Pitbullshark

Jeffrey Dahmer of the Woods

2012-01-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

I certainly very much enjoyed my first cut Christmas tree, but the going in is better than the going out. While I am pretty sure I will have one again next year, I nevertheless wonder if the whole thing makes more sense when one lives in a rural setting, or if urban or suburban, then at least living in a house with a yard. Somehow having a cut Christmas tree, especially with the disposing-of-it-after-Christmas issue, in an urban apartment may seem as peculiar as having a pet tiger…something that more reasonably belongs in and can be better taken care of in a different and more appropriate environment.

First, getting the tree home…certainly not every urban dweller has a truck, or, if they do, it is more of an affectation rather than something they ordinarily will get much use out of. I guess maybe one could stuff a Christmas tree into the back of an SUV (most of which never haul anything except children), but the whole Christmas tree thing seems to fit more of an image of tromping out into the snowy woods, cutting one from your farm’s tree lot, and then dragging it home. None of that in the big city. As for me, I had mine delivered, and was thankful for the service.

The place where I bought the tree advertised a disposal service at the end of the holiday, but when I asked about it, they said that it wasn’t them, but a separate service that they would be happy to refer their customers to…all arrangements would made with that particular company. Somehow this extra step was enough for me “think about it later”, which I also did when I saw that the place was selling “Christmas tree disposal bags”, at a price I don’t remember, but somehow it seemed that the disposal service and the bag, together, were going to cost more than the whole tree did to buy in the first place, and that is not even counting the cost of the delivery (and tip), so I balked. So, I just took one step at a time.

But soon enough (actually, surprisingly quickly), it was time to deal with that issue. Despite having a full bowl of water to sip on, the tree was noticeably drying up, even before Christmas. This did not destroy its appearance, but instead, as the thick, rich, full foliage “shrank”, it revealed the lights more (which I had buried into the branches), which was quite pretty, and still did show green, although a paler green than it had shown originally. So I was happy to keep it going a while longer, keeping an eye toward New Years day.

But, alas, the calendar turned and New Years came and went and winter break was over and I was back at work. For sure the time was now to undecorate the house and figure out how to get rid of the tree, which I thought of kind of like a pet that needed to put down.

I was curious about “curb-side” pick-up, but, looking on-line, found nothing conclusive. It seems that in my area, trees can be “dropped off” at several county parks and fire stations, but only on Sunday, January 8, between certain hours. No mention of any kind of curb pick-up, and indeed, last week along my commuting route, I saw only one tree outside on the curb and there it stayed all week.

I did find an advertisement for what I bet is the same pick-up disposal service that the place where I bought my tree mentioned, but it just seemed to cost too much, so I was reluctant to simply use them. I figured the best bet would be for me take advantage of one of the drop-offs, but for that, to be able to put the tree into my car, I felt I needed to put the tree in a disposal bag. However, now it seems that where I bought my tree (where I saw the bags for sale) is closed for an indefinite time. This isn’t because they are only a Christmas tree lot, because they are not. They are a vegetable and fruit farm, selling produce all year-round, or so I thought. Anyway, they aren’t open NOW, so no Christmas tree disposal bag.

I decided the best thing for me to do would be to cut up my own tree. Using a hand saw, I cut off the top two feet. This revealed a forest of branches underneath, so I began to eviscerate the tree, one branch at a time, sawing, sawing, sawing, and stuffing the branches into regular kitchen garbage bags (which were too thin, but serviceable). I figured this would be good enough for stuffing pieces of the tree into my car’s trunk, which otherwise wouldn’t have carried the tree whole.

I admit that I felt like Jeffrey Dahmer, doing this, except that instead of my apartment now flowing in blood and internal organs, the tree version is needles…so many needles…a virtual unstaunchable torrent of needles.

I’ll tell you this, if you love the scent of an evergreen tree, having had the tree, itself, over the Christmas holiday gives you only the hint of evergreen, but cutting one up from limb to limb, you’d think I spilled a whole bottle of Pine Sol. Also, there is quite a lot of tree sap generated, which required me to stop and wash the tar off my hands as I progressed.

It was at the time of cutting off these branches and attempting to stuff them into kitchen garbage bags that I came up with my “you ought to be rural for this” thesis. How badly I simply wanted to burn the whole thing, a nice wintry bonfire in the evening would be perfect, or, failing that, I could be warm and toasty crackling these branches in a wood-burning stove. But, an urban apartment…please.

The most laborious aspect of it all was the shifting Sahara of pine needles all over the place. I had read on-line that one needs to sweep up all the pine needles, NOT vacuum them, as apparently they can gum up your vacuum cleaner’s works (must be that tar, again). Taking them at their word, I actually did sweep up those needles, and added them to my kitchen garbage bags (picking up handfuls of them). Of course there was still some dusty duff that I couldn’t manage to pick up off the living room carpet, so that portion (not too much), I did vacuum. I discovered that when I did some more vacuuming today, that my vacuum cleaner (at least with this bag still in it) is now a powerful pine scent atomizer.

I kept the eviscerated Christmas tree parts by my front door all weekend until this morning, Sunday morning, the day that all these places were accepting the drop-off of dead Christmas trees. Now for the task of getting the bags out to my car. However, only a third of the bags completely filled up my trunk, and left a trail of pine needles (and on the floor of my trunk), to boot. And, sitting right there next to me were four perfectly good garbage dumpsters, not anywhere near full…in fact, the furthest one was nearly empty, and I knew that the garbage collection would occur tomorrow. So, to heck with it, I simply threw the sections of tree into the dumpster. I’m not quite sure why I shouldn’t…after all, except for the garbage bags themselves, this is definitely biodegradable and may actually be good for the landfill. I am pretty sure the apartment complex’s gardeners put their prunings into the dumpster. Still, I did feel a bit “bad”, like I had put myself in league with all those people I complain about who throw their furniture away in (and mostly around) the dumpsters (which is against the lease). I wished that the management of the complex had sent notices around to all the tenants regarding the best way to dispose of their dead Christmas trees, but they ignored the issue, leaving it to the devices of the residents, which is not the best idea.

As an example of that, one person had simply dragged their finished Christmas tree out to the dumpsters and left it lying there, still nailed to its stand and water bowl, right in the exit path of the guy who parks next to me. Next time he wants to leave, he will be faced with having to do something with that old Christmas tree that is blocking his egress. It’s still unimaginable to me this low level of action (simply leaving a Christmas tree there for another tenant to deal with), but in this place, the unimaginable is becoming “normal” quite fast. Of course, whoever did that wouldn’t be expected to even have a saw to use for cutting up his tree like I did, let alone actually do the work of cutting it up, the benefit of which apparently would accrue only onto to somebody else, a stranger, no less. Which takes me back to the idea of having to being rural again, where self-reliance and, I hope, some consideration of your neighbors, might be the norm. Which makes me wonder why people like that celebrate Christmas at all. Just what does it mean to them, exactly? In their heart and soul, do they even have a place for meaning?

If I Express It, Maybe It Gets Better

2012-01-02T13:17:00.001-08:00

One thing good about starting back to work tomorrow after having had one of the best winter breaks ever--and this is the only good thing I have thought of so far--is that I won't have to hear every day the horrible voice of the man who lives down below me. I don't really know if he actually does live there, I don't think I have ever seen him (I only hear him), as I had originally thought who had moved in was three very ugly girls (young women). I wouldn't ordinarily think to describe anyone as ugly, and the fact that all three are grossly overweight has nothing to do with it, but when I happened to run into them waddling across the parking lot and gave them a very friendy "hello", they ignored me entirely, which in this complex (or neighborhood) could mean that they don't understand a word of English (or even have the ability to interpret a smile), or, more likely, actually are very ugly people. Their ignoring my friendly overture lifted any optimistic veil I might have had covering my eyes and I could see quite clearly that the very best word to describe all three of them was "ugly".

It must be that all three girls were moving in, they kept piling in so much junk that boxes and bean bag chairs and every other kind of assorted (ugly) junk filled up even the dining area that is easily seen from the front door. They even filled up their balcony with junk, something that is against the lease, but is something that is generally ignored elsewhere in this complex, as well. As the quality of the clientele here has diminished steadily over the months (to the extent that I feel a rush of surprise and positive energy if I happen to run into somebody here who is actually decent), so have the standards, to the extent that, apparently, there no longer are any standards at all.

The unit below me is like mine, a three-bedroom apartment, so three college-age girls commonly makes sense for that size of an apartment if one isn't a family. In fact, I have finally understood why there is so much moving in and out, which I have observed over the months and determined from some conversations I have had with those doing the moving out--they are singles who have roommates and the roommate moved away for some reason, and, since the tenant couldn't find another roommate, he or she had to move out, too. The other big reason is that if it is a couple, they break up, or get a divorce. The complex is large enough, and the relationships unstable enough, that there is a U-Haul in the parking lot almost every single weekend, including the resultant thrown-out ratty furniture crowding out my parking space...also against the lease, and also generally ignored, of course, because it is impossible to police and it seems that people have lost the ability to police themselves. Which means that I will very soon be treated to a whole forest of dead Christmas trees also crowding out my parking space. For my own (sadly) drying-up Christmas tree, I have found several places run by Los Angeles County where you can for free drop off your trees to be turned into mulch, so that's where my own will be going. By the way, a few days ago, I took to one of the county's hazardous waste disposal three bags of stuff--one filled with expired prescription medications, one filled with expired over-the-counter medications, and the third filled with old grooming products that I no longer use. Imagine, I didn't just throw all that out into our apartment's dumpsters, how weird everyone here would think I must be to not do that!

As ugly as the "three girls" were, they weren't really very noisy, which was a blessing compared to whomever lived there before, the heavy pot smokers who generated smells in addition to their constant fighting and door-slamming noise, not to mention their yippy little dog whom they would put out onto the balcony (instead of walking him like they should), which made his yapping all the more evident to my ears. I seriously contemplated dropping down some poisoned meat, and I love animals and normally would never think of such a thing, but this dog simply did not deserve to live. I prayed for these people to move out, but, you know, be careful what you wish for.

However, after a month of blissful quiet, I soon started to hear the sound of a baby or child crying. Now, this isn't minding that per se, or least, in this case it wasn't the crying itself that was bothering me, but more that it sounded like a child who was possibly being abused. I definitely couldn't hear clearly enough to make any kind of a determination on that score, nor can I explain exactly why that thought would enter my head, but somehow, this didn't quite sound like a baby's "normal" cry, but had some note to it that made me think "abuse". And with three obese ugly girls taking care of it (read: "serious emotional problems and frustrations"), abuse sure seemed like a possibility, but not enough for me to call any kind of authority, but just enough to put me into a state of constant tension whenever I would hear it.

It was soon after that that I began to hear the voice of this hideous man. Again, I don't believe I have ever seen him, but there is some evil quality to his voice that makes me want to vomit. He never seems to speak, he only seems to shout. It is impossible to understand what he is actually saying, because it is in a foreign language, so for all I know, he may be saying "Honey, do you want me to help you with dinner?", but instead it sounds like anger and bullying. I do think it is Spanish, but I have never heard Spanish sound ugly, before, so, again, I think he actually is speaking ugly, angry, bullying words. Anyway, he seriously puts me on edge and the fact that I live so close to such a horrible-sounding man is disturbing, and also a bit frightening, thus the feeling of nausea that overcomes me, as if I, myself, were the child fearing abuse.

Without knowing his story at all, what I can imagine is that he was the "lover" (using that term very loosely) of one of the ugly fat girls, who got impregnated by him and now this is the baby of the two of them, who are not married. He is probably taking no responsibility for this baby at all, but comes by periodically just for some more sex. I can't imagine anyone wanting sex with one of those three girls, whichever one it is, if any of them, but from the sound of him, he can't be too choosey. He probably hates her for her ugliness, though, and he hates her for his sexual need (a man like that doesn't take responsibility for anything, even his own desires; it is all the fault of somebody else). And so it is possible that the abuse of the baby comes from him...in fact, I have started to notice that the two sounds are now often concurrent. Again, not anywhere near enough for me to be conclusive, only negatively imaginative.

Fortunately, I really don't think he lives there, but, instead, comes loudly clomping up the stairs (also disturbing to me) and slammingly enters the door and the shouting begins until he slams the door on his way out and his hobnail boots go stamping on down the stairs and his car-sorely-in-need-of-a-muffler-repair goes booming out of the parking lot. I hate him and want him totally gone. Even if everything I have imagined is 180 degrees away from factual, the hideous sound of his voice, alone, is enough for me to want him removed to a different dimension.

I am sure that all this makes it seem that I live in a truly awful place and, of course, must want to move, myself. Well, I do want to live in a house (living here has made it very clear that I would never buy a unit in a condomium) and have no idea what my future holds, but I actually really love the apartment, itself. And unless I were a millionaire (or maybe even billionaire), I have no idea where I could go where the entire culture, itself, isn't falling apart. Fortunately, except for some noise and a certain feeling of "aloneness" (the negative aspect of "solitude"), my life here is good. There are so many neighborhoods that are much, much worse. From a middle-class point of view, this one is still pretty good. Although I will admit to being disturbed by having discovered just last week that the Spanish-language billboards are now only one major street to the north away (as you travel south from here, the neighborhood goes from middle class to some of the more upper class in the entire San Fernando Valley, but as you travel north from here, well, the billboards being in Spanish tell you what that means).

With the United States being economically more polarized than ever before in its history, and it is predicted to get only worse, the ones who are being hurt are the middle class. The rich class seems to still be untouchable, and the lower class is now the ever-increasing majority. When one reads of people moving out of Los Angeles specifically, and out of California generally, I think the ones doing that moving are the middle class. Again, the rich are still benefitting from the assets that California has to offer, and the poor somehow just keep on piling in, across the border if from no place else.

Strangely enough, I am actually liking Los Angeles more than I ever have before, but still, if I ever manage to hear of (and be convinced of) any place in the world where things are actually getting better (and by that I don't mean China, which most westerners think is the economically booming place, but I think that it is heading for a serious correction, or Africa, some countries of which actually have logged in some of the highest economic growth on the planet, meaning "up from nowhere", so...no), I would visit there to see what it was really like, and maybe even make plans to move there. However, so far, I have not heard of one hint toward anything in that regard. Instead, what I have heard of strikes me as ridiculous; mostly extremely rich Americans moving to what they believe is the real-life version of Atlas Shrugged's "Galt's Gulch", but which is located, not hidden away in the mountains of Colorado, but in southern Argentina. I say, "Argentina, you've got to be kidding me;" that's a country that seems to alternate among dictatorships, socialism, and economic collapse, which one of those cycles is the one that is supposed to be appealing? Of course, I'm not rich enough, or "mover and shaker" enough to be welcome even if it really were a genuine "Galt's Gulch" but as it is, it is a commercial real estate venture that heavily advertises its golf courses and the like and is being sold more like a billionaire's resort except not in a Caribbean paradise. So that one is a "no".

So, for now, like most everyone else, I am stuck with what we've got and attempting to make the best of it. So for me, to quote Nick Vujicic, "Attitude is Altitude".

I Brake For Lemonade Stands

2011-12-17T14:28:00.000-08:00

I absolutely have been having the best time this Christmas season, not exactly sure why (although I have generally felt extremely good this whole year), but I think it may have something to do with my having put up a Christmas tree.

This, honestly, is the first time I have ever gotten my own tree. For most of my Christmases, I had gone to my parents’ house, which continued every Christmas (with few exceptions) as long as they were alive. This took me far into my adulthood.

For those few exceptions, I have lived in apartments that were too small to fit any but the smallest (artificial) tree, which sort of counts, but not really.

For the past couple of years, I have been spending the few days immediately surrounding Christmas at the house of my brother and his wife. But they do not decorate for Christmas (but my brother’s wife does the most marvelous COOKING, plus they are a blast to visit, so I am definitely NOT complaining!) I think my brother had his fill of Christmas decorating, because the brunt of that effort our mother put HIM to, mainly because he was always able to get to their house many days before the rest of us were able to make it (remember that our mother had multiple sclerosis which made her bed-ridden, so she could no longer do the decorating herself, which she sorely wanted to do). So HE was one who assembled their large (artificial) Christmas tree, put on all the lights and decorations, and did all sorts of other decorating until the rest of us got there to help. I swear, our mother wanted every inch of their house decorated for Christmas, right down to things hanging on every doorknob, dozens of needle-pointed Christmas theme pillows on all the furniture, and Christmas-oriented hand towels in the all the bathrooms. There wasn’t a square foot of wall space that didn’t have something Christmasy hanging there. And, oh yes, there were Christmas coasters and Christmas barware (you drank VERY well at our parents’ house…my father seemed to stay planted at the bar the whole season, and you WILL partake! Hey, my arm doesn’t need twisting; and if you were a friend of theirs, yours didn’t, either!).

I don’t want to make it look like the rest of us were slackers…at least, not me, anyway, because since our brother was the one who had put most of it all up, the rest of us were the ones who had the job of taking it all DOWN. I think I would rather decorate than undecorate, but that’s how it was and I’m not complaining…I wish we could still do it, parents and all (but if they have a way of checking in on me, they already know that they are thoroughly IN me).

But lately I have felt that something was missing Christmas-spirit-wise and realized that now that I live in a place large enough to easily fit a full-sized, cut Christmas tree, that was what I wanted. And I’ve been able to enjoy it ever since Thanksgiving, and will continue to do so up to New Year’s.

I pretty much knew where I would go buy my tree, a place that is normally a strawberry farm near where I live, one of the very few farms still remaining in the San Fernando Valley (which, once upon a time, was completely agricultural, but Los Angeles spread and spread and spread). They always fill up an immense lot with beautiful trees.

Since I figured I’d have to somehow get it home, myself, and I really wasn’t into getting involved with tying it onto the roof of my car or some such (guaranteed that it would slip off before I got to the next block), I felt that I’d have to get one small enough that it would either fit into the trunk of my car, or maybe my backseat (uh oh, tree needle city!).

However, fortunately, they had signs everywhere on the lot advertising that they would deliver (for a reasonable fee), and when I checked on it, I learned that they would actually deliver whatever tree I bought that very day (THAT sold me)! Good thing, too, because I saw that the four-foot trees just weren’t going to cut it, I wanted something at least my height or it wouldn’t satisfy my desires.

The truth was that every single tree they had was full and beautiful and perfectly shaped. They were all lined up in perfect rows by the species, starting with the least expensive ones, the Douglas Firs, and going up from there to the most expensive, which were Noble something…but I actually liked the Douglas Firs the best, so I picked out a 6 ½ foot one that seemed to call out my name (like a puppy in a pet shop), so that’s the one I bought. The woman who rang up my sale was a jolly elf, laughing and full of cheer and so happy that I was happy, so the entire purchasing experience was a delight.

And the delivery occurred without a hitch, with two people who carried my tree up to my apartment on the third floor and set it down in my living room right where I wanted it. Immediately, the whole house smelled like I was camping in an evergreen forest (which I now have a yearning to go do some weekend!), a feeling that has not diminished. It is such a grand atmosphere to come home to after work.

I had in my storage unit (sadly, not yet emptied out…one of the projects I hope to work on this winter break) some Christmas decorations that I got from my mother’s collection after both parents had died (most of which she had made), but that storage unit is so solidly packed that I was unable to find that box or those boxes; it would have required emptying the whole thing out, and I had neither the room nor the time to deal with that. So I realized that I had to buy some new decorations and strings of lights, with the idea of leaving some room my mother’s things for NEXT year. (Didn’t quite work out that way…it was hard to estimate and what I bought was enough to fill up my whole tree.)

Shopping for Christmas decorations (at Target) was another joy. Families were there in all of the aisles and I could hear the excited voices of children that filled up my heart. “Oh Mommy, look at THIS, can we buy this, can we, please?” So sweet. Of course, I loved buying things for my own tree, but I truly loved being there among the families who were buying things for THEIR tree. I kind of feel like I am with them, even if I am not. But I would share in the fun with them and would laugh and joke with them, and everybody seemed to enjoy this sense of shared happiness. Why not do that?

Back at home, I put on some good music that I could sing along with as I worked, and I truly did have a blast decorating the tree, which ended up requiring four strings of lights (I had to go back to buy two more strings; two just wasn’t enough!). My heart just soared. I knew that probably no one else was ever going to see this (my apartment really isn’t quite yet ready for “prime time”, as I say, so I have not yet gotten into entertaining mode), but it is actually okay to simply treat ones self, in fact, that is now one of the main lessons that I like to share (to whomever will listen to me if the subject comes up)…you MUST treat yourself and not deny yourself because “it is only you”. So, please, do things for YOU. Yes, do things for others, but don’t leave yourself out. Make your life beautiful.

Here are some pictures of my tree, which I realize probably looks pretty pedestrian as Christmas trees go, I guess, and pardon some of the nearby junk (more winter break projects!), but I love it, and it looks so pretty in the evening when the white lights buried in among the feathery green branches are twinkling (hard to properly photograph THAT effect), so it’s all good.

And now that “I am participating”, I have been appreciating the Christmas decorations that everybody else has done, some of which is mind-blowingly spectacular, and some of which is simple yet still wonderful, and I am thankful for their efforts since it seems that they are communicating a certain feeling out to the general public (I, too, have some external decorations, a garland of purple lights along my balcony railing along with a Christmas snowman wind sock blowing in the breeze out there; for some reason, I am the only one in this immense apartment complex who has any external decorations). Much fewer people out in the community compared to previous years have decorated, though, which is troublesome (Increased unemployment? Continuing economic crisis?). I think there was more decorating for HALLOWE’EN (which I also did, mostly as an advertisement to the kids out there on the street that there was candy to be gotten at my house; that’s where the purple lights came from, which I bought at a Hallowe’en store—I figured I could use purple for Christmas, too, which I couldn’t do with orange as that would obviously be left over from Hallowe’en; those were the only colors sold at the Hallowe’en store. But purple is good.).

Decorating has been very sparse at work, too (absolutely nothing in the school’s reception lobby). This year, there was no “Secret Angel” festivities (gift-giving that would go on for a whole week and that usually garnered ever-increasing office decorating), but the woman who normally organized that didn’t want to do it this year, and another person who volunteered to take her place lived, according to many complaining people, “too far away” (okay, so she wasn’t a five minute drive down the hill...!). The kind woman who volunteered ended up with only six participants besides herself (with me being one of them), so she said “Let’s just do a simple gift-exchange and pot luck lunch here at work” (not a whole week of giving like we’d do when Secret Angel had twenty or thirty people participating), the kind where the first person opens their choice of wrapped gifts (NOT white elephant gifts, but something new that cost under $30), and then the second person can steal their gift or open a wrapped gift, etc. Some people hate that game (the “stealing” part), others really love it. But with us having so few people, there really wasn’t much stealing go on, but I think everybody ended up with something that they liked. Anything that anybody bought was worth having, so there really was no reason to take something from somebody else.

So that was fun, but the offices didn’t look much like Christmas (or any of the other winter season holidays).

I felt like there was a lot of generous gift-giving from our school’s parents and from some of the employees, though; I ended up with way more than I had ever gotten before (boy that sounds materialistic, but that’s not what I meant; what I mean is that suddenly at the last moment, a “lot of Christmas” came out).

I couldn’t possibly afford to give gifts to every employee (there are more than a hundred), and my administrative position doesn’t really “allow” me to choose favorites, so I had started the habit of giving gifts to those who chose to give gifts to me. Again, in a way, there’s something not quite right about that, but I honestly haven’t figured out a way around it, because I am constitutionally unable to simply receive gifts without giving anything in return. Fortunately, it’s usually the same people who give to me each year, so I already put them on my shopping list at the beginning of the season. However, there are often surprises; this year there were five surprises. I had prepared for these surprises by already having on hand something nice but generic to give in those cases, but some people fooled me by not giving me a small loaf of homemade nut bread or something like that, but really giving me something amazing and that took specific thought. So THEN I really had to SCRAMBLE to get them something somewhat equal in thought to what they had given me, which can be extremely hard to do at the last minute. Thursday evening, I spent several hours at Pier 1, which was an appropriate store for one of those who had given me a spectacular gift and which I figured might have something good for the others. I kept finding things that I wanted for myself, actually, but for the most part I stuck to my plan of finding things for the people who had surprised me.

While I was at Pier 1, a woman came over to me and said, “You are a man, I would like you to answer a question for which I want an honest answer.” Uh oh. While I am always quite pleased to be a “stand in” for my gender, I sometimes wonder if I am “man enough” to do so! But anyway, she stated her problem; she had to buy several gifts for some teenage boys and some grown men, all of whom live in France, so her task was to give them gifts that they would like but that didn’t cost a huge amount of money, and that would not be very expensive to SHIP. She said that she had spent several hundred dollars just in shipping costs alone, last year, and she just couldn’t do that again. I understand her problem, because I used to give gifts to people overseas and the shipping costs killed me, so I simply stopped doing it. She then went on say that the girls and women were EASY, and she proceeded to point out dozens of things right in the vicinity of where we were standing that would work for the females, but, obviously, none of that would work for the males (and she was right about that).

Well, she gave me quite a challenge, but one that I was internally ADAMANT that I had to solve for her. It’s not often that I get to speak for all male-kind, and FRENCH ones, to boot! But gee, surely I ought to be able to figure that one out. But before she spoke, she outlined all the things she had already done BEFORE, thus instantly wiping out every idea that had immediately come to my mind. So now that I was tapped out, I kind of just stood there hemming and hawing to the extent that she decided that I was going to be no help and so thanked me for my willingness, but conceded that the task was impossible.

But it is NOT impossible, but give me some TIME, okay? I asked her if she was going to be in the store for a while longer, and she said “Yes”, that she still have some other shopping to do there, for the GIRLS.

I said, “Okay, I have to do some more shopping here, too, so let me think about it as I look around and if I come up with some good ideas, I go find you.”

She answered that that was a good idea, although I could hear the sigh in her voice that meant she never expected to see me again.

However, as it turned out, I had gotten only about two aisles away from her, when I got my answers that I was going to share with her. Fortunately, I found her nearby.

I told her that it was almost certain that the teenage boys were into video or computer games and that there would be no limit to their capacity to absorb and enjoy those. All she would have to do would be to find out from their mother (or mothers) what system they used, Playstation, X-Box, Microsoft, or whatever, because a game for the wrong system would be useless, and while she was at it, maybe she could find out what KIND of game each one liked, such as role-playing, battle games, life simulation games, building games, travelling games, violent fighting games, “Car Theft” games, sports games (basketball, football, hockey, etc.). I said that fortunately with computer games, the software standards are international, unlike, say, movie DVDs, which have to conform to a regional standard in order to be playable.

Also, computer games come on a disc, so they would be very light and inexpensive to ship.

She LOVED that idea and said that it would be snap to find out from their mothers the right system and type of game. She also seemed to know where she could find these games (I would have suggested the two places that I knew, WalMart and Fry’s Electronics, but she seemed okay on that score). I had given her THE acceptable and useful answer for the teenage boys.

As to the adult men, I said that EVERYBODY likes music, and CDs, of course, are as light and inexpensive to ship as the video games would be. Now, she might not know what taste these men have in music, or what music they may already have and what they may want, but I had a solution for that, too. I told her to go home and get on her computer and do a search for “Concord Records” (actually, when I checked it out at home afterwards, the right spot is “Concord Music Group”, but Google would send her to the right place). Concord Records would be a supplier of rare, collector, or unique artist retrospective CDS or CD sets that those in France (and in the US, as well) might not be in a position to be familiar with. I know all about Concord Records, as Hal Gaba the OWNER of that company, was on the Board of our school’s Trustees and was someone whom I personally knew (unfortunately, he died a few years ago of cancer). He, and television producer Norman Lear (his partner in that venture) bought up some languishing record companies that happened to own an incredible treasure house of classic jazz studio tapes, material that HAD NEVER EVER BEEN MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC, by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Theloneous Monk, John Coltrane, and dozens of others. This is stuff you really can’t get elsewhere.

I said that, stereotypically, the French have very serious artistic tastes and the French have always welcomed jazz; in fact, in the early portions of the 20th century, black jazz artists from America found a powerful welcome in France, where they did not suffer discrimination, so even if these men didn’t specifically like jazz, they would still appreciate having one of these CDs, which maybe even would open up for them an appreciation of this high quality level of jazz.

Okay, so this woman now was really excited, first the video games, and now this, yes, yes, these were the answers, and she was going home right away and search for and then log on to Concord Records. I had solved her male-gift-giving-problem! Wow, I was so happy to help!

Now, here’s something else that happened that same Thursday evening. I had left work to take to the post office some very important mailings that had to be postmarked that day (December 15 was the deadline). Instead of taking my normal route home, I took a road that went down the hill to a spot that would take me quite close to the post office that I was going to use. It was already quite a dark evening anyway, but it had been a cold, rainy day, which deepened the sense of darkness.

Just as I came to a curve in the road, I saw a bright, “glow in the dark” hand-lettered sign that said “Write Your Teacher’s Name, Unique Christmas Gifts Here!” and a young boy and his mother sitting in front of their house at a table covered with what looked like a collection of small potted plants. Now, you remember the bumper sticker that people used to have, “I Brake For Small Animals”? I think maybe there was another one that said, “I Brake For Garage Sales”. I ought to have one made for me that says, “I Brake For Lemonade Stands”, and by that I mean, generically, anything that a child or a group of children have enterprisingly got together to sell, I will pull over for and buy from them. First of all, it is such a pleasure to deal with excited children, but also, I like to support what they are doing, which I think is a valuable help for their future. I want them to know that what they are offering will have an appeal to people, even though probably a discouraging quantity of cars will simply drive on by. So, in the past, I have bought lemonade dozens of times, large pink grapefruits that kids had grown in their yard, cleverly-carved miniature pumpkins that kids were selling prior to Hallowe’en one year, and more high school car washes than I can count.

Well, I WAS on my way to buy gifts at Pier 1 (described above) after going to the post office, so this one was in all ways a no-brainer. I had to find a place to turn around, and then wound my way back to the house, and since it was a busy road with a curve, the only reasonable place to park was in their driveway, which I did. I said it was quite a dark evening, but when that boy and his mother saw me enter their driveway, it was as if a spotlight had turned on. They were so HAPPY…and remember, they HAD been sitting out in the RAIN to do this (but at the moment, the rain had blessedly stopped).

What they had for sale were potted Christmas cactuses (that’s a smart idea right there), but they were better than simply one plant potted. The boy (whose whole idea this was), had put together little artistically arranged miniature gardens with several sizes of Christmas cactuses, some of which were blooming red and some of which were going to bloom soon, and also what his mother called “Thanksgiving cactuses” that were soon to bloom white, all set with beautiful stones in a way that was what I would call “casually zen-like” (if “zen” even CAN be casual…). Also, the boy had painted the perimeter of the flower pots below the lip or rim with blackboard paint, and had “planted” in the cactus garden a nicely-made brass “wire” that held up a piece of white chalk that was inside of a carefully spiraled loop. The idea of this was that you give this gift to your teacher, for example, and you could write her name on the blackboard portion of the pot, “#1 Teacher”, or whatever you wanted, or one could write and erase their own messages, just like writing on a blackboard.

And the prices were reasonable ($10, $15, or $20 depending upon the size) and intelligently set in that they didn’t require messy change-giving. I would have bought one of them regardless, simply to support the boy’s effort, but honestly, I LOVED them, and bought one in the $15 size that already had a really nice red bloom going on and several white ones that they told me would open in about a week. At the time I figured this would be a good “generic” gift to give to someone who had surprised me on the last day of school (Friday), but honestly, once I got it home and saw it clearly in the light of my kitchen, I realized that I liked this so much that I decided to keep it for myself. Up until now, I hadn’t had any plants in my apartment, but my Christmas tree (even though it was cut and will have to be thrown out after Christmas) seems to have risen within me the desire to have a plant in the house.

It ends up that while the boy goes to a different private school from the one where I work, the mother said that they knew a family whose children had gone there, and she told me the name and I knew who they were. Also, the woman told me that her mother’s best friend is the mother of one of our substitute teachers, whom, when she told me her name, I described as “a goddess”, and absolutely IS the first substitute teacher that any teacher of ours calls when they are sick, and, in fact, that teacher is basically there on our campus every single day. So that was fun, having those connections, and I am sure the mother will mention me to those people and say that I bought one of the boy’s cactus gardens. But I hope that he sells a lot, as he should. When I told one of my friends about this at work, she loved the idea of it, especially the idea of being able to write a message on the pot, so she told me she would go down there after work to buy one, too, which I hope she did.

I had to research on-line how to take care of this cactus, and found out that unlike most cacti, this kind comes from the JUNGLE, not the desert, so it doesn’t require, or like, hot sun baking down on it, which means that it doesn’t have to be outside, but can live quite well indoors (it does like LIGHT, though). Perfect.

This morning, as I was making my breakfast, I saw that beautiful red bloom with those waiting white buds, so perfect for Christmas, and instantly this blog entry was written in my mind, so here it is, now, all ready for you.

I hope you have a glorious Christmas, and may you thoroughly enjoy the joyfulness of the season.

Ghosts

2011-12-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving day during my Thanksgiving break (the family celebration of the holiday was going to take place on Saturday), I took a day trip up to Nevada County, where I had lived between the years of 1988 and 1993, and it had been a significant five years of my life. I had been back there one time again for a short while in 1996, for another, but quite different significant chapter in my life, but until yesterday, I had not been back there since.

I had no idea what to expect, but while there, I observed a typical phenomenon of my life, how just the sight of a road, or a building, or of anything, really, would immediately bring to mind something that I had done in that spot, even insignificant things, and this occurs even if some major details are no longer the same (such as whole blocks were razed and new buildings put in their place). It is clear to me that every single thing is recorded in memory (or perhaps stored in some kind of a spiritual cloud), the address of which for finding again actually IS an “address”, that is to say, an actual geographical location that one sees again. This tells me that the physical dimension, and the experiences there (since so strongly remembered and so easily recalled upon stimulation), are extremely important in a way that I might not have understood or appreciated before.

It is clear that these recallings ARE memories which may have no correlation with the present reality of the location. For example, I was somewhat horrified to see the house where I had lived, which had been mutated not only in appearance but also in spiritual atmosphere to the extent that I almost missed it entirely. It feels to me that after I and my particular energy moved away from there, nothing but low-life people moved in (perhaps a stream of them), and the place had become a place of an almost sickening misery. The house had been externally remodeled in an inexpert way, strictly for appearance’s sake, so that a structure that had once been almost beautiful due to its simplicity and honesty, now looked like a face that had undergone a hideously botched plastic surgery. Also, the place looked abandoned, and possibly even vandalized, so that I considered parking and actually walking into the grounds and looking around the property and peeping into windows. There was a real estate sign out front, so it might have been safe for me to do so. However, I wasn’t completely sure that there weren’t people currently living in there, so I was reluctant to invade what might be their privacy; that, coupled with a whole feeling of evil (or, at least, “neurosis”) about the place, convinced me to leave it alone and do whatever research I wanted on-line via the house’s real estate listing (which I did do later back at the hotel, and I saw that they had performed even more useless alteration and had expressed even more tastelessness on the interior of the house. Low-life, absolutely, and from driving on the mountain country road in this area, I felt that this area to me now looked like what maybe could be called “California’s Appalachia” and I wondered just what it had been that had drawn me to live in such a place at the time. I certainly had absolutely no interest in any of it now other than that I had had a past there; it for sure was NOT “me” any more, if it ever had been. It was, maybe, a detour in my own road and it might be valuable to analyze if anything that HAD been developed of me while I lived there is, any more, a genuine part of me, or should be.

Being way out in the middle of nowhere there, and on Thanksgiving Day when so many commercial enterprises are closed, I developed the need to go to the bathroom, in addition to which I was hungry, so I now headed back into the town areas of Nevada City and Grass Valley where I hoped to find a restaurant that was open in which I could satisfy both needs.

I decided my best bet would be “Lyons”, in a business area half-way between Nevada City and Grass Valley, which had the further value of having been a 24-hour coffee shop in which I had had many, many meals and wonderful experiences. In “those days” when I lived there, Lyons was a hang-out for Nevada County’s “theatre set”, of which I was a part. After rehearsals and performances, whole groups of us would head over to Lyons for a late-night meal and for me it was wonderful to have friends to do something like that with. And, even better, I was working on an unlikely relationship with a nineteen-year-old actor of remarkable beauty and talent, one who, surprisingly, responded back to me at every turn, who ended up moving in with me, and who remains to this day the only relationship with a male I ever had in which the loved one ever told me that he loved me, and when he volunteered this information to me (as he held and kissed my hand lovingly), I could absolutely feel it and clearly understand why he did. I could see through him the me that someone like him genuinely WOULD love, which is a very special and empowering experience. He and I, upon occasion before he moved in, would go to Lyons after a show, have dinner, and continue talking there until morning, at which time we would then have breakfast; pulling “two meal all-nighters” at Lyons. Due to this, Lyons had become one of our own special love-havens.

But as I drove down the hill on the freeway from Nevada City, I saw that “Lyons” was now no longer called that, but was “Lumberjack’s”, instead, and all redecorated in a split-wood, log-cabin type motif. Well, my bathroom needs had become even more urgent, so “Lumberjack’s” it was going to be.

After I finished in the bathroom and came out to be seated, the hostess seemed to be confused, for some reason, as to where she could seat me, which section was available (although the restaurant was far from crowded). But then suddenly appeared on the scene a beautiful young man, probably quite recently graduated from high school, who directed her to seat me in the section that was his. He was one of those whose very appearance washes away all other considerations or practicalities…his beauty becomes the only reality, and deeper than that, the only truth that matters. At first what I saw of him was only the perfection of the shape of his torso as it pressed against his shirt, although I was also subtly aware of his take-charge, solve-the-problems attitude. It also vaguely seemed to me that he very much wanted to have me in his section, which is something that now I feel quite strongly had been the case. He definitely had had the chance to have me seated in another section. Of course, one could say that the only “wanting” regarding that was mine, ME wanting to be in HIS section, but he had already been in the motion of insisting that I be placed in his before I had even seen him.

Where he had the hostess seat me was in the very first booth, the one closest to the hostess’s station, but on the other side of a wall that separated the booths from the area where people sat to be seated when the restaurant was crowded. Interestingly, the effect of that was that whenever he came into view, it was always a sudden appearance from behind me that I would see out of the corner of my eye. It also had the apparent effect of him coming onto a stage from the wing on the left, so there was no gradual fading of him in and out, or with longer views of him from a distance. He was either RIGHT THERE at my table, or else only a few tables beyond me. If this were a stage, I was sitting in the first row.

The hostess had given me a menu, one I had never seen before, of course, whereas I imagine that diners in that town already know the menu by heart. (When it was Lyon’s, I had known everything on THEIR menu.) But here I had hardly even opened the menu when he was there to take my order. I explained that I needed a few minutes, as I had never been there before. But this gave me a good excuse to say, “How long has this been ‘Lumberjack’s’? I remember when it was Lyon’s, which may be ancient history.” (I felt like adding, “Which was probably before you were born,” but I did not.) My main impulse, though, was not that I wanted to obtain information (although I was legitimately curious), but that I wanted to talk with him; I wanted to have more of an involvement with him than just giving him a food order.

He flashed me a glorious smile and he had devastating dimples that twinkled, and he answered, “Oh yes, I remember. It has been Lumberjack’s since September 5, 2010, but the restaurant has gone through several changes.” He began to tell me what name had followed Lyon’s, which I could now see had been pretty soon after I had moved away, and then the name after that. The name after that, I think he said, was “Sweet Pea,” but then in 2010 it became Lumberjack’s. While it wasn’t clear from his list of names whether these were all the restaurant’s changing hands (Lyon’s was, or had been, a chain, and upon later looking up Lumberjack’s on-line, I saw that it is a chain, also), but there was something magical about the WAY he said all the different names, in that from his manner in saying each of them, I could feel what their decorative atmospheres had been, what kind of clientele they had been designed to appeal to. He wasn’t TELLING me the names so much as he was vocally INTERPRETING them. His was an artistic answer, not a “business” or “financial” atmosphere.

And he seemed well-pleased to be telling me these things, and responsive to me being more than a customer who is unaware of or uncaring about the history of places and little design details and touches; in other words, he seemed to be glad that I was someone who fully experiences the experience, which, he, at the moment, was the main significant part of THIS one.

He then left to give me a chance to study the menu.

The restaurant, while not crowded, certainly seemed quite busy, at least in his section, and he seemed to be doing a good job of keeping everybody satisfied. He was quite occupied by bringing large plates of food to the various booths, and the people in each booth kept filling him with further requests, so for a while, all of his “on and off stage” movements involved him carrying things in either direction for the other diners. But finally, he suddenly materialized at my table (from behind me, of course) with his order book in hand, thanking me quite profusely for my patience. I indicated that I hadn’t suffered the least bit, but had appreciated having the time to look at all the appealing offerings that were on their menu. He very graciously received “my reprieve,” if that’s what it was, and I noticed that it was true that he genuinely was very beautiful in how he looked, the musical and poetic way that he spoke, the grace with which he moved, and the manner in which he operated, which I think I would describe as “compassionately extroverted and responsibly self-reliant.”

A person like that I can’t just leave alone, and by that I mean I had do something more than simply be someone who orders a meal and then moves on. But, as Juliet said to Romeo that first night on the balcony, “What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” I didn’t live there in town. It was highly likely that I would never see that guy again. And what could I possible be to him, anyway? To HIM, all I was was a customer. Maybe slightly more interesting or pleasant to work with than the normal, but that’s all.

I thought of so many things I could say to him, something funny, for example. In keeping with the theme of the place, they had running on the video screen (that so many restaurants feel that they need to have, these days) a lumberjack “Olympics”, in which Paul Bunyan-type guys were racing to chop their way through immense tree trunks. The way the guys were violently wielding those axes, it was like Bruce Lee crossed with an Ax Murderer coupled with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Next time that waiter suddenly manifested at my table with his dimples flashing, I was going say, indicating the video, “I’d hate to make one of those guys mad, the way they’d tear into me, I’d need plastic surgery from head to toe”! Believe me, it WOULD have been funny, except the waiter had gotten into a little drama from making a mistake with the order of the couple in the booth in front of me. He had gloriously arrived with two immense platters piled high with delicious-looking food, presenting to them with a flourish, “Two turkey platters” (remember, this was on Thanksgiving Day), but neither the man nor the woman moved a muscle, freezing the waiter in mid-flourish. “Wrong order,” said the woman. Flashing dimples gone. The self-reliant, graceful waiter was for a moment confused, but then remembered, and said, “Ah yes, prime rib and tilapia, not two turkey platters, I remember!” and off he was again, exit stage left. No stopping by MY table to hear funny comments about the ax-wielding lumberjacks.

Then the ax-cutting contest ended and now it was pairs of behemoth guys pulling saws back and forth, cutting logs the diameter of my rental car, making my hoped-for comment no longer appropriate, or funny.

Next out of the corner of my eye, the waiter RUNS like Wiley Coyote, and brakes to a stop at the mistaken table, this time laden with prime rib and tilapia platters, each one studded by a full miniature loaf of sourdough bread with the explanation, “Since you had to wait, I’m giving you each full loaves.” This seemed to be something he had taken upon himself to do for them, which I thought was respectable (although please don’t do that for me, I can’t even have the half-loaf). But the way he had RUN to them was magical. Again, he communicated so well with his entire body.

He then quickly exited the stage again, since he still had more plates to deliver. By now the whole lumberjack contest video had ended and there was nothing left but a slide advertising chainsaws from a local hardware store remaining on the screen. No appropriate comment occurred to me, now.

But thinking about how he had run by with those plates of food and how he had jerked to a perfect stop at those people’s table, I heard in my mind my asking him if he had ever performed on stage there. Here was the perfect leading man, physically gorgeous, and also a character actor for the funny parts. Anyone as expressive with movement as that, with such great diction and vocal interpretation, plus his perfect looks, he’d be the town STAR in no time. And for sure, no crippling stage fright for him!

I began to have a couple of fantasies…one was that he was currently acting on stage there, and was, in fact, already a star, and would be able to trot out some names of directors or theater owners or performing companies that he had worked with, whom I can say that I had known, or worked with when I lived there before, and it would have pleased him very much to have his qualities recognized by such a stranger seeing him out of context. This would be bound to make him feel good.

The other fantasy was that he was not performing in local theatrics there, but had wanted to and all he needed was just a tiny little push, such as the suggestion by a stranger that he do so. I couldn’t imagine that a guy who was like him DIDN’T have that desire, if he wasn’t already pursuing it.

Either way, this would give me the opportunity to do something for him, give him some gift that might have some positive impact on his life, and just the thought that maybe I could do that would be the satisfaction that I could obtain.

I did wonder, though, if what I was seeing in him was genuine, or was I being affected by the ghosts of all the performers who had filled these tables in the past. And was this still an acting town, where audiences would come from Sacramento, and maybe even the San Francisco Bay Area, to see plays in the oldest theater in California, or was all that, too, something from the past?

Had I just become a semi-senile “old man”, confusing a cute boy with the one I had courted and loved and who had wanted me, too, and who told me that he loved me several decades ago, the only one who had ever said it, and probably the only who ever would?

A good time to ask him my question, give him my verbal gift, would be when he comes to refill my coffee. However, when he did come, he didn’t have a coffee pot in his hand, but was there, instead, to tell those of us who were in his section that he was now having to leave to go to a family dinner and that he was turning his tables over to the waitress whose name he gave, but which I didn’t store my head. So, there was not going to be any time for any kind of humorous repartee, he wasn’t even going to finish the basic job of being my waiter for one meal. Still, despite this not being the best moment, I heard myself ask him my question.

He didn’t answer immediately, so I got embarrassed and said, “Not that I am recruiting or casting or anything, but I just thought that with your great expressive diction and appealing, extroverted mannerisms, and leading man looks, that you would be a natural for the stage.”

He then smiled that sunrise smile, and with comfort and ease canted his hips into a position of relaxation, and said that he had never been on stage, but that he had been politically active, had started an anti-litter campaign called “Super Hero” (“Be a Super Hero by keeping the environment clean) for the county that was meant to be directed at school children, in which he made county-wide presentations wearing a Super Hero costume and had been interviewed on the radio (the same radio station that had interviewed me about a play that I had directed) and he had become known for the character that he had created and played, and that he hoped to use his political experience in other helpful ways, as well. He than apologized profusely for having to leave, but assured me that I was in good hands with the waitress whose name I didn’t store, and that he hoped to see me there again, and then he moved on to the couple whose order he had messed up, and he apologized to them again for originally messing up their order, but they said that he had nothing to apologize for, he was a “Super Hero” to them, and he went on down the line of booths repeating that he had to leave but that he would be back in the restaurant that evening, and woman in the last booth he spoke to was very concerned that he wasn’t going to get the tip that she wanted to give him (which had I had been concerned about, as well, but I figured the take-over waitress would share the tips with him), but he assured her that he WOULD get his share and all was well.

And then he quickly walked out of there and then through the large picture windows of the restaurant I saw him run as fast as he could over to his black pick-up truck, and I had every expectation of seeing him speed that truck with a squeal out of the parking lot and down the street, but no, he drove at a very respectable, sedate, safe pace, the all-around great guy that he was.

Driving back down to my hotel in Sacramento after my day trip to Nevada County, I couldn’t get him out of my mind and I thought about his answer to my question. Politics? What did his answer mean? Was he saying to me, “No, I am using the qualities that you observed for genuine ACTION, not fantasy; I am using them for making a difference, not for simply telling a story or providing entertainment.” Was he, in a way, saying, “Thank you for your observations, but I am way ahead of you, already doing something else that I think is better”?

DO I think the “action” of politics is better?

Well, no, I do not, nor am I sure that that is the best use of his qualities. I never thought of politicians as beautiful, although I guess they could be. Who was the last good-looking politician that I could think of? President Kennedy, maybe. Mostly I just think of them as ugly, corrupt old men.

An actor on stage can create any of an infinite variety of characters all bringing to life a meaningful story that adds to the culture and enhances the growth of the individual who can open to the meaning of the story and apply its lessons to his own life. Being a “politician” is just ONE type of character, and I don’t think the waters run very deep, nor is the effect very positive.

In order for him to give me the answer that he did, he had to hear what I was saying, extract from it what the qualities were that he had used, and enumerated for me how every one of them he had used, similar to how he had had enumerated for me the name of every incarnation of the restaurant where he now worked. While he had never performed on a theatrical stage, he DID apply himself to a public arena in a different venue, even right down to his choice of wearing the costume of a Super Hero, and it was his body that had been the first thing of him that I had noticed, and he had been interviewed on the radio, where his only instrument would be his voice. So his answer was, in fact, a perfect and appropriate response to my question.

If a person actually hears what you say and is able to apply what you have observed of them into real examples from their life, then that means that you two have made a connection. So what he experienced that day was that he had been really SEEN, and what I gave him was the gift of that. If he wants to continue with political actions, then he has received further affirmation of the rightness of that path. If he has other desires, then his having been seen will also have been beneficial in ways that his genuine self will understand.

And it wasn’t the ghosts of performers from the past who distorted by vision. My vision was perfectly clear.

But the fact that THIS is the restaurant where he is making his living, makes me think that the ghosts have had a pull, after all. Perhaps they drew him there, and have made him feel right at home among them. We can rarely know the impact that we might have on people, but if we are willing to give the gifts of our positive, supportive observations, some good, either small or great, is bound to come in the lives of others we meet and are drawn to; it is making love.

"Gerry-Meandering" or Suddenly Understanding Existentialism

2011-10-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

It's getting more and more frustrating to contend with "canned" sites on the Internet that make me feel that they don't deserve to receive my attention any more. Yeah, I guess we really are just "advertising fodder" for them all so that they can earn Google money. They just want your presence, but they're not really interested in your content. (And sites like Facebook just keep tabs on everything you do on line so that they can sell the information to the government.)

I used to love to write movie reviews for the Internet Movie Database, but normally won't do it anymore unless I am an earlier writer in the process (such as when a movie first comes out). Who will manage to read what I write when there are hundreds and hundreds of other reviews?

But I recently watched a movie that I had ordered from Netflix that really stuck with me, a movie that apparently most people hated, but that I loved. That seems to be becoming a pattern with me...a movie that most people loved, I hated, and movies that most people hated, I love. (There are exceptions to that, of course...I am not completely perverse.) Well, one example of that was the Gus Van Sant movie, Elephant, which I viewed as an outstanding work of art, but that a shocking number of people hated (and definitely failed to understand). The usual complaint from haters is that a certain movie is "boring". Well, in response to that, I would like to quote a line from a Pet Shop Boys song, which seems appropriate here: "We were never bored because we were never boring." So, these people are bored, because they are boring, which I take to mean that their mind runs along the same shallow and simple channel and so anything, such as a work of art, that doesn't run down that same shallow and simple channel "bores" them. Their mind isn't engaged, because they are unable to grasp what is in there.

So, the movie that I recently watched was also a Gus Van Sant movie, Gerry, that I also took as being a great work of filmmaking art. I had no thought of writing a review of it, though, until I saw so very MANY negative reviews of the movie on the Netflix site. I mean, many people really, really HATED this movie, thought it was the absolute worst they had ever seen. They couldn't even imagine how anyone could possibly like it, and if they did claim to like it, there simply had to be something very wrong with them. Oh yeah, projection much?

So, against my better judgment, I decided to write a positive review of the film for the Netflix site, and I don't bang these things out, I take a great deal of time with them, so imagine my dismay when I finally got it the way I wanted it, and submitted it, that the site wouldn't take it because it exceeded its 2,000 words limit. I have no idea how many words long the review actually is (they don't even extend you the courtesy of giving you a running word count to help you out), but I don't really care; if they have to put an arbitrary limit on it, then they won't get this review from me, it's that simple. I don't need them to edit, or abbreviate me. Nobody would read it, anyway, as they already have something like 300 reviews. It was just my perverse pleasure to post a good review of the film in contrast to all the bad ones, but no, they lose out.

But I had written this thing and didn't want my whole evening to have been a waste, so I went over to the Internet Movie Database to post it there (despite their also having several hundred other reviews, so, again, nobody would really read mine), only to discover that they had an arbitrary word limit, as well, even worse than the Netflix site, 1,000 words (and, again, did not offer the courtesy of providing an actual word count). I didn't even bother to check out Amazon.com (who, maybe, HAS no limit, but I don't even want to check anymore), I was so disgusted by all these sites that I decided to heck with it, I will post it HERE on my OWN site, even though of all places, this has the least chance of any that anyone will read it, especially since this isn't even a site, like Netflix or IMDB, where a person is curious about this movie and maybe wanting to read a review of it!

Oh well. Maybe somebody WILL read this and actually be interested in renting this movie and watching it. (But they'll probably hate it!)

First, though, I better explain a little bit of what the movie is about (which was not part of my original review, since that would already be explained on Netflix or IMDB). The movie is deceptively simple. Two guys (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck...Casey Affleck was also one of the writers of the film), both calling themselves by the same name of "Gerry", are on some kind of a road trip, driving across the desert. After a long while of silent driving (the entire movie has no more than about two paragraphs of dialogue), they pull over and go on a little hike into the desert. There is a sign that says "Wilderness Trail", and apparently they allude to having some kind of a destination, which I am guessing is something like an interesting view point that they have decided to go look at. But they also decide to veer off the trail, either to take a short cut or they are simply interested in making their own way to the point.

They walk a while, and then become aware that they aren't really sure where they are. They have somehow lost sight of where the normal trail was, which, of course, would be totally easy to do, out there in the desert. So they deviate again in an effort to rejoin the original trail, but really, all they do is make their situation worse. As they continue to walk along, they kind of deflect from bringing into full consciousness the idea that they truly are lost. Instead of, say, sitting down and thinking the situation through logically, such as determine which directions were which, or setting up an awareness of various landmarks, they decide to split up and search for various higher grounds from which they may get their bearings, and then rejoin each other, but their plan sounds kind of vague and unclear, so, of course, this plan isn't successful but I guess there was some small victory in that at least they weren't permanently separated, which could happen, also.

This is pretty much the gist of the whole movie, they're attempting to find their way and putting a great deal of energy into the task, but their situation just continues to get worse and more desperate but without them ever actually squarely facing up to the full reality of their situation (as if to admit it would be to succumb to it). Watching this, I kept thinking of "Jews wandering in the desert for 40 years in search of the promised land", and deciding that that HAD to be a metaphor, that no tribe of people could actually manage to DO that. (FORTY YEARS?) I don't think that had anything to do with this movie, that was just what was going through my mind.

Okay, now starts the review that I tried to write for Netflix:

I'll start with my favorite scene of in the movie, which I view as "pure Gus Van Sant" just the way I like him. It was the eternally-long trudging scene, crunch crunch crunch, while they still had the energy to power forward, two vital guys, in which the two Gerries were filmed close-up on the side of their faces with one of them just slightly in front, but then he would sometimes briefly fall back, but they both nevertheless were kept right in the frame as they continued forward, for such a long time. To me, who has been an actor in films, this was the very essence of acting at its most difficult, and really shows the ability of Casey Affleck and Matt Damon to keep this up for such a long shot. It is so much easier to play a part and to naturally animate your face when you are having something to say, when there is a give and take in a conversation, but here, there was none of that, just two guys walking in a steady but desperate rhythm with various thoughts running through their head and the situation realistically playing across their faces.

I love Gus Van Sant's tracking shots, so amazingly beautiful, and the little short at the end of the DVD (if that's how you saw this movie) that showed them filming a scene with the "camera dolly railroad tracks" going almost infinitely across the white salt flats gives some hint of how this kind of camera work was achieved. But it was the actors that truly showed the magic of THEIR craft in this amazing scene. YOU think it is easy...but it's like a staring contest with yourself, and unless you are of that level, you will lose.

From Elephant I had fallen in love with Gus Van Sant's style of filming close-up to his performers' faces to the extent that you become totally smitten by their humanity, and so I was entranced by this particular scene in "Gerry", which made it anything but boring. Maybe one has to have actually acted in a movie in which a camera was held close to their face for ten minutes like that to truly understand the power of such a shot and the skill of the actor who can deal with it.

Many of the "hated the movie" reviewers couldn't believe "how stupid" these two guys must have been to "go off on a hike in a desert with no water," blah blah blah, (how easy to pass that judgment while sitting comfortably in your living room or safe in your civilized movie theater) yet it was clear to me that this was just meant to be a short hike, maybe a half-hour's walk over to a particular view point...YOU wouldn't bring along anything, either. (They were smokers, so yes, they did happen to have matches or a lighter, so at least they could make fire, but this had nothing to do with "preparation".) And how VERY easy it is to get lost if you aren't paying attention and it can happen in the dense woods as well as in a stark desert where there really is no clear trail. Or anywhere, for that matter. I submit that the vast majority of the people in the world are just as lost, they just aimlessly trudge through life without any understanding of anything at all, and when things get bad, they just keep making them worse, having no clue as to what else to do. The whole state of our country, today, is a perfect example of that (any
country...just pick one).

I also loved the cinematography, and the views of the great vistas and rolling clouds and so on perfectly reminded me of a situation I had gotten myself into, in which I was attempting to drive between Reno and Sacramento one late December evening when a sudden "Donner Party Killing" snowstorm came up that caused the closing of both I-80 and US 50 over the mountains, but I heard trucker's conversing on my CB radio, telling each other that the way was clear if one went north on 395 and then
took California 70 west over, so I tried that. Unfortunately, the blizzard overtook us all on that route, too, with snowfall shooting onto the windshield so heavy you could hardly see to drive, so all the trucks simply pulled over to the side of the highway to hunker in for the night. I could not do that in a small-sized convertible, with the closed soft top, I would probably freeze to death, so I had no choice but to soldier on, blizzard or no blizzard.

Ultimately, along California 70, I could no longer even see where the road was any more, the snow was so heavy, I was just driving across white snow through the woods in a car that was not a four-wheel drive. I understood that my situation was desperately dangerous, yet there was no solution other than to just keep on going the best I could and hope that the car didn't break down or the way become entirely impassable.

Who knows if I was even driving in the correct direction any more. But there was one magical moment when I happened to look sideways into the snowy woods and was amazed at how beautiful it was, which I thought was ironic to suddenly perceive that while I was actually in the midst of serious danger. The beautiful scenes in this movie reminded me of that experience. I felt that my awareness of that beauty kept me going, gave me hope, but humans do have an amazing ability to continue when they
have to and often that dogged determination is ALL you have.

I suddenly felt in this movie a desperate fear that these guys simply would NOT make it, because it had gotten to the point where I could see no way out for them. I was actually praying out loud for them to finally stumble onto the road, because it would be INTOLERABLE if they did not make it! One might wonder why I would even care, but I consider this an example of the filmmakers' genius that I DID care, that I was made to see that their human frailty and being tired and lost and having no idea what to do about it yet still trying while there were still some twitching muscle fiber left to move them was my own, as well. I was filled with great compassion, and imagine being brought to that in a movie where "nothing" happens and it is "boring", yet few among us have any kind of life that, if seen from a distance by a stranger, is any less boring than what we were watching in this film (yet how precious it is to us).

Maybe this is why so many people hated and couldn't stand this movie; because it did not offer them the escape that they so desperately attempt to keep right in front of their face so that they won't fully get how tenuous their own situation is. Instead of a "momentary hike over to a view point," this movie rubbed their face in the hard, gritty sand of their life's actual helplessness. Just what tiny little change could occur in their life that would suddenly ruin everything? I think the nagging fear of that, whatever it is, runs very, very deep in our human nature. The truth is, we thought we'd "conquered Thebes", but maybe it'll end up we're just "rock-marooned" without a "sand mattress".

Oh well, that was my "too long for the movie sites" review, ending with some terms and situations that were mentioned in the movie, which would make some sense to anyone who sees the movie.

I decided to look up the meaning of the word "existentialism" (which I felt like this movie had to be the essence of), and lo and behold, oh wow, yes it is!

Here is what the Wikipedia says about Existentialism: "...philosophical thinking begins with the human subject--not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by...a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world." Also, the entry states that existentialists felt that "traditional academic philosophy was too abstract and remote from concrete human experience", and that "Soren Kierkegaard, regarded as the father of existentialism, maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom."

That's exactly what this movie was about. When Gus Vant Sant focused his camera on the faces of these two lost boys trudging energetically across the desert in extremely long, steady, tracking shots, he was showing the acting, feeling, living human individual, and being lost in the desert, they for sure were disoriented and confused in a world that was alien to them (meaningless and absurd). What could be a more concrete example of human experience than walking, walking, walking...I mean, mankind covered this entire earth in search of...whatever, all at first done on foot. These boys in the film were actually trying to save their life, which, again, I would say, would be an expression of passion and sincerity in a most basic way, and they certainly were faced with despair, angst, absurdity, and even boredom (walking, walking, walking)...it was BOREDOM that was most experienced by the film's viewers (those who didn't understand the richness of what this film was offering).

I think it may be too much for people to be made to experience their own desperation and so they fight to reject it. Yet it was these same people who rejected this movie who also dissed the boys for not "preparing for their trek in the desert"; yet what preparations can one make when they don't even know that they are in trouble?

Speak Out, Children!

2011-07-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

This little entry is a result of my having finally watched a movie that I ended up detesting, which everyone else apparently loved, which is typical. The movie was Waiting For Superman, a socialist's idea of what is wrong with education in America and what they think needs to be done to fix it. Why do I say it was "a socialist's idea"? Because it was directed by David Guggenheim, the same man who directed Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which was "man-made global warming" propaganda...uh, excuse me, climate change propaganda, because, since the Earth never dangerously warmed up as it was touted it would do, it became more all-encompassing to blame mankind whether the Earth warms up or cools down.

Because it is all about laying a global blanket of government control over every single human action, and what more reason to do so than to "save the Earth"? Since there truly can no longer be a "Big Brother" to worship (since everyone knows that "Big Brother" will somehow end up participating in some kind of a sex scandal and therefore not worthy of any admiration)--unless you live in North Korea, where the "big brother" is "Ill"--it works out much better to impose a "Giant Gaia" that is blissfully free of any human foible. And this one can become quite as angry and punishing as any Old Testament God, as shown by one of the most powerful pictures I have ever seen, which I happened to come across again last night:

That's a "Thailand beach scene" from the Tsunami that occurred several years ago. At first glance, all you see in that photo is rubble, but if you zoom in, you will see the picture is also filled with human bodies. That's what can happen on Gaia, but it isn't hurting Gaia one bit, it only hurts living beings and their constructs. As for Gaia, she just keeps on going on and on, and will continue to do so eons after we are all long gone.

As I was washing dishes this morning, I realized that in America, the skill of persuasion techniques, in other words, "mass media", have been honed to laser sharpness so that there no longer is the need for any bloody conquering of the people and their freedom, like, say, in Lenin's Russia or Mao Tse Tung's China. Instead, the majority of the people are so brainwashed that no weapon needs to be drawn, they just offer up their wrists and beg to have the chains locked on. And these days, it seems that the average academic with a PhD is even spouting the same propaganda. On-line philosopher, Stefan Molyneux, whom I greatly admire, call the "academic class" the modern-day version of "the priesthood" from the Dark Ages.

But before you get to being fully propagandized by that college-level priesthood, you first have to get through elementary and high school. And thus comes in Waiting For Superman.

Now, please don't get me wrong...I am very much in favor of "education", but I am NOT in favor of "schooling". I remember back on September 11, 2001, the famous video clip of "deer-in-the-headlights" President Bush in that Florida classroom having just had news of the second jet crash into the World Trade Tower whispered in his ear. Immediately, everybody got it wrong. First, there was constant talk about "Bush reading a story about a little girl with a goat to school children." And second, there was talk all about Bush, himself, and his reaction...did he show utter incompetence instead of hopping into action ("We were being ATTACKED!"), or does the mask of his face indicate that he KNEW this was going to happen, or something else something else, yammer yammer yammer.... I say "yammer yammer yammer" because as much as people discuss these things, they will never know the actual answer, because falseness and misconceptions, whichever ones become manipulated into the mainstream, if those serve the purpose of the politically powerful and "approved historians", they will end up becoming "the truth" that will forever be taught and believed by the majority.

I very quickly understood that no matter how much "expert analysis" there was, President Bush's face wasn't going to have revealed anything to us so discussing THAT was a waste of time. But where I placed my attention was back on that first actual fact that was immediately twisted around...it was NOT President Bush reading to the children, it was the CHILDREN reading to President Bush. And how they read chilled me to the bone.

One of the things that most shocks me these days is how quickly and how bold-facedly the mainstream media will lie, even when the evidence of the opposite is right there in front of everybody's face! This is double-speak in action. Anyone who ever saw that video clip KNEW that Bush was not reading to the children, the children were reading to Bush, and yet, all you ever heard was "Bush reading a story to school children". Why am I making a big deal out of this? Why does it matter? Shouldn't it matter when you hear the news media and everyone around you parroting the same twisting of a simple fact that you saw with your own eyes? And why did they do that? I guess it was because it "softened" the President, made him more compassionate and loving (because maybe they had some understanding of what was soon going to be coming down the pike...Homeland Security, TSA, recording everybody's telephone conversations and e-mail, never-ending war with the Middle East, torture of prisoners, ever-deepening violation of the Bill of Rights); "Aw, there he was when this evil enemy was attacking us, reading a story to school children!" (and it was even a whole school of black children, which makes it even better!). Oh, what a nice President he is!

I don't mind people thinking he was a nice President, if he truly is, but let's have it be based on reality, not propaganda.

But, even worse, and this is my main point, was, as I said above, how those school children read to him. They were like Nazi soldiers goose-stepping past an Adolph Hitler with his arm held up in "Heil" pose. This is how I imagine the school children read in North Korea today. A very militarized, in unison, marching to a teacher beating a lecturn with stick (hidden message--we can beat YOU with this stick if you get out of line) form of reading, and it didn't even have to be in English, just meaningless sounds uttered on command, for there was no indication that the students had the slightest command or understanding of anything they were reading. This was really just a DRILL. They call this reading, they call this teaching, I call this boot camp for cogs in the lowest machine we've got. Yes, THIS must be the dream of the political elite for black children in school. And since white kids all want to be black, now, listening to hip hop, making up rap rhymes, calling themselves by rapper names, wearing baggy clothes falling off their butt, making gang signs whenever a photo is taken of them, they'll be the ones next up for the "military school" hopper. Well, America has no jobs for them, anyway, so why not? There's plenty of room for them in prison, where they can make license plates (California) or check the accuracy of state income tax filings (Idaho) or clean up trash along the highways (North Carolina), etc. Now THAT'S Obama's "public service work camps" for you!

And our President was there, visiting a school whose "reading program really works"! (This isn't against Bush personally; any one of them could have been there.)

So what do the makers of Waiting For Superman think "really works"? And, oh, in case you didn't get this, what "shows" what "really works" is getting better scores on standardized government proficiency tests. Shall I say that again--getting better scores on standardized government proficiency tests, in other words, how well did they learn taught "FACTS" that the government wants them to learn. There is no such thing as a government "entrepreneurial" proficiency test, or an "inventor" proficiency test, or a "thinking in a dimension so far unknown to the rest of us" proficiency test. Actually, I found myself accidentally writing "efficiency" test instead of "proficiency" test, so even my own right brain understood before my (government taught) left brain did, that that's what these tests really are, efficiency tests. How well have they learned the skills that their masters want them to learn.

Skills are for workers, whether manual or clerical and maybe even managerial. Employees.

Thomas Edison was kicked out of school because "he could not learn", which nowadays would mean "he couldn't learn skills". Yet while still a child, he made a fortune repairing an old printing press and using it to publish a newspaper while he worked in the baggage compartment of a passenger train. And then, of course, after that, he became an inventor. (There is, of course, a controversy about how much he actually invented and how he much he grabbed someone else's ball and then successfully ran with it, but then the same could be said about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, or even the youngest billionaire in the world, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.) Or, how about John Stuart Mill, who had an estimated IQ of 200 (compare that with Einstein's IQ of 160), who could not and did not learn to read until he was 12 years old. I guess you could say that John Stuart Mill would have been sent to "the drop out factory".

But where does Waiting For Superman find the kind of standardized-test-taking-skills-improvements that they think comes out of better schools? Well, schools that have better teachers, for one thing, but also schools that are closer to what I think of as the "totalitarian" ideal...schools with LONGER HOURS, schools that operate ALL YEAR ROUND, EVEN ON SATURDAYS, and STARTING KIDS OFF MUCH EARLIER (all of which, by the way, really works out for working-class parents who have to struggle to obtain a place to keep their kids during that otherwise "empty" 3:00 to 6:00 after school period). If the motivation of the state is to separate control of the children from their parents, these concepts work out really well for them. There was even an elementary school boarding school that this movie was recommending (with, good God, THREE children per dorm room), so if the motivation was to take the children away from their families, this was the ultimate!

This whole thing actually reminded me of Orson Scott Card's science fiction novel, Ender's Game, in which the Earth was eternally at an inter-galactic war and so the (global) government was breeding special "military geniuses" whose entire purpose was to be soldiers in this inter-galactic war and they took them away from their families (but it was considered an honor to be chosen), put them in a special school, and started them off with this military training very, very early. It's interesting that the Earth's enemy was a race of intelligent beings that were "ant-like", and so I saw that it must have been fitting to breed a special class of human "soldier ants" whose lives would be sacrificed for the planet in order to fight this "ant" enemy.

Because, again, none of this is to truly "educate" them, but to indoctrinate them and then train them for a specific level of task that the government wants them to willingly fill. It is NOT about these children discovering and understanding who they are and what they really want, since, of course, they have few moments to devote to that crucial discovery. No solitary time, no time to play, no summers off to explore, just drill drill drill.

Maybe people differ with me about what an education really is. I will have to use my own example, growing up and going to school. This is something I noticed when I was in high school. In almost all my classes, there was a particular girl with whom I felt I was in competition for getting the better grades. But one day my junior year in high school, I had a discussion with her that revealed to my way of thinking that she really wasn't very smart at all. In a flash I understood that she really didn't actually "know" anything, but she was extremely good at memorizing. I am terrible at memorizing, and so I very often fail to do it, so if it is a "facts" recitation that you need, I very well may come up empty. But she, on the other hand, could call up those facts in a flash, but a conversation with her will reveal that she doesn't really understand those facts at all (or draw any inferences from them), she can only parrot them back out. I learned, then, that there are two kinds of students, the "memorizers" and the "figure-outers", and so often it is the memorizers who come across as the better students. And yet, who is really more valuable in the long run are those who can figure things out, which to me means figuring out ANYTHING, regardless of subject (and, especially, cross-subject), so it really doesn't MATTER what you actually "learn", you can figure it out on your own. And, especially now, thanks to computers, facts can all be at your fingertips, but until we have highly-developed artificially intelligent computers, no machine can take the place of those who can figure things out.

So a true education needs to reward and support that kind of person...although one might argue that THEY don't really need to go to school at all. Oddly enough, even this movie, Waiting For Superman, actually graphically SHOWED what their belief is, and that is that it is the teacher's job is to fill up students' heads with facts (I think they called it "knowledge", but if it is something that a teacher can pour into a student's head, then it is "facts"), and they actually showed a cartoon of a teacher walking along school children sitting in their rows of desks, lifting up the top of their heads, and pouring in a swill of facts.

I do agree with one of the propositions of the film, and that is that truly good teachers can do a good job of helping students learn, and bad teachers can harm them, and the mediocre teachers just pass them along. It is shocking to hear the statistics of how many California high school graduates who are in the upper percentiles of California high school graduates nevertheless need up to TWO YEAR'S worth of remediation in order to actually begin college-level work. In other words, those aren't really college-level students at all, and yet the colleges have to accept them if they want to fill up all the available spaces.

However, in my view, as helpful as it is to have a good teacher, and how damaging it is to have a bad teacher, one doesn't REALLY NEED a teacher at all, except, perhaps, as a kind of sometime tutor to help a person understand something temporarily difficult. (In a way, this is the college method, whereby "school" is a giant lecture hall where some boring professor drones on and on, and the real learning is going on inside of you back in the dorm room or quiet library with all your texts, and if something isn't quite clear, you can get specialized help from your section T.A., who is a graduate student only a few years older than you are.) To me, the most important factor is the TEXTBOOK, and, my God, those seem to be so dumbed-down these days that it horrifies me even to open the pages of one. If I had to go to elementary school today and had to work my way through the thick slough of a modern-day dumbed-down textbook, I would have literally exploded with frustration. Is there any wonder that kids would rather just play video games? (But, uh oh, that's just like Ender's Game! Right this very minute, I am sure somebody is working on "educational video games"...or am I behind and everybody knows that we already have them?)

I'll have to write it again...the founders of our nation were essentially self-taught. Most of them, such as Benjamin Franklin, were apprenticed out to work before any of them would have even been in a modern-day high school. And yet, on their own, they read books that would choke a Yale graduate. And these people were able to create a nation like had never ever been made before, or since. George Washington went to school to learn only three subjects that he wanted to learn, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Surveying. What were his actual "skills"? Horseback riding and ballroom dancing. He was also, apparently, a master of fashion. But look at all his accomplishments.

I remember back to my own schooling, again, where I was good and where I wasn't so good. I already knew how to read, one of my grandmothers taught me one afternoon. I can hardly believe that it is now supposed to be so hard to teach reading. John Taylor Gatto reveals that it took explorers in Africa only 40 hours of personal contact to teach African tribesmen how to read when prior to those explorers coming there, the tribe didn't even have a written language at all! The explorers used the English alphabet to phonetically write out the spoken language of the tribe and all who wanted to obtain this "magic" completely learned how to read and write in 40 hours, tops. Yet today, in a culture surrounded by the written word, there are still high school graduates who (apparently) are accepted into COLLEGE who CAN NOT READ!

So in school I blew by Dick and Jane, which I thought were cute, kind of like comic books for morons, so the teacher would have me write stories on the blackboard for the other students to read and copy, which were more interesting.

Okay, so I was "verbal" (as they divided people up in those days), but not very "mathematical".

However, one day early in the third grade, a close friend of mine, Joan, was skipped ahead to the fourth grade. I not only missed her, but I was envious of her now skipping ahead a grade, so I told the teacher that I, too, wanted to be skipped into the fourth grade like Joan was. The teacher smiled and said, "You can't. Joan was very smart, too smart for the third grade." "Well, I am very smart, too," I said. "Yes, you are," the teacher patiently explained, "but you aren't really very good in math." And this I knew was true. So I said to her, "So, if I were GOOD in math, then maybe I, too, could be skipped into the fourth grade?" "Well, yes, I suppose you could," was her answer; "IF you were good in math like Joan is."

I took this as a promise, and I figured the only way I could obtain this achievement was to learn every bit of third grade math. So that weekend, I worked my way completely through the entire math textbook. I read every lesson, did every exercise, did all the homework, too, and graded all the self-tests, and turned them all in to the teacher on Monday morning. I told her that I had done the entire third grade math curriculum in that one weekend and if she checked all my work, she would see that I now did, indeed, know all of it.

To her credit, she did check it and reported back to me that I had, indeed, done the entire third grade math curriculum.

"Now can I be skipped ahead to the fourth grade?" I asked.

To her discredit, she simply said, "No."

So, what had I learned from that experience? That a dedicated person, on their own, can actually learn an entire school year's worth of a subject that they weren't even very good in, in one weekend, and as far as how students are classified and treated in school, it is based on some irrational system that is unfair and probably political. So, in my view, from then on in school, I was on my own, to learn what I wanted at the more rapid pace I wanted and I didn't need the cooperation or help from the teachers nor must I be limited by the ceilings of their expectations. Just like the founding fathers understood, I learned that learning was an "on your own, individualized" proposition.

So in a film like Waiting For Superman, that's exactly what all those children are doing, WAITING, for that "Superman" to come in and save them, when the Superman they have been waiting for all this time is them, themselves.

I just love so much that section in Richard Branson's autobiography ( http://www.amazon.com/Losing-My-Virginity-Survived-Business/dp/0307720748/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309823086&sr=1-1 ) where he discusses the exact moment when he became the Richard Branson that he is today, billionaire founder of record companies and music stores and airlines and railroads and all-around adventurer and explorer. He was a child riding along in the car with his mother in some rural area of England when she suddenly pulled over and asked him to look around. "Do you think you could find your way home from here?" she asked. "Yes," he answered, "I can." "Prove it," she said, and indicated that he should now get out and walk home. Excited, he got out of the car and watched her genuinely drive off in a cloud of dust, leaving him there all alone. He said that at that moment, the entire world unfurled itself like a red carpet at his feet, and he knew right then that wherever he wanted to go, whatever he wanted to do, whomever he felt like being, was within his power to achieve step by step. And he has done so, over and over again.

To me, the big problem with all the people interviewed in the film, Waiting For Superman, all of whom spoke very highly of their interest in education, for themselves, for their children, or for their community, was that almost all of them could not even speak a decent English sentence. How can a person believe that they are working for education when the very sound of their communication speaks of ignorance and sloppiness, and, in fact, demonstrates the very FAILURE to learn and that this is okay? Am I being racist? Or is bad English "okay" for certain races and economic levels? Well, it is only when you expect to isolate them within a lower worker class, which is what you are doing anyway if you are only teaching them standardized skills that are useful only in a job setting. Every one of these people kept talking about "going to college," "going to college," "going to college," yet what kind of "college" are they actually going to be going to? Some of the parents (and grandparents) spoke frankly about not having had much of an education themselves for various reasons ("We were poor", "I had to go to work", "I wasn't raised by my parents", etc.) and their idea of their kids going to college is to obtain a path out of the neighborhood and the life that they are currently living. But I would think that if you wanted to get out of somewhere by wanting to get INTO some place else, then it would behoove you to thoroughly research and UNDERSTAND the rules of the world you wanted to get into. Otherwise, you or your kids would always be a stranger in a strange land, never accepted, never assimilated, and never ever belonging (and so what you will do, instead, is blame those who belong in that land as being rejecting or discriminatory, and you will demand that society change the culture that you had wanted to become a part of; in other words, make it just like the one you wanted to escape from). To his great credit, Bill Cosby has spoken much about this, and has also been soundly vilified for speaking this truth. And don't forget that others have successfully made this journey and this was leap years before Civil Rights and Affirmative Action and all the other liberal agendas that have paved the path with gold.

And nobody is REALLY helping these kids, and apparently, they will not help themselves. One little girl who was featured as being "very smart" and "gigantically motivated" kept saying (when you could understand her, which was difficult), that she wanted to be a nurse, a doctor, a veterinarian. When I would hear that, I would think, "Well, which is it, nurse, doctor, or veterinarian?" Because, you know, they're three different things. But people accept that as a definite ambition (woo, that "doctor" gets them every time...but I hate to break it to them, but thanks to Obama's health care reform, if it continues, "doctor" will become a middle class position, deep in medical school debt but earning ever-diminishing "payments" from the bankrupt government).

These families seem to view "going to college" as like winning the lottery, if you go to college, you have it made. So it was interesting that how they would attempt to get into a "better" public school (charter school, and the like) was via being accepted via LOTTERY. I wondered why the children weren't being accepted into these better schools due to merit. But oh, sorry, I forgot...the theory is that "all children are the same" and accepting by merit is to "track them", a big no no. This is that whole liberal concept of "equalizing the outcomes," which if they are all cogs in a wheel, then one cog really is the same as another. What they think is that opportunities must be equalized, forgetting the fact that, like Richard Branson, people make their OWN opportunities. (Just ask the Chinese about that, who have made a success of themselves in every culture around the world into which they have inserted themselves throughout history.) But America isn't about that, any more; instead they want to set up road blocks before the advantaged kids and provide as smooth a sailing as possible for the disadvantaged ones, which hasn't worked at all for the past 40 years. And socialism (which the majority of the voters vote for because they think this will give them an advantage) is about supporting the unsuccessful by taking from the successful. Which, of course, is like eating up all your seeds (like they did in Zimbabwe).

But the lottery method is harsh, so few available spaces in contrast to all the applicants. Like getting a job, nowadays (which is what happens AFTER you graduate from college). Only two of the students who were followed in this documentary obtained admission via the lottery, and one of them had at first been fifth on the waiting list. Did anyone wonder how he was moved ahead six spots to gain admission...I mean, if this school were so wonderful, why did the five people ahead of him choose to not end up going there? (Maybe they all moved away....)

The boy who made it into the school via the waiting list was accepted into the "Ender's Game" type boarding school (no games, no free time, total immersion in getting higher test scores on the standardized proficiency exams), and he was being raised by his grandmother, who admitted that she was, understandably, torn about this. While she wanted him to get a good education, she hated to lose him. The boy's history was that his mother disappeared soon after he was born and his father had died of a drug addiction, so his grandmother, the father's mother, willingly took him in. At the beginning of the documentary, this boy tells a story of how he wasn't very good in "maths" (or, for that matter, English), but something drove him to do better so he started going his homework and suddenly he was passing tests when he had been failing them, before. So he could hardly wait to bring home to his father his first passing math test, but his father died of his drug addiction before the boy had had a chance to show him. There was a photo of the father holding his son in his lap that kept being shown in the film, as if the boy was still living for the absent father. But instead, who really WAS there for him, was not the drug-addicted father, but the grandmother who had been raising him all these years.

There was, I feel, a pretty telling scene near the end of the documentary where the grandmother is taking the boy into the boarding school, which really is the moment of a lifetime of separation between them. They have to sign in through some kind of a guard at the entrance to the school, so already it feels like a prison. The plain rectangular dorm room with brick walls painted white has three beds in it, two in a bunkbed and one solitary twin bed. The "guard" taking the boy to the room says that since he is the first one there, he has his choice of beds. At first he picks the solitary bed, but then he decides that he prefers the top bed on the bunk. He was always a very morose child throughout this whole film, one who slurred his words and he never spoke with much enthusiasm, and this going over the threshold into his apparent chance for a better life does not make him any more enthusiastic. Frankly, he seems to be going through the motions, because while he is told that this is a great opportunity for him to have a better life, he also views it as the end of all his fun and his involvement with his friends (after all, he IS just a little boy and he shouldn't even have to face any of this). He does not mention being separated from his grandmother, the only solid adult he has ever known, and fearing that he will be homesick for her.

He had been told earlier that the students were "allowed" to decorate their one wall with posters or any pictures that they wanted, so he came prepared. He put up a colored poster of a Lamborghini, and then lay down on the bed with his head on the pillow and he reverently taped to the wall a tiny snapshot that he could see while lying down. I had hoped that it would be a photograph of his grandmother, but the camera slowly zoomed close and revealed that it was that photo of him as a baby sitting his drug addict father's lap. I felt that what that boy needed more than a special school was a father, and then I felt that he would be trapped by that need for the rest of his life; it would never be fulfilled, and his "shunning" of the grandmother, with whom there was no hugging or tearful goodbye, he merely lay there and then went to sleep with that photo of his father in front of his face, I felt that he would never open himself up to any reasonable substitute. Therefore, he would remain stuck and all the schooling in the world, good or bad, wasn't going to make any difference in his life.

I am sure it must be gigantically unfair of me to negatively judge the various children in the documentary who virtually had no advantages and didn't seem able to accept the special advantages that they did have (such as the girl whose single ghetto-based mother struggled with several jobs to earn enough money to pay $500 a month tuition at a private school for her daughter...but in the end, who, due to a job layoff, missed a final payment and therefore her child was denied the graduation ceremony) simply because you could hardly ever understand what they were saying because they mumbled and spoke very softly. But the kids at the expensive private school where I work also do that and I am starting to feel that something is very wrong about that. I have attended several classes when they are reading stories that they have written and so on, usually assignments that they do very well on and that are definitely worth sharing, which you discover when you read them yourself. But when they are standing up in front of the room or even sitting at their desks, while you are in the same intimate classroom with them, you can hardly hear them and you can not distinguish the various words they are saying. I can't imagine that the teachers can hear or understand them any better than I can and I don't understand why they allow that.

What do I mean by "allow that"?

Well, it's not that kids don't have loud voices. When I am working in my office at the school, I can hear them as plain as day out on the playground, and even at home where the walls are practically sound-proofed, I can hear them screaming in their games out on the lawn or way over at the other end of the complex beyond several three-story buildings, I can hear them in the pool. So why in a quiet classroom when they are reading a story that they wrote and that they WANT to share with others, can you not understand what they are saying?

Because I believe that oral presentation is as important as written expression, that enunciating words and speaking them loudly and clearly is as important as correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar, so why do the teachers at our school or the filmmakers of this documentary let them mumble and speak so quietly that I had to put my volume up all the way to the highest level and even then could hardly hear them?

I have even shared this concern with our performing arts teacher, who is also a professional actor, but he only teaches the older kids. I have said that I think oral interpretation skills need to be taught to every grade school child, and while I was sure he would think my suggestion would be weird, I did expect him to at least think about what I said and then agree, even if he felt that such for some reason would be impossible.

But all he said was that it was "not age appropriate," that you do not get into "oral interpretation" until fifth or maybe sixth grade. Well, to hell with that, if I were a teacher, even in kindergarten, I for sure would teach those kids how, and why, to speak up. They must learn how to be heard if they ever want to get anywhere. Are their egos really that stuffed under a rock? I hardly think so. "Open your mouth and speak out! We need to hear what you have to say."

But it must be like something else that I have observed from working at an elementary school. The kids are constantly admonished to not run. And ALL they want to do is run. But instead, all they hear is "Don't run!" So what they do is hide. They run until they are seen, and then when they hear the order to stop running, they will stop, but then will start running again when they are out of sight.

Well I say that if it is in their nature to run, then run is what they should do. And they should keep on running; running, running, and running, and never, ever stop. That's WHO they are, and WHO they are matters more than any other single thing. That's maybe the ONE lesson that they truly do need, and then they will have reverence for their being and their dreams, and nothing will ever be able to stop them from bringing that into fruition.

Don't let schooling wreck their understanding of who they are. Not even in the attempt to give them an education.

Shots!

2011-06-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago (Thursday), I started my day off by getting four shots, two in each upper arm, way up into the shoulder, really. I actually had no anxiety about them, I only wanted to do what was right and healthy and I knew that whatever pain that might have been involved would only be momentary.

I was impressed by the operation of the place where I went, called "Passport Health". From my observations, it looked like a group of doctors, or maybe only one cleverly entrepreneurial doctor, alone, came up with this brilliant idea of creating a practice specializing in inoculations, mostly for travel, but a person could get there any kind of vaccination or required or recommended shot--flu shot, TB tests, children's required vaccinations prior to going to school, and so on. They, or the one doctor, had tiny little offices all over the city and wherever you lived, you would be able to find a location that was convenient to you. Not every location is open every day; the one where I went was open only two days a week. I presume that when they have busier seasons (peak travel seasons, school-starting, flu season, etc.), they may be open more frequently. The only people there this morning at the time of my appointment were me and the nurse who gave me the shots, which gave me the idea that all these satellite offices are controlled from one central office, so only a nurse to give the shots needs be in each location.

The office was decorated in a "travel" style that appealed to me; various travel posters for exotic locations, and native crafts and artifacts such as African masks or other carvings decorating the walls. In the office, which was also the injection room, there was a huge and very detailed map of the world that covered one whole wall and a third of each wall that was next to that one wall, so it was almost like a 180-degree map. I had a similar map in my bedroom growing up, which maybe helped feed my love for travel.

The nurse had for me an entire booklet custom-made for this particular trip with my name printed on the cover; a complete description of every kind of vaccination in general (what they were for, how they worked, under what circumstances you might need them, the recommended frequency of getting them, their side effects, what the diseases were like that they were to protect you from, and by what method you might happen to get those diseases (oral/fecal, body fluids, respiratory droplets, sewage, bad water, mosquitos, rabid animals, and so on). Then there was a section on Palau, where I was going, where there was even greater detail on the diseases that people get there and what inoculations were recommended for travelers going there. All this was very comprehensive and educational and useful beyond just the immediate travel needs.

Interestingly, some diseases that are "gone" in the U.S. are very much alive and quite dangerous in some other countries, such as ones that anyone my age already has an immunity to, polio, chicken pox, mumps, measles, German measles, and small pox. Based on my age, alone, the nurse knew that by law I already had had all the polio shots and a small pox vaccination, and regarding chicken pox, mumps, measles, and German measles, she asked me if I had had those in childhood (yes, I had) and therefore I was immune to them for my lifetime. I remember that in my childhood days, mothers would rush to GIVE their children those diseases when they heard that a neighbor child had any of them, because then their own children would henceforth be immune for the rest of their lifetime. Now, though, they have vaccines for children, so few of them ever have to have those disease, even the first time.

They did list one vaccination I had never heard of, one recommended for older adults to protect them from shingles. Apparently having had chicken pox does not make one immune from shingles, and the booklet said that 50% of people living up to age 85 get the disease. Really? Half? I had always considered it a rare but horrible event, but maybe as more and more peers become elderly, I will be hearing more about it. I now think I ought to consider getting this vaccination.

It's interesting that the prime time for getting vaccines is when you are very young and then when you are elderly. The very young makes sense in that if you are going to obtain a lifetime immunity, then the earlier the better. Vaccines for the elderly seem to be for diseases that occur more frequently when people are more susceptible to sickness as a whole.

So the shots I received were Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, and the Tetanus, Diptheria, Pertussis booster that I was due for. The nurse told me that if I "didn't like needles," there was an option of getting both the Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B in the same injection, but that option cost $80.00 more. I surprised myself by saying, "No, thank you, I'll save the money and get the separate shots." And once I saw the final total for everything ($420, and none of it is covered by insurance), I was glad that I hadn't let it elevate to $500!

Whatever pain there was, 95% of it was the effect of the medication in my arm, not the needle sticks, which truly were very minor and one of them, I think it was the booster, had NO feeling of stick at all. And those that I did feel were injected so quickly that it was more like the in and outs of the needles was like your finger passing through a candle flame, too fast for the nerves to even register.

The soreness in my two shoulders, though, which continued to build up as the day continued (and I could still feel it long into the evening)...well, let's just say that I wasn't going to be doing any push-ups that night!

Due to having had these shots, I did feel out of sorts and maybe "put upon" that whole day at work. I would have been much happier just this once being left alone by all the cockroaches who continually make demands on me. It might have been better if I could have had a restfully productive day at work (which mostly means "no interruptions" and "no additional problems"), or else be able to go home early and just get into bed and read, but, no, there was no rest for the weary.

This inoculation office had "everything" to do with travel; they sold mosquito repellant (which I bought, as there were several mosquito-borne disease possibilities in the jungles of Palau for which there is no vaccine) and money belts and water purifiers and electric plug converters and any other thing a traveler could think of. They even would help you get your passport renewed or sell you temporary medical insurance for your trip. As I said, that doctor (I am pretty sure there is only one) was quite an entrepreneur, and I respect her cleverness.

I added to the mix a "diarrhea kit" that they put together all in a nice plastic carrying case, consisting of hygienic cleansing towelettes, oral rehydration salts, anti-diarrheal tablets, and six azithromycin pills prescribed by this one MD (a female). According to the booklet they gave me, if there is a chance of getting diarrhea due to a location you travel to, 50% of the travelers will get it. And just the misery of diarrhea when you are in a strange place can ruin the trip you paid thousands of dollars for.

While I was very happy to have completed this task, as I said a few paragraphs prior, I was not in a good mood at work afterwards, where it sometimes takes super-human patience to endure. So, my resistance was down. Yes, I have a "good job". The setting is wonderful, the co-workers are nice, the work isn't picking cotton or screwing on hubcaps in an assembly line or slaughtering animals in an abbattoire or rotting in a war zone somewhere. I have it quite nice, actually, but the ever-increasing workload, the constant problems flying in like a cloud of locusts from all directions, the ever-squeezing interference of government regulations and demanded compliance with draconian procedures, and due to all this, the resultant inability to meet ones own good standards anymore, is very wearing. I find myself experiencing something that I had never before experienced in my life, and that is that my brain just shuts down--it gets paralyzed. It is as if I am computer and too many concurrent operations have used up all of my RAM. It's peculiar to feel it and when I get into that "no more RAM" state and then one more demand gets put on me, I get angry. We continue to hear of the dangers of social unrest in America (which has actually already been happening in some cities) and I think anger and then physical violence results when people no longer feel that they have any other option; the threats against them become too much to bear. That "no more RAM" state is, for me, like being forced into a corner with no avenue of escape. Maybe that is another reason why I am looking forward to this trip so much; it, at least, for a brief while, WILL be an escape, and my very emotional survival depends upon it.

Obtaining a Slightly More Complete Understanding of "Adventure"

2011-06-19T00:19:00.001-07:00

Regarding a "travel adventure" to an off-the-beaten path location, It's easy to think of only the good side...the fascinating, the unusual, the beautiful, the exotic; and maybe moments of peace, freedom from the stress of civilization, being among a kinder, more generous people than what it seems that modern urban Americans have become.

And if we weren't expecting to obtain some, most, or maybe even all of those good things, we'd just as soon stay home and lose ourself in our own residence and maybe reconnect with some of the charms of our home area (gosh, don't people come HERE to Los Angeles for vacation, whereas we who live here can't wait to get away from here!). I was surprised, for example that a short while after I had come home from a vacation to Kauai, I found a MUCH better beach for swimming only a couple of hours away in Encinitas (in north San Diego County) than I had experienced in the whole of the island paradise of Kauai. The Kauai beaches were more beautiful to look at, but with the constant and ever-present warnings about how dangerous the beaches were everywhere there, actually swimming in them wasn't really all that much fun.

Apparently a dark secret about travel to Hawaii is how many visitors there drown in the ocean, and among drowning deaths in Hawaii, Kauai is the champion. This, it is explained, is due to the changeable and extremely powerful currents that sweep by the edges of this island, so the tourist is cautioned to only swim in the beaches that have lifeguards and, best of all, beaches that have artificially-created rock barriers that turn the swimming areas into something akin to wading pools for toddlers.

But, the other side of that story is that supposedly the most dangerous beach of all in Kauai was Hanakapiai Beach, about two miles into the Na Pali wilderness. People are cautioned to not even soak their toes in this killer beach, because by standing so near to the water's edge, a rogue wave just might come up, grab them, and haul them off to their watery grave. And there ARE such rogue waves at least SOMEWHERE. I know somebody who lost a friend by such a rogue wave up at Point Reyes, in Marin County, California, and he had been unable to save him. (Many years later, I happened to visit Point Reyes and saw government signs warning visitors about the dangers of the rogue waves there.) But, regarding Hanakapiai, in 1983, I went to Kauai and spent an entire day swimming all by myself in the water at Hanakapiai (completely naked, I might add, as I had read in a guidebook that the whole Na Pali wilderness area was "clothing optional," so I had taken advantage of that throughout my day there in the wilderness) and, well, this is not a ghost who is sitting here writing this. While the waves were certainly powerful (body-surfing them, particularly body-surfing them naked, was a never-ending thrill, which is one reason why I stayed out there in the water so long; I wanted it to last and last), I never once felt the slightest hint of danger. Maybe I was just phenomenally lucky? But I don't remember there being any warnings at all in those days, but now, there is nothing BUT warnings.

And I do remember being at a beach resort in Fiji and hearing a woman who had gone out beyond the rocks screaming for help. It was horrifying to hear the sounds of somebody who really was in danger of dying. The lifeguards at the resort were like Keystone Cops in their efforts to get their various speedboats rounded up, started up, and headed out into the correct direction. The woman had been silenced before they managed to make their way out there. Her silence was even more chilling than her screams had been. And we were told later that day that she had indeed drowned out there, and the resort management reiterated their rule that swimmers were not to go beyond the breakwater of rocks. Remembering that event in Fiji spoiled my swimming fun in Kauai.

Now, with my upcoming trip to Palau, up until a few days ago, I had thought about nothing but of the pleasures that I expect to have. Oh, I knew there were going to be SOME inconveniences, it is a third world country and doesn't have much of an economy (but that doesn't mean that the people there are stone-cold impoverished; most of them are "subsistence farmers," which means that they live the way Pacific Islands have done forever, eating fish that they catch, fruit that they pick, and vegetables that they grow, which, as civilization either collapses all around us or is just interrupted for a while, just might be the safest and most secure lifestyle of all). Other than receiving aid from the United States, their economy mostly is based on tourism...tourism from Japan and Taiwan. While the residents of Palau can speak English, I'm not so sure about most of the visitors, such as those who might be along on at least one activity I have booked, a day of boating, kayaking, snorkeling, swimming, hiking, and having a picnic on a hidden beach in the Rock Islands. Of all the touring companies who responded to my request for information, the one that responded the quickest, answered all my questions the most thoroughly, was the most polite and friendly, had the best, most comprehensive tour of the things I wanted to do at the best price, and was the one that I booked this particular tour with and paid up front for, I later learned in a guidebook "is for the Japanese." I do kind of take that description with a grain of salt. Five percent of the visitors to Palau are from the United States, and of all the other visitors, the vast majority are about 2/3 Japanese, 1/3 Taiwanese, so it might actually be accurate to say that EVERY touring company is "for the Japanese". And why shouldn't they be, if those are their main customers? Japanese visitors that I have seen elsewhere (such as in New Zealand) are among the most joyful and enthusiastic travelers, so if there is any way to communicate with them at all (if only with a smile and an excited-sounding voice), I can hardly think of more enjoyable people to experience things with. (I just only hope that the tour guides will remember to at least say some things in English, which I guess they will, since they, themselves, live in English-speaking Palau.)

It was kind of interesting reading all the TripAdvisor reviews of lodging, eating, and activities in Palau...many of them (and in a few cases, ALL of them) were written in Japanese. I had never experienced that before, always kind of thinking of various websites as always being "American" when, of course, they are not. The only time I had ever seen Japanese was occasionally checking out a link to an anime site or whatever. TripAdvisor had gone to the trouble of providing with a click Google translations of the foreign language reviews, but whereas those in Italian or German (there were some of those, too), were reasonably-well translated, those that had been written in Japanese absolutely were not. After a while I gave up on clicking on those at all, because the English versions that resulted from them were incomprehensible.

And no wonder...I bought for myself a beginner's Japanese language book, called Japanese Demystified, and oh my God, I just might have finally come across a subject which I am absolutely unable to learn. (Organic Chemistry kind of approaches that, but so far, the Japanese language far outshines that when it comes to difficulty.) I bought it because my trip to Palau goes there by way of the Tokyo airport and my return flight has a six-hour layover there, so I have planned to use that time to visit the cute little town of Narita that is about a fifteen minute train trip away (Tokyo, itself, is too far and is not recommended for those who don't have time for a whole day). The train, fortunately, leaves right from and returns to the airport...very efficient.

I have always been very worried about going to an Asian country, because it wouldn't be like pulling out a Berlitz French or German phrase book and reading off to somebody the question as to where there is a bathroom. Just to read a road sign would require pouring through thousands of "squigglies"...how could anyone actually do it? This reluctance, if not downright fear, of putting myself into an Asian country, has created a big hole in my "global travel map", but this miniscule wetting of my little toe in Asia by having my flight go through Japan just might be the very baby step that I need to overcome that "reluctance". After all, I am sure that I could find my around the international airport (English will probably be as abundant as Japanese), but a little beyond the confines of the airport, well, it's like going through some kind of curtain...what shall we call it, the "Rice Paper Curtain"?

So it's kind of ironic, but here my vacation will take me to a country that once upon a time had been an American protectorate (now Palau is independent...although as independent as a student who has gone off to college and whose parents are paying the tuition) and therefore English is spoken virtually everywhere, and the currency they use is actually the U.S. dollar...not PEGGED to the U.S. dollar, but IS the U.S. dollar...and yet, because of this six-hour layover in Japan, I have to get some YEN and due to that and the abundance of Japanese tourists in Palau, I figured it wise to learn some basic Japanese!

I had always thought that Japanese (writing, anyway), was basically Chinese with maybe some adaptations, and I had already discovered years ago that Chinese ideograms were pretty easy to learn (but how to SPEAK Chinese, I know nothing). I learned, for example, that the two characters in the name of China stand for "center country" (that's logical, since from their point of view, THEY are at the center), and "center" is shown by a drawing of a square and then drawing a vertical line down the middle of it. I always love seeing the menu of a Chinese restaurant and seeing that square with the vertical line somewhere near the top of the menu, because somewhere they are going to have to use the word "China" or "Chinese". Another of the Chinese characters that I quickly learned was "gateway", that looks like the two swinging flaps of an old western town saloon that the sheriff or the bad guy pushes his way through into the place. I was so excited one time taking a city bus down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and happening to see a sign on a Chinese restaurant. I recognized the "center" character and then I saw the "gateway" character, and then my eyes lowered a bit and I saw the restaurant's name in English: "Golden Gate Chinese Restaurant". That truly was one of those exciting, "ah ha" moments...so in my view, Chinese (writing, anyway), seems like something a person could actually learn if they only took the time to study it and worked on memorizing all these various characters. They apparently have virtually no "grammar" to speak of; instead, it is all quite poetic in its construction of "pictures". ("Friendship" shows a hand reaching for the moon; "human" is a drawing that shows two legs; "big" is the human drawing with arms spread wide, "mother" is the human sign holding a baby, "sit" is the human sign over a horizontal line that indicates the ground, "autumn" is a combination of the sign for time and the sign for burning, because to them autumn is the "burning time," which I guess means that part of their harvest cycle is burning up that which remains after the fields are gleaned, but to me, I think of burning piles of autumn leaves, "duck" is the combination of the sign for bird and the sign for water...the duck is a "water bird". I have absolutely no idea what combination of signs will yield the result of "Communist Manifesto" but I am sure that whatever it is, the construction of it would be pretty fascinating. It would start with a "worker", I would guess....)

Japanese, though...according to "Lesson 1" in the "demystification" process, seems to combine three different writing systems--"kanji," which has thousands of characters that come from Chinese, "hiragana," that are adapted Chinese symbols that are used to represent syllables, and "katakana" are also syllabic symbols that are used for foreign words that the Japanese now need to use and for phonomines, phenomines, psychomimes...GOT THAT?

No wonder Google translator had some problems...how does it know if what is shown is supposed to be a Chinese-type picture of something or a syllable that sounds out something? And even for Chinese, context may tell a Chinese reader that the combination of the water sign and the bird sign means "duck", but how does Google translator understand that the sentence isn't talking about, say, a bird that fell into the water?

PHONOmimes are sounds meant to imitate things like people laughing, dogs barking, or the sound of rain. (Don't ask me why--I know they would ask the same question about us--but to them, the sound of laughing is not "ha ha ha", but "geragera"; dogs don't go "woof woof", but go "wan wan", but at this stage in my "learning", it is too early to figure out what in this sentence represents the sound of the rain: "Ame ga zaza futte imasu." I am guessing the "zaza" but only because it, like the others, repeats syllables.

PHENOmimes are syllables that describe things like "sticky" ("nebaneba") or "rough" ("zarazara"). (Again with the repetitions.)

PSYCHOmimes are psychological states (again, they have the repetitions), such as "fuming" ("punpun") or "restless ("sowasowa").

I admit that as I write this, unless this whole thing ends up making me "locoloco", I'm starting to find it kind of fun! I may never be able to find a bathroom or order some sushi (that's a joke...sushi IS a Japanese word), but I'll at least watch out for all those repeated syllables so that I will know that somebody is describing an animal sound or what kind of a mood they are in. Is it okay to learn a foreign language by learning all the phono, pheno, and psychomimes first? Here I am learning as much English as I am Japanese!

So I guess you could say that THAT is an adventure.

But in this entry, I am meaning to be headed more toward the dark side of travel. Since life is filled with polarities (the good and the bad), and an ADVENTURE is supposed to be an expansion of normal life, while we want to go on adventures for the expansion over toward the good side, we better not forget that it might be balanced by an expansion over to the bad side. Uh oh, I wish I hadn't thought of that! (Or maybe I will thankful that I DID think of it.)

For example, I learned a couple of weeks ago that regarding travel into Japan (and now I am guessing that the same might be true of ANY foreign travel), that Japan has some pretty strict rules about the DRUGS you bring in (and I'm talking about required medications, not heroin or kilos of marijuana; obviously I'm not intending to be drug smuggler). And from what I have been able to read, that "bringing them in" could actually refer to the fact that your plane landed on their runway and you walked in one gate only so that you could walk out through another one on your way OUT of there! I mean, at first I never really thought of myself as "going to Japan" at all; it was only a place where I had to change planes for my TRUE destination. But no, even if all I actually did was simply change planes, from the point of view of Japan, I did go there and whatever I had with me, either in my checked baggage or in my possession as a carry-on, they view as something I am bringing into Japan. So restrictions and rules apply.

And regarding prescription drugs, we aren't in Kansas anymore. Just as in the United States not every state (or ANY of them?) accepts the idea of "medical marijuana", Japan has its own view of what kind of drugs are actually medicine and what other kinds of drugs are there to rape and pillage the minds of their people. All of a sudden, it now seems to me that that friendly, smiling customs agent or whoever it is whom we have to "pass through" (IF they ARE smiling and friendly) is really about as friendly as a SWAT team crashing through all your doors at midnight because their sources told them that you had drugs in the house. You may think your innocent little amber bottle with the name "CVS Pharmacy" written across the top of it, filled with your heart rate medication is about as "acceptable" as a bottle of Vitamin C, but THEY, apparently, may not even trust the Vitamin C (or the sinus spray or the asthma inhaler)! SOME things they won't let you take in at all, prescription or no, such as, apparently, anything that is a "methamphetamine". Now, I don't know meth from menthol, but I DO remember my mother's very brilliant anti-drug lecture to us all that worked better than any "scared straight" documentary or tour of a prison.

Those who know me or who have read my blogs for a while may remember that my mother had multiple sclerosis and during the last thirty or so years of her life, was completely bed-ridden, utterly unable to consciously control her lower limbs. She had a whole bathroom drawer full of dozens of prescription drugs, many, or most, of which were very powerful pain killers. Because while her motive nerves were not anything she could control (so they were useless for lifting up a leg or even wiggling a toe), her sensory nerves were working like high voltage wires transmitting PAIN. If you got anywhere NEAR her feet, she would scream bloody murder just due to her FEAR that you might happen to brush against a toe and the pain would be enough to knock her out. And there were nights we would hear her crying, if not screaming, due to pain that she felt at the time and had nothing powerful enough that could stop it. (I really don't even want you to attempt to imagine what this must be like for a child to hear these sounds coming out of his or her mother.)

So yes, she had drugs, prescription drugs, and she showed each one to us and explained to us how they worked and what they did and what it would be like if she didn't have them. She explained how one could need more and more of them in order for them to keep on working because the body adapts and what used to work gets so that it doesn't work as well, and that her fear was that it would get so that she would reach a point where no amount of them would stop the pain, so she never took enough to completely mask the pain, but only enough to tone the pain down to where maybe she could stand it at least for a little while.

"So," she said, "what do you think if you had been taking drugs for FUN, just for the thrill of it...and you know that ALL the drugs that people take for FUN are derivatives of drugs that people need for REAL, or maybe they are actually the SAME drugs, and that the whole time you were playing with the drugs your body was adapting to them so that you needed more and more of them, so that if you had already maxed your body out on drugs for FUN, what would it be like if you got a disease like mine, or any one of all the OTHER disease that people can get that REQUIRE pain killers, but now the drugs won't work for you, how would you feel then?"

None of her children ever played around with drugs. And you wouldn't either. If you ever heard your mother crying in pain, or screaming, and you knew what was needed to make it stop, you would then be CLEAR on what these drugs were FOR. And so if you ever needed them, then maybe they would work for you. But otherwise, no imagined pleasure on earth could lure you into trying them and getting your body to the state in which you needed more and more of them in order for them to be effective at all. It was valuable to know that these things had a serious and very real PURPOSE and that having a THRILL was not what they had been developed for.

So what I am remembering right now is that basically ALL "illegal" drugs can, in some form, have a genuine medical use, so from the point of view of a country like Japan, even prescription drugs are "illegal" drugs if you DON'T have a prescription, or if you have more with you than you need for your medical condition. Being my mother's son, I've had some surgeries and I was given prescriptions for pain killers and I filled those prescriptions, but I only took them to the extent that I genuinely needed them, so I ended up with a lot of them left over. What if I brought into Japan some of those pain killers? I have no medical use for them right now, so from Japan's point of view, they would now be "illegal drugs".

If you are bringing prescription drugs into Japan, you have to also have with you current prescriptions from your doctor, your doctor also has to write a letter on his or her letterhead stationery explaining what conditions you have that require these drugs, and your prescriptions have to be in the bottles from the pharmacy they came from complete with their labels that have information that match who you are and who the doctor is, and you have to be bringing in the quantity that you NEED for the duration of your trip, not, say, an entire three-month supply like I have for four different medications because I buy them in three-months-for-the-price-of-two-months from my insurance company's by-mail prescription drug program. Any failure to comply with these rules just could with strong likelihood get you arrested right on the spot for illegal drug importation. At the very least, if they didn't arrest you for bringing illegal drugs into the country, they could impound and destroy the drugs that you brought in so then you wouldn't have something that you need. You would then have a hell of a time getting those prescriptions filled elsewhere, even in Japan, but certainly you would have problems getting them in some third world backwater.

So, peculiarly, in this suspicious "global war on drugs" age, a traveller can get into extremely serious trouble for simply having a medical condition that requires prescription medication. I have never had to do any of this before despite all the places I have been, but I don't know if it is because drugs laws have gotten way more strict elsewhere, or if it was because I didn't NEED to carry with me prescription drugs; either way, this is a danger I might have never known about or thought before until it was way too late.

As I understand it, it is best to have these medications and the prescriptions and the doctor letter WITH YOU in your carry-on bag. Having something like that in your carry-on bag is a good idea anyway, just because your checked baggage might get lost or delayed. But from the legal point of view, one might think at first that if they put their prescription drugs into their CHECKED baggage, then nobody would think you were "importing" them into the country where you had a stop-over or plane change, since you had no practical access to them. But checked baggage gets inspected, too, so I am not sure what they would do when they inspected your baggage down in some baggage inspection room, found those drugs, and you weren't there with all your letters and whatnot as an explanation of what you were doing with them. I think for all reasons, you must have those drugs and all the required paperwork there WITH YOU in your carry-on bag. Then it ought to be an easy matter to make it through whatever process they have. Since I see four occasions where all this might occur on this particular trip, I plan on having four copies of each paperwork item, in case their rules require them to KEEP a copy of the paperwork as part of their records.

A traveller must also do some research to discover what drugs can't be brought in no matter what. A person in such a situation may want to obtain from their doctor a substitute drug, or figure out some workable alternative, or simply not visit that country.

Another medical issue is what inoculations are recommended (or even required) in the destination where you are going? Fortunately this is something I thought of in time, but it ISN'T something that I have needed to consider for a long time (you don't need inoculations for Key West, Hawaii, or Las Vegas, for example!). It ends up that for Palau, I need to get inoculations protecting me from Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and Typhoid. It is also the ten-year-time that I need an update on my tetanus shot. Additionally, where I am going there is a possible danger of getting Denge Fever for which there is no preventative medication other than mosquito repellant (25% to 50% DEET). I HATE wearing DEET, but now it looks like I will have to, at least in the jungle area that I am going. One of the parts of the trip I am most looking forward to is also the most dangerous, disease-wise, and that is that I have rented for two days and nights a beachside bungalow (fortunately, with kitchenette) in an isolated portion of the country with a jungle, waterfalls, a river, and native villages nearby. The beach is supposed to be outstandingly beautiful, white sand and clear blue water with excellent snorkeling and the owners of the place have free kayaks for the guests, to go paddling around in. It sounds like a wonderful place. This is not an expensive resort, but a family-owned facility; their correspondence with me (and traveler's reviews of them) demonstrate that they are extremely friendly and helpful and the place is a peaceful visit to an unspoiled tropical paradise. Even the paved route out to there is relatively new; it used to be just a dirt road that the car rental companies wouldn't even let you drive their cars on.

However, "unspoiled" may also be another word for "uncivilized". And, in a way, "uncivilized" could also apply to some sections of town, where I have now read (if you search beyond the glowing travel information) have sewage problems in that basically, sewage disposal means simply ditches along the side of the roads. I've already been through something like that in the so-called gorgeous (and phenomenally expensive) paradise of Bora Bora. I think it was none other than James Michener who described Bora Bora as having the most beautiful lagoon of any island system in the entire South Pacific. However, I can tell you that its beauty kind of pales when you are walking out in it (it's knee deep for thousands of feet) and human turds go floating by. Yes, from my personal observation, whatever sewage system they have empties right out into the lagoon. And one problem with that lagoon is that the passage through the reef that allows the water to go in and out is pretty narrow, so this beautiful lagoon is like a modern-day toilet that you have flush several times before you can finally empty it.

The truth be told that I actually hated Bora Bora. I very MUCH loved Moorea and Tahiti, but Bora Bora really was a shit hole. Even if it hadn't felt like swimming in an incompletely unflushed toilet, the water was SO SALTY (due to that same phenomenon of the all-but-closed up lagoon), that it made my skin crawl. All I wanted to do there was take a fresh shower. And my poor traveling companion contracted encephalitis, there. She thinks it was the mosquitos that flew in through the spaces in the thatched walls of where we slept; I don't know where encephalitis comes from and she's probably right, but I vote for whatever disease you can get from swimming in sewage. On the Carnival Cruise that I went on with my sister and her two children a couple of years ago, I got too sunburned the first day on the ship, so I stopped wearing a bathing suit and didn't want to go into any water. When we were at the beach in Ensenada, Mexico, I stayed under shade on the sand while my sister and her children went swimming in the ocean. All three of them got sick, but I did not. I remembered back to when I first did film extra work and had been envious of some of my fellow extras who had been in the movie The Titanic, that had been filmed a few months before I moved to Los Angeles. They did all their scenes down in Ensenada where James Cameron had built a movie studio in the water that had a workable scale model of a sinking Titanic ship. I thought it would have been fun to get a free trip to Ensenada and be in such a popular and well-loved movie. But no, they all said, I would have hated it. The only thing they liked about it were all the Coronas they got to drink in the evenings after the filming quit for the day. Otherwise, it was nothing but floating in the water all day, because they were playing drowning passengers. "Besides," they told me, "everybody got sick from being in sewage water all day...Mexico, you know...." Humm.

Thank goodness, though, concerning Palau, nobody writing any reviews for TripAdvisor or any other site ever mentioned getting sick in the water there (or from any other thing), and anyone who went out to any of the more isolated places just raved about the beauty of the water and the beaches and the friendliness of the people. None of the places where I am going in Palau is tightly surrounded by a Bora Bora type of reef, nor are they as heavily populated as northern Baja, so if THEY do empty sewage into the ocean, most of it must be quickly swept away by the tides. I hope so.

I wouldn't need one of the Hepatitis shots if I weren't going out there; the key to whether you needed it or not was whether all your meals were going to be eaten in urban restaurants (such as if you were a business traveler staying in town), or were you going to be eating in local areas. The place with the bungalows advertised that one could buy delicious meals from a neighbor to the facility if you gave them 24-hours notice. I told the owner that I would be cooking my meals while I was there (she told me where to find groceries in the main town before I drove out there) except for the first dinner, and for that, I would like to order from the neighbor. So that one "cooked by a neighbor in an isolated area" meal makes me have to have an inoculation for Hepatitis A or B, I forget which one of them it is.

Also, I probably wouldn't need the insect repellant if I weren't staying out there "in the jungle". But then, if I were that touchy, I shouldn't be going anywhere at all except to Disneyland.

Throughout all of Palau, one should only drink bottled water and not get anything with ice. I already went through all that in Mexico, TWICE during the three months I was vagabonding around that country (in the mid-80s). Despite my being as careful as I knew how, two things got me--the ice for a margarita (and at an elegant, Americanized hotel in San Miguel Allende for rich American tourists!), that was chipped from a block of ice (hint: block ice is filthy, whereas the cubed ice is made from bottled water and therefore safe), and lettuce that had been put on a tostada (that I took off and DID NOT EAT) made by a nun at an orphanage in Mexico City. All it took was for that lettuce to TOUCH the beans and I got Montezuma's Revenge. It's funny how in Mexico where I got sick was in the "civilized" places, but going into the tiny villages and mountain towns, I could even get tamales from street vendors with no problem. I think the difference was that if it LOOKED nice, I'd let my guard down. Can't do that.

But I can't but be unhappy over having to get the shots. I can tell my rational, intellectual self that I already have proven over and over again that shots don't really hurt, or if they do, they hurt for the tiniest fraction of time. They probably hurt less than all the times I had to have my blood drawn (every three months for several years); they probably hurt less than even getting my finger pricked (at a minimum of once a month, sometimes more frequently, for years and years) to check my blood coagulation levels. So why am I suddenly upset over having to get these shots? One of the hepatitis shots is even in a series of THREE (I hope BOTH of them aren't), but the Typhoid, that could be a shot or it could be pills, the doctor decides based on, what, I don't know.

I hate the idea of getting these things to the extent that as an adult, I did not keep good records because I wanted to put the while IDEA of them out of my mind. A Tetanus booster very ten years? Yeah, right! I felt much better "ignoring" that and therefore skipping the record-keeping, so instead, I never knew when I needed one and when I DID need one, I had to guess when the last time I had one was. Very bad, I know. Stupid.

Fortunately for this time, I DO have a record of when I had the last Tetanus shot, and it was exactly ten years ago. I had cut my hand on a sharp metal edge of a paper towel holder in a bathroom at school where I work and had to taken to the ER for eight stitches. That was a worker's comp injury, so my own personnel file at work had the date of that incident. I remember when the ER doctor gave me that shot, which further proves what a stupid fool I had always been about that subject. As he was talking to me, he reached in through my shirt and kind of lightly slapped his hand between my upper chest and shoulder. He seemed to have in his hand something like a round flat metal disc, but he did it all so quickly I didn't really "see" it. All I felt was a quick touch of his hand on me, I didn't even ask him a question, but I maybe looked at him quizzically; anyway, he simply said, "Oh, I just gave you a tenatus shot." There was NOTHING about it that was anything like a shot...no obvious syringe, no sense of needle, and certainly not even the feeling of a prick. Just his hand touching my body for a quick moment.

So why on earth do I feel queasy over all these inoculations? My father, who was in the Navy, had two rows of vaccination "circles" across his bicep (maybe 9 or 10 or 12 of them, like I have ONE of), like a row of military medals or maybe Boy Scout merit badges. Interesting that where he was a commanding officer of a naval base during World War II (Okinawa) is not too terribly far from where I am going (Palau); both were Japanese-controlled regions in the Pacific theater. I imagine there were a lot more diseases to watch out for in the 1940s but whatever devices were used to innoculate him and all the other naval officers and sailors were sure no "round flat metal discs" that were administered with a gentle slap of the doctor's hand. So for sure I can be brave like my Daddy, right, who truly NEEDED to be brave, when I have it easy, right?

But I understand the fear. Childhood traumas are likely to stay forever. I remember the polio epidemic and in 1955 when I was in first grade and we lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, North Carolina was one of the hardest hit. My oldest living relative, my father's first cousin, who is now in her 90s and in a nursing home, got polio back then. The woman I travelled with to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and French Polynesia (the one who got encephalitis in Bora Bora), someone I knew "my whole life" because her parents were best friends with my parents, her birth mother got polio and was in an iron lung. My mother was always so sad about my friend, because she would say to me that whenever she would see her, she would remember seeing her playing on the floor next to her mother in an iron lung. And then after her mother died (after only a few years), her father married his wife's sister, who always remembered that she had been "number two", and from then on, and especially after she had two children of her own, her adopted daughter, my friend, was the "ugly stepchild." So my mother always had a special place in her heart for my friend who never was lovingly mothered like she (and any child) should have been.

The first person I knew who was my age who died was a girl who had been GIVEN polio by accident (so the story went)...she was given either too many polio inoculations, or too much in one inoculation; at any rate, the shot that was supposed to create an immunity to the disease ended up GIVING her the disease. She lived all the way through (with withered, damaged legs) to her junior year of high school. She sat next to me in class every single day from our freshman year until she died. I felt the loss of her very deeply.

My algebra I teacher had had polio and he had lost a lung. When he taught, he would speak only on the outbreath, and would pause mid-sentence to breathe in. I loved him, and got As in his algebra class.

My sophomore year was geometry, then my junior year was algebra II.

For some reason, I was afraid of my algebra II teacher (a different math teacher from the one who had had polio) who was mean and cruel. As a result, I couldn't learn a thing from him and ended up with a D at the end of the school year. I almost always got As, so that D on my report card was a shock, particularly when I had gotten nothing but A's in algebra I. So I had to repeat algebra II my senior year, but fortunately, my teacher this time was the nice one from algebra I. He knew that I was learning the subject now and felt that I had a special knowledge because I also knew the pitfalls in the subject, where it wasn't clear, from having nearly flunked it the year before. Our class was in the last period of the day, that meant our teacher by then would be very tired from having had a day of speaking only on the outrbreaths with one lung, so he would ask ME to teach the class when he would get too tired to speak! Here I had gotten a D the previous year and now was taking over as the teacher! The other students loved it, because they really could learn it from me and I think a valuable principle in education is that often a course is taught best by someone who had trouble learning it. Maybe if it was easy for you, you can't understand why somebody would have trouble and therefore you can't teach it very well.

All this is to say that polio was a reality in the life of the people of my generation and the generation before us, and we understand the value of the polio vaccine. But oh what a trauma it was to have to get those shots, at least it was, in my experience (what a blessing it was when they came up with the oral, "sugar cube" medicine!).

I still feel in my bones what it was like to be in the first grade in Raleigh and to get that first polio shot, AT THE SCHOOL. All the students were lined up across the playground, waiting to move into the gymnasium where the shots were being given. Of course we were scared, we had no idea what it was going to be like inside those doors. Our fearful imagination would run wild; I am sure we had already had had some other shots by then, so the concept itself was horrifying, but this was so much worse because it was so PUBLIC, at the school, not quietly and privately in a doctor's office or maybe when you were sick in bed in your own bedroom in the days when doctors made house calls.

So those were the factors: "fear", (expected) "pain", and "public".

The addition of "public" as a traumatic factor may surprise some people, but as I write this, I realize I now have a greater understanding of that. North Carolina is the only state I ever went to school in that had corporal punishment. I think they still have it even today, even if most other states have outlawed it in the schools.

I never received corporal punishment in school, partly because I never deserved it (if any student does), and partly because (I later learned) that my parents had gone to the schools where I was enrolled and forbade them to do it. They instructed the teacher or principal that if I ever did anything that called for that, they were to tell THEM and they would take care of it. Of course, nobody never needed to report to my parents anything bad.

But I definitely believe in the concept that to witness a trauma is to suffer it yourself; you don't have to actually be a direct victim of it for it to affect you (maybe not as deeply, but you are traumatized by it, too). Such as with child abuse, maybe, as sometimes happens, only one child in a family of several children actually suffers regular child abuse. The others are left alone. Yet they suffer from it, too, anyway.

Some wise tribe in Africa, maybe several of them, have a saying, "To beat a child is to offend its spirit; the spirit goes away and it takes a lot of work to lure it back." Some people say that the spirit is what connects the soul to the personality, so that if the spirit is offended and goes away, it is as if the person has no soul. Yes, they have a soul, but there is no communication between that soul and the person living here on Earth. So this is a very serious thing. You have to be very careful with how you treat a child, you may actually damage their connection with their soul.

The first school I ever went to was a private school that went from kindergarten all the way up to graduation from high school, and also had a nursery school. I was in the nursery school, and the girl I described above whose mother had been in the iron lung also went to that school. She was older than I was, so she was one or two grades beyond me.

For some reason, I really liked her teacher, whether because of that connection with my friend she had a special importance in my mind, or simply because of some quality that I saw in her, herself, that made me like her so much, but whatever the reason, I developed the habit of going over there every lunch and giving that teacher one of my Graham Crackers (it was like a gesture of extreme affection). I wouldn't really visit her or play with my friend, I would just go ever there, say hi, and give her a Graham Cracker, which I imagined she received very graciously and joyfully. I work in an elementary school, now, myself, and I can tell you it means amazingly much if some child knows my name, says hi to me when I walk past, or writes me a thank you card or letter in response to something I have done (such as I read a story in the class or helped them on a field trip). It's the most precious thing ever.

However, one day I had gone over there to give that teacher a Graham Cracker and when I entered the classroom, to my great shock, I saw the teacher sitting down on a chair with my friend held down across her lap while the teacher violently beat her butt with a paddle. I don't remember there being any sound at all, no slaps from the paddle or shouts from the teacher or screaming from my friend, because I suddenly was thrown deep into myself as if I had slipped into a diving bell under the water; all my senses were muffled inside the helmet of my skull and I instantly slipped out of there and ran back to my own classroom. I never told anybody about it or asked anybody about it, I don't even know how much I understood about it or how aware I had been about my friend's situation in her home life which might have led to her acting out in some way or made this teacher's response to her particularly inappropriate. Only as an adult can I process how horrible this was, that this poor girl whose only connection with her mother was to play on the floor in the hospital next to her iron lung and then she died, and the step mother who took over treated her like she was an enemy to resent instead of a child who needed care and love. But children are phenomenally aware and sensitive in a spiritual way even if they maybe don't understand the facts, so on some level I must have viewed it as unimaginable that any possible behavior could have come out of my friend that deserved that treatment. And to me, the worst of it all was that somebody, anybody, could come in and see it (as I did, and then wished that I could disappear from it), that this painful, unjust thing was not private and hidden like the shameful thing it really was, but there on view to anybody.

Yes, beat a child and the spirit is offended and goes away and to witness the trauma is to feel it yourself; I could feel the feeling of my own spirit retreating into the silence that was inside my head, but of course living in a loving home like I did, the good atmosphere easily brought me back out again and it maybe even had been by own pre-school teacher who had brought me comfort, I don't know, but one thing I do know is that I never ever again went over to that teacher to say hi to her and to give her my Graham Cracker. I never laid eyes on her again and whether she felt the absence or not, I can say with assurance that that sweet, precious, generous, loving spirit that I represented was so offended that I permanently went away from HER!

And I later learned more about this kind of thing in other classes at other schools, particularly in the class of one second grade teacher who used the paddle every chance she could get, not only for behavioral problems, but as a public punishment for those who had trouble learning. She publicly paddled those students who would miss more than five words on a spelling test, and she'd take that paddle with her to every reading circle and she would paddle any student who would misread three words in the reading group. I wonder how many, if any, of those paddled students ever read for pleasure when they grew up.

What sickened me the most, and can almost make me vomit even today just to think of it, is, unlike me who shrank back away from the scene with the teacher and my friend, feeling deep within me that it was almost a sacrilege to have even been there to see it, how many fellow students in that second grade classroom LOVED it when this would happen, CRAVED for it to happen, and would with great excitement struggle there at their desks, craning their necks so that they could get a better view while I, alone among them, slipped down behind the back of whoever was in front of me so I wouldn't have to see a thing and I wished that I could also cover my ears; and when the person being beaten would finally cry out, I, too, would cry along with them. I knew that the teacher would continue beating them until they DID cry, so it was better for them if they cried sooner rather than later, but boy or girl, they held off as long as they could because when they cried their sense of pride was lost and their pride was more precious to them then their body and the need to save it from pain.

So that's why in the traumatic triad of the polio shots there was the "public" in addition to the "fear" and the "pain", because the "public" aspect of the "fear" and "pain" harmed the most precious quality of all, the child's pride. (So there is another lesson for schools...do absolutely nothing that harms a child's sense of pride, but how many schools actually work to aggressively DO that very thing?).

So there we were in line to get our polio shot, each one locked into our fear, and when we got closer to the gymnasium door, it only got worse, because now what we could hear every time the door opened was a torrent of screaming and crying coming from the children inside. I don't see how the emotions could be much different from those felt by cattle being led to a slaughter house.

And I remember once I got INSIDE! There was a long table covered with a (sterile?) white tablecloth and lined up along it were about twenty (I remember them as black and silver metallic) syringes with long needles sticking out of the end of them, and behind the table were several white-uniformed nurses filling these syringes by sticking the needles into the rubber ends of bottles of medicine and next to those nurses were a few more who would take the next child by an arm, roll up the sleeve or his or her shirt or blouse, wipe their arm with a frightening-smelling liquid (alcohol, I guess), and one of the several doctors would pick up one of the filled syringes and jab it into the arm of the swabbed boy or girl who either was already screaming or crying, or mortifyingly did once the needle entered their arm. The doctors would repeatedly say, "If you are good, you get a lollypop", and one of two final nurses standing by with lollypops would hand them out, saying "You get a green one!" or "You get a red one", etc., and the child receiving it would tear the clear plastic wrapper off and toss the wrapper into a wastebasket proffered by the very last nurse and then they ran to freedom out the back door.

I was too numb by all this to cry or scream, I remember for sure that I did not do either, nor could I tell you at all how the shot itself, actually felt, I don't know if I even felt it at all, but instead, what I finally did was vomit into the waste basket with all the thrown out plastic wrappers. I did not get a lollypop and, in fact, I NEVER EVER got "the lollypop" at any inoculation, public or private, because I was never "good". I always either vomited or fainted, and it wasn't until I was a freshman in college having to get some kind of a series of shots at the university's clinic, where at the first series they used a "gun" and I was so happy about that because it wasn't a needle, but it HURT like somebody punched you in the arm without a boxing glove on, so when I went to the clinic for the second dose of the series and you could choose to get it either from the gun or a needle, I CHOSE the NEEDLE and discovered that it didn't hurt at all!

It was ALL FEAR, and the only shot that I can ever say actually HURT me (that I can remember) was a penicillin shot that I had to receive not once, but twice, one in each "cheek", at a free public health clinic because some anonymous person who had gotten syphilis had given my name (along with several others, I imagine) as a sex partner and therefore I was either a potential donor or victim of the disease. The doctor said that it was safer to give me the shot than it was to take the time to test whether I needed it or not. But even in that case, it wasn't the needle that hurt, but the medicine, itself.

So I have since argued that most of the time, shots really DON'T hurt, but here I am, facing up to having to get several inoculations next week and I feel like I am in the first grade again. In the face of repeated past trauma, it is not the rational mind that has control.

Since I've mentioned having to get penicillin whether I actually had syphilis or not, and one of the Hepatitis shots (I was told by a friend) is for unclean food and the other is for unclean sex, for a trip like this, one might as well research the sex laws of their destination, as well. I don't expect to have sex with anybody, and I sure am not a "child sex tourist" (nor is anywhere I am going a place travelers go to with that intention), but this, too, can be a very serious and dangerous business. One needs to watch out for sexual solicitors who may be sex workers themselves, or may be agents procuring customers for brothels, or may even be part of legal "stings" looking to lure people into following them, only to take them straight into the clutches of waiting police officers and a sure imprisonment in hell. Sex is just about the last thing I would ever think to have in a foreign country, unless it would be with somebody I was traveling there with (nobody fits that bill), but even having sex with a partner you know, you ought to know what is legal and what is illegal in the places you are going. As I said, you won't be in Kansas, any more.

All this concept of "adventure" that has excited me these past weeks had come to me when I discovered my new favorite author of all time, Willard Price, which I discussed in a previous entry. I have now read the first four books of his boys' adventure series, Amazon Adventure, South Sea Adventure, Underwater Adventure, and Volcano Adventure. I now have all fourteen of them, but I am "controlling" the reading of them like DeBeers controls the mining and marketing of their diamonds. These books are too precious to me to simply race through them and be done with them quickly, so I am carefully savoring them and leaving some spaces between reading successive ones so that the whole of them will last me longer. I am pretty sure I will feel grief once I have read them all, to not still have more of them to look forward to.

Each one that I have read so far has been amazing. The first one I read, South Sea Adventure, the second book in the series, made me fall in love with the two brothers, Hal (19 years old) and Roger (13 years old) who are the heroes of the series. On the strength of that one book, which had been republished in the same volume with Volcano Adventure (I have no idea how the publisher decided to pair books together and as near as I could tell, they republished this way only six of the books), was enough to get me to buy all the others. While I certainly like and admire both of the boys (and believe that there really are boys like this, and also grown adults that I wish I knew), I have to say that I give a special edge to Roger, the 13-year-old brother, who is more mischievous yet his mischievousness leads to some of their best discoveries. But both of them are amazing, yet it is fun to give a special cheer to Roger's successes, since he is so earnest and what he accomplishes is often so unexpected.

I gave my volume of South Sea Adventure and Volcano Adventure to a boy named Sam who graduated from our sixth grade this year (there wasn't time to order him a good condition copy of that volume, so I explained why I gave him mine and ordered a replacement one for me). I had seen him in action during one of our two-night-overnight field trips, plus throughout this school year, and I felt that he exemplified the adventuresome spirit and moral strength of these books and these characters. He's also very smart and a great, well-rounded student; he will be going to our city's top prep school next year.

The very next day after I gave this gift and graduation card to his mother to give to him, he put in my school mailbox one of the very best thank-you letters I have ever received. He said that he was already on chapter 7 of the book and that he couldn't wait to read more. He told me about a part in the story that made him laugh out loud, and it was a part that had made me laugh out loud, too (in addition to all their other charms, the books are quite funny). He also was excited that one of the characters was his age, which happens to be the appealing 13-year-old. [If he continues reading the series after the second book in the volume I gave him (which will require some work on his part to find them), he will be increasingly impressed by that particular character, that I imagine he relates to.] He told me why he found the book inspirational and how he thinks it will help him be more confident that he will be able to pursue and achieve his dreams. In other words, if I were to write out instructions of how to write a thank you letter for any gift, he would have followed them perfectly: demonstrate that you like the gift by already putting it to use, be specific about something you like about the gift, and show that you understand the thought process that the gift giver had used in selecting that particular gift for you and how that was appropriate. What better way to say "thank you"?

So far, Volcano Adventure taught me the most about a subject I knew next to nothing about, and made me fascinated by this subject. Amazon Adventure was probably my favorite of the four books I have read so far and every step of the way was utterly fascinating. I really really really must take a trip to the Amazon! Also, it is amazing how the author does not sugar coat anything. I'm sure his books would be considered "inappropriate" by liberal blue nosed librarians these days. Actually, librarians are the people who are tough and fight for our rights, no librarians are into banning books! It is cowardly, weak parents and controlling ignoramus school boards who are the enemies of free speech and honest, empowering books for children.

I love it that these boys have and know how and DO use guns; in fact, I am using the detailed gun descriptions as guidance for myself if I were to ever buy a rifle. They aren't afraid to kill animals for food; they understand that meat is an essential part of the human diet. Since most of their adventures have to do with collecting specimens of animals for zoos and aquariums, they also are quite clear that there are animals that eat other animals. They had collected quite a phenomenal menagerie on their trip down the tributaries through Ecuador and Brazil that led to the mighty Amazon river--a vampire bat, a baby tapir, a boa constrictor (that gave birth to babies!), a rare kind of six-foot-tall stork, two different kinds of jaguars, a monkey, an electric eel, and an anaconda, among other animals; all kept in cages or in water or tied with a leash or via other methods-- and they had quite a job catching food for feeding these animals! (The vampire bat, for example, needed fresh blood. The anaconda was probably the easiest to feed, actually, for once it swallowed something like a deer, it was set for several days, maybe even weeks.) There is nothing in there that I viewed as ridiculous or beyond the powers of boys like them who have knowledge, patience, and courage. It was clear that they had fully studied about the animals they were likely to and hoped to find before they went, so they had good ideas of how to catch them, and then take care of them.

I also liked the plot structure in which the father, who initially led the excursion but certain circumstances intervened that made it so that the boys HAD to go on without him, there was no choice in the matter, this realistically led into the boys amply proving their resourcefulness and success that leads them to the other adventures where they no longer need the father, but there are often other adults, such as the volcano scientist or the underwater treasure hunter that they initially are in the employment of, but who somehow get incapacitated in some way which leaves the boys as the responsible parties, which is one of the main points of these books (another of the main points is to give to readers a love for and appreciation of animals and cultures and natural geographical conditions of the world whether that be an Amazonian rain forest, the Arctic, South Pacific islands, volcanoes, or under the sea, etc.

Another part of the "not sugar-coating" is that there are surprisingly bad people in these adventures, also. These are no "Raggedy Ann" books where those who start out bad get turned into good due to the goodness of the two dolls, Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, who have "I Love You" candy hearts sewn into their cotton stuffing, which are girl's books in which love and nurturing is the most important ingredient. While certainly the two genders do, or should, share certain qualities, I have taken enough gender workshops to understand that there nevertheless are still fundamental differences between boys and girls, with very, very few exceptions.

Girls are circles and boys are arrows. Girls are embracing and keep a warm, loving hearth. Boys shoot outward and are focused, directed, and deadly sharp. Girls can stay in the center, like a proton, whereas boys buzz around the stratosphere like electrons. Boys have to go off to dangerous places and they have to watch out for and protect society from all the horrible things that want to kill, eat, or enslave us all. It does our society no good to feminize the boys or, worse, to SHAME them for being what Michael Meade calls "inferior or failed girls"; boys aren't girls, inferior or exemplary, but boys, and very good at being what boys are good at being. This particularly happens in school, which is more set up for the nature of girls (sitting in straight, neat rows and quietly listening to a female teacher drone on and on about trivialities) than it is for boys and so the boys are in danger of feeling stifled or bored or out of place in society as a whole. Girls learn by observing, whereas boys learn by doing, so they want to get up, go outside, and DO something! If they can't go do something productive, then they will go do something destructive.

So while there are girls who love these books, too, I think the girls may like them because girls like boys and these boys in these books are real boys the way boys are supposed to be. So far there have been no females in these books at all, other than the boy's mother, and the only sign of her has been one telegram from her back at their home on Long Island, which the father received from her in Brazil. She matter of factly reports that a competitor has set fire to and burned down all their outbuildings and killed their entire stock of rare animals, so the father has to rush home to protect her and leave the boys alone to go hire a crew of Indians to go with them down the Amazon so that they can continue to rebuild their father's rare animal inventory (since without them doing that, their whole family would be financially ruined).

Naturally, there are also agents of this competitor there in Brazil, so, in order to do what they have to do, the boys have to learn that there ARE bad people in the world so that they can be recognized, guarded against, and defeated. The boys in these books have learned that, but they operate with a balance that is kind of like a version of "trust God, but still tie up your camel." They are willing to give a person who their senses warn them may be bad the benefit of the doubt, but they nevertheless are on guard and set up protection for themselves, and when the bad person shows their hand, the boys are ready to act immediately without doubts. They would be willing to die for each other and for their friends, but they will do whatever is necessary to stop a proven enemy.

The more exciting the adventure, the greater the dangers, and for me, so far the scariest of the books is Underwater Adventure and I have been 100 feet underwater and I even have had SOME clues as to just how scary it can be (the fact is that I was nearly drowned in Australia due to a selfish and inconsiderate dive buddy and only careful self-control and a willingness to do what I had to do without utterly panicking saved my life). In fact, for me, the dangers too much outweigh the pleasures. So, some of that book was hard to read because it was just too realistic to even stand comfortably.

Imagine, for example (from the book), that you are on a job salvaging a priceless treasure from a sunken Spanish ship, not for your personal profit, but for the scientific and cultural benefit of a museum that is sponsoring and paying for your expertise. And you discover that somehow that treasure is being stolen, but you have no idea HOW or by whom. So everybody decides that they will have to divide up staying on guard throughout the night, whether they are a man in his early 20s, a boy 19, or a boy 13, and each ones shift lasting as long as the amount of air a typical aqualung (the word they used in the 1950s when this book was written) will hold. Basically, this means that each of the three of them will alternate keeping watch one at a time 100 feet down under water on this sunken treasure ship alone in the dark for an hour while the other two are asleep up above on their ship on the surface. So, if the first hour of being alone in the dark a hundred feet down under water wasn't scary enough, imagine having to go back down two more times that night, and then repeating the whole thing the next night and then the next and then the next! And for sure Willard Price describes all this with his extremely effective writing style; an experience that is about a hundred times worse than being alone in, say, a haunted house, because underwater, the sea creatures are REAL and way more active at night than they are during the day, let alone how wildly your imagination will be running and every single thing that passes, bumps into you, or chews on you will be scaring you to death! Oh, and you can't just curl up and sit there on the deck Indian style...that deck will be covered with very active things like octopuses that come out at night by the dozens and that also can, and will, eat a man...or a thirteen-year-old boy! So you must be constantly on guard in every possible direction.

But even with an upcoming adventure like mine, that compared to these things is as tame as tame can be, I could nevertheless find myself caught into something truly horrible. For example, the leader of this expedition gets killed simply by walking across a lagoon. He gets set up by a very bad person who trickily engineers this whole thing, but it realistically could happen to anybody simply going on vacation today. Without going into much detail, basically what happens is that during this trek across the lagoon, which is more like swimming rather than walking, but the water over the reef is shallow enough that a person could stop and stand there and rest for a while, the victim gets lured into doing just that and he happens to step right inside the open shell of a large clam (that the bad man knows is exactly there) and the clam instantly clamps shut like a bear trap and the man's leg is stuck in there. Unfortunately, the tide is in the process of coming into the lagoon, so if the man isn't freed from the clam, the water will soon be over his head. There is a way to be freed from such a clam if you have somebody with you who knows how and is willing to do it. They have to wedge their knife (if they have one) into a certain place (which takes some inspection with goggles to find where that is) and they have to cut their way in to where they can find a muscle deep inside the clam that operates like a hinge. They have to courageously stick their arm inside the clam, sever that hinge-muscle, and then the shell can be opened. This is all but impossible for the one caught to do by himself, and if the person with them actually wants the person dead, well...what a perfect murder for the one doing it, as this looks like a reasonable accident.

Palau is known for not only having huge clams everywhere, they even have a program of reseeding the reefs with clams that they start out as babies in a kind of fish hatchery, and then when they are big enough to survive in the wild, they are taken and "planted" all around on the various reefs and where they dig in become a permanent fixture. So this is particularly something I now know to watch out for, to not ever simply put my foot down without looking underwater to see just exactly what is under there, even when I am close to shore. The place where I am staying in the beachside bungalow, they say that there is amazing snorkeling right off the very beach (no need to go boating out to some special spot). Well, if the snorkeling is so marvelous that means that right off the beach is coral and an abundance of sea life and who knows what all (large CLAMS?), fantastic to look at, but probably not something to simply stop and stand on, or in, right? Right?

I am going to end this entry on the subject of "the dark side of adventure" by putting in a little excerpt from one of Willard Price's adult books that I am also reading. This is from his wonderful book, Adventures in Paradise: Tahiti and Beyond, published in 1955. (Remember, he, himself, traveled to 77 different countries.) Would somebody today experience traveling misery like this simply by taking a ship in a third world country? Well, maybe not any more on a journey to Bora Bora (nowadays, if you go to Bora Bora, you simply fly there from Moorea or Tahiti or some other French Polynesian island) but how about if you book passage from, say, Port Moresby, New Guinea (apparently these days the most horrendous seaport in all the world) to Bangladesh, where nowadays is one of the places old ships finally go to die? It's where ship-wreckers salvage whatever they can literally by cutting entire ships up into pieces by hand (there are few things more horrible in the world than dead ships ready to be cut up for scrap). I saw a documentary film on the subject and then later used Google maps to take a satellite look at the region. I was astonished by the immense number of dead ships, hundreds and hundreds of them, clearly seen in the satellite photo, waiting to be torn apart for scrap. To think that such ships would be in worse shape than this one described below, which was, after all, still taking human passengers instead of being used as independent ("mercenary") cargo carriers by pirates who had stolen them:

Here, by Willard Price:

"Make the Best of It--It's Terrible," says Mr. Noordman about the Benecia, the schooner we shall have to take to Les Isles Sous le Vent. And our Chilean friend, Carlos Garcia-Palcios says, "I don't think there's a lousier boat in China."

Nick Rutgers (James Norman Hall's son-in-law) went last week. The boat, scheduled to leave at 5 PM, left at ten, and instead of arriving at Bora Bora at five the next evening, got there forty-eight hours late. Adverse winds.

For another sailing, Mrs. Hall's chauffeur went to board the ship on Monday. Sailing was postponed to Tuesday. On Tuesday it was postponed to Wednesday. On Wednesday it was postponed to Thursday. Each day all the passengers were on hand at five PM and sent home again at eight or ten.

Anything can happen during the passage. Its not uncommon for a piston to go out and the ship wallows for twelve hours or more in the trough until repairs can be made, or a day or two until new parts can be brought from Papeete.

Danielsson says the vessel has holes in her bottom; the pumps have to be kept going continually. Nick says she also has holes in her top; the deck passengers are soaked with rain.

Dr. Wurfel, who chartered the boat for a medical trip and had it all to himself, found all the cockroaches on board concentrating on him. His cabin walls were black with them. They would get up his sleeve--he would try to pull them off--out would come a leg only. He didn't sleep a moment all night.

A ship on this run was lost a few years ago. Fuel was rationed and only enough was allowed for fifteen hours. Contrary winds came up. The ship was never heard from again, must have sunk with all on board.

It doesn't sound too inviting--but over against it is the irresistible lure of the islands so romantically called "the isles under the wind," Raiatea, Huahine and Bora Bora.

It's All That It's Painted. We were aboard the Benicia and find that our friends did not exaggerate.

We were fortunate to have a cabin. Of course we don't have it to ourselves and the occupants are of both sexes, but the women are allowed to undress first.

One of our companions is perpetually seasick--in an airless cabin! Door and window must be kept closed to keep out the sea which thunders against the bulkheads at every roll of the ship. So far the rest of us have refused to patronize the buckets for lost dinners that are hooked to the berths, but when we may succumb, who knows?

The bunks are very narrow--an advantage, because you can wedge yourself in. Still, a Pan-American pilot who sleeps up forward says he has had to tie himself into his bunk.

Of course all this is first class.

Up a muggy companionway are the third-class accommodations. They consist of simply the hard deck. This is jammed with seasick Chinese and Tahitians together with their dogs, cats and pet pigs, crates of chickens, strings of fish, bundles of food.

Eating and throwing up both go on continuously, and the smell of food before it goes down and after it comes up is hard to bear.

The Chinese are the worst sufferers. They eat a tin of corned beef, throw it up, immediately eat another tin, and keep this going ad nauseum.

Still, third class is preferable in one way to first class, because the deck, though roofed, is open at the sides and therefore well ventilated, at least in theory. In practice, the fumes from the engine and the fug of food have a way of lying in stagnant pools behind the forward bulkheads in defiance of any breeze that happens to be blowing. It's worst, of course, when the breeze is with the ship and can't quite catch up.

Leaving Papeete at eight PM (only three hours late) we spent a night that seemed approximately five times as long as usual and arrived at Huanine in the early morning. We went ashore to the Chinaman's for some black coffee and bread. (Benicia serves no meals.) The beauty of the island revived us. Huahine had everything--high mountains, deep bays, islets, irregular coast, blue lagoon, barrier reef. Everything but food.

It was three in the afternoon before we reached Raiatea and staggered into a Chinese restaurant. The town, Uturoa, is pretty though thoroughly Chinese. After lunch we got a car and drove out to a marae, native temple, reputedly nine hundred years old and made of twelve-foot stones. The heads of thousands of victims sacrificed to the gods were deposited here.

Back to the ship, and now we are within sight of the great Gibraltarlike rock of Bora Bora, silhouetted against the sunset.

Lemonade Stands

2011-05-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

I've always liked those "Life's Instruction Book" kind of books and one of my favorites was one written by a father to his son who was going away to college, a "Dad's messages to a son who is on his way to becoming a man and how he can become a decent one". My own father--and mother, too--certainly taught me so much of that stuff, although not in writing; their method was more by unwavering example. One piece of advice from that book that I remember having come from that book and that I have always followed was a rather cute one: "Always buy from kids selling lemonade at a lemonade stand."

Why would you want to do that? Well, this world runs on commerce and making money is essential. The sooner that kids get a positive taste of that, the more successful they will be in life; it is one of the more important lessons and your participation in that is a valuable investment in the future of our country. Besides, it is very fun to do it and your involvement in the transaction is not to be concerned about whether you actually want the lemonade, or whether you think that the price is a "good deal," or even that you think that lemonade was made by their mother so the whole thing is rather artificial...your part is to enjoy being put into the role of letting young entrepreneurs know that there IS a market for their efforts and that they CAN obtain customers for their products. I actually can't imagine how it would be possible to drive on past a group of enthusiastically waving children, smiling and so hopeful that somebody will stop and buy their lemonade. You'd have to be a special sort of callous individual to think "I'm too busy now," or "I'm not really thirsty," or "A DOLLAR for that tiny paper cup of lemonade, who do they think they are fooling?" Making those kids happy feeds and refreshes you way more than the lemonade does.

And, of course, all this goes for any other similar thing that kids are doing...selling Girl Scout cookies or candy bars for some charity drive or, my parents' favorite, Boy Scouts in our neighborhood selling lightbulbs! Those Boy Scouts were our family's main supplier of lightbulbs for decades, and then in another town when my father was too old to be able to hear the low battery warnings and my mother wouldn't let him climb ladders anymore, he depended upon a service provided by the Boy Scouts, checking all their smoke alarms.

I also find it impossible to drive past high school car washes, even though I realize that getting my car washed that way will end up taking some time. But for sure you will get a thorough cleaning of your car and you also will be treated to the show of attractive teenagers having a blast and getting more soaked and soaped up than even the cars are. But they will feel supported by the adults in their community and will find their school spirit strengthened...so that, too, helps education.

On an LA to Mexico Carnival Cruise I took with my sister and her two children, our first destination was Catalina Island, just right across the water from Long Beach where the cruise began, but somehow going there this way, it seemed more like Naples. One of the things we did was rent a golf cart (the only vehicles allowed in the Catalina city of Avalon) so that we could take the city self-tour. My sister said to me, "I'll pay for the golf cart if you will drive it!" Such a deal...I'd want to drive it anyway!

It was quite a great tour and it took us way up into the hills above the bay with views that were outstanding. We were also getting quite hot being exposed out there in the sun and we were genuinely getting thirsty. As luck would have it, as we were coming through a residential neighborhood up there, we saw kids on the sidewalk with a card table and a pitcher of lemonade....JUST what the doctor ordered! Of course I stopped and the kids were so excited to have four customers! I am sure that based on their location up in the hills of this small town with virtually no traffic, they hadn't seen many people come by, but they sure had us and we liked their lemonade so much that all four of us had second glasses of it.

And that is an important thing, by the way; when you do this, you have to take the product (and it helps if you actually do want it!). There was a brief period in my life when, if people were selling chocolate bars for charity, I would just give them the price of the candy bar as a donation but say that they could keep the candy. I thought I was doing something good (after all, they got the money), but after a few times of doing this, it became pretty obvious to me that THEY didn't like it. Who wants to attempt to sell something that somebody doesn't really want? Of course, "in real life," you won't stay in business very long if you don't have a product (or labor skills) that people genuinely want, but that's not what we are teaching here with children entrepreneurs (or at least, maybe I should say that that is not what WE are teaching here; they're learning it more than they need by all those people who pass them by). What we are teaching is just the basic concept that a child CAN have the thrill of setting up a flow of incoming money, and the details of what product is truly desirable can be worked out as they continue to get older. (As an aside, after I booked my airline tickets for my trip to Palau this summer, I checked out on the Internet to see what the planes I was going to go on looked like. I found an Airbus website that was designed for airline purchasing agents and I thought to myself, imagine someone actually being a commercial jetliner salesman! Of course there are those, but it isn't one of the things a person normally considers, I imagine. I wonder what kind of commissions THEY get? Well, while we are at it, who is it who sells ocean liners to cruise lines?)

A couple of weeks ago, I bought some lemonade from two enthusiastic boys and one little girl who were, again, selling in what I figured was not a heavily-trafficked neighborhood. They were like explosive Jack Russell Terriers as I drove by! Lemonade is NOT on my very low-carb diet. But I did sip some of it before I got back into my car just so that I could genuinely tell them how good it was. (I wished I could drink it, and they were cleverly also offering refills for half price, but I couldn't participate in that.) Once I got home, I privately threw it away. And just last week, in another neighborhood, there were two boys selling very large and beautiful grapefruits, three of them for a dollar. Grapefruits aren't on my diet any more than lemonade is, but I raved over how beautiful those grapefruits looked and I said that three for a dollar was a great deal (even though I had absolutely no idea at all). I wondered whether those grapefruits had been grown in their back yard (citrus does grow quite well here), which would have been a good selling point, but I didn't ask them as the details of where the product came from wasn't germane to my purpose, since they didn't offer this piece of information. I mean, maybe their mother had bought all the grapefruits at the local grocery store, but to lead the kids into revealing that would have been to deflate the power of the experience I was wanting them to have.

As it so happens, I needed to go to Ralph's (a major supermarket here) to buy some more yogurt, butter, and turkey sausages for my breakfast the next morning, so I did happen to check out the grapefruit prices. Ralph's was selling grapefruits that were navel-orange-size for 79 cents each, so these three LARGE grapefruits for a dollar WAS a great deal! And the three co-workers I gave them to the next morning at work were thrilled to get them, so I received emotional rewards not only from the kids selling them, but also from my co-workers in the office!

When I was vagabonding throughout Mexico some time in the early 80s, I ran into a British couple, Rod (a partner in an estate agency, what we here call a real estate brokerage) and Judith (a second grade teacher), who had taken a year off from their respective jobs to take a trip around the world. We three liked each other so much that we spent two weeks in Mexico traveling together, and then later I visited them several times in Hurworth, where they lived. When I was alone, and obviously traveling very much on the cheap--using cross-country busses or even walking from town to town--I was pretty much left alone in Mexico, but being with very well-dressed and beautiful Judith with her striking long blond hair, we were beset constantly by people begging for money or those who wanted to touch her hair. Judith was very generous in giving money to all these beggars (which, of course, simply made even more people run over to us), but whenever people came up to us selling things, she would wave them away.

One day we were enjoying lunch and a "cerveza" (Rod's favorite Spanish word) outdoors in a beautiful plaza in Guadalajara (one of my three favorite cities in Mexico), when a young girl came by selling what looked like cute little beetles made out of walnut shells. I was kind of fascinated by this and asked the girl about them (in Spanish), and she explained to me that she had this idea of making these and since they were unique, she thought that she could make some money selling them. In English, I said to Judith, "It's kind of funny how you are very generous giving money to the people who are begging, but those who are attempting to make a real living, you wave them on." I wasn't criticizing her, and she didn't take it as a criticism, but only an interesting observation that she, herself, hadn't thought of before. She said, "You are right, I end up supporting those who are doing nothing, and turning away those who are in some measure entrepreneurial." Being the smart person that she was, she realized that her energies were at cross-purposes with her beliefs, so she studied that girl's walnut beetles and selected one of them to buy. "I think this clever hand-made item from another country would be something cute to show my students when I come home," she explained, and from then on, instead of waving the sellers on, she would look to see what they actually were selling and if it were something she could use for "classroom show and tell," she would buy it. She ended up with bags full of cute hand-made objects that she shipped back to England. This didn't stop her from giving to beggers, too, but now she was more discriminatory, reserving her charity for those who seemed to have fewer options.

As for Rod, he was fascinated by the people who would set up card tables on street corners and lay out extremely variable merchandise to sell...which could be anything: gum, bottles of Coca Cola, playing cards, a paperback book or two, razor blades, condoms, grooming items, puzzles, stockings, apparently whatever the vendor felt that people might want to buy, or he had experienced a demand for in the past. Rod said that he understood that in Mexico the concept was that anybody should have the freedom to make a living however they could without the obstacles of special licenses and other regulations, and I think the Chinese must really be into this kind of thing, too. Here in the various border states, we have Mexican immigrants all gathered around in front of the U-Haul rental agencies or Home Depot stores, hoping to be hired for day labor, which is actually illegal here if they are undocumented (although a former husband of one of my sisters says that he uses people like this all the time and you couldn't find better workers, at least on a day labor basis). Many Americans are severely bothered by their presence, but I wonder if what the illegal aliens are doing is something that is ingrained in their culture and America is proving itself to be a less free place because one isn't supposed to be able to do it. I wonder if unemployment here continues to increase if we will start to see American citizens doing the same thing in order to earn some money. It kind of makes me think of Of Mice and Men, how if we had another Great Depression, would we have groups of men walking across the country to some hoped-for promised land and desiring work along the way, such as to help bring in the harvests. In this present-day era, all that kind of work would be done by the Mexicans and the American citizens would starve to death. That is, all except those who as kids had had lemonade stands.

The Republic of Palau: Paradise or Adventure?

2011-05-29T04:52:00.001-07:00

This year, I think I have spent more time studying, figuring out, and planning my vacation than I will actually spend on the vacation. What an amazing, difficult, frustrating task it has been; nearly impossible, really. But I guess that's the story if you want to go off the beaten path. Oh how I wished it was as easy as my last trip somewhere (TWO summers ago), which was to Kauai. Regarding Kauai, I knew that I wanted to see the Na Pali coast from the sea by zodiac boat, and everything just fell into place from there. One search on Travelocity got me a non-stop flight to the Lihui airport, the hotel I wanted at about half the normal price, and a nice rental car. One click travelling!

But, I don't know how many, millions, I guess, people go to Hawaii every year. The choice in flights, accommodations, anything you want, are legion.

But this year, I wanted to go to a place I hadn't been to before, and that apparently NOT all that many OTHERS (comparatively) have been to before, either. Micronesia.

I had read somewhere that even longed-for destinations like Fiji and Tahiti only have visitors that number in the thousands, so flights there really are just basically stop-overs on the long hauls back and forth between New Zealand or Australia, which are, themselves, pretty popular travel destinations. I have often wondered what it would take to make me ever go to Australia again, with its torturous 16-hour flight. I figured I have to be able to afford First Class, which I imagine I will NEVER be able to (or, when once faced with the difference in fares, I just never would spend the money). But, here, all of a sudden, I have booked myself on a flight (coach) that begins in Los Angeles at 12:40 PM on a Sunday and ends at 11:15 PM on a MONDAY. Well, that Monday is because of crossing the International Date line, so it's not really as bad as it sounds, but even so, from beginning to end, this flight consists of about 19 hours of travel time. I will be moving ahead across 16 different times zones!

Originally, as I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I wanted to go to Ponape (my main goal was see the ancient ruins of Nan Madol), but I gave up on that. THOSE flights were on the order of 36 hours due to all the flight changes and stop-overs. A typical flight to Ponape (now called Pohnpei, but the airlines still call it Ponape) involved Los Angeles to Honolulu to Guam (with about a 16-hour lay-over) and then on to Truk (now known as Chuuk) and then, finally Ponape. Another choice might be Los Angeles to Honolulu to Majuro to Kwajalein to Kosrae and THEN Ponape, depending upon which way you wanted to cycle around the circle of the Continental Airlines Island Hopper (Continental was basically the only affordable airline going to those destinations). Travel reviewers routinely described this travel as the most grueling they had ever done anywhere in the world. I felt that to stop at all of those places, it might make sense to GO to all of them, let's say spend a couple of days in Honolulu, and maybe another couple of days in Guam, and Truk with their fantastic lagoon sounded like a place I wanted to see, so let's spend a day or two there, as well. All this was just too complex for the on-line flight systems (Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, etc.) because which way the flights go is based on what day it is. For example, once I began to study travel books about Micronesia, I decided I wanted to add Yap to the picture, but flights to Yap (in and then back out again) were only once a week, so if you wanted to see Yap for more than an hour, you had to stay there a whole week, which I did not want to do.

I finally began to make some progress when I downloaded Continental's flight schedules and made a detailed spreadsheet of every place I wanted to go to (which by this time included yet another destination, Palau) and what days and times those destinations were served. But no on-line system could handle as many ins and outs as I wanted to do...Honolulu, Ponape, Truk, Yap, Palau, and Guam (Guam was essential for Yap and Palau, as Continental did not go to either of those two places except from Guam) and even Continental's own reservation system could only handle about half of them. So I fudged it a bit just to see what kind of cost was involved, cutting the various stop-overs in half, and that method revealed total ticket prices in the two, three, four, or five thousand dollar range, whereas the original LA to Ponape 36-hour "round trip" with all the stops cost about $1,800. Why the price became astronomical when one scheduled stop-overs at each of these places instead of booking a round-trip to one destination that involved the plane landing at all of them anyway, I can only explain as an idosyncracy of the on-line scheduling systems. Probably if I used a travel agent to schedule it all, or perhaps telephoned Continental airlines directly (instead of doing this on-line on their reservation system), I could get a reasonable deal. But by then I began to tire of the idea of all those different places and began to wonder if ANY of them were really worth it. I began to yearn to simply stay at home.

But I couldn't get the idea of going to Micronesia out of my mind. I began to read a Micronesian travel guide much more carefully, and also got a video on travel to Micronesia, and decided that only Palau was really the place to go to. While the ruins of Nan Madol might be fascinating, as the ONLY reason to go to Ponape, they don't measure up as all that much. Yap really was a lot of trouble...the main reason to go there was that of all these islands, it was the one that most kept its ancient ways (meaning, it is the most primitive), but that carries with it a nuisance to the modern-day traveler, and that is to go almost anywhere on Yap, to each different village, you have to get permission from each different village chief. Also, Yap does have the curiosity of having a treasury of huge stone "coins" that are were once used for money (some of these can be have diameters taller than a man), but where those stone coins were originally made was in Palau (and part of what made them valuable was that they somehow had to be taken across the sea in a wooden canoe from Palau to Yap, so the difficulties and dangers of that added to their preciousness) and some of them are still there (as is the quarry where the stones were cut out of).

Regarding Truk (Chuuk), the travel guide was forthright enough to say that except for those who come to Truk to dive in the deep lagoon to see the dozens of Japanese ships that were sunk by the Americans in World War II (which I was NOT going to go see), visitors don't like Truk, as it is somewhat an unsavory and possibly dangerous place. Apparently the people of "Chuuk", unlike most of Micronesia, are for some reason rather belligerent, which apparently has to do with all the bad economy and unemployment (which in Chuuk is close to 100%). Even in Palau, which maybe has the best economy of any place in Micronesia, most of the "economy" is charity from the United States (and the rest is whatever tourism they manage to have).

But Palau is unquestionably beautiful, especially with the Rock Islands (such as seen in the photo above) that are a wonder of the world. This kind of water is beautiful beyond belief:

And I would love to go on a boat trip (maybe even kayaking) and spend an afternoon at a beach like this:

And there are lush jungles:

And some interesting remains of their ancient civilization, such as these stone pathways from village to village:

There is a certain beauty to their ancient way of building:

And the level of their crafts is quite amazing, such as beautiful detailed carvings (story boards) that they used to record their myths and legends:

And while there is modernity, they still do have pockets of people who live more or less as they always have:

Of course, the MAIN reason most people go to Micronesia is to scuba dive; Palau is supposed to be one of the primo dive spots in the world. But I will not be scuba diving as I have realized that it causes me anxiety that is greater than the beauty of it is worth (this maybe comes from my near-death experience scuba-diving at the Great Barrier Reef, even though I DID "get back on the horse that threw me" and went scuba diving afterwards in Fiji, but I think I have "done it" enough to suit me and snorkeling, instead, will do just fine!). To even read words such as "Blue Hole" or "Drop Off" or "Underwater Caves" or "Wreck Diving" or "A Hundred Feet Down", while inciting lust in a dedicated diver, almost sets me up for heart palpatations. So, even though I am a certified scuba diver who has already been "a hundred feet down", and am going to a scuba diving place where most divers would give their life savings to get to go to, I will be enjoying the OTHER charms of the Republic of Palau.

I have been saying "Micronesia" as if it were a unified place, but just as Melanesia and Polynesia consist of several different independent countries and territories, so does Micronesia, which was one of the difficulties in just figuring out the airline fights (since different countries have different economies and politics and thus different needs for and frequency of use of airline travel). All of the main islands of Continental's Island Hopper, for example, were in one country, called the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the main islands of which are Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, and Yap, which are states within this federation. Palau is a separate republic as are the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru. There is also the Commonwealth of the Marianas. And Guam is a territory of the United States. One thing that interests me about all of these islands is that they are more or less on the equator, and while I have CROSSED the equator before, I had never gone to anywhere ON the equator before. And, I believe, hurricanes do not occur on the equator, but they do START from there and cause their damage elsewhere. So, tropical islands that do not get periodically damaged by hurricanes (such as what happens to Hawaii) is a pretty interesting concept. However, these islands suffered greatly during the Japanese invasions prior to World War II and the American efforts to destroy Japanese naval bases, thus all the sunken wreckage everywhere. One of the islands (Bikini, in the Marshall Islands) is where the United States did atom bomb testing. But throughout it all, the people of these "micro" islands seem to have managed to keep their cultures and identity intact.

Now that I knew enough about flight schedules and the like, I was able to do a simple "round trip Los Angeles/Palau" search (which, by the way, is actually a Los Angles/KOROR" search, as Koror is the main island in Palau that people go to, whereas a "Palau" search gets confused with a location in Sardinia of all places!) and lo and behold a somewhat acceptable flight on DELTA was discovered by ORBITZ that cost (what looked by now as) a "reasonable" $1,600. Travelocity and Expedia had nothing even close, so Orbitz is this year's winner and I booked through them the flight they discovered.

The flight goes from Los Angeles to Tokyo, and then after a short layover, a plane goes from Tokyo to Koror. The return flight isn't QUITE as good, as there is a longer lay-over in Tokyo this time, not long enough to really do anything, but too long to just stay in the airport the whole time, so it looks like I might dare to venture out into Tokyo proper a little bit. Asia is a big hole in my travel experience, in that I have never been there, I've always considered it something rather difficult to deal with (although I guess it isn't really) due to Asia having languages that aren't easily deciphered in a phrase book. Just to be on the safe side, though, I think I will have to bring SOMETHING that deals with English/Japanese, which I may very well need even in Palau, as tourism there is heavily loaded for the Japanese, as well as the Chinese. Several of the hotels in Koror I have investigated on-line are described as "primarily for Chinese businessmen" (those would be the downtown, business district hotels), whereas several of the resorts cater to the Japanese and their websites are even IN Japanese, not English. One of the most beautiful resorts is owned by Japan Airlines. Despite their website being entirely in Japanese, based on their photos, that's the place I would have loved to have stayed, but it was the second most expensive resort in Palau and way beyond anything I would pay. The Japanese are apparently really into scuba-diving.

But now here I am with a booked and paid-for flight, but I have no idea where I will end up staying. That has been another frustrating experience. Things are quite a bit more expensive there than I would have expected, especially if the place is nice or has lots of amenities (and by that I mean "balcony", "swimming pool", and, preferably, a beach...this IS a vacation to a tropical paradise, after all). But $400 or $500 a night is not something I will do...even $250 a night is not something I will do, and that price is getting down to "mid-range". In the hundreds, say $150, generally means "just a room", not a pool, and certainly not a beach, and even that is, to me, "freak out expensive" when multiplied by nearly a week's worth of nights.

There ARE budget places, possibly most commonly frequented by these Chinese businessmen, so they really are just "hotels" and based on the photos I have seen, can be quite depressing. The guidebooks say that they "offer nothing of interest to the vacationer", but, interestingly, reviews on-line are more critical of the mid-range places than they are of the budget places. I guess if you are a tourist and you spend $150 a night, $250 a night, you really expect to get a LOT, whereas if it is a budget hotel, you expect nothing more than a bed to lie down on. Most of those people say they are there only to rest their head between dives and they appreciate having available the budget option. (Those with money spring for the live-aboard dive boats, on which a week of dives cost a few thousand dollars.)

Orbitz, that was so helpful in finding my flight, would only come up with two hotel possibilities, neither of which appealed to me, but after checking out several other hotel-booking sites, I realized that very few of the available hotels were even checked by any of them at all. The best source of hotels was Palau's travel board site, that was fantastic for providing information about nearly everything--tours, museums, shops, restaurants, and every level of hotel, guest cottage, bed and breakfast, resort, motel, and condo rental. So I am sure that I will come up with SOMETHING, although it may end up being a far cry from what I have been hoping for. Which may end up being a run-down Asian version of a Motel 6 (which would be positively luxurious in comparison). Oh, there IS one other possibility, kind of crappy, but maybe kind of cool too...kind of way far out on the end of one of the islands still connected by bridges or roads, but where the roads are dirt and the rental car companies won't let you rent a car if you are going there, but will rent you a jeep or four-wheel-drive, instead, are what are called "ocean-side bungalows" that are individual cabins costing somewhere between $40 a night and $100 a night. They're described as being several hour's drive away from everything anybody wants to do when they come to Palau (off the tourist track), and are "too poor" to have much of a presence on-line, but if they are on the beach and they put a roof over your head and have bathrooms, how bad can they be? This may be kind of like camping, but with rustic cabins. They may actually be a secret paradise if only one would be brave enough to take a chance (would anybody complain about staying at Curry Village in Yosemite, for example? No, I don't think they would, unless they wanted to spring hundreds and hundreds for the Ahwanee Hotel). I don't know though, I just wish I could get better information (or better photographs) about them. I am spending too much money just flying to Palau to have my trip ruined by horrible accommodations. But I guess I wanted to have an adventure and this might be it.

We'll just have to see how things shake out in the next few days.

Who Remembers Him?

2011-05-21T20:05:00.001-07:00

Seems the older I get, the more pleased I am to reconnect with the feelings of my youth. You know, such as here, with this guy (here I am taking a break while helping my father do some work in the back yard):

I had to search pretty hard to find a picture of me that wasn't of me dressed in a tuxedo going off to the prom or something, the sort of normal, formal, reason for a parent to take a picture. This was just me having a moment with my Dad, which I think every boy appreciated having whenever he could.

By reconnecting with the feelings of youth, I primarily mean reconnecting with who we were and what our dreams were, a concept I'm not too sure that very many people in our society grasp. I tend to stress it every time I make a presentation to the kids at the school where I work, and I know they haven't the slightest idea of what I am talking about (which means that who they are hasn't been lost, yet), but I continue to stress it, anyway. For example, I encourage them to ask their parents to KEEP the things they write and bring home. "Do NOT let them throw these things away," I say. "Have them put them away in a file or someplace safe and then give them to you twenty, thirty, forty years later. Because believe me, you will get so caught up in the requirements of life that are imposed on you that you will FORGET who you are now and who you wanted to be. And who you are now will be of vital importance to reconnect with when you are much older."

I suppose not everybody forgets these things, not completely, anyway, but they do get put so far back on a back burner that they may as well not exist anymore at all, and they WON'T exist if they aren't brought back to the forefront, again.

It wasn't until about a year ago that I began to appreciate as one of my favorites the Stephen Sondheim song from Follies, "The Road You Didn't Take," some of the lyrics of which I have selected here:

"...
You take one road,
You try one door,
There isn't time for any more.
Ones life consists of either/or.
One has regrets,
Which one forgets,
As the years go on.
The road you didn't take
Hardly comes to mind,
Does it?
The door you didn't try,
Where could it have led?
The choice you didn't make
Never was defined.
Was it!
Dreams you didn't dare
Are dead.
Were they ever there?
Who said!
I don't remember,
I don't remember
At all.
...
You take your road,
The decades fly,
the yearnings fade, the longings die.
You learn to bid them all goodbye.
...
The Ben I'll never be,
Who remembers him?"

One really ought to hear this song sung (I couldn't find any version on YouTube that was worthy of linking to, here). Sung right, there is hardly a more tragic line in all of musical theater than that concluding one, "The Ben I'll never be, who remembers him?" If not you, then who...and the point is, it IS you (the most precious part of you). Which means that he is dead and unremembered and unmourned even while you are still alive, or pretending to be.

I myself have had the privilege of reconnecting with things that I had written in childhood (thank you letters to grandparents, and the like) and in my youth (things I wrote to parents and friends while I was in college), and all I can really say is that reading those things made me LOVE that guy who was me...but where is he? What can I do to bring him back and make him live, again?

One thing when I was young, I loved reading boys' adventure stories, and when I liked an author, I wanted to read every book he or she wrote. I would come home from the library with my arm filled with a tall stack of books, everything I could find written by a beloved author. It didn't matter if the adventures were in foreign lands, or in outer space, or at the bottom of the sea, or on other planets, or in lands that don't exist at all, I wanted to go there. And, true, as an adult, I have gone places, more than most, but there's still so much more that I could do. I just have to allow myself to do it, make myself do it. And then write about it, oh yes, especially that.

Lately, I have built my home library and a book (two books in one, actually) that I had come across on Amazon.com a couple of years ago and bought to read sometime soon and then had forgotten about, I pulled off the shelf to read last week. It was by an author I had never heard of before, Willard Price, who was Canadian, but who had in real life life travelled all over the world (to 77 different countries), lived a real life of adventure, and had written 14 adventure books for youth between the years of 1949 (one year after I was born) and 1980 (one decade after I graduated from college). He also wrote about as many adventure and travel books for adults, too.

The book that I had gotten was a recent republication of two of his books, South Sea Adventure and Volcano Adventure:

Most interesting to me, since I strongly believe in the meaning of "coincidence," I had been attempting to figure out where to go for my vacation this summer, and for some reason, the idea of going to Micronesia kept running through my head. I had been to, and thoroughly loved, Melanesia (the Yasawa Island Group of Fiji still remains the most beautiful place I have ever been) and Polynesia (if Moorea isn't a dream island come true, I don't know what is!), so I definitely wanted to experience less-known Micronesia and the island in Micronesia that most appealed to me was Ponape, which not only was a still-unspoiled tropical paradise, but also has on one of its satellite islands the mysterious lost stone city of Nan Madol that I thought would be fascinating to see (best toured by boat from Ponape):

So here I was trying to figure out how to arrange a trip to Ponape, when I discover that in this Willard Price book written in 1952, that the South Sea Adventure the boys go to takes place in Ponape! So, humm, yeah, maybe I really should go there! Well, and then after facing nearly every death-possibility available in the Pacific, the boys at the end finally reach safety in the lagoon of Truk, described so beautifully in the book that I now have to go there, as well, since Truk and Ponape are served by the same Continental Airlines "Melanesia Island Hopper" flight.

I truly enjoyed this book and couldn't wait for after work so that I could come home and read another few chapters. The plot is a boy's adventure come true. The two main characters are brothers, Hal (nineteen years old) and Roger (thirteen years old) Hunt (so their ages "bracket" the "teens"). Here is how Wikipedia describes them: "Hal is the typical hero: tall, handsome, muscular, possessing an almost limitless knowledge of natural history and a caring and trusting disposition. Roger, on the other hand, is an ardent practical-joker, often mischievous but just as resilient and resourceful as his older brother." But in this book, their father, who runs a global animal collecting enterprise from their farm on Long Island for zoos, circuses, and nature parks (sorry if all this sounds "politically incorrect" by today's standards), get this, sends the boys off to the South Pacific without him to charter a schooner and collect a series of amazing exotic sea creatures to be shipped back home, and while they are at it, they are given the responsibility by a professor to check up on an oyster pearl bed in a secret lagoon that the professor had seeded with oysters transferred from the famous pearl diving region of the Middle East (that I know to have been the main money-making enterprise of Dubai prior to Dubai's development from oil wealth).

That teenagers could actually run such an enterprise was not at all a surprising concept in the 1950s and earlier eras, and exemplar educator John Taylor Gatto is quite fond of pointing out how America's first great Admiral, Admiral Farragut, was eight years old when he captured a British warship and put its captain in irons in the hold of the ship which he commandeered into Baltimore Harbor, and that Thomas Edison had already earned a fortune writing, printing, and selling news about the Civil War on a cross-country train where he worked in the baggage compartment after he was thrown out of school for being "unable to learn" and that George Washington was earning the equivalent of a hundred thousand dollars a year as a teenager surveyor in Culpepper County, Virginia, and countless other examples of what youth could do and DID do in earlier eras. Now, instead, for most of them, they are locked up in the meaningless prison of high school with no greater future ahead of them than paper-pushing drudgery in "cubicle hell"...if they can be employed at all, nowadays.

I loved being with these two boys in this book, and while I loved Hal, my favorite was the mischievous Roger, who, while sometimes getting into trouble, also often made the most useful discoveries. It wasn't so much "older brother, younger brother", they were equal partners in this adventure, each one contributing different characteristics to the adventure's success. They were for sure the kind of boys I would have admired if I were their age, and would have wanted to be like. Both them were also very funny and I often laughed out loud while reading the book, which I thought was brilliantly written and also rather educational. I kept being surprised that the author had been born in 1887, he seemed to know more than I might have expected, but anyone who had lived in several foreign countries and had travelled to 77 of them couldn't fail to know a lot.

As soon as I finished South Sea Adventure, I wanted to read another book in the series, but it was clear that this adventure led right into Underwater Adventure:

whereas Volcano Adventure, the second book included in the volume that I owned, was really the fourth book in the series. And, I hadn't read the first one, Amazon Adventure, just one book prior to the one that I had read, so today, true to my childhood self, I ordered from Amazon.com ALL of the books, coming from various used bookstores all around the country. I got them only from American suppliers (the most frequent source was the UK, but I didn't want to have the longer-distance shipping) and I got them in the best condition I could unless they were charging huge amounts for them (some of the good-condition hard-bound copies, which I did not buy, were costing several ten dollar bills, and the cheapest edition of the author's autobiography, which I wanted, but could not afford, was being sold for over $300). My Amazon.com order looks very peculiar, with some books costing one cent, and others being as much as just under $10. I spent over a hundred dollars getting these books and feel that I got a real bargain, but half of that hundred dollars is just the shipping costs, since, coming from separate used book stores, I could not take advantage of Amazon.com's free shipping.

I also bought every adult travel book written by Willard Price that I could find following the above-described rules, but there were only very few available, so I was only able to get about four of them, I think it was.

Concerning my idea of reconnecting with the dreams of my youth, it's awesome to not only read the stories of boys whose value system matched my own, but to have the time described match the era of my own childhood. Even the covers of the used books I ordered "say" something to me and remind me of the era of my past, such as these awesome ones:

Seeing these lined up like this, I notice that there is a kind of "Tarzan" feel to them. So, I wonder, does it mean something that right now I am living in Tarzana, the area of Los Angeles were Edgar Rice Burroughs had his estate and is named after him? Every detail of life tells a personal story, I believe, and one must use every sense to "braille" the story that these details tell. In fact, our very survival as a unique person depends upon it.

A Comment About Smoking

2011-05-14T12:53:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite blogs "The Beauty Hunter" posted this photo that generated a bit of controversy:

This is a photo of one of my favorite male models, Paddy Mitchell, and the controversy was that he was shown smoking. "Aren't you not supposed to show that?" "Is the designer trying to promote smoking?" "This is a filthy habit." "This can cause cancer." "Is this, in fact, sexy...yes...no?"

Well, I doubt that the designer (or photographer) is trying to "promote" smoking, but he (or she) probably IS desiring to attract some attention, and controversy is one way to do it. Since I, myself, have never smoked a day in my life, and don't ever intend to, I am somewhat immune to any attempts to GET people to smoke (in fact, I didn't really even notice that he was smoking in this picture, its qualities have already been subsumed into the effect of the whole), although I do understand the techniques involved since once upon a time I worked as a research project director for the nation's largest market-testing firm and one of our major clients was the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company (their major brand was Kool, the largest-selling menthol cigarette), and the name of THAT game was to unseat Marlboro from the number one spot among all cigarette brands (which I think will remain impossible). None of the time-tested techniques are on display here, for the motivation here is not to cause an interest in smoking, but to generate an interest in being this particular model (however you perceive him) and wearing the style of whatever clothes he ends up wearing, when he does wear any (and in the case of this particular model, he sells better by NOT wearing many clothes, which is ironic, but then, fashion is subtle).

So in this photo, the cigarette is used as a fashion accessory and to tell us something about the persona that is being sold here, which is a kind of "devil may care", "rebel", "bad boy," which as all men and women know, is a very appealing image. I guess what I am saying is that people generally do not admire sheep. They want to be able to decide for themselves what they want to do, or at least, they admire others who make their own decisions and act upon them.

So yeah, the rebel sells and it has nothing to do with "health" or "non-health".

CAN smoking be sexy? Well, what do you think? I think it is not so much the smoking itself, but the style, skills, and rituals involved. There is a lot of communication going on, such as the brand that the guy smokes. "Marlboro" says one thing, "Camel" says another, "Benson & Hedges" says another (and, yuck, one of those antiseptic low-tar-and-nicotine brands says another, especially some generic plain-packaged brands picked up at a discount store if they still even MAKE those anymore). If I smoked, I would probably smoke some never-heard-of foreign brand (although I understand that they are all awful) to indicate that this was something I had picked up in an exotic foreign land I had visited (how plebian to simply smoke some typical American brand). My father, when he smoked (he quit when I was a little boy), liked to roll his own, having the tobacco in a little bag in one pocket and rolling cigarette papers in another; he prided himself on being able to roll his cigarettes with one hand while astride a horse, so I guess you could say he out-Marlboroed the Marlboro Man and then some. I was also impressed by the style of James Bond as described in Ian Fleming's novels, in which James had a gun-metal cigarette case (that saved his life at least once by deflecting a bullet aimed for his chest) that he would daily fill with fifty cigarettes, which were custom-made with a particular foreign tobacco blend and specially-selected papers. James Bond, by the way, for someone who was really a professional killer, had an amazing fashion-conscience, even down to the designs on his dishes and the brands of jam he would put on his crisp breakfast toast. His taste for life helped fill up the empty spaces in which he was aware that he could be horribly killed or tortured at any second. Also, he used smoking as a method of being quiet and to think and plan; as if smoking were the incense used to support meditation.

Think of all the various ways a person can hold a cigarette, tough guy holding it between his thumb and index finger or doing something weird such as holding it backwards and sucking the smoke with the hand twisted outward (this says "Watch out, I am very scary"), somebody effete holding it delicately between the first two fingers as if the cigarette were a porcelain teacup held with pinky finger extended. There are those guys who hold the cigarette inside their hand so that it looks like any second they will be burning the palm of their hand except for the fact that while they are immune to the fear of danger, they are also utterly in control and every second are aware of what is going on with their body and in their surroundings.

What about those guys who blow smoke rings or exhale forceful dragon-plumes from out of their nostrils, what are THEY saying (very skilled, practiced, their bodies are fine-tuned fearless machines, almost like circus-performers, I guess).

I was once very attracted to a guy who did shipping in the warehouse at a place where I worked. Here was a guy who had such masterful control of every movement of his body that I craved to have him be an actor on stage that I could direct, he was a one-man body-communication-machine. He could immediately BECOME whatever race or nationality group he was with at the moment. He nearly made me laugh when he played pool with a gang of black guys (who all were packing heat), white skin or no--he was actually a redhead, himself--he suddenly was perfectly black. Or when he got together with his Latino friends, he slouched and sauntered so that you could almost see a Zoot Suit and you wondered where the low-rider Chevy Impala was parked. But when he was with me, he was the earnest, artistic youth, all wide-eyed, poetic, and philosophical. He used all his tools like juggling instruments. If he did a tire rotation or a brake job, he made the wrenches spin the hubs like Waring blenders and even doing some routine task in the shipping warehouse such as stapling a label on a crate, he'd do it by grabbing the bottom end of the stapler and spinning it around with a slam so that in one singular quick motion he both opened up the stapler and nailed the staple home in the label. It was actually orgasmic to watch him work.

You can be sure that he was a master at handling a cigarette. I used to love to lean against the wall next to him when he was on a smoking break, just so I could see him dispose of the cigarette after he had sucked it dry. Without even seeming to move at all, he'd somehow do a subtle flick with his finger that would send the butt flying yards away like a bullet. It was like the physical version of an African click language, whereby periodically the speaker will make a click inside the hollow of their cheeks that could make your ears ring (this verbal sound is indicated as an exclamation point in their written language)--how do they DO that, instantly generating such force and power? Well, his flicking the cigarette technique was just like that and while for him it was merely just a practical method of getting rid of what was now trash, he knew I loved it, so during our conversation he would look up at me with a certain expression for a moment which would tell me to "watch for it" and then "FLICK!", that cigarette would go flying. Kind of reminded me of a girlfriend I had who loved to watch me masturbate and would give a little shriek when the cumshot came. This was somehow almost better than having it inside her, where the masculine force of it was buried and absorbed instead of being on fascinating display.

Speaking of women, there, too, cigarettes have their own sexuality. Just this morning while enjoying my fourth cup of breakfast coffee, I was thumbing through one of my favorite magazines that had arrived in the mail yesterday, Wallpaper, and came across this photo:

And if you don't understand that the photograph is heavily swimming in female sexuality, maybe the bowl of fruit in this picture from the same series will make it more clear (and if IT doesn't, just take my word for it):

That photo of the female cigarette case with the colored Vogue cigarettes very definitely reminded me of another girlfriend I had had when I was in college, who started out smoking black-papered, gold-rimmed cigarettes held in a long cigarette holder, but then moved over to hot pink, turquoise, and other beautifully-colored cigarettes about which I was quite frank in my admiration of. Maybe I was weird in the kind of stuff I liked about women...we could use Faye Dunaway in the original Thomas Crown Affair, one of the most stylish movies ever, as a model of what I liked:

Because of her in that movie, I made all my girlfriends wear hats. I, of course, was Steve McQueen, where even bank robbery was sexy:

I frankly never worried too much about why one of my favorite movies of all time had two main characters who were utterly amoral; this had nothing to do with my own sense of morality, but had more to do with an awareness that beauty, style, and sex can trump morality any time, but morality has to do with an inner character whereas beauty, style, and sex can exist in the realm of outer appearance, and so I see no conflict between my thinking that one probably ought to not smoke, yet I can still see it as sexy and communicative of a strength that is very appealing and maybe even admirable. And what is life, anyway, but conflict and contrast and mysteries that only manage to add up in arcane dimensions that one can spend a lifetime discovering and exploring. So yeah, please don't smoke, but I don't mind it if you do.

Herbie Hancock: 100, Janet Jackson: 0

2011-04-18T00:03:00.001-07:00

When one is summoned to serve jury duty with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Criminal Division, you are told to park in the garage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall (pretty much an empty parking garage during daytime hours). I have parked there several times, thanks to jury duty. Also, one of my favorite places in LA to go is to the REDCAT, which stands for “Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater”, which is in the basement of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It is an alternative arts space, featuring amazing art exhibitions, experimental films, and various avant garde theatrical or musical presentations. I have loved everything I have ever seen at the REDCAT, and even think it is a great place to go just for a drink or a cappuccino in their lounge. Also, the other people one meets down there are quite unusual characters and well-worth getting to know, such as those of indeterminant gender I have seen at various of the “way way way out there” presentations I have gone to. This really is a place to go for one to broaden their horizons in a way that those horizons need broadening.

But for all that parking in their garage, I had never actually gone to a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, itself, so this time after I finished my jury duty, I got smart and bought a ticket to something at the box office that happened to be open as I was heading toward the entrance door. I took a glance at their schedule to see what was coming up soon and saw to my great delight Herbie Hancock, who has long been one my favorite musical artists. I hadn’t realized that they had jazz concerts, too, at the Disney, but Herbie Hancock is a serious musician to the match of any symphonic composer, so he definitely belongs there, in my opinion. The friendly person in the box office told me that his concert was completely sold out, but she would check to see if anyone had turned in their ticket, which is, apparently, a privilege for subscribers. If for some reason they see they are unable to attend a concert for which they had requested a ticket, they can turn them in for a refund (or maybe exchange) and therefore their seat would be available for a “Johnny Come Lately” like me.

There WAS a ticket available, right in the center of a section that happened to be the second row from the very top of the concert hall. This was fine by me, as I quite often buy the absolute cheapest ticket I can find that is, at least, near the horizontal center. This certainly saves me hundreds of dollars a year, and rarely has harmed my enjoyment of anything I have seen. The Pantages in Hollywood is a theater where one can sit with their head practically touching the elegantly-worked ceiling without the slightest handicap to their enjoyment—I had a thrilled enjoyment of “Riverdance” and “White Christmas” that way, for example. The only show I had seen at the Pantages where my distant seat was a disadvantage was for “The Lion King,” where it was hard to enjoy the animal mask and puppetry costuming, which was one of the main features of the show. Obviously, that was a rare exception.

So, I very excitedly bought my Herbie Hancock ticket for a seat way up near the top and very much looked forward to the concert.

A couple of weeks later, I received an advertising e-mail listing various upcoming concerts in Los Angeles. Now, after the death of Michael Jackson, I had been kicking myself for never happening to go see him in concert. You know how that is…you take something (or someone) for granted and then when they suddenly are gone, you realize all the opportunities you let slip by. Well, there was now no chance to ever see him in concert, but this LA concert listing showed that JANET Jackson was going to be performing in her “Number 1’s, Up Close and Personal” concert at the Gibson Amphitheater at Universal City Walk. Well, I have long loved Janet Jackson, so, it seemed like a perfect time to get a ticket to THAT concert, as well. However, price very much was an object, plus it looked like tickets were selling pretty quickly for this concert, so, unless I wanted to spend way more than I wanted to spend, I had to be satisfied with a ticket that was not only pretty high up in the amphitheater, but way, way, way (ALL the way) over to the left side of the semi-circle. Looking back at it, I’m not quite sure why I was willing to buy such a badly-located seat; it could be that the next best location was (to me) shockingly expensive, or maybe I felt that it just wouldn’t matter, seeing her sideways instead of straight on would still be seeing her and, of course, I definitely should be able to HEAR her. As I have written here, “cheap” seats had rarely been a problem. Anyway, I bought a ticket for that seat (costing a little under $60; how many CDs, DVDs, or downloads could I have gotten for that amount of money, instead--two, three, maybe even four, is my guess).

It was exciting to be parking at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and to be actually going to a concert there. I had arrived early, so wanted to go get a drink at their “hidden garden” that I had read about. Alas, the usher I asked for directions to the garden was surprised that I thought there was a bar there (well, SHOULDN’T they put a bar there?). Also, the garden not only isn’t hidden, its entrance is a stairway right from the street, so, day and night, anybody could go up there if they wanted, they didn’t have to be a patron of the concert hall. Surprisingly, there was only ONE couple up there, sitting at a table having a picnic dinner that they had brought (and seemed none too happy that another person was up there, now). I didn’t understand why there weren’t more people up there enjoying the atmosphere. Maybe few actually do know about its existence. So I looked around, and then made my way down the various layers of patios and gardens until I got back down to the street level. Around the block was the front of the concert hall again, but up on another elevated patio was on display a new Acura SUV and a man and woman eager to demonstrate this vehicle (this is LA, so you will often find a car on display at an entertainment event or in a shopping mall, usually associated with a drawing to win one, but I never fill out those cards because all they get you is constant sales communications). So I went up there to praise the car and promised them I would tell my sister about it, who is a devoted Acura fan.

I then saw that people were being let up the escalator beyond the lobby into the concert hall antechambers, so I went on up to the highest layer of the building, the last entrance on which was the doorway to the section where I had my seat. However, they weren’t ready to let anyone inside, yet, so I found a relaxing French-curvy couch near the stairway and read my program, instead. Every once in a while, a couple or two, newbies like me, would come up, but they were just exploring the interior of the building, which was a complicated maze of levels, stairways, waiting rooms, bars, and architectural features. I loved it, considered it to be fascinating.

Then a young man and an older man came up, I figured they were father and son, although the relationship could have been something else, and sat down near at the other end of the curvy couch. The young man, probably high school age, I guess, was amazingly beautiful in an unusual way, that is to say, he had his own unique style. His best feature was his VERY long dark hair (nearly down to his waist) that he had in a pony tail (but it flowed widely below the constricting band). Up until that moment, I had hated the look of guys in a pony tail, all of whom I had seen (but not lately….I think that fashion fell out favor) had been fading middle-aged men attempting to grab onto a sort of artsy-intellectual, South American tango-dancer sort of cache; in other words, just too self-consciously affected to be able to stand or to treat seriously. But somehow on a young high school boy, this was very appealing and sensual. I studied him discreetly to determine whether I thought he was popular in school (as I felt he should have been), or a bullied pariah. He certainly seemed confident and independent, to look the way he did, so I figured he probably was one who drove everyone in his class into an emotional turmoil--attracted, yet at the same time feeling inferior. Beyond his thrilling hair, he wore a black suit and a white shirt and a classic narrow black woven tie—he was so retro/cutting edge fashionable that I wonder if he understood this or was it a fortunate accident? The only discordance to his look was his white gym socks and some kind of Rebok or Nike shoes, which was, in its own way, charming, and to be expected for one so young (those could actually be the only shoes he owns).

As for the Dad, HIS appearance was more typical, unremarkable older man (but certainly SOME parental unit in that family was either engendering of, or accepting of, their son's apparently never-cut hair), but he had brought his son to a Herbie Hancock concert, which I think was a demonstration of quite good parenting on his part. I really would like to see way more dads doing things like this with their sons.

At the allotted time, I made my way back over to our section’s entrance door and the young male usher standing there told me that he was curious about “this man Herbie Hancock”, whose music he had never heard of before. He said that he knew it was jazz, and he then used an unusual but I think probably apt phrase to describe his opinion of jazz, which I wish I could remember. Non-melodious, maybe? I don’t remember, but the gist of it was that (using my own words) it wasn’t something that one could hum. I told him that some of Herbie Hancock’s music one could DEFINITELY hum to (at least I can, and do; “Maiden Voyage,” “Butterfly”, and “Spiraling Prism” are some good examples), but then some of it, no. I asked him if he would be able to hear any of it, and he said that it would be broadcast on speakers throughout the concert hall, so he would be able to hear it. I said that I was pretty sure he would like it. “Give it a chance,” I said. “This is a 100% sold-out performance,” he said, “so I think it would be worth my giving it a chance if he is that popular.”

I, myself, was pretty well-dressed up, part of the fun of going out to something like that. I enjoyed seeing the other well-dressed men and women who filled up the seats around me; this demonstrated to me that they considered this a special event. All of whom had, like me, purchased inexpensive seats, but all were impressed at how well we would be able to see even from up there. I noticed complicated baffles up on the ceiling and realized that an acoustical genius had been involved in the architecture of this building, so I expected the best regarding the sound (and, oh boy, did I ever get it!). Also, I loved it that the people around me were real Herbie Hancock fans and I felt that this was part of the joy of going out to a live performance.

It wasn’t just going to be Herbie Hancock; in his band, this time, were also the genius saxophonist, Wayne Shorter, and the well-beloved bassist, Dave Holland, and, perhaps best of all, one of the all-time greatest drummers, Vinnie Colaiuta. I have to admit to not being familiar with the other musicians (but I soon enough got an education!).

Right smack on time the band came out to a rousing applause and cheering, and then they got right down to work. I had no idea what to expect in a concert of this type; would Herbie Hancock make it a “popular” concert by playing some new works and also lots of old favorites? No, he actually did not; it was all “new”, so new, that in fact it seemed like they were generating it right then and there in front of us, it springing right out of the combined genius consciousnesses of those four great musical artists. At first the music was, shall we say, NOT “hummable,” but was, instead, as compositionally complicated as say, a whale’s song (not sounding like that, just complex like that). I began to worry that the young usher hearing this on the speakers out in the antechamber was deciding that he didn’t like it, and I had to ask myself, “Well, do YOU like it?” Almost as soon as I began to ponder my answer, I began to feel that the music made me feel ecstatic! Herbie was doing something way way down on the furthest base notes of the piano, some kind of interaction in the deepest realm of the piano that I don’t think I had ever heard used before, certainly not in such a way that Herbie was, interacting the depth of these notes so magnificently and beautifully that it certainly felt like brand new aural territory. Actually, from that moment on, I felt like this whole concert was “pontillism for notes,” as if the compositions were George Serault paintings, whereby he wouldn’t paint, say, a purple dot, but would paint a red dot and a blue dot next to each other, so your EYE got purple, but in a shimmering, dynamic way that bounced among the three colors. Herbie Hancock seemed to do that with notes, creating new notes from the combinations of adjacent notes. I had never heard anything like this before.

About this time, the bassist made his presence known in the absolutely most subtle way possible, as if you could feel the vibration from his strings before there ever was a sound, and then following that, you could, barely, perceive an actual sound, so careful, so skillful, so controlled in intention. Fine acoustics, oh hell yes, that concert hall was PERFECT for hearing exactly what these musicians were putting forth, my whole body thrilled at that level of design and exposition.

Then Wayne Shorter got into the act, giving us just as subtle of a tone from his saxophone as Holland gave us from his bass. He even could vibrate his saxophone’s reed WITHOUT it making a sound, a woody-version of Holland’s soundless vibrating string. Prior to that, I had always kind of thought of the saxophone as a nauseous instrument, never making a pretty note but, at best, sometimes being tolerable whenever it approached a sound that might be sweet or the rhythms were good. But Wayne Shorter put to rest that idea; his saxophone was as rich and beautiful and elegant as brass itself, as if his instrument were the sound of a luxury ocean liner from the an era gone by, all polished darkwood and velvet carpet, bubbling champagne, the richest food, and laughing ladies flashing diamonds, held steady on the strong arms of tail-coated millionaires, all solid and powerful over the deep splash of a gently rocking sea. Beautiful, just beautiful.

And now, the drums. Had he been playing the whole time, I don’t know. But now he was beginning to stand out, this was not “just” a rhythm section, a human metronome whose only real purpose was keeping the time, no; this was an INSTRUMENT in its own right, and suddenly, rhythm seemed to be a new kind of melody. One could SING this rhythm, it had tone and notes and a music fashioned from the interactions of rhythms just as Herbie Hancock was creating pontillistic new notes from the interactions of other notes. Who knew that drumming could actually be so BEAUTIFUL? The various drums clearly had their own voices and they formed a choir, almost religious in their reverence. Prior to this, I always kind of “ignored” the drums (or thought I was ignoring them), but that will be impossible now.

All in all, this concert was beyond anything I could ever have imagined; my knowledge was expanded, my appreciation was enhanced, and my ability to hear notes and rhythms elevated to a new and different plane. The experience was as uplifting as our row of seats was high. And I definitely plan to return to the Walt Disney Concert Hall again and again.

I floated down from the concert hall clouds, yet maintained that sense of joyful elevation as I got into my car and drove up from the lower levels of the garage. I decided to not take the freeway home, but go the “slow” way (which, regarding getting to and from downtown is often the fast way) on a surface street. I selected Sunset as my route, and after this musical experience, was now entranced by the nighttime FRAGRANCE of gardenia and jasmine that floated down from the Hollywood Hills. Yes, it was now spring, arguably Los Angeles’s most beautiful season. As much as people hate Los Angeles in their love/hate relationship, and I am certainly no different than everybody else in this regard, we must not forget the LOVE portion of that equation. Right now, driving down Sunset at night after this incredible Herbie Hancock concert, smelling the spring flowers, I absolutely loved Los Angeles.

Today, about a month later, it is still spring, Los Angeles’s nighttimes are still delicious, and Friday evening it was time for the Janet Jackson concert. Wow, what a different experience. In a way, whatever could go wrong, did.

Friday was the last day of the first week back to work after two weeks of spring break and it was one of the longest weeks on record. Why, I can’t explain, but everybody felt it. On Wednesday I actually had to look at my calendar to determine what I had done last weekend, which felt like the first weekend after spring break, only to see that we hadn’t had that weekend yet, that we were only in the middle of the FIRST week back. So maybe the evening had gotten off to a bad start because I was stressed and exhausted from the long, painful week back. I planned to treat myself by having dinner over at Universal City Walk rather than going in the other direction back home to cook my own dinner. Eating out is less of a pleasure for me than it could be since I am following a very special diet (no more than 1,100 calories a day, and 40 grams or fewer of carbs a day), on which I have now lost 80 pounds (I now have the fat percentage of a fit 18-year-old). So NOTHING will cause me to break what I am doing; I got through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, my birthday, Valentine’s Day, and various other events without breaking my diet once, so this evening was not going to be an exception.

I generally think of Universal City Walk as a crowded mess, mostly filled with rowdy teenagers, drunken, out of control adults, and, yes, gang activity. So while I wanted to eat there, I didn’t want to venture far into the City Walk. As the Gibson Amphitheater is over on one end (near the parking garage, I thought), I figured it best to eat at whichever restaurant was closest to the amphitheater that served the kind of food I could eat, which means, basically, protein and vegetables, such as chicken or fish, and non-starchy vegetables, maybe a green salad. I bring my own zero calorie, zero carb salad dressing, and my own zero calorie, zero carb Margarita mix, which I add to a bourbon and water to become a whisky sour. I won’t go to a restaurant without checking out their menu on-line first to see if they have what I can, and want, to eat. If I have to simply starve until I am back home, then that is what I will do.

There was a restaurant that seemed to fit the bill, Saddle Ranch Chop House, so I made an on-line reservation. I kind of wasn’t excited about this; I had been there before at a party, and the place seemed to be very crowded and noisy, which I didn’t want. So after making my reservations, I decided to read some reviews of the place. Every single review complained about the slow service, often taking up to a half hour just to get your order taken, and then, of course, there would be another long delay before you actually got your food. Hummm, I had a concert to go to, that seemed unacceptable. So I cancelled my reservation and did a Google search for restaurants in the vicinity of City Walk rather than there at City Walk. A place called “Café Sierra” kept coming up with good reviews, but I had never heard of it and had never seen it, even though I drove past that area twice a day for nearly fifteen years, as it was on my way home from work when I lived in Hollywood. I did a Google Maps search for it and discovered that it was a restaurant inside the Universal Studios Hilton Hotel, right across the street from the entrance to City Walk. (No wonder I hadn’t heard of it; I had never been inside that hotel.) Perfect! I made reservations and they confirmed it was an easy walk from the Universal parking lot to there. I studied the Universal map and determined that the most convenient parking lot to both the Hilton Hotel (other than the hotel’s OWN lot) and the Gibson Amphitheater was the “Frankenstein” lot, so my plan was to park there in that lot.

However, when I got there, I discovered that the Frankenstein lot was all barricaded. So I drove up to an employee directing traffic and asked where I could park, that the lot I planned to use was for some reason barricaded. He explained that the Frankenstein lot was for employees only (unusual, I believe, that the employee lot was the most convenient). Instead he directed me elsewhere, but it ended up where he sent me was VALET parking, which wasn’t what I was looking for. So, asking for more help and making another u-turn, I had to drive all the way around Universal to where the public parking was (in my opinion, quite far away), where I was faced with “Premium Parking” at the “Woody Woodpecker” lot that cost $20.00 (quite expensive in my view), or “Public Parking” at what they called “Jurassic Parking” that cost $10.00 (way more reasonable). Of course, “Jurassic Parking” was as far away as it could possibly be, all the way at the OTHER end of Universal City Walk.

I must say I was shocked to see how crowded this immense parking garage was; if I kind of hoped that Universal City Walk went out business, there seems to no hope of that; apparently they have ALL the rubes they need.

I was part of a solid line of cars going around and around the layers of this garage; it was a good thing that I had given myself an extra half-hour time cushion. It took that entire cushion just maneuvering into the correct parking lot, finding a parking place (on the very top level), and getting out of there and down to the Hilton Hotel. Despite the frustration of this, I did have “time” to be amused by the lack of consistency in parking lot names and also what I think of as a kind of grammatical error in the naming of the one where I was. Of course, they are named after various diverse properties owned by Universal; apparently they seem to have some ownership of or license for the “Frankenstein” character, but rather than continuing the theme of horror movie monsters (let’s say the other parking lots would be named “Dracula Parking” and “Wolfman Parking” or something), they jump over to a Looney Tune character, “Woody Woodpecker,” which leads me to believe that the other two ought to be named “Porky Pig Parking” and “Bugs Bunny Parking,” but no, the third lot is called “Jurassic Parking”. I guess “Jurassic Park” was a Universal Studios picture, but to be correct, in my view, they ought to call the lot “Jurassic Park Parking”. But anyway….

From Jurassic Parking, the Hilton Hotel seemed leagues away, so I opted for the shuttle. As is typical with ALL Los Angeles public transportation of ANY kind, the wait for, and duration of the ride of such transportation is so very often equal to, it not greater than, the time it would take to WALK the distance, and this was no exception. Even though the Hilton Hotel was “next” as far as distance was concerned, the route of the shuttle had to take us all the way down the hill and over to the Sheraton FIRST (and wait for the slow emptying out of the shuttle and then wait for its departure). THEN it went back up the hill and over to the Hilton Hotel.

The shuttle had filled to the brim with people carrying immense amounts of junk food, which they continued to eat on the shuttle. Across the aisle from me was a woman who had a pillow-sized bag of caramel corn, which she kept shoveling into her mouth. The young man next to her (probably not her son, but a way younger brother, maybe?) said to her, “You are STILL eating?” She frowned at him as she continued tossing caramel corn into her mouth, “Of course, I paid $8.50 for this,” which I guess means that if she paid for it, she was going to damned well eat it, ALL of it (but all at one go?). This, by the way, became a kind of a “theme” of the evening, which I will explain in a bit.

At the Sheraton, where all but one of passenger was staying, they oohed and awed over the mile-long Hummer limousine with the hot tub in the back that was parked in front of the hotel. They all wanted to ride in that hot tub.

The shuttle filled up again, this time with a bunch of families with kids who fought over who was going to sit next to whom. Finally I made it to the Hilton Hotel and found my way to Café Sierra, which was a large, beautiful, extremely high-ceilinged room just past the hotel entrance.

They definitely designed this to be an elegant restaurant, and I was greeted by a very polite, refined, maitre d’ who welcomed me and took me to my table. However, other than me (in a jazzy houndstooth raw silk sport coat), everyone there was families all dressed sloppy-casual, as if they had just been shopping at the mall, which in a way they had, but it was souvenir-hunting at Universal Studios after taking the Universal Studios tour. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I think they all would have been happier at an all-you-can-eat buffet joint.

I was really surprised to see so many families and concluded that this still must be spring break at the various public schools.

My waiter was a very solicitous Asian man who kept calling me “Gennelman”. Immediately he wanted to take my drink order, which was fine, I wanted a drink. I ordered a “bourbon and water,” which for some reason always stops waiters, I haven’t quite figured out why. Isn’t that a normal drink? Anyway, I often have to explain that I will be using the water to mix a drink mix that I bring, which, of course, generates more questions. After he understood what I was doing, he tried to make me choose a bourbon brand (naming off some high-level brands), but I already know that if I fall for that, the price will double or triple. “No, please, just your house brand. After all, I am mixing into it a Margarita mix, not drinking it neat, so I don’t need any specific label.” “Ah, you want ‘well’, then.” “Yes, ‘well’, that is the word.”

He then wanted to “give me a tour”, which meant that he was going to point out where all the food was, starting with the dessert section (wrong). Oh, so it IS an “all you can eat buffet,” just dressed up in fancy serving trays. I said to him, “No thank you, I don’t want the buffet, I would like to order from the menu.” This was diet-forced, by the way; normally I LOVE hotel buffets, but something like that would do me absolutely NO good at this point. Ninety percent of what they had would be something I couldn’t eat, so I wouldn’t even want to LOOK at it.

But from there we then had a bizarre conversation that I cannot unravel, but the upshot of it was that I concluded that he was trying to tell me something about how either you had to be a guest at the hotel in order to order from a menu (or maybe even be able to eat there at all), OR that tonight was buffet night for the guests of the hotel and there was no other option. I really don’t know, MAYBE what he was trying to get across was that they had a deal that included in the room price the buffet, I don’t know, but the two things he kept saying had to do with having to be a guest at the hotel and that there was no eating from the menu.

Well, of course this was completely unacceptable, so I angrily got up and as I stormed out, the elegant maître d’ looked at me curiously and disappointedly, so I said to him that the whole thing was a disaster, that I had already wasted half an hour GETTING there, only to NEVER come there again and, on top of that, I now had to write a blisteringly negative review of a place where you have to be a hotel guest to have dinner and you can’t even order from the menu when you are on a special diet and I had checked out this place specifically to see if they served what I needed.

He seemed shocked and told me immediately that of course I could order from the menu and that I could have anything I wanted, there had just been a terrible miscommunication, would I please come back and he would get me a menu right away. I truly have no idea WHAT the actual miscommunication was, but it really didn’t matter, he was making it right, so I smiled and said, “Yes, okay, that is good.” He asked me if I wanted a better table, but I said that the one I had was fine, and he asked me if I wanted a different waiter, but I said, “No, no, it was my fault” (and maybe it even was, who knows), so I was returned to my table and my Asian waiter practically ran to me with the menu. He said to relax and study the menu, but I said that I was already ready to order, that I had decided what I wanted before I had come in. So he pulled out his order book and I ordered the swordfish and a green garden salad. He asked me what kind of dressing I wanted, and I said that, like the drink mix, I had also brought my own dressing. He looked at me quizzically and said, “You don’t look like you have a bottle of dressing with you,” and I smiled and pulled out of my sportcoat pocket two packets of zero calorie, zero carb salad dressing. I will say that this is the first waiter I ever had since I had been on this diet who actually cared about, and understood what I was doing, now that it was explained to him. He was actually very impressed, and complemented me on my dedication. I said, “Well, this is how you lose 80 pounds,” to which he had to say, “Well, it looks VERY good, Gennelman,” which, thank you, I actually did know (because I worked for it) but I love hearing it.

He said, “Do you want some rice with this,” but I said, “No, no rice, no potatoes, only steamed vegetables, but some butter is okay,” and to his question about bread, I, again, said, “No, thank you, no bread.”

The meal was perfect; the swordfish was delicious and cooked correctly (I mean by that, not breaded and fried), every vegetable was exactly something I could have, and the quantity was right, as well. The salad had a good mixture of greens and vegetables that I could eat. It was a meal that did not break my diet one iota, and quite delicious, as was the drink.

I did have time to notice the behavior of the various other diners, who seemed to be enjoying the buffet. What was most amusing was that somewhat near me was the dessert section and the main item there was a complicated, many-layered chocolate fountain that had about twenty different pans that both white and brown chocolate spilled into from one to another to another and another in a quite beautiful and artistic display. The diners had a large selection of fruits, strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, and so on, that they could spear and then douse in one of the chocolate streams. Children, especially, who could hardly reach it, seemed to love this fountain, returning again and again to get more of the fruit dipped in liquid chocolate. It was fun to watch their enthusiasm and joy with this.

As the meal progressed, I wondered if the buffet would have been more cost-effective (I never did check to find out how much it cost); after all, I might have had the discipline to stick with fish or chicken, etc.; but I think what I did was best, even though it wasn’t cheap. I also wanted to make sure the waiter got a noticeably good tip since I had made such a fuss and ended up getting what I wanted; I gave him 25%. I also realized that I PROPERLY also needed to tip the maître d’, although that seems to be lost in our culture currently, but lost or not, I understand that while they should get a tip as a matter of course, they definitely deserve one if they do a special service for you, which this one had, so I decided to slip him a $5.00 bill. I also realized that I needed to tip the piano player who had been playing and singing beautiful jazz standards. So, on my way out, I put two dollar bills into the piano player’s brandy snifter tip glass and gave him a smiling thumb’s up for the beautiful playing (and he for sure noticed and nodded his head in thanks), and then shook hands with the maître d’ who immediately felt the money in his hand and was genuinely surprised and well pleased. I was quite gratified. He said that he was very happy that I had stayed, and I said that if it hadn’t been for his help, I wouldn’t have, but I was glad I did.

In truth, in retrospect, the whole thing was more expensive and more trouble than it was worth. But I don’t decry the experience.

Now, it was time to head on over to the Gibson Amphitheater. It was a warm, perfumed, delicious night, just perfect for sitting outside for a concert. However, despite its name, it ended up that the Gibson Amphitheater is actually an INDOOR venue. Oh well, too bad, but maybe then the sound will be better.

It turns out that the “Gibson” in that name refers to Gibson electric guitars, I suppose to serve as bookend to the Hard Rock Café over at the OTHER end of Universal City Walk (where I had to park). I don’t know, maybe the Gibson Guitar Company (or whatever they are called) somehow “sponsored” this auditorium. Everything is decorated with models of Gibson guitars, all of which have basically the exactly same shape, just come in different colors—yellow, black, red, turquoise—kind of silly as a decorative them, unless one simply goes wild over the whine of such a guitar (which I don’t). The interior lobby is filled with merchandisers (Janet concert tour t-shirts, Janet’s autobiography, souvenir photos, programs, etc.) all along one wall and junk food vendors all along the opposite wall. Oh, and you have to go through a pat-down before going in to make sure you aren’t carrying in a weapon, something I had forgotten about with this kind of place (or the kind of patrons they attract).

It seemed like a long, long walk all the way around to the very far left end where my seating section was. I had forgotten that my seat was on the VERY end of its row. Oh well, maybe being on the aisle is good. But wow, so far over, why did I buy this seat, again?

I got there at 8:00 and the concert was supposed to start at 8:15. Peculiarly, the amphitheater didn’t seem full at all. Actually, it seemed that there were more people roaming the aisles than there were people sitting in their seats. There was a CONSTANT stream of people (who soon enough began to feel like a parade of circus elephants) going up the aisle to go get some food and then bringing it back down again, large trays filled with mountains of French fries cooked in rancid oil, along with gallons of Slurpies or other junk liquids. Honestly, it seemed like the name of this game was eating junk food more than it was attending a concert, and the second most-important activity was taking pictures of each other with camera phones. Oh, and third was texting messages to the Amphitheater’s monitors. “I luv yu Janet!!!!!!!” “My boyfriend is wonderful to bring me to this concert!!!!!!” “Bill loves Steve!!!!!” I get the idea that the exclamation mark key on these people’s phones has all the paint worn off them.

Time proceeded on, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, and all I had had to look at was a landscape-oriented monitor showing its version of what was being shown on a screen to those in the center, that was in portrait orientation (in other words, the view for my section was distorted). Besides the text messages and various advertising, what the monitor mostly showed was a way-too-broadly smiling face of Janet Jackson and something about “True You,” which took me nearly half an hour of looking at it to finally realize that it was a book she had written. Books are generally in “portrait” orientation, which is why my brain did not immediately register that’s what it was, because on our monitor it was stretched wide to fit its landscape orientation. Once I realized that it was a book she had written, I wondered about the process of hiring a ghost writer (which I was sure she must have done). Is there one that they all know via word of mouth? How do you judge a ghost writer? And what a lame title that is, anyway, “True You.” I couldn’t think of what she would have to say that would make a readable autobiography. Sure, I like her music, and yes, she IS one of the Jacksons, but really, WOULD this be all that interesting? Well, not to me.

Oh, and then there were those two spotlights on the other side of the stage, shining at me; they looked like the headlights on a Jeep and no matter how many times my eyes swept past them (hundreds of times), I kept forgetting that they WEREN’T the headlights on a Jeep and I kept wondering for a second why somebody didn’t turn them off.

Time continued to pass; by now it was 9:15 and Janet’s appearance was an entire HOUR late. No explanation, no apologies. The seats were starting to fill up, but the circus elephants continued their food-bearing parade up and down the aisle next to me. I began to hate everybody in that place. Why weren’t people complaining about the delay? But no, all they really wanted to do was eat. I guess simply being in a room with Janet—once, and IF, she finally arrives. As for me, I wondered what I was sitting there for. The seat was obviously horrible, and seeing was not going to be good. She damned well better have AWESOME music. My body was beginning to hurt, I was getting tired. I somehow knew that even Janet’s arrival was going to be anti-climactic. It was now only a matter of giving her a chance, let me hear the first song to see how it is, let me hear her apology, let me hear her say, “Hello Los Angeles, I love you.”

By now I think the audience was getting tired of the delay. Finally, every single seat was filled (did people KNOW that she was going to be very late?). The audience had taken to clapping and cheering very loudly whenever a background song on the sound system came to an end, as if by their enthusiasm they could MAKE her appear. However, all that would happen would be yet another background song would play. This cycle must have occurred a dozen times.

Then, at about 9:30 or so, the voice of Janet Jackson could be heard and the audience stood up on its feet and ROARED. Wow, she is finally here. I was in too bad of a mood to stand up (I felt no respect), so I just sat there and looked at the monitor. Janet was not out there, they were merely running one of her music videos. What was this, a kind of joke warm-up act? To me, showing the music video was a tactical error. It made me realize that what I knew of her, what I LIKED about her, was her music videos. Yes, I HAD purchased one of her CDs, “Rhythm Nation” (decades ago), and really liked it a lot, but I never bought any more of her albums. (Michael, in contrast, I bought every single one of his albums, and even bought all the videos, as well.) I DID download from iTunes about eight or nine Janet Jackson music videos, many of which are pure genius. I thought to myself HOW could a live performance measure up to these well-crafted, expertly-directed, phenomenally-well-danced-by-a-huge-corps-of-dancers music videos? Even this one shown here at the concert (and then a SECOND one they had the gall to run) was clearly going to be much better than anything that was going to happen live on this stage. I understood that I would have done better watching THIS music video at home on my own wide screen high definition good sound system monitor and not paid any more than about $9.99 for the download.

Now it was only stubbornness that kept me still sitting in this auditorium. I really simply wanted to get up and go home. It wasn’t a matter of getting my money’s worth, I had SPENT the money, regardless; it was a matter of what was going to make me happier.

It was an anti-climax when she finally DID arrive at about 9:45, a whole hour and a half late. First the band came out on stage, about five thugs wearing what looked like white pajamas. They sat behind their instruments along the far wall of a box that was mostly INSIDE the stage, so that where I was sitting, I could only see the one who was the furthest outside. The monitor did NOT pick them up. There was a large blue-lit cloud of steam or smoke which didn’t excite me in the least and when it cleared, there was Janet standing there wearing white jeans and a short white vest that seemed to accentuate that she must have been gorging on the same junk food that most of the patrons at this concert had been carrying down the aisles. She had plastered on her head an earphone headset with a microphone that went across her face, kind of spacy/android in effect, not like actually having a person out there, one you could see, anyway. With her were four, I think (it was very hard to see), back-up dancers, quite ugly-looking, actually, wearing clothes that made no impression on me at all. Their dance moves, such as they were, and Janet’s, were so basic and lame that a two-year-old child could have done as well, if not better. There was no thrill or excitement associated with what they were presenting, instead, it felt like they all were just going through the motions and hoping to get it over with quickly.

I could see the edge of the monitor all the way across the auditorium that showed that in the center of the “box” that was the stage, at the rear, was a large projection screen that showed something like a flowing street scene in Los Angeles. This did not show on “our” monitor at all. In other words, these seats really WERE so terrible that basically we could see only about 1/6 of what was there. And what we COULD see was very boring.

The sound was equally bad. The speakers all pointed frontwards, towards the center of the auditorium, so by the time the sound echoed back over to where we were, it was just a loud muddy bass (kind of like listening to the distorted hip hop of a drug dealer driving down the street) punctuated by her indistinguishable whine. Her lyrics could not be understood as the sounds were simply a blend, like melted frosting on a cake. I did realize, though, that she was singing a medley, but if you like a song, you want to hear the whole song, not just a piece of it. Oh well, she wasn’t singing ANY song that I liked, nor was she putting any emotional modulation into any of it. It was just all at one steady level, loud, much like the singing done by a no-name theatrical company on a Carnival Cruise, meant to signify “excitement” to the musically deprived, but in actuality, just either puts people to sleep or else drives them away (on a Carnival Cruise, to just go gamble, instead).

I was irritated by all the people in my section standing up, so I was forced to stand up, too, just to see what was going on. When I saw Donna Summer at the Hollywood Bowl, her concert was so exciting that almost everybody (including me) was standing up and dancing at our seat or in the aisle (including me)…now THAT was a fantastic concert! But here, nobody was dancing (what was there to dance to, really?), and they were only standing so that they could see.

What I saw, the boring medley continued, the back-up dancers, two of them by now (I guess the other two went back where we couldn’t see them from where we were), were just standing there, not even dancing at all. Well, I was now on my feet, so I used them for what they were made for, I walked on out of there.

I was angry enough by this debacle to contemplate attempting to demand to get my money back (if one even could, something I have never had to attempt before), but there was no manager on site that I could see, only endless vendors. I finally shrugged and decided that I had been tainted by this experience enough, to just go on outside and be done with the whole nasty enterprise. Ah, but that delicious night air felt good. It actually made me happy again, so much so, that I even enjoyed all the drunken patrons having their own enjoyment at Universal City Walk. They, at least, had had the smarts to not attend the Janet Jackson concert. They were having their own fun having drinking games at Bubba Shrimp or whatever; ah, people, gotta love them.

Jurassic Parking ended up feeling closer than it had when I was rushing to get to Café Sierra. I found my car easily enough. As I sat down behind the wheel, I ended up having an amusing thought. This whole thing had begun due to my feeling bad at never having been to a Michael Jackson concert. Now I felt that I hadn’t missed a thing.

THE END

AttaCHE Bags, CHanel, et les CHameaux

2010-09-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

When I bought my beautiful Cadillac, I felt that it would be discordant to have my black nylon “attaché” bag lying on the iced-coffee-colored leather upholstery in the back seat, so I bought the perfect beige leather bag from the Levenger catalogue (they bill themselves as selling “tools for readers,” but I always think of them as more “tools for writers”), which has been my daily companion ever since. (The look I was striving for was what I think of as "CEO": a gorgeous leather attache case, a pair of gray suede gloves, and a crisp Wall Street Journal carefully folded in thirds.) I used to get tons of compliments over that bag (which that catalogue no longer sells anything comparable to anymore), but now (110,000 miles later on the Cadillac, which is still more or less pristine, thanks to a rebuilt engine and transmission by my expert mechanic and a new gold vinyl roof and new upholstery on the driver’s seat), the bag has become pretty thrashed. It’s stained and loose and floppy instead of tight and some of the trim on the edges has worn off, but it’s certainly still serviceable, perhaps more than ever. I can’t say that I treat it as carefully as I did before (which in a terrible way makes me think of something written by Zora Neal Hurston about the black man Tea Cake beating his woman because she wasn’t as pretty as another one), and in a way I kind of have my eye open for finding a new one.

But I’m anything but fashionable these days like I used to be when I was younger; it’s almost like “what’s the point,” with this body that’s as used and scathed as the bag I was just talking about. And one thing I have basically stopped completely is wearing cologne, when only about as recently as a decade ago I had a virtual wardrobe of cologne. That is to say that there was “daily going to the office cologne” and “weekend lying about cologne” and “going to brunch cologne” and “incredibly elegant going out on special occasions cologne”. There was even “hmmm yummy ‘voulez vous couchez avec moi?’” cologne. But now, it’s whatever soap I had just used in the shower and a rolled-on splash of Aubrey “E Plus High C” deodorant that I buy at Whole Foods. Does that even have a scent? Let me look at the label…gee, I guess it does, the first ingredient is rose water. So that’s what I am doing nowadays, going around smelling like rose water and sea kelp? (Or olive oil.)

But I’m not immune to marketing…in fact, I am extremely susceptible to it, especially when such experts as Chanel and top film directors and fragrance and color and packaging and language experts get together. Such as here: directed by Baz Luhrman. What’s to not like? Paris, Istanbul, ancient European train stations, the Orient Express, a sleeping compartment at night, ferry boats on the Bosphorus (if you had ever seen the movie Steam, you would be in love with Istanbul), two gorgeous people shown to great advantage surrounded by gold and skin tones, French accents, and (I’m guessing here) Billie Holiday. Might as well pierce us through the heart with a steam roller, but I love it.

Who knows why exactly, but, those marketing experts and my susceptibility again, this very much caught me:

I think maybe because I am drawn to woolen navy blue coats (let’s say like a peacoat, although I do not actually have one, because I happen to live in an almost always warm climate), despite the fact that the model is not actually wearing a peacoat, or maybe it’s the French accent again, or a somehow magnetic shade of blue that is almost black, but only a glance at this advertisement made my think I should go back to wearing cologne again, and that this cologne ought to be the one. It’s all about image, of course…I had NO idea what this cologne smelled like, but, peculiarly, that didn’t even seem to matter (although to a rational person, that seems to be the only pertinent thing, and to the rational and practical person, no fragrance whether you liked it or not would be worth $59 a 1.7 ounce bottle…would it?).

As it happens, my Visa bill was coming due and my Visa card is a Macy’s card, and you can pay your bill at the store. Also, I desperately needed a new pair of shoes, so I decided to go to Macy’s to pay my Visa bill and buy the shoes I needed. I was looking for something extremely comfortable that I could wear to work, so they had to be casual but look acceptably dressy. Regular dress shoes were feeling like a torture from the Spanish Inquisition. However, Macy’s had nothing that was close to what I wanted, so I figured I would try a regular shoe store elsewhere in the mall.

In walking through Macy’s to get to the rest of the mall, I happened to walk past the men’s cologne counters, and remembering the Chanel Bleu ad, I thought I would try a tester. I found the tester, sprayed a tiny amount of cologne on one wrist and rubbed both wrists together. To be honest, I did not like the scent at all. It seemed to be kind of similar to several other popular colognes, but lacked a certain “beauty” that I was hoping for. Well, I’m no expert on fragrance, but this one just didn’t seem to be “me”. Oh well, as I said, I wasn’t wearing cologne these days anyway and now I could save myself from spending $59.00.

I found a shoe store, Clark’s, that had the perfect “comfortable, casual, but looks good enough for business wear” shoe and they were even on sale, so I ended up buying two pairs of the shoe I liked, one in black and the other in brown. I had been helped by both a female sales clerk and a male manager, so they both were at the counter ringing up my sale and they both began to gush over my attaché bag (that hadn’t received any complements in quite a while). They were saying things like “that’s a classic,” “gets only better with age,” “very handsome and appealing,” and I was quite pleased to come away both with some wonderful shoes that I could wear and with so much appreciation for my bag.

Now that I had my shoes, I walked back through Macy’s so that I could pay my bill. Since Clark’s had been on an upper floor in the mall, I was now in an upper floor in Macy’s, a women’s clothing domain I had never entered before. I found a likely sales clerk who cheerfully handled my paying of the Visa bill. She also took the time to gush over my attaché bag, saying pretty much the same things that the clerks at Clark’s had said. Again, I was quite well-pleased by this, but also rather surprised.

Later in my car driving home, I was marveling over this sudden approval over my poor worn out leather bag. At both places where I had a personal interaction, the sales people really loved it. Suddenly as my hands were turning the wheel of my car, I caught a whiff of the Chanel Bleu that was on my wrists, the fragrance now resting on its “final note,” which, by itself, was actually something that I really liked. Then I realized it, that’s what had to be it, it was the cologne that had been causing all this positive reaction to my bag. It must have seemed that I was (suddenly back to being) “fashionable”. That’s what I was thinking then. But then later, I read a review of the cologne by a fragrance expert, who defined the final note of the scent as “suede”…in other words, some kind of “leather”. So now I see that what must have been happening was the final suede note of the Chanel Bleu on my wrists was as if my attaché bag, itself, were sitting there broadcasting its presence and its “leatherness”, very much like if I had obtained from a car manufacturer that “new car smell” (which is NOT the same thing as the kind you can get at the car wash), anyone sitting in my car very well might start gushing over how beautiful my car is, despite the fact that it now has a mileage that has gone beyond 100,000 miles! Fragrance really is a powerful force.

So I guess I am kind of back to keeping one eye open for a new bag, although I haven’t yet seen anything that is anywhere near as nice as the bag I already have. Such as these in the pictures that follow, I don’t like them very well because they have the messy complication of all those buckles and straps. Mine closes perfectly with just one elegant metal oblong device that fits through a slot in the flap and turns from horizontal to vertical to lock it closed. One flip of the fingers does it.

I DO love the marketing idea of these bag ads, though, where they show their bags in use at exotic places around the world. I just happened to think that these camels in these photos are so damned cute, the way they curl up their legs when they are resting. Why aren’t camels appreciated more? I mean, for sure these are as cute as kittens all curled up on a pillow, aren’t they? Yet think how hard they work. They deserve their rest, sweet things. I wish I could pet them; does anybody ever pet the working camels?

Super Model Ash Stymest

2010-09-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

I guess I will dare to go out on a limb, here, and say that as a super male model, Ash Stymest must represent something quite different from what we ordinarily expect. I really do like him, but the question is why? I don't think he is particularly good-looking; he is young and all, but compared with some others such as Paddy Mitchell or Luke Worrall, or let's really be unfair and throw in somebody like Francisco Lachowski, guys who are "swoon down on your knees WOW", I don't think Ash Stymest has the same effect. He doesn't have a really great body. Yes, he is at least lean, very lean, but if he has any muscles at all it is because he plays around and is hyper-active, skateboarding, dancing, or just plain won't sit still. But I doubt he has touched a weight or entered a gym, which means there's no conscious effort toward his body, he just sort of has this natural body that is sexy and appealing for no discernable reason other than he just doesn't worry about it, but instead enjoys it without concern.

One of course notices his tattoos (maybe with like, maybe with dislike), but on the whole, those are more of a distortion to the body than an enhancement, I think. I do LOVE the way he says "tattoo," though; I wish I could write it in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but the way he says it is a kind of a lightly skimming over something like "taddauw" but said so appealingly that it almost makes ME want to get one too (and that's saying the nearly impossible). I think tattoos would be truly wonderful if you could walk up to a person with them and ask him about them. I mean, really LOOK at them and get their story, not quickly glance away as if the person were badly crippled or had a horrible disfiguring disease. Maybe Ash Stymest is a person with tattoos that make him look dangerous and tough, and yet you aren't afraid of him.

And honestly, as much as he is photographed, are they ever having him wear any kind of clothes that you would actually wear (although you maybe kind of wish you COULD wear, but only he can and you can't)? This means that you are yearning toward a world he lives in, and you can, when you realize that he seems to making it up himself as he goes along (I think he would be the first one to say this). If he can, you can.

I also imagine that he is kind of unhealthy (although of course I could be wrong, he could be almost Mormon in his pristine personal habits for all I really know), smoking, drinking, taking risks, there are probably drugs in there somewhere, all of which means that he could be eventually wearing out in a painful way, youth doesn't remain immune forever. But then, if so, he's also living in a world you are curious about but don't want to subject yourself to the danger of. So you watch him, instead, and enjoy its reflection.

I think what it is, is that he is a nuclear ball of energy. You never know what he is going to do, and probably neither does he, but he'll do it anyway and that lack of inhibition is powerfully magnetic. I don't think we could possibly stand him for long as lover or even a friend (we're not up to it), he would wear us out or send us screaming to the quiet comfort of a padded cell, but we would like to PLUG INTO him for a moment, but the most we could stand is what we get from a photograph or a video, a three-minute experience, or a two-dimensional one. The full-on experience of Ash Stymest in person would probably burn us out as if we touched a live power line. Does anybody know, does he have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or are all his human contacts like balls rolling around in a pinball machine, good for a quick bump, but then they've got to skitter away (or he does)? If he has some loved one, I'd love to see what they look like. I imagine hair as frizzy as a Troll doll and if you touched THEM, you'd jump back from the electric spark as if you had spent the last half hour shuffling along a thick carpet (whereas they're the one who has all the residual energy).

In short, what Ash Stymest shows is that you don't have to be beautiful in any tradition that anybody knows, you don't need to work out, groom yourself, count your calories, live in crippling moderation, worry about a future you have no control over, or follow anybody's irrelevant rules. You only need to be yourself without inhibition, regret, fear, social approval, or higher authority. How wonderful it is that a person who seems totally free can be a super model (that is, a representative for others), and that may be Ash Stymest's greatest power, that he is dissident and dissidence is exactly what we need, all of us, even those in power.

Thoughts On The BP Oil Crisis

2010-06-21T00:18:00.000-07:00

First of all, I am sick of it being called an "oil spill". It is not a "spill", it is a "leak" or a "spew" or a "gusher" or an "out of control uncapped oil well"; to constantly call it a "spill" is to harken back to the Exxon Valdez and other accidents wherein certain legal precedents were set, but this is a different situation entirely and needs to be looked at with fresh, unbiased eyes. (And using the right words instead of common "sound bites" is always being on the side of truth instead of manipulation.)

Second, I am sick of everybody saying "BP did this," and "BP did that". BP is a huge corporation (a legal creation on paper, actually), comprised of hundreds of employees, including board members, officers, managers, clerks, and every other type of occupation. What caused the explosion was a combination of decisions made by INDIVIDUAL workers on the job. It was a DRILLING SUPERVISOR who decided that chunks of rubber coming up out of the riser (which ended up being pieces of a damaged rubber ring that is one of three stopper methods used to temporarily cap off the well) weren't a problem enough to delay the operation, an operation that already had cost BP close to 30 million dollars, I think it was, in losses due to problems and delays in the drilling of the well (leasing the Deepwater Horizon costs a million dollars a day). Secondly, it was a BP MANAGER (again, an individual person) who overrode the Deepwater Horizon's method of filling the well with "mud" (a thick, heavy liquid substance which has weight that applies downward pressure to counteract the upward pressure of any gas or oil that seeks to escape from a well), which was the second of three capping-off methods, in the interest of making it more convenient and quick for the extraction platform that was going to come in afterwards (Deepwater Horizon is a drilling platform; after they drill, they cap off the well and move on to drill elsewhere while another platform comes to connect with the well and pump out the oil). So now we have two individuals making time and cost-saving decisions that compromised the safety of the operation and effectively eliminated two out of the three methods used to safely close off a well. The third method is the concrete cores that Halliburton installed. I do not have much information on that piece, except that I did hear that some manager at BP counteracted Haliburton's procedure in some way which compromised that, as well (used fewer cores, maybe, to plug up the well?). To hear how this whole thing is being treated, it was as if the Board of Directors themselves issued a policy of "safety features be damned, full speed ahead," you know, due to "greed" and all that, when really, again, it was individual workers on the scene making risky (and wrong) decisions, which can, and does, happen any and everywhere (such as the railroad engineer in Southern California who was text messaging just before having a head-on collision with another train). Perhaps BP "policy" can be blamed for putting on that pressure to hurry? But who has a job where THAT doesn't exist? (Why have I been putting in 12-hour work days for the past four months? Fortunately, I just work at a school instead of drilling the deepest underwater oil well in human history.)

This is NO DIFFERENT from the Challenger space shuttle explosion, where engineers warned that due to unseasonably cold temperatures in Florida that the rubber in the O-rings might have been compromised, but management at NASA refused to delay the launch due to fear of bad public relations and damage to their carefully drawn-out schedule (a delay in launch probably also costs money). This was a decision to "chance it", since they really didn't KNOW what the o-rings would, or would not do. The drilling supervisor on the Deepwater Horizon didn't actually KNOW that the annular ring was totally damaged, nor did the BP Manager KNOW that the pressure from the well would be too great to contain the methane gas without the weight of the "mud"; these men only knew that many millions of dollars had been "wasted" already and they wanted to hurry up and get this well capped off so that the pumping rig could then move in (maybe in a few hours?) and start extracting this oil.

I don't remember there being cries that NASA ought to be drawn and quartered because of this managerial decision to launch the space shuttle against engineering recommendations to not launch. Why? Because NASA is the GOVERNMENT whereas BP is a corporation; to liberals, GOVERNMENT is supposed to be the solution to these problems, yet always, it is individual working people who make the decisions whether they are working for the government or for a corporation. So, the very force that liberals want to use to regulate errors such as made by individuals working for a corporation (BP), were the actual forces that caused the Space Shuttle explosion (workers for NASA). So, increased government control is not the answer. Deepwater Horizon had the best safety record of any drilling facility out there (seven years without an injury or accident), yet the risk-taking decisions of a small handful of workers in a moment counteracted that great safety record and caused the greatest ecological disaster in history. But this is not "BP". It is a laborer for Deepwater Horizon and a mid-level manager for BP. It could be someone like us in some other setting.

"Corny" as it may seem, I feel like saying to all those screaming congressmen and liberals and environmentalists, "Let he who has never been involved in an accident or made a bad decision throw the first stone." Everybody else is just working to satisfy their agenda, which is to "destroy the petroleum industry" and "increase government control over all aspects of life." Sounds good to some level of idealist, but I see they're all still driving cars....

I will probably be vilified for my comments here, but I care about the environment just as much as anybody else does and I detest what happened and mourn the loss of life in whatever form it comes in, and I can't stand the thought of beautiful white Gulf beaches turned gray. But my grief over this situation does not make me succumb to regular "ten-minute sessions of hate" as if I lived in Oceania in 1984. My whole orientation is more "what exactly happened, what can we do to make sure it never happens again, and what can we do now that it HAS happened?" (This, of course, will never happen with a government commission, such as the one that Obama has already assembled of environmentalists and others who have already said that their agenda is to socialize the energy industry.) Looking to find who to blame and brand them as "evil" (members of the Board of Directors?) and spend all our time screaming at them and thinking of ways to punish them is simply medieval and really, not of much practical use to anybody.

They Don't Matter

2010-01-25T09:55:00.001-08:00

I'm turning over a new leaf concerning my involvement on the Internet (although sometimes I feel that I am turning over so many new leaves that it is eternally autumn) and although it is a simple and almost childish thing, I am putting it down here in writing for my own benefit in hopes that I continue to follow it.

Virtually all correspondence on the Internet is anonymous and the truth is that we may be temporarily contacting a type of person that we would never willingly stand within 100 feet of in real life. I think of being on the Internet as somewhat similar to riding a Los Angeles Metro Bus, which I sometimes did, for example, when my car was in the shop. But riding a Metro bus is to be packed jostling body-to-body for a horrendous, extremely uncomfortable hour, hour and a half commute with people you just might not want to ever associate with for even a moment, let alone having your entire body pressed tightly against them for an eternity. So now whenever my car is in the shop, I rent a car.

I want to apply an "escape" similar to that regarding my use of the Internet, and this particularly pertains to forums, discussions, comments, and book and movie reviews within which I might participate. It is nearly impossible to read a list of comments on any subject without coming away from the experience being thoroughly revolted by some of the participants--"Who are these people?" and "Keep them away from me, please!"

In the several years that I have been extensively participating on the Internet, I have NEVER EVER seen a person change his point of view during a discussion. There is absolutely no learning, no compromises, no coming together of minds, no progress at all, just an ever-increasing spiral of filth and spittle. It's all about you extending an opinion to an anonymous stranger and then him spitting in your face something vile in response, not only disagreeing with your opinion, but also casting aspersions against your character. What's the point of it, really? If what I was interested in was cock fights, then where you would find me would be in some seedy part of town putting my money on some poor razor-blade-legged rooster. Since that's about as far from my personality as anything I can imagine, what am I doing wasting my time discussing things on the Internet with people who are, in my opinion (as far as the type of people I would willingly associate with), just as objectionable?

So I'm simply not going to do it anymore. Oh yes, I will still leave comments, reviews, my opinion, and I will also carry on a discussion with somebody worth discussing things with, but regarding this other type of person, I will simply ignore them. This is a hard thing for me to do, and in the past, I have been far too easily drawn into further escalating discussions until I can't stand the involvement any more. This has been very stupid of me, but I have learned from the experience and it is now at an end.

One of my favorite people of all time was American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In his day, he was a controversial figure (and actually still is) as many highly creative and innovative people are and he was forced to receive a lifetime of bile from other architects, critics, and various other people who just didn't understand. He was interviewed by Mike Wallace in a series of television programs and one of the questions Wallace asked him was what did he think about or do about this kind of person. And I loved his answer so much that I would like to see it carved into stone: "They don't matter. I realize that I am not for them, and they are not for me." And that ended the matter. Why should this man be interrupted in his progress by stepping into a pile of dog do? He'd just wipe his feet and move on. I absolutely love that attitude.

Old But Not Freakin'

2010-01-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or...

I mean, I know I am "old" and "out of touch" and all, but don't you think that if you were young:

and considered good-looking enough to be a model (though in this picture I'm not too keen on the farmer tan):

that you would do whatever you could to preserve your looks, and not have a freakin' FACE tattooed on your chest?

After all these years, I still just don't get it. But it really doesn't matter, does it, this guy is STILL a model anyway. Like those models who look like heroin addicts. I am beginning to think that on some level (have I ever said this before?), this kind of advertising is similar to those liquor ads that had carefully airbrushed into the ice cubes monsters that severe alcoholics sometimes see when they have delirium tremens, selling a product by appealing to Freud's id, the lowest level of each individual's psyche (unconscious, instinctive, and relentless in pursuit of its basest desires). It's frightening how so many things are actually an addiction. But as for me, I'll draw the line at addiction to needles, which in my view, is what we are really seeing in the picture above. Watch how on him, now that he is started, those tattoos will spread like a fungus.

Martha Betty Crocker Stewart

2009-12-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

My all-time favorite way to entertain is to have one special someone or a special couple over for a semi-formal, sit-down, candelabra-lit dining-room dinner for which I have cooked and prepared everything from cocktails and hors d'oeurves all the way through every course (including carefully selected wine served in cut crystal goblets) up to and including dessert and after-dinner drinks, preferably following a particular theme. (It's especially nice if that special someone stays over and then I cook them breakfast in the morning; such a breakfast can be just about anything, but in my view, has to at least include waffles).

But I haven't been able to do that for oh-so-long, especially being in this apartment in which there isn't room for even me to eat. I have to eat at my desk, which I think is disgusting.

But nobody I know seems to entertain that way any more, anyway. Instead, it's all pot-luck parties. I used to despise pot-luck, which you will understand is the opposite polarity from the kind of entertaining I just described that I like doing, everything being organized and integrated, instead it is a hodge-podge of whatever it is that people decide to make (if anything), which almost always has to be something that can be made ahead and then travels well which isn't really the best of dining. I think my mother used to dislike potlucks, as well, because she saw them as a cop-out for the hostess (since my mother was the most awesome dinner-party-giver ever), but she didn't dislike them as much as she disliked cocktail parties, which she saw as something people gave as en masse paybacks for all the wonderful real dinner parties they had been invited to. I don't think my parents ever in their life gave a cocktail party; instead, they had friends over, two or three couples at a time (not the hundreds who come to drop in at cocktail parties), for some real food and awesome conversation and deep, mature companionship. As a child, I loved experiencing from afar this very adult entertainment; the delicious aromas of the food, the tinkling of the bar ware, the joyful laughter of the ladies, and the earnest discussions of the men. They made me eager to grow up into the mysterious and serious world of the adult.

But potlucks are the only kind of parties anymore, so I do go to them and I always bring a main dish that I made (and something different each time I go, since I like to explore, although there was a group of vegans I partied with when I lived elsewhere who would always beg me to bring my textured vegetable protein tamales, so for them I always made those...and tamales you can make ahead and they travel well, in fact, they are a perfect picnic food. I'll never forget the tamales I bought on the Copper Canyon Railroad that runs from Los Mochis to Chihuahua in Mexico. Women would board the train carrying buckets filled with tamales covered with a hot dish cloth and walk up and down the aisles of the train selling them until the next station, when they would get off and another bunch would get on in their place and in this way hop-scotching station by station all the way up the line. Unbelievably delicious and quite safe to eat.). I don't really understand these people who happily get away with bringing "nothing", and by that I mean a bag of chips and maybe some dip, or a six-pack of beer, or napkins and paper cups. Gee whiz, how hard is it to cook something? Even the most pathetic of bachelors ought to learn how to cook at least his special spaghetti or an omelette or maybe a chocolate pie.

Speaking of chocolate pie, when I was so sick with the stomach flu or maybe it was something else a couple of weeks ago, I reverted back to feeling like I was a five-year-old (I wanted my Mommy!) and I began to crave certain foods that I remembered enjoying way back then that I don't think I have had since I was five. For example, I was craving Jello and also Jello Instant Pudding. As I started to eat again after three days of expelling toxins from both ends, the first thing I made was (lime) Jello, because I just happened to have some in the house that somebody gave me a couple of years ago. And then when I was strong enough to go to the store, I bought some chocolate and some vanilla Jello Instant Pudding. I also bought other things I was craving, such as peanut butter and grape jelly for PBJ sandwiches, and tiny bags of plain potato chips (not Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, or any other "os" that I normally might select now). I got Root Beer and Seven-Up (which is hard to find...it's always Sprite everywhere) and apple sauce. Then, being a little more adult but still self-indulgent, I also bought Carrs Table Wafer crackers and Alouette artichoke and asparagus cheese spread.

I was invited to a party a few days later (pot luck) and WAS going to make some kind of a main dish, but happened to treat myself to some Alouette and crackers and inside the Alouette wrapper was a recipe for cheese-stuffed mushroom caps that looked delicious. So on a whim I made those, instead, and nothing could be easier. You wash the mushrooms, gently pull the stem stubs out of the caps, fill the caps with 1T of Alouette spreadable cheese each, put them on a cookie sheet cap-side down, sprinkle on each 1t of seasoned bread crumbs and cook in the oven at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. The whole thing was so easy that I made them at work and cooked them in the oven in the employee kitchen right before the party, which was right after work. And people loved them. One woman who is a phenomenal cook asked me for the recipe and she made them herself for a party she went to two days later.

Tonight I made myself chocolate-flavor Jello Instant Pudding...I kid you not, this takes FIVE MINUTES and I can't imagine who would complain about the flavor. Call it "Silken Chocolate Mousse" if you want. They had a recipe for what would have to be a killer pot luck dessert: Chocolate Jello Instant Pudding stirred with Cool Whip and poured into a pre-made Oreo pie crust. WHO CAN'T DO THIS? Now, if you want to be really fancy, you can grind up some peppermint candy and mix it into the chocolate pudding--great for Christmas.

While I love making dishes that take quite a lot of time (and maybe skill), I absolutely do not complain about using plain old American foods that I loved when I was five years old that can be put together to make something that will bring tears to the eyes of any adult. We all need comfort, don't we? And the other guests will be thrilled and impressed, whereas you bringing the six-pack or the bag of chips, not so much.

Expectations: Reliving Some, Fulfilling Others

2009-11-27T20:35:00.000-08:00

Bobo's The Steak, Lombard Street, San Francisco

It ended up that yesterday, Thursday, was just about all about eating. Now, given the fact that yesterday was Thanksgiving, anyone reading this might nod his or her head knowingly, thinking, "Well of course, it was Thanksgiving." But no, yesterday wasn't my Thanksgiving; that will be tomorrow, Saturday, which ends up fitting everybody's schedule better. Is it incorrect to celebrate Thanksgiving on a day other than Thanksgiving Thursday? I am sure that when we do celebrate it, I will be thinking that it is about getting together with family and friends and being thankful for our many blessings...and THEN eating.

I started the day yesterday with breakfast at Cafe Lombard, after making sure that they were open (which they weren't the night before). This is the delicious little Italian restaurant that is owned by a Chinese woman who does all the great cooking; she serves regular American breakfasts and lunches. When she saw me, she said, "Welcome home!" after recognizing me from when I was here at this time last year. I loved that "home" (as opposed to, say, "nice to see you back again"). I asked her what she was going to be doing for Thanksgiving, open for Thanksgiving, or cooking at home for family and friends, but she said she was invited to a friend's house so she was able to escape the kitchen. I said, "Ah ha, this time it is for somebody to be treating YOU."

For some reason, this year I am being thankful of all the time off that I get to have in my job and am more keenly aware than ever of all those who are working to make the holidays work for those who are off. I've been leaving larger tips on such occasions, and also making mention of my noticing that they ARE working whenever that seems appropriate. I think it must be hard to be working when everybody else is playing, but a little extra recognition might make it better.

I got to sit in "my" seat in the restaurant's window (which will now be the fourth time I have sat in that one and only spot there). Kind of behind me were the only other diners in the restaurant, a man and a woman, whom I never really got a good look at because to do so would involve a very obvious and pointed turn-around-and-look. Whenever I am dining out alone (which is about 99% of the time), I am keenly aware of how easily I can hear every single thing that is said by others nearby, which I assume is a general principle with all lone diners unless they are utterly insensitive to whatever surrounds them. But I make a big point of acting like I am paying absolutely no attention whatsoever (and sometimes whatever they are talking about is of no possible interest to me), but my ears are not turned off so people's conversation are similar to a radio that is on in the car. I just want people to understand that if you are talking in a restaurant and there is a lone diner nearby, every thing you are saying is being heard by that diner. Does this now make you paranoid? Well, it shouldn't...but I thought you would like to know.

What makes it hard is if one of the speakers is outrageously funny, or perhaps extremely fascinating; I want so much to laugh, or to join in, but either response would spoil the carefully created illusion that people have some measure of privacy when out in public.

Based on their conversational style, I happened to like both of these diners sitting behind me at Cafe Lombard, even though the man had a very whiny voice. I wondered deeply about that whine; it wasn't that he was complaining about anything or was even demonstrating very much of a negative nature, but it seemed that this voice might be a carry-over from a childhood raised in a household where the culture was one of extreme disappointment and while he had absorbed that affect, he counteracted it by having an attitude of "the silver lining." Another description of this might a Pollyanna-ish "glad game," which is a perception of always turning around the bad things that happen to see what good is really inside there. I find that unfortunately people are more commonly the opposite of that, keenly aware of or carefully seeking out the negative that is lying in wait inside of the good things that happen. So, in some peculiar way, I realized that despite what might ultimately become screamingly tiresome to others, this voice could be described as the "sincere voice of Thanksgiving," saying in its tone, "I may have been hurt all my life, but there is always something good to be thankful for." So his was the perfect soundtrack for Thanksgiving morning.

The woman, on the other hand, was quite free-spirited, taking whatever in life came her way, and often made a clever joke of her companion's "glad game". For example, the man was quite complementary about various things about the restaurant...he loved the light classical music that was playing in the background, he loved the crispness of the home fried potatoes, his eggs, though a little runny for his taste, were nevertheless quite delicious in a way that he wouldn't have expected. He said to her, "So I had thought you might like to eat here instead of the coffee shop in our hotel, even though it was an eight block walk, I hope that was okay." She said, "It was fortunate that I had put on my walking shoes."

When the owner came to bring the man some more coffee, he said, "Oh yes, PLEASE, this coffee is just SO good!" Then he leaned over to his companion and said, "But you are drinking tea." And she said, "They have the best hot water here." I nearly burst out laughing when she made that comment, but he took her humor in stride and said, "You know, you are in so much trouble!" which, when spoken in his Eeyore-like voice, also nearly made me burst out laughing.

After breakfast, my mission was to cross over the bay via the Golden Gate Bridge and drive around in Tiburon and Belvedere, two of the more famously appealing across-the-bay waterside communities that I used to love when I lived in the area. Both of them, along with the better-known Sausalito, and well, anything water-side in the bay area, is utterly out my reach, I who couldn't even afford a falling-down tract house in a gang-infested area of L.A. But for some reason that I cannot quite yet explain, it was important for me to reconnect with this kind of thing, as if they represented some life-line that I could grab onto to pull me up out of the mire that I felt stuck in.

After marveling at those fairy-tale communities (and SOME people actually commute via ferry-boat from those lovely Marin County docks to San Francisco's downtown financial center skyscrapers,
so I could just as easily refer to them as "ferry-tale" communities), I crossed back over the bridge and headed south into San Mateo County to go look at the restored Carolands Chateau in Hillsborough:

Carolands, the 65,000 square foot home of Harriet Pullman Caroland, heiress of the Pullman railroad car fortune, once sat at the top of a major peninsular estate in what is now the Town of Hillsborough, which I loved to go look at from time to when when I lived in the area, but as people died and various heirs took over and money became tight, the place fell into disrepair. It used to be you could actually drive right up to the house and, if you were brave, walk around on the property, but now I see that it is fully landscaped again, gated and closed, and all but-invisible from the road.

Hillsborough, and another similar town in the Peninsula, Atherton (where my parents lived from when I was in sixth grade all the way through to when I was in my mid-thirties), are as equally out of reach for me and 99.9% of all the other Californians as are the fabled bayside cities, but I have fond memories of these communities having lived there during my "prime" years, so they are in my blood. This makes me kind of the opposite of the whiny-voiced man having breakfast at Cafe Lombard. I did not grow up in an atmosphere of disappointment, but in one filled with nearly impossible expectation.

I hadn't slept well the night before and felt exhausted with doing even more driving the day after having made the long drive up here, so I decided to drive back to San Francisco to take a nap and then relax until time for my dinner reservation at Bobo's, which really ends up being the day's main event.

I found Bobo's (Boboquivari's) to be everything it was touted to be. The restaurant, itself, was a melange of different rooms on different levels all in a fun, dark, romantic atmosphere. I was seated at a table in a room that was partitioned into intimate areas by heavy velvet curtains. There was an array of various-sized heavily-framed artwork on the walls, all in a hodgepodge of DISarray, as if the joyful energy of the various diners over the years had knocked them hopelessly off-kilter. I thought that was decorating genius. The colors and patterns of the Harlequin, the Italian comedic/operatic clown (such the rows of diamonds, or black and white stripes), was also a decorative theme of the restaurant, and a little research on the subject revealed that harlequins, while gluttonous, were also acrobatic, given to flips and cartwheels. Well, I will surely agree with the GLUTTONOUS part, but if after eating there I even attempted a cartwheel, that would have been the last act of my sixty-one years of life.

The waitress wished me a happy Thanksgiving and I said, "So, what about YOU?" and she told me that the restaurant had provided a Thanksgiving party for all of them earlier that day, which I thought was a wonderful touch. "But how are you going to be working stuffed and sleepy?" I asked her, and she laughed, saying that she had had time for a nap and now was subsisting on gallons of espresso. But we both agreed that sometimes your co-workers are more of a family than your own family, so a Thanksgiving with them can make sense.

My exposition here wouldn't be complete without a summary of the other diners who were in this room whose conversations, of course, I was privy to. Next to me were two men, a young college-age man with a phenomenally deep and sexy voice, and an older man. Naturally I wondered about why those two would happen to be together on Thanksgiving night, but I ended up figuring out that they were father and son, and surmised that the father had divorced his son's mother long ago and really doesn't know his son all that well. One was visiting the other, but I couldn't quite figure out which one lived there and which one didn't, but if I had to guess, I would have said that it was the father who was from out of town. The son seemed more secure whereas the father was unsure of himself. They discussed the ISSUE of religion, God, and what happens after you die (but not any of the specifics), which I guess came up because the father is an atheist whereas the boy was raised by his mother to be a church-goer. However, once the boy reached college-age, he determined that Christian behavior was hypocritical and therefore he lost faith in the faith. It was kind of a peculiar conversation, actually, in that the father never had had a thing to provide on this subject and now that his son was questioning, the father couldn't add anything to it, since to him there is nothing there to even ask about. For his part, the son wondered how a person actually went about answering these questions, realizing that most people never really do seek, but simply accept whatever they were taught.

At the other table in the room were three drunk middle-aged men and one fat middle-aged woman. They were simply having a good time eating and spent their whole meal discussing the relative merits of various steakhouses and how steaks are best cooked. It was their conclusion that Bobos' was consistently the best steakhouse they knew, and that Ruth Chris's was often a disappointment and ALWAYS snobby (and horribly expensive). After their dinner, they were going to further add to their fun by bar-hopping for the rest of the evening.

As for me, I really treated myself to the full nine yards--mixed drink, the bread that they automatically brought, salad, steak, side, dessert, and coffee. In retrospect, I would have been perfectly happy with just a steak and maybe a simple dinner salad.

Regarding drinks, the menu offered a variety of clever creations, most of which seemed to involve margarita-like salt around the rim (which, if I get a margarita, I always ask the bartender to skip) except here there were various combinations of salt and pepper, or various other spices, or even ground chocolate. I ordered a blueberry margarita that various restaurant reviewers recommended except that the only blueberry I managed to taste wee the actual blueberries that they had placed IN the drink. This margarita had nothing around the rim. Well, it was unusual and refreshing, but I didn't need to have it.

The bread they brought was practically a whole LOAF of olive bread that was heavily infused with olive oil so that one did not need to, say, put on butter (besides, there was going to be BUTTER to come elsewhere in the meal....). The bread was the only thing I was unable to finish, so I "brought the rest of it home" to the hotel and actually, I have yet to finish it. It's very good and also very filling, but somehow I sense that it is very healthy. It has pieces of both green and black olives in it.

The salad was a wedge of baby romaine lettuce with sliced apples, seasoned walnuts, and raspberry dressing. I told the waitress that I could get addicted to those seasoned walnuts. She told me that they also serve them as snacks at the bar and she, herself, always finds herself reaching for them.

Then came the steak, a bone-in filet mignon cooked medium rare, sitting in the middle of a large square plate, and the "side," which was sauteed portofino mushrooms. Here was where the butter came in, since both the steak and the mushrooms had been cooked in butter.

I could very well say that this was the most delicious steak I had ever had. I, for sure, could say that it was the most TENDER steak I had ever had. In fact, upon alternating between a bite of steak and a bite of some portofino mushrooms, they both were as equally tender. Since for me steak is often a chew-chew-chew ordeal, I just can't imagine how they managed to cook it so deliciously and so tenderly. For sure it has to do with the cut of meat, but it is more than just that. Anyway, that was utterly wonderful and would bring anyone to his knees, I am sure.

For dessert I had blood orange sorbet in a waffle basket and this was actually a dessert that did not taste sweet; the blood orange is almost bitter like a grapefruit. I kind of enjoyed having a dessert that did not make me feel like I had to immediately brush my teeth after. And, in all honesty, I am getting so that I hate chocolate, so it was nice to have a dessert choice that didn't have anything to do with chocolate.

The coffee was, of course, also delicious, but what I liked about it was the sculpture of the coffee cup in which the porcelain rectangle that was brought around to make the round sides of the cup had one end of it that was also extended out to form a handle. And they didn't just bring you a cup of coffee, but it came in a stainless steel carafe for the table that held three or four cups.

So, after this meal (which, before the tip cost $108), I had no further ambition than going back across the street to the hotel and lying down for the rest of the evening, which is exactly what I did.

But finally I could fully understand the suggested diet of one of my doctors. His trick, as he so proudly reveals, is "soup for lunch, salad for dinner, and steak once a week". That "steak once a week" makes him wink at you, as if THIS is the key to dieting success. But that secret hadn't communicated to me until my dinner yesterday at Bobo's. NOW I understand the reward that is implied by the "you can suffer anything all week just so long as you get a steak" steak.

And a diet is for sure something I need to go on again.

Thanksgiving Redux

2009-11-25T20:20:00.000-08:00

Here I am sitting in the exact same room in the exact same hotel in San Francisco where I stayed last year, the Lombard Motor Inn on Lombard Street one block west of Van Ness--a perfect location and a great deal, price-wise (within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay, Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, plus public transportation (busses, cable cars, and street cars) to any destination imaginable. I'm here for three days, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then Saturday will drive to the house of one of my sisters for Thanksgiving dinner with her family. (We expect this to be at her house in Clear Lake like last year if some construction she is having done is complete on time. Otherwise, it will be in her apartment. Either one will be great.) Sunday, I am driving back home.

The drive up here had a different "feel" than normal due to the fact that three weeks ago I had had my car's engine rebuilt by my expert mechanic (and wow, does it ever run beautifully!). I asked him if he recommended a certain "break-in" (I've had rebuilt engines before) and he said, "It's probably not essential, but it might be a good idea if you don't drive over 60 for the first month." I figured if I wasn't going to drive over 60 on this trip, it would be better to take 101 instead of I-5. On I-5 you can go 70 from the bottom of the Grapevine to where I get off at the Tracy turn-off for the Bay Area (all of the trip that is in the Central Valley). It would just be too miserable to be traveling that slowly while all but trucks were speeding by at 70, which would also mean that I would be stuck with all the trucks the whole time. US 101 is a longer but prettier route, but keeping it below 60 wouldn't be so intolerable. And I was right. I basically set my cruise control for 58 and then sat back and "watched a movie of beautiful hills, forests, and vineyards" as I smoothy headed north. There were LOTS of cops everywhere, standing by the side of the road pointing radar guns as if they were hunting rabid dogs or else actually giving tickets, their cars all flashing red and blue, but I just sailed on by them, not the least bit concerned. No tickets for me, going under 60 everywhere!

Oddly enough, the slower speed seemed better matched to the rhythms of the music I was playing on my iPod. Never before had that music sounded like such a beautiful soundtrack. Though I don't know from experience, I felt that a drug trip could hardly be better. (I ought to confess right here, though, that I have reached a peculiar stage in my life where I feel that I ought to take an acid trip. That was something I missed out on even though I was a college student in the 60s, but perhaps that was just as well as people really didn't know what they were doing, then. I've read enough stuff about it recently, though, to make me think that I would benefit from it. I would have no idea how to seek it out, though, so probably never will actually do it.)

While California is frustratingly expensive, when I go on a trip like this, I am certainly reminded of why people like it so much. There's just nowhere else quite like it.

It took me 10 and a half hours to go from my apartment to the lobby of this hotel. Of course, I had stopped for gas twice, had breakfast and lunch on the way, and had three bathroom breaks. I never did take a nap at a rest stop, though, something from time to time I felt that I desperately needed, but there was only one rest stop on the way, a tiny one twenty miles north of Santa Barbara, but it was so crowded with people waiting in line just to park so that they could go to the bathroom that I thought I ought to not hog a parking space by taking a nap. But doing other things (such as simply going to the bathroom, or getting a McDonald's "McCafe") gave me second and third winds, so it was all okay.

When you make reservations for this hotel on-line, they have a section where you can select certain options. The options I chose were (a) to be on the Lombard Street side (that has the balconies and the view, whereas the other side is quiet), (b), to be on the third floor, (c) to have a king-size bed instead of two double beds, and (d) a refrigerator. But when I got here, the desk clerk was all concerned because she said that the only king bed room left on the Lombard side on the third floor was the smallest room in the hotel. If being in a small room bothered me, I could choose the second floor where there is no view, or the third floor but have two double beds. In attempting to make this decision, I asked the desk clerk why the room happened to be so small, and she explained that it was right next to the elevator. I said, "I think that was the room I had last year; I had no idea that it was small." It ends up that that WAS the exact room I had last year and I thought the experience was great enough to return this year, so there certainly was nothing about it that bothered me. Now that I am in it, I see that the room is shaped in an "L" around the elevator shaft, but all that does is make the room feel cozy, like the bed is in an alcove. It's really very nice and instead of being something to complain about, I think it is a plus.

Once I got settled in, I went out onto the street to get some dinner. I figured I would go to Cafe Lombard just up the street, which, even though is owned by a Chinese woman who is also the cook, serves delicious Italian dinners and I was eager to eat there again this time. However, they were closed. That left as the only other restaurant anywhere that I could see Bobo's Steak House ("Bobo's" is its nickname; it is officially called "Boboquivari's The Steak and The Crab"), but going there is a big deal (dress up, spend lots of money) and I am already going to eat there tomorrow and have reservations for it. So I walked around the block and spied a little neighborhood market and deli just around the corner from the hotel. The young man working there made me a delicious meatball sandwich on an amazing roll (about half the size of a full-on loaf of French bread) and I added some potato salad and some orange juice. I took these items upstairs and ate it at my hotel room's table while I watched the valet parking attendant across the street at Bobo's. I've got to say it, this guy is really very, very good-looking. I'm enough of a good looks worshipper to think that a guy that good-looking shouldn't be parking cars. However, if I could tell him (which I could not), I would tell him that he does serve as a great "advertisement" for Bobo's. He stands there in front of the restaurant looking all beautiful and I imagine that a certain kind of person just has to stop, and, well, "Let's go eat there!" He's one of those perfectly lean muscular guys, sharp and strong and thin as a nail (not bulky and all bull-like, a look that I despise), looks like if you pounded him on the head you could drive him right down into the sidewalk. Unlike the valet parkers in Los Angeles who all seem to work for the exact same company and wear the identical uniform of red valet's jackets that make them look somewhat like hotel bellhops (plus they're all Mexican, which the one here is not), he's dressed as only someone made like him can dress, with a skin-tight white pecs-and-abs-form-fitting dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to below the elbow, black dress pants that look as though his bottom half were dipped in a vat of black latex. And he's got on a black tie, somewhat narrow that is perfectly proportioned to his half-percent of body fat torso.

I'm thinking that isn't fair that a person be that good-looking (despite the fact that I am so thankful that some people are) and just as I was wondering how he happened to be as fit as he is, a car filled with diners arrived and at the exact same time, another party of diners had finished eating and now arrived with ticket in hand, wanting their car back. In order to accommodate the demands of two parties, he RAN up the hilly street to quickly retrieve the leaving diners' car and I got my answer; he couldn't get more aerobic exercise if he were at a gym taking a spin class.

But between cars coming and going, he's got nothing to do but stand there out in the evening chill looking beautiful. Why on earth don't they give him a chair to sit on, at least? I see that in an effort to relieve the boredom and his aching bones and muscles, he leaves his post from time to time to go lean against the wall of the Travelodge that happens to be next door, as if he were a hustler who comes already with a room to have sex in. All I can say is that I hope he receives generous tips, because I think he earns his money. If I had some way of providing him with a chair, I would do so.

I hope to write more as this trip progresses, but I failed to do so last year, so I'm not counting on much...but we'll see what happens!

Moderate THIS, Karen De Coster: Busy-bodies and Busy Bodies

2009-07-12T18:47:00.001-07:00

THESE ARE NOT LAZY, HELPLESS FAT PEOPLE:

One of my favorite lines in literature was from To Kill A Mockingbird, in which Harper Lee describes Mr. Ewell, the man who lived at the junkyard, who in the story, unjustly accuses a black man of raping his daughter (which line I approximate here): “The only thing which allows Mr. Ewell to hold his head high is that if you scrub his skin really hard, deep down underneath all that dirt, that skin is white.” I grew up understanding that if the ONLY thing you can feel proud of is that your skin is white (and, by extension, if you feel proud of that fact at all), then you don’t have anything to be proud of. The color of ones skin is a given fact, not a personal achievement.

Nowadays, I apply that same principle to people who vilify fat people. Fat people are the only people in our society left whom haters still feel they can publicly hate with impunity. These same haters probably typically still also hate various other races, religions, or cultures, but, being conformists and therefore cowards, they are too afraid to be public about it. But about the obese, they just won’t shut up, but instead, expect praise and amens for the vocalizations of their prejudice.

With obesity, they can have a field day, because their deep-down sense of inferiority requires that they accept and further the myth that fat people are fat because they are lazy gluttons (which the hater feels that he or she, at least, is not), and therefore are actually deserving of such vilification; their condition is something that they brought upon themselves.

But, just like we all know that homophobes are closet homosexuals (sexually secure men and women aren’t the least bit concerned about what other adults consent to do in bed, they’re too busy enjoying their OWN relationships and are glad that others can have them, too, regardless of whatever it is that floats their boat; true love is a force that multiplies, doesn’t divide), so too, those who so vocally hate and fear the obese are harboring some intractable sense of resonance with the condition. In other words, deep down inside, what you really fear is what you fear you really are.

Now, I don’t mean that those who want to ostracize, outlaw, tax, punish, hide, exclude, ban, imprison, or exterminate the obese (or simply get off on writing negative articles about them) fear that they, themselves, are “really” fat (although in some way they may be way too obsessed over their own appearance and secretly fear that some “but the Emperor is wearing no clothes”-saying kind of a person will spill the beans on them by pointing out how really very ugly they are). Usually, they have no specific relationship to fat at all, but are, instead, those who can and do eat anything imaginable without the slightest fear that they will gain an ounce. They are people who have no weight problem, but somehow imagine that this is because they have worked at it and have therefore achieved this condition (whereas everybody else is some kind of out of control glutton), yet in actuality it is no more praiseworthy than the color of their skin.

What it is that they really fear, is the concept that some shameful, hidden desire or hunger within themselves is one that will someday rise, grow and out-picture itself on their body for all the world to see. What they fear is that some evil vice, thought, or obsession will become public knowledge, and in their mind, the only reason this hasn’t come out yet is that they have held onto it with a vice-grip of self-control. They fear that if they would ever let go for a second, they would then send out into the world an unstoppable torrent of vileness, much in the same way that they view adipose tissue overwhelming the carrying capacity of the human body. This is, perhaps, akin to the grieving male who is terrified of crying, because if he ever dared to let go and express or release his grief, his tears would be enough to drown the world. The female version of that is a fear to give in to anger; for to do so might be the explosive release of a whole pandora’s box of destructive ills onto the world. To people like this, the obese are an abomination, because in their mythological view, they are examples of people who have let go, and in the lives of the obese haters, such letting go would mean the annihilation of their illusory lives. So, to them, the obese somehow MUST BE STOPPED.

But this is not what obesity in the real world (the world beyond the fantasies of the lean) is about at all. Obesity is but one of countless examples of a single affect caused by a myriad of reasons, many of which are still unknown. To blame all obesity on a single combination of two causes, eating too much and exercising too little, is not only incorrect and unobservant, it is actually insanely wrong, and every overweight person KNOWS this, whereas it seems that NO non-overweight person imagines anything else. And how unseemly of a situation is this: countless non-overweight people who know NOTHING about this condition, arrogantly lording it over and advising overweight people with principles that the overweight people absolutely know are false (or at least misleading, or only a tiny part of the story). Why should people open their mouths at all on a subject they know nothing about, or when whatever it is that they know is wrong? This would be like me lecturing physics to Richard Feynman, arguing philosophy with Lao Tsu, or telling Michael Jordon how to play basketball.

Well, what else could be the causes of or contributing factors to obesity? Unhealthy food, toxic food, food laden with chemicals the body has no idea how to process (substances that didn’t exist millions of years ago), emotional stresses bathing the cells with cortisol or other hormones causing imbalances that cascade into various maladies such as insensitivities or burn-out of insulin, leptin, adrenaline, or other hormones that now no longer can carry regulatory messages that the body can act upon, reproductive cycles that stimulate the storage of fat, bad or diminished sleeping habits that confuse the natural processes of the body, feelings of insecurity or lack of safety (actual or imagined) for which the body knows only one solution that was appropriate in ancient times, to put on pounds for warmth or cushioning or greater size, or for protection; eating too few calories (dieting) that leads to a signal of famine and therefore a food storage response, too much exercise that is over-stressful to the body and therefore worsens the internal chemical imbalances, false dietary information promulgated by the government or food corporations, or by people who have always been lean and therefore know nothing whatsoever about the process of weight loss, unproven genetically modified foods, anti-biotic, growth-hormoned, estrogenated feed lot protein sources, rancid oils, mercury in fish, vitamin shortages, damaged immune responses, damaged liver, gall bladder, badly functioning intestines, toxins in the colon, pharmaceutical side effects effecting massive weight gain…is this enough to give you the idea? And combine these causes with all the mis- and dis-information on how to lose the excess weight once it is gained. I have at this point seen every single kind of food blamed for the problem in some diet plan or another, going beyond the usual culprits of sugar, white flour, and certain fats, to even include ordinarily-considered benign or essential substances such as certain vegetables, fruits, and even water (yes, I even found a diet plan that was against drinking water). And for all I know, there may actually be some truth to these various complaints. So what is an overweight person to do? It’s probably easier for them just to give up trying to fix this condition and try to live with their body condition, particularly considering the fact that the impulse to eat is fundamental (you could almost just as easily make yourself breathe less), especially when a person is starving, and if an overweight person is unwittingly consuming non-nutritious food (or food substances that the body doesn’t need at that particular time), then no matter how much they eat, they are still starving and therefore the impulse to eat cannot be stopped.

I have become disturbed by seeing this ignorant viciousness toward the suffering obese happening more and more now that people are being emboldened by the possibilities of socialized medicine. Now no longer is it “they might make me sick if I see them on the beach” (this is a subset of the very weak characteristic of “Oh, I am so offended”), or “they’re going to be sitting next to me on the airplane”; now it’s “they’re going to unfairly raise our social costs of medicine”, or maybe even (from the greens who crave population diminishment, which can only be described as a yearning for genocide) “they’re going to eat up all the food in an economy of shortages…and I’m going to need that food to power my car!”

Well, to be disgusted by the sight of fat people on the beach, one may as well claim revulsion at babies born with cleft palates, or to be repulsed by paraplegia, or horrified by acne. Life, unfortunately, is loaded with misfortune and bodies are scathed. What, it’s all a matter of aesthetics then? You find fat bodies “distasteful”? Sorry, but few Americans can justifiably lay claim to that; we’re not Parisians, after all, or even Masai warriors, for that matter.

You fear an unpleasant seat neighbor on an airplane? That could be somebody undeodorized, or a boor who won’t stop talking, or a couple of unruly, undisciplined kids, or scores of other circumstances. Life, venturing outside your own living room, is filled with any kind of unpleasantness. If you’re that worried about who’s going to be sitting next to you on a plane, maybe you ought to fly first class…or secure a private compartment on Amtrak. Sure, YOU have to pay more, but YOU are the one with the problem with life not being nice enough for you.

Regarding the cost of medical care, maybe you ought to not lend your support to socialized medicine; there are far more reasons to not want that than the presence of fat people in society. Maybe you are also suggesting the elimination of a much worse drain on medicine, the elderly? Which would include YOU when you get older, of course.

While all this has been around for quite some time, it now seems to be amped up more than ever, with very shrill people screaming very loudly and very frequently. Suddenly, other people’s obesity is being considered a national problem (instead of an individual problem, which is what it is). All this came to a head for me where I finally had to write about it, because there is a blogger that I used to enjoy and admire, Karen De Coster, who writes for various libertarian causes. I liked her, because she seemed to understand economics and the principles of personal freedom. For quite some time, it was refreshing to hear her sensible and personally empowering point of view; I would have said that Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson (what we think we know of them, anyway), to name only two out of many, would have loved her and welcomed her voice in our present times when so many people have given up self-control in favor of the nanny state. I thought we needed writers like Karen De Coster to counteract the soporifics emanating from mainstream globalist media.

But to be successful and genuine in this arena is to walk a razor’s edge, and bloggers have to be careful, because they offer much greater opportunity for dissection than do columnists writing by the column inch, or broadcasters speaking in sound bites. Sooner or later, the more a blogger writes, the more his or her warts will come clear to the public eye, and this is all the more obvious in the case of those bloggers who attempt to put forth the illusion that they are perfect, all-knowing beings pontificating for the benefit of an imperfect, ignorant public, which is Karen De Coster to a “T”. As a blogger, I’m safe from that, myself, because I have always been up front about my confusions, questions, and attempts at moving forward from my place of error and brokenness. If my thoughts seem strange (or just plain “wrong”) to people, as they almost always do, it is because the ordinarily accepted realities (group-think illusions) do not need to be spread by me—I am speaking from an entirely different, alien, and possibly brand-new (or seldom spoken) position, but one which I think takes us closer to the truth. (And when my direction ends up being wrong, I am quite clear about being willing to alter my view and my direction.)

Libertarians have successfully been branded selfish and uncompassionate by liberals, as also have conservatives and Republicans (President Bush thought that he could stand out and garner liberal votes by claiming to be a “compassionate conservative,” thereby underscoring that conservatives were normally NOT compassionate). This is because the libertarian end of the spectrum supports the inalienable right of private property and absolute personal freedom of behavior up to the threshold that nothing is done that steals from or interferes with or hurts the rights of others. A tax that raises money for a welfare program, for example, is for government power to steal private property from one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. Libertarians view this as wrong, but liberals ask, “What, you don’t want to help your fellow citizen? Are you not your brother’s keeper?” Libertarians are not against helping their fellow citizens when they are the ones voluntarily deciding to do it; it’s the being forced to by another group that is the problem. But for liberals, “helping their fellow man” is an easy sell, especially to those who will be the recipients of this aid (under the determination and control of the liberal elites). This is the “progressive” way, which has been accepted by the majority voter as the “caring” and “evolved” way to run a society, despite the fact that it is ultimately destructive both to the producers from whom all this largess is taken, and to the recipients (some would say “parasites”) who, while gaining some level of subsistence, nevertheless lose their initiative and self-reliance, often for generations.

Unfortunately, the blogger Karen De Coster has demonstrated that she actually IS as uncompassionate as any liberal would accuse her of being, and in actuality she doesn’t agree with libertarian principles at all. In fact, in typical LIBERAL fashion, she only wants freedom for herself and for others who completely agree with her, but she would deny that freedom to others whom she thinks are somehow distasteful, but who may be anything but, and she would deny that freedom to those who support those others whose freedom she denies. (This is pointed out by the fact that she moderates the comments that are left on her site, and I know from personal experience that she will delete comments that conflict with her position. I consider that cowardly, especially for one who thinks she is such a "female stud", and for one who espouses freedom, hypocritical. How can you say you espouse freedom when you manipulate a one-sided discussion, and particularly when the point of view you eliminate is the one that actually presents the truth? This indicates that you have an agenda and therefore your blog does nothing but add to the disinformation stream, which makes it not worth reading...not worth it for me, anyway.)

She recently wrote a negative blog decrying fat people riding motorized wheelchair scooters at Walmart. To hear her description of it, Walmart is inundated by hordes of fat people traveling the aisles, people “too lazy to walk” and utterly without shame. This is something that for some reason bothers her very much…I guess because she sees it as yet another sign of our society’s diminishment into a state of chosen helplessness in which these “lazy obese” will require, demand, and expect help from others, which presumably includes Karen De Coster’s personal treasury.

But there is much amiss here in this complaint.

First of all, just because an obese person CAN walk does not mean that they are lazy when they do not. Our whole society is one that, when offered the opportunity to do so, will most often choose a machine to assist us with our labor. After all, we generally drive our cars to the store, park as close as we can, and go up and down stairs via escalator or elevator. We will also use a washing machine for our clothes instead of taking them down to a river so that we can beat them on a rock. If we are to write a letter, we more often than not will chose to do that writing on a computer rather than getting out clay tablets for cuneiform. If we mow a lawn, we will use a power mower instead of a scythe, and if we clean a carpet, we will use a vacuum cleaner instead of ripping the carpet up and hanging it outside so that we can beat it with a carpet beater. If we are cold, we will adjust the thermostat on our forced-air heater instead of going outside with an ax to chop down a tree, and a maul to split the wood so that it will fit into our wood-burning stove.

Is this laziness, or is this convenience and time-saving? Presumably, in Karen De Coster’s world view, if it is an obese person doing these things, such as riding a scooter around Walmart, then it is laziness, for she believes that they “should” do much more walking because she feels that it is proper for them to exercise in order to lose weight, a goal that she demands.

Ms. De Coster attempts to sweeten her argument by stating that her amputee brother who really NEEDS a scooter often can’t get one, because all the lazy obese have commandeered them, instead. Well, who’s not being self-reliant, here? Presumably her amputee brother needs a scooter ALL the time (his amputations do not come and go), so why doesn’t he have one of his own for use everywhere he goes, but is, instead, relying on Walmart to provide him one? How does he get through other stores, or is Walmart the only place he shops?

Think for a minute, if you will, of a Walmart shopper who is a hundred pounds overweight. No, let’s make it ninety pounds overweight…ninety pounds is the weight of a bag of cement. Okay, now you, the healthy, in-control, beautiful and perfect skinny person, are going to go shopping at Walmart. But what you must do the whole time you are over there is carry around with you a bag of cement. You like exercise right? Well, let this be your exercise. This is a bag of cement that you NEVER can put down, by the way, so you have been carrying it for months and months and months before you even started this particular Walmart shopping excursion. This bag of cement, you will sleep with, you will make love with, you will sit with when you watch TV, you will carry it with you into the shower, and you will have it with you at all times while you are at work (do you have a job that requires you to be on your feet?). Hum, are you getting just a little bit tired? Don’t you just want to put that burden DOWN? Well too bad, bucko, you’re just TOO LAZY, then. Don’t even THINK of lightening your load for even a moment by riding that scooter, you may frighten the easily offended Karen De Costers of the world and what you need is to exercise to lose weight! (But I wonder, why hasn’t that exercise lost the weight by now? An exercise that you are doing ALL the time, and yet not one pound comes off? Is there something wrong with the formula?)

I have a friend, who happens to be a phenomenally talented writer—published in real books and journals, not on-line blogs (need I say that she puts De Coster’s journalist hacking to shame?), who, when I met her, was in the process of getting her PhD at U.C. Berkeley. Is getting a PhD at Berkeley something for the lazy? Well, she got her PhD, but the most difficult thing for her was walking across that huge campus every day. Why? Well, she was overweight, overweight enough for someone like Karen De Coster to sneer at her as she passed. Overweight enough for her to have several broken bones inside both feet, bones that her podiatrist told her would never heal so long as she continued to put a load on them. The agonizingly painful broken bones in her feet would never heal unless she dropped out of school and stopped walking to class for several months. But the idea of that was impossible, because my friend was not only committed to her PhD program, which she hoped when it was completed would lead her out of the financial trap she was in, but she also was raising three children by herself after she and her children escaped from her violent and physically abusive husband. So she just lived with the painful broken feet and walked across campus, eventually earning her PhD and getting a job as a professor at another college where she was then able to work on getting her feet healed. If U.C. Berkeley happened to have a fleet of scooters for students to use for getting around campus, I can assure you she would have used them, and with great gratitude in her heart for the university’s compassion.

One might ask how this person happened to “allow herself to let herself go so much that she ended up obese and with broken feet”. Well, the lack of money was the largest factor (if we fail to take into account the stresses suffered by a battered wife trying to save the life of herself and her three children). Cheap food is incredibly fattening food. Is it smart to eat that way when you are poor, or trying to save money, or living on student loans? Well, obesity is an insidious condition, it creeps upon one slowly, whereas poverty is large and glaring and immediate and obvious. So what do you think a person in that situation will most likely do? (And notice that most people this obese are poor; does this show that they are lazy and therefore their laziness makes them BOTH poor AND obese, or is it just that their poverty leads to less healthy food choices?)

I have another friend, a hugely successful sales rep whose territory covers Washington State and British Columbia. This friend is always earning “most sales” or “most new customers” or “increased sales goals most often met” awards at her company. She makes quite a lot of money and I would venture to say that this person is not lazy, either. Yes, she is overweight. Why? Because she eats out in restaurants a lot…almost every meal, actually. You tend to do that when you are on the road all the time. Do you think that when she is selling her wares at some island off the coast of British Columbia, that when it is lunch time, she will drive back home to her apartment in Seattle and fix herself a healthy lunch? No, she will go out to eat, then continue to meet with her various customers, then go out for dinner, then check into a motel for the night. There’s a lot of walking involved in this job, too, from some hard-to-find parking space on a city street to a small store several blocks away (or up a steep hill), or to several stores inside of a huge shopping mall. I wonder why all this walking didn’t help her to lose weight? Instead, it led to her needing to have her knees replaced due to wear and tear on her joints. Do you also understand that each time she had a knee replaced (these operations are done separately, one knee at a time), this meant that she had to STOP working for several months and this then meant that her income STOPPED, too? So it took her quite a while to finally go ahead and schedule these surgeries, which in quite a practical way meant that she was in danger of losing her job, or her well-won territory. Meanwhile, until she could complete both surgeries, she continued to walk and travel and sell with agonizing knee pain…yet if Karen De Coster or one of her non-feeling compatriots happened to see my friend obtaining a moments’ relief by riding a scooter, they would frown and look down on her and shake their heads in dismay at the gall of one so able demonstrating such laziness…for something that really was none of their damned business. Just be thankful YOU don’t need, or want, to ride an a scooter.

I could go on and on and on with these stories, which could be repeated countless times in a universe of other examples, but the principle should be clear without further examples, anyway. Unless you have walked a mile in an obese body, then you ought to shut the hell up. You don’t KNOW the daily misery of being in an obese body, and I’m not going to describe it to you. Maybe if you sit and think about it for a while, you’ll begin to figure out a part of it, but even then, you wouldn’t be able to imagine the whole of it if you had never actually experienced it.

You may THINK you know the business of a fat person, what they did wrong to get that way and what they should do right to get out of it, but if you do think that, then you are an idiot. Only a liberal, nanny-state-loving Nazi thinks they know how another person should live. A person who believes in freedom doesn’t sneer at those who are exercising that right (which in the case of the obese, is only exercising the right to exist and get around the best way they can during this present time; and then, maybe when the right combination of events and circumstances occur, they will choose to commit to a program of their own choosing and an effort that suits them that will succeed in getting their excess weight off; or maybe not). And while you may view their condition as unhealthy and life-threatening (the obese understand this far better than you do) and you therefore wish to justify your suggested controls on their lives as being for their own good (such AS, for example in other arenas, MANDATORY health insurance or retirement fund savings), you must understand how society could likewise turn against you and apply some “for your own good” controls for some other “unhealthy” habits, conditions, and activities that involve you.

In Ms. De Coster’s case, among her various interests, she is into machine guns and riding Harleys. I think that’s her perfect right and I would work to see to it that she is allowed to pursue these, and other, activities unmolested. But don’t you think that to some nosy busy-bodies, this might look like an accident waiting to happen? To people like those, machine guns and Harleys would be Ms. De Coster’s “obesity”.

Missing Michael Jackson

2009-06-30T01:46:00.000-07:00

I work quite near where Michael Jackson's parents live and have driven past their house countless times over the years without actually knowing which house it was. But today a friend of mine at work showed me her iPhone photos of the crowd around that house, so I decided to drive by it on the way home from work to see what was going on. Actually, it wasn't possible to drive down the block the Jackson house is on, as the police have it barricaded. But you can park elsewhere and walk down there if you want, so that's what I did.

One whole side of the street (the side opposite the Jackson house) has news media satellite trucks from end of the long block to the other. I'd never seen anything like that before; there must have been maybe thirty trucks lined up, maybe more. The trucks, with their satellite upload dishes on the ready, all aimed skyward, were pretty cool to see, but it actually seemed like a pretty slow news day. It made me wonder just how much "hurry up and then sit and wait" is involved in the average news person's day.

There was a pretty big crowd of people out in front of the Jackson house. The gate to the parking area was open, but people respectfully stayed outside in front (but there were a few police in the area keeping things orderly). I felt like the people were expecting somebody to arrive at or leave from the house, but instead, things seemed quite quiet. I wondered what it must be like to have a constant presence of people like that, but of course, the Jacksons are quite used to it. When my mother died, and then when my father died, I wanted absolute privacy for our family to grieve, but the Jackson family surely knew that these people waiting around outside their house were fans who loved Michael, which maybe helps some.

There was an immense amount of flowers, stuffed animals (including a gigantic stuffed cartoon gorilla), balloons, banners, posters, notes, and pictures all along the wall in front of the property. The basic themes of the notes were, "Gone too soon," "You're at peace, now, sweet one," "You meant so much to me," and "Thank you for the wonderful music, which we will treasure forever." It reminded me of pictures I saw of what people had left for Princess Di after her tragic death. I had been disappointed at the news media for failing to mention all the charitable works that Michael had done, but the signs and the notes out in front of the Jackson house did not repeat that same failure--his fans remembered, for sure. There were reasons beyond Michael's music that his fans loved him so; part of that was how much he gave to others, and another part of that was how much pain he had been in, himself. People could relate to that.

My friend who had shown me the iPhone pictures said she wondered if Michael would have been as creative as he was if it hadn't been for the pain, and I thought of others who had begun as child stars, such as Judy Garland (found dead on her toilet at the age of 47 with an overdose of quinolbarbitone). If they had had happy childhoods, they maybe never would have had the deeply affecting careers they had, so that which benefits so many others perhaps costs too much for those who give us what they do.

I thought about how lonely Michael had been, upon his own admission. It was terribly sad to think that with all his popularity all around the world, that it seemed that he did not have one real friend who truly cared about HIM (instead of what they could get out of him). A friend who might have warned him to stop having children sleeping over at his house because of the accusations it opened Michael up to, or to cool it on all the damaging plastic surgery, or to not let concert promoters sign him up for a 50-city tour when he was tired and frail. But then again, maybe he did have people trying to help him and he didn't listen, I don't know. Or, again, he just wouldn't have been "Michael Jackson" without all these things.

It's funny, Michael Jackson was always one of my favorites, and I was one who always felt that he was innocent of any crimes, but I didn't confuse him with a person that I have a personal relationship with. And yet now with him suddenly gone, I feel the same kind of guilt and regret that one can feel when friends and loved ones die--"I never told them I loved them enough...I didn't visit them enough or write to them enough or call them enough...", whatever the regret it is. For example, I never went to any of his concerts (surely he must have had them in the United States, but I wasn't really on that wavelength). I guess what the feeling boils down to is, "I always took them for granted," and in Michael's case, I always took him for granted, too. I guess he was always going to be there, pumping the music out.

It seems that no matter what we do, that lesson keeps on coming, and coming from unexpected places. I guess what it really boils down to is that we take LIFE for granted. And, like so many things that happen that result in a loss, Michael Jackson's death is one more thing reminded us of how precious life really is, and how much we need to be thankful for it every single second.

So Much Misbehaving

2009-06-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

Is it Los Angeles, or the times we are now living in? It is hard for me to judge, since I have been here so much longer than most other places I have lived, but it seems that Los Angeles contains some of the rudest people in the world. But maybe it is the times we are living in, instead, because now seems to be a time where what is presented to people as examples of success are liars and criminals (that’s government), or rabidly aggressive, selfish, pushy people (that’s celebrities on television). It’s kind of like people are made to think that the model of a life successfully lived is the reality game show, Survivor, where there is only one winner for the million dollars, and the way to win is not to be the strongest, most resourceful, and most competent in the face of challenges, but the one who is most able to fool and then shaft everybody else.

This kind of thing is neither inspiring nor entertaining to me, and so I don’t watch it on television and I don’t participate in it in life.

But I sure do see it all over the place, mostly in little ways that shock me even more than all the gross sociopathy that surrounds us. Of course the forest is rotten, but it is truly disturbing is that the tree roots are, too.

One example I experience all the time is how people merge onto the north heading side of the 405 freeway from the Skirball Center exit. This would be my way of going home if I take the freeway, which I rarely do, because I do not have the constitution to deal with the behavior at that entrance. For some reason, this long entrance consists of two lanes of traffic, but merges into one lane about two car lengths from the highway. It is the left lane that is the main lane, and the right lane that is supposed to merge into the left. One can clearly see this from the design of the roadway, but one problem with this is that the roadway designers must have presumed that conscientious and forward-thinking drivers would look ahead and see that the better and correct lane to be in is the left lane. So, of course, I get into the left lane as soon as I can, which usually means at the very top of the road when I make a right turn into it.

However, what that does is leave a relatively empty right lane, a perfect and unavoidable opportunity for the stupidly short-sighted and the aggressively selfish. All they see is that if they go into the right lane, they will move past (ahead of) seven or ten cars waiting patiently in the correct left lane. And then what those in the right lane face is the bottleneck at the end where they are two car lengths from the freeway, yet are next to a solid wall of cars in the left lane, all of whom had gotten there before those in the right lane did. So the effect is that those in the right lane want to butt into line ahead of the wall of cars in the left lane, yet they have no right to do so, and how many in the left lane, do you think, are willing to let them in?

Okay, so maybe a driver from time to time will be genuinely “stuck” there in the right lane because they weren’t paying attention and will look pleadingly at the drivers in the left lane for a space to get in. That’s when I will give up the battle and let them in…but that then seems to invite the rest of the whole row of cars in the right lane to then aggressively push into the space that I have allowed for the one nice, pleading driver. But more often, however, the tack of those in the right lane is to just play a game of chicken with those in the left lane and push their way in any way they can, devil may dare. I have been in several of those contests, myself, in which what I am thinking is, “If you really want to buy me a new car, then keep on going because I am in the right of way and I am not letting you push your way in no matter what you do.” I have seen cars continue on anyway by driving up onto the hill of dirt on the right shoulder and then drive on down the freeway that way until they can manage to force their way into a lane later. These are the same drivers, I am sure, who will perform any dangerous stunt on the road just to get one car length ahead of you, and one car length ahead of you is where they will stay for the next hour, because their actions had secured no significant advantage at all…but they will constantly be on the lookout for the next such useless opportunity. Honestly, who wants to live that way? What kind of person spends every waking moment looking for the tiniest advantage of getting one car-length ahead? Is the proper focus for one’s journey through life to be that tight and small, looking just one inch ahead of their nose?

The truth is that more and more people are acting like they are the ONLY people in the whole world.

For example, a couple of days ago, I was at a bookstore looking for a magazine. I wasn’t looking for any specific magazine, was just aimlessly scanning what they had, hoping for something that might interest me. I guess at the back of my mind was maybe a travel magazine featuring some place I might want to go.

As I did this, I came upon a section where a little girl was sitting on the bottom shelf of the magazine rack, on a cushion of magazines, and surrounded by piles of discarded illustrated children’s books. Hey, one doesn’t sit on, in, and among the merchandise, and there were plenty of couches and chairs in that area. And if that wasn’t bad enough, her father was busy looking for books he hoped might interest her, taking them off the shelves and bringing them over to her where she was ensconced on the magazine rack, pleadingly giving them to her and then watching as she rejected them, discarding them one by one in a mess on the floor, and then he went back to the shelves for more. (What a mess they were making for the bookstore staff who was going to have clean up all that after these people left, empty-handed, of course. The girl was going to end up with ice cream, instead.)

Fortunately…but I don’t know if the good fortune was for me or for the girl and her father…she was sitting on, in, and among a section of magazines that didn’t interest me—magazines for video gamers. But if, instead, she were in the travel section and thus was blocking my view of about seven different potential magazines, there would have been a confrontation. In my mind, the confrontation might have gone along the lines of me speaking to the little girl, “Get the fuck off the magazines so that other people can look at them, you hideous freak,” which would, of course, have created quite a stir. I would have hoped to have scarred the girl for life, maybe impressed upon her indelibly the level of comportment required in a bookstore, and if I had succeeded in scaring her out of bookstores entirely, so much the better, for honestly, if you can’t behave, then I don’t want you anywhere around me, and from the looks of this, this girl had absolutely no hope in life of ever growing up into anything better than a despicable bitch.

I took one look at her father, a blond-haired guy in his 30s wearing a beige baseball cap (makes me want to vomit), and pegged him as a certain brand of “Los Angelino hope to make it big as a producer in the film industry” whom I despise. When he isn’t messing up bookstores with his sickening princess of a little girl, he’s busy attempting to pass people on the road in his Porsche—he’s got a “pitch session with the studio” that he’s late for and everybody else better get out of his way. I could see his whole story—divorced, his wife got custody, so he only has alternate weekends to “impress” his daughter and his method is to cater to her every whim and thus ruin her for life. If she’s pretty, some other poor schmo will marry her for sex, get so he can’t stand her, divorce her, lose custody of the child and so the whole thing goes generation after generation.

I’ll just skip by people talking out in pubic on cell phones. I hope they actually are getting brain damage as the alternative health practitioners continue to warn…in fact, I’m sure it’s already happened. I realize that I am now a generation or two behind, but I just cannot fathom the need to be connected to somebody by phone every waking minute, walking down the street, shopping in a store, waiting in a doctor’s office. And I sure don’t want to listen to them in a restaurant making business deals or arranging their child’s bar mitvah. Do your work in the office or have your conversation at home. Leave the rest of us at peace. Egos are shallow enough as it is, do you really have to pretend to be the big cheese or social butterfly to a public of absolute strangers, who hate the sound of you and would love to mutilate your face with a fistful of forks if they could? And this happens EVERYWHERE, ALL the time.

Then, yesterday, it was around 11:00 at night and I was hungry, so decided to walk over to the convenience store at the gas station a few buildings over. I hoped it was open; the previous owner would lock it up after 10 PM and you had to shout your request through a little hole and exchange money for snack food through a sliding drawer. But hooray, this new owner is more welcoming and even the front door was wide open; there was busy traffic of people getting gas (it was Friday night) and the store had quite a few customers.

I went in, picked out some things I wanted to buy and then got in line. Finally it was the turn of the guy directly in front of me, who held up a plastic bottle of Naked juice and said he wanted a refund. The clerk, who is some kind of Asian/Mexican mix, looked at him blankly. I know and like this clerk, have been buying from him for years, and know that he often lapses into a pretend “I don’t know the language that well” when problems arise. The guy continued, “I bought this here a few minutes ago and now I want to return it, I want my money back.” The clerk continued to stare at him in disbelief and finally said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

The guy continued, “How could you not know what I am talking about? Don’t you remember me, I was here fifteen minutes ago, I bought this juice and some other items, but now I don’t want the juice, so I am here to return it.”

The clerk said, “I don’t remember you.”

The guy could not believe this, and continued to berate the poor guy, acting upon the assumption that he was in the right and all he needed to do was spark the clerk’s memory over the transaction and then he would be able to return this bottle of juice. But I could see that he was getting nowhere, and why should he? (Just keep the damn juice; if you don’t want it now, save it and drink it some other time.) For one thing, it looked to me more like he had just then taken the juice out of the refrigerator and gotten in line, but even if what he was saying were true, one could not expect the clerk to remember him among a constant stream of junk-food buyers, and who thinks that these snack items are returnable, anyway? The clerk asked him for a receipt, which the guy didn’t have. So then the clerk told him to come back tomorrow morning (when, I guess, the owner would be there), but that was unacceptable to the asshole, who wanted his money NOW.

It was clear to me that the guy was going to get nowhere, and nowhere was where he should have gotten. I wondered whether I should step in and come to the aid of the clerk, but I also wondered if this were a prelude to a gun being drawn and thus didn’t want to escalate the negative energy with my contribution. Instead the guy had an idea, he would go back outside and get the other stuff he bought to “prove” to the clerk that he had bought the juice in that same transaction and thus could get his refund. His leaving then brought me up to the cash register.

I said to the clerk, shaking my head, “I’m amazed at some of the stuff you have to contend with.” Then I suggested, “Simply tell him that the juice is non-refundable, that it violates a health code, that you have no idea what he had done with it after he took it out of the store, that you can’t sell it again.” All these would be logical explanations in my mind, but the clerk was more set on the bullheaded approach, and all power to him. The guy came back in as I was leaving and I hoped that next time I came back to this store late at night, we wouldn’t be back to the locked door and speaking through a hole in the glass. And if so, I knew whom exactly (what type of customer) to blame for that.

If I had my way, I’d send every one of these people back to kindergarten for a year. They failed to learn even the most fundamental rules of how to live in a decent society. Or else I’d like for there to be a special kind of “fatal swine flu epidemic”…one where whom the virus infects are those who act like swine. Unfortunately, life doesn’t operate that way, and the ones who have to suffer are the innocent and the polite, while the guilty and the rude continue on their merry way.

P.S. Here's a great article about the exact section of freeway where I have to drive home every day when I take the freeway.

Summer Lover

2009-06-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

It must be the testosterone therapy. Why else would I be so especially excited about the onset of summer? I mean, not that I’ve never loved summer or anything, but this year, I am really feeling it and the feeling is good. I’m even loving being in LA, and that’s funny, because only a few days ago I checked out a calculator on the website that showed me how much I could increase my disposable income by moving somewhere else. I calculated it for every city on an American coast, for which I included Great Lakes cities as coastal, too. It works really well for moving away from Los Angeles, one of the highest cost-of-living cities in the country. About the only coastal cities I would lose money moving to were Santa Barbara (the worst), Honolulu, New York, and San Francisco. Even moving to other California cities would put disposable income in my pocket, even cities in Orange County, or cities like Santa Cruz.

Interestingly, based on these calculations, the best cities to move to are in Texas, and second best would be Connecticut. Well, Texas really was no surprise, and any one of Texas’s coastal cities would put an extra $20,000 to $30,000 in my pocket annually, presuming I could find a job similar to the one I have now. Sure the salaries would be less, but the cost of living is SO much less that the net effect is a hefty gain. And Texas is a state I would consider. My experiences there have always yielded very friendly people and a pride of place that I consider admirable. And I am one who likes hot humid environments and the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes, though, I could do without, but other than the west coast, you can’t find coastal cities without hurricanes whose weather isn’t freezing cold in the winter.

Moving to cities along the Long Island Sound in Connecticut would put about $15,000 to $25,000 extra in my pocket. I never would have thought of that with Connecticut, but the deal there is that salaries tend to be high (they’re in the vicinity of New York), whereas cost of living is lower than Los Angeles. I just wouldn’t like Connecticut winters, though.

A state loaded with coastal cities that I would consider, Florida, ended up being less impressive when it came to increasing disposable income…the figures there were around $10,000 to $15,000. Not bad, really, it’s just that the Texas figures were so much better.

Yet even with this, this onset of summer is making me love LA. Summer this time didn’t suddenly blast itself onto us, but has slowly crept in almost like an eastern season change, yet the season is definitely Californian. In California, as the sun goes down, a cool, sometimes chilly breeze comes in to fill the gap, which is why even in summer restaurants with outdoor patios have overhead heaters. This is something I am sure people from eastern climates find hard to understand, for in the east, when the day is hot, so, too, is the evening. Now, there is hardly anyone I know who likes a hot summer evening better than me; sitting on a porch with, say, a Southern Comfort in the hand, rocking back and forth as the lightening bugs flicker and the tree frogs shriek. If the thunder cracks and a rainstorm suddenly pours, well, so much the better, I’ve got a cover over my head.

In California, the version is a cool but sweetly refreshing chill that washes over the salt-sprayed and sunburnt skin. I can almost feel the sand between my toes and smell the bonfire that we have started on the beach. Watching a sunset as the sun makes a golden pathway across the water before it finally sets into the ocean, especially as you are entwined in the arms of a loved one, the two of you cozily wrapped up in a set of beach towels or a blanket, what could be more beautiful than that? If you’re watching this sunset from a private, hidden cove, you’ve probably got a jug of cheap wine chilling in the ice cold Pacific, held in place by a line tied through the glass handle ring. It doesn’t have to be a fancy California wine in order to enjoy this beautiful setting, and the beautiful setting enhances anything you are drinking.

Yes, it must be the testosterone, the only medical therapy I can ever remember that clearly brought on instant positive results. I haven’t felt this good inside my body since I was college age, something I never thought I would ever feel again. I had to ask my doctor if what I was feeling was genuine, or was I just somehow fooling myself, and he confirmed it as a reality, saying that he hears this from his patients all the time (he himself, a Malibu surfer when he isn’t practicing medicine, is too young to need testosterone therapy). And this, unlike injected pharmaceutical testosterone, is a therapy that is pretty safe—bioidentical hormones that are custom compounded individually for the patient and rubbed on as a cream.

From the look of me, I’m just about the last person that should be feeling sexual, yet this feeling seems to be translating to others from me; maybe the true secret of attractiveness is simply feeling good yourself. And that, I do. Even if my only possible lover is the city, and its delicious seasonal change brushing across my body, a body held and carried back and forth by a fervent, frothy ocean, the joy within me seems to say that that is more than enough.

Money Danger Opportunity

2009-04-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

Now here is something that I was fortunate enough to come across that is not exactly what you might think--when you see the word "conspiracy", don't get immediately turned-off by thinking that is something like "the 9/11 conspiracy" or "the New World Order conspiracy"...not exactly, anyway. Here is the link, but read my explanation:

The Eight New Rules of Money

I'm sure some of you have heard of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books by Robert Kiyosaki, and you might have even read a few. I've read three of them and liked them all very much. Here, for free, is his newest one that it is being posted on the Internet, chapter by chapter as they get written, because the author believes that the normal publication time (about two years to hard copies being available in bookstores) would be just too long; in the light of the kind of history that is being made right now today, it would be too late for this information to help anybody.

Robert Kiyosaki's most important point is that people are not educated about money. The schools don't do it, and he feels that there is definitely a reason for that: the schools were made by rich industrialists to train WORKERS, not rich people. Another man I admire greatly, John Taylor Gatto, has been saying this for years, which is why the schools are so awful (they are factories designed to keep the people DOWN).

Kiyosaki's real dad (the "Poor Dad" in his books) was practically a socialist (in this new book, Kiyosaki actually calls him a socialist, although I doubt if his father "knew" that he was that directly). (Please forgive me if I have gotten some of these details wrong...it's been a while since I have read these books. The gist of what I am saying is correct, even if some facts may be wrong.) He worked for the government (I think as a teacher?) and depended upon the government mediocre salary and government security in order to survive. While he was a nice and smart man who taught Robert a lot of important stuff, he was NOT someone who understood how a person could become a huge success in life. Robert's "Poor Dad's" idea was to be a drone--secure, and it is hoped, safe, but nevertheless a drone. (But such safety is a delusion as many people have now discovered.)

However, in contrast to the "Poor Dad" philosophy, Robert had a friend whose father was very rich. This friend's dad had (if I remember correctly) a large string of stores and maybe also commercial real estate. (By the way, let me interject here that Robert had been saying for years that people had to watch out when they considered their house to be an "asset" instead of a "liability". Again, this has proven to be nearly prophetic.) Robert's friend's dad had a enterpriser's or entrepreneur's concept of how to live, and he impressed Robert very much. Robert started out as a kid working in one of the man's stores and learning everything he could from him. He "adopted" him as his "Rich Dad," and the one who really taught him what he needed to know about money.

The lessons in Kiyosaki's books are immediately obvious, and yet they make you think, "Why didn't I ever understand that before?" That's because NOBODY ever taught us any of that before, and, in fact, there is a definite ENERGY in the country to KEEP us from learning it. Kiyosaki wanted to change that, because he believed that an educated and fully productive society benefits ALL of us (even the super-rich, who don't seem to get that...although I will add here my own contention, and that is that most of the super-rich of the "Rockefeller" type don't have the slightest idea how to go out and make money; they've inherited all their millions or billions and are ignorant of the real process, which makes them very afraid of those who DO understand it. Unfortunately, these people nevertheless do have a LOT of power.)

I was inspired enough by Kiyosaki's books to put together my own "money course" for after school at the school where I work, using Kiyosaki's two different "Cashflow" games as a method of instruction (one game for little kids and the other game for older kids). Unfortunately, the kids really weren't interested (maybe I wasn't a very good teacher?); they'd rather just play. While I did have several very smart and interested students, the majority of them were disruptive and undisciplinable kids that made it impossible to function, so after two exhausting trimesters, I stopped offering the course. One lesson that I learned from that experience is that most of the wisdom offered is really only for a very few students, anyway, which is why "forced schooling for the masses" is such a failure. In the early days of our republic, students only took courses in and learned material that they were interested in and really wanted to learn; for the rest of their time, they were making a living, such as helping on the family farm or in someones enterprise, in whatever capacity they could (of course nowadays, our child labor laws would prevent the latter).

Despite my having read three of Kiyosaki's other books, I had no idea that he had the particular background in thought that he talks about in this new book...that is to say that he is philosophically one of "what I am", or maybe I ought to say that I am "one of him". He was greatly influenced by a book of Buckminster Fuller's; he seems to share the same understanding of education as John Taylor Gatto; he says that the only honest politician running for president and the one who had correctly warned us YEARS ago about what was going to happen was Ron Paul, the one I supported (with donations and my vote in the primary). So I'm feeing a real kinship with Kiyasaki that I didn't know was there.

And I think he is entirely worth listening to. So far, of course, I have read only the first and currently available chapters of this book, but several times I found myself having an "Ah-ha" experience about things I THOUGHT I understood but didn't really. He explains things so simply and logically, that even if at times he maybe seems to be talking down, that is exactly the level I need to be talked at (wow, badly written sentence, but I think you know what I mean). Simple is fine with me if it gets me to understand!

You, too, can read this book as it comes out, if you want to. There is a certain level of "signing up," although I THINK that just setting up a user name and password is sufficient. However, I went all the way with a complete registration (name, address, etc.), because I knew that along the way, I was going to want to participate in the forum's discussions, which is another aspect of this. If doing that worries you, I think you don't really have to...but check it out and see. As for me, I thought it was worth it.

Okay, in many ways I am easily impressed (but I appreciate that about myself, because it shows a level of humility). For example, a few days ago I had an appointment with a new doctor in Malibu, and afterwards, I decided to treat myself by coming back home via the Pacific Coast Highway. Of course, I am eternally envious and amazed at those people who have houses RIGHT ON THE SAND along that route, something that seems IMPOSSIBLE to me. I decided to have lunch at Duke's, a restaurant on the coast that I had long wanted to try out, but so far never had. I got there just as they opened for lunch (11:30). It was a beautiful Southern California day, the kind of thing that people pay so much money to be here and enjoy, but which I don't enjoy as much as I should because I resent not owning a house (but yes, circumstances ARE changing). I sat outside at their "Barefoot Bar" and had a delicious macadamia-encrusted Oho (or is it Ono?) fish from Hawaii with saffron rice and salad, and with a coconut-milk and pineapple juice rum drink, all of which my personable waitress referred to as "The Consummate Duke's Experience" (which I also understood meant that I was a perfect patsy for the "Consummate Duke's Marketing", but so what, I DID enjoy it...in fact, it was ALL perfect).

I sat there right up against the plexiglass partition directly on the lava boulders upon which the waves were crashing and surveyed the scene that curved out before me. Just beyond the flat, empty portion of beach began again a string of houses directly on the beach with their decks jutting out over the water and their intimate stairways down to the very sand, ah, how wonderful, and then across the highway and high up on the hills above, even way up on the mountain tops, were other multi-million dollar houses. I marveled at the people who had successfully done such a thing, placed a house right on the beach or else infinitely high on a mountain I didn't even know you could reach by car. I was reminded of my idea about "how late" it was now to do this in L.A., and how marvelous it might have been to have come here in the 40s or 50s when things were only just beginning, and yet I also chastised myself for fear and inaction; I thought about the many notices I continually see on Internet sites such as "The Sovereign Society" or magazines that I receive such as "International Living" where they discuss waterfront property for sale in Brazil or Panama or Uruguay, or islands off the coast of Asia, or in developing former Communist regions of Eastern Europe along the Mediterranean (Dubrovnik, etc.) for prices like $30,000, and I think "Well, aren't these like 'LA in the 40s or 50s?"; in other words, I understood how easy it was for me to succumb to "fear and inaction" in the face of genuine opportunities elsewhere. Something I really need to fix about myself (and I think more understanding of money and how it works will help with that).

But then Robert Kiyosaki did a video on his site that was taken in his backyard in Hawaii, and he made no bones about the fact that it was ON WAIKIKI BEACH and I knew that those waves crashing up against the border of his property and that sand had to be among the most expensive oceanfront land on the face of the EARTH, and Robert Kiyosaki is a self-made man, having started out working in a store and whose real father had a government job. Robert Kiyosaki is not a Bill Gates, for example, who managed to ride the crest of one of the world's major economic and technological developments, a "once in an eon" opportunity that Gates happened to be at the forefront of. Kiyosaki achieved his achievements in a way that virtually anybody could also do if they knew how, and had the foresight, courage, and energy to do so. This is not to denigrate Kiyosaki's achievements at all, because primarily what he did was fill an essential need that had long needed to be filled and he was the one who did it...but my point is that such opportunities are infinite and do not require any special place and time.

And even when times seem dark and getting darker, we must not make the mistake of riding the waves of those times down into a treacherous whirling sinkhole of personal resignation and destruction, but should, instead, see that the opportunities to fill hungry needs are even more numerous than in the good times. So when the things are the darkest, so do rays of light shine the brightest.

So, if Robert Kiyosaki's newest, and perhaps deepest "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book seems to interest you, please sign on and let's see how far it will take us. No more worrying about surviving, but putting our attention onto thriving. That's the "opportunity" half of the "danger/opportunity" ying and yang of the word "crisis".

Two Things About The Devil

2009-03-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

Since Obama (I've decided to go along with a practice I've heard others suggest, to NOT call him "President" and frankly, it's an image that doesn't compute in my mind anyway) never ever impressed me for even one second, while all around me people were tearfully prostrating themselves before his image as "the new coming", I can't really say that he ever struck me as the least bit "beautiful". But as so MANY people seem so fully drawn in by the "good-looking, well-spoken black man" (a concept that ought to insult every other black man and maybe they're soon enough starting to figure that out), whereas I, in contrast, see him as having proven himself to be the worst president in U.S. history before he even took his oath of office just by virtue of the cabinet he assembled (I mean REALLY, making a MONSANTO man the Secretary of Agriculture, suggesting a tax evader as Secretary of the Treasury? Why didn't he assign a wolf as Secretary of the Henhouse?), I began to muse over that concept of "he looks so good, so he's got to be wonderful".

As I thought, somewhere in the back of my head, I could hear my wise and thoughtful father warning us when we were children, "Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Devil would be scary and ugly. Something scary and ugly you would obviously reject. The Devil is the master of LIES and part of that is that he could assume any pleasing shape he would think would be a temptation to you. The truth is, the Devil would beautiful beyond belief. After all, he was before the fall the highest angel in Heaven, and second in command to God. As his name of Lucifer suggests, the light-filled sight of him would make you fall down on your knees. Also, the Devil does not consider himself to be an enemy to God (that would be impossible, anyway). The Devil is an enemy to JESUS, the Son, whom Satan thought had usurped HIS position in Heaven and whose very existence diminished the purity of the One God. The Devil did not want to be second fiddle to Jesus, so he rebelled. Watch out for those temptations...they will not be obviously repulsive."

As a child I used to try to imagine what a beautiful Devil would look like and wondered how I could possibly be saved from him due to that pleasing appearance. I gather from Christian theology that you basically are helpless against the Devil, that you need Jesus's help to feel the contrast between the two and to pull away.

But I think what people in our present-day society have pulled away from is that kind of understanding, which they would think of as only being rabidly "Christian" (and therefore "backward') anyway. But I don't think you have to be a Christian in order to understand that concept and I am sure other religions have concepts similar to that, if dressed in the stories of a different mythology with different animating characters illustrating the basic concepts. That which is "evil" or which can really hurt you may not be so obvious, but instead would be so very pleasing, and that is what makes it all so very tough.

But gee we are so all appearance-oriented, now. It seems that our society really doesn't care about genuine substance at all; the only thing that matters is how things look, and are they fashionable and cool, and anything else is thrown by the wayside. And the way it seems to be in this society, now, the Devil could even appear hideous and frightening, and THAT would tempt some people. A truly beautiful appearance might not even work any more; that would be considered too "prissy and good".

Now I am not saying that Obama is the Devil. After all, I started this piece by saying that he never for a second tempted ME. But for sure he does tempt so very many others and it is those others who need to be warned. Because it is so clear to me that the substance of the man is harmful, yet there are so very many, too many, who wouldn't even begin to consider that, let alone clearly see it. And that is because, to them, he "looks and sounds good" (but LISTEN to what he is saying!). But looking good when one is not exists in which realm, now?

The second thing about the Devil that I was recently reminded of was that "you have to invite the Devil in." Now, that is amazing when you think about it; that this ultimate power of evil is nevertheless helplessly blocked from forcing his way into you. Is that really true, and if so, how can that be? I can only think that that comes from the idea that the Devil is not against God, the Father, he is only against Jesus, the Son. The poet John Milton, in his amazing and powerful work, Paradise Lost, went so far as to say that the main suffering of Satan from the fall is that he is no longer able to look upon God's face. God still holds the upper hand, here, and if people were given the power from God to have freedom of CHOICE, then even the Devil does not have enough power to violate that. So YOU can keep the Devil out, just as Jesus did during his three temptations (and, as Buddha did, during HIS three).

Back to Obama...times are tough and are likely to get much, much tougher and I think the time will be ripe for MUCH confusion and suffering and this offers a great opportunity for evil to expand across the land (the road to serfdom, economic collapse, homelessness, starvation, civil unrest, martial law, race war, nuclear war, totalitarianism...). For sure many will succumb to evil, will join it and carry it; many already have. But for those who would like to avoid that, it might help to remember these two things, which you can take as actualities, or you can take as symbols and metaphors:

1. The Devil would be amazingly beautiful and appealing (and therefore hugely tempting), but

2. You have to invite the Devil in; otherwise, he is powerless against you.

For those who don't like that kind of thing, sorry to get all "Christian" on you, but hard times require something strong, and I don't know anything stronger than God (or however you conceive that force). Now might be a good time to reconnect.