number

Posted on by June 27, 2013

I have a friend who is a songwriter who has absolutely zero internet presence.

I’m not saying that he doesn’t have presence…he has more presence than most people I know. He’s a very charismatic guy.

It’s just that he hasn’t worked at putting his name out in the “internet world”.

He hasn’t developed the skill of glib self promotion.

He doesn’t have a Facebook account.

He keeps it real.

When you Google his name to see what he’s up to, the only things you come up with are mentions of when he’s been involved with someone who is kind of “internet savvy”.

I woke up this morning and wondered if maybe he’s on to something that I didn’t really understand.  Maybe it’s a good thing to not be so connected?

I know that I’d give up any information a lot of the time if I thought I’d get something free.  If I thought I’d get a free e-book out of the deal I’d be more than willing to tell anybody just about anything.

Especially if it was a free e-book with a title like “How to Protect Your Internet Privacy”.  I could use something like that.

I come across as a cranky Luddite  (with a self-hosted blog….what a contradiction) when I complain about how over connected we are. I know that.

It’s something that maybe has to be an either/or situation…you’re connected and involved with the internet…or you’re not.  Maybe there isn’t any middle ground.

Maybe it’s only a huge middle ground that keeps getting bigger.

It’s something we feed until it’s so big that it swallows us whole.

The internet is like a hammer.

A hammer is a great tool.  It’s good to have a hammer if you need to whack a nail…pound it down.

But I wouldn’t want to wear a necklace made of hammers.  It would be awkward.

I don’t want to be blue toothed to death.  I don’t want to constantly be checking Facebook on my smart phone to see if anyone in the Cloud has managed to “outclever” us all.  I don’t even know if I want a smart phone.

I don’t want to be turned into an android…or chipped…or monitored…or regulated.

I don’t want the men in the black helicopters to swoop down and imprison me in a secret underground government facility.

Especially if my only crime is mentioning a secret underground government facility in my blog.

That would really stink.

So my friend has no internet presence.  That a good thing sometimes.  He knows who he is.  He knows what he’s done.  He doesn’t need the internet for some kind of weird boost.

Art can stand on its own without any thought for Search Engine Optimization.

guy clark workbench songs

09 Analog Girl

Here’s a great Guy Clark song…I think that he has a good handle on the situation.

Like most things, I don’t really know what the answer is.

Maybe it’s good to back away from it all.

Facebook serves its purpose.  It can be fun to reconnect with friends.

But it’s not life.

It’s just another hammer.

leaf on the wind

Posted on by June 26, 2013

A buddy of mine quoted a movie called Serenity the other day.

I’d involved myself in a Facebook conversation that I had no business being in…something about class warfare and the lack of ethics that having money encourages…and it had begun to get weirder than I suspected it would.

I was trying to express that money isn’t the evil that some think…but it wasn’t a popular sentiment given the quoted article’s slant.

I pictured us with pitchforks and torches, climbing the hill to the mansion where the cheating rich were barricaded.

By the time it turned back into “fun”, my friend had the intelligence and good judgement to quote Serenity and make it “all right”.

What a great line.

“Riding” through any of the minor rough patches life throws at us ( I haven’t had the opportunity yet to pilot and land a disabled space craft)…it’s a good line to remember.

“A leaf on the wind”.

Gliding …or thrown around in the hurricane…I suppose the question for me is how do I arrive at the perspective about the situation that lets me see it as gliding?

Thinking about what we call “minor rough patches” is kind of interesting, too.

Some can break a nail and it’s over for the week.  Nothing can be right because something small was wrong.

Some can wake up to day number 1,140 in the concentration camp and see some sun and dream about what things are going to be when it’s all better.  Nothing can be completely wrong because they still have the hope of something “right” coming someday.

I don’t know how we decide which approach to take.

Lots of thoughts that have no business being attached to a great quote from a great movie…but it’s something to aspire to …that whole “leaf on the wind” thing.

It’s like the “zen master” buddy who stays so chill as long as he has enough Guiness in the refrigerator and all the problems around him are someone else’s.  He can be so cool about things…maybe even dispense some good and appropriately zenlike advice when the situation allows.

But….he completely falls apart when the problem is hitting a little closer to home.

When things get personal, philosophy flies out the window sometimes.

When it really hits the fan….he loses his “leafyness”.

Weird.

Enough rambling.  This is a great movie….Serenity…and I think it can be found streaming on YouTube.

A “leaf on the wind”….that we’d all have occasion to quote that when getting hammered by the storm.

 

 

fireflies on the living room floor

Posted on by June 24, 2013

lightning-bug2

Here’s a quote from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw a backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

I woke up this morning and there was a firefly on the living room floor.

My first thought when I saw the little pinpoint of light was “who moved the power strip?”.

I’d like to report that I had my “whole life as a bell” moment then…but it was mostly confusion at seeing a blurry little green light on my way to the toilet.

That’s the beauty of waking up slowly…if the confusion isn’t over something dangerous, you can ponder it for a while.

Being slow on the draw doesn’t always kill you.

Our house is pretty tight.  We still get some air whistling through when the winter winds blow hard, but for the most part we don’t have a whole lot of bugs migrating in.

The bugs have to work at it to get into our house now.

It poured down rain last night…a real gully washer…so this lone firefly must have found his way in and out of the deluge…and on to our living room floor to give me something to write about this morning.

( That’s the thing about ego…everything revolves around the “hub of the universe”.  I doubt the firefly had anything concerning me in his head when he came out of the rain…it just sounds fantastically powerful to suppose that synchronicity was at play when he was still shining when I got up this morning….like “look what God gave me!!  A blog post topic!!”  I’m sure that God has better things to do….and, probably, so does that firefly.)

That random firefly was pretty cool, though.

Like a jewel…or a little star…on the living room floor.  It could be anything in the transition from sleeping to writing.  Another “oooohhhhh…..shiny” moment.

There are all these amazing moments…amazing things in the world…that because they’re familiar to us we stop being amazed.

I guess our heads would explode if we constantly gave things the credit they deserve.

But I don’t think it’s just stuff that we’re familiar with in our own small corners that ceases to amaze.

Now we can say…”Oh…yeah….I saw that on TV…I know about that…right, I watched that special where the guy was in the submarine…yeah….a thousand feet down…I know about that.”

“I know about that”.  When did that start?  About the time of the first Apple Festival?

We can be tuning forks.  We can be bells.  There’s a lot of things in this world that are trying to ring us…lots of amazement waiting.

“I know about that” already.

image from here.

 

 

growing grass

Posted on by June 23, 2013

Green-grass-in-field-free-desktop-background-free-wallpaper-image

I’m growing grass as I write this.

I guess that what I mean is that I threw some grass seed on the ground…and I have faith that it will grow.

It grows on its own.

I don’t know if I did it right…the sowing part…but all that seed is laying there, and I’m watering it…so it should grow.

Growing grass is a funny thing.

We had some grading work done a while back and I planted a bunch of grass on the new hillside.  It came up like a carpet.  It was beautiful…thick and green…luxurious.  I thought, “why do people complain about how hard it is to grow grass?  Look at that…just as thick and green and healthy looking as it can be.  I must be smarter than everybody else...look how good I am at growing grass.”

I’m glad I kept my thoughts to myself.

My green carpet grew…and then started to not grow….and then little by little, patch by patch began to turn brown and die.

I blame it on the soil.  I know I did everything right.

I fertilized it.  I watered it.  I watched it grow and then die.

That’s “right”…right?

The funny thing about it is that the hillside is covered up with green now…it’s just not the “green” that I intended.  There’s crabgrass and clover, some dandelions, other weird stuff…it’s thick with green but not much grass.

I guess that no matter how bad the soil is…something is bound to grow. 

It may not be what we expect…but something is going to cover that bare ground…and until we take a closer look, it’s going to be just just as green as it can be in our perception of the world.

It may as well be grass, right?

I know that in my life, when well laid plans fall through or an outcome is different from what I intended, it’s easy to get used to things the way they turn out.

“That’s just the way it is…”

But really, I should be telling myself…”that’s just the way it is….now“.

A green hillside doesn’t mean that I should stop trying to grow grass.

And when you really get down and think about it…a green hillside is still a green hillside.  I get caught up in disappointment when things don’t work out…but on a spring day, a green hillside looks pretty darn good.

It looks good no matter what the reason for the green is.

Maybe it’s God’s way of saying, “Quit your whining….so your grass died, stop moaning about it.  Check this out…here’s some clover…that’s pretty nice now, isn’t it?  Here’s some little yellow flowers….pretty, huh?  How about some grass?  You want grass…you got it.  Bam.  Here’s some crabgrass.  Nice, huh?” *

“Check that out.  I did it all by myself.  I must be smarter than the average guy, after all….”  God might say. *

I don’t know about grass.  It’s a trip to try and grow grass.  It’s a trip to try.  It’s kind of a trip to live, really.  You never know what’s going to come of it all.

Not knowing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t throw down some seed now and then, though.

 

* This isn’t some kind of direct quote.  I suspect that when and if God talks to me, his communication will be a lot more poetic and lucid.  I was mostly just trying to communicate that our plans don’t always jibe with what’s important to God…no matter how picturesque we view them as being.

 

 

…down by the river

Posted on by June 22, 2013

There was a great old skit on SNL that featured Chris Farley as a motivational speaker.

In the skit, he mentions “living in a VAN…down by the RIVER”.

And here’s this guy…this angry guy…living in a van somewhere.

Holy Smokes!  I know there’s got to be some really regular folks out there living in vans down by the river.

I know there’s got to be some quiet, regular joes living in a van who don’t freak out and yell into the camera.

Now look in the background…look in the van behind him…is that a BEAR?  There, sleeping in his van…is that a BEAR laying in there?!  That could be one of his problems.

I’m all into helping animals…but you add to the stress when you share your van with a bear.

I don’t know…maybe it’s just a sleeping bag.

This guy scares me.  Up until this video, I thought that moving all of us into a van and finding a nice quiet spot under a bridge somewhere close to the river would be a good way to save money.

It sounded peaceful.

But this guy’s been to “prison college”…whatever that is…and he seems like he knows the score…and all of a sudden, that van idea doesn’t look so appealing.

If I say something loudly…NO…IF I SAY SOMETHING LOUDLY….EVEN IF IT’S KIND OF CRAZY AND OUT OF LINE…MAYBE PEOPLE WILL PAY CLOSER ATTENTION TO ME.

And …if I can claim lack of oxygen from living in a small enclosed area…I’ll have a legitimate excuse for being angry and loud.

The thing about this video that just hit me is how good the interviewer is at keeping the ball rolling with responses like, “that’s where we’re headed..” and “it’s insanity”…or even “DANG”.  That’s quite a skill to keep the nut jobs talking.

I can do that.

Nut jobs talk to me all the time.

Was this guy a kook before everything hit the fan?  Did it hit the fan because he’s a kook?

Our biggest worry right now is what to do with 3 extra roosters.

“My muffler blew up, my starter blew up…I’ve got one dollar in my pocket!  ONE DOLLAR!!”

“This is revolution time…but who’s gonna do it?”

Holy Smokes….what a weird way to wake up (in America).

I don’t know…living in a van down by the river might still be kind of peaceful.

It might be kind of nice if this guy doesn’t figure out how to move next door to you.

And what the heck is John Gosselin doing interviewing guys on the streets of Orange County?

 

 

 

 

 

awake

Posted on by June 21, 2013

what dreams may come

I was having a dream last night.

It was a dream I remembered when I woke up.  It was a dream I remembered when I woke up relieved.

In my dream, I was delivering the mail.  I was delivering out of my 1981 Corolla Station Wagon, so I knew in my head…even in my dream…that something was different.

I haven’t driven that car on the route for a while…not since I blew the head gasket trying to go too fast up the Saluda Grade to get a package to the District Manager on time.

In my dream I was having a pretty good time.  I was up in Asheville for some reason…fully loaded for a day of delivering but way outside my delivery zone…when I heard what I thought was Gary Clark Jr. playing some blues at a big street festival.

The guy had the red guitar, wore his hat the same way..he was playing the blues pretty well…surely, it had to be Gary Clark, Jr.

So I parked the mail and left my car and got out to enjoy the music.

This is a big no-no.

When you deliver the mail, you are tethered to your vehicle.  You lock and secure…you don’t leave to go listen to Gary Clark….Jr.

You don’t chase butterflies when you deliver the mail.

You have to stay focused.

But, in my dreams…I leave to listen to “the blues”.

Anyway, I was grooving to this music and enjoying the sunshine when I took a closer look.

“Hey…wait a second.  This isn’t Gary Clark….Jr. …..this is Shambone and the Ruffintown…what the heck?!!!”

It was at that moment that the full responsibility of my commitment to the USPS kicked in…and I looked for a fig leaf to cover myself.

“I’ve got to get back to the car!!!”

So I wandered back to the place I’d left the vehicle…right in front of an illegal chop shop and catty-corner to the crack house….AND MY CAR WAS GONE.

MY CAR WAS GONE.  THE MAIL WAS GONE.  MY LIFE WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME.

I was frantic….running down the street, around all the corners I came to…looking, looking, looking….LOOKING HARD.

MY CAR…AND THE MAIL….WAS GONE.

In my dream, I must have run for at least half an hour.  I was nervous about this “losing the mail” situation.

“Why’d I ever stop to listen to that faux Gary Clark….Jr. ?!!!  I’m ruined.”

I couldn’t figure out how to get out of losing all this mail.

I felt like Pinocchio on his second day at Pleasure Island.

And then I remembered…in the midst of the mildest bad dream I’ve had in a while…I remembered that I could WAKE UP.

What do they call that?  Cognizant Dreaming?  Lucid Dreaming?  I don’t really know…but I remembered that I could wake up and the part that could be so damaging if it happened in real life would just go away.

So I woke up and it was all over and I knew that I had another chance at another perfect day of bringing the mail to the people correctly.

My string of perfect days was unbroken….it was only a dream after all.

But, while my dream lasted, it was a lot of fun to be standing in the crowd listening to some really good cover band play the blues.

I guess that’s why they make repercussions as painful as possible.  We’d all be chasing butterflies if the payback for enjoying ourselves wasn’t so damaging.

Dreams are pretty strange.  I’m glad I could wake up from this one…no matter how much fun it was at the beginning.

 

rich enough to simplify

Posted on by June 20, 2013

Watching this, it makes me wonder if you don’t have to have some resources to really live the simple life?

When frugality and simple living is a choice, it sure does seem a lot more appealing…otherwise you’d lay in bed at night and wonder how it must feel to go into Wal-Mart and buy a brand new boombox?

There’s (possibly) a lot of satisfaction in living in a cardboard box…there may be a homeless man somewhere who waxes eloquent about how free he feels and how close to nature his lifestyle choice allows him to be.

But…I doubt it.

I don’t know…there’s something both great and kind of creepy about this sort of thing.  There’s a self-consciousness to this that kind of bugs me.

I don’t think that somebody slogging their way through a day working at McDonalds…going home to some overpriced rental home or apartment….eating whatever is easy and filling and cheap….I doubt that they’re going to find getting really philosophical about their lives very appealing.

This seems to be the “country equivalent” of the minimalist Architectural Digest home that takes a lot of work to get to the bare, minimalist stage.

I’ve watched this a couple of times now….and it’s bugging me.

There are a million….no, a kazillion…people around the world living like this by circumstance.  It’s what they know…it’s not a choice…it’s not some spiritual quest…it’s hammering out a living without expectation of something bigger.  It’s just the way they live.

This is an expensive way to live.  Maybe these people built their own house…I don’t know the details of their lives, and I shouldn’t pass judgement…but she strikes me as someone who probably had some craftsmen come in and build this thing, this life, this house to exacting specifications to help them reach an idealized simplicity.

I guess that if I have enough time on my hands to pay any attention to how someone else lives that I have too much time on my hands.

This is a nice little house.  It’s a good way to live.

But…again, the “but”….this really bugs me.

The luxury of considering our “innermost lives” in the context of simple living…it’s not something that some folks out in the world have the time to wax eloquent about.

Live in a little house…be thankful for what you have…live and let live…be a good human.

Any of that rolls easy on my mind.

Just don’t be creepy.  If you’re going to simplify, just don’t be creepy.

Please….don’t be creepy in general.

And save your candles for night-time.

a place to stay

Posted on by June 16, 2013

“You just have to put your mind to it….and that’s what scares people.”

What a tremendous thing it would be to…in addition to an education…give a kid a place to stay that was their own.

What an education it would be if the young person made themselves a place to live.

This is a pretty inspiring movement.  I’d written before about tiny homes …but it was kind of a response to what I thought were a bunch of folks with money building these expensive boutique tiny homes just because the movement had become trendy.

If you google tiny homes…or check out Lloyd Kahn’s blog or books , you’ll see that there’s a broad range of situations going on.  It’s not just wealthy trend followers working at being “hip”.

I love funky building…and I love the thought that we can build in a way that provides freedom from mortgages and being “tied down”.  That’s pretty inspiring.

Check out this video for an example of doing the “tiny home” thing on very little money…

I’ve said it before…the world is a BIG PLACE.

There are so many different ways to live…why not in a “tiny home”?