Litany for Leaving the House

Order of service for daily departure from the house. May be used for departure from Day Care or Preschool as well, as needed. Intended for daily observation.

L: Daddy, I need to say my words.
C: Okay.
L: Daddy, I love you.
C: I love you, too.
L: I'll miss you.
C: I'll miss you.
L: Don't forget to lock your door when you're done at church.
C: I won't.
L: Don't forget to unlock your door when you get to church.
C: I won't.
L: Hug, kiss.

The Hug of Anxiety shall be exchanged at this time. The hug may be followed by a kiss on the head. On especially sweet days, a kiss on the lips may be substituted.

L: I love you.
C: You already said that.
L: I'll miss you.
C: You already said that.
L: Bye.
C: Bye. Go watch me through the window.

Blown kisses and waves may be exchanged through the window as the congregation drives away. Failing to follow this order of service will result in the entire litany being repeated many times.

Breakfast today was coffee (Dunkin Donuts whole bean), generic frosted flakes with milk, strawberry banana yogurt, and stale toasted English muffin with Promise.

indifference

During a discussion the other day I brought up a bit of pop wisdom, possibly attributable to Elie Wiesel: "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."

Yes, this is the kind of thing I talk about at work. On good days, anyway.

Aside from the pleasurable way it illustrates the slippery nature of the word "opposite" (whence much of my frustration with standardized testing), this quote has some truth to it, at least for high-temperature-emotion folks.

I insert that last qualification about emotional temperature to be fair to a colleague who approached me after the discussion. He wanted to dispute the opposition of love and indifference. He wanted to claim that some forms of love do not have strong opinions. Perhaps he even wanted to imply that a benign indifference can be the most enlightened form of love.

This got me thinking about Buddhism, and the concept of Nirvana, which has been characterized as "detachment" or "non-attachment." What brings freedom from suffering, by the Buddha's Third Noble Truth, is the cessation/destruction of craving/attachment to things that will fade away.

As a teenager raised in the Christian tradition, I heard this as a cop-out. Detaching from the world means ignoring the goodness of creation, right? It means an end to love and passsion and activism, right? After watching "Gone With the Wind" I decided to make my mission statement: "Give a darn" (or variously more vulgar forms of that basic idea--probably not the right idea to get from the movie, but that Scarlett was GORGEOUS).

Well, as I got older I came more to appreciate emotional restraint again. And as I got to know more actual Buddhists, and not just what I imagined about them from superficial reading, I came to see that there could be such a thing as peaceful, non-grasping love which authentically is unashamed to be who I am, and also unanxious to let the beloved be whomever they might happen or need to be without trying to fix them. Infinitely curious, and infinitely generous, but not heated or needy.

This is not what my colleague is like.

He claims to have no fixed opinions and to be willing to go where people need him to be in a Zen-without-being-aware-of-it sort of way, but it is so inauthentic. He is an anxious person who is never seems to listen to others who don't already agree with him. He is unable to understand anything that is not already inside his head. And he appears so wounded when you contradict him in the least possible way that a nice person is inclined to avoid contradicting him at all. So he gets to avoid all conflict.

I remember, at a time in my life when I was extremely inexperienced with relationships and with leadership of all sorts, that I felt a sense of smug superiority over folks who had to have things their own way, or who had such strong opinions that they could not fully participate in a discussion by being persuadable. I felt pride in my flexibility. I have since come to learn that while this attitude has distinct advantages, it also manifests itself as poor leadership or a failure to engage fully in conversation. If I just claim that anything goes, then there is nothing to say, or to do. And the pushy jerks always win.

And my worst sin was this: I didn't know that many of my opinions were just as rigid and fixed as the ones in others that I complained about. And I was so inauthentic about it. This is what I see as the soul of "emotional dimwittage" (to bowlderize Bridget Jones): to be so unaware of oneself and one's baggage as to see it as an advantage, and to attempt to recruit others to the same crippled lack of self-understanding that you are a victim of, or to run others' lives by your baggage, as if you alone know the One True Path to happiness when you in fact don't even know how to make yourself happy without damaging others along the way.

Much better, then, to seek to know oneself, to seek to express oneself, and to stand for things one is actually passionate about. As long as you don't clench them in a destructively rigid way.

Non-attachment is not the same thing as indifference, and not-caring is not love. Of course, hot passion is not the only game in town, either. Why not wry amusement, generous attentiveness, and play?

Lunch was multiple courses of fast food: I fed my boys McDonalds Happy Meals so they could have the Spider-Man toys before school began. I had a grilled honey mustard snack wrap for myself and mooched a few fries and nuggets from them. Then I met more of my family at Culver's, where I had a double Butterburger with everything, including cheese and endless drippings of finger-lickin' condiments, crinkle fries, ketchup, Diet Pepsi, and finally as dessert a scoop of the flavor of the day custard: chocolate caramel nut.

Clearing the pipes

I don't write enough. There I said it. I don't write enough.

I am not only talking about this blog. There are vast swaths of my existence that are unexplored, unrecorded, lost to the ages. And some (few) of them just might be interesting. But do I write them down? Do I share my knowledge/experience/views? No.

All my life, I have imagined myself to be a writer. My therapist once told me that the greatest hope of my recovery/destiny/calling would have something to do with my writing, and I do not write.

I compose an intentionally low-threshold theme for a blog--Random Ignorant Musings and What Had At Lunch--with the explicit goal of simply getting myself to write--and I don't write. People who love me ask me to write, and I do not write.

Meanwhile people all over Facebook and the Blogopia are all writing 25 random things about themselves willy-nilly. A friend, just for the heck of it, writes 50 random things. And they were interesting. I was glad to read them.

And this introverted intimacy-phobe who doesn't let anyone get to know him except strangers craves an even more anonymous form of writing. But then, I never write in my blank bound journal either.

I come up with themes, I write a few hundred words, and I throw them away because my expectations are too high.

Well, that is enough. I am self-indulgent. I am writing something. I don't care.

Okay, I do care. And I already feel guilty for writing this whiny screed, but I am not letting the voices in my head win.

Onward and upward!

Lunch today was Visiting Parents Sandwiches: we never eat plain lunchmeat sandwiches unless my parents are visiting, because we are much more self-indulgent than that with our food choices. But my parents help us to live simply: bread from the corner convenience store, two extra wide slices of turkey, one extra-wide slice of ham, processed cheese, butter, and mustard. Generic Lays-equivalent chips. Diet Coke. And a snickerdoodle, home-baked from a refrigerator pull-apart package, so that the cinnamon makes this square on top of the round cookie. Oh, and my sandwich got the guilty lettuce--no one else would take the last slice that Mom had brought all the way from home. It sat in the cooler in her trunk for days, but it was quite well refrigerated by all the miserable weather.

1133rd

I had the tremendous honor last night of saying the invocation and benediction at the community sendoff of the 1133rd National Guard transportation unit, who are heading toward their second tour of duty in Iraq.



I sat on the dais with a selection of dignitaries, including the Lieutenant Governor of our fair state, and the Adjutant General for the National Guard in this region. And after my closing prayer (read directly from the brand new Pastoral Care book, which arrived yesterday) I looked up and saw the eyes and cheeks, shiny with tears, of these uniformed men and women who had stood so correctly at attention during all the boring speeches.

They were so young, and so brave. And something in me broke open a little bit.

Breakfast this morning was cereal: generic raisin bran and generic grape nuts, with milk. Also, mango light yogurt and coffee.

horse racing

This morning, once again, the conversation on my NPR call-in show was on the topic "Can John McCain win?"

This is a useful conversation to have in small doses. And it is very useful to insiders and campaign workers. They need to have this conversation.

But the general public should only rarely be involved in this conversation. (Arguably it is useful during the primary season.) The question that most people should be concerned about is not "CAN win?" but "SHOULD win?"

Then (God-willing) we would talk about issues, leadership styles, relevant personal information, and such, rather than polling, leads, margins, and all the "objective" data that is only useful for self-fulfilling prophesies.

We are talking about meta-campaign stuff that is not actual democracy, but horse racing. And I am frustrated with it. Humbug.

I recognize that it is harder for media to maintain an image of objectivity when they report on qualifications and issues rather than horse-racing. But I wish we were talking about meaty things instead of fluff.

Anyway, back to the campaign for a few more weeks.

Breakfast today was yummy bread from a Wisconsin monastery: Sinsinawa Mound's Honey Wheat, toasted with butter, and their Large Cinnamon Loaf, toasted with butter. Also, a bit of generic egg substitute, scrambled with milk and microwaved in a Pyrex dish.

Bindi the tragic girl

I'm writing an especially ignorant blog tonight, O true believers. I've never even seen the show I'm going to talk about. But I have seen the commercials, and in today's drive-by culture that's enough, right?

Is anybody else bothered by this "Bindi the Jungle Girl" show? It's apparently an award-winning nature show on Discovery Kids starring Bindi Irwin. She's a cute little kid with pigtails and total innocence in the video I've seen.

Yet I can't watch a moment of the commercial without thinking of her father's tragic death. For Bindi is the daughter of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, who spent his life putting himself in alarming proximity to dangerous animals for the sake of entertaining video. And while filming a show he suffered a fatal stingray barb to the heart. Classic illustration of Pride, Fragility of Man Before Nature, Thinning the Herd, and all that sort of thing.

And I think about the fact that the guy had kids, and I get sad. And then I see that this show exists, and I wonder about the thought process involved:

Producer #1: Crikey! Bummer, right?
Producer #2: Eh, and a pity about the little girl.
Producer #1: I wish there was something that we could do for her.
Producer #2: Well, we don't know how to do anything but produce tragically hazardous Nature Gone Wild television programs.
Producer #1: Let's give her her own show, then! That'll make her feel better.
Producer #2: Sure, let's build the whole show around her, so that she is absolutely indispensible. And if she ever throws a tantrum on the set, or has feelings about the show that she doesn't know how to deal with, we can just threaten to film a stingray episode!
Producer #1: That's a good one! How do you think she'd look with a boa constricter around her neck?



For lunch I had deli ham and deli balogna on Wonder Bread with mustard, butter, and mayo. Also, leftover cornbread. And a Diet Coke.

p.s. Slightly less ignorant: I looked it up, and apparently Bindi began filming the show before her father's tragic death. Which makes it a bit less creepy, but how could she go on with the thing? And how can all these people make their profit by a show where all the economic incentive is to put this girl closer and closer to the tragedy of her father, while on camera? And if she lets her pain get to her, and quits the show, then she is supposed to feel like a washed-up celebrity? What else can she do with her life at this point?

I'm also reminded of the creepy video of Steve Irwin feeding a crocodile while holding his infant son with one arm. Allegedly the child was in no danger.

silence is golden

While looking for James P. Carse's book "The Religious Case Against Belief" (I'll probably end up having to actually buy this one. The local library and bookstores are too small.) I stumbled upon an earlier piece he had written called "The Silence of God." It's not what you think, some modernist Job-like rant against an absent God who owes us something.

Rather, the book praises silence. A particular kind of silence: the expectant silence of a good listener. The silence that lets you speak, share, and perhaps surprise the listener and yourself. I like this kind of listening. I crave this kind of listening. I seek to do this kind of listening ("be the change..."), though I'm not as good at it as I want to be.

It's hard to be a good listener. Most of us want to be God, that is, to be the one with something to say. And so it is hard to stop everything else long enough for someone to actually say something to you. Especially if they don't couch it with entertainment.

One of the most annoying things I do is to complete people's sentences, because I am too impatient to wait for them to finish. Maybe this would be fine if I always got it right. But all too often I don't know where they are going, and my impatience is offputting enough that I miss out on the surprise someone would have given me.

With books and movies and art I usually seek out things that will surprise me, or teach me, or reveal something I haven't noticed before. And with people I often seek out the weirdos and freaks and outcasts who most people wouldn't want to listen to. But with the people I am closest to, I have often done a poor job of letting them actually tell me who they are.

But the need for a good listener is primal. Many of us crave it so much that we become performers, defensively seeking always to entertain so that people will keep listening. I took a job where, periodically, people have to listen to what I say, and it is the most satisfying part of my week. But maybe all I really want is for someone to pay attention.

(Theologically, Carse's argument suggests that God is a benevolent player, creating us as toys/fellows who are interesting to behold. And the whole point of our existence is therefore to BE, as fully as possible. This may be an argument against the value of divine foreknowledge: if the Creator really wants to listen to us being ourselves, it might spoil the fun if there could be no surprises. )

There is an excerpt of Carse's book availble on the internet that reads like a study guide. I can't recommend it. It is so tersely written that I could only skim it, dipping into random paragraphs in turn, like a set of Confucian analects, rather than continuous reading. I strongly suspect that I am misrepresenting what he has to say. But that's because I'm not as good at silence as I'd like to be, even as a reader.

Lunch yesterday was leftover brisket, personally smoked by my favorite father-in-law. We made it into sandwiches, with rich and sassy barbecue sauce. I strongly suspect I'll have the same thing for lunch today.

returns

Okay, so there's this Batman movie. It has gotten some press. You may have heard of it.

And I so am frustrated with Heath Ledger for spoiling the plan. Christopher Nolan has expressed in interviews that he imagined the thing as a trilogy. And the ambiguous ending of Ledger's character, together with the otherwise-unjustified appearance of the Scarecrow at the beginning of the film, suggests strongly that Ledger was meant to appear in the third film. How dare he succumb to that Olson twin's death-dealing? Grr.

And does anybody else feel like the film was still an origin story? The first movie was clearly an origin story, but this year's model still felt like it spent all but its last few seconds setting up the situation that the director really wants, with Batman all cool and underground and forced into hiding and stuff. Batman was always cooler when he was a loner, hated by the law enforcement establishment (except Gordon, usually), instead of the Super-Friend heroic public figure we get in most of his eras.

Maybe the third film will have him finally set in a world, instead of setting up one. And to me, the world the third film will inhabit (if it keeps moving in the same direction) is awfully similar to the emotional situation for the original "Dark Knight Returns" graphic novel by Frank Miller, minus the futuristic setting.

Sorry for the fanboy post. Just trying to write something rather than nothing.

Breakfast today was English muffin with Promise and syrup, coffee, and a bowl of generic honey nut cheerios, generic grape-nuts, rejected Alpha-Bits and way too much milk (which is probably why the four-year-old rejected the Alpha-Bits).

travellin' through

I finally watched "Transamerica" tonight, and my wife is right. That is just my sort of movie. Humane, cynical about humanity but generous towards humans, and funny little moments about how little we know ourselves and each other.

I have too many commitment issues to get a tattoo; I can hardly imagine what it would be like to desire gender reassignment surgery. Yet the film raises all sorts of useful questions about who we really are, who we pretend to be, the lies we tell one another and ourselves. And the way that most of us just want somebody to see us for once. To pay enough attention to get us. And yet we keep cutting ourselves off from those who might be able to get to know us that well. Because it's dangerous to be close. It's hazardous to let somebody in--because you never know if you can trust them.

And sometimes the most open people in the world can be the most guarded. I think of a Pedro Almodovar movie where the lead character talks about how drag queens are the most natural people in the world because they have constructed their entire nature from scratch. This is not an exact quote.

Anybody interested in constructing some new reality?

Lunch today was Perkins--coffee and this biscuits and sausage gravy platter from a special menu that emphasizes breakfast all day, as if that were not the whole reason I go to Perkins in the first place. Along with all the fatty things, I ordered my scrambled eggs made with Egg Beaters. A drop in the bucket. And did I mention the best condiment of all: really slow service. They seem to have forgotten my order altogether, and the whole rest of the party was almost finished with their meal before I got mine. And it tasted so good because of the embarassment and hunger. Mmm.

Old-Timers

Last Wednesday:

"Hello"
"Hello, how are you?"
"I'm fine, and you?"
"Is your [report] done?"
"Yes, actually."
"Do you want the news now or later?"
"Well, now."

And then my life changed. My father has a diagnosis. It's not good. It's pretty far along, but we have no idea how it will progress from here. His sister was diagnosed with the same disease and was dead three years later.

I'm still in shock. My work is suffering. I want to go home. I want to quit my job. I want to start an oral history project about him while he can still share stories.

I'm feeling guilty about not being nearer. And about not being closer. I'm feeling guilty about burdening people with my family's health issues. I'm feeling guilty about my work and my family and about not knowing how much to share with people, because my parents don't seem to be telling people. I feel guilty about not knowing how to communicate with my family.

And I'm afraid that it's hereditary. That I'll get it. That my kids will get it.

Okay. Deep breath. Start over. My father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Stage 5 of a possible 7. Mom claims he is responding well to medication. I don't know what else to say at this point. Help me, Lord.

Lunch today was a recipe we tried for the first time earlier this weekend: refrigerator homestyle biscuits rolled flat, then filled with ground turkey and fat-free cheese, with a dash of salt. Fold over, fork the edges closed, and bake. Basically a diet empanada. Yum. Also, unfilled biscuits (made for the toddlers) with butter and honey. Water, and the dregs of the Starbucks ground coffee we received in a Christmas gift.

Why omit Ovid?

Why didn't they tell me about this? All these years I've been reading my Edith Hamilton, reading my Bullfinch, reading my secondary sources. And then at a library book sale I pick up a well-worn copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in the Horace Gregory translation.

And the heavens open, and I am a mythologist again.

I mean, seriously, I used to think of myself as a somewhat educated fellow. I read the required Homer (including the boring Telemachus parts) and the extracurricular Homer (beautiful bloody battle bits, though repetitive). I read me some Aeneid and some Divine Comedy and some Milton. My best friend in college was a Classics major. But nothing has been as much breezy fun or as diversely educational as this strange, comprehensive poem that would serve so well as a beginning mythology text.

Everything you need is there. Why don't teachers use this version to teach Perseus? Why don't museum curators print selections beside ancient illustrations? This is so well written, so readable, such an education in pacing and transition control... Are people so afraid of primary texts that they would rather read badly written Cliff's Notes than actual good, terse, muscular writing? (Don't answer that.)

Or do Gregory's oddly VH1-ish introduction and oddly located chapter summaries scare people away?

If I ever teach a mythology class, this will be a significant chunk of the curriculum. I'll probably have to throw in some other cultures to be more politically correct. But Ovid is a pretty ideal Dead White Male.

This nerd says check it out.

Breakfast today was homemade monkey bread made by a very intense four-year-old. Torn-up raw refrigerator biscuits in a loaf pan with melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon poured over the top, then baked for much longer than I expected. Lunch was much less interesting.

Crimes in Social Science

I'm enjoying slogging through Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect. It seeks to reveal how normal people do evil, with special attention to the author's own famous study: The Stanford Prison Experiment. Thirty some year later, the guy finally gets around to writing a book about it. Makes me feel more hopeful about my own procrastination.

Anyway, a passage on conformity experiments brought back my own brief days as a social scientist. For the eighth grade science fair, my scientifically superior friend WBL suggested that we replicate a famous (but not yet to me) experiment by Solomon Asch, where subjects are asked to compare the length of lines with each other, and answer which lines were the same length. The trick was that confederates of the experimenter would be taking aloud the same test at the same time, and they would conspire to answer certain predetermined questions incorrectly. The experiment would be to see how often subjects would bow to peer pressure and give the wrong answer.

Quite often, as it turned out, both for Asch and for ourselves. But I have always felt queasy about the way we did the experiment. To begin with, our "confederates" were our friends--people known to be honors students near the top of the class. And nothing was anonymous. And for some reason we didn't always use lines, but sometimes used questions that people genuinely might not know the correct answer to. And perhaps most egregiously, we failed to debrief our test subjects so that they would know what was going on. How do you suppose these friends and acquaintances of ours felt after they suspected that they had been had?

It was fun to participate in a social science experiment, and we did establish that peer pressure is indeed strong. But I fear that the exercise largely functioned as a chance for us honors student nerds to feel superior to the people we invited into our experiment. And to exert power over others with the one form of superiority that we had: test-taking skills. These people would be justified in never trusting me again.

I felt queasy at the time about this (though perhaps not as queasy as when I was buying and selling people's souls in high school). But I never spoke up or stopped the experiment. I just did a poor job at presenting it at the science fair, because I felt guilty. And reading Zimbardo's book, I feel like I was living inside Milgram's famous electric shock experiment--I was willing to cause possible harm to my peers for the sake of a silly experiment. And I did nothing to get out or stop it.

I am very suspicious of using power over people. But sometimes I do it. And it makes me sick. This is why I am not a social scientist--a weak stomach.

Lunch today was forgettable, but supper was interesting: instant rice, frozen broccoli from a nuke-in bag, chow mein noodles, and leftover generic spaghettios. I am trying to be supportive of a loved one's restricted diet. Eating without fat is remarkably difficult, though.

clique track

On "Grey's Anatomy," there has been until recently a shameful neglect of Dr. Miranda Bailey. Finally she is getting a chance to lead again. Her leadership provides me some assertiveness training reinforcement from time to time.

Well, Shonda Rhimes (sister of LeAnn and Busta) is already doing her predictable deflation-of-any-character-who-shows-any-strength-whatsoever thing on Dr. Bailey, and tonight's episode provided me with some food for thought.

First, an old high-school friend showed up to provide a heaping helping of what some call cake. (By the way, Lesley, write your book already. Yes, boys can understand the concept, though probably not immediately and probably never perfectly. In my seven years as a recovering cakeboy, I would claim I have been less cruel to women than before I learned the vocabulary. Sometimes still cruel, of course, but less cruel than before.) And Bailey demonstrated just how powerful an old but life-defining adolescent relationship can remain long after you were supposed to be an adult.

So far, all good, messy, life-situation defining fun.

But then Bailey starts to complain to the local recovering cakeboy (McDreamy), which I approve, and she talks as if the most defeating characteristic of her high school life was wearing a band uniform, and I cannot approve of this one bit.

Why does suddenly membership in the band connote lasting shame into adulthood in our culture? Is this the influence of the "American Pie" movies? Is it really so damaging to think of oneself as a former band geek? I've seen this many places, and it is getting to be an awfully unfair cliche.

My wife claims that this shame varies from school to school, or from region to region. But I would claim that band members should have fewer lasting effects from high school geekitude than other kinds of high school geeks.

Yes, at the time I was occasionally ashamed of my membership in the band rather than in other, more prestigious, high school cliques. In high school, I felt like a geek for enjoying the band so much. But in retrospect, the band was a relatively healthy community that instilled self-respect and leadership ability and plenty of friends and support for its members. And the ability to play an instrument is something to enjoy later in life, not be ashamed of.

(Maybe doing a pronounced "glide stride" during the parade at my son's music class was something to be embarrassed about. I don't know. Other people seemed to be laughing at me.)

And at least I wasn't in the orchestra.

Lunch today was red beans and rice from a cheap mix. With lots of saltines, extra spices, and water. And then I cooked a whole 'nother meal for supper to cover up the smell, due to lingering trauma from an unfortunate olfactory incident during my wife's pregnancy.

autumn

Today the leaves have faded a bit. The other day they were yellow like banana peels. Today they are more like Post Toasties.

I made a point of walking a bit extra on my way to work. I parked in my usual place, but chose to walk all the way around the block instead of going directly in the door. And I enjoyed the weather.

It's a wellness thing.

For breakfast today my toddler Grant and I made muffins and cornbread. They tasted so good because they were made with pedagogy.

right now stuff

1. Because of a new health plan, I went in for my first ever annual physical yesterday. During the physical, the doctor started chatting me up. Mind you, this is a doctor I have seen dozens of times with my wife or my kids. This may be the first time I ever met with him by myself. He opened up about himself and his family much more than he ever has before when I've been there with my wife. Which made the rubber glove component all the more awkward.

2. This morning the sidewalk outside my office was covered with bright yellow leaves. The tree there has nearly emptied itself, and I got to shuffle through, feeling like a toddler again.

3. I don't know whether I should mow my lawn one more time or not. It's beginning to freeze at night, which I understand is dangerous for the grass. But the grass is just barely tall enough that I would have mowed it last weekend if I had had time.

4. I failed to remember the Fifth of November until Len on "Dancing with the Stars" mentioned fireworks day. I am intrigued by Guy Fawkes Day: Why do we want to remember this? (Unless we happen to be anarchists.)

5. I am wearing really warm socks. But I still feel cold. Maybe I should put on a second pair.

6. I feel guilty telling stories like the above to my blog before I tell my wife, but we keep falling asleep really early on the couch.

7. For lunch yesterday, I had a Burger King spicy chicken sandwich, cheesy tots, and then half an hour later a full butterburger basket from Culver's with green beans and Diet Coke mixed with red Hi-C. I had been fasting.

feliz dia de la muerta

One of my favorite computer games ever is "Grim Fandango"--a graphic adventure where you play a grim reaper trying to function as a travel agent for the recently deceased. You attempt to sell people deluxe packages for their travel through the next stage of the afterlife, and their currency is based on their good deeds on earth. It's all the sort of thing that Martin Luther would have written some theses about, but it's presented very amusingly.

The graphic style is based on Central American native cultures and on recent Mexican Day of the Dead popular art. And I am hooked. I am endlessly fascinated with the Aztec culture of death, the pan de los muertos, the toys and folk art of "skinny ones" (i.e., skeletons) doing everyday silly things. It seems much more healthy to me than our norteamericano avoidance of the whole subject.

And I remember a poem from a book I gave away about a boy whose mother took him to cemeteries a lot. The last line was something like, "The more time you spend with the dead, the less you have to say."

I need to spend some time in a cemetery this week.

Lunch today was leftover pizza from a Halloween party. Cheese pizza from Godfather's.

defensive driving

I like to pretend that there is an invisible car on the road. Maybe it's the influence of a Herbie movie or certain comic books, but I never completely trust my perceptions enough to rule out the possibility of a car that I cannot see.

So I use my turn signals even when my car is all alone on the road. And I try to slow down before I reach intersections, to give the invisible car in front of me time to move out of my way. I move slowly in parking lots, and try to keep from driving through parking spaces, just in case an invisible car is parked somewhere at the edges of the parking lot. I figure it's their own fault if the invisible car is parked in a place I would actually want to park.

This method of driving didn't suit me all that well when driving in heavy traffic, but then I expect that invisible cars wouldn't travel much in such conditions.

But someday I just know that I will be changing lanes too quickly or pulling up to a stop-light and experience that sickening crunch that says my car will need expensive body work. And I'll be pretty angry if that other car is invisible. It'll be their fault, right? But regardless I will have spoiled their secret mission, and I'll probably feel guilty.

Lunch today was Culver's take-out. A butterburger with cheese and everything else, with a basket of fries, ketchup and a Diet Coke. I wanted a fried cheese curd, but I never asked for one. So that's my own fault.

the unknown underworld

We occupy a sacred space. We have separated ourselves from the earthy, the dirty, and the profane far more effectively than the ancient Israelites. We need to touch nothing that has not already been cleansed, disinfected, or even irradiated for our sake. And mysterious forces carry away all that is polluted, filthy, and unclean from us.

I am talking about modern plumbing, and modern distancing from reality.

I make use of plumbing all the time. Several times a day. And usually, it requires no attention from me whatsoever. A year ago, though, I became a homeowner in a house with a basement. The pipes are visible, and there are so many of them. My personal restroom is down there among the pipes. And every once in a while, twice in this house, once catastrophically in an apartment I rented, sewage or sludge backs up in the pipes and overflows into my life.

And I call the plumber, and the problem goes away. But how do I prevent it? How could I fix it myself? What will happen to my lovely pipes when the revolution comes and there are no more plumbers?

I am a generally well-educated person. I have some experience with construction. I could tell you a bit about wiring, or how a car works. I could explain much of the engineering of the Hoover Dam, probably. But ask me about this cleansing river that flows underneath my home, and I have to throw up my hands and call somebody.

A hundred years ago, when my grandmother was growing up, a flush toilet was a conversation piece. And it didn't work that well. And now, it may be the invertion I could least imagine living without. Gasoline engines, air conditioning, information tech: I'd trade it all for a good flush--after experiencing a nasty broken public restroom or two.

And yet it might as well be magic to me. What makes the water flow? How much water pressure is in the pipes? In the toilet basin? How much clean water passes into the sewer? Could the sewage still flow properly if we all used extremely low-flush tanks and recycled our other water? How far does the sewage flow before it is treated? Does it need to flow downhill? How can we have toilets on the third floor? What would happen if we tried to dig a sub-basement with a bathroom below the sewer system pipes?

I don't know the answer to these questions. And I have been seduced by apathy into believing I don't need to know the answer to these questions. The plumber and the city manager can take care of it.

But when the gunk flows backward, our faith in society comes into question. Can they truly guarantee me a sewage-free life? Can I really trust others to take care of my shit for me? Or do I need to get more involved? Will I be fleeced by greedy plumbers? Will an ignorant electorate put into place leaders who do not care for our civic infrastructure, flooding entire cities with human waste when hurricanes or earthquakes visit? Will I have no capacity to handle the smells and the dirt of existence if I have to face it without my affluent bubble of disinfectant?

I need to do some reading.

Supper tonight was leftover KFC chicken: a mixture of Extra Crispy and Original, now with a different, healthier kind of fat. Also, some of my kids' leftover pizza and macaroni.

tagged by mosup a long time ago

In the interest of writing *anything*, I have decided to do a meme. The rule is to say six weird things about yourself. I choose to ignore the rule about tagging six people to do the same, since I don't know any bloggers who are not already tagged or participating.

1. I seem to be shrinking. I started losing weight when I watched "Super Size Me" and stopped drinking sugar drinks, since I did not want to be a hummingbird. But that was a long time ago, and I continue to lose weight. I hope I don't have a tapeworm. More likely, my metabolism has changed, likely due to improved circumstances of life. I think that happiness is making me thin. (And yes, I know that males should never talk about weight loss.)

2. I almost never buy recorded music. I love music, and spend much of my life thinking about music. I enjoy listening to new music, especially obscure music, and I even write music. I subscribe to Rolling Stone. Yet I have bought more hymnals and sheet music than CDs. I sometimes request music as a gift, but people don't seem to know what to buy me. I probably come across as a snob. But truly, I am a cheap, ignorant musician (aside from what I can learn by reading).

3. I am not an insomniac, because I could sleep at almost any time. Naps work just fine when I try them. But I almost never go to bed when I should. I simply choose to stay up until I am absolutely exhausted.

4. I can change diapers really fast. Sometimes I time myself.

5. Certain rooms I keep messy as a barricade against visitors. I really want to keep these rooms to myself, so I make them unwelcoming. I started doing this long before I knew why I was doing it.

6. I like to end counted lists in the mode of The Count from Sesame Street. Six! Six weird things! Six! Ah! Ah! Ah!

My lunch today was two cheeseburgers made on our new but well-used gas grille. Perhaps one burger was too rare. Also, Diet Coke and many white round Tostito's corn chips. How many adjective does a chip really need?

el condor pasa

Anne Lamott, on page 187 of Bird by Bird, quotes Violet Weingarten's Intimations of Mortality to ask the burning question: "Is life too short to be taking shit, or is life to short to be minding it?"

This is an urgent question in my life. Family Systems Theory has taught me much about being differentiated, about having a clear sense of self. Assertiveness Experts remind me that standing your ground and clarity in the face of conflict is the only way to get what you want. And those who do not stand somewhere can accomplish nothing. To paraphrase e e cummings: There is some shit we should not eat.

But I also pride myself on my flexibility, on my ability to see the multifaceted beauty of any situation or position. I have been playing Devil's Advocate for so long that I don't always know which side I am on. And this has enriched my experience of life immeasurably by helping me to see a fuller picture of the world. When you can hold multiple contradictory positions in your mind at the same time, I feel like you are getting closer to the mind of God. Too many people are too caught up in their own agendas to ever experience what is actually going on around them. Sometimes you have to let things play.

So, in Lamott's terms, is it better to refuse to take shit, or to refuse to mind it? Life is full of things that are wrong, people who misunderstand, people who fail to appreciate or be generous, ideas that are misdirected. So do you hate the sin and love the sinner? Do you hate the sin and hate the sinner too? Do you find some (possibly sick) way to love the sinner and come to understand and love the sin, too, for its beautiful effitude?

I used to want to be a Buddhist. And Buddhist writings talk a lot about water--the ideal element, which does not take its own shape but always seeks the lowest place. Which assumes the shape of its container. Or the green reed which does not snap in the presence of wind, but bends to stay alive.

At the same time, I don't want to be a doormat for all the aggressive non-Buddhists out there. (And there are not many Buddhists in this country, despite Richard Gere's best efforts.)

So, to ask the question implied by my title: Would I rather be a hammer or a nail?

Tentative answer: I'd rather be clay. Molded by reality, shapable by the stresses of life. Pliable. Yet firm. Able to bear beauty for a while. But deliberately impermanent. Until the fire comes, at least.

What I did eat today: leftover fettuccine alfredo with broccoli and chicken from a can. A hamburger steak. A few bites of my son's Kraft Supermac and Cheese. Water.