Dreams

I seldom remember dreams, although recently I have been plagued with clear memories of dreams I would prefer not to recall. Not unpleasant, just desperately mundane. Spreadsheets and sales reports, business plans and cash flow statements ... deathly boring, ordinary and indicative of my unhealthy obsession with work.

C tells me that I have been sitting up in bed and talking to her

M: What did you do with the spreadsheet?

C: WTF are you talking about. Nothing.

M: I sent it to you

C: You did not

This continues for some time until, mid-sentence, I fall back to my pillow, apparently deeply asleep.

I am interested that C engages in these conversations, it's not like they hold much entertainment value. Mind you, I would encourage that conversation if roles were reversed ... and see if I could guide it into more interesting territory. But then I can be a bit of a bastard that way.

So last night I dreamed (the snippet I remember on waking) that I had sent some hard friends to have a word with someone who is irritating me at the moment.

It's Brad and Janet, hardly the hardest of my acquaintances. They are standing at the offenders door, arms around each others shoulders. They are arguing about who will knock when the door opens and the offender, jaw jutting, pupils pinpricked in blazing bloodshot eyes says "what?"

There are three of them now, perhaps they felt they needed help. I think it's Clyde. They are all identically dressd for a school production of West Side Story. Leather jackets and white T's. they have shaven heads though and are a little buffer than in life. They look friendly, but menacing. (How do they pull that off?)

Brad looks at Clyde and says "let's throw the fucker off the balcony, nobody will miss him"

Clyde says "Righto" in an English accent and disappears inside, his arm around the shoulders of the offender, shoulders slumped he seems resigned.

I know that's the last I will see of him. I feel nothing.

Brad is sharing a sandwich with Janet.

Now "let's throw the fucker off the balcony, nobody will miss him" is a line I heard uttered when I was lying beaten on the floor of a hotel room, in another life. I remember thinking ... you are right, get it over with ... it's easier than fighting back.

a most unusual meditation

I have become conscious that I manically multitask, sipping coffee, lighting cigarette, typing left handed. But meditation aint like that is it? Kinda sacred, requiring the exculsion of all else. Besides, I have always thought of it as just sitting (before it became walking and a few other things I won't cop to here). Hmmm.

A few weeks ago I fell in love with a little orchid from the Mekong Delta. They had been cleverly potted in snail shells, which was cool until you put them on a flat surface. So I made a mobile. Bamboo and raffia, feathers (of course) and a couple of large crystals which were not that happy with the light on my god-spot. It's been christened the "questionably cathartic potatoes on a string" by a smug and cynical friend. qcpoas (there's a fine san click in that like "!darrell". If you do not know that amusing story, drop me a line, I'd love to share it).

Yeah, yeah ... I know what you are thinking. He's making shit with refuse from the gods again ... up the lithium dose. Give me a break, at least it's not hanging from a fresh piercing. That's growth innit?

Anyhoo ... It didn't like the light (or the cigarette smoke) in the study either.

So it grew a little, courtesy of the Bluebird whole food market and my apparent inability to visit there without shedding a few k. And moved to a new spot above the bath. It's very happy there.

So long as I have run the bath well in advance and can't hear the geyser filling, I like to meditate in the bath. With my head under the water I can hear my heartbeat. Makes me feel like I have achieved a new level of mastery.

So, I have taken to doing my "torture pillow" exercise, in the bath, with ice packs on my knee (to get that over and done with and to increase the load ... (I wanna walk in Spain and Greece and I can do without crutches on a camel in Giza)

... and meditating.

This morning the damned geyser was doing it's thing and my heart and I were not connecting. I opened my eyes and got such a gift.

I like the view of qcpoas from below; but this morning it was awesome. Wreathed in the rising steam the orchids looked fat and warm, wet and happy. The feathers were beaded with moisture and the overhead light had pierced the top of the central crystal, punching scattered pinpricks of colour.

Sorry heartbeat, you'll have to wait your turn. I blissed out in that little landscape for half an hour.

It's going to be a very good day.

a hitch in the unfurl

Hmmm.

In taking my inventory it's my part that is important so before the ... to be continued there's this post, post script.

I've been here before. I create this.

I am handling this very differently but I still seem to create a victims role for myself. WTF is that about I wonder?

The sticky unfurling of tenuous wings ...

or

4:30 am and nothing better to do

So here we are. In a pretty pickle ... just the way I wanted it and wondering at the wisdom of that.

A friend from the land of oz suggested that this was a spiritual awakening, well yeah, isn't it all if the consciousness is engaged?

But I do get the drift, it's only when things are hard that I grow, when I realise that my view of the road is blocked by the close up I have of my own ass.

I give my head a shake and take a step to the side, out of my own way.

Reframe.

Hmmm ... there's a tawdry collection of mixed metaphorish nonsense.

Oh well.

So life got a little more interesting for Sheriff Woody yesterday, tight assed little goody two-shoes, hell bent on impressing the irrelevant. There I was; counting the days left in a job where all luster was lost. Covering my ass and going all co-dependent on my staff’s asses. (There are a lot of asses about this morning … wonder what the Freudian significance is there?)

Buzz Lightyear had blown into town a few weeks ago, explaining a lot of Machiavellian bullshit and abuse (allow me a little whine, or stop reading now ‘cos I guess I am feeling a tad sorry for myself, righteous and resolved of course, but self pitying nonetheless. There is bound to be more)

Where was I, oh yes, Buzz. Very smart and qualified and focused … not a very good fit in this burg. A BBBEE appointment to the position that I had been offered, and accepted. The appointment would have been entirely justified without assassinating Woody. A smart move really. Woody really should have had his wits about him. Sometimes Woody can be Mr Potato Head. Actually, sometimes Woody can be Rex … "I don't think I could take that kind of rejection!" even when the whole plan is to leave.

Being pushed this way is just not cool.

On the sensible advice of friends this, the larger portion of this blog, has been suspended in goodwill for the undeserving.

Watch this space.

I am starting to feel like this …

To be continued …

Oh, before I go. All this of course needs to be framed. Reframed.

This is a good thing. This frees me up to do what I want to do. It's not the way I would have chosen to exit. I have old fashioned ideas about honour and dignity. I am something of a pompous ass sometimes.

But it is undeniably good. Faster than I could have engineered. When did I ever complain about a little instant gratification?

Now if I can just get a little help with formatting this damned blog.

I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter... starter... starter...
Starter...

Procrastination, priorities and motivation (to the cadence of wampeters foma and granfaloons)

A Wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. Facebook or any social network might be a case in point.

"Foma" are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel”

A "granfalloon" is a proud and meaningless association of human beings.

Face book, I guess is an example

That’s a damned good title for Vonnegut Jnr’s book.

Quite why book titles would be running through my head as I wake and check the time, several times after 1am, is unclear. Why those thoughts should be shot through with restructured legal agreements and images of discussing a business plan with a uni professor is more obvious but no more reassuring.

I have work undone.

Procrastination, like masturbation, seems like a good idea at the time. But in the end, I am only fucking myself. So I roll out of bed into the cold at 3:30am. Fill and fire up the kettle en route to light incense in the study.

Coffee has become a meditation. Warming plunger and favourite cup, heating the milk just so, filtered water allowed to rest for 20 seconds before splashing over exotic crushed beans releases the scent and my synapses start to twitch. The first sip a judgement. Hmmm some nicotine. Now I am ready to face my keyboard.

And so I blog. Revised forecast, business plan and partnership agreements chitter softly in the background. Supporting one another in their judgment of this selfish indulgence. Screw em. If procrastination be the food of sloth, play on.

A friend lost his son last week, not being careless, the child died a few hours after birth. I was so moved by his response. He shared about the outpouring of love from friends and fellows. He was not unprepared for the loss and believed that the love he had for his firstborn son would somehow fill the gap. That did not happen and he was overwhelmed by the grief of the loss. In the depth of that feeling he found a message. The guy is a recovering smack addict. A no-hoper who has, by grace, been clean for ten years in the program which saved his life, and mine. He shared this: “Recovery has taught me how to be a man i never thought i could be. Because of the steps i am able to be strong for my partner when she needs me to be, to be there for my son when he needs me, to ask for help and receive love when i need it.”

… taught me to receive love when I need it. There’s a statement of self worth without arrogance. I like that.

I have been meaning to write that for a while. Procrastination has not been the problem. Priorities, the little suckers. I have been wrapped up in satisfying others needs for a while. That and keeping my lily white ass covered ‘cos I am not keen on the static if I do not maintain my diligence. I’m fifty years old and I still do not like getting into trouble. I will go to some really pussy level lengths to avoid it. Like 3:30 am starts to my day.

So this is my reward this morning. A little procrastinatory prose.

Gotta stop that goddamn chittering. I am ashamed that it is going to be the forecast which gets cut from the herd, the benefit of this prize, this motivational interlude. That is not the priority … it’s just the piece of work which will keep me out of trouble.

Sour milk

So ... why does milk sour?

Milk is good. Milk makes you grow big and strong. Bacteria also like to grow in milk but they are microscopic and don't grow big, they divide and multiply, like amoebae, and lava lamps. Strong though, bacteria that is, not amoeba, or lava lamps.

But I digress

I know that to grow, or rather, to divide and multiply, they need energy. Most of that they will get from the lactose in the milk (which is not quite as tasty as the sucrose that I enjoy, but bacteria can’t taste so they are not very discerning). They will use the lactose as an energy source and, in doing so will change it into lactic acid (which, of course) will make the milk taste sour. That’s not the point.

Grasshopper mind digresses even while digressing.

That’s not what I wanted to think about.

Rewind

My milk tastes sour, I throw it away and open another defrosted sachet (I don’t like frozen milk but that’s another story and not a very interesting one at that and I am trying to maintain some focus here). The new sachet is also tainted and, I suspect that the next sachet, defrosting in the fridge downstairs, is too.

There’s a niggle in the back of my mind about a superstition, just a little too far back to scratch. Something about … milk souring because you have spoken ill of someone or run over a black cat crossing your path under a ladder with a broken mirror or something.

This horrid situation at work smacks of sour milk … no that’s sour grapes isn’t it?

She has a face that would sour milk? No, that is not it …

Digress, digress.

Google hasn’t helped me.

I speak to elder daughter in the land of the long white clowned, she has wiccan wisdom but I am distracted (what a surprise) by my love of reaching out over the ether and hearing her voice, the whalesong of her man coaxing food into my chattering grand daughter.

So I failed to make use of that resource.

I am not comforted by my magpie mind’s suggestion that I be satisfied with the knowledge that many foods, which were valued when we were conscious enough to honour our sustenance, had superstitions associated with them to deter their waste and to teach children not to wander into the forest with a witchy looking woman unless they had a chicken bone and an Grimm brother handy.

My magpie mind, expert repository of inanity but steadfast in its refusal to hang onto today’s date or the fact that my tax return might please the receiver sometime soon, is smug and self satisfied (redundant and tautologous). If Google couldn’t find some wiccan wisdom to provide an “ah, of course ... how could I have forgotten” moment then how am I to satisfy you? Can only justify, scratch the mental tickle with the fact that that nugget of trivia is unimportant when bathed in the light of the magnificence of the senseless data resident in my current consciousness.

What the hell was it that I once heard about why milk sours?

To hell with this, I am off to buy fresh milk.

"Meditation... disolves the mind. It erases itself. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass." Tim Robbins

Café cruising in Cape Town a little while ago, looking for breakfast with a view. It’s 7:45 and a crew of teenagers order a bottle of wine. I wonder if they will have cereal with that.

I’m thinking about my day in the world, I am thinking about not really thinking about what happened this morning … well, I am thinking about it all right, but it’s slippery.

Strange experience, good, but strange. For odd and boring reasons I’d spent the night in a hotel in Long street … I am a few years past that being a good thing. Dead tired but not able to sleep I decided to just get the day started.

I have a pretty set morning routine … get coffee going en route to the study. Chat to God, meditate, work on my step … then it’s back to putting the coffee together and a day in the world.

So the meditation. Simple stuff, candle to focus on, follow the breathing, mostly stop the thoughts of the day from intruding by holding them and gently letting go, persistent little suckers though … and they tend to swarm. Mostly that’s it. It’s calming though. Sometimes I get to relax inward enough to hear my heart, that’s cool. Less often I can get in touch with my blood flow and get my hands to warm, or my head … whatever, that’s something I reach for. I look forward to whatever is beyond that for me.

This was a morning of low expectations. I was in a hotel room, unwelcome gift of a migraine. It had been a noisy neon flashing night and not much had changed. About an hour before dawn I sat on my pillow, got the old om namah shivaya going in my head like elevator muzak and started to follow my breathing. I wish I knew how I got there but this, I guess, was about being unconscious

… I felt a connection from the base of my spine, like a tail rooted in the world but linked back, through time and forward through me, my chest, to the future. One.

A bead on a string of selves. Heavy. Older. Wiser. Harder.

Cloaked in an older self like a coat, a second skin.

Muscled corded thighs, woodgrain hands, tools.

A sense of healing and healing.

Sage and storyteller. Younger and older.

Light flows and rolls, gentle pulse, it felt like time.

Long time, no time.

Falling, falling. Held dark and warm uncoiling. Quiet. Quiet self. Still. Still self.

Blue, white, white, white. Belly deep voice.

A calling. Insistent, irresistible gentle pulling. Warm wise eyes, eldergrey.

Wearing this self fills me, really fills me, with a warm dark comfort … viscous, liquid, it’s a holding place.

Then a rush, a foreign emotion, unfamiliar … Teeth clenched, hot and hard and sharp. I want to howl, can only groan.

No label, no value, no register.

Linked, through me, cog and wheel.

Forward, behind and here. All Here. Only Here.

Stand with me now. Stand. Here.

Now, with me, in me, through me.

Caught breath and a little manic shiver.

It’s been an hour. Where the hell have I been?

And that is why it was so slippery ...

Namaskar, thanks, again, for visiting. Keep coming back.

Bathed in monitor light

Computers are getting smarter all the time ... scientists tell us that soon they will be able to converse with us; computers that is, I doubt scientists will ever be able to converse with us. I spend so much time in front of this machine. Portal to the ether, vast repository of knowledge, albeit provenance unknown. I seldom read newspapers or magazines anymore. I check my mail on my mobile while I drive on the freeway, respond too, on occasion. I have somehow succumbed to the pace, the urgency. That shift where I have ensared myself in a need to be informed fast and to respond faster. There was a time when, if a man missed a coach he settled down at the inn for a few days to catch the next. Today I get irritated when I miss the first gap in a revolving door. Evolution or insanity?

Chat has made email seem pedestrian and formal. I prefer text to voice. My monitor, my shield? A filter, holding communication at arms length? I can no longer compose with a pen and paper, I need to spread my fingers qwerty-wise to engage brain (or bath and be damned by my inability to record).

Life intrudes ...

Shirky's an inspiration. "For the first time, we have the tools to make group action truly a reality. And they are going to change the world". With respect Clay, tense error. They have changed the world, irrevocably ... and it's extrapolar. Gathering pace in a way that makes be think that there's a barrier out there, about to be broken ... a social sonic boom.

Around 1440 Johannes Gutenberg triggered massive social change with the invention of his printing press, heralding the renaissance era and a century of social chaos in Europe. (Stephen Fry on the Gutenberg press here www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zqgs4iS76c) Then keepers of history, the core of catholicism and much else, scribes, gifted literate monks, are consigned to a role of decorative calligraphers. Fifty years later, a well meaning Abbott demonstrates the effectiveness of the shift in publishing his impassioned defence of that profession ... in movable type. And so, through the growth of literacy, enlightenment, the next quantum leap, and the next and the next. Personal computers, irc, the internet, email, mobile phones, social networking, blogging. It feels to me like we are moving from evolution, through revolution to ... to what? Change is becoming like watching cornstalks in a field from a passing train. It's breatholding to contemplate.

And where, pray tell, am I going with this? Hmmm ... you may well ask. Random orange thoughts these are Yoda. No more.

Sleepy

Hum

Best intentions cast aside

bath and rest eschewed, computer bound

dabbling in trivia, bathed only in light of monitor light

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

dipping toes

testing water

committing not

and much left undone

luxury of anniversary

of a day inhumanity marked

giving procrastination space

a way to end a day?

Thoughts trip skip. Gambol tumble lightly

mayfly lifecycle, slippery lil suckers, nothing sticks

Back another day I think

blink and wink

When facility returns to line em up

dust em off

write em down

g'nite

More NOT SURE I CAN LIVE DOWN HERE ANYMORE or maybe … RUNNING ON EMPTY

So, as I lie in the fragrantly bubbled bath, a wrap around analgesic really, writable stuff drifts through my head faster than I can remember it, much less record it.

I have been reading Clay Shirky (yes, in the bath), by way of learning something about my latest interest, means of whiling away the better part of my days and potential source of income. It's very good stuff. I'm on a mission to apply the "being conscious" stuff. I have defined myself by what I do for too long. I spend so much of my time earning a living. I start well and then fall back into most of what I do being an unpleasant effort, not so much losing interest in what I do, rather taking my eye of the ball and finding myself in a space I never really intended visiting. I think that a positive step is to earn my living doing something that really interests me, with people I like and respect and learn from.

I digress.

Clay Shirky. He speaks with clarity on how scribes became redundant professionals after the advent of Guttenberg's press made mass publication cost effective. In much the same way, several hundred years later, the internet threatens the livelihood of publishers and makes journalists of us all (if we so choose). The internet, social networking, blogging … these are not inventions … they are events, they have already happened, they can’t be undone. Like my relationship with my higher power … they don’t require my approval or even my understanding, just my acceptance. So what, what now? Where do I go with this?

Judge me arrogant, naive or ignorant but for me this is a nexus point. Having found myself here … what do I do with it. It feels just too important to let it drift by unnoticed, to become a victim of this circumstance rather than engage and master it.

And so I blog.

And now the phone rings and I see another facet of this form of communication. The ease with which I can interrupt myself.

Blog #1

Well. Here we go.

Ten years playing with the internet thing, many more a wannabe writer and here I sit ... fingers dance nimbly (well, nimbly enough) over the trusty keyboard and what do I have to say?

damn

I think about cutting and pasting from my "writing" folder, but I can't find it. I see that I am in my "my pictures" folder ... that explains it. Mark personal, Writing ... that's the one.

Hmmm ... what would I share out of this collection of non-sequiteurs? The proverbial "ass in the wind"

How did this get in there ...

My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it. - Daniel Gilbert

That's just a quote. Was it meant to inspire me to write something profound?

I miss my format painter ... I am distracted by this font change but will show my mastery over my obsessive tendencies by ignoring it and pressing on.

How about this:

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Another inspirational quote? Iconic really, where I live.

Or this:

NOT SURE I CAN LIVE DOWN HERE ANYMORE

or maybe …

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Lying on my back, I open my eyes in the dark. I am surprised by the tears on my cheeks, wetting my neck and my pillow. I don’t feel sad. I must have been asleep, I don’t cry when I’m awake. That’s good, crying, that is. But I feel like I have been awake all night and I know that I am not going to get back to sleep.

Hours later I sit on the parapet, kicking heels on weathered brick. I have always liked rooftops, and early mornings. Enjoying the height and the freshness of the night’s lingering chill. Warmth of the sun’s first rays. There’s a quality to the early morning morning light. Kind. A promise of beginnings. Below, birdsong and the muted rumble of distant workbound traffic. Abrasive aubade in the calm, like the call of a loerie, sorry, it’s a turaco now isn’t it?

Some joggers go by, breath steaming, feet in trainers pad padding, metronoming their conversation up to me, punctuated, like boxers’, by their explosive talk on steamy breaths. There are always joggers. I remember a fellow falling man asking “where the fuck do they come from? Go to the middle of the Congo with nothing but a knapsack, a book of matches, and a package of trail mix. Sit in a lotus position and become one with nature. In ten minutes a jogger will run by. I'll wager you $100 on this.”

Most days I can pull off my impersonation as a member of the species pretty well and without too much effort. It’s been more difficult recently and I am starting to wonder whether the fault might not lie with me after all. I think that I am just getting tired; tired of the pretense of it all. It’s been so long now that I am not sure what’s real anymore. So many days and months and years of meeting expectations; of trying to meet expectations.

… I just don’t know what parts of me are me and what I’ve conjured up for somebody else’s benefit and found myself stuck with. What am I if not an amalgam of experience? How much do I chose to carry and choose to discard? How much is unconscious? And there, of course, is the key. It’s getting grounded, in touch, conscious.

A splat of metaphorical birdshit on my shoulder interrupts this reverie. I need some coffee and to post this before I chicken out and start editing it.

Namaste … thank you for visiting … keep coming back.