondays might not be too far off.

So we dream and launch when we can, but after reading through the list of foodstuffs that are available down sout on LA on foodtrucks, well, I know that we have only one way to go and that's to the used food truck lot. If a four wheeled kitchen is what it takes to truly expand our menu, well then, it's time to get a business license, a food handler's permit and a bigger dose of dreams. Well, the dreams come easy, I can see it'll be a bit of a hassle for two big egos to come up with one name to grace the side of that big ol' chrome shingled beast!

Dos Pendejos? Bi-Coastal Fusion? Pancho Schwartz Rides Again? The business name opportunities are endless! Take a look at the article posted below and see why I have a secret agenda for wanting job offers to come from down south!

Salud!
http://theguide.latimes.com/Elina-Shatkin/lists/178178/nouveau-food-trucks

Dog of choice

2009-12-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Ah, Jane and her well matched pups! I think I'd like to get a couple of those myself!

Quite a number of years ago, when I was still with my third wife, we were gifted with two brand new chihuahua puppies. We named the brothers Vago (Wanderer) and Meil (Honey). Their names fit all too well with their personalities. Vago was the tunnel digger, as an afterthought I should have called him Bronson. He helped to keep my fence reinforcement skills up. And Meil, well, he was the lapsitter, the prototypical shakey small dog with the big eyes and the sad/happy disposition. Apart they were great, but when those two dogs got together, man, it was fireworks. You would have thought those two were pitbulls the way they behaved instead of Taco Bell spokesmen stand-ins. The would size each other up, growl famously and then have at it, fur and blanket parts and squeeze toys flying everywhere. Then, after their bloodlust had cooled a bit, they would sit around and lick each other's wounds, pride themselves on their oversized cajones, and then curl up to nap, pals and brothers once again.

Sadly, I had to give up those two when landed here in the Puget Sound. Couldn't find a house for them and so I put an ad in the paper, free to a good home. Tons of response. Finally found them a home outside of Snohomish. Old couple who had lost their chihui lately. Later found out that that sweet old couple ran a Chihuahua stud farm. I'm sure it never bothered those two oversexed dogs a bit.

So, I can easily say that I had a pleasant experience with those pint sized pooches to have wanted one in my life once again. My Chihuahua jones spiked about seven, eight years ago, but unfortunately that was at the height of their new found popularity. My neighbors had a connection to a breeder and picked one up for themselves. When my Estranged One asked if she could get the number of the seller she was told that "we had the babies, they got the dogs", something like that. Very snarky. No more Christmas cards for them.

No matter, I waited as I always do for these kinds of things to pass and now, it seems, that with a bit of driving and a small outlay of cash that this dog can have his day and a chihuahau, too. Hadn't planned on getting a dog but once my ship comes in and my new location is secured, know that Guapo is going to have to get used to having a canine brother around the house.

Operation Chihuahua, indeed. My grandmother and my great aunt both had chihuahuas. I've had a couple myself. Hell, that made me and my family cool long before Legally Blonde ever came on the scene. And my two tough barking perros would have laughed at that sissified character "Bruiser" in the film. Hmmm, yeah, they would have barked him right out of the doghouse.

Wee perros practically for the taking. Gosh, yet another reason for a nice long roadtrip to Cali.

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chihuahuas10-2009dec10,0,4465673.story

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chihuahuas10-2009dec10,0,4465673.story

Oh, go ahead, Drag Me To Hell

2009-12-09T22:37:00.001-08:00

Sometimes it takes me awhile to catch up on new releases. I've been a Sam Raimi fan for years, and have tried my best to keep up with his oeuvre. But tonight, after too many years of wondering if all he had left in him were those great Spiderman films, I watched a movie that took me back to those early Sam Raimi Evil Dead roots, to a place filled with fantastic and outrageous terror, a kind of good and crazy scary that he christened "shock-a-blast". Drag Me To Hell was both hilarious and terrifying, the sort of scary movie you'll delight in if you like your frights spinetingling and goosebumpy without too much gore. If The Others and Orphanage and Paranormal Activity are your kind of scary then this flick will deliver the goods. Great production values, great cast, great script and plenty enough shocks to make you and your jaded horror fan pals holler out loud. Great sitting-in-the-dark-on-the-couch popcorn flick...catch it if you dare and be prepared to scream..and to laugh a bit, too!

Salud!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/drag_me_to_hell/

That's entertainment...

2009-12-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

First we get the multiplex thrill of a multimillion dollar making horror film made on the cheap in someone's suburban San Diego home (Paranormal Activity) and soon we might be able to check out the big screen antics of Youtubes "Fred". Take a moment and tune into that guy's crazy site. As the article points out, it's an aquired taste, funny in small doses. Just like with"Jackass" films, shows we really haven't moved too far from the days of bread and circuses. Mishaps, craziness, Christians being eaten by lions. One good banana peel is all it takes and we're good to go for the day..

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/movies/08fred.html?hpw

Yet another reason to move to LA..

2009-12-09T10:42:00.001-08:00

In-N-Out burger..yes, yes, yes, THE reason anymore these days why I make that long and wonderful drive down south. Sure, the weather in the springtime can be sublime, and who can knock those beautiful sunsets when the smog is just so? I love to go to Disneyland, see my old toy soldier seller, hit up Western Bagels and drop into Santa Monica for a quick spin at the Los Angelese Museum of Art and a quick walk on the pier. But when it comes to food, burgers and LA reign. Yeah, great Mexican, wonderful Thai, fantastic Vietnamese down in Little Saigon, all those great taco trucks, a man could go on and on. Now into the mix this little upstart. Doncha know that I gotta try it out? Road trip, anyone?

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-review9-2009dec09,0,4545014.story

What Calvin would truly wish for for Christmas if he had the internet at his disposal..

2009-12-09T10:14:00.001-08:00

There was a photo in the Seattle Times this morning that showed a happy family playing in snow in their front yard. Problem for the rest of us is that we haven't had snow come through yet. How to solve this sticky situation when the temps are below freezing? Make your own snow machine at home, or, if you are well-heeled and can see uses for a high pressure washer around the house the rest of the year invest in a well machined and dandy looking snow set up. I think that Bill Waterson's cartoon boy would have completely grooved on this set up and would have driven his folks mad for oned. Why beseech God for snow when you can now blow your own?

Salud!

http://www.snowathome.com/our_products/SG7_Snowmaking_Package.php

Story of my life..

2009-12-09T09:52:00.001-08:00

I know all about the electronic dragnet, about being caught up in hard to dismiss world of cellphone bills, internet histories and errant blogs. I should of warned Tiger, knowing how easily one can fall when your head is blissfully in the clouds and your fingers are happily typing away.

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/09text.html?hpw

Recipes for holiday treats

2009-12-08T18:33:00.001-08:00

An annual list for sweets that needs to be heeded. I would post this list on the recently defunct Cooks Talk! blog. Make one or more and enjoy the sweet giddiness of the season!

Salud!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/foodwine/2010243143_holidaycookie11.html

Joys of the day

2009-12-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

It was a good day.

There wasn't much there in terms of what counts as "big thrills" in today's action packed, consumer world. As a matter of fact it was a pretty simple day, and, if held against other days of my life, might be considered small, or even bittersweet.

But today we had sunshine, even if that sunshine was laced with an occassionally wicked bit of windchill factor. Today I got off not one, not two but three old fashioned, snail mail type application packets to places all over the West. One was across the pond for the librarian pool of the King County Library system, another went off to Pueblo, Colorado (they're looking for a Circulation Supevisor with an MLS attached to their experience). The last went out to Prineville, Oregon, to the Crook County Library. They want someone to fill a duel role, to be a children's librarian as well as an assistant director. A big wow there. I think I may be overshooting but maybe, well, just maybe, I'll get a nibble, a nod before they shred it. Remember, hope dies last.

So, I topped that off with a visit to the Hot Dog King (too cold to chat outside while he peddled dogs to those brave customers heading up the street to the Tree Lighting Ceremony), then a run to Hollywood (rented Jim Jarmusch's Limits of Control and Lu Chuan's epic Mountain Patrol). Took in some chili and baked potatoes at Wendy's, ran into Jane and wished her happy birthday a week early, then headed back to downtown PO and wandered about. Light crowds this year, no snow, no laser shows or fireworks to keep folk hanging around.

The Hot Dog King and I hit up Gino's afterwards for appetizers and drinks, I stayed on for late night happy hour, but only for their wicked Blackened Chicken Caesar salad. I walked uptown to the Historic Orchard to grovel before my old supervisor and he put me on the schedule once again. Having that strange hobby/volunteer gig there pays off as I was able to get in sans admission price and watch Black Dynamite (groove on it if you dare!). Not much more to do after that as it was cold and late, so I went home, put on Bill Paxton's The Traveler and crashed with the cat.

So, you might wonder, where was the joy and mystery and wackiness of the holidays in all that? Sure, everywhere you go you hear the music, see the sparkley things, feel the consumer buzz. But I found more joy in going places and seeing folks I know or who once knew me and chatting. I found more holiday spirit in those two guys at the movie house who didn't care about why I hadn't come around but that I finally showed up. I was filled with happiness breaking bread (literally) with my best man pal, as for years I didn't have one and who taught me what it takes to have a good friend (you have to be willing to 1)make time and 2)listen).

But what cost me some bittersweet tears was that silent wave I got back in regards to that accidental run-in I had with Jane. It was an across the street, car running kind of birthday wish, a drive away moment. I wonder if that's all we'll have between us for the rest of our lives. Chance encounters and long stretches of nothing in-between.

Yesterday was a good day, one that, even though not totally filled with contemporary Christmas buzz, was tinged with a delightful dollop of holiday spirit, and with just enough mystery and hope that I feel that maybe, just maybe, we might squeeze another Christmas miracle out of all this yet.

Salud!

It's the little things...

2009-12-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

It's the little things, like..

..knowing that my Christmas tree is up and that I have a month or more to thrill to it..

..having a full fridge and being able to groove on fried eggs on top of day-old enchiladas after a pot of presspot coffee..
..finding all the old Christmas things up in the crawlspace and knowing that their emotional content, once as fatal as Kryptonite, has mellowed and are worthy of digging through once again with the family by my side..
..watching The Fantastic Mr Fox with my boy, who is no longer really even a boy, and enjoying it thoroughly (even though I put up a really great argument for Ninja Assassins and could have easily just watched that by myself, instead, since they both started at the same time)..
..knowing that the huge upholstered chair I found second hand in Boise works in this little house of mine, and that my good friend The Hot Dog King has the same one at home and probably paid ten times what I paid for it back in the day when he was well heeled in California and that my cat loves it to death (I am sure that it came from a cat friendly home considered the "abrassions" on the legs..is it time for an extra cat?)..
..waking up warm and toasty under the covers inside knowing that frost has been laid down thick outside overnight..
..discovering the joys of "Two Buck Chuck", Trader Joe's famous (maybe infamous) three dollar wine from the Charles Shaw Winery of California..
..finding Indonesian masks and Russian fairy tale prints (sadly, the latter torn from some quality book or another) at the Helpline thriftstore, all to be wrapped and placed under the tree for me..
..thrilling to the idea of and gearing up for a holiday party here at home and planning one, maybe, two, more drives to Boise before Christmas..
..having good friends who, even after everything I've been through and knowing the full story behind my travails, have stuck with me thick and thin..
..witnessing the selflessness of the community behind all the hard work at the food bank and knowing that, without their support and generosity, that the hungry in the South Kitsap area would be hungrier and colder than they already are..
..hearing the overly laid down yet infectiously joyful Christmas tunes everywhere I go these days..
..knowing that the weight gain that I have seen come back into my life these last few months would really irk my doctor, thrills the secondhand stores (more pants to buy! Probably the same ones I unloaded at the beginning of summer!) and affirms that while I have not gained that weight through sloth or not caring about myself that my mantra "I will live until the day I die!" is fully engaged and actively seeking even more good times to gain weight about..
..seeing moonlight on the water and sunrise splashing on the Olympics both at the same time right outside my living room..
..hearing raves about the "Tommy's chili" I still continue to make for The Hot Dog King, even though he is seriously in arrears..
..knowing that the kids and the family are happy, healthy and well taken care for Christmas (in a big way) even though I am outrageously broke and close to being busted..
..finding job opportunities out there that lead me to believe that there could still possibly be one more Christmas miracle waiting for me..
..running into old friends out in town who are still happy to see me, regardless of everything..
..knowing that I gave my all to love and that while love let me down for the moment I will never give up on love..
..knowing that the ton of movies, the raft of wine and the full larder I have laid up over the last few months gives me peace when I find that the world is too filled with angry souls, boring people and far too much angst than is necessary..
..knowing that there are little gals working major chain coffee houses who are out there spreading misinformation to travelers about fifty cent refills on coffee and then finding out that that only applies to in-house purchases and then only within a halfhour of purchase and then finding out that there are all other gals who will override that rule ("..just this time") and who willingly show smiles when you commend them on their bravery for overriding rules for the sake of good customer service (and leave them a tip, besides)..
..the overwhelming assortment of used Christmas loot to be found at second hands these days (oh, and you should see the six foot, Fifties plywood Santa I found at St Vinnies the other day..what a kitchy score that was!)..

..but mostly it's the joy in living I am feeling right now that is filling my heart and life with so much meaning. Sure, I could be worried, actually, I should be worried, but I am filled with hope and baby, hope dies last. Things will work out because, well, just because they will, and that's one big thing to top off all the little things that are bringing peace, joy and happiness into my life these days..

And what about you? What are you finding to be happy about these days?

Salud!

Long time gone, Accumulate Man!

2009-12-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays, everyone! Eat enough turkey? Set up your Christmas tree yet? Been smooched under the mistletoe? Accumulate man is on it, even though that mistletoe action might have to wait. And some might say "well and good" to that last part. Maybe a break from that kind of drama, for the moment, anyway, is, as Martha might say, a good thing.

Otherwise it's been over five months since I've graced the halls of a certain organization and only in some ways do I miss it. I miss the paycheck, sure, but I miss my old patrons even more. But what's funny is that most folks, when I see them around town, wonder where I've been and tell me that they miss me, too. I've gotten cards and emails from people in ways that say to me that I touched on folks lives and that no matter what or where I go I will not be forgotten. Good feeling, that.

I miss, too, the supposedly easy comraderie of the desk, the supposed connections I had with work "friends", but the farther away I get from that old life the more I realize that most of those folks who were friendly with me at work were not friends at all. That more than anything was the biggest lesson I have learned yet.

But what is funny, too, is that folks are coming around and seeking me out with social networking tools, finding and "befriending" me in ways that says to me that I am not the pariah that I was made out to be, either in my head or in my heart. It was all "just business", and while that business cost me hard cash it was also the greatest and best wake up call I've ever gotten in my life. Whatever it was that hit me, bus, train, carload of loons, it was the finest lesson a man could ever ask for. I am happier now than I have been in years. My heart is a little more ragged, sure, a bit more jumpy and achey from all the wear and tear of uncertainty that's been thrown at it, but I am, at least for now, okay. I am in daily communication with The Estranged One and all is courdial on that front. As for all the other grand players, friends and bad actors and actresses in my life who have contributed to the greatest drama of my life I have been keeping them or winnowing them out as I see fit. Some have been fitting in cameo appearances, and then, once they have graced the stage, like Snake Lady and Stick of Wood, have exited stage left, never to be seen or heard from again. Strange and wonderful all at the same time. Showed me what they were made of.

SO, all of that leads me up to now. I still won't grace the halls of my former employer and I'm sure that they are happy about that, too. I am still gracely unemployed and playing my part but sending out three applications or more a week. I have sent them out all over the place, and have made a complete reversal on that "I'll never do library work again" theme I was on up until recently. I have applications on deck for the Grand Canyon (a federal job), an assistant director/children's librarian position (Prineville, OR), a circulation lead in Pueblo, Colorado, a volunteer/children's position in Veneta, OR (home of the Oregon Country Fair) and assorted other places. I have been focusing on positions with various state employment departments and agencies thinking that it was close to the kind of work I did before, but those jobs have been hard in coming. So, instead I'll fall back on what I know and apply to the kinda jobs that are near and dear to my heart, the ones that truly say to me "Public Service".

In the meantime I've been working my tuckus off at Helpline. We have been hyper-busy from the holidays. Hunger never sleeps. No matter how much we get in the form of donations it all goes back out the door as fast as it comes in. Some days I've had to wonder who'd been messing with the clock. Even on my busiest days at the branch time never moved so fast as it does when I'm busy filling baskets for the least fortunate of the community.

Okay, so now you're caught up. I'll be heading to Boise, if it doesn't snow, for the holidays. The cat is doing fine. My oldest turned eighteen, the next in line is making his own stop motion piece at Arts West, a toney art school in Boise. The middle ones are doing well with lacrosse and dance, and the youngest is grooving on being the baby of the family. Thanksgiving went well for a change and I am thankful for many things...good friends who stuck by me during my travails, health, a tight roof. some spending cash and a reliable car. I have been happy even without the Plaster Saint in my life. I am happy even with all the uncertainty that being unemployed has brought into my life.

In fact, for over five months now, as crazy as it sounds, I have been the happiest I have ever been. I stood my ground, maintained my integrety, lived and loved outside the box, cared for folks that mattered, and did what I had to do, and so far, so good...I am alive and well and doing the best I can with what I have.

Thanks for checking in. And who knows, maybe I'll even see you under the mistletoe.

Salud!

Mall buzz

2009-11-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

I was out and about yesterday and decided to hit the mall. It's something I usually don't do, because, as most of you who drop by here know, I don't like to pay retail if I can avoid it. But yesterday was a typical Sunday of late for me: rootless, without focus and with a bit jingle in my pocket. So I drove to Silverdale and took in their gigantic Goodwill, which was right across the street from the equally large and wildly busy Costco, and so, for the heck of it, I took in Costco, too. But it was the mall that thrilled me yesterday. What is it about brand new sparkly things that gets folks so excited? Is it something the manufacturers build into the packaging that draws us in? Is it some sort of slow release chemical that attracts customers in the way that exotic flowers draw in flies?

There is a sort of energy at the mall on busy Sunday that can't be matched anywhere else, well, maybe outside of a major factory production line or the Seattle Center on New Year's eve or during a key moment at a big sporting event. It was beyond busy, human running about like newly minted molecules, excited children bumping around like pinballs. The light, always kaleidescopic in a place like that, took on a carnival air. And it applied to almost all corners of the place. No shop or kiosk or big box store was immune. I cruised fast, skirting around customers like an old tin-can destroyer on a high seas cruise, getting in my walk for the day, and took in all the sights, big retailers like Penny's and Macy's, just to see the latest cookgear, as well as old favorites like Cost Plus World Bazaar (always liked their rug and wine assortment).

But in order to slip away from all the pre-holiday madness and catch my breath I snuck away to the cookbook aisles of Barnes and Noble. It was great having that store as an access point to the Mall. It was a sort of sylvan glen to rest in before I slipped out into the desert of retail madness, and a nice place to decompress before I headed off to my car. One thing for certain, if I am ever going to have a good thing going with my cookbook collection I must have readily accessible shelving like they do, and an equally large room to store them in. I was wowed, as I should have been, by the size and breadth and freshness of their collection, but being the after-retailer that I am, I couldn't bear to look at the prices after a few moments so I just took note of the most happening and nifty of their stock and left.

I do love going to the mall, no doubt about it. There was a time when I regularly exercised credit cards there, but those days are long gone. I think of those kinds of places as the new town squares. We dress the part and stroll about, like kings and queens and duchess in the gardens of Versailles. We get to show off our feathers, blow cash we don't have, eat cookies and bad Chinese and overly crusty pizza, smile loudly, bang about like loose cannons and yell after our children, but it's all in the name of commerce and patroiotism and retail therapy. I love that last part. That shop till you drop thing. And then, after we rest our feet, knock back a good cup of coffee and a heavily sugared treat, we jump back into shopping combat mode and go at it again, sort of like kids on Halloween night. They never seem to be satisfied until those sacks of theirs are embarassingly full. Watching the crowds yesterday, I saw no reason to believe that unemployment stood at 10 percent. Heck, all I saw was the full recovery of the nation being just around the corner, all stuffed into large department store sacks.

Yeah, I'll be back. See you in the cookbook aisle some Sunday, eh?

Salud!

Lies, statistics and the realities of job searching

2009-11-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

If there was ever a time when I needed to practice better money discipline now is the time. For all too many years I have spent money like a drunken sailor (didn't hurt that I had a lot of experience being one for a time..) but now that credit cards and a fat paycheck are clearly out of my life I have no excuse engaging in "retail therapy" on a daily basis just to get myself out of the house. I have all too many other things I could be doing but I have been finding all too much pleasure cruising the aisles of Goodwill and all the other local junk stores in search of treasures that give me momentary pleasure. That is, until the next all too necessary fix...

Work. Hmm. I spend most of mornings "working" online. Actually, my routine is pretty dependable and fairly comfortable. The cat walks on my chest anywhere between three and six in the morning. Depending on my disposition (and the amount of wine I might have consumed the night before...) that will "start" my day. Better if it's closer to six, because then I have an excuse to put on a movie. Better if it's closer to seven or even eight because then I can start my daily in somewhat realistic fashion. Eight is a good time to be up and out of bed. Eight is good time to fire up the news, the stove. Eight is late enough in the morning not to startle the new neighbors next door when I stumble out the back door in my whitey tighties and throw out yesterday's coffee grounds. Eight is a perfect time to stretch, brush teeth, scratch, all that.

A daily routine is important if you want to stay on track, if you want to seriously want to get back on track once that proverbial ship comes steaming in. I wake up to old news in my head, but know that new news is awaiting me down at the computer. What's good is that I get to work online before the bandwidth is sucked up by the local branch library. I believe we share the same cable service. Seems when their doors open my computer slows waay down. Coincidence? Imagination? I don't know for certain but it is somewhat uncanny when it takes me a half hour to move through a couple windows.

No matter. Me and the state of Idaho have become good friends. I use a variety of on-line services for job searching and let me tell you, the hour that they give job searchers down at the local library isn't near close enough to find meaningful employment. Almost every application I have fired off over the last four months has been online. Without a reasonable expectation of two to three hours to search, work through applications and download a resume (let alone build one) if you are just using local library facilities you can expect be looking for work far longer than your unemployment benefits will run.

So my mornings are spent searching, but my afternoons have been largely spent hanging out with my pal The Hot Dog King. I have a small spot of concrete that I warm next to his cart and have gotten to know his clientle over the last few months. It's been a gas meeting attorneys, sheriffs, watching the court action come and go, especially the family and drug court folks who come around on Fridays. The "1:30 Follies" are especially enlightening. It's a "but for the grace of God go I" kind of thing. Helps to keep me in line and thankful. Every day.

So, the newspaper says "10 percent unemployment" My friend says it's closer to 17 percent when you figure in men like me who are out there looking for work outside the realms of their chosen profession, men who are happy to be applying for jobs that pay half of what they were making before just to keep the wolves at bay. The other day I said that I would never consider library work again. I know that I keep plugging away at Idaho, keep looking at working a desk in Boise or Pocatello or wherever as a Workforce Consultant. The longer I keep looking for work the more I realize my skills are needed in that agency to help folks like me find work. Let me tell you, it's a bitch, truly.

That library job I mentioned a moment ago? A branch library manager, Delta, Colorado. I wasn't looking hard for that job, let me tell you, but it was there on the Colorado library job line. Wrote a cover letter this morning. Will run to Gig Harbor Peninsula branch tomorrow to print out an application, send off a package Monday. Why Gig Harbor? Seriously? Can you see me getting within shadow's distance of my local branch?

The realities, though, of my life are that for all the anxieties about work I am pretty happy. Things could be better, sure..my house could have sold, I could be in Boise with my kids right now. Could have made better sense of my life while I was here, made better choices, kept my words to myself, all that, but hey, you guys voted me Best Blog. Had to keep up the faith by writing, sharing, wearing my heart on my sleeve, all that.

Oh, and for those of you who know or have the priviledge of being able to see MJR let her know that I need to talk to her. That we need to sit down and share a cup of coffee. It's been a year since I've seen her face and even then it was only in passing. And, if all goes well with this job search business, know that I'll be gone soon. That should be a plus, as far as information to pass along to her is concerned. Let her know that she needs to call me, okay? Ah, where's a good "broker" when you need one?

Okay, keep your body and soul together, chillin's. And know to keep your words and emotions to yourself, otherwise you, too, will learn to appreciate the joys of filing your weekly claim at midnight on Sundays.

Salud!

Road trips and revelations

2009-11-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

For the last four months I have been grounded, in a way. Strickly my fault, you see. There hasn't been anyone forcing me to stay home these past few weeks, rather, it was a sort of self imposed arrest. There is something about travel that liberates the soul, that opens up possibilities, that releases the imagination that I wasn't quite comfortable embracing at the time. I kept putting it off, wondering what the world "out there" held in store for me, yet, at the same time, turned away from it because I was afraid of what I might find.

I finally took my act on the road last week after three false starts. I put off my long overdue trip to Boise for a number of reasons. First it was the mechanics of the car, then it was cash flow and then, finally, weather. But once I road tested my wee little beast up and over and back again from Twisp I felt confindent that the car could handle the miles. Money, well, there never seems to be enough of it even in the best of times so I decided not to let that be an impediment any more. And as for weather, well, I bought chains and that was that.

I figured since I had the time and the skies were clear I would take a lesser traveled path. I took the highway up and over the Cascades by the way of Enumclaw and into Naches via Chinook Pass, driving through windshield high snow drifts on a recently plowed highway. I was happy that my car was not giving me fits, as the phone reception disappeared once I left Mt Rainier National Park. I was happy for the solitude, the sunshine and the massive bag of snacks and tunes I had by my side. I felt self contained, even giddy, knowing that the back of the wagon was filled with loot for my kids and that I would finally be seeing them before the night was out.

What surprised me more was finding that after all the angst I've had about my little house and my community I was glad and happy to be back in Idaho. I fought the notion of moving for so long that when I arrived and got into the groove of living with my children once again that I had to wonder what the heck I was thinking of before. I had to really wonder about about myself and what had held me back for so long...an old stick house, a boxful of memories and a profession that, for better or worse, was just another way to make money.

I found that I was comfortable in Boise, as the place reminded me a lot of where I grew up. As I drove down Eagle highway and on the roads in and out of the subdivions of the Treasure Valley I kept having flashbacks to early days, to old towns like Tustin and Costa Mesa and all the previously unincorporated lands that were once fields and orchards and cattle ranges. As I took the Estranged One around to second hands, as I raced the kids to the movies and school and their friend's homes I kept thinking of the times I had in my youth where my friend's moms and dads would do the same for me and my pals. All around us the bean fields were disappearing and housing tracts were popping up. On the way to and from the beach and school and playdates the orange groves were coming down and malls and eateries were rising. I saw the same thing happening there on the outskirts of Boise and strangely felt at home.

I know that to leave this little house and this sweet community would release me from the self imposed exile I set for myself. I held the line for no one but myself. I came home from a wonderful road trip and lovely Halloween and a ton of good moments to house that was warm, filled with my things and "peopled" by my cat, but not much else. Oh, sure, that and memories, but memories do not warm a bed or make me laugh out loud or keep me busy in a meaningful way.

I came off of that road trip knowing that I work at Helpline because I miss working for people in a meaningful way. I know that I am here in Port Orchard because of an old house and friends and the memory of old loves and those reasons alone. I came off the road to a house that now off the market with the phone ringing off the hook looking for new possibilities to sell it. Now that I am "home" I can see that I took that trip not only to see my children but to help me mark my internal road map. Where I was headed was a mystery before. I know now that my sights are set on Idaho, if only because the dreams I had for this house, for this community, for my profession, are all over and done with.

Later on this week I'll have a new realtor. I keep throwing out applications towards Idaho and sooner or later something will happen there. My children light up my cell phone with calls and messages that I found were, more than anything else, are what really matters.

I discovered, too, after alot of thought, that my chosen profession is really just helping people. I am a glorified customer service rep to the needly and the lost. I am a helper to those with questions and to those with poorly defined answers. I am a man who knows how to find information but more how to set people on a path to a better life. Maybe I can do that for myself for a change.

One thing I found for certain and that is the Treasure Valley area is not too big on hiring librarians. So, from here out, in order to be where my heart needs to be since this place has effectively shut it out, I am going off into the world of customer service and leaving librarianship behind. Twenty five years of doing the same thing is enough for me. Time for something completely different, even if that means reinventing myself in ways that, even two weeks ago, I couldn't begin to imagine.

See there, that's why I didn't take that road trip before. What happened was what I was afraid was going to happen. It was a release of the flood waters behind the dam. Hell, the complete and total destruction of the dam and the life that I had been living. I am ready to be swept away, road or no road, job or no job, map or no map.

I am on my way. On my way to where, I have no idea, but I think that it will be to a place where I can be happy again, even if it's just for a moment, but hopefully, for the rest of my life.

Salud!

Fire rings

2009-10-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

The solstice is coming. I remember all too well the fire rings at the beach in the winter. We would drag in stacks of wood pallets, as many as we could find, never enough considering how well guarded they were down there in SoCal. We would always send somebody ahead earlier in the day, tough duty on a state beach, cooler full of beer, sunset full of toxins and pollutants, always a wonderful sight to see. But we would eventually congregate in mass come dark, boom boxes blaring, food sizzling on hibachis or charcoal grills, beers and other libations escalating the level of conversation and merriment. And while it wasn't necessarily the thing to do each and every time the longest night of the year came about, there would always be someone in the crowd who would want to test out the level of their testosterone and leap over the flames. I never saw burning calzones to mark the occasion but I am sure that there were plenty of singed hairs about to talk about in the morning.

I can't imagine life in that region without fire pits for those last summer nights, for those wildly cold winter holy days, for the evenings in the spring and the fall when the air would be soft and warm and not quite seasonally uncomfortable. I think of all the rites of passage and all the rituals of growing up that would be lost if those rings went away. Sure, there will always be fools who jump over blazing pallet fires. Those same fools will always sing too loud, laugh to heartily, behave too boorishly and find ways to piss off the neighbors, but then again, without them we would have no reason to feel okay about behaving wickedly and foolishly on the Feast of Fools or the Winter Solstice. We would have no right to our rites, to our revels, to our fire gods. We would wonder what the fuss is about and lose connection to the real reasons why we light fires in the night and wish to be one with Thor and Bacchus and the rest of the cooler, wilder and more sympathetically fun gods.

So here's to the solstice, to fire circles and to the great cycles of life!

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-newport-fire-pits28-2009oct28,0,4525544.story

Where trails lead

2009-10-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm sitting in a very nice old chair I found at Goodwill the other day. As I was leaving the store a man walked up to me and began to tell me how to fix the material that was unraveling on the back of the chair. At closer inspection we both found out that the fabric was coming apart due to a bad staple job. He recommended hot glue. I found out that the man was an upholstery guy from way back. What are the odds of that? Leave a store with a four buck chair that takes two hands to carry ("good buy, that chair" said the upholstery man, "if you can carry it in one hand it's not worth buying") and come across a guy who can tell me right off the bat not only that my chair is grand but worth recovering as well. Wow. Love where life leads you when you are not asking for directions.

Earlier today I found myself on a "backwoods" trail instead of an interstate highway, or, for that matter, the information superhighway. I had finished up my required "three job searches" for the week and decided, last minute, to put off a planned five hundred mile ride to Boise until next week and take a long walk, instead. I figured that I needed to stick around, act on the latest job information that landed earlier that afternoon in my email box before I took off down the road. Plus I needed to secure a storage unit, spend a bit of time clearing out the little house in the back, to get that place ready for all possibilities, possibly even installing a renter if selling the house isn't this fall's big event. Clearly, life is not providing me with a map for the next part of my life.

As for that backwood trail, well, let's just say thank you, Port Orchard, for annexing The Woods to our community. I don't feel bad these days when I take advantage of the numerous paths and trails that wind through their holdings. As fun as they are to walk I found that they can be a bit of a maze sometimes. I found this out the hard way when I went out for a stroll last week. It was late in the day, the sun was down, there was heavy cloud cover and the trails were poorly marked. By the time I found a parking lot the streetlights were on and I found that I was a quarter mile down the road from my car. It was a good moment to reflect upon the "10 Essentials" I was taught years ago but more a moment to reflect on the realities of poorly marked trails. That simple walk through "the woods" retaught me a valuable lesson and that is that we only think we are in control. The casual stroll that we are taking through life, the one that we think is just a walk through the park can end up being a long journey through an ever darkening and deepening wood, one without markers, one with strange birds calling out in terror, with weird rustlings going on under the brush.

Yet today I emerged from the woods confident. I was happy to find that the street was where I thought it was. I felt the same way when I submitted an application and two more came back asking for my attention. One job in particular is for the State of Idaho, a late shift receptionist at a hospital for the developmentally disabled. What a departure from all things I have known. When I think of that job I picture my old friend Benj at the Fort Lyon's Veteran's Hospital, I see old references to Ken Kesey and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. I picture the great American Novel being written at the desk during long quiet stretches on the 10 to six in the morning shift. And, the big plus to all that would be that my children would be living right down the road.

I think of where my life has been leading me these last few years and I know that my strange travails of late are what I've been needing. Yeah, it's all been a very generous and timely ass kicking delivered straight from some kind and all seeing and easily amused god. I suppose we all could use a real ass kicking now and then. I passed up a real one, years ago, not too long after I got out of the service. It was late at night, in a tough town, and I found myself in a fairly rough bar with my father. My father was a hard core man's man and he was more than loaded that night, loaded enought to want to take on the NFL linebacker who was the bouncer at the door. I got my pop out of the bar that night with no damage to his body, but, looking back at it, I think that there was a bit of damage done to his soul. I know he had to wonder what kind of son his mothered raised. I remember the long quiet ride back home from The Alamo that night, back to his trailer in Arleta. I can still feel the steering wheel of that big old Caddy of his in my hands I drove on down the freeway away from San Fernando. He told me that night, after I dragged him into his house and tucked him in, that he was disappointed in me, that he expected me to go out of that bar with him back to back, take on the world, or, at the very least, the linebacker.

Over what, I had to wonder. Hell, even he didn't know the next day what the beef was about.

The point to that story? The point is that I let my old man down, that I didn't get into a real old fashioned bar room brawl over nothing. And while I wasn't a candy ass I used diplomacy instead of my fists to get us out of the bar in one piece. But maybe fists would have been better, more John Fordian, more Donvan's Reef like. Looking back I could see that diplomacy, that talk, that walking away was my style. This summer I got was I deserved. I was long overdue for a good ass-kicking and because I didn't get around to it back then I feel that the universe knew that the bill was due. The fact that I got such a big dose of it was a "just because I love you" kind of moment.

Sure, I didn't come out of it bloodied in the physical form that my pop would have liked but I think I finally got that high horse I've been resting on for years kicked out from under me. Yeah, I landed on my ass hard. I may not have the bloody nose that some might of wished for for me but I am still reeling from the psychic beating I took. Let's just say that I won't let it happen to me again. It was about as big of a Zen moment as a man could ever ask or wish for and I'm the wiser for it.

So today I fearlessly wandered the trails of The Woods and took on the travails of unemployment fearlessly as well. I found a bit of sunshine as I wandered among the grey clouds and I was happy for it. Today I took out a pen knife and marked my path with numerous scratchings along the way to let the world know that I was alive. And today I took to the paved road through the Woods, waiting for the man who really had a right to kick my butt three years ago to pass me by. Yeah, today I was looking for that guy. Today I was fearless. What could he possibly do to me that life hasn't done already? Kick my ass? Get in line. I'm already "inbetween positions". I lost my job and the respect of my Estranged One because of words, words to a woman who is long gone, who is and forever shall be the embodiment of undying love.

That in itself is a trail enough to follow. Or blaze. Or blunder through. My choice.

Come along if you wish, but as the old adage goes, lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.

Salud!

KB Toys, Mr Kaufman and my kids

2009-10-17T13:07:00.001-07:00

It was sad to see that KB Toys was no longer at the Centralia outlet mall. It was a big fixture in our lives when we were somewhat new parents here in the Puget Sound. It was an out of the way place for a family on a limited budget to take a field trip to, but we would always manage to fit it in at some point on our travels either coming or going to Portland or other sourjourns down south. We would always stop there on our way to the coast and let the kids go crazy for stuff to lose in the sand. It was conveniently places across the street from a Mickie D's, and for the sake of toddlers and diaper changing, right next door to a public restroom. And for a while it was even built into our business budget, as it was always a last minute place to stock up on tanks and airplanes before the big October toy soldier show down in Lake City.

It was bittersweet to read about Mr Kaufman, about his life and his love of toys. For his love of toys alone he would have been most welcome in our home. As it was he played a part in the history of our family and was most certainly a big part of my children's childhood. Thank you Mr Mr Kaufman for KB Toys. We'll miss the break from the road and the bargains and the sense of place we used to share with the employees of the company in the same way we'll always miss our children the way they were when they were little people.

Salud!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/nyregion/18kaufman.html?hpw

"If" and the Old Men of Disney

2009-10-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

Herb Ryman, first artist on the left. The photo is of the first bunch of WED folks to come out of the studios. What incredible people they were.

Thinking of you, Herb, and seeing all those posts and images out there attached to your name can sometimes make me feel like I have somehow squandered my life, not lived or accomplished quite enough but then again, here I am, still living a good life, doing what I was doing when I first met you and moreso and still honoring you and your life and that of old man Kipling's. So instead of saying that my life has been half lived, let us say "I think not" and lift a glass to your memory and to the rest of a life that has yet to be lived.

But, let's talk about "If".

What a gift you gave me that day.

I know that somewhere along the line I posted this poem before. You must remember the details. I worked for Disney at the time. I was newly married, newly back "in country" and working against some sort of diabolical layoff clock. I was working with you, with men, who, in the animation industry, were giants but I had no idea who you were. That was due to the lack of easy access to video at the time. Years later, when I would watch some old piece of Disney animation or another I would see your name, the names of the men that I had once served and shout out to my kids "I checked out books to that man!"

So, there I was, in the stacks, a somewhat callow youth, fresh out of the fleet, working a desk at the WED research library, the one and only "special library" of my library career. It was a happening time for the company and I was happy for the work. I came to Disney from a temp job with an electrical parts firm, but that didn't matter much as my first wife was very jealous of my appointment with Disney. She thought that her part time visual merchandising job for the Yokosuka Exchange would carry the day and that she would be taken into some department or another instead of me. Damn if that data processing of mine in the fleet didn't carry the day, instead.

But the sad thing was that at the time I wasn't given the support that I wanted from my boss as far as a library career was concerned. So, instead of pursuing a job in the research business I decided I wanted to be more like my father, instead. I wanted to be a grip in the movie industry, a desert motorcyclist, a rough and tough man like my old man. I wanted to jump out of perfectly safe airplanes and drink beer like a Titan and be a fire fighter like I wanted to be in the fleet, something like that, all those things instead of a rationally married man. Instead of realizing all those dreams my first wife left me instead and went to live with my father's girlfriend in Glendale. I went on to qualify for LA County's fire department hiring roster but affirmative action laid me low. I ended up moving back with my mom because my stepdad had a last minute midlife crisis that involved a Korean hairdresser. I ended up going back to Santa Ana, back to the old family home to help my mom through her crisis. Not a bad deal in a way, so I say, but my brother might say different as I kicked him out of his room and put him up into the attic. Our relationship was never the same after that, to say the least.

But during that time I met the great Herb Ryman, who not only sent me a very nice Christmas card that first year but also gave me a copy of the following poem. I have no idea what happened to the original copy he gave me but I have kept a copy of that poem in wallet ever since. It was a long time ago, Herb, but let me say to you "thank you" not only for the poem you gave me but for putting up with that callow youth who served you oh so long ago. If only I had known who you and all those grand old men of Disney were at the time....

IF.....

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more -
you'll be a Man, my son!

by Rudyard Kipling

Salud!

Of two hearts

2009-10-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

The weather outside today reminds me of why I need to keep my eye on the prize. So much left to do and very little time left to do it with.

After a week of absolutely grand weather I woke up and faced a cool, grey morning outside my window. Not too bad of a start, I suppose, and yes, it could go away, but as Hot Dog King likes to say it's the cool weather that drives his sales so maybe for his sake I'll wish for this cool grey day to stick around through, say, two o'clock. My feeling about is that it can go away and come back later on in the month. That's when big things are happening in my life.

The end of October has been my focus for, well, seems like forever. All my work and energies have been sited on the 31st, and is where all my fretting, planning, prayers, frustrations, fall back plans are all headed. Right now I am still focused on selling my house, but that's strickly an afterthought of summer. I worked like an animal earlier in process to get it ready and I haven't had anyone come through in weeks. But maybe because I have shifted my energies a bit. I am back in the house again, living in it as if I still live here. The tacit agreement between me and the realtor was that the house was supposed to be vacant. After awhile that ruse didn't wash. I needed a place to sleep that wasn't filled up with boxes and spiders and where better to do that than in my own bed?

Where I lay my head down to sleep is what the end of the month is all about. I am on the road and am fast approaching an offramp of sorts. As much as I would like to get off and take in a rest stop before I get there I may not have that option anymore as things are happening now and I think by the end of the month my time in the Pacific Northwest, my fate, may be sealed. Nice to know that something will be clear. I could use a bit of clarity right about now.

What's happening are two interviews in Idaho, and possibly another one here in Port Orchard. What's interesting about them is that none of them are librarian positions. The two out of state jobs have customer service components built into them but that's about as close as they come to my chosen profession. The one here in town has a customer service angle, too, but again, is way out there from what I've been doing for the last twenty five years. The only thing that all of them have in common is the rate of pay, which is about 14 dollars an hour.

Wow.

But it's what they represent that thrills me more than anything. "And what is that, Mr Accumulate Man?" you might ask. Well, what these interviews are saying to me is that my skill set, which I was worrying an awful lot about, is a bit broader than I thought or even hoped for. I have been meaning to do up a new resume based on skills and achievements rather than a chronological list of all my librarian assignments and duties. I'm even taking a class later on the month to help me focus on what my skills and strengths are. When you've been doing the same thing for so long it's easy to overlook what it is that you are actually doing. In my head I may think "I'm just a librarian", but really, that title is like a stew. A great stew isn't composed of one thing but is a nice mix of a wide variety of ingredients, all put to the test, as it were, under high heat. How it turns out is up to the cook and the larder and life. I think if I were to rate myself as a stew I would say that I am a pretty tasty dish.

I think somewhere along the line that I forgot that. That my somewhat tasty work life hasn't been as mononfocused as I sometimes like to think it was.

So, what are those upcoming interviews for? What am I getting all excited about? Well, one of the jobs is based in Twin Falls. Workforce Consultant. I would be working for the Department of Labor, helping wonderful folks like me find work. Nice. I can relate to that. The other state job would be, for the moment, a trainee position. If I am chosen I would be working in Boise for the Department of Transportation as a Port of Entry Inspector. Picture this man finally working in a hairy chested male environment again. I would handling surly truck drivers instead of impatient moms at the desk, asking for bills of lading instead of library cards, checking out loads under tarps instead of doing fingerplays and baking cakes for book club gals. What a world of difference, what a change. As for that position here in town, well, that job would be a bit ironic, considering how hard I've been trying to leave: Moving Coordinator. Picture the man behind the desk who has been trying to sell his house helping other people move out of state. Touching and just a bit tragic.

But see, there's the rub. I like where I live and if I could have my way I would never leave. I have friends here, have some interesting things happening here as well. I'm a once a week Chili Czar for the Hot Dog King, I have my projectionist gig going on, I will be working with Helpline once a week starting next week and have a bagging thing lined up with Rosa Coffee on Bay Street later on in the month. I still throw small dinner parties, folks have me over for supper. I know the merchants and they know me. And frankly, I do like the weather, grey days or not. I know, all small stuff, but still, it's where I live.

I love my house, my view, my community, it's history. I may not have a lot of cash coming in but there are bigger things afoot. My little house has a renter possibly lined up for later in the fall and if that doesn't work out the gal across the street who runs the B and B may have an idea or two for helping me make a bit of side cash. The only thing that keeps me focused on that out of state line is Punkin and the boys. They are the reasons why I am still dogged about this move. Nothing else could get me to go. And if I don't go now, well, then, come the spring I'll start the process all over again.

But for the moment my work, my career, cashflow, all hang in the lurch. I have two, possibly three or even four opportunities coming up, all heading in different directions. I may be clearing out my house later on this month, or not. All depends how my resume and phone voice or my visage impresses the audience.

As always, I'll be sure to let you know.

Highways cross and split and sometimes carry you to places you never knew existed before. Will I ever be a librarian again? I have to admit, if I never have to do another summer's worth of summer reading programming I would be a very happy man. "What did he just say?" Heresy, yeah, I know, but there it is.

Salud!

Romance lessons on tape

2009-10-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

Can "True Love" be bought or sold or conjuered up? Frankly, between you and me, I don't think so.

I shop around in second hands alot these days. My biggest fascination of the day was to stumble upon a multi-volume, how-to, non-fiction series on how to achieve romance for married types in VHS section of the Silverdale Goodwill. I suppose that long marrieds need a boost ever now and then, that they need to revisit the old primer that got them started to begin with in order to get the old spark plugs firing in unison once again. Or for the first time. Whatever.

But what struck me funny was that it would take a whole set of tapes for a couple folks to learn how to be romantic all over again, or for the first time. I didn't jot down the title of the set, but then again, maybe I should have. Somebody, somewhere, along the line went out and laid out good money to learn how to be a more romantically inclined partner. Maybe I've had it all wrong all these years and that tape set would have set me straight. Maybe at ten bucks or so it was the most invaluable find in the whole gosh darn store that day.

Oh, yeah, sure.

What I considered a bit more funny than that was the slug of French films I stumbled across in the same stacks that day. Now those films, I have to say, ended up in my basket. I love foreign film. For awhile I had a colleague who was absolutely nuts for foreign films. I made sure to watch at least one or two a week in order to have something to talk about at the desk, for it seemed that most other movies just didn't have the same appeal. Somewhat snobbish about film as far as I'm concerned, but, well, whatever, it takes all kinds. No matter, I know the appeal of a good French or Japanese or Chinese film. I love what the Spanish are doing these days in the cinema world and have never turned up my nose to a Fassbinder or a Wenders film and know that Thai cinema is the one to keep an eye on. I watch all kinds of movies, borrow foreign titles from Hollywood Video and from my local library, occasionally catch the rare foreign film now and then at my local art house, but as far as adding foreign titles to my collection I don't find too many non-Hollywood films out there to buy. Today was an exception. Happy days for me and for my video collection.

Okay, this post is not all about movies. I guess what I'm driving at is that someone, somewhere along the line missed out on a true romantic opportunity in the VHS stacks. I can't figure out why those movies I found today were missed. Was it a technology issue? Was it because too many folks are out are out of tune as far as the humanities are concerned? Maybe too many folks are caught up in business courses in college and not attuned to the arts. Maybe too many folks out there are paying more attention to the needs of their libidos instead of their hearts.

Maybe it's our society, or our contemporary culture. Maybe it's the way we "talk" to each other. I listen to contemporary music and watch the tele while I'm on the road and see that maybe, just maybe we are a bit too hung up on the physical side of life. Maybe we read too deep into the power of the body, of a finely tuned physique. Maybe we are too hung up on hard physical power, on what professional sports supposed bring into our lives. Maybe our lifestyles are lacking in grace and charm and plain old caring about ourselves and that other person who matters in our relationships. Maybe we've just stopped caring about anyone but ourselves.

I think of what Hallmark tries to stuff down our collective throats with their cards and such and know that that's not "romance" no matter what they might say. I think of all the stuff I stumble across in Goodwill around Valentines Day, the teddy bears and plastic hearts and such and know that stuff has nothing to do with romance either. But take a man or a gal too obsessed with chasing the buck or trying to break the glass ceiling or spending too many hours in front of the tv or the internet or spending too much time nose deep in romance novels or magazines looking for romance and not paying attention to real life and I'll show you a seeker or a relationship that is in trouble.

Hence the need for that multi-volume tape set to kick start their romantic life.

I think of whoever it was that donated that video set, if they had come down to the store today and stood next to me and chatted awhile about movies they might not have had to hit up that movie set and might have thought twice about buying someone elses's advice about what love and romance is all about. Maybe they would have ended up picking up a tape or two out of my stack. Maybe they might have been on their way to a far more romantic evening than those talking heads in that multi volumed stack could have ever offered them.

My take on on what it would have taken to have a romantic evening? After a nice vist to Red Apple, after securing a couple bottles of good wine and some cheese and bread and few other items for supper they could have wandered the store..found some new linen, a cookbook or two, maybe picked up some champagne glasses, maybe found a silver or chrome plated wine bucket to go along with, maybe found a few new and interesting plates and bowls and such for dinner. Maybe they could have found a new and interesting piece of lighting, a couple of great pillows, a piece of music or two to go along with dinner and then, after all that, grabbed a handful of French movies. The stack that I have at my feet tonight isn't all about the classics. There are a number of what would be consider "contemporary French romance" films. Knowing that they didn't come out of Hollywood tells me that there's a bit skin in there. Old marrieds, beware!

So, leave those non-fiction romance sets alone and pick up on the vibes that you tend to see and read about in the personal ads, instead. What are most folks looking for other than walks on the beach, dinners out, bike rides in the country and moonlight drives? For someone to pay attention to them, to listen to them, to be kind, to take a bit time out of their busy lives to indulge in something other than their own pleasures for a change. Sometimes it takes a cruise around a second hand to set up the stage for a romantic evening, sometimes it takes a movie with subtitles and a sexy premise, but more times than not all it takes to spark and inspire romance is to be real, be there and be yourself and to pay attention to the needs of your lover.

So, old marrieds, take it from me, leave that non-fiction romance tape set behind on the shelf and find something a bit more..what? thrilling? sentimental? romantic? to snuggle up on the couch with next to your sweetie. You'll find that your fires will be rekindled in ways that you never imagined.

Salud!

What a hundred bucks will buy you

2009-10-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday I was saved by the bell. The wolves are still out there but have been backed off a range or two. I know that it'll kill me later on but I took out my wee retirement. So, does that make me "retired"? Do I feel like I am retired? Am I now strapping on white shoes and hitting the links and watching Oprah in the afternoons in my barkalounger and hanging out with my homies on a bench in the park playing checkers? Oh, I think not. No, I'm still hustling for work.

Sure, taking out my retirement cash was crazy, and because of that I went alittle bit crazy after a three months of austerity. Yeah, today I went out shopping. Retail therapy. Blew all too much money considering my circumstances. Today was a good example of what controlled Mexican madness is all about. But when I tallied it all up it was all spent on all goods for the long run. Groceries, books, movies, clothes and music. And not one thing bought retail.

Huzzah!

Today I hit up three second hands, a pawn shop and a discount grocery store in two counties. Bought labeled goods (Ocean Pacific, Quicksilver, Ralph Lauren, Columbia, Cablela's), a nice stack of music, an even better stack of current movies (five dvds for ten bucks, cheaper than renting) and more than a few award winning cookbooks. I look around me and see while my haul could fill a couple boxes or more on moving day I am satisfied with my craziness. Yeah, I really couldn't "afford" to do it but I did it anyway. Why? Because we are a consumer society? Because we are trained like monkeys from birth down in the OC to shop whenever or however we can, damn the cost? No, because after working the summer away like a dog under the threat of punishment and exile from a somewhat suppressive agency I had to o something to relieve the pressure. Oh, yeah, baby, and I did, and I had FUN.

Face it, I am in exile. I am a long way from family but thankfully close in to friends who went out of their way to support me during my times of trial. Let's just say that blowing fifty some odd dollars shopping at the grocery store today felt like a party. I felt vindicated stocking my wine cellar with discounted wines, loading up my larder with canned goods. I felt that what I spent today was spent in the name of good will. Someday, and that day is soon, is tomorrow, hell, is everyday, was spent readying myself for the long haul. That "long haul" started months ago and has been staring me in the face all the while, even while I rifled through today's receipts.

Today I went out and blew a fortune. But today I socked in movies and books and things that in my wildest and most wicked of imaginations I would never think to ever borrow again from my local public agency. Today I went out and paid nine dollars for a bottle of wine that in my wildest imagination I would never think to spend twenty five dollars on. Today I blew ten bucks on a coat that was mostly a forty or fifty buck coat retail that I will pack away in my car, a coat that I will use going back and forth on those long and cold trips to Boise this upcoming winter. And today I went out and added candles, cookbooks, music and movies to my collection that someday I hope to share in the wee hours with somebody who cares a bit about me, or, while I'm waiting, with friends who like to cook, like to eat, like to drink wine and who, frankly, like me, like me for whom I am, and that is a thrifty man.

Salud!

Achingly, wonderously

2009-10-04T19:45:00.000-07:00

I went out and about in the fall weather today. It would have been all too mundane to waste away the day doing yardwork and I was aching for something more along the lines of an exquisitely mundane experience so I took a drive instead, went all the way to Tacoma, ended up at Point Defiance Park. Wandered the Dahlia Trail, took in the poetry encrusted concrete waterfront walk, watched the white horses wrestle with the wind and the tide in the Sound, talked to smiling dogs, said "hola!" to highlander indios fresh off the truck. I sucked in heartily of the tanginess of the smokey city air, ate burgers that resembled those of my youth and spent oh too money around town like the misbegotten sailor I used to be.

Yeah, today I took into account the softness of the autumn air, avoided yard work like the plague and because I was either foolish or mad or a combination of both was blessed by the season. What a benediction. It was a good day to be alive and out and about. Hope your day was half as nice as mine.

Salud!

Small thrill, new skill, big passion

2009-10-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

Today I started a new "job", well, rather, a new volunteer position. It does come with perks, will be teaching me a new set of job skills and shows me that passions don't necessarily come with big paychecks attached. I already knew that from my years in the librarian profession. Considering how many things in that profession fall under "manual skills" I have to wonder half the time if we shouldn't just label it a "trade".

I digress.

Today I started my apprenticeship in the fine art of film projection. And really, it is an art, in the way that cooking or painting or mud wrestling is an art. No one way to really do it. It's somewhat like brain surgery or brick laying or souffle building, every time you do it seems to be a different thing altogether. Today I went in at two in the afternoon and came out at eight a different man. I finally got to see movies from the other end of the beast. That sounded strange, sure, but there's some crazy stuff afoot in a movie house once you climb up and above the comfy seats and go up into the projection booth.

My teacher and boss felt I had a leg up on the rest of his trainees he's had if only because I used an 8MM at home and was familar with threading my old reel to reel. I suppose in some ways, yes, that old up and over and around threading thing I was used to was there with me today, but man, it was a completely different ball game being up there in the booth with two movies going round and round simultaneously, with paying customers in the lobby wanting popcorn and waiting patiently in the auditorium for their films to start. You can dabble all you want at home with your music and old flicks but once you get paying customers in your midst all the variable change and everything you do becomes all too real. Or "reel" in my case.

Picture a large circular dining room table, oh, say, six feet or more in diameter..that's how big a platter is for films. Then picture this strange, overhead and underfoot sort of freewheeling jungle of film vines snaking in and out of a projector, going back and forth onto that huge platter, then top that off with old school projection technology and you get the kind of day I got to have four or five times today. My boss was patient...he's been in the business for a dozen years or so..and he walked me through the steps more than once. It felt like the first day of school. I couldn't absorb enough information fast enough, and frankly it made my head spin faster than those gigantic reels spun the film.

But you know what? I did it. With help, sure, but I managed to pull off threading and setting up four different movies today. Plus I learned how to work the popcorn machine. And I got to watch part of a Korean vampire film, the whole of the new Kevin Spacey film Shrink and even swept the floor during intermission. Next week I get to unload films from the platters and break them down into their shipper boxes, load up an upcoming film. All that for free.

All job descriptions I see these days ask for experience. Sometimes you have to go out of your way and be willing to grab that experience without pay. For me it's gravy, or rather a free movie, a bag of popcorn and a Coke on top of the new skill set. For others it would be out of the question. Will I get to use this new found experience later on? Who knows? But for the son of a grip and an old movie maven this is a job made in heaven. For the moment, anyhow. See you at the movies!

Salud!

Need movie times? Here's the Historic Orchard site:
http://www.orchardtheater.com/

Baby, I'm a statistic!

2009-10-02T10:08:00.001-07:00

The talking heads might tell us that the recession is over and the worst of it is behind us but the numbers say different.

There is a time to be out of work and then there's not. From what I can tell this is one of those times. Twenty six year unemployment high and jobs across the spectrum continue to be shed. Back in the day when I was a "golden boy" I wouldn't be worried right now. I'm not worried yet but still. An awful lot of folks are out there roaming around, looking hard for work. I should know because I am one of them.

All I have to say is keep your larder packed and your suit pressed, folks, it's going to be a long winter.

Salud!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs3-2009oct03,0,2971924.story

Giving and receiving

2009-10-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

For years I was the United Way coordinator at work and loved what it did for the community. We gave from the heart and those gifts found their way deep into the heart of the community. I always strived to impress on folks the importance of giving generously to our annual campaign challenge even though we couldn't see where our monies went. Face it, those monies landed in places we didn't necessarily want to go anyway. Our donations helped folks so far away and removed from out daily existence that we either didn't want to see it or when we did, we tened to turn a blind eye to those problems. That was okay, that's why the money went out and went into the hands of people who were there, there on the ground, taking care of folks that we couldn't. Those agencies, those folks working with the great unwashed, yeah, their eyes were wide open, and the hands of people we were helping with our United Way donations were wide open, too. Everyone made out, well, as best they could under the circumstances.

Another thing we excelled in was food drives. Once or twice a year we had those big blue buckets in our lobbies to gather up non-perisables for the local food banks. In South Kitsap those cans and packages of this and that went to our local Helpline. Those Helpline folks see people these days that they probably never expected to see. Not only laborers and non-skilled and migrant workers but professionals, degreed people with no immediate prospects other than needing to pay the bills and put groceries on the table.

I always felt that it was important to give, to get that good karma out there, to put money and time and effort into the cause of taking care of people who are down and out, because, baby, you just never know you when you might be down and out, too. You just don't.

I put in an application to volunteer at Helpline the other day. For years I worked with various gleaner organizations in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties and know how to handle food distribution to the hungry. One great thing about those Gleaner groups is that if you work you get to bring home produce and bread and such for your table. I like to know that I am working for my supper, or breakfast, whatever. I never felt that getting was gratus. We worked hard for our stipend, even though we knew the best and the bulk of our work went out to the community. Everyone gained, everyone was happy, least ways, they were as happy as they could be under the circumstances.

My circumstances aren't as dire as they could be. I have a bit of money in the bank, my in-laws are generous to a fault with The Estranged One and my kids, and hopefully soon I will be seeing a return on my investment coming back to me from the state. But still, for a few weeks there I was running short, shorter than I have in my whole adult life. I was wondering if I would be signing up for the services that Helpline provides. I must admit, and for those of you who know me and have eaten well in my home, taking food without working for it, without paying for it, is a real bit of humbleness. I take advantage of their day old bread. I have taken home vegetables and fruit delivered by home gardeners. I have watched folks come and go, talked with volunteers and coordinators and folks on the dole, and know that no matter what, when this is all over, I will empty out my larder and pass it along to those who have helped me when the chips were down.

We have to always remember that you just never know when the world will pull that rug out from under your feet. Me? Well, I should have seen it coming. I loved out of turn and that was that. But still. Like with earthquake preparedness, set aside a bit of good karma for another day and give to the United Way and be sure, when you can, give generously to your local foodbank. You never know when it'll be your turn to have a hand out.

Salud!

PT Tremor 8/30/09

2009-09-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest from the USGS about the Wednesday 9/30 Port Orchard tremor. Reading so much about earthquakes, tsunamis and other such happening in and around the "ring of fire" these last few days made for a bit of a jumpy heart at 8:10 this evening. 3+ pointer, Olympic pennisula. Read all about it and other various earthquakes around the globe in the site listed below. Great site. We're not alone. And one more thing: be prepared.

Salud!
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/last_event_states/states_washington.html

The effect of the Samoan tsunami on the Washington coast:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009974794_webwashwave30m.html

10 things I do every day

2009-09-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's all about discipline, buddy.

You take these things for granted as only a worker bee can, you just get up and strap on the feedbag and press your clothes and jump into your car and just do it, punch the clock, stand and take your customer's grief and boss's crap and you just do it, get up every morning and do it, not only because you want to get paid but because you truly love the work. You may not get to say that very often with conviction, especially if you've had a toxic kind of day, the kind of day where admin passes down assinine directive and a customer leaves a trail of biohazardous stuff on the carpets around the building and you find that your tire is flat and dog is sick and the roof is leaking and you end up late for work late and they say that it's okay but that look you get from your coworkers says it's not. Someday's you wonder if it would have been better to stay in bed.

To that I say "no".

It doesn't matter if you are gainfully employed or out of work you still have to get out of bed. You really no choice if you are true worker bee, if you truly value the benefits of getting out of bed and facing the day. It's more than just getting up just so can tell your mate or partner or spouse or internet pal that you did something meaningful with your day as they get up and take on the slog. It's just so you can feel good about using the most precious gift imaginable, and that's another day standing upright on God's green earth.

So, every day I have my things to do list that has nothing to do with projects. I know that someday soon the weather will change and the idea of sending out for Chinese food and staying in bed all day watching movies and sipping champagne with a lover will sound great, but for the moment it's all about me and the world and the things that need doing.

Every day I have ten things that I have to do in order to make that day worth while. Your list will be different than mine but my life right now is quite different than yours, different than I planned or could have even predicted...

Every day I get up at or around 8:00, hit the bathroom, brush my teeth and while I have a mouth full of brush and suds fill up the kettle, grind beans and turn on the heat. I let the cat in after my morning's brushing is done, restock his three bowls with dry, water and a spot of tuna. While my beans soak I fire up the computer and prepare for a morning's worth of internet work

Every day I spend one or more hours cruising the 'net for work. Somedays I get a hit that requires another hour or so filing an online application. Somedays I just look and that's okay, too.
Every day I do my US Navy S/S/S routine. Keeping the body clean and the face fresh and approachable is key maintaining a positive outlook and keeps me ready for whatever lurks outside the door.

Every day I do up a "things to do" list, even if that list is just for show. Well, hasn't been yet. Every day it carries over and plus it's a good tool for helping me see how much I've gotten done and out of the way

Every day I walk, even if the walk of the day is from the car to the market, the car parked way the hell out there. Some days I just couldn't take it if it wasn't for my walk. Most days I try to hit the Cedar Heights track around five. Not always possible but there it is.

Everyday I make contact with the world, be it on the net, on the phone or in person. Maintaining contact with friends has become so important and valuable to me that I can't even begin to tell you how important it has become. When you are surrounded by patrons and work mates you take this foregranted. For awhile there I lived so completely in my head that I got startled just hearing my voice spoken out loud.

Everyday I fire up one or two good meals. Not a boilie bag or a microwave dinner but something real, something that requires thought and preparation time. Cans, boxes and plastic bags cannot be considered dirty dishes, ever.

Every day I wait until six to have a glass of wine. No slacking there. I promised myself I would never go the "Frank Baez" route, the one that would allow for me to sit and booze the day away waiting for the phone to ring. Never, ever, period.

Every day I read up new recipes, try to listen to some new piece of music that I have never heard before and do my best to fit in a movie, never mind whether or not I've seen it before. Every day I do my best to stay informed and read three papers.It is important to maintain that info edge, to stay knowledgeable about what's hot and then stay abreast of the stories. Every day I do my best to share some piece of hot intell, either with friends face to face or with you here in this blog space.

And every day I write. Right now it's this little piece. Later on it'll be letters, or my novel, or posts to my friend Jane. Every day, every day, I write because writing is what got me here, got me to this place where I get to practice my ten things that I must do every day. Every day I ponder over the power of the written word and write out a piece of my mind for I know that for some it thrills, for some it brings a smile and for some, well, it scares the living shit out of them because, baby, my words you just can't corral. Just like time, just like the days that come and go out the window like shadows and the breeze.

Hey, let's make that eleven things. Every day, no matter what, count your blessings.

Salud!

Every day

Now this film looks scary!

2009-09-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

Stumbling on articles about little movies like Paranormal Activity is one of the big reasons to keep the 'net up and running, that's for sure. Sure, the buzz about that flick would have reached this little burg eventually but it helps to have a cape waved in your face, matador style, in order to be aware and ready to catch little films like this when they come through town. In the case of this particular movie, if it comes through town. Paranormal Activity is in "limited release" at the moment, playing in larger metro areas awaiting a groundswell of interest to carry it forward. Or so they say. Sounds like a William Castle kind of gimmick to me. (Update 9/27: according to an article in today's LA Times the gimmick is working: it looks like it will be in wider release this coming October).

Will Paranormal Activity be a one trick pony (albiet a very scary pony!) the way The Blair Witch Project was? Or will it have legs and become a haunted house classic in the tradition of The Haunting, The Others or The Changling? After being scared witless watching Shiver alone the other night, I find myself craving another new and exciting frightfest, but something out in town, with an audience screaming all around me. Nothing quite like mass hysteria to get the old heart pumping in a truly meaningful way.

Yeah, just typing up those titles gave me a bit of the creeps right now and had me switching on the lights. Time to vote online to get that movie to come just a wee bit closer than Seattle. Take a look at that trailer and I bet it'll get you turning on your lights, too.

Salud!

Paranormal Activity Yahoo article and attached trailer:
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/buzz-log-paranormal-activity.html

Nice article about the film's history found in the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-paranormal20-2009sep20,0,1437340.story

Oh, yes, and while you're waiting..if you need a bit of tension and relatively gore free frights in your life try the little French horror film Ils (Them!) The lead up may be slow for some but it belies the tension that builds up in the second act...an act that is 77 minutes of sheer tension and pure psychological terror. A "61" on the Tomato Meter...here's a quote among many that I loved for it's brevity:

"It breezes by and slaps you with some ice water and then scurries right out of the room."
Full Review Comment
03/20/07

Scott Weinberg
Cinematical

Where did the money tree go?

2009-09-25T20:29:00.001-07:00

Music, I never seem to get enough of it. Well, this is, until today.

This evening I was trolling the stacks of my local Goodwill when I decided, against all common sense and possiblity, to hit up their cd rack to see what kinds of new stuff they had in. I figured maybe I would find something truly great that would tempt me to break my budget. The Hot Dog King had just paid out a bit of cash to me for running him around town on some errands, so I had a touch of small change in my pocket, but money I had earmarked for gas and a bit of cilantro next door at Sav-a-Lot.

Well, I wandered over and sat down on the floor anyway thinking I would find a blues album I left behind a couple days before. Damn if they didn't restock the whole rack with some dead man's cd collection or some near equivilent. I sat there spellbound before the assembled titles, and with nobody breathing down my neck pulled nearly eighty (80!!) cd's off the rack that were hot, semi-hot or interesting enough for me to want to buy. Back in the day when I wielded charge cards with abandon that scenario would of had me sweating. It was all I could do not to pick up the entire stack and head over to the checkout counter to buy them all. For some reason, maybe sanity, I balked and set the stack back down in the rack and ignored them all. I heard a call from the overhead speakers saying that VHS movies were two for a buck that day and went that route, instead.

For me setting down those cd's was a realization that the freewheeling spending patterns of my past were done and that my days of using credit cards as a salve to sooth my emotional state were over. I left the store trying to figure out how I could have ever possibly justified that kind of purchase considering my employment status and couldn't find a way to winning that argument. It was clear to me that from there on out I could only buy something if I had the cash in my pocket to pay for it. The whole justification of buying a stack of music with credit because it was hot, new and novel to me was gone. I had no argument considering that that "money", if used in the form of credit today, would kill my budget later on.

Money. Wow, so where did my money tree go? I've worked hard all my life and have always made good money, well, good for a librarian but due to bills and kids and a one paycheck household never really had a large overflow of cash to set aside. Right now I am waiting for my unemployment and retirement cash to arrive in order to make it past this crazy spot I'm in. It's strange, but also a sign of the times, to find myself in this situation, to be waiting for work to show up. Never had this problem before. Back in the day I would throw out a resume, land a job, easy peasy. In the past I always felt I was the "fair haired boy" to beat and would find a work without much of a struggle but I know that the world right now is filled with an awful lot of younger, even hungrier "fair haired boys" who will work for practically nothing and I'm up against all of them. Yeah, it's a much smaller pie for all of us to share these days, that's for sure.

I know, too, that I am not in as big of a hurry to do what I was doing before so maybe that gives me a leg up on the situation, I don't know for sure. What I do know is that reinvention of Accumulate Man is the key to my survival and that's where I am going with all this. It's not stuff that I'm searching for, so money is not the issue. Money always comes. Job satisfaction, organizational integrity, loyalty amoung colleagues, honesty between workers and management...all that...that's what I want this next go round, not more meaningless stuff to fill my burgeoning shelves with.

Yeah, there's gotta be something more to work, to life, than a mere paycheck, than a pile of loot at the end of a work week. That old spending pattern of mine says alot about my life, tells me that something major was missing. Looking around me, at my years of accumulation, I can tell that I wasn't hungry for music, or books or movies, or even novelty. I was hungry for...what? satisfaction? Yeah, I wanted more than anything to be satisfied with what I had, both at work and at home, and baby, you just can't buy that.

Maybe it took a stack of eighty this or that to fill the hole that work, that life, that relationships, wasn't filling. No matter, one thing is for certain and that is my ability, rather, my desire to walk into a store and blow two hundred and fifty bucks in credit on music is long gone. Know that at one time I would do that without blinking an eye, damn the costs. Say's an awful lot about where I've been, where I'm at and where I'm going. I am sure that I am not the only one in the country who feels this way about things like that these days. Sobering, eh?

So, hey, if you see that old money tree of mine go ahead and keep it. Peel me off a few leaves and send them along with your good wishes. I'm on my way to find the place where satifaction grows, maybe not on trees, but someplace deep down inside. Yeah, all will be well and good up the road. See you there, companeros. Affectionately, your old pal, Accumulate Man

Salud!

Zaftig by any other name

2009-09-25T15:06:00.001-07:00

Great use of the color red in this painting, wouldn't you agree?

Salud!

"If you've got the money, honey, I've got the time"

2009-09-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

Time. I've always felt it was a bit like the Bukowski title, something about the wild horses running, but, my case, not just away but over a cliff. I never felt completely in control of time, not in the way that some people seem to be. Sure, I have always been punctual, maybe not with time to spare but when the clock said to be someplace at 12:15, I was there. No messing around with that.

No, it's that other aspect of time, that use of time that says the horses, Whoa! , that slows them down, that turns them at the last minute from spilling over, willy nilly, tumble bumble, into the ravine. I want a way to brake time, to slow it down, to give me that much needed twentyfifth hour in a 24 hour day. I want somehow for my children to stop growing up so fast, for the calendar pages to stop falling so relentlessly, for the seasons to quit skipping by so quickly and just cool it for a bit, just learn to stroll and enjoy themselves in the way they never seemed to in the past.

I woke up the other morning at two thirty or so, thinking it was six. Something about that big hand in the distance made me think that the night had passed and that it was time for me to get up. Well, it must have been the cat or something but I did get up and he came in and then the night just passed oh so slowly after that. I have to wonder what the difference was right then and there about time, how time in that sense, in the dark warmth of my bed, could drag by with the speed of cold molasses, versus time when I'm at the beach or a park or in the city with my kids and I look down at my watch and see that it's eleven thirty and two minutes later I look down and find out that it's time for dinner. What the hell is the difference?

My take on it? The difference is novelty.

There's something about corralling four kids in a park, all with different needs and and issues trying to slow down time versus laying in your bed, with night sounds surrounding you, the darkness hiding secrets in the corners of your room, to give time a new twist. The other night I woke up in the back of my car in a sleeping bag in the middle of friend's field on the outskirts of Twisp. I had gone over the mountain to see an old friend of mine who had paintings to sell and we ended up at his friend's house to see them. This artist pal of my pal had a huge workshop where there was plenty of room to store my friends oversized works. After the drive and a couple of beers and a lengthy viewing of various art pieces I found that sleeping hard was my first desire, but then novelty took over at three and stood in sleep's place for a couple hours. It helped to change my whole perception of life as it stands right now, that's for sure.

There is nothing quite like waking up in a completely strange place and not really knowing where you are, who around you are friends and how close help could be found in an emergency. See, that's novelty speaking. I was safe in three season bag in the back of my wagon. I had friends close by and there was nothing to worry about. I had the whole universe spinning overhead in all it's magnificence and all I could do at the moment was worry. But once I let worry pass it was all okay. The night tripped by slowly, not too much different than it did for me in my bed the other night. The big difference between waking up in the middle of a field in Twisp instead of my bed was that I was in the midst of an adventure. When I woke up in my bed and stumbled out of it to let in the cat I missed out on working the novelty aspect of the night. I could have slapped on some Dixieland and started writing. Instead I struggled to go back to sleep. What a waste of an adventure.

Right now I don't need a clock to know what time it is. Outside of hustling for work online and working on projects around the house I don't need a watch to remind me what time it is. Right now I could reinvent time if I wanted to, but discipline keeps messing with that. I want to stay in bed some days, sleep in past eight but I find that that's impossible to do. I want to goof off something badly but when I do I fret thinking I've pissed away the best part of a day. I figure if I'm not breaking a sweat I'm squandering time, but then, I think of my drive the other day to and fro and up and over the mountains to the Methow and think, man, I need more of that. Less structure, more goofing, more enlightenment, more joy, more laughter, more adventure.

But big adventures take capital. Right now I'm all spent out. My bills are paid, my utilities doubled up and my larder relatively full. I have books and movies out the wazoo so going out and hitting second hands will just have to wait awhile. I have tools enough and supplies enough to get most jobs on my things to do list done around here, but the bathroom and tile projects will just have to wait till my ship comes in. I have time right now to write, and so my novel is underway and that's grand, too. I have unimpeded time to walk or lift weights or whatever, so long as it's close to home. I suppose that's the rub. It's hard to slow down time in your neighborhood when you've been there awhile and feel like you've seen it all. But one thing I discovered last winter when I was without a car and that's once you get close to the ground everything changes.

Now that I am "in-between positions" life has gone and done that...changed up and made everything different. Right now life is one big novelty store. And I suppose that's what I crave the most: to be able to wander around awhile, pick up this and that and apply it to my life, change my life, myself, into something new and completely different. I want new, not so much new as in consumer goods but new for me. I want to reinvent the man who found his way here so that he doesn't have to leave the same man and make the same mistakes again. I have the time right now to reinvent myself in a way that I've never had before. I have no partner, lover, wife around to make lists for me or place demands on me. My children are five hundred miles away so I don't have to meet their needs for the moment. I have no work clock or organizational expectations to face and bow before so that part is good, too. I have well meaning friends who remind that times are hard and my wait time for employment could be awhile. Maybe that's what I've been needing. A good long wait. Like waiting in a station for a train to come. The adventure is before me and all it requires is a bit of patience and a lot of imagination.

Time off. I have to admit that I found that sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for. In the midst of a hellish summer reading club day I told a coworker that I really wished for a summer without summer reading. As fundamental as it is for our business it felt forced right then and there, all too much paper work, all too much noise. I felt that all that hub-bub got in the way of the joy, the thrill, the novelty of kids reading something new and exciting for the sake of reading new and exciting. Well, days later I got my wish. I didn't have to do any more summer reading club stuff and I had plenty of time off. And you know, that part, making that wish and having it happen, was not only scary but grand. I look back at that moment and think, wow, I really have some serious chops going for myself. Look what I made happen. Now I just need to apply that wishful thinking to the rest of my life and make great things happen.

And so I will.

Salud!

A taste for something foreign

2009-09-24T21:08:00.001-07:00

Having a video store membership is really quite old fashioned in a world that has to up to your door movie delivery, but I like the staff at my local Hollywood Video store and I like their easy to use Power Play program. It may not have quite the price break as Netflix or have the convenience of delivery like other services do but I like the ease of use of movie selection in real time. I like wandering in the stacks, enjoy the slow pace of picking up this box or another and reading the descriptions on the back. There is something thrilling about that completely analog experience of reading and walking and musing in real time, in a real brick and mortal store that I just can't get from online shopping. I can't see doing business any other way.

Foreign films have been my latest film genre kick. I don't attend flicks in movie houses too often but I do love it when I find quality foreign films out in town to buy or borrow. I find non-Hollywood titles second hand every now and again, which is great as it helps to pad out my film collection with stuff that is just far and away from what the bean counters and the franchise operators in Hollywood consider entertainment.

For instance today I found a copy of Once Upon a Time In China Pt III directed by Tsu Hark at Goodwill for fifty cents, which is fine since I saw the first part and know that I'll someday stumble upon the second. I also came across a copy of Wages of Sin the other day, too. I can only wish that it was the latest Criterion print but it wasn't. Rather, it was produced by some long lost transfer house who stumbled upon the rights to print it. They did, but badly, with the subtitles printed directly into the movie in some washed out typeface the color of the film. There were more passages than not where I had to fake out what was happening on the screen and just pretend I knew the language being spoken. All the same it was a grand time. A classic is a classic no matter what the quality of the print.

My local video house has a wide variety of international films to choose from, which is surprising considering how slowly they move. Today I dropped off two catalog titles at Hollywood, District B13 and Dynamite Warrior. I can only wish the latter was worth recommending. Pity, as the trailer looked great and the promise of an action packed martial arts film was what I was craving last night. Great idea, though. A sort of revenge flick set in some Thai kind of wild west setting, with big lumbering water buffalos standing in for steers. Truly a kooky kind of cowboy action film, but only for those who have die hard tastes for the genre.

But the Luc Besson produced District B13 more than made up for the lack in the other film. Fast paced contemporary crime film set in a somewhat futuristic walled in ghetto in Paris where the criminals run the show and the cops stand back and let them do their thing. Once the criminals get ahold of a nuclear device the film switches gears and turns into one of those strange kind of buddy films, the one where the maverick cop and the gangster with a conscious get together to save the world, or, in this case, Paris. Grand stunt work, totally jaw dropping action. Highly recommended.

Today I picked up a Spanish film that, even as I write this, continues to produce shivers. Funny, as that is the English language title: Shiver. Incredibly scary in that non-slasher, not a zombie in the house kind of way. The film centers around a boy who has an extreme reaction to sunlight who is moved up the mountains by his mother to a little village where some strange and wicked kind of stuff is happening in the woods. All too many moments of what I would consider extreme psychological terror to recommend this to just anyone. You have to have a strong desire to be scarred out of your wits in order to watch this one. Highly recommended for those late night date nights where you want your sweetie to dig her nails into your arm.

Lastly I picked up a copy of Schultze Gets the Blues. World wide winner of 10 International Film awards. Haven't watched it yet but idea of a German protagonist heading off to Louisiana to adapt his polka playing skills to Zydeco music sounds pretty wonderful to me. I'll let you know if it deserved all those awards or not.

Oh, and speaking of foreign, be sure to attend the fundraiser at the Historic Orchard this Tuesday if you can. Twelve bucks gets you in the door to see Like Water For Chocolate plus a small drink and popcorn. Proceeds go to the Immigrant Assistance Center to help buy books for immigrant children. I'll be learning how to work their film projectors that evening, maybe I'll see you there. And if not, well, maybe I'll see you in the aisles of my local Hollywood Video store!

Salud!

The big score

2009-09-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Anglo-Saxon treasure. Who would have thought?

Buried treasure. Show me a boy with a shovel and you know that pirate gold is there in the back of his mind. Dig deep enough, or just dig enough holes and something will turn up.

I think it's something we all dream of finding. Long lost valuables from some ancient civilization or some badman's loot secreted away that will somehow bring us instant fame and fortune. In Mr Herbert's case, found in the story pasted below, he was just wandering around a friend's farm with a metal detector when he stumbled upon on of the grandest finds of ancient loot found in modern times. How many times have you seen retirees and such wandering around beaches and parks with those detector things strapped around their necks and wondered if it was worth your time and effort to do the same? I know that they can't be making much. Pocket change, lost rings, old bullets, a piece of iron pipe and the occasional watch. It certainly can't be counted as exercise. I know that they can be breaking a sweat, unless the lugging of that device is a heavier and more perspiration inducing workout than I imagine to be.

But what has to be more thrilling than hearing the sound of the beep when it hits metal is the call of the imagination, the drive to find the first piece of the long trail of treasure left behind by some unheralded outlaw or unsung pirate or other misguided soul. For every boy out there with a pick and wheelbarrow, there's a man like Mr Herbert prowling fields and meadows in search of big treasure. In Herbert's case he just didn't find an old horseshoe or pike head, he stumbled upon a hoard of loot that has become England's largest Anglo-Saxon treasure find ever.

I wonder if they'll let him keep a piece or two for his troubles? I'm sure that something that big can't be owned, it must belong to the people of England now. Well, I suppose if they don't let him keep anything that proposed seven figure return on his time investment will somehow smooth things over. With those kinds of proceeds he can buy a whole box of the museum's upcoming coffee table book and share it with friends. All those new found friends, treasure hunters all.

Salud!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090924/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_anglo_saxon_gold

No Tuna Town Tourism for my tomcat

2009-09-20T03:04:00.000-07:00

My cat Guapo likes to start out his day with a pinch of cat nip and a spoonful of tuna. I don't know about other cats but he is a fairly finicky critter when it comes to his wet chow. He won't have anything to do with those fancy cans of cat food, and has consistantly turned his nose up to other kinds of canned fish like mackerel, sardines and salmon. But tuna? If I find that the cat is a bit overdue from his evening's outting all I have to do is lay my Swingaway to the top of a can of Bumble Bee and he magically appears by the back door. Good trick, good tuna.

Now, I have to admit I do not spoil my cat with high priced cans of albacore or the like. I have no idea what types of tuna parts are found in the kind of tuna I bring home but I am sure it is not sashimi grade. After reading the NY Times article posted below I guess I can say that I am getting off lucky and so is he, for tuna are highly overfished and because of that can be pretty pricey in some parts of the world. According to the article some fisherman in the little fishing town of Oma, Japan, feel that catching a tuna these days is like winning the lottery and can bring in thousands of dollars for one fish alone. I must remind Guapo of that the next time I hear a little attitude in his morning "meow". Attitude or not, that cat, gawd bless him, allows for a bit of that Vegas lottery magic to happen here in this house every day, all at sixty nine cents a can. Good for him, good for me.

Salud!

The Napa Valley of tuna towns:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/asia/20tuna.html?_r=1&hpw

Simple things, media style

2009-09-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, know that my entertainment budget has been wacked hard, but this week I went out and about like I still had it all out in front. It about attitude, not about what you buy. This week I fell upon a really fantastic Thai film, Bang Rajan, a sort of Seven Samurai/Braveheart epic about a band of Siamese warriors back around 1765 that held off a superior Burmese force much to the distress of the Burmese. Great action flick, highest grossing film in Thai film history. Check it out! Otherwise I fell upon a copy of Wages of Fear today. How wonderful is that? Earlier this week there was this incredible stash of movies donated from some old codger (like me?) that put labels on all his films, when he had watched them, his ratings, all that. Grand. Had to buy a few. Desperate Hours with Bogie, Black Pearl with Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara and a breakthrough film for Robert Mitchum Blood on the Moon. Oh, and I also found a three album set of Spike Jones recordings. Pristine. All for the big price of a buck.

And, finally, cookbooks. Really, didn't have the budget for this at all but found a nice stack at Goodwill today, including Bernard Clayton's Small Breads,a nice University of Carolina Press book on Southern baking (Biscuits, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie), two Chronicle pieces (always pretty those Chronicle books!) on holiday and chocolate baking and finally a nice compact title on tapas by that big box store favorite Parragon. Who can ever get enough tapa titles in their collection, now tell me?!

Okay, off the the kitchen. Taquitos tonight with refried beans, Monterrey Jack (that they used to use a real jack to make that cheese is a story in itself!) and a big mess of quacamole (Sav-a-lot two avocados for a buck, 15 (!!) limes for a buck and two heads of cilantro for a buck..go now!). Oh, and head over to Saars if you are up that way, they have a really grand South African wine(Golden Kaan label) in right now at three bucks a bottle. Truly great stuff.

It's a good life, my friends, no worries for now...

Salud!

It all feels so different now..thanks!

2009-09-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

Time. It's amazing what a difference one week makes. Seven days ago life was pure hell, a week later it's a whole different world and time has become a completely new and interesting commodity for me to deal with than it was before. Strange, enticing and oh so very cool.

Last week at this time I was girding my armor, preparing for war, preparing for who knows what and tonight I am enjoying a late supper and thinking about the upcoming weekend instead. Last week I couldn't really consider going away for I thought my place was here, waiting, waiting for what I didn't know but but I spent my time here waiting for the inevitable all the same. I didn't wait on my hands, as you know, but worked hard every day, if anything just to burn off all the anxiety that went with along with all that pointless waiting. I still find myself getting up and getting into my work day by eight o'clock but now I'm working with a different sort of time element. The hour glass has turned, the sand is running and my time, my life, is once again my own, but now it has an edge to it, one that says to me that I'm not getting paid for waiting around anymore, that it's time to get my act together and rediscover myself. Life and all it's merciless variables are staring me in the face and the wolves, while not at the door, are in conference, wondering what to do with me this winter.

Oh hell, let 'em howl, been there, done that before.

Today I realized that while I want to play, take road trips, goof off, what I really need to do is start looking for the next square on the board. Today I spent more time online than I have in weeks, spent time writing friends, lining up activities, planning events, getting out applications, all that. Before, when I would wake up, I would check the news, drop an email or two, check the job boards, get on with my day. It was the life of the living dead. Now I am back with the living, talking to friends via the net, getting things lined up, making contacts, calling in old markers. It's a different use and appreciation of time and it's all very liberating.

Today I also realized that I while I need to keep to my program, maintain work discipline, all that, I also know that I can relax a bit, breathe deep, take walks, eat slower. I am already sleeping better, and my stomach has been less inclined to be filled with bile. I know, too, that I have to look at this time off as a gift, not just as a time to think about finding the "next job". I know that money worries will always a constant, but I know, too, that time off like this is something I will never get back again. Every day must count, even if some of that time is spent napping with the cat.

To that end I am thinking about a road trip to California to see new sites, old friends and long buried relations, with maybe swing up and around through New Mexico to see an old artist friend of mine. He wrote to me today and told me that he would be happy to illustrate my "great American novel", something else that I have finally started over the last few days. I know, too, that I need to get things to Boise, that I need to spend some serious time with my children. I've spent two hard months working on this house, two miserable months worrying about the unknown, two difficult months in a sort of purgatory and now it's time to find a new path, a new place, a new way to live, a new way to breathe. More than anything I need to learn how to appreciate time once again in a way that I couldn't before.

Baby, this is the only life we have and it took some hard lessons to figure that out.

I woke up this morning and stood on the porch, looked at the ruddy sunrise and thought, Red sky at morning, sailor take warning, all that, and all I could do was smile. Sure, we had a touch of rain today, but baby, it takes rain to make my flowers grow. Let it rain, I don't care, that's what windshield wipers and good stout jackets are for.

Time is once again my friend. Whether I end up in Eugene, Boise or Port Orchard or some point in-between it doesn't matter much to me anymore. I am living once again and to those that gave me that gift, thanks!

Salud!

Curiosity knocked me down

2009-09-15T04:37:00.000-07:00

A nice NY Times blog piece on "unfettered inquiry":

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/does-curiosity-kill-more-than-the-cat/

Read and heed.

Salud!

Pirates go BOOM!

2009-09-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

Port Orchard has it's share of fun and interesting festivals and events throughout the year. Car shows, 4th of July fireworks, a Christmas tree lighting festival, this summer's celebration of Cedar Cove, all of which help to keep the locals busy and entertained all around the calendar. One of the more interesting events to come on the scene in recent years has been The Murder Mystery Weekend, which was turned into a wonderfully fun event once the pirate theme was tied into it. I can't remember whether or not the first one had that cool twist going for it, but the last three years has brought in a large number of variously costumed folk into town, and an equally large number of people who like to come by to play the murder mystery game, watch buccaneer antics and dream about donning pirate gear next year.

You have to have a certain amount of self confidence to walk about on the street in pirate finery when it's not Halloween. There is a particular, or maybe peculiar, gene or another that gets employed, that gets put to the test. It has nothing to do with being able to talk like Robert Newton, the famous star of Disney's Treasure Island, and it certainly has nothing to do with the authenticity of your costume (but it helps). No, it's more the ability to be able to live and breathe in those clothes in a way that says you do this every day. That is an old mind trick left over from my Ren Faire days, I am sure, but it gets me out the door and down the street and keeps me in character without having a speck of self conciousness about me. I just think it's alot of fun, and I'm sure, deep down inside, given the right opportunity, the right look and a little bit tomfoolery, there'd be a lot more adults who would get into it, too.

One of this year's truly fun features was a pirate camp set up out by the Waterfront Park gazebo. Prior to the the B.O.O.M. Pirates being on the scene the most interesting part of the weekend was the pirate costume contest. This year we had not only that but a great "gentlemen (and ladies!) of fortune" reenactment troupe on hand who not only ran a tight ship but were also a lot of fun to watch and listen to. I suppose the term "listening" could be taken two ways, for while their lectures and tidbits on pirate lore were both solid and informative, it was the close up and in your ear explosive madness during their cannon shows that really dialed in your listening skills! Wow! They brought along a number of black powder cannons, miniatures, of course, but also a number of swivel guns and flintlock pistols and smoothbore muskets to shoot off as well. Twice a day for fifteen minutes or so you could get a taste of black powder shock and awe, a feel for the rush of seventeenth century warfare, play acting style. Sure, they were small guns, small arms but they were LOUD. After sitting there grooving on their show in the peaceful September sunlight I could only imagine what the noise and mayhem and cacaphony was like below decks on a ship of the line with all those larger, bigger and badder guns all going off at once, all letting loose during a well timed broadside, not only giving but receiving as well.

Well, back to present day Port Orchard. The event proved to be a enjoyable time all the way around. The "pirate market" was well attended and built in rather nicely into our regularly scheduled weekend Farmer's Market. There were a lot of downtown merchants tied into the event as well due to the scavenger hunt and the placing of mystery clues around town that went along with the murder mystery theme. The town once was truly able to tap into the local zeitgeist and found yet another way to let imagination and gawkery rule the day. Even if you couldn't find that gene in youself that allowed for you to don a tricorn and swagger about with a "arrgh, matey!" and "yo, ho, ho!" on your lips you could at least stoll about town, play the mystery game and indulge in a bit of voyeurism. It was always the thing that got me to Ren Faire, being able to stoll about in costume in that mix of participants and turkeys..er, turkey legs. Now it's something I can look forward to seeing happen here, too, even if it's just for a weekend, once a year. How grand.

Salud!

Couldn't quite get your fill of piratey activity this last weekend? Here's a list that'll have you chasing pirates all over the country! Oh, and there's a link to next weekend's Portland Pirate Festival in the mix as well!
http://www.piratefestivals.com/

Official B.O.O.M. Pirates site:
http://www.boompirates.com/

"Box of Rain"

2009-09-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

"Haleakela Sunrise" by Walfrido (http://www.walfrido.com/)

Dedicated this morning to those still standing before the mast:

Box of Rain
Grateful Dead -

Words by Robert Hunter;
music by Phil Lesh

"Look out of any window
any morning, any evening, any day
Maybe the sun is shining
birds are winging or
rain is falling from a heavy sky -
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
this is all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago

Walk out of any doorway
feel your way, feel your way
like the day before
Maybe you'll find direction
around some corner
where it's been waiting to meet you -
What do you want me to do,
to watch for you while you're sleeping?
Well please don't be surprised
when you find me dreaming too

Look into any eyes
you find by you, you can see
clear through to another day
I know it's been seen before
through other eyes on other days
while going home --
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
It's all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago

Walk into splintered sunlight
Inch your way through dead dreams
to another land
Maybe you're tired and broken
Your tongue is twisted
with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear
What do you want me to do
to do for you to see you through

A box of rain will ease the pain
and love will see you through
Just a box of rain -
wind and water -
Believe it if you need it,
if you don't just pass it on
Sun and shower -
Wind and rain -
in and out the window
like a moth before a flame

It's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare
But it's just a box of rain
or a ribbon for your hair

Such a long long time to be gone
and a short time to be there"

Be brave, Mi Amiga, and know that you have friends out here who care.

Salud!

Independence Day in the South of France

2009-09-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Mi Novia said that I must look at this time as one filled with gifts, and that I should remind myself daily of the power and complexity of those gifts, and to be sure to thank those who gave them to me. That's just good manners, much better manners than my betters practice, so let this note be a lesson onto them.

So, to that end, after my long period of house arrest, I just want to say "thank you" for your gracious option, the one that gave me the key to the lock on my door on Cellblock 708, the key that has allowed me to once again sip the sweet air of freedom.

And rest assured that I know that this taste of freedom comes with a mighty high price tag affixed to it. Maybe finally understanding the value of time and money, of what it means to have one but not necessarily the other at the same time, was one of the gifts you gave me, a lesson that I've learned the hard way over the last couple months, one that now allows me to truly appreciate what I have before me, and made oh so clear the price that I am willing to pay for my supposed sins, not only up front but over the course of my lifetime as well.

So since I'm paying up front for this dear bit of freedom with a large chit of socio/economic statistical poverty I suppose I can boast about my lazy day, about this absolutely lovely "weekend" kind of day I'm having right now, one built into the end of my work week. This morning it didn't feel so much dear as sinfully wonderful. Once again, thank you for the gift of time, which goes far beyond the benefits of whatever I could hope to buy with money. Oh, and the pink bow you wrapped it up in was the best.

I felt that this morning was the first actual "vacation day" I've had all summer, one completely devoid of guilt trips and anxiety, unlike that faux "vacation" I was on the first part of July. Today I gleefully lounged in bed until almost noon with Mi Novia. This morning we watched the sun come up, laughed at the antics of Darth Vadar's mythical brother Toledo Vader, ate toast and scrambled eggs off of a Japanese serving tray, planned a trip to Portland to see the Vaux Swifts, plotted the end of Western Civilization as we know it and generally relaxed in a way that only a fox who has escaped the hounds can do.

The best part of the morning wasn't sipping press pot coffee and resting seaside in the South of France but knowing that the machine elves were dutifully swapping out all the steel and chrome parts that were indaintily shoved into my torso over the past couple months with real flesh and blood components. I must tell you, of all the indignities I've suffered through recently, it was the hardening of my heart and spleen and the shredding of my gut due to fear and uncertainty that I rail against the most. Hence the late night flight to this beachside villa on the edge of the Med with Mi Novia in tow. I needed medical help and needed it badly so betwix Laurel and Hardy tapes, a good pot of Chili Verdi, a nice bottle of South African wine and the loving ministrations of Mi Novia I am now on the road to recovery.

Work? Not today. Hell, the rest of that paint job can wait till Sunday. Pink walls, wow. I love them. And even she said, begrudgingly, that they looked good in the morning light.

Oh, yes, and speaking of gifts, peace and love and a heartfelt thanks to all my friends out there who supported me during my time of trials. Your friendship and loyalty was the biggest and best gift of them all.

Salud!

Post 601

2009-09-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Today the dog broke and ran, and baby, I cheered for the dog, not the chain.

Salud!

A manly man shade of pink

2009-09-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

The first thing Punkin said when I told her that I painted my bedroom walls pink was "that's MY favorite color!" Well, of course, I was thinking of her all day long when I laid down that paint. I thought, too, of all the dresses and toys and thingamajigs that she has that are pink, or a shade of pink, or variations of purple and pink, and know that somehow she tapped in hard in the decision making for that color. Five hundred miles was a long ways to send a psychic message to her Papa but the connection has been laid down fairly well over the last few weeks. It must be all those daily phone calls she sends my way that influenced my paint selection.

It wasn't really the color choice I had planned on making. I had a wide variety of paint swatches in hand to choose from. I had been leaning on cantalope, or a shade of peach, maybe even something on the other side of the spectrum, in a lighter shade of blue. But the blue, while nice from the old man in the sea perspective, made the room seem too much like a baby boy's room, and with the coming of winter and the possibility of another long season of cold ahead of me here in this house, I didn't want to lay down something that would add an extra layer of chill to that room.

Yeah, I didn't want cool, although that color would be nice on those steaming hot summer nights when the temperatures hit the low nineties. No, warm was the direction where that color had to go. But in the end it could have been anything considering the paint that was on the walls before I started. I was talking to my boy tonight and he was in agreement that he and his brother were only days away from notifying their congressman about that paint before they had to take off to Boise. It was something that bordered on asthetic cruelty, it was that bad. But not bad in a horrible color sense, but bad in that the paint was old and worn and needed freshening up. It had not been touched upon since we bought the house eleven years ago. Someone along the line decided to paint it a shade of vanilla, but laid that light yellow paint over an old school variation of avocado green. Somehow that yellowish tinge just couldn't keep that shade of green down. It was awful, made even moreso while I laid down fresh paint on top of it.

Nothing like a fresh coat of paint to give a room promise. See, all you hyper masculine men out there must be wondering what the hell a manly man like me would be doing painting his room pink. Well, if you really feel you have a need to know just know that the name of the shade is Pink Grandeur. Doesn't that sound pretty swell already? And it isn't a cotton candy pink, or 50's pink, or even Pink Cadillac or Pink Elephant, but a shade of pink that has a bit of peach in it. Think what you'd get if you mixed your "flesh" and "pink" Crayola Crayons together and that's kinda where it's going, but with a hit of orange in it, too, for warmth. But what really makes that color sing, though, are these two old fifties orange lampshades that I picked up a garage sale in Grants Pass years ago. When those lights are lit that shade of Pink Grandeur turns downright wicked.

Okay, well, not really wicked, but you get the idea. So, think warm. Think of the color of your sweetheart's cheeks after a hard walk. Think the opposite of Pacific Northwest winters, think waking up to a room that already has a blush of sunshine in it. Not painted some cool shade of blue, cool like the deep waters of the Sound, but something with a touch of sunrise in it, something with a hint of the coming of the spring. Not a bad thing to see on your walls on a frosty morning come December. So take that, all you hairy chested types that might snicker at my choice. Besides, it's Punkin's favorite color. Anybody want to give me a hard time about that?

Salud!

Nobody's Fool

2009-09-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

John Bonham he isn't, but he sure knows how to make some noise.

These past couple months I've woken up pretty much every morning to the same sound from the same drummer, one that relentlessly beat an anxious tattoo down in the panic zone by my navel. It has been a subtle but consistent drumbeat, not insistent in the way that nature calls, but one that drags me out of bed with a voice that goes beyond prepping my mind for work and other responsibilities: it is one filled with alarm. Each morning brings on that same feeling of dread, of "general quarters", one that propells my body to not only to let in the cat and turn on the coffee water but to get me in the mindset to gird my armor and stand by to repell all boarders.

But I must say that this morning was a bit different, that that mad beating was silent, or at least stilled for the moment. I woke up after a good nights sleep, knowing that the cat was still out and that lights were still burning. I went down, secured the lights and opened both front and back doors to let the cat choose his avenue of approach. Instead of lighting kitchen fires and firing up the internet I took a drive, a truncated version of the Stations of the Cross, hoping once again to beat the odds that have been rocking my world this summer and finally come across the walking Professora. Afterwards I came home to this place, to a pot of hot coffee and a snoozing cat. All well and good. I have miles to go before I sleep.

But back to that sleeping drummer. Somehow I have come to place that is a few steps past the crossroads, to a space on the game board that allowed me to pass go and leave behind the filthy lucre of my job. Somewhere along the line I grew hair where hair was lacking and today I let that freak flag fly. Today I will let those that have helped guide me assist me in telling the powers that be that I am not their lackey, their whipping boy, their punk, any longer. Today is the day that I will proclaim that I am nobody's fool. That proclamation will allow me to not only work hard and walk tall but go forth in the world with a new sort of power, a renewed sense of wisdom, one that says to the frighteners that you can't take away my birthday and damn it, know that you never will.

Yesterday was but another day but still, it was one of those kinds of days that said to me that life is full and remarkable and filled with a sort of passion that only comes when you show the world that you have a zest for living. Yesterday I found myself messing about in a tide pool with friends and I came away from that experience knowing that life is just that, one massive tidal zone, one constantly shifting between water and sand, light and dark, misstep and fortune. It made many things clear to me, mainly that time marches on, that life as we lived it was just that, a time in the past, and that we have many things to do before we settle down into the comfort of that grand sleep that awaits us at the end of life.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a symphony, a jazz quartet, a sock hop garage band playing down in my belly. I woke up and relieved the tired drummer of his anxious instrument, had him put up his drum for awhile. I am tired of hearing the incessant tattoo of that fearful drumbeat. There will be plenty of other opportunties for general quarters in this life but for now it's time rebuild and repair and sooth the tired muscles around my very ragged heart. Right now I wish more than anything just to hear what I want to hear, sweetness, pleasantness, the sound of my children's laughter, not ugly sounds that the enemy camp wishes me to hear through it's psy-ops programming. Today I snub my nose at Goliath and tuck away my sling into my belt, for today is the day that I begin my walk away from the madness and let my life become my own again.

Just know that from this day forward I would rather be ragged and hungry than to live with pockets full of jingle and a belly full of fear.

Salud!

An arts festival of my own

2009-09-05T17:55:00.000-07:00

Once again a Labor Day weekend comes and while it hasn't gone anywhere yet I realize that I'm not going anywhere either. Once again work dominates my "holiday" weekend: I have a bedroom that needs painting, which I shouldn't feel bad about since I've been living in this house over eleven years and haven't painted it yet. I know that I have a lot of loose ends that need to be wrapped up in order to hit the BIG project next week, and that's to strip out the bathroom. I see plenty of possible issues coming out of that so I don't want to say that it's "just a painting project". The sink needs replacing, the coving needs to be replaced with a hemlock trim and maybe, just maybe, I might go whole hog and replace that awful linoleum with a nice tile job on the floor.

I may be off but my work ethic has been strong and has pretty much followed the same pattern every day: up by eight, pour a pot of coffee into my system and then check out the things to do list for the day. I tend to goof a bit here and there, run errands and second hand but generally I work straight until six. That's when the whistle blows and the "internal boss" allows for a cooking, a bit of wine and when, the kitchen is all wrapped up and secure, for a movie, maybe two.

Yeah, all work and no play makes Jack, or at least Accumulate Man, a dull boy, so this weekend I decided to make it a point to knock off early and start supper at five. Spin some vinyl, get in a couple or three movies a day. I may not be cruising some nifty art exhibits but I will be painting rooms in the inside of my house. I might not be able to grab of bite off of some Seattle's tastier food stalls, but yesterday I made a mighty fine vegetable and polish sausage frittata for lunch and mighty grand pasta bake for supper. We have to look at these things as, well, part and parcel of the whole "labor" day experience.

The Kitsap Stree Movie Festival began yesterday, too, with a "screening" of the Russian epic 1612. Followed up that bit of joy with yet another "epic", Hellboy II The Golden Army. Nice to finally see the big guy again, as the local video house kept coming up with nada for me as far as a rental was concerned. Sometimes you just have to go out and buy these things. Yeah, as far as buying films, wow, thank goodness I'm still into VHS. What a haul lately. Lots of still sealed films, like Yojimbo and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Ryan's Daughter. Found a nine volume Nostalgia Merchant set of Laurel and Hardy shorts, a clean copy of The Seven Samurai amongst others. In recent days some thirty odd films have come into the house, all ready to be viewed.

But a good arts festival includes music, too. That part I do miss the most about Bumbershoot. I have to admit that it was my chief musical influence there for awhile, as it introduced many new bands and acts into my life that I wouldn't have able to catch otherwise. But since I had my duties to attend to here I pumped a bit of cash into vinyl instead and found some tasty treats to sit and listen to, for instance, some still in their wrapper recordings of Charlie Poole and North Carolina Ramblers. In the same stack I found, oh, let's see, some Doc and Merle Watson, a nice old timey Cajun fiddle piece, some Flatt and Scruggs with Bill Monroe, some clean eighties stuff, a bit of soul, a bit of "at the hop" oldies and ton of Celtic.

Sure, I may not be listening to the cutting edge of current music or be grooving on the best of World Beat or all that, but I won't have to deal with stinky neo-hippy types sitting down next me or have wild street irchins dipping their chopsticks into my brown rice with peanut sauce. The idea not jostling with the crowds on this wet day or seeing all that trash they generate or having to take the long way home via the ferry late at night is good enough reason for me to be home today. I have junk enough to deal with on my own around here.

So, my own personal arts festival is off to a good start. Today is day two. Looking at the program I can see that I'm schedule to brew up some coffee, go watch The Music Box with Laurel and Hardy, listen to a couple sides of Johnny Horton's least known hits and then, after a solid breakfast, I'm due to get out the primer and a couple brushes and hit that bedroom. If I can't go out and see art today, well, maybe I'll make some of my own. I'll pretend my room is a big canvas and go from there. It may not be a Van Gogh, but I think that Van Gogh might find it to be a mighty fine place to paint!

Salud!

Bummer to missing Sheryl Crow, but not bumming over needing a real bumbershoot this weekend: here's this years Bumbershoot program:
http://www.bumbershoot.org/

"Comin' around"

2009-09-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

"Early this mornin' I was washin' my face
Thinkin' 'bout goin' to town
Sick and tired of hangin' around this place
Waitin' on the blues to track me down
Bless my soul maybe I'm comin' around

Been lyin' low but maybe I'm comin' around
I've been runnin' nearly all of my life
Far and as fast as I can
It may sound funny but I'm thinkin' this might
Be about right where I came in

Well I don't know maybe I'm comin' around
Got a ways to go but maybe I'm comin' around
Finally layin' my burden down
One fine day
I'll be free
'Til it comes
I'll go on

My heart's a little ragged but it's all that I got
So I'm gonna give it a try
Look out world I'm comin' ready or not
I don't wanna let you pass me by
Here I go maybe I'm comin' around
I'm a little bit slow, maybe I'm comin' around

Finally layin' my burden down
Maybe I'm comin' around
Maybe I'm comin' around
Maybe I'm comin' around
Maybe I'm comin' around"

Steve Earle
The Revolution Starts Now
Artemis, 2004

Smudged finger prints

2009-09-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

I have been working hard on this old house of mine, hopefully doing all the right things so that at some point the house will attract the right folks at the right time with the right amount of cash to blow. When these projects started back in July I thought, okay, cool, the house is sweet and quaint and all that, that in itself should attract buyers. But the more projects I have managed to knock out the more I found left to do. Today was one of those days. Once I moved all of The Boy's stuff out of his room and into the staging area next door I saw that the room was a bit tawdry, a tad more than worn. So yesterday I got out the brushes and the paint cans and got to work. Just finished up this afternoon. Sunshiney yellow with white trim. When it dries I'll shift around a few pieces of furniture just to give it that staged, lived in look.

The only thing that gave me pause was the door. I was working my way around the room and finally had everything done but the doorway leading out of the room. The frame was easy to knock out, then I started in on the door itself. That's when I saw them, the hand prints down below the doorknob. Somehow in my frenzy to clean I missed them, that or I ignored them, but there they were, in stark relief to the bright, white paint all around them. I looked at the positions and the size of the prints and knew them to be the "pawprints" of my youngest and my girl, Punkin, too. Nobody else three years ago would have been that far down, that close to the floor.

So, in order to move the project along I just painted over them. I didn't wipe them away like a good prep artist should, but instead covered them up in order to preserve them. Nobody else will ever know that they are there, no one will ever be able to discover their presence. But when I look at that door, at that place below the door knob, I will know that my children were here. This was their house, too. This was a family place.

Walking out of that freshly painted room I can say that a family lived here. Mine.

Salud!

Coffee, the NY Times and happiness

2009-08-03T08:50:00.001-07:00

There are various reasons why some of us get up first thing in the morning and hit the news. For some it's to check on their stock portfolios, for others it's to connect with the various political or social or economic climates of our times. For me it's just to know which way the wind blows and to get a taste of good writing from the outset.

My life has been busy lately, in such a way that I haven't had time for a book in weeks. I could make time, I suppose, the way I make time for movies or coffee in the morning, but lately I tend to find non-fiction pieces that I can dive in and out of quickly, magazines with kicky articles I can knock off in a few minutes, cookbooks with colorful pages and well written narration. Reading, or rather, skimming through five papers in the morning is just another one of those kinds of "fast catch" exercises that I award myself, or rather, task myself with, if anything just to grease the skids and keep up with the world. I wrote a friend recently and told her that I couldn't imagine hanging out with someone who didn't go through the news on a daily basis. Not just for the sake of being in the know, but to also be aware of world at large, to see that there is really nothing new in the world, just more of the same thing served up differently.

Then there is the joy of reading pieces of writing that are absolutely delicious, that speak to me in ways that I feel are somewhat supernatural. I read the blog post below and felt like the writer was talking to me personally. Of course I know he wasn't, but this morning he was speaking about universal truths, about tough times, about the chasing down of happiness, about the fleeting goodness of feeling happy, and brother, I could relate to that. I think down the road I will remember this summer in the same way. Right now it's about alienation and shifting things and painting and very hot days. About uncovering little pieces of stray nostalgia, of plumbing the depths of my soul. Later on I may laugh, or marvel at the insight that I gathered. Right now, though, it's all pretty rough and that's okay. Nobody has come around to take away my birthday and so the hard work continues.

But happiness. Wow. I've chased that stuff down all my life it seems, and now, according to the article posted below, all I was doing was living life to the fullest. The piece below is a bit to long to tattoo above my heart, but I will print it out someday and stick it in my wallet. Like Kipling's "If", this piece speaks to me and I hope it registers with you, too:

August 2, 2009, 9:05 pm — Updated: 8:56 am -->
Averted Vision
By Tim Kreider
In 1996 I rode the circus train to Mexico City where I lived for a month, pretending to be someone’s husband. (Don’t even ask.) I remember my time there as we remember most of our travels — vivid and thrilling, everything new and strange. My ex-fake-wife Carolyn and I often reminisce nostalgically about our honeymoon there: ordering un balde hielo from room service to cool our Coronas every afternoon, the black-velvet painting of the devil on the toilet that she made me buy, our shared hilarious terror of kidnapping and murder, the giant pork rind I wrangled through customs. Which is funny, since, if I think back honestly, while I was actually there I did not feel “happy.” In fact, as mi esposa did not hesitate to point out to me at the time, I griped incessantly about the noise and stink of the city — the car horns playing shrill, uptempo versions of the theme from “The Godfather” or “La Cucaracha” every second, the noxious mix of diesel fumes and urine, the air so filthy we’d been there a week before I learned we had a view of the mountains.

The fresh heartbreak was, in a sense, like being in a foreign country; everything seemed alien, brilliant and glinting. It was as if I’d been flayed, so that even the air hurt.
I was similarly miserable throughout the happiest summer I ever spent in New York City. I was recovering from an affair that had ended badly, and during my convalescence I was subletting a cool, airy apartment a block from Tompkins Square Park, with a kitchen window that looked out on a community garden. A theater troupe was rehearsing a production of “The Tempest” out there, and I got used to the warped rattling crash of sheet-metal thunder in the evenings. I happened to catch “The Passion of St. Joan of Arc” on cable for the first time late one night, a film I knew nothing about — it was grotesque and beautiful, astonishing. One of the happiest memories of my life is of sitting on top of the little knoll in the park with my friend Ellen, eating a sweet Hawaiian pizza and waiting to see what movie would play on the outdoor screen that was being inflated in front of us. (It turned out to be “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”) Even though this whole time I was preoccupied with thoughts of the woman I’d lost and torturing myself with jealousy and insane fantasies of vengeance, in retrospect it’s obvious now that the main thing I was doing that summer was falling in love.

I wonder, sometimes, whether it is a perversity peculiar to my own mind or just the common lot of humanity to experience happiness mainly in retrospect. I have of course considered the theory that I am an idiot who fails to appreciate anything when he actually has it and only loves what he’s lost. Or perhaps this is all just what Michael Chabon called “the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past.” But I think I recall that summer with such clarity and affection for much the same reason that I remember my month in Mexico City so fondly. The fresh heartbreak was, in a sense, like being in a foreign country; everything seemed alien, brilliant and glinting. It was as if I’d been flayed, so that even the air hurt. When you’re that unhappy, any glimmer of beauty or consolation feels like running into an old friend abroad, or seeing mountaintops through smog. Maybe we mistakenly think we want “happiness,” which we tend to picture in very vague, soft-focus terms, when what we really crave is the harder-edged intensity of experience.

We do each have a handful of those moments, the ones we only take out to treasure rarely, like jewels, when we looked up from our lives and realized: “I’m happy.” One of the last times this happened to me, inexplicably, I was driving on Maryland’s unsublime Route 40 with the window down, looking at a peeling Burger King billboard while Van Halen played on the radio. But this kind of intense and present happiness is heartbreakingly ephemeral; as soon as you notice it you dispel it, like blocking yourself from remembering a word by trying too hard to retrieve it. And our attempts to contrive this feeling through any kind of replicable method — with drinking or drugs or sexual seduction, buying new stuff, listening to the same old songs that reliably give us shivers — never quite recapture the spontaneous, profligate joy of the real thing. In other words be advised that Burger King billboards and Van Halen are not a sure-fire combination, any more than are scotch and cigars.

There is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness.
I didn’t always enjoy being a cartoonist. During the 12 years of my career, if I can call it that, I bored my friends and colleagues by complaining bitterly about the insulting pay, the lack of recognition, the short half-life of political cartoons as art. And yet, if I’m allowed any final accounting of my days, I may find, to my surprise, that I reckon those Fridays when I woke up without an idea in my head and only started drawing around noon, calling friends at work for emergency humor consultations, doing frantic Google image searches for “Scott McClellan” or “chacmool,” eating whatever crud was in the fridge, laughing out loud at my own jokes, and somehow ended up getting a finished cartoon in by deadline, feeling like an evil genius, to have been among my best.

But during the time I was actually focused on drawing — whipping out a perfect line, spontaneous but precise, or gauging the exact cant of an eyelid to evoke an expression, or immersed in the microscopic universe of cross-hatching — I wasn’t conscious of feeling “happy,” or of feeling anything at all. I was in the closest approximation to happiness that we can consistently achieve by any kind of deliberate effort: the condition of absorption. My senses were so integrated that, on those occasions when I had to re-draw something entirely, I often found that I would spontaneously recall the same measure of music or line of dialog I’d been listening to when I’d drawn it the first time; the memory had become inextricably encoded in the line. It is this state that rock-climbers and pinball players and libertines are all seeking: an absorption in the immediate so intense and complete that the idiot chatter of your brain shuts up for once and you temporarily lose yourself, to your relief.

I suspect there is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness. Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It’s the consequence of having lived in the way that we’re supposed to — by which I don’t mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living. In this respect it resembles averted vision, a phenomena familiar to backyard astronomers whereby, in order to pick out a very faint star, you have to let your gaze drift casually to the space just next to it; if you look directly at it, it vanishes. And it’s also true, come to think of it, that the only stars we ever see are not the “real” stars, those cataclysms taking place in the present, but always only the light of the untouchable past.

Porch work

2009-08-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

Every day is a work day around my house. I can't remember the last time, outside of the time when my kids were here in July and we took a day trip into the city, that I took a day off. Feels like weeks of labor under my belt, but I am not complaining as it shows. Every day is new project done and out of the way and that is a good feeling, no doubt about it.

I keep a "things to do" list going in the cottage, hit it first thing in the morning after I get my coffee water going. Check off things that I hit the day before that I might have missed, add few new items, strike others from the list. It would be daunting to try to remember all the tasks to get done if I didn't have this system going every day. Years ago, when I was in the navy, I would carry around a small spiral bound notebook in my pocket. Kept me abreast of the day's duties, somewhat like "quarters" did for the division in the morning. We all need to keep a list handy just to help keep us abreast of the day's activities. My list told me that today had an "about time" item on it. I had to finish the painting the porch railing. The weather was right and the mood for the job was perfect.

Stood outside and knocked out the job as the rest of Port Orchard went downtown to lend a hand to painting the town, well, if not red, at least other nifty shades. I figured to make PO prettier one house at a time, even if that house was mine. Took care of lot's of other things, too. Oiled cabinets, painted the basement door, unloaded a bookcase. Prepped supper. Stuff got done.

While I was on that porch I was reminded of the summer I took off almost seven years ago. Took more than a summer off, spent six months working on the house, building up a business, goofing, searching for work. Landed a job right here in the county, which was a different place altogether different than where we had expected to land at the end of that six months. I learned a valuable lesson that summer, far more valuable than the ones that helped me build a trellis, a shower stall, slap up dry wall and build a porch. I learned that you should always expect the unexpected. Learn to appreciate what you have in front of you, and more, don't bet on the bird in the bush, take the one in the hand anytime. But also to watch that bird, as they can bite.

So, I took on that porch job today and did all but paint the door trim. Wasn't on the list and so it didn't count. But you can bet it will be on the list tomorrow morning. One more thing to brighten up this little house of mine. One more thing that will help to put the ghosts to rest. One more thing that help me get a bit closer to my children.

Check off that porch railing paint assignment. On to other things.

Salud!

Some things I'll miss

2009-07-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

I set my paintbrush down for a moment this morning and took in the breeze. There is a soft one off the inlet today, helping to take the edge off the heat. The heat, too, is a bit more gentle today. I feel the need to hydrate just a tad less than I did yesterday at this time.

I stood on the porch and looked around, took in the boats in the marina, the Olympics off in the distance, the clock tower before me. What I love the most about the view is the outrageousness of the angles, the wackiness of the shading as the day progresses. I love the color changes to the water, the way the sun plays with the tides. I look at that view from my porch and know that it will be the singular thing I will take with me whereever I go. It won't matter much if I live in some small town or a big burg. It won't matter if the house is small or if it's a condo or a new place in a subdivision. I will close my eyes and still be able to look across the water and tell you, if you asked me, how that scene looked according to the season or the time of day.

I sat down in the living room afterwards and it hit noon. At first all I could hear was the tinkling of the chimes on the porch, then I heard two toots from the Horluck ferry down at the waterfront as it prepared to leave, then heard the tones from the clock tower start up. The tunes haven't been as varied as they once were, but those old showstoppers, those old Broadway and Tin Pan Alley favorites have become my own special Port Orchard soundtrack, and have been tattooed onto my aural soul for life.

Once that wee concert was finished I took myself outside to finish up my clematis work. It's rambling over the wall of the house now, just like the English Ivy, and has taken to climbing roofs as well. I've stripped both those plants of there adventurous tendrils, and will miss their annual struggle to take over the house. Mostly I will miss that spectacular bit of blooming in the spring, not only of the clematis but of the Oriental Pear and the Italian Plum and the ornamental Cherry. It was always one of my favorite scenes, stepping out of that back door to head to off work and be assailed by the scents and wild colors of blossums all about me. It was like snowfall sometimes, all those petals falling. Grand. And all for the sake of supplying my Estranged One with a bit of privacy.

This little house has been good to me. It's been a home for my children, a place for my friends to come and gather and sit and tell tales and partake of good food. It's been a place of refuge for family and erstwhile companions, a place to stand and take in the fireworks off of the sound and a home to come back to after long sorjourns and difficult journeys. It's been a home and there will be much to miss about it. But there it goes, it's been a home and my home will always be where I hang my hat.

I have been looking at houses in that faraway place and know that there are many that I could choose from if things go right. I look at the features and the "bones" of the place and know that there is yet another little house out there for me, a place to paint and chaulk and strip out old carpet. A place to sink nails and hang paintings and make altars. There is a place out there that I will be able to come back to after long ramblings and short trips. There is a place where my children will be able to gather and laugh and play in again. It is coming. And know that that place, when I shut my eyes and move onto to other things, I will remembered fondly, too.

There will always be something to miss no matter where I go.

Salud!

Home for sale

2009-07-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's not everyday that I get to see the results of a long campaign spread out before me on my coffee table. It's been a week of hard de-cluttering, waiting for the moment I could say to my realtor "yes, go ahead, put it on the market". Her satchel of papers told me I was on task and ready to go. And now the house is, too.

So this morning I put my home up for sale. What a magnificent line in the sand that was.

Three years ago there was no way in hell you could have convinced me to do it. Five years ago it was just too far away from being ready for anyone to be interested. Last year, heck, even earlier this month it was still unapproachable in it's messiness. But after three weeks of grueling work I can say that I would be happy, even proud, to have folks come walking through my door and taking a look at my home.

Watching the movie "Up" the other day with my kids clued me in to the great reality, that this beloved little place of mine is just a house. Putting my name on the jet-inked line this morning made that thought even more concrete. But what has been freeing, even more than watching all that clutter go away, is knowing that I am one step closer to truly grasping some greater realization, and that is that my children, and time, and not my possessions, are what matter in this short and happy life.

I have no idea what awaits me in Idaho. I have no idea what I will do for work, where I will live or how much of an inpact I will be able to make in my children's lives. But one thing is for certain, and that is that I will no longer be ten hours away from them. When those emergencies happen, when those plays are held, when those recitals and ballgames and sleepovers take place, they can have me there as a witness. I will finally, after four years, be able to share their joy in real time.

This house has been a witness to my personal growth, but it's time to take those hard learned lessons to the place where they really can take root and grow.

My home is on the market. For those of you who have been here for supper or barbeques and loved the view, please tell a friend. It's priced way below value. Come and see, especially at sunset. It's a mighty grand little place.

Salud!

Patroness Saint of Lost Causes

2008-10-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

We all love getting paid. And while I love those twice a month moments of financial solvency, I haven't gone so far as to elevate paydays into some sort of secular holy day. But, I have to tell you, after my somewhat mystical encounter yesterday, I might have to think twice about that and mark those days on a religious calendar.

The joy of paydays are generally offset by general misery of bills. Bills. Yech. They arrive punctually, like the swallows do at the San Juan Capistrano mission. They're predictibile, like sunrise or the seasons or the tides. They slip in steathily, or like a clap of thunder, or like the sickness of a old relative. Steady, fretful, bothersome, mundane. Twice a month I pour a tall mug of coffee, whip out the checkbook, sort through the dross and the circulars, scratch out a few checks and then survey the damage. Usually there's enough left over for gas and groceries and a little bit of play. Thank goodness that I do not lack in imagination or else I would be in a world of hurt for entertainment until that next paycheck arrives.

Yes, taking care of the bills is the ultimate in mundane activities. But yesterday changed things a bit, took bill paying into a realm outside of the normal fare. It was filled with worry of a different sort, instead. I poured that tall mug of coffee that I mentioned above and cleared a place at the coffee table in the living room as usual. I had the heat on low, pens at the ready, the bills stacked and sorted and begging to be paid. But, after a bit of poking around I had to ask myself, "where did I put the checkbook?" Long gone are the days where I would just crank out another book from the check box, get my bills and the bank all out of wack because the order of the checks was suddenly loopy. No, I had to find that checkbook, not just because I tend to get really nervous about identity theft and the town being papered with worthless checks, but also because I had a few of those bankcard checks tucked away in there, too, and that would mean double trouble if the checkbook fell into the wrong hands.

I seem to know pretty much where all my "financial tools" are these days. I have so little cash to blow that paper tends to stay home and my debit card gets the workout out in town, instead. So it was with a bit of consternation that the book should turn up "lost". I began to pace the house, turning over books and stacks of paper and cupboards, looking in places that I know that the checkbook would never land. I went up and down and around the house, checking pockets of coats I haven't worn in months, rifled through drawers I hadn't touched in weeks. I know that I went through my sock drawer, and looked on top of the video cabinet and came close to runny out through the rain to the car to check in-between the seats. But I didn't. I knew that it was inside and it was just a matter of time before I either found the errant checkbook or panicked and called it in to the bank.

So I went upstairs and looked around my bedroom one last time. I have books and films and whatall stacked on my bed as I've mentioned before, and rifled through all that. I took one long look at a photo I have on my dresser of my plaster saint and asked, well, beseeched, for a bit of intervention on my behalf, to have that checkbook show up. I took one step, uncovered another photo tucked away into a stack of VHS tapes, and there, next to the visage of the saint herself, was the checkbook!

Now, I am not one to believe in such things, but I must admit that I was a bit wowed at that moment. I know that having someone pray for you daily is a bit of a luxury, especially in today's crisis packed world where there is so much to pray for. But I have to wonder if I have an account built up somewhere, somewhat like you would have if you gave blood regularly. Do I have a cache of prayers saved up for me someplace that I can tap into on occasions like this? Would they be just as valuable as, say, a bank account? Do I get to work up to a, say, platnium membership? In searching for that checkbook did I somehow tap into a previously unknown mystic portal in my house, one that operates strickly in supernatural terms in times of peril and distress? I wonder how much that checkbook recovery cost me, how much my prayer account is down because of it. Maybe I shouldn't have asked for that help. Maybe I would have found it in the end on my own.

Maybe.

All the same, you, my beloved plaster saint, you have now been elevated to the role of Patroness Saint of Lost Causes in my house. Truly, if ever there was someone who could handle that role with aplomb and grace, you're it.

Thanks for aiding and abetting me with that intervention, and for filling up my spiritual account. I owe you one, buddy.

Salud!

Inauspicious Spring

2008-04-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

Today started out cloudy and went straight into sprinkles. The daffodils are up and taking it in stride but by lunch time the crocuses were down for the count. I sat on the library floor this morning, my nose in a book, and listened to the rain hit hard on the roof. I stood up and looked outside to see the sun breaking in the parking lot, then the rain came back again, unbidden yet welcome.

The seasonal cold was startling for some. I heard many times over about how cold it was outside, about the teasing sleet, about the almost snowshowers. I watched the sky from the recesses of the stacks and felt the chill roll in the door but the sun ran off with the threat and the day went back to being wet, just wet. Easter is promising to be wet again this year. I pretty much expect that to happen here in the Pacific Northwest.

The last time I had a really warm and sunny Easter Sunday was in Southern California many years ago. I suppose if I wanted sunshine I could go there but I like it here, I like the damp, I like the fresh washed skies, I like the emerald green grass that climbs up high and brushes against my pantlegs this time of year. I like to look out from my windows at home and see glistening whitecaps on the Sound, look out and see blinding flashes of red, yellow, pink and violet rising up out of the garden beds. To see that is to know happiness. Fleeting happiness, but that's the best kind.

Two years ago I remember waiting for an Easter to come. It was quiet that Saturday, almost a proper day for a nap. The afternoon started out gorgeous, then the sky took on that steely grey hue that speaks of heavy rain coming, of sleet, of snow on it's way. I was upstairs at the time, watching the tempest from my bed, books and clothes strewn about. The air grew heavy as I looked out the window, then I felt the rain hit hard against the roof, and listened as it turned vicious. I watched as the petals of the neighboring cherry trees hit the grass, listened as the songbirds turned off their songs, watched as the sleet built up high on the window sill and then, miraculously, watched as it walked away, chased over the county line and into the next region by soft winds and sunshine. Within moments rainbows ruled.

I took a long walk later on that afternoon, walking uphill against the rain water rolling down the street and into the gutters, watching as the flower petals were washed away with the residual slush of the sleet. I remembered, while I was out walking in the cold, the warm comfort of my bed and wondered how, in the midst of spring, we could go so easily back to winter. How things could change so fast.

Easter is early again this year and the cold runs late. It's springtime in the Northwest.

Salud!