Arts and Crafts

[Notes from Moleskine journal written a little while ago] Taught computer programming class last night. Felt elated as I watched students/customers write, debug and complete their first successful computer program, especially since they didn't even know they were writing a computer program. Always amazed when people see how easy computer programming is, and yet how frustrating - the true essence of a computer programmer - rediscovering one's gift for problem-solving through sheer persistence.

Woke up this morning, debated getting out of bed.* Wife woke up and left the house for special activities on her day off. Got out of bed, ate breakfast after showering, checked email and fell into an old habit - reviewing general news sites (al.com, knoxnews.com, independent.ie, yahoo.com and google.com). Nothing new in the world - poverty, pestilence, rampant disease, political turmoil. Reassuring, nonetheless and all the same. Played with cats, delivered card table and one Pink Panther slipper to my wife for her to use with her business partner at their exhibit in the spring NEACA craft show where they sell handmade cards, journals and scrapbooks.

[*Ode to Beatles' "A Day In The Life"]

Need to work on lesson plan for tomorrow's class and write blog entry for today. No theme yet. Perhaps examination of the craft show business:

• What is your hobby?
• How do you express your creative side?

On what do you focus your eyes? Everyone here at the craft show looks at items for sale on the floor but the people and the displays take up less than 25% of the space in this exhibit hall. How many people look up at the exposed building trusses, air handler ducts, PA speakers, power distribution units and sound absorbing panels?

A friend who used to own a Japanese restaurant (in which my wife and I were part owners, now since defunct), Robert, commented that we should only eat food that we recognize its original shape.

What about the rest of life? What do we consume without knowing its original shape? Do we realize what original ingredients go into plastic bottles and understand the benefits/risks of post-processed results like bisphenol A? I grew up in a town where the main employer, Eastman Chemical Company, still prides itself on analyzing organic polymer chains, developing new polymer compounds and selling megatons of packaged polymer bits to companies that melt, mix and shape polymer goop into various products, including plastic bottles, carpeting, dyes and other items not found in nature.

In high school one year, I was a member of JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society), mainly because most of my fellow Boy Scouts were sons of Eastman employees. Thus, we would take monthly tours of local businesses, with Eastman garnering a large number of the monthy* visits. The engineers and scientists who conducted the tours would talk with joy about their work, some of them even showing off the chemical burns and permanent dye stains on their bodies. "The price of pure scientific discovery!" one of them proclaimed to us when we asked if it hurt.

[*a twisty ode to Monty Python and "The Full Monty"]

As I sit here in a portable metal-and-plastic folding chair, observing the vendors and customers at the craft show, I see a hand-painted wooden sign on the other side of the aisle. "Don't wait for the storm to pass / Learn to dance in the rain!" Hmm...would that include acid rain? lol

The craft show crowd is abnormal this year, coinciding with spring break (that is, many primary/secondary school students have at least one week of free time away from in-school studies). Still, the majority of casual shoppers include retired adults and young mothers with babies. Earlier, one special contingent of Japanese mothers and their children passed through, saying they were returning soon to Japan after their educational exposure to the American craft business.

I can't imagine this is a full livelihood for anyone, but at least a way to make spending money and travel the country for some. An RV cottage industry, so to speak.

Which reminds me, are there active Travelers in this part of the country? I haven't heard about them in the news lately but I know they're out there. If Travelers are a distinct subculture (with many subgroups distinguishing each other as pure or impure Travelers), when would a craft show seller qualify as a Traveler?

What is the difference between craft and art? Some differences are obvious. Some are not. Repetitive piecework most definitely is craftwork, but some crafters produce art, unique works that exist outside contemporary, zeitgeist moments.

I like to look at insightful work, 3D pieces that speak of timelessness, point out human frailty and offer thought-based remedies for our woes without falling into superficial sentimentality.

What is art? Well, if you have a place in your part of the world where the random ravages of nature have mixed and shaped the ecosystem, you'll see art. The redbud tree blooming outside my window is art. Three hundred windows piled end-to-end through which I could see the world is art. Art is life, no matter whether what you see was shaped by one human, a group of humans or no human at all. Art is what you get when you learn something about yourself you didn't know you had or could do. Computer programmers discover art in their algorithms. Scientists see art in long polymer chains. Repetitive craftwork becomes art when your repetition turns into a mantra that leads to a deeper self awareness. Art is not restricted to museums, galleries, architecture or religious structures.

Art is understanding, plain and simple.

The Silence of ...

Today, I can find no insights worth reporting. I hear no echoes of gurus past offering sage wisdom. Stood in the yard, letting bees, birds, and flutterbys incorporate me into their internal landscape maps.

Alone in a human crowd, giving them more than I get back. Will I ever be me completely by myself? Of course not. Then why pretend I could be someone else or something else? There is no escape hatch to an alternate universe. And if there was, would I be just as disappointed in my new existence? Likely.

No escape. No rescue. Since I'm not going anywhere else, then what? Another walk in the woods, perhaps. Take a nap, perchance to remember my fantastic thoughts. No matter what, give in to silent meditation - that much I know from my own collective wisdom.

When I was young, I saw a film about the life of religious adherents in another part of the world. Their religious practices differed from the one with which I was most familiar. The adherents, at a certain older age, gave up their community responsibilities and wandered the countryside in pure poverty. Younger ones would often become monks and go off to special centers of religious training. From that film, I believed my goal in life was to dig ditches for a living and live in a cabin in the woods. I have lived in a suburban cabin since 1987 and once worked in the sewer business for over eight years. I have accomplished all the goals I set to comply with the needs/wants of my society. When do I cast off the materialistic burdens of my younger days and become a poor hermit?

If I wait for a signal from my current subculture, none will come. Or if it does, I may not recognize it. The sign or indication must blossom forth from my internal well-being and awareness. I have peace. I have internal well-being. Is awareness at hand?

WoW

[Another post-hike observation - no advice to give you]

Hiked in the opposite direction today. Walked north on my road until I arrived at a cut in the woods where the regional electrical power distribution company, TVA, had hired subcontractors to tear down the trees and move boulders around so they could plant artificial trees with metal vines strung across them. ATV and motocross bike riders use the area under the galvanized steel poles to test their offroad skills in suburbia.

While I picked my way up the hill, noticing tire, deer, and dog prints in the mud, I pondered the past few days.

In the first vestiges of serious thought patterns in my childhood, I knew that I was not going to fit well into my society because I neither wanted nor needed to find my place in the social hierarchy. By the same token, I don't like dealing with those who insist I fit into their pigeon pecking order.

Were my formative years influenced by the counterculture leaders of the 1960s, including Timothy Leary who said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out"? Perhaps. But does it matter? Only if I want to rewire myself, I suppose.

If I note a discrepancy in a situation, should I concern myself about to whom I make an observation pointing out the discrepancy? Only if I want to be seen as someone who plays by the rules of those around me who have a vested interest in that situation.

I don't have children. I can die or leave a situation at any time with no consequences for my genetic future. If, as the antiestablishment folks are wont to say, our human cultures are merging into a homogeneous multinational corporate oligarchy, to which I feel no need to belong even though I understand the need for some sort of an established culture, do I have a place in it?

A reader pointed out to me that there are no more untamed wild places so what difference does it make if we pave over the whole world because it's going to happen anyway. The reader is right in one sense - our air, water, and light pollution have affected just about all walks, flights, and swims of life. However, we haven't yet found a way to domesticate all living things, although we're certainly trying.

When looking up information about Timothy Leary to see how much influence he might have had on my pre-conscious living (the time when my brain was still working on organizing basic body functions while figuring out what independence was), I found a term I don't remember seeing - cyberdelic. From that word, I learned of a person named R. U. Sirius who embodied the term cyberdelic and followed Leary's late life delusional confusion about independence when he coined the phrase, "turn on, boot up, jack in," in reference to the PC being the signpost directing people to the cyberdelic movement.

The idea that drugs or technology can help one find a useful counterculture is false to me. Counterculture, by its definition, gives recognition to the culture it denies. All cultures have countercultures. Part of the cycle of human existence.

So if my pre-conscious self was partially programmed to seek countercultures, then I'll always be disappointed. In either case, we're still talking about social, hierarchical beings which organize into groups using ancient techniques for ensuring tribal and individual survival, with the elderly, infirm and young being susceptible to tribal views of survival.

Some people I've met in my life have found the post-cyberdelic lifestyle they enjoy, wrapping themselves with the protective cloak of anonymity in virtual gaming systems like World of Warcraft (a/k/a WoW). I tried playing similar alternative personality games many years ago (fall of 1980 being the first time I remember) when I was invited to join some college students to play Dungeons and Dragons. I was quickly bored. What's the point of a counterculture if all you're doing is substituting one form of human existence for another?

I've experienced the same thing over and over my whole life. When people have felt they like me, and thus believe I hold the same interests they do, they invite me to join their subculture, whether or not it's counter to the prevailing culture. I quickly get bored. It's not that I don't like the people, it's just that what they're doing - creating their own hierarchical sub-subculture - is not something I'm interested in.

If I feel this way, then being the human I am, there are thousands, if not millions or billions, of people just like me. That's one of those things about feeling like an individual while swimming in a world-sized Petri dish with billions of identical creatures. From a distance, general trends emerge. The individual is truly unique but shares all traits with others of its kind.

Some of those like me who feel unique race through others' cultures with strong goals of their own, accepting the inevitable run-in with others' desire for the racers to join their game, but putting that run-in to their personal use and not, like me, worrying about pleasing those around them.

I want people to feel the games they play should be important to them, with or without me. If they feel I am important to their existence, I worry that I'll disrupt their feeling of importance if I don't join or stay in their game(s). But why should I? I'm not going to have children. My thoughts die with me.

And finally, I get to the specific issue at hand. I want the students/customers in my ITT Tech class to believe that no matter where they are in life or the games they play, they are important. I, however, am tired of playing ITT Tech's games, including their hierarchical squabbles/needs (I'm already gritting my teeth as it is, knowing I'm training the customers to be good participants in the prevailing culture I have no interest in). I have no vested interest that forces me to keep playing ITT Tech's games. With no children to raise, future family to protect, or any other vested interest, I can quit ITT Tech at any time. The only thing keeping me there is my desire to make my wife happy, which includes fixing my car and repairing some rundown parts on our house using disposable income and not our retirement funds. I am an amateur philosopher who ponders this question: after all the sacrifices she's made for me, what price am I willing to pay to keep my wife relatively happy?

[And that'll lead into another blog entry soon, I'm sure (e.g., "what is marriage" or "what defines a relationship between two people" or "what causes two people to bond for life").]

What is Hope?

I'm starting this blog entry at 10:38 Central time, watching the sun arch overhead as the Earth spins, the warm spring air drawing my attention with Siren calls to take a walk or hike, the only thing holding me here inside at this moment the memory of pulling ticks off my leg while showering earlier this morning (a frequent consequence of hiking in deer-infested woods).

When I was younger, I heard admonitions from adults telling me that with my fair skin, I should stay out of the sun. They'd then bathe in the UV rays, turning their elastic skin into hard, leathery shells, while I either had to wear a long-sleeved shirt or lather myself with sunscreen if I wanted to stay outside. Often, I just stayed inside during the heat of the day and learned to enjoy myself - reading, writing, or playing games with others. Even though I had fun indoors, I saw adults' sun-darkened skin in a negative light.

Now I sit here and look at the difference between the skin on top of my hands versus the skin further up my arm. Clear indications of sun damage, scarred skin, blemishes and such, map the terrain on my hands. My skin's defenses haven't failed yet so cancer is still only a future possibility.

And if cancerous growths were discovered on my birthday suit, then what? Do you have an idea what you would think? I heard the phrase, "It's God's will," last night. In my religious training growing up, such a phrase was common, including the comment that predestination determines our afterlife and guides our life. Some call it fate or destiny. But you and I know it is a combination of randomness, coincidence and consequence, do we not? X number of sun exposures equals Y number of skin cancers, give or take your luck of the DNA draw, local skin defects, and other carcinogenic substances you've exposed your skin to.

No matter what happens to me, I am me. Lose an arm in an accident and I am me with a memory of an arm. Get skin cancer and I am me with new learning opportunities.

I already said I am dead. Genetically, the buck stops here and is going nowhere else. With the limited knowledge I have (and the longer I live, the less I realize I know), what is the reason I would want to consider the meaning of "hope"?

I have no future. I only have this moment. But, barring unforeseen circumstances, I'll live in other moments not yet experienced by anyone else but me.

The only goal I have is completion of the basket I'm weaving to carry me to the end of my days. Some of the threads and reeds in my basket repeat themselves. After all, my existence depends on eating, breathing and eliminating wastes. I've added daily habits, like brushing my teeth and my hair (but not with the same brush, of course). I drape pieces of cloth on my body because the local customs of my tribe require covering our nakedness. Otherwise, I look for new patterns to weave into the basket, even if I know the threads and reeds I use appear in other people's baskets.

Sometimes I see patterns repeating themselves only when I step away and look back at my basket (maybe I should stop doing that?). The repetitions shock my senses, driving me temporarily insane, flushing my body with hormones, endorphins and other chemicals, and giving me an unintended high. The subsequent crash brings me down. Triggers depression and tiredness.

In the depth of my situational despair, I crave relief. I cry out in the silence, "Somebody rescue me from myself!"

Remember, life is simpler than we want it to be. Even in desperate times. All I want in the depths of my delusional depression is the idea of hope.

But what if I don't know what hope is? In fact, I don't. I can Google it, or look it up in my Merriam-Webster dictionary but those are somebody else's words.

Yesterday, I was depressed. I did not want to face a classroom full of adults and promise them a future of money-making jobs based on what I planned to teach them. I just didn't care because in my life, all seemed lost and hopeless.

But I have an obligation to the world, local in practice, to complete my social experiment and put a few dozen people on a path to economic success. Regardless of my fluctuating emotional state.

Last night, I walked into class, at a low point mentally. The students, or customers of ITT Tech, if you will, didn't know what I thought. They only saw my face. And I theirs.

Guess what I found when I looked in their faces (yeah, I'm giving you another easy one here).

I found hope.

What is hope? It's the smiles of people who've put trust in you to make them students for life. It's eye-to-eye contact with no invisible walls between you. It's the unspoken understanding that both of you are thinking similar thoughts just by what your body language is saying. It's the concern I have when I see someone nodding off that s/he is missing something that might make an important difference in her/his life and I believe in that person enough to do what it takes to get that person's attention without disrupting others who are already paying attention.

What is hope? I don't know everything. Last night, I weaved a few brightly-colored threads into my basket when I found out something new. Hope is You!

An Opening in the Woods

[This is a set of personal observations - no advice here]



Took a walk around the neighborhood at 12:45 today, returning home around 13:15. Walked south on the street until I got to a drainage ditch. I then walked up the hill, climbing from rock to rock, until I got to one of the streets in the new subdivision on top of Little Mountain. Soon, construction sounds will no longer emanate from the valley and echo off the hill behind us but fall off the hill onto our heads instead.

I walked to the end of the subdivision and hiked through the woods until I arrived at the path down to my house. As I hiked, I stepped over and around trillium. I saw one wild mountain phlox in bloom (Linanthus grandiflorus? Phlox latifolia?). Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica). Redbud (Cercis canadensis). Others my eyes saw but did not register.

Mainly, I was walking off my depression and paying little attention to what I saw, other than as a means to an end, a path to walk to burn off some energy.

I found out this morning that my next-to-last book did not reach the semifinalist stage in an online "breakthrough" novel contest. On top of that, yesterday my current part-time job had inadvertently exposed personal data to strangers, always a concern in this day and age of identity theft.

I live in a suburban area of North America, calling by right of civil ownership an acre of land my own. Therefore, I am undoubtedly dependent on other humans for my existence, the land I own not able to provide full subsistence (lack of natural freshwater source, the main problem).

And right now, I don't like that simple fact.

I want to be left alone for a while but feel obligated to my duties as a part-time (adjunct) instructor, the social experiment of mine that I'm working on, hoping to cure my and my fellow humans' social/economic woes through job volunteering (I'm working at a job that pays less than I'm worth in order to show those who normally see the job as a definition of their worth that job status is a lie we perpetuate to justify our current conditions, especially if we feel a situation is out of our control; anyone can do anything if s/he puts a mind to it and takes control). Thing is, I already see the social experiment is working. How long do I have to volunteer for this job to prove to myself that this sort of thing works for any volunteer? I'm not normally the volunteer type.

My depression gets worse just thinking about the long weeks ahead with nothing Rick-centric to focus on (too bad it's not wurst, because I'm getting a little hungry).

On top of everything else, I'm a guy. The older I get, the more women there are (and I mean real women with curves, not the anorexic waifs that advertising firms employ) who are attractive to me. I made a promise to myself when I got married that I would have no sexual contact with any women for the rest of my life except for my wife. I have kept that promise and will keep that promise until the day I die. Some days that promise is frustrating. But hey, like I said, I'm a guy. Is true monogamy normal? Or is monogamy, how do I say it...idyllic? Something we believe should be followed but really only practiced by the timid or risk averse? How many times have we read or seen someone say, "It's not what it looks like"? In other words, it really is only lust (or even shared autoerotica) and has nothing to do with monogamous love. Can we fall in love with love (seduce and hypnotize ourselves) and never know the difference? Time to meditate on a thought: Keep your mind on the things you want and/or can have, and not on things you don't want and/or can't have.*

[*Ode to my sales training techniques from my days with the Southwestern Book Company in the summer of 1983]

I'm a human being, through and through, no substitute or artificial parts added. I'm subject to my chemical makeup. Emotions. Cancer. Arthritis. Tinnitus. I deteriorate, therefore I am. Depression describes my emotional state today. Nothing more. I'm sure I'll feel different tomorrow.

Too bad today is St. Patrick's Day and I have to teach from 18:00 to 22:20. I could have drowned my sorrows. Maybe tomorrow. That seems like a pretty good idea to me.*

[*Ode to Wall of Voodoo's "Tomorrow"]

Dense Fog Advisory

How many of you are jumping back into the stock market? Did you already do so? What did you pick? Was it traditional stocks like GM and GE or did you go for broke and invest in alternative energy stocks? The opportunities right now are tremendous, like picking the ubiquitous low-hanging fruit. If you aren't raking in at least a few thousand dollars a day, then you're just playing around. Unless, of course, you're in it for the long haul. Either way, you shouldn't miss this moment. Once in a great recessional long while do investors get these free handouts in the form of cheap stocks to buy up and reap the benefits daily, or almost immediately, anyway.

From my first barter experience at age six, when I traded a watch my parents had given me in exchange for a rare matchbox race car another kid didn't know he had, I have desired to be the unobtrusive, sly millionaire next door. I realized early on that money has no value to me. It's just stuff. The stuff of dreams to some. But the stuff of ideas, too. Ideas that range from emptiness to rocket science. Hold a piece of paper money in your hand and ask yourself if it has any real value. You will undoubtedly say, "Yes, it does!", and dream of what it can buy you. But the fly that just landed on your paper money sees it simply as a stopping post, no different than your arm or a table. The fly can't eat the paper (unless you spilled jam on it first thing this morning) or exchange it for food at a restaurant.

I woke up this morning to a feeling of living in my own private world, the area around me surrounded in dense fog. Spider webs glistened in the landscape, dotted here and there among the vinca vine (both Vinca major and Vinca minor) spread across the front yard. Of course, to the spiders the fly has much more value than my dropping a piece of paper money in their midst.

We know the tired old phrase, money makes the world go around. I wonder...

I'm here because I've put others' desire for money to my personal gain. They use the idea of money to value company performance, which then demonstrates its value in virtual slices of the company called shares. Like infinite pieces of pie ready to be devoured when people are starving for dessert.

It would be wrong of me to bad-mouth that which puts food on my table. Of course, others play the game of satire to make fun of the world yet eat the food the world provides them. Hypocrisy is par for that game.

So is risk.

For those who've lost 20%, 30%, 40%, or even 50% of your investment portfolio value since 2007, what is your definition of risk? I'm sure it has changed. Mine sure has. I see risk as intrinsically important to my life. Risk in my portfolio? Well, that's what stock investing is all about. If you don't want to risk your money, don't have any. Money is itself a risk because it has no value except what two people agree it has.

Everything is barter, if you didn't know it.

I took a separate risk recently and accepted a part-time job with a for-profit corporation. The purpose of the corporation is to make money for stockholders. I haven't yet bought shares of the company's stock because I'm still evaluating whether the company's employees understand and demonstrate the core values of the corporation. If you asked me right now, my evaluation says that the employees are confused about the purpose of the company. Some of them don't understand the basic idea of the company's customer or that they're even working for a company. Their minds are blinded like a driver speeding through my neighborhood in the dense fog this morning, surely heading for disaster (or at least taking a high level of risk). It's as if they think they're working for a non-profit organization or a government agency. For many of them, that's all they've done before they started working for this company, so I've got to keep telling myself that they need some deprogramming time to get used to working for a profit-making group. Unfortunately for them, they've staked their livelihood on their misconception. My risk is only a loss of time, giving up an opportunity cost.

Well, at least I thought that was my only risk until last night. I won't go into detail about the new risk that one of the employees exposed me to but that employee is one of the ones who treats this venture more like a nonprofit or government job, where the risk of a lawsuit by a customer is low or impossible.

I am only a part-time employee of this company. A subcontractor, if you will. Following the advice of futurists, riding on the wave of modern employment practices. However, I sit here and ask myself if I should step in and assert my authority. Should I go up the management chain of this corporation and ask the higher-ups to develop a deprogramming program for employees like the one I referenced in the previous paragraph? I may. I don't know yet.

I don't mind the opportunity cost - it's a calculated risk I'm taking. However, if other employees continue their habits that clash with standard business practices of a for-profit corporation, then those others are taking risks for me that I didn't sign up for. Should disaster occur, I have no clear path to recovery like the one that this economy is providing my portfolio right now.

Bottom line: I like to buy the stock of companies with which I do business, whether as customer or employee. In this case, I'm not ready to recommend what should have been a no-brainer investment. More details as they develop.

Meanwhile, I'm still helping the small startup I stepped away from several weeks ago - the startup team wants my participation, if only part-time in this economy. I'm sticking with them because they may not understand all the details of running a business but at least they know the difference between significant personal and business risk-taking.

A Plaque Upon Your House

We cannot relive the past so this moment and the next one and the one after that and this one right here and the one that's going to happen now...you get the picture. Anything that you wish could have happened to you can happen to you right now. It doesn't start with tomorrow or some wonderful time when you'll have all the time in the world in the future. It starts now.

That's all there is to living. Every successful person will tell you that's why s/he excels - live every moment to the fullest, with no regrets and no wishful thinking. The definition of "fullest" is up to you and you only.

Read that last paragraph over and over again - you'll save yourself thousands of dollars in "motivational" lectures, CDs, books and other repetitions on that theme. I've seen too many people in my life want to sell me the secret to life, or their secret version of life, only to find out they have no secret. It's something innate to our existence. Every living thing lives in the moment. Only we humans have complicated the matter and envisioned these things called past and future.

When I was a child, I followed the directions of the adults around me, uncertain why my personal view and inner vision didn't mesh with their spoken views of the world. By following them, I hiked the Appalachian Trail, spent weeks and weekends at Camp Davy Crockett and eventually collected enough points on the adults' scorecard of my outdoor (and partially indoor) activities that I earned the Eagle Scout Award in 1976 when I was 13 years old. Two plaques hang on the wall in front of me, one which points out I was "desiring to continue to promote, support and apply Scouting ideals through service" and thus "hereby recognized by the National Eagle Scout Association as a member in good standing," and the other plaque issued by the Colonial Heights Optimist Club "in recognition of your achievement of the rank of Eagle Scout. Your effort indicates to members of this Optimist club your level of good citizenship and character."

I still have all my uniforms, including the one I wore as an Explorer Scout with the patches from my time at the National Scout Jamboree in 1977. I have my scorecards, too. I earned my first merit badge on my first day as a Boy Scout, getting a 76 on the First Aid merit badge test, with 75 being a passing score, by putting my Cub Scout first aid knowledge into immediate use, even though the person giving the test felt like I should have taken his First Aid class like the rest of the Boy Scouts in the room.

I cannot go back in time and relive a past where I would tell the adults around me that the whole time I was going through the Scouting program, I never once felt like I deserved what the adults kept giving me. Like the First Aid merit badge example above, sometimes it was just too easy.

Also, I wasn't so sure about the oaths I had to keep reciting. I knew most of the kids in the packs/troops/patrols to which I belonged - they seemed to take the oaths to heart and put them into practice. We boys knew right away the "other" kids who weren't practicing the letter and spirit of the oaths. In fact, we often overheard the adults tell each other that they'd make sure those kids weren't going to make it to Eagle Scout. So, with keen observation, I kept my personal beliefs and visions to myself, so that I could stay on the path designated for me by the adults in my life.

Second of all, I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. In those past moments, like this one now, I was content observing and postulating, not having to generate any action to indicate my intent.

In other words, I was driven by my vision and didn't know it. What was the vision I first saw when I five years old? Well, since it's my personal vision that has led me to riches untold, making me a millionaire in 2006, I'll gladly sell it to you for $19.95 plus shipping and handling, satisfaction guaranteed. If you order in the next two seconds, you'll get it free. Ooh, too bad! Two seconds just passed by, didn't they? lol

But seriously, folks...for instance, take my wife. Please!*

[*Ode to Henny Youngman and David Young]

I've already told you my vision, I'm sure, well articulated in my favorite Chinese fortune cookie saying, "Life is a grand comedy to your sense of humor."

Plenty of you had the same vision so you can skip this paragraph if you've thought this, too. When I was five years old, I was sitting in a Sunday school class (for those who don't know the phrase "Sunday school class," it's a place where a relatively young parent sits down with his or her kid and other children her kid's age and discusses the relevance of a religious text to the daily life of a child). My parents had already gone over the lesson the Sunday school teacher was going to cover so I had read more than just the one Bible verse the class was going to discuss and had a vague understanding of the context of the verse (one of the Jesus parables). The teacher began by asking how many kids had memorized the verse. All of the kids except me raised my hand. The teacher asked me why I hadn't memorized the verse. I explained that I had spent the time she expected me to memorize one verse by reading the whole parable and the one after it. The teacher chided me for not following directions. She then had the kids recite the verse. The children around me smiled in conspiratorial satisfaction that they had one-upped me. I opened the Bible and read the section before the parable, seeing if there was something I was missing - nope, Jesus didn't tell his disciples to memorize what he was about to say. After the recital, the teacher described an elaborate story about a child and then at the end of the story repeated the Bible verse, putting it completely out of context to the story Jesus was telling in the Bible. It was at that point I had my first "vision." I call it a vision because it was the first time I could remember having an important thought that seemed out of context to the situation I was in. I have these visions all the time. We all do (at least I hope you do, unless you're the robot computer doing nothing else but exactly recording these words).

What was my first vision? People follow and give directions because they don't want to bother thinking about life from moment to moment.

Don't get me wrong. You can reach success in whatever you do by following directions. I've met lawyers and doctors who rarely stop to think for themselves but rely instead on their vast sum of memorized knowledge to dispense justice and drugs. When they act that way, I treat them like the successful robots they want to be. For those who open their mouths and declare themselves independent humans despite the labels on their lapels, they get my full attention.

I'm not asking you to think for yourself, telling you to think for yourself, or following you if you think for yourself. However, I'm thinking for myself in this moment. It's been my MO (modus operandi) since I was old enough to think for myself, and so far it has worked for me (should I say mindlessly so?). And when I think, I laugh at my friends, Irony and Regret, telling them silently that I only live in the moment. And that has made all the difference.*

[*Ode to Robert Frost]

Saccharomyces Abbey

Taking the next step. Is there a "where" since there is no "why"?

My goal is not to know. My being is learning. Once learned, twice forgotten.

I am not smarter than you. Smarts are only assembled facts, or sassy assessments.

Wise man say, "A rich man owns an expensive car. A wealthy man owns the car factory." A wise man stays off the road, altogether.

Can one reach the end of the learning path?

Wisdom.

What do I know? I'm just this simple man who had a vision when he was a boy and decided not to have children. Yet, I have been pushed along, propelled by others who could not see my vision, always toward their goals.

What is wisdom? Can I see it in a microscopic yeast cell? Yes, I can and I do. Does an abbot provide wisdom to his abbey? Maybe.

These words will never provide wisdom. Words are symbols even simpler than I am.

Was Newton wise? I cannot dispute or compute his contribution to the depth of human understanding. His brain connections would fascinate any neuroscientist. My reading of his life history teaches me that honesty and openness with self provides the clearest path to wisdom.

Do words inform or entertain? What will humans discover that is better than words to communicate? Will another 10,000 years pass before we get beyond a keyboard? Surely not.

We can observe brain electrical patterns now. Soon some will see that brain-to-brain communication will occur when we give up the educated belief in the strengths of words. Cries of heresy will drown out understanding for many years to come.

Eventually, when we figure out that the body is more than static words or pretty images, more than body movement, more than the function of organs or fluid systems, we will replicate not just RNA and DNA but total body communication.

The years between now and then, when we not only understand the connection between brain synapses but also the hormonal responses, the tactile responses, the scent glands and muscle memory...I wonder if history will repeat itself and the closer we get to total understanding the more the barbarians want to tear apart the vessel of learning and let the accumulated liquidity pour down the drain before bothering to understand what they've conquered.

Who are the next barbarians threatening to destroy the current cycle of civilization? Are we our own berserkers, poisoning ourselves with our trancelike healing potions?

We can read others now without special technical gear. That art came before the science. Science will level the playing field for the less attuned.

Even now, criminal scientists want to install fear detectors at transportation hubs. But not every criminal exudes fear. And not everyone who is afraid has committed a crime. But the scientists are on the right track.

As we invent better and better body and brain scanners, when do we say we finally know what one specific person is thinking without having to get a baseline scan of that person in the first place? Will DNA samples collected at birth give sufficient clues to a person's lifelong pattern of living? Will a scan of a newborn's body become the person's set of fingerprints, excluding severe trauma later in life that might have changed a person's chemical makeup?

When we go from technological devices that use metallic wires to ones that use biological pathways, can we implant new personalities that let us bypass our usual emotional responses so that our lying goes undetected during intense political/business negotiations? Would we then manufacture plausible deniability?

When we learn to read whole body responses, can we remotely write them? Look at how much we write or influence body responses already, through advertising, body painting, body odoring, wall painting, etc. We indirectly manipulate the input signals to human bodies. When do we bypass the semipermeable sense organs in our communications with each other?

I am not wise. I have nothing to offer you. I have only this middle-aged body for me to use. The electrochemical connections in one part of my body have grown more complex with age, only because I keep cycling and refreshing the connections. With each cycle, the certainty of fact decreases. What I believe is not necessarily what is or was real. My friend, I know that reality is only seven letters. However, if seven of us are told to observe a street number on a mailbox, should not seven of us repeat the same number when asked what it is?

Someone says "Piccadilly" and I think "Cafeteria" while you think and say "Circus" and my brain pattern changes to "Circle" while my mouth salivates for an unknown reason.

What do I know? I am who my friends are so ask them. Whatever they answer is who I am and what I know. I know the word Marmite (which is like Vegemite) but they know what it tastes like and whether it's available in Newton Abbott.

Can we reach the end of the learning path? The wisdom of my friends says no. Tonight, yes, that's all I know.

Companionship

Why do we lead others? Why do we follow others? Why do some seem to lead or follow none?

Questions that you have to answer for yourself.

But you can find the answer in this question: why do you read blogs?

I used to look for a core being within me so I could clearly say, "This is who I am without any influence from another human being." I was led to believe such a core existed in my misunderstood youth because I showed interest in what others had to say. They in turn assumed I reflected their interests and must be like them. They told me, "See, at your base/core, you are like me, so follow my way and you will find happiness and joy." Zen and the Art of Misreading Others.

I know now there is not a "core," as such, unless you say I am a product of a sperm meeting an egg, making my core a DNA thing.

My DNA. Sounds like a song. "My DNA/ My DNA/ Won't you play with my DNA?"

We all fetch, decode and execute our DNA before we even know how to spell deoxyribonucleic acid.

Now we can toss our DNA into a cup and read it like tea leaves. Diviners can predict our future based on our DNA traits and propensities.

We have gene therapy to repair ourselves somewhat.

We have genetically modified food and animals to eat or experiment on.

We can design our own children.

And soon, we will have completed the design of our first living being from scratch.

Futurists and science fiction writers (two sides of the same coin) show us bright or grim futures based on the use or abuse of DNA modification. The future is rarely so one-sided.

My life is half over. I have no offspring, although I could produce them if I wanted to contribute sperm to someone else's egg.

How long will it be before we can simply hand a tuft of hair, a fingernail clipping or small piece of skin to a medical technician, bring up our DNA code, compare it against a list of potential partners on the genetic version of an e-dating service, see what the DNA combination would be like, make a few modifications, and receive a newborn baby to care for nine or fewer months later?

The answer to the questions at the top of this blog entry is plain to see and I'm sure you figured out it's the title of this blog - companionship.

How many of us will fulfill our destiny to have kids and take care of our family by seeking companionship through modified DNA babies, not bothering with a partner to share the baby care, using the community to help raise our babies, instead? Many women are already using artificial insemination to produce babies for themselves. Many others use surrogate mothers.

I say this a lot but the future is now. We don't have a core that's implacable. We don't have to depend on our biological parents' procreation to define who we are. We can change our DNA makeup, clean out some (and soon all) of the genetic defects, and when or if we feel like adding a companion to our lives, we can create a new human with some of our best DNA features.

How long will it be before social pressures drive humans to feel responsible for society and only fit in when they've created designer babies? [In other words, if you have a baby with a serious birth defect, you are ostracized for your selfishness.] Okay, I've got this ol' dusty crystal ball here and have figured out how to use it. The gap between rich and poor keeps growing. Thus, until designer baby companies bring prices down to at least lower middle class economic levels, then the only subcultures for which designer babies will become the norm will come from those where big toys and designers boys and girls are a drop in someone's economic bucket.

Meanwhile, foster care, adoption, surrogate birth and artificial insemination will drive the non-natural birth child production and companionship creation process.

I don't have kids. I have my wife and she has me. We are companions for each other, satisfied with our selfishness in not having kids. We do not participate in a lot of local social functions because of our lack of children (PTA meetings, school events, church events, etc.). So why should I care about the future, if I don't have a vested interest? That's a question for the ages, one I'll meditate upon for the rest of my life. That's why I lead a benign existence, freely letting the rest of the parented world use or abuse the planet, because the planet will belong to someone else's kids, not mine. I'm happy here to eat a few crumbs and delight in the wonders of the universe.

Those of you with kids are the ones who should investigate for yourselves whether global warming is really in your hands or out of your control. It honestly doesn't matter to me one way or the other. All the same, I like spending time in what's left of the untamed wild, so I'm doing my part to keep my energy use under control.

I'm sticking around to share my experiences with others, tell a few tall tales, laugh, cry, and enjoy casual companionship. That's why I don't take life seriously. I found the facts of life on the tracks of life and punched myself a ticket on the fun train a long time ago. Very few of you will be around to see life in 200 years but keep in mind that whatever you do now, your offspring will experience the consequences.

My seventh great-grandfather stood with other men on a raised landscape called King's Mountain and fought against other men over the issue of control of a section of North America. Because of his determination to fight, he helped lay the foundation for the United States of America. What did he think about? I don't know. From historical records I know he hunted animals, killed Native Americans and later kept slaves. Do I excuse his behavior? From today's societal norms, no, I don't. From what he faced in the late 1700s, I bet I would have accepted what he did were I his child. In any event, I carry many parts of his DNA in me (I, like him, stand over six-feet tall and have red hair). I will not pass his DNA on. A side path of the genetic trail of his dead-ends with me. His Scots-Irish heritage will continue through someone else, instead. In other words, I am his consequences 200 years later. Think about it.

Flavor+

In meditation, I seek the truth of my existence. My existence is both general and specific. I am one example of my species. I am one with my species. I am one inexact copy.

In the past, I have sought an explanation for the thoughts in my head, which have no meaning to me because I see them as just so much electrochemical noise, looking to others of my kind so I can extract some universal meaning, especially for repetitive thoughts ("I am hungry now," "I have sexual urges now," etc.). Otherwise, I don't have a specific reason to give importance to thoughts for thought's sake, without a need for input from my hypothalamus. I recognize my thoughts are usually relative in importance only in relation to my surroundings.

I remind myself that a human's life is truly simple - adapt to one's surroundings to preserve one's self and one's offspring. As we all know, our population grows and requires greater adaptation skills to differentiate one from the rest of us and thus create a specialization that others need of one to ensure they solidly support one's place in the village.

I have now taught the first class for each of three 11 weekly classes where I'll instruct students in the art of organizing their electrochemical processes so they can prove to their village they have a specialization, guaranteed in writing.

I do not have a strong monetary motivation to teach. I do not have children of my own to feed, clothe and house. I face every waking moment of my recent past, present and near-term future adjusting my mantra of ["Have kids. Take care of your family."], with no kids or family in-need feeding into my daily meditation.

I am all I have. I am all I need. Or am I? ...hmm...

I am like every human being on Earth and I am not like any human being on Earth. By personal observation and interpretation of scientific studies, I am a social creature. I am also a creature of habit, adapting to new conditions with difficulty. I work well by myself and work well with others.

Kenyon, the director of recruiting at the ITT Tech Madison campus, told me today that the success of the campus depends on having instructors who are flexible.

I sing the body electric.*

[*Ode to Walt Whitman, Slim Whitman, and Wit]

I focus on one thought, one line of thoughts, one emotional state, or a combination of those, to enjoy the "taste" of them. Like pouring sugar or capsaican on my tongue, feeling the rush and intensity of purity. But do I not also enjoy complex flavors? Isn't that why my wife and I visit gourmet restaurants because of the edible masterpieces created by flavor artists? Quality over quantity, to put it crudely.

The conclusion is just out of reach, around the corner, over the horizon, clouded by space and time.

What am I doing here? There is no "Who am I?" to resolve. There is no purpose I must find. It's a matter of deciding which is more important to me at this point - mellowing in the randomness of electrochemical processes or concentrating/focusing them to get the next new "high." The latter gets me out of bed in search of a new adventure, if only one in my mind. Am I just an endorphin flavor fan?

Even in my dreams? Then why meditate? To reset the baseline for my next electrochemical rush, of course. Only now do I see I spent too many years pushing my baseline off the scale with artificial stimulation. No regrets there, though, because the stimulants provided many an insight and situation for a story I enjoyed writing later on. The next 15,027 days provide me ample time to slice and dice my electrochemical processes into fun units to explore, where my secrets of the universe wait to be discovered!

========================
+ After watching the movie, "The Name of the Rose," and reading online information about Umberto Eco and his tribute to Borges.

The Definition of Happiness

What is happiness? I've probably thought about and written about the subject of happiness many times, without specifically mentioning the word "happiness." Right now, I am happy so I'll talk about it some more.

But first, what is your definition of success? Some say that you (that is, every person on this planet) feel successful when others recognize you because of something important you did for them.

Okay, then what is important?

The search spirals further inward, cutting off the layers of a flower bulb - an allium or crinum lily (or the proverbial onion) - with a paring knife and silk gloves.

Tonight, my wife and I attended an annual event called An Irish Evening that benefits the local chapter of United Cerebral Palsy. My wife had wanted to attend the event in years past but never convinced me to go. This year, we found out that the chair of the event, Cheryl, is friends with the wife of a friend of mine, Gary, who we planned to meet for dinner tonight until Gary realized that the UCP event occurred on the same evening. So, I ordered two dinner seats for my wife and me at $75 per person (you could also pay for a whole table, if you wanted).

What is important? Well, I requested that we sit at the same table as Gary and his wife, Dawn. Well, Gary and Dawn had requested to sit at the table with their friend, Cheryl, since Dawn and Cheryl are former college mates and Dawn served as the "best man" at Cheryl's wedding.

My wife and I showed up and were assigned to table 40. Table number 40...hmm...didn't sound very important to me. Aren't most VIP tables usually labeled number 1, VIP, etc.? Apparently not.

What is success? Who here is successful and what gives you the feeling you've achieved success? Is it retiring from your lifelong career? Is it reaching a certain job position? Is it sitting at the top of your social pyramid? I don't know what you call success. I see success as situational. Who has the most air of mystery in the room, for instance.

Like tonight. My wife and I ended up sitting with two brothers, Roger and Peter. Peter had come to town from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to visit his brother. Peter retired in the late 1980s and has been working for a long time as a lawyer for a non-profit organization. Roger called himself a reformed engineer and seems to have a new profession as a person who appears in court at least once a week (expert witness?). We found out from Roger that Cheryl's husband, Jim, is a local judge and had expected to spend the evening chatting with Roger until he found out that Roger had brought his brother along. We enjoyed conversing with Roger and Jim. Just four people with something interesting to talk about. Nothing particularly special.

Oh, I forgot an important detail. Earlier in the evening, a photographer from a local vanity magazine grabbed me to take my photo in front of a large matte photo of an Irish pub, with a photo assistant adjusting my outfit for full effect (I was wearing a tall hat in the shape of a pint of Guinness, a Celtic patterned tie, green linen shirt and a light sport coat, as well as green Mardi Gras beads, and a button or two). Several people overheard the conversation between me and the photography crew about my having purchased the hat while on business in Dublin, when my wife and I watched the St. Patrick's Day parade from the sidewalk on O'Connell Bridge.

The mystery was set. Not only were my wife and me strangers to most of the local "it" crowd but we were also world travelers. Many a lawyer's wife stopped by to tell us that they'd give their eyetooth to go to Ireland, if only...

If only what? Aren't they successful? Don't they live at envious street addresses? Aren't some of their kids off attending private school?

Envy and happiness are not mutually exclusive, I know. But how well can they coexist?

Roger and Peter were not particularly impressed by our travels to Ireland for they are world travelers, too, both in their present lives and in the recent generational past, their grandparents having hailed from the Swiss-German border. But then again, Roger and Peter sat at the same table as us. The same table where Gary and Dawn and Cheryl and her husband were to sit.

Dawn was sick so Gary and Dawn could not join us. According to Cheryl, her husband felt tired and decided not to show up (he's a local judge and had handed down a sentence earlier today to a member of a locally well-placed family (the person's named ended in "IV," being the fourth generation male with the same name), and figured that he'd hear the opinions of other locally well-placed families who attended tonight's event so I can see why he felt too tired to attend). Cheryl ended up walking among the tables until later in the evening, when she finally stopped to get a bite to eat and sat with my wife and me for a while.

What is happiness? Tonight, I am happy because I enjoyed seeing the looks of people who could not figure out where my wife and I fit into the local Huntsville hierarchy. Some of them looked at us with envy. Some of them looked at us with jealousy. Some of them, of course, didn't care who we were but stopped by to talk to us anyway, being the naturally sociable people they were.

The reason I got out of bed to write this blog entry was to set all this up so I could mention the following. At the end of the evening, the grand prize was awarded, a special set of jewelry, based on a number engraved on the side of a plastic ring sold for $10 a piece - several dozen rings had been sold for a chance to win the grand prize. After the grand prize was awarded, the MC announced another prize chosen by random name drawing from those present. My wife's name was called out.

My wife and I laughed at the irony. We always make fun of prize awards at events like that because they're inevitably rigged so that at least one or two prizes are given to VIPs at the event. So there was my wife sitting at what we didn't know was the VIP table and she got the last prize for the evening. The looks of anger I saw from the wives of rising young hot attorneys at the next table over made the evening enjoyable to me because here my wife and I are near the bottom of the local social hierarchy yet because of our mysterious arbitrary appearance at the VIP table and the random awarding of the final prize, others shot us the same look we often show when we think a prize is rigged to go to special guests.

Us, special? Hahaha.

But then again, maybe we are. Maybe my wife and I, because we don't play the social status game and take everyone at face value, are special because of the way we treat people.

And that, my friends (like you, Lynda, who asked for this a few weeks ago), is the definition of happiness. The freedom to step into a room and be who you are, or whomever you want to be, with no preconceived notions of who you are clouding people's treatment of you, and no tired "I gotta appear at another public event" motivation forcing you to show up.

Bottom line, we simply had fun.

And the prize that my wife won? A set of two tickets for a riverboat cruise, an $88 value, at Bellingrath Gardens in southern Alabama, about a six-hour drive away from here (in other words, $60 in gas plus lodging equals more than the prize). I'm sure you're envious. If those dark-suited guys and their sharply-dressed wives only knew!

Of course, a prize is a form of social recognition, a definition of situational success (and thus temporary happiness) but shouldn't the value of the prize also have some relation to the feeling you get? Not according to scientific studies. Next time you feel envious of someone or jealous of what they've got, keep in mind that appearances are deceiving and not all contests are rigged. It might even make you feel happy.

The Space Between Two Objects

Outside the window, a branch rests on the invisible pillow of gravity, buffeted by the winds of change. Upon the branch, pink bowties, ... waiting ...

A tree cannot read a watch.

A watch cannot read a tree.

Yet both tell time.

The daffodil blooms in the yard have shriveled into parchment-thin ghosts of their glorious past, glory only a concept in my thoughts but "past" clearly a word in a daffodil's vocabulary.

The daffodils now know their next steps to follow, nourishing offspring, unless I follow expert gardener tips to cut off the seedpods.

Not I.

Thus, daffodils spread across the yard each year, unaware of my disuse of lawnmowing gear, happy in both our lives to let be.

You are here with me. We see us not in each other's eyes. The space between two objects defining us, instead.

Reality is more than we can bear. Words were never necessary.

You are the walk I take in the woods, the redbud I see outside the window, the space between these words.

I am not a gambler. Thus, poetry is not my strong suit. I alight upon alliteration like the airy goldfinches fluttering twixt the birdseeder posts.

Rhyming's not my thing.

When these black scribblings become more important than the two objects they describe, then let me be the mourning dove and the robin sharing a branch outside my window.

Management vs. Labor

I thought I was done with my astonishment, that the renewed violence in northern Ireland would not get my goat, as the saying goes. However, the useless killings still rest a heavy yoke on my thoughts. So I trod not lightly today, dragging my poor feet shoed with a wornout soul.

When I was working in Ireland, many an Irish citizen reminded me that just because I was born with natural red hair and had family from Ireland, I could not say that I am Irish. At best, I could say I am of Irish descent. Alas, 'tis not so. My ancestors, who wrote that they were Irish on their gravestones, were merely visitors to the island, emigrants always on the run, first from the British persecution of Scottish inhabitants and then to the land of promise - North America.

Nomads.

Again, I am not my ancestors. I have their genetic heritage flowing through my veins, forming my propensity for pink skin and specks of melanin, and a wee bit of Nordic or Dutch blood showing in my red hair.

I am likely more Scottish than Irish so the violence in Eire does not belong to me, except for the age-old resentment between the Scottish (primarily Protestant in their religious practice) and the Irish (primarily Catholic). I was raised in a Protestant household, with Presbyterian being the Christian sect I studied. However, I, like so many Americans and Europeans, have found religion less integral to my daily habits of living, making the killings over the British rule of Northern Ireland seem...well, I'm not sure, yesterday's news?

I grew up with the impression that I was "blessed" to live in the land of opportunity. Even so, opportunity was divided into two categories: management and labor. I understood that these categories were solely economic, not a hard-and-fast rule like the caste system of India. Yet, I met families whose two or three generations living together all effused the essence of either a management or labor view of life. Now, this is one of those chicken-and-egg things - which came first, my education that tainted my observations so that I only saw things in an either/or scenario of management-vs.-labor, or the human tendency to gather in socially-defined cliques, which in my neck of the woods was twofold?

No matter.

I've read a few articles and books that for the past ten years have predicted the breakdown of traditional business roles. In the future, which is now and in the past, people will no longer work for others or have people work for them in a corporate structure. We'll all have freelance jobs. Subcontractors. Independent workers.

Can we handle the responsibilities of working for ourselves?

Can you?

That's a question I've asked myself ever since I was a wee lad, when I realized that I wouldn't be one to sire the next generation. For those of you who have kids or plan to have them, you know what it takes to be responsible. There's not much more important than having the life of another person in your hands.

Now I'm standing in front of about 60 students a week, none of them my offspring, teaching them about specific school topics. At the same time, I'm asking them to raise their heads and look around them. No one else in the room is responsible for the other's life.

Or are they?

In fact, they are. The violence in Ireland has proven that to me. Indeed, we are each other's brother and sister.

Therefore, I agree with the assessment that the future is now and we are no longer engaged in the business practices of our forebears. Management-vs.-labor is passé. We are independent contractors, here to create and offer our goods and services to one another. No more excuses about hiding behind labor contracts or minimum wage. You are neither a laborer nor a manager. You are "You, Inc." Make yourself a product you can prosper with, putting your talents and those of your network of brothers and sisters to the benefit of all.

I'll end this entry with an Irish blessing:

May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live.

KISS

How many of us have a favorite reading list? Not a list of our favorite books but a list of material we like to read over and over again. For those with a religious bent, you more than likely read and reread your religion's holy text, such as the Bhagavad Gita/Mahabharata, Bible, Qu'ran, Tanakh/Talmud, āgamas, etc.

I rarely reread books I enjoyed the first time, with a few exceptions. "Knots" by R. D. Laing is one of those simple texts I go back to every couple of years. If you ever want to see a fun, semi-mathematical approach to human reasoning, run your eyes across the pages of "Knots." It's like poetry or song lyrics but it's not. It is. KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid (a mantra from my Southwestern book sales days).

Last night, my wife and I ate at the opening night of The Melting Pot in the Bridge Street Town Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. Our server, who hails from Wichita, KS, named Tenille (and she'll tolerate joking about Captain and Tenille, having endured the jokes when she had a boyfriend of five years named Tony), delighted us with her new tableside fondue mixing skills. My wife and I plan to return to the restaurant, since Steve, the owner, was open and kind to us, showing us around the place, and sharing tidbits about the 20-month process he endured opening up a new restaurant. I know it's daunting but hang in there, Steve!

To those with a taste for history, you'll like to know that one of the founders of the original concept for The Melting Pot retired to Scottsboro, AL, from his business roots in Florida. He was kind enough to visit the Huntsville store and share the history of the restaurant with the young staff, including descriptions of the old wooden tables and the "European eye" style burner on which the fondue pots were placed. My wife and I can remember those days, too. Guess that makes us historic!

The president of The Melting Pot visited the store in the past week to recognize the top six performers with special gifts. It's that kind of dedication to one's employee base that makes leaders/coaches worth working for.

= = =

I wanted to tell a witty story about a couple of kids who wandered across the face of the planet where there are no daily newspapers but I have too much teacher preparation time ahead of me to give the story the brainwork and facetime it deserves. Hopefully, I can get to it soon. Basically, the kids will discover the world is different than the one described to them by their jetsetting parents, who traveled a world where everyone knew the hot stories and general headlines of world economies because of newspapers and magazines but carried with them the tasty treats of local stories that only they and not their friends or neighbors knew.

The kids develop an instant reporting tool that can broadcast on a worldwide channel/network, which gives flash (1-second), flush (5-second) and indepth (10-second) snippets of local information from around the world, broadcasting to TVs, portable Internet devices, radios, cell phones, automobiles, billboards, and virtually everywhere, taking the concept of facebook/twitter to the next ADHD level.

Subscribers will be able to filter what they see/hear/touch (tactile experience being a new addition to the kids' broadcast tool); however, the filter only adjusts what people see and will still randomly show them stuff they opted to filter out, including advertising, subversive messages, offensive stories and alternative views.

The kids make money by selling their instant reporting tool, a small box made solely of recycled material, using solar/battery power, with wired/wireless connections that:

• uses a microphone to pick up local audio signals and translates them into multiple languages, both written and verbal
• uses a webcam to capture still/video
• uses a network connection to capture local network traffic (part of the flash broadcast that shows random charts of Ethernet traffic patterns)
• uses a touch screen that accepts typed messages up to 80 characters long but also broadcasts the global channel

The kids set up a network of servers that takes in the messages from the small boxes and then randomly posts them to the global broadcast. They give away the software that filters what you see, allowing you to either access it by going to their World Wide Web address, installing it on your own device, and/or preinstalling it on devices you sell. Otherwise, if you watch it on TV or listen to it on radio, you get the random broadcast.

The kids sell their invention in Internet time, on the day of and five seconds after their planned massive global product release, letting a true global player take over the messy part of sorting out profits on random flash advertising.

They spend the rest of their lives winking at each other at their inside joke that turned quiet meditation on randomness into a world completely governed by randomness, following the advice of their uncle, who told them the best way to conquer the world is to keep it simple, a lesson he learned from a book he liked to read every so often, "The Art of War."

The Gap Between Teaching and Learning

Last night, I began the adventure I looked forward to and dreaded at the same time - teaching. My first class with young adults. In this case, there to open their minds to an introduction to personal computers. The students ranged in age from 20s to 40s. Employed and unemployed. Thrilled and less than interested.

Education. What is it? Frankly, I don't know. That, however, is a good fact to admit. Start first with your understanding of what you don't understand. Then, and only then, can you decide whether you want to understand more.

Many of my students don't understand binary and hexadecimal numbering systems and why they're the basis for computing. Talked with my wife and she suggested going to the basics of turning a light bulb on and off, then lead into decimal counting (such as how do we go from nine to ten - we mark a one where ten is and start counting one through nine again), then show how binary is the same, just with a smaller digit set. Hopefully, that will work for my students.

Meanwhile, I've got to decide what I want to understand. Part of me has no allegiance to my ancestors. After all, they're long since dead and gone. The only thing left of them is me and my immediate family. I am not one who has to rewrite history and even if I wanted to, the type of history I could write is limited, just like the majority of us humans hanging around on this planet. Therefore, with no megalomania running through my genes, I have found I like just being me. It is part of my quiet, meditative self.

However, distant relatives of mine are trying to drag me out of the dark. I suppose we all have family like that. Especially in times like these. They have taken my mantra to heart - "Have kids. Take care of your family." - and extended it to extreme bounds. Blood is thicker than water, and all that.

Thing is, they missed the full meaning of those two simple declarations. The logical statements go together, having kids and taking care of your family. 1 + 1 = 2. I don't have kids so my expression of that statement is 0 + 1/2(1) = 0.5. With no kids, family has only half as much influence on my taking care of family. There's a half-life time decaying factor involved that makes it less than 0.5 and relates to my lifeclock that says I only have 15,031 days left to live but we'll leave it out of the equation for now. Suffice it to say that some of the following is important:

N - Amount of element after time t.
No - Initial amount of the element.
t - decaying time.
L - ½ life time.
N = No(½)^(t/L)
N/No = (½)^(t/L)
Ln(N/No) = Ln(½)^(t/L)
Ln(N/No) = (t/L)
Ln(½)Ln(N/No) / Ln(½) = t / L
t = L [Ln(N/No) / Ln(½)]

As the saying goes, I'll leave it up to the reader to try to figure out what I'm trying to figure out what I'm trying to say mathematically.

The lesson I'm trying to learn...

Well, I watched a movie version of a novel, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress." After watching the movie and hearing what my Scots-Irish relatives are facing in renewed violence on a island in the northern Atlantic Ocean, I have something to learn here.

I have mixed a big vat of stew in which I've thrown "1984," "Brazil," "Brave New World," "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," "Purple Rain," "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables," "The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual," "Common Sense," "The Color Purple," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Why Did I Get Married?," "Mad" magazine, "Angela's Ashes," "Joyeux Noël," "Brigadoon," facebook comments, and totally meaningless news headlines. And, of course, a special blend of herbs and spices...sigh...can't forget the commercial influence on my gastronomic tastes. I'm no gourmet so I'm going to coat everything in a capsaican sauce made from concentrated hot peppers grown in a hermetically-sealed hydroponic chamber hidden in a hall closet and drowned in some hoppy beer I fermented at home in my pantry.

Just a moment while I sample the flavorful concoction.

Cough, cough! Wow! Delicious so far.

While some people prefer to eat freshly-prepared meals, I like to wait a few weeks, months, or years before sitting down and savoring my secret recipe. By then, it's no longer breakfast, lunch or dinner. It's a potent potion.

Of course, my being human, and not especially unique, I know that I'm not the only one like myself, which means I can look at humans in other parts of the world and expect them to do the exact same thing I'm doing, either in concert or slightly syncopated chronologically.

As I've stated repeatedly, it's not all about me. Sometimes, it's about me' (pronounced "me prime"). Ad infinitum. And yes, ad nauseum, at times, too. Variations on a theme. But whose theme are we talking about here? ee cummings? Perhaps a little. Most definitely, absolutely, one that's out of Africa. Both now and in prehistoric past.

I am a human. That's what I learned to call myself. But that doesn't mean anything other than a word in a language that has spread globally (with tendrils reaching out beyond our solar system). Language defines me. Language doesn't define me.

Thus, when I take these two light-sensing organs that line up with the rest of my body and focus them on neatly-arranged words, whether on paper, on a movie screen, or on an electronic window like the one in front of me, I am both the single sample of a human being, with genetic ties back to the jungles, plains and savanna of an ancient continent, and part of the colony of primates which populate this planet, indistinguishable in my set of general traits from others.

So, to those distant relatives of mine, who want me to join them in a struggle to claim that a whole island belongs to them and not their near relatives, I ask you, who do you consider family? Your ancestors are dead. They don't need you to rekindle their lives. You don't know the thoughts that went through their heads, only the actions that they took to protect and defend their families. Their definition of family will always be different than yours. That is the whole point of studying history, so we more enlightened descendants can see that a human's set of learned behaviors gets larger with time, thus allowing every human to benefit from the lessons of the past, not repeat the same mistakes.

During this economically-induced depressive period in our lives, we fall prey to those who improve their family conditions by inducing others to reduce the conditions of someone else's family. Keep your eye out for those predators. The benefits they offer are temporary.

But you argue that there's no other game in town and it's the only one offering you food to put on your family's table? Then I'm calling you out right here in front of everyone and pointing out your short-sightedness. I might even call you too lazy to be responsible for your family. Yes, I know that "lazy" is a derogatory term but sometimes a word like that will jar you into serious action.

Use your brain. Think for yourself. You have all the skills you need to care for your family. Don't wait on someone else to tell you what to do. I'm looking at you and I don't see an army of ants battling against invading ants from a neighbouring colony. What I see is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of cooperation with fellow members of your species. If you still have the innate desire to hunt and kill when there are no more easy targets around, then be creative. Unless you were bred for cannibalism, there's no reason to attack and kill others of your kind. Go to a farm or an animal slaughterhouse and watch how food is prepared to be put on your table. Who knows but that you might even get a job there, helping you work out your aggressive killing attitude in a more modern environment.

There will always be a gap between what I say and what you hear and think I say. It's the gap between teaching and learning. Keep that gap in mind and learn to listen to yourself. In that gap is the definition of you, where your true uniqueness exists. It's where you'll figure out how to take care of your family without resorting to physical violence. Violence is part of our genetic toolset, inherent in our system of governing others. But YOU can put that toolset to positive use. Use pent-up anger to find strength and fortitude in you to start your own company, taking an idea that's sat in the back of your mind and making it useful for many people, some who might want to exchange money or barter for. Don't worry about making your ancestors proud. It's your family who wants to be impressed by you.

In other words, I can talk until I've run out of words, trying to teach, but in the end you still have to educate yourself.

The 100th patrol

What will you do to fill your day?

By chance, this blog entry marks the 100th time I've written and posted a time-stamped thing on this Google-owned software app. Numbers in action. Ten times ten fingers. Five times my fingers and toes. I drink a glass of Chambourcin in mock celebration. Drained. Done.

In 1985, I wondered what would relieve my daily boredom. In the small bookstore on the main campus of Walters State Community College in Morristown, Tennessee, I found a slim volume of poetry, titled, if I remember correctly, "Bars, Babes, and Boo-Boos," written by an instructor / professor at the college.

I can almost picture the author's name. I met him once or twice.

He might even have served on the committee that issued the Outstanding Student Award in the discipline of Creative Writing to me. I don't know.

The typewritten pages of his poetry and his stark scenery of searching out overnight companions at old watering holes inspired me to self-publish my early work on photocopying machines ("Of Friends, Neighbors, Lovers and Miscellaneous Passers-By" in Knoxville in 1992, using the photocopier in the little office I usually sat in alone, supposedly analyzing sewer flow data but often working late night hours on my writing, instead).

Neither one of us found fame but did we seek it?

We uncorked silence and let it flow between the spaces. Intoxicated with self-satisfaction. Aah!

Tomorrow marks the first day I'm to teach college-age kids. Hmmph. I'm taking the easy path. I know that now. Hiding in my parents'/family's vocational shadows. Destiny? Cheating myself? I don't know.

Need to mention Eimear in other parts of "The Mind's Aye." At the beginning - foresight? Hindsight - at the end? The end - mais oui! D'accord!

In reference to my last blog entry to build my next story:

• When would the local/committee censorship, self-policing policies of one nation slip into the night and create a Chinafication of the West? Has it already happened?
• Have we morphed from free-market capitalism as birth twin of a democratic republic to centralized capitalism as conjoined twin of a socialized republic?
• Has the West become little brother to the Middle East and East Asia?
• Will restrictive Eastern governments absorb Western practices and turn freedom of speech into a pure pacification tool, as long as speech leads to improvements to society in the form of marketable ideas, goods and services (including ones that seem to diss society but breastfeed the innocent minds and hearts of well-meaning infantile dissidents) - with art and product advertising being the purest form of pacification?
• How will this be reflected in decentralized Internet marketing campaigns for pacifying isolated subcultures?
• What about Latin American gangs? Russian conglomerates? In other words, how to build a better society off the strength of the underground economy?
• Legalize illegality?
• How do those of us who walk both sides of the street put our self-destructive habits to good use while keeping the goody two shoes blissfully unaware of what we're doing, not turning purely self-destructive people into happy zombies but simply tools for which all of society can prosper?
• Is violence really an inherent part of the system?

Am I dreaming? Where am I going? What's it all about?

Quick! Where's a calendar? What year is it? 2009? Somebody slap me. Please.

I just dreamed it was 1984 all over again.

Wait! It is!

Kevin, I think we misunderstood our musings that mushroomed out of control - everything DOES go in a circle. A very vicious one, too! But this time you've got five mouths to feed. I only ever had to feed me. At least we both stayed under the radar while we read people's faces and stoked their egos. No crime against that, is there? If they only knew...hehe

Some quick trend observations

Stating the obvious here for some people but recording these thoughts because I don't want to bother with writing them down on paper and then later eliminating or expanding upon them here when I turn some of them into a humorous story:

• Will the decrease of paper newspapers and journalism as a viable profession have any effect on the effectiveness of community citizenship and Internet censorship? And what are the macro-effects of Internet censorship on citizen journalism? Who causes the macro-effects?
• Is there a trend where we keep encapsulating our lives, insulating us from diversity, that our subcultures become virtually isolated from each other, despite the openness of the Internet?
• Is the Internet really open?
• Can the global economy support a human population fully connected to the Internet?
• What is the definition of "fully connected to the Internet" - 70%, 80%, 90%, 95%, 99%? And to what extent does the information trickle-down effect of one person connected to the Internet to that person's unconnected peers have to do with the first part of this question?
• How many of us completely ignore dissident views to begin with (censorship at the personal level)?
• In the isolated subcultures, what future revolutions are being fomented? In the battle for the mind, what propaganda techniques are the isolated subcultures using against each other?
• The modern struggle is economic, with government military posturing securing/comforting the general population. How long will this unsure balance last before someone declares war?
• What does it take for money to become obsolete?
• How does an isolated subculture rise to power without money or military strength? "Flash market" techniques? Texting "wars"? Play up dissidence in its group while playing up complacency in nearby subcultures?
• How subtle are the influences of the Internet if you're a full-fledged member of a subculture? In other words, how many subculture adherents stray into overlapping arenas (general news sites, etc.)?
• In the need to promote the free marketplace of ideas in citizen journalism, how do freedom writers endanger that freedom by inadvertently spreading subliminal messages from those who want their own subculture to dominate?
• Terrorism is a tactic with many methods of deployment, not all of which have obvious negative implications or immediately evident connotations. A stop sign placed on a busy thoroughfare has more than a benign effect on those drag racing across a side street when met by a driver who refuses to stop for anyone.
• When is a depression not a depression? When is a war not a war? When is money not money? Where do you think you're going if you don't know what it's all about (especially, if you think you do)?

I look forward to writing this story!

Chapter 46.838 [For Adults Only]

I hesitated adding "for mature audiences only," because of the sensitivity of today's blog entry. However, "mature" is subjective. Actually, "adult" is relatively subjective, too, kind of like military intelligence, but that's a whole other category.

In any case, I have also hesitated about discussing today's subject. [And a question to you word hounds, is a subject subjective by default? I can't remember.]

I know that many of you have experienced or will experience what I'm going to talk about. I assume this phenomenon is universal or almost so.

As I wrote an outline about today's topic (I only write outlines when the topic is as important as this one so you know I'm going to get down and dirty before too long), I contemplated the first time I heard someone else talk about this.

I probably was exposed to this delicate issue at a young age but didn't recognize what the adults in the room were saying. Sometimes, you've got to experience something for yourself before you fully comprehend a word you can easily figure out when adults S-P-E-L-L I-T O-U-T (adults forget how easy it is for children to assimilate their surroundings, including letter counting, sorting and assembling).

We adults crack jokes in front of children using code words, too. But kids these days, well, in fact, kids of any generation, know when adults are pretending kids are ignorant. Kids can read tone of voice, hand gestures, winking or other facial expressions and just about anything else they watch adults for in order to mimic their behavior.

But kids can't mimic this behavior. Sure, once they reach puberty, they begin to understand some of the problems but still haven't fully grasped the annoyance of the situation.

I don't know why I can't just step up on this virtual podium, lean into the microphone and start an open dialogue about this. It's not that it's particularly embarrassing. People live with this condition most of their adulthood and lead healthy lives. Many of us go throughout the day without noticing how many others suffer this condition.

Strange, isn't it? I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. You look in the mirror or examine your body and sure enough, there it is again.

You know, I'm making more of a big deal out of this than I should or than it deserves. However, the longer I suffer from this condition, the worse it seems to get.

Okay, enough, already. I could wander the word trails for paragraphs, leading you down the forest path until we'd all suffer this condition, age getting the better of our bodies.

Here it is. Hair. Hair where you don't want it, or never heard anyone warn you about. I'm talking about the forest growing up your nose or out of your ears. Okay, yes, this is our bodies' natural defense mechanism for old age - keeping the earwigs and nasal gnats from crawling into ever-widening orifices...that's another thing - this issue of cartilage stretching with age - ears getting large and noses growing longer, making room for more hair!

This isn't what you expected, right? Well, too bad. I didn't, either. In my morning and evening grooming routines (you don't see it but I'm down on my knees praying and lighting candles for the ancestor who invented the mirror), I used to have a few short tasks to complete, including teeth brushing (two minutes each for top and bottom set, kids!), hair brushing (the stuff on top of my head, not the stuff in my ears and nose), and shaving. The cost of the items to handle these tasks are cheap, too. Now? Whew! It takes hedge trimmers to complete the one extra task on my list!

I know most of you adults, or many of you...okay, well, a few of you, anyway...you sympathize with my plight.

Say you've gone to a meeting where someone is staring not at your face but off to one side for the whole meeting. Then, after the meeting's over, the person pulls you aside and says, "Hey, did you know you have a hair growing off the side of your ear?" You hear snickering and then realize everyone in the room had been texting each other about the vine growing out of your head.

I, for one, don't miss the opportunity to point these out.

For instance, I went to Hooters restaurant back in 2002 with some co-workers (and those who are more offended by that statement than this topic, keep in mind that my wife and I both have eaten at Hooters, without my having to drag my wife there - she used to work across the street from the original Hooters in Florida and walked to the restaurant for lunch, seeing the restaurant for what it was, a beach eatery, as opposed to what it has become, a symbol for sexism where women exploit the use of large breasts to extract big tips from us testosterone-driven primates out of proportion to the average meal and extra-talkative service we receive). I sat across the table from a guy who had a hair growing out of the middle of his forehead. When he was in the middle of a good flirt with the waitress, I loudly pointed out the hair. I don't think he ever ate out with me again.

Have I talked about this before? Most likely. But's it's bothering me today.

This morning, I woke up, stumbled into the bathroom and found a family of hummingbirds nesting in my ear. And all this time I thought I had tinnitus. Instead, it's the tiny hum of beating wings. At least I solved one problem. Now I've got to figure out how to get these little guys out of the way so I can hear what people are saying, as well as keep folks from laughing at the aviary hanging off of my head.

Forget about Rogaine. If someone could figure out how to harvest the stuff growing out of our ears and noses, they'd have a gold mine of hair transplant possibilities and make a mint during this economic downturn. Just don't tell the recipients where the hair came from!

Taking the Shortcut

"Wrote blog entry about mirrored DJIA pattern. Will take walk along concrete path in Hays Nature Preserve."

Sit in my old BMW at the top of the driveway, under one of the circus tents that dot the yard (reflecting my life view - a grand comedy, accompanied by trapeze artists, captive animal performers and human-like magicians), enjoying the warm day, writing a note to myself in my miniature Moleskine about moments outside this one. Remember the day our builder told us about how to hook up a device to the whole house power meter that would shortcut the circuit and make the meter under-read our actual power use.

What is MSRP? Who cares except game show contestants who must pay taxes on gifts they receive, sellers and salespersons promising savings that shortcut the middleman, or police claiming the street value of a large drug bust? Why do I feel like I'm walking well-worn word trails, behind the footsteps of vaudevillian barkers like Vonnegut, Ballard, Barthelme, DFW, etc., and...

Well, will you look at the white mold growing on the dead branches of the burning bush (Euonymus alata "Compactus") overhanging the BMW at the end of our driveway? A shortcut to the point my eyes were making when my brain was not.

I am not the men who went before me. I am not my father. I am not any man or woman. I am me. Satisfaction guaranteed. Time to close this chapter of my life. Was it fun? I don't know. It was. That makes it wonderful.

The old gang can do their recruiting somewhere else. I want a united world, not one divided by those who want to shortcut others. Here, you can have my words. I set them free! No need to know the original MSRP. You can't get a cut out of nothing, can you? How can you milk the cow if you stop its milk production? Reminds me of two of my old poems.*

Saw Soos Weber at the Hays Nature Center parking lot, along with some geocache enthusiasists (woodland nerds, in my view; BTW, I'm a word nerd). Walked a mile or so on the river trail. Drove into town, cruising down a boulevard of blooming Bradford pears. Shopped at Party City for my wife to buy St. Patrick's Day plates and cups to use at a gathering next weekend. Ate early dinner at Longhorn's restaurant using a $25 gift certificate. Returned home to read. Played with cats. Sat down to write, using a note I'm writing to myself in my miniature Moleskine.

Reread blog entry and feel the door of destiny closing behind me. I have not expanded the universe with these words. I have no offspring to call my own. My genetic material mutates with time, inertia winding down to inert and finally to ert or in. I, despite the virtual breath of fresh air I take with each intake of the wondrous universe, am getting old.

Time to set this virtual pen down and let the next generation take over. It's your turn to play with words. Maybe you can transcribe a better mousetrap. Let me be an example to you. Best not be sitting inside the trap when you write it. Unlike the fairy tales, you can't hide a shortcut in here; eventually, you'll starve from lack of words, your vocabulary becoming a stale, dry joke with no meaningful, thirst-quenching punchline.

And one more thing - I was wrong. Life is a sentence. Have fun with the dangling modifiers. Fill your life with ellipses...say,uh, um, whatever, you know, that is, short stops and starts, ahem, that give you time to think, too (even parenthetical phrases can give you pause, separated by commas, if you will, and stretch out the exciting moments), leaving misssspellings and incomplete thoughts for all to. Whatever the judgment that put you in the sentence, do what you can before you reach the ending punctuation like "." or "?"! Yes, feel free to end your life on a question mark as long as you remember you won't be around to find out the answer. Better yet, go out with a "!" - don't slip out of this world unannounced.

= = =

*The Official Social Protest Songs

I. Familial Norms

Wasted, wornout baby, way to go,
You messed up the morning you cried;
The doctor announced your death,
Said you could've done worse.

Honey, in the morning when I leave,
Kiss the baby, tell her she's loved;
We only have 1.5 more to go,
A station wagon and a dog.

Chorus I:
Corporation Mama, teach me the stocks,
Businessman Daddy, when will the interest rates rise?
We're on a collision course toward nothing,
Tax shelters, IRAs, we know the solution
Beating out evolution's path.

II. On Equal Terms

TV antennae sprouting atop consistent shingle madness,
Smoking charcoal eats leftover curtain stains;
Tailored tomorrows, discount store no-credit everyday bargains,
Paid in forgotten ambitious selection,
Hold out green angels, golden apples, some god's heaven,
Earthy images of monkeys raping Mother Nature's plan.

Chorus II:
Network communication,
The Master equals Media Man,
Presidential, precedental,
Sunday evening, July eighty-four.

Repeat Chorus I
Repeat Chorus II

[Published in Gallery 1985, a Walters State Community College publication, spring 1985]



Striving For Efficiency

Undocumented love songs do appeal
To unrelenting robots at the job,
The automatic working people's deal
About their heavy hearts' (in stillness) throb.
You people! See your wasted VCRs!
Take comfort with the loved ones from the rain,
Wave pennants at the ballgame, and our cars
Shall eat the track. Replace oldtimer's train
With progress' routes, invented by the Old
Guard, so the New will build starcruiser ships --
The labored, never-ending future, cold
Beyond imagination -- mindless trips.
The words we say, the plans we've made in haste,
Perspective bears their worthiness or waste.

[Published in Gallery 1985, a Walters State Community College publication, spring 1985]