Cover My Bets

Nineteen years ago, tomorrow

You better start keeping your eyes wide open -

 - you never know when you might see something

 A sudden river of light streaming across our kitchen floor

The Agreement

is that, in social networking - and I use the term in its pre-internet sense - in fact, in its most elemental sense, the exchange of pleasantries artfully packed with information entwined with inferred questions - is that one must never reveal more than the most fragmentary glimpse of one's own pain and struggle while sharing benign verbal and visual snapshots of beauty, and affection, and invulnerable comfort and equilibrium.

Jackie, pre-vanity, circa 2000

When's the last time you saw someone you know crying on Facebook? I know why we don't share that. But how great it could be, if we found a way to tell our real stories, that was not just a hideous catalog of misery.

Me? No answers. Just a question.

Here come those goddam year-end reflections again

 - gonna start now and avoid the rush - - eh - -  too late...

1) I think one definition of happiness may be that at the end of a weekend (or holiday break, or vacation),  you're eager to return to work. Of course, this may also mean your private life is miserable. I'll have to get back to you on that.

2) Something my wife feels strongly about - and with which I've come to agree, after some years-  is that party or dinner guests should NOT help with cleanup, beyond maybe taking out the trash or recycling. A good host/hostess has a system for post-bash cleanup, and a guest's "help" usually throws a wrench in the works. Just relax and enjoy!

3) It's 100% true, today and for all time, that we don't know what tomorrow will bring, so expressing your affection and respect for those you care for, without delay, is almost always a great idea. The exception may be when it's really late and significant amounts of alcohol have been consumed. I'm not saying this invalidates the sentiment, but I'm pretty sure the recipients of the warm feelings are likely to see them as inflated. Use your best judgement. (I think most of us past the age of forty have worked this out, but it probably bears repeating).

4) Part of the reason that being kind and patient is often so difficult is our fear that we're the only ones trying to do it. You know what? So what. Do it because it's a better way to live, not in the hope that it'll change anyone or anything besides yourself.

When I said that it wasn't about the presents,

I didn't mean to say that presents aren't fun! Especially when you make an educated guess on what they may want and you get it right. Payoff: big warm smiles.

"All he lost he shall regain"

Learning by rote is not just effective for low-level knowledge like multiplication tables or state capitals, I've come to believe. I think it's a good way to remember and reinforce more complex and subtle concepts as well. Like:

Our circumstances - our health, finances, relationships, and every other aspect of our lives that we spend time and energy thinking about - are whatever they are. When they are not what we'd like them to be, we typically feel bad - anxious, sad, angry, confused, and every possible blend or combination of these states. 

But luckily, we can sometimes find ourselves suddenly distracted or lifted up out of out of our dark places and feel lighter and content, if only for a short time. And the interesting thing is that in most cases, there's been no change in our circumstances. The bad's still bad, the good's still good.

So, it would seem that at least some suffering is voluntary. And if so, we have the ability to be happier by just choosing to not to suffer.

Repeat as needed.

22nd of December - the first run-through

A day early posting the lyrics and a day late posting the performance - - -

Not Dark Yet - no, wait, it is.

Most everyone I know - including some friends who are Conservative, and whose perceptions I may question, but still value - are in despair at the state of the Union, and some at the state of all the people of Earth.

Unfounded anxiety? Oh, absolutely not.

You want the good news or the bad news?

The good? Historically, EVERY civilization has expressed near-suicidal angst at the downward slope of their reality. Going WAY back. And yet - we're still here.

The bad? And dismiss me if you will, at which point we part ways:  the sustainability of anything resembling a middle class life-style - and maybe even the wealthy - is now much more uncertain than it has ever been. Unlimited energy and open space - the premises upon which our cosmic-teen-on-crack practices have always been based - are about to go the way of the dodo. How fitting.

Running Out of Dreams

Again, hope this is new to you:

The 22nd of December

(Written one year when Winter Solstice fell on the 22nd...)

Everything's connected (Handle with care)

One of the forms of awareness or intelligence that children - and some adults - mostly lack is the understanding that every one of our actions has consequences. So one of the jobs we as parents (or family members, or teachers) take on is to instill this awareness. And as always, the most compelling evidence we can offer is from our own lives.

And as we do so, it's impossible to avoid reflecting on how well or how poorly we have learned this lesson ourselves.

Each of our lives is created by a fantastically elaborate web of decisions, and one of the truly fascinating things is that some of what seemed like poor choices at the time now prove to have played an utterly unforeseeable and crucial part in the composition of the fabric, and some actions that looked brilliant were likewise equally unforeseeable in their true effect.

And here I am imagining I can see the whole picture at this point.

Taking it slow,

for a change. Usually we get the tree, drive home, wrestle it off the roof of the car, then into the house, onto the stand, and then dive directly into the ornamental extravaganza.

This year, we did the first layer - the lights - all white, at Jackie's request - and then said, hey, let's just dig this phase for a day -

One thing I noticed as we tree-wrangled this fellow - either a) this particular tree was much heavier that those of previous years, b) the Earth's gravitational pull has steadily increased, or c) we're getting old.

It's not about the presents.

December 2008

Seriously. Well, maybe when the kids were real little and were so full of anticipation that they made the whole house vibrate, then, yeah, having a bunch of stuff under the tree felt like something we had to make happen.

This year the tree won't have quite so much company. And just as I felt like this realization was going to hit me in the heart, I became aware of the fact that I was actually OK with it. We're still going to have a nice tree, with all the beautiful ornaments we've gathered over more than thirty years, and some fine meals, and family and friends around us.

I'm not going to lie - 2010 had some awful moments. And it still has a few weeks left; who knows what the hell else it has up its sleeve....but despite it all, at this moment, I feel inexplicably hopeful.

April 29, 1981

As time went on, when I found time to update the journal, I was less oblique, less obscure. More in touch with depicting the day. As opposed to concealing it.

An unexpected benefit of being a husband and father

 - or wife and mother, I'm sure, but I'll speak only of what I know first-hand - is that even when the road gets scary dark and you feel like you can barely put one foot in front of the other, it suddenly occurs to you that the one thing you CAN do is to smile when you get home and not add worrying about you to whatever else they are contending with. And lo and behold; the performance becomes reality. The smile warms its wearer.

All morning outside my window

they've been trimming the sycamores that line our street. I got nothing against tree-trimming - being married to a gardener, I know that's how you keep plants, bushes and trees happy - but between the chainsaws and the giant wood-chipper, the noise level was almost comical. (I said "almost.")

And rather than becoming less piercing and present as time wore on, the racket actually seemed to resonate more painfully, as if the bones of my skull and jaws were vibrating in horrible harmony with the machines.

And then - they finished. They drove off. And now I can hear the little sounds of the house - the ticking of my office clock,  the distant whoosh of the furnace as the heat kicks on. My heart begins to slow down a bit.

Wish I wasn't so easily distracted, but I prefer to describe it as being inherently interested in my surroundings. Yeah, that's the ticket!

The bad thing about playing a great gig on a Sunday afternoon

is that re-entry into the working week the next day is that much more painful. But that's the deal I made, now, isn't it.

Gerry Tenney, Kurt Regas, 12/12/10

Joe Saah, 12/12/10

Matt Parker, Gerry Tenney, 12/12/10

Parties, continued

My daughter reminded me - indirectly - that my comments on parties left out a critical element. An omission I can't explain: the parties that Teri and I have hosted through the years. As Jackie put it - with great accuracy - "No one who comes here wants to leave."

The girl speaks the truth. This is not bragging; this is a statement of fact. We have never hosted a party that was not larger than we anticipated, or that did not go on longer than we had planned.

Bear in mind, my wife is a gifted hostess, not just in terms of laying out a full table of great food and drink, but in attending to her guests with genuine care. And I hold up my end in the "gift of gab" department (hey, we are Italian/Irish/Jewish - you want reserve, pal around with Episcopalians). And if any of you sing and play music and are not shy about it - let the games begin.

So this is a notion still not full-baked. Bear with me.

"The Key to Happiness is broken off in the lock -

Use the window."

Wrote that when I was around twenty-one. I was feverishly trying to finish up my Senior Project at Bard, and my collection of writings - one short story and maybe a dozen poems - was looking really skimpy to me. So I called this a poem and included it. Hey, one more page.

But even at the highest tide of my post-adolescent ego I could not convince myself that this was anything more than a wise-crack in fortune-cookie drag.

Funny thing, though - reading back through that collection, some of the more "serious" work has not aged well at all, while some of the lightweight bits still seem fresh. Good notion to reflect on, I tell myself......

About Parties

When we were young, like in high school, throwing a party was truly exciting. Nerve-wracking, in fact, because we could only throw a real party - loud, intoxicated, sexual - when parents were away. So a party was dangerous, illicit, and there were more than a few that got out of control or got you busted by your parents when you didn't cover your tracks well enough (like one time when we thought we'd cleaned up pretty good - except for the dried spray of beer that Tyler had spewed from the second-story landing, over our living room wall).

Grown-up parties are not as much fun - how could they be? We gather. We drink, or not. We talk. We eat, or not. At a company party - like the one I went to in the hills outside San Jose last night - there's also the fine line between shop talk and, well, everything else.

But for all my grousing, here's the funny thing - I almost always have a good time. I just don't have the pleasure of anticipation, since, again, we're not getting away with anything and no real surprises are in store. But the gathering, the lights, the feast (gotta have the feast) - these are still fundamental. And of course, for better or worse, I'm a born talker. And talk - even more than food and drink - is what the party runs on.

Brand New Moon

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today

SM journal pages, 12/9/1980

One day, John came home from Kindergarten

and asked if we were Jewish. Well, I said, your grandma Lil is Jewish, so you could be.... (trailing off here...) - - why do you ask?

Turns out that as part of his class's discussions about holiday traditions and stories, his teacher Mrs. Chew had told them all the story of Hanukkah, including what must have been a very moving account of the miraculous oil that lasted eight days during the revolt of the Maccabees. Hence his strong desire to light a menorah in our home.

John did not covert to Judaism, but we did get him a menorah, which we've lit every year since then, going on twenty years now. Not saying it's much more than a secular family ritual at this point, but, hey, we light candles, we hug....I'll take it.

While wife and daughter were still sleeping,

I got up, brought in the Sunday papers, fed some of the cats, showered, then went out to pick up our traditional half-dozen Sunday bagels. The golden morning would quickly fade back to that chilly slate grey that Winter seems to prefer, but at least I got a taste of light.

I came back and had another one of those fleeting moments of contentment as I ground coffee beans and sliced and toasted half an onion bagel; for a moment, there was nowhere I'd have rather been; nothing else I'd have rather been doing.

Moment of Weakness

For The Characters' final recording project, we were down to an acoustic trio; kind of a quiet "see you later".

Note: No visuals here to speak of. You can take this opportunity to rest your eyes.

June 25, 1973

The start of my second tour as a camp counselor at Camp Wel-Met in Narrowsburg, NY:

I distinctly remember an afternoon

in I think July or August of 1976, when I was feeling down, for whatever seemingly important reasons at the time, and as I sat near the corner of Claremont and College in Oakland and watched assorted groups of people strolling along, I thought to myself, "they look carefree and happy," then wondered - for real - "Will I ever be carefree and happy again?"

Bear in mind: this was a beautiful summer day. I was 23 years old, in near-perfect health, had all my hair, and since I didn't own a car and walked nearly everywhere, I was in just about the best shape of my life.
And yet I was able to create a state of concrete misery for myself, out of pretty much thin air.

How enjoyable it would be to go back in time and kick that bonehead in the ass.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

I had just popped a plate of left-over pasta with smoked turkey cream sauce in the microwave and was about to build up a good head of resentment about it being too cold to take my lunch break in the back yard, when I stopped for a moment to run the dark wash through another dryer cycle. And suddenly it all felt right - the sound of the dryer, my dying cat waiting on the kitchen table for scraps - George, you doofus, it's MACARONI - the food slowly spinning in the microwave. 

You never know when these moments will arrive. Part of the magic, I guess.

Abstraction, distraction,

diversion, immersion

A melancholy mystery,

the way this late November sun sheds no warmth at all. In fact, this dull light seems to make me feel colder.  But it's not really mysterious. Tomorrow the short Thanksgiving break is over; I return to work; my son flies back to Seattle; everything that was imperfect on Wednesday but that I invoked the holiday to freeze in one distant, dim frame, like a DVD on Pause, will jump back into motion.

But that's tomorrow, right? Yes, but the dread has a way of kicking in early. So this is the main event - the fight for our right to be happy despite the facts. The right to be unreasonably serene.  

George the cat

is not all that old, for a house cat. At least not based on our other cats over the past thirty years. He's perhaps twelve - we don't keep great records in this area - yet he's mostly blind and senile, and increasingly skeletal. Plus he has a fantastically penetrating yowl as he begs for food, which is just about whenever he's awake. Despite the fact that we feed him at least ten times a day. Most of which he just nibbles at.

When Teri cooks, or when any of us eat anything at the kitchen table, he gets inches away from whatever is being prepared or eaten, and yowls until we begin to contemplate throwing him out the back door with all our might. (No, we have not succumbed to that impulse yet. But who knows what the future may bring.)

It's a given that those of us who love and care for animals have to endure surviving them, over and over, but the hardest aspect is deciding when to put them down. I'm holding off on George because at moments he still appears to be enjoying himself - when we pet him, he purrs vigorously - but who knows what he's really feeling? That said, my first choice is to have him simply die in his sleep. Then again - as in so many other cases - I don't really get to choose.

Every pleasure in this world comes at a price, no matter how fervently we may wish for loopholes.

Late In the Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWQ1HuCmQE



The Characters: 

Greg Gould, Bass
Drew Kemp, Drums
Steve McKenna, Guitar, Vocals
Kate Moran, Vocals
Phyllis Plotkin, Piano
Anthony Carpentieri, Electric Guitar

Recorded at Cave Studios, Oakland CA, 1986

Yesterday, not surprisingly,

I ate too much, but of course the point of the feast is the preparation and anticipation as much as the actual consumption. And who is with you on the journey.

Not to mention the great treasure, leftovers. I feel very rich right now; I have no money, mind you. but I have my family and a fridge full of food. No complaints, today.

Shadows Still Remain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n68v28aazD0


Highly Important note: Original melody by David Rubin.

Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind - and then -

Setbacks at work today; never welcome, but made more crushing by the overall paucity of the pipeline. Then came post-game analyses, lacking in insight. My spirit did a searing impression of lead.

The sadness began to do its toxic magic: all troubles are one gigantic trouble. That can't possibly be untangled or overcome.

Then I heard my wife and my daughter in the kitchen doing first-stage Thanksgiving prep. Cutting up the white bread for one stuffing; baking cornbread for Stuffing II; brining the birds. All the while, music playing, from Mom's iPod: Temptations, Stones, Beatles, Aretha, The Dead, Dylan. And my little girl not rolling her eyes but doing a little dance here and there.

There. My family rescued me. Again.

Like the old joke goes,

what do you call someone who speaks two languages? A bilinguist. And what do you call someone who speaks three languages? A trilinguist. So what do you call someone who only speaks one language?

An American.

I do dream of one day learning a second language. For reasons obscure to even myself, I've decided it will be Russian. (And I don't underestimate the probable challenges. Years ago, I managed a small furniture store; I worked alone and had lots of time on my hands because most of the merchandise was relatively expensive and did not sell quickly. In an effort to make use of the idle hours, I bought a mandolin and a set of Japanese language cassettes. The good news is that I DID learn how to play mandolin passably well).

In the meantime, I try to enjoy my one language as fully as possible, like a blind man whose senses of hearing and touch have had to grow more acute. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I go through phases where certain words seem especially expressive and aptly formed.

Current favorite: Encouragement. (поощрение).

The best time to write

is whenever you have an idea or two and you have time and concentration enough to incarnate them into words and see how they run.

On this damp chilly morning, under a pale sun that seems to have come to a complete stop, I'm waiting to drive down to the office till the worst of the drive-time has come and gone. Too early to do follow-up calls with prospects - especially on a Monday. Not a way to endear yourself to strangers who are not, in fact, waiting for your phone call.

Back to the topic of complaining, I realized that, although in the privacy of my own brain or sometimes in conversation with my wife I will bluntly catalog my troubles, I've actually gotten fairly adept at shaking it all off and moving forward. Or at least presenting that performance to the world at large.

And I began to wonder, when did this particular skill kick in?

Answer: when I became a parent.

You know where you can always find me

somewhere just studying the light

The cold breeze persists

with that penetrating quality it has when infused with moisture, but the rain has stopped and the clouds are on the run. So I get to sit in the backyard and enjoy the sun as it breaks through, in pulses. As do the cats, who really hate the rain and were acting like little lunatics when they were all forced to share the house earlier.

I call what I do reading, as I sit there, and I do have a book or magazine on my lap, but half the time my eyes are closed and my mind wanders. As always, contentment is no more constant than today's warm sun, but as long as I get at least some, I can hold away whatever pains or worries are dogging me right now.

November 1983

Already quite hungry.

(Teri's recipe, naturally.)


Thanksgiving Butternut Squash Soup

2 yellow onions (diced)

1 large Butternut squash (peeled, seeded, diced)

1 red pepper (diced)

3 cloves garlic (chopped)

1/2 cup dry sherry or brandy

Pinch nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon paprika

1/3 cup walnuts (chopped)

2 tablespoons honey

6 cups chicken stock

Salt and pepper

This is the "Before" picture.

Sweat onions, squash, and peppers in a little olive oil on medium heat for 15 minutes. 

Add garlic and walnuts for 2 minutes. 

Add brandy, stock, and spices. 

Bring to a boil, lower to medium cut until veggies are soft. 

Puree until smooth.

Serve with toasted baguette slices, salad with goat cheese and crumbled bacon.

The World Has No Pity for Those Who Are Defeated By the Ordinary

: Another way of saying, oh, dude, get over it.

I've been instructed by management that I need to drive in to the office two days a week for the next month or so (average round-trip drive-time: 2.75 hrs.).

Not crazy about this development, but 1) they could have said daily; 2) I can arrive late and leave early in order to avoid the worst of the rush hours, and 3) I do have satellite radio in the car. So, I will choke back my tears.

Plus, there can even be beauty in traffic. On occasion.

The pressure is on

 - but when it comes to sales, when is the pressure ever OFF? Yes yes I get it. And I really ought to be used to it after all this time. But there are days - and this is one of them - where it requires every particle of my patience and diligence to not run away screaming. Or crawl back into bed. Or run screaming back to bed.

When you see someone juggling swords and torches while riding a roller-coaster through gale winds, give the guy a break, would you, and don't keep asking him what he's going to close this week. It's not helpful.

OK, venting time is over. Back to work.

September 1977

And a time for every purpose under Heaven

When Teri decided to finally move on from childcare and teaching about eight years ago and pursue her longtime desire to design and maintain home gardens, her first real client was a woman named Leonore Fine. Leonore lived nearby on Claremont Avenue, and she really wanted a garden that she could spend peaceful, meditative time in. She even had a name for it - The Grotto.

Leonore was already 92 at the time, but still traveled, studied, entertained, and generally made middle-aged people like Teri and me feel really silly about kvetching about age.

Teri and Leonore got along great these past eight years, although Teri did think Leonore should have allowed her to kill garden snails - Leonore, however, forbade it, citing her Buddhist beliefs.

Leonore turned 100 this past March, and, though keeping as active as ever, did confide to Teri more than once how tired she was starting to feel.

She passed away at 2:30 last night, at home, with family at hand. And yes I know 100 is a great run, but I'm still choking up a bit here. Goodbye, Leonore, wherever in the universe you are. Hope it's all you imagined.

That Sunday Afternoon Feeling

Don't get me wrong, I like my job for the most part, and of course these are especially inappropriate times to whine about any gainful employment. But as a morning of reading the Sunday papers in the warm, sunny backyard with numerous cats lounging near my chair drifts into mid-afternoon, thoughts of Monday don't bring me joy. What can I tell you.

As I write this, my wife is out front raking leaves, and our big orange Elvis cat sits in the garden watching her. Neighbors and strangers walking by stop to admire him, and he accepts their attentions with the placid grace of old royalty. How do I get HIS job?

I admire William Blake and all

but I always found the phrase "doors of perception" problematic, if not downright clumsy.

We WALK through doors. We SEE through windows.

But "windows of perception" doesn't scan all that well. I admit. And if Blake had used that phrase, Jim Morrison would have had to have fronted a band called The Windows. Which would have just sucked.

Be Good to Each Other

Fun with Appliances, continued

The ginormous Franken'roid fridge got moved safely from Sandy & Eric's into our dining room last Thursday; it wound up taking a four-man crew. BIG guys. Tomorrow the old piece of crap gets hauled out. So tonight we've secured the help of Mike and Evan - two of John's pals for many years, and both very tall and fit - to help us 1) move the old unit into the center of our kitchen - after disconnecting the water hook-up; 2) move the Death Star into final position. # 2 should be interesting.

Can't Complain

Here's the thing about complaining - or even just talking about your pains, worries, and burdens in what you were hoping was a matter-of-fact, dispassionate tone: either the people you share these thoughts with don't see your situation as being all that bad, relatively speaking, and wish you would just suck it up for godssake, or they are truly moved by your problems and feel compelled to offer advice, which you actually did not want (even in the event that it's useful).

It's no secret that most of the best therapists and counselors have learned how to listen without saying much, but while still managing to convey sympathy. Most of us couldn't do that if our lives depended on it.

Once again, the two extremes are easy to pull off - you can either let it all hang out and express every dark, sad, bitter notion that haunts you in your times of trouble, or you can throttle back any and all expressions that might reveal you feel like you're about to fall off a cliff. Each has pros and cons, naturally.

I think a middle way might be better (and you probably knew I was going to say that); what I mean is, sure, it's not cool to lose your shit and either annoy or depress everyone within earshot, but neither is it a healthy course of action to shove every painful emotion into a vault in your guts. I'm not the first person to say this, by any means, but sometimes it's a good idea to catalog, in detail, everything that's wrong. And cry about it, while you're at it. Eventually the wallow will lose its appeal and shaking it off will seem like a great idea.

Notice I didn't say that doing this publicly is advisable. Your call.

All I want to do right now

is to sit beneath the November sun as it does its slow low roll across the cool blue sky.

But no.

I remember sitting on a park bench one sunny lunch hour on upper California Street, on the edge of Chinatown. April of '92? I was still wearing a dress shirt and tie to work every day at that time, but I had at least rolled up my sleeves and loosened the tie and was just floating in the warmth for a few minutes before I had to go back to my desk.

Teri and I had been trying to have a second child for a while at that point but Fate was fucking with us; miscarriage after miscarriage. The doctors were unable to find any cause.

So that was on my mind. I suddenly thought, all I want, I swear, is to have one more little baby who'll be able to feel this warm sun on their face. That's all.

I will admit with some shame that, though I got that wish, I did not remain in a permanent state of gratitude and fulfillment as I'd wordlessly promised. Working on it, though.

Man of Virtue

I know you’re careful what you wish for

and you watch just what you say

But it all comes back to haunt you

anyway 

Now you may be a man of virtue

and a friend to all you meet

But that ain’t necessarily useful

on the dark side of the street

You must remember this

A kiss is still a kiss

‘cept when it’s followed by a blade

You’re always so surprised

each time you recognize

some bad decision you just made

Sometimes I get the strong sensation

that my heart is like a bell

pealing brightly up to Heaven

tolling darkly down in Hell

But I just may be mistaken

Maybe only I can hear

and the day that bell stops ringing

it’s gonna be me who disappears

But please don’t get me wrong

I didn’t write this song

to make you brood or bear regret

I’m just the same as you

Don’t always know what’s true

and much of that I soon forget

I wish I knew where we were headed

‘cause this trip’s gone on so long

I don’t always trust my information

All my bearings could be wrong

I beg you do not be a stranger

for I’d surely miss your face

Just tell me ,”See you later”

You don’t have to name the time or place

Natural Causes

I grew up across the street from a cemetery, and I used to joke that before I was ten I'd probably seen - from a distance - more than six hundred funerals. Not to mention that I still associate the sound of bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace" with Sunday mornings and the smell of coffee, to this day.

And since the cemetery was a pretty vast stretch of property, with plenty of hedges and bushes and only a few meandering service roads, it was an extremely convenient place for us to do all the things teenagers like to do when adults aren't watching.

I don't believe any of us felt we were disrespecting the dead; we had hung around the place so long I think the reality of what its function was had long been lost on us. And in our defense, we never trashed the place or made much noise -  morality aside, that would have attracted unwanted attention.

We were all pretty young and healthy, so Death was not just another country for us - it was another world.

And my situation was even odder, in that my parents had decided to entirely isolate my sister and I from our large extended family in New Jersey, where they'd both been born and raised, so that aside from a few visits a year to my prematurely senile Grandpa Frank in Paterson, we knew nothing of that world. All of the ceremonies and rituals - including funerals - that bound those big Irish-Polish clans together through the years were attended by my father as sole ambassador, and he never reported anything back about the events. We may as well have been the very last of our line, as far as we ever saw.

This rejection of ritual eventually reached disturbing lengths, when my mother refused to have even a memorial service after my father died in 1986. Still working my way through that one, as you might imagine.

That's how it came to be that I never actually attended a funeral until my father-in-law Skip Hayes died in 1999. I'd like to make clear the fact that I'm not complaining; though I do believe with all my heart that the gathering of friends and family after a person's death can bring wonderful comfort and support to the survivors, I find formal funeral and burial services to be a brutal ordeal and I'm having none of it; mark my passing with lively music and overindulgence.

What's prompted all this, you ask? Not sure, really, but the past year or so has brought news of death to me often enough, and in enough different forms, that I can no longer pretend that it's an aberration or abstraction, or that it's a foreign thing whose residence is far away.

Suicide, accident, illness, even murder - when I say they're all natural causes, please don't think I'm being callous or flippant. I only mean that they all take place in one world. This world.

The World Is My Sweet Potato

Mission Not Accomplished

 - in that the mission was to get the stray cat (who Teri named Pancakes, in the fullness of time) to the vet, to be inoculated and spayed.

But we have succeeded in getting her to eat on the porch pretty regularly, and even in the pantry on occasion. The other cats leave her out of their pecking order politics, for reasons unknown. And she sleeps in the warm dry basement undisturbed,  we're fairly sure.

So she looks better and seems calmer. But we think she may be pregnant now. So did we help or hurt her, all in all? I just can't say.

May 1977

Soul Survival

Seems like all my life I've heard people talk about how living the wrong way - especially in terms of what you do to make money - can kill your soul.

I've had some time to ponder this. My tentative conclusion: souls are not as fragile as some would have you believe.

Does spending most of your waking hours most days of the week doing work that often seems pointless and brings little or no beauty or joy into the world actually damage your essential spirit, the way eating crappy food or breathing polluted air damage your body?

Answer (again, tentative): damage, perhaps. But destroy? No, for the same basic reason humans can survive toxic physical environments - adaptation. In the case of the soul - or mind, or spirit; not picky about the tag in this case - most of us find ways to discover some brightness or color or meaning in our days, whether through connecting with the people we work with, or perhaps just through momentary flights of imagination, anticipation, or memory.

And as I've said before, we can all use a hand with this now and then. Look around.

Cutting Board

A history, a stage. Wherever I look. A tiny geology of stains and cuts.

Brother

New to you, or hoping it's worth another go.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-6FxAZsiTQ

February 1999

I reached for the shadow of the bannister

and almost fell -

Disaster Averted (Major Appliance Division)

One of our old neighbors and current gardening client of Teri's is remodeling their kitchen, and they offered us their old refrigerator (for free). Given that this unit is larger and better-made than the Maytag lemon we've been stoically enduring for more than twelve years, Teri of course said yes.

So the plan (Stage One) was this: rent a U-Haul pickup and heavy-duty dolly, hire Teri's sometime gardening helper Louis to provide some young-person muscle, drive to Sandy's house in Piedmont, haul the new unit out of their garage, pull it up onto the truck via a ramp made of two thick planks of wood, drive it back to our place, get it off the truck, get it up our front steps, and park it in our dining room until Stage Two.

After smashing and gouging several fingers and Louis spraining his back in the process of just getting it out of the garage and into upright position, I contemplated the various ways this could play out, going forward. Nearly all of them involved additional injuries and possible destruction of the appliance.

I then made what I believe was a judicious call - I said, this is a very good point at which to stop our do-it-yourself effort and hire a professional. I mean, really. Holy Shit.

So we parked the now-upright unit - which I came to finally see was as big as Frankenstein on steroids - in an alcove off their driveway, and now the hunt is on for an actual trained, equipped mover.

Again, I feel like a wise, wise man. A wise man who is now more than $100 bucks in the hole for this "free" appliance, and who will likely be spending a hundred or two more before all's said and done. But, again, I mean, really. Holy Shit.

When I say I'm happy

it means that at this moment - if only for this moment - there is nothing else I want, and everything within reach of my senses and my memory feels like a treasure.

All Hallows Eve Eve

When the kids were little - and even ten, eleven - it was easy to get that Halloween buzz, because they were just so into it; I mean, how could you not?

But this year, my oldest is seven hundred miles away, and my youngest is fifteen, so yes, it took a bit of effort to drag home the two large pumpkins (only ones left at our Safeway), cut 'em open, scrape 'em out, and carve (or in the case of Jackie's and Teri's, drill 'em out).

But I'm glad we did it. She's still into it, though she may act a little cool about it sometimes. Believe me, I want to avail myself of every trick in the proverbial book to slow time down and treasure every second.

SEA-TAC, 4 PM

Got a ride to the airport way early, and again breezed through Security in less than five minutes. With more than two hours till boarding time. Jeez. Airports are, as everyone knows, a place where time crawls and your powers of concentration are sapped by the drone of Muzak and fragmented by each booming, repetitive announcement over the PA.

But I scored an actual table and chair outside a Starbucks directly across from my gate, and SEA-TAC furnishes free w-fi that actually works. So this is actually sort of homey in an early 21st century way.

The trip was a success as far as my bosses were concerned; the event at the museum was well-attended and - atypically for a gathering of this kind - most of the attendees appeared to be in good spirits and curious to hear what we had to offer. So my colleagues and I rose to the occasion and did our song and dance with gusto (again, not the first time I've been struck by the performance aspect of sales).

Later, John and Steph picked me up and we went to a Chinese restaurant by the water (don't ask me which water - but there were many small boats bobbing on the silver-black surface beneath our window).

We drove back to near where I was staying and we stumbled upon a cool pub (http://www.mcmenamins.com/308-mcmenamins-queen-anne-home) with great beer. Started with a sampler tray; John and I moved on to pints of Terminator Stout. Then they walked me back down the hill through a light rain to my hotel where soon I was deep asleep.

Once In a While You Get Shown the Light

 

I had a boss, a few years back, who was well-meaning but basically ineffectual; he was just not good at connecting with people (a grave flaw for a person in sales). In fact, the rest of my co-workers seemed to actively dislike him, and treated him with close to open disrespect. I never really understood exactly why they were so contemptuous of him, but neither could I muster up much of a defense for him - he really was kind of a putz.

But in the course of one of the ongoing sales trainings he held, he said something which was very true and moving, and held far more significance than anything else I ever heard him say.

What he said was that no matter how successful or accomplished you are in your field, there will still be times you will do a bad job, or otherwise suffer setbacks and disappointments. And at that those times, you need to remember that there is a"you" who is not just the person doing your job. There is a "you" that was there before any job, and for that matter before any of the relationships in your life. And you need to remember that person, and to remember what that person believes in, and to take care of that person. Because your true happiness and success depend on that original "you".

("....in the strangest of places, if you look at it right...")

Up North a Lttle Ways

Flew out of OAK at 9 AM. Felt like a hotshot because Teri dropped me off outside Alaska Airlines at like 8:20 and I boarded the plane at 8:35 without breaking a sweat. Strange how satisfying tiny victories can be.

Landed in SEA-TAC right on time; met my colleagues (who had flown in out of SFO), jumped in the rental car, and drove to our sister company's offices in Issaquah, where we conferred on a range of technical topics at the outer edge of my competence, and also helped with some prep for the event they are co-hosting tomorrow afternoon at EMP|SFM (Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum). This is my kind of geekdom, no question about it - I'm actually looking forward to it, assuming I get to spend some time exploring.

Then we drove to a sports bar and watched the Giants beat the shit out the Rangers, while drinking many beers and eating high-calorie/high-fat foods....those of you who know me know that this is not my typical night out. And that's probably a good thing. Still, good company, fun horsing around. Part of who I am is being able to plunge into this kind of foreign territory and find a groove. (I did enjoy the fact that SF won, I will freely admit).

As a special bonus, once I make my way through whatever tomorrow brings, John and Steph will be picking me up and we'll go out to dinner. And not at a sports bar. No offense to sports bar aficionados. If that's an actual demographic.

OK, I will admit

 - part of why I grieve for the past? Full goddam disclosure - I miss looking (and feeling) like this. I will take the hit here - I am a very bad buddhist.

But - I AM working on it -

After a long hiatus

 - maybe as long as five months, I seriously don't know - The Waterdogs finally reconvened, at least in our acoustic quartet manifestation. Quintet, actually, since Kurt had our occasional collaborator Gerry Tenney sit in. (For those of you steeped in Beatles' lore, I guess I'd compare Gerry's presence as similar in its stabilizing effect as Billy Preston's during the Let It Be sessions).

When we do our acoustic practices, we generally hold them in either Joe or Kurt's living room, and they are usually literally 100% acoustic - no mikes or amps of any kind. For me, this is a liberating experience - I get to wander around, bend, and move however I want, as I sing and play. Not sure if everyone else agrees, but it works for me, and not for the first time do I give thanks for the street music I played all those years ago - taught me how to sing and play nice and loud when needed.

We were decidedly rusty in some spots, but after that much downtime, hell, no shocker. Given that, we sounded OK. I felt a little bad for Gerry, since we had no charts or cheat sheets and not really enough time to walk him through the material, most of which he hadn't played in at least four years, if he'd ever played it all. But he's a pro, and he dug in fine, plus played us a couple of his (simpler) tunes for us to stumble through in return.

When it comes together, it's like leaving the ground, or like having the wind fill your sails; always has been, always will be.

Walked out this morning

and the rain - which had been only a slow pulse of mist or fluttering curtain of droplets on Friday and Saturday, but had grown more serious on Sunday - had moved on.

As soon as I opened our front door, the sharp scent of the wet brown leaves on the sidewalk wafted up through the cool clean air. Mind you, around here, the seasons play hide-and-go-seek - it could be Autumn in the morning then back to Spring by noon, then early Winter after sunset. So the transience of these markers makes them pack an extra punch.

And of course, after real rain, the birds seem to sing much louder. Makes me wish I knew their names. After all this time, about the only one I can identify by sound is the crow. Wonder what that means.