zenscription

ken and rocket club

2010-07-01T04:15:00.001-07:00

ken and rocket club
Originally uploaded by zen

By now you've heard the West Asheville news, the main East West-Asheville music venue will be closing doors this Saturday. I got a chance to talk with Ken Klehm and he said he could "wax poetic for hours" about why it didn't quite work out, and he headed the list with the large number of Asheville venues, including those that had very deep pockets and those that were willing to resort to unorthodox activity. But it wasn't sour grapes for Ken, as he included the downturn in economy and size of the venue, with it's high ceilings and wide open spaces not providing quite the cozy and intimate atmosphere that he imagined.

Ken also talked about what he wanted to do now, and he honestly hadn't thought much about it, but scrunched up his face at the thought of putting together a resume to pitch to the 9-5 workforce. "My favorite all-time job was as a SCUBA dive instructor. I was good at it and loved making it fun and exciting for people." Ken has the kind of self-effacing egoless manner that would make a good teacher and he said that "in the 5 or so years i taught he only got one complaint." Which was why the establishment he worked for gave him free rein to teach his style. Ken also reminisced about cave diving - an activity that would scare the crap out of me. His 'final exam' for cave diving certification was to go 1/4 mile into a cave where no surface exits were and buddy-breath with a partner all the way back to the entrance in darkness and while the instructor messed with the return line and undid fin straps to unnerve him. He loved it and never got rattled. Which is the way ken is - unflappable. I don't doubt whatever he does do he'll do with all his heart and soul.

We'll be seeing Ken around East West Asheville probably at the DeSoto Lounge which was started by one of his protogees and is "a fine bar, indeed."

Photography, Hashtags and Language

2010-05-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

This post from Scott Bourne got me thinking.

The funny thing about language is that using it makes it so. Right now, 'togs' is meaningless because the majority of people are not using it, but the reality is if it became a de-facto standard thru use, THEN it may become as powerful as "photography"

More probably it will mean something else, though. Think about what is in your mind's eye when someone says "photography." Now think of the word "pictures." It implies photography by the family or casual photographer generally. Pictures of a trailer park aren't high art like "photographs." "Pics" may seem even more casual, but "B&W" has a whole other set of implications. AND it's short.

And twitter is about brevity and communication in 'code.' I RT'ed your LOL just FYI. So while it may be nice to communicate with masters of search engines, Google and Yahoo and Bing are in some ways slaves to what *WE* do as communicators. Just like photographs.

caught napping

2009-06-14T10:10:00.001-07:00

caught napping
Originally uploaded by zen

Man, it must suck for people who can't nap.

Part of the problem i think for those who have trouble napping is that the body confuses it with sleeping for the night. It's not. It's more like restful meditation for less than an hour. Lie down in a quiet room, think of things - altering with the thought that you will get up in 45 minutes - and don't try to sleep. The 3rd time you do this you will have napped (but you may not be sure in your head that you actually napped - sometimes you can dream you were awake).

The point is to rest. Think of things but let them go. It's ok to think of the dust on the ceiling fan but don't imagine yourself cleaning it off. That's for later; right now your 'doing' is napping.

We normally don't think of 'doing' something as we sleep or nap, but that's exactly what it is. While nighttime sleep is necessary to most people, napping is not and so the first worry is "I'm wasting time. Time i could be balancing my checkbook. Or gardening." It doesn't matter that what you think you should be doing. It's a tough spot to be in. Rarely have you ever napped restfully, so you have a hard time giving it validity as a 'doing.' But, once you've napped and awoken refreshed a few times you can't believe that you've added another day to your day!

It's rare, but sometimes... sooometimes a nap will end early or be interrupted or begin to drift into the abyss that is sleep. THEN you will wake up completely fogged. Unglued to reality, and it isn't good. In fact for some - like myself- it's actually physically painful. Your head hurts not like a headache from the inside but like the result of thinking from the outside. Not the outside of the brain, but the very outside world that your brain isn't. If that analogy is hard to conceptualize, it's deliberate because it's exactly how your brain hurts. It can't wrap itself around reality anymore, and it takes some 10-15 minutes to become unpainful, connected and useful again.

Anyway, that's my thinking on napping at the moment.

today's thought

2009-06-11T04:12:00.001-07:00

The path to LOL is paved with WTF.

standing there next to the truth

2009-04-17T12:30:00.001-07:00

standing there next to the truth
Originally uploaded by zen

Getting into Heaven is easy... just decide whatever you want the truth to be and live by it. Interpret it openly or behind closed doors, it doesn't matter. Or, if you're too lazy or stupid to decide what the truth is to you, then find a religious leader who is passing their truth off as universal and follow them. That way you wont even be burdened with having to decide what Heaven might be for you.

April's fool

2009-04-01T20:25:00.001-07:00

zen's new shirt
Originally uploaded by zen

Last night Helen put out a shirt for me to wear which she doesn't do often, but i do appreciate. However, this was one of my favorite work shirts where i had worn out the elbow and she said she'd fix by turning it into a short-sleeved shirt.

She did that and more. When i put the shirt on it felt scratchy by the sleeve and when i saw the lace trim i howled with laughter, went back into the bedroom and kissed and laughed the morning into light.

I decided to wear it to work, pretending i didn't notice that the sleeves were 'funny.' And i made it through 2 meetings (one with 4 different directors) without anyone saying anything to me.

At the end of the 2nd meeting when Tim asked if anybody had anything else to report, i said that I did and began to tell them that "Helen sets my shirts out for me and i didn't realize the april fools joke until i got to work..." Laughter and not a little bit of relief.

The funniest reaction was much later when the head of Medical Records told me that she was glad that i told everyone it was an april fool's joke because she was mortified because she (seriously) thought i was perhaps wearing women's underwear under my clothing and that somehow a small part was showing!

I am Helen's sweet April Fool and love her fiercely!

my photomural tentatively approved for Indigo Hotel

2009-03-24T15:39:00.001-07:00

my photomural tentatively approved for Indigo Hotel
Originally uploaded by zen

The Indigo tentatively approved my photomural for the inside of some of their hotel rooms! The curved wall separates the room from the closet and wraps around the edge. Was kinda weird seeing one of my photos so big!

Helen and i are off to celebrate.

laminated ginkgo leaf painting

2009-02-20T19:11:00.001-08:00

laminated ginkgo leaf painting
Originally uploaded by zen

In the little box with all the postcards at Goodwill i found this little gem - a scene painted on a ginkgo baloba leaf. Obviously newer and laminated and yet hand-painted it enthralls me as i look deep into the sweet painting feeling the light drizzle and the interactions of friends and strangers near the bridge.

As far as the writing, a good friend of mine knows a Professor of Japanese & Asian Studies at Furman University and passed photos on to him to evaluate the writing. He was able to conclude that it is indeed Chinese.

Top right: The second character in the four does not make sense in Japanese, but other three do: Water-X-Four-Seasons. It seems it is part of a series of 4 seasons of water. It is Summer and Rain (the two characters below the first four).

Bottom right: The real bottom one is the name of the painter: The first character is his/her Family name and it probably means tree, but abbreviated in post-revolutionary Chinese way, which is different from Japanese. Second and third are his/her given name. The second in Japanese means "wish fulfilled ." The third is again a post-revolutionary abbreviation and I do not know the meaning. The fourth means "Painted/Picture" indicating the person with the name of the three characters painted/drew this. The vertical 4 small characters and the horizontal 3 characters are not the same as the painter's name and written in more ancient, stylized characters and are difficult to decipher.

Bottom left: They seem to be the stamps of either artist or publisher, but I cannot decipher. The top two characters in the red stamps are (from the right) "to stretch" and "to obey" and the bottom left is similar to "silver."

Just one of those weird things that come across our lives for a few moments...

I didn't get a decent inauguration day

2009-01-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

And not just because i was at work, but because a racist ruined it. The TV in the breakroom tuned to CNN to allow people to watch the inauguration during their approved breaks and lunches. At around 9:30 I was in there alone with Lauren and just finishing getting my coffee. It was motorcade and nothing really going on about the inauguration. Jamie (not her real name) from Medical Records came in and made a deeply disgruntled noise, obviously in reference to the proceedings on the TV.

I said "well, even if you don't like him, it *IS* an historic occasion. I mean we’ve elected a black man."

"No! She immediately started raising her voice. "Why all this stuff about him being black? He's only half-black and people want to make a big deal of it! It's NOT historic! He's a man. Just a man and people are saying what a historic thing."

I said "Well, what if Hillary had been elected?" That would be an historic occasion too." I didn’t speak angrily or as loudly as Janeen, but was only trying to perhaps soothe whatever was really bothering her. “I mean Hillary isn’t a man first unless she’s transgendered or something,” Trying to make a joke of it to diffuse the tension. Lauren responded but Janeen clearly did not hear it.

At this point William, who is black, walked in and she pointedly asked him, "William!" she said. “Are you black or are you a man?"

William, getting something out of the refrigerator did not answer that I can remember (Though if he did it was a soft answer) because Janeen began getting very agitated. “My ancestors are Irish and it’s not historic if an Irish person gets elected to president!”

“Well, Kennedy…” I began, but decided it was best to leave the break room even with a silent Lauren and William there. Outside in the hallway were two people who were not entering the breakroom because of the rukus Janeen was creating. I did not say anything in leaving; I wanted nothing to further anger her.

I beat feet out of there and got back to my office where Stephanie made a face of oh-my-god and said "I don't wanna know... i just don't wanna know." And i don't blame her. It was weird.

Turns out Janeen went to her office and slammed the door. A co-worker of hers asked her if anything was wrong and Janeen went back to being ballistic and laid into her using the 'bitch' word.

Well, it turns out that the whole thing found the ear of the CEO and he asked my boss if he, my boss and i could come to his office for some after-spin. Asking me about what i thought my idea of historic was.

What? What-what?

When George W took (i'm sorry 'won') his second term, i had to hear the jibes and arrogance of medical conservatives poking fun at me for my position. And i didn't go all ballistic on anyone though i was, i'm sure, just as angry as Janeen about the outcome. But behaving civilly at work was the order of the day. I didn't even hate the conservatives, i just couldn't believe the nation as a whole was that stupid. Still, i kept up the smile of resignation that i had to.

Anyway, she just bitched herself out of a job. So she will remember the resignation as the day she got fired. Or quit. Or whatever. But anyway, it so upset me that i really didn't feel like watching the inauguration in the break room. I felt like i somehow inadvertently initiated the loss of someone's job, and during these hard times - even if she deserved it - even if something else was eating at her - it can only make her less satisfied with her life.

Luckily, Susan had a great inauguration party with Kyle, Jen, and Charles back from the land of the Kiwi and Helen and i ate delicioius food and sang "Barack Obama" and other songs.

It's better now.

Demo Derby

2008-12-02T21:44:00.000-08:00

I originally started writing this in the MountainXpress forums, but ought to pass it along here.

I drove demolition derby for 5 or 6 years in a row when i was living in the Northern Virginia area (Manassas had the best fair i think), and every year we'd send our application in; get our car number back; buy a $100 car; pre-smash it up - knocking all of the glass out; weld it shut; put in a motorcycle gas tank; paint it up and go smash the **** out of it!

Some advice?

Make sure to weld your trunk firmly, not just wire it shut. The first year (as seen above) we wired the trunk shut, but the first hard hit - remember, your butt is your weapon - snapped the wires and the trunk lid came up making it very difficult to see. And hitting a 'dead car' or a driver's side door with the back bumper is an illegal move.

Study the car classes carefully and try to buy the heaviest, strongest car for the class. For the compact cars early hondas and toyotas are best and the midsize group the older more 'metal' cars. In the heavy group, try and find a Cadillac or better yet a Chrysler Imperial if they allow it (it was built on a truck frame).

Underfill the tires a bit. You'll be fighting on mud and you want the most rubber on the 'road', plus it will allow the tire to 'give' a bit before it punctures. Don't fill the tires with water, you'll be found out.

At the very start, hesitate. This allows everyone else to pull out and all those juicy chrome radiators/grilles are available for the taking.

Oh, i have tons of advice, but the main thing is be safe with a great helmet and leather or fireproof clothing and enjoy the heck out of it! Remember, too, that it's entertainment - kinda like WWWrasslin' so play it up, mug it up, drive crazy on the field and get involved.

oh, and bring a great mechanic with you - you're allowed one in most derbys... if you win, you'll be driving in the final round and you want that car to survive just long enough to give you the win.

Oh, one optional last piece of equipment? A hot tub. You will absolutely ache from head to toe for at least a week after. But the best part is when you're driving around town, you know exactly what it takes to knock the driver who cut you off into the ditch!

Obamabilia

2008-11-19T01:57:00.001-08:00

ophelia's obama sunrise
Originally uploaded by zen

After successfully branding himself (i loved the 'O' logo), the campaign smartly offered all the campaign stuff at half price on the Obama website and it went like iPhones - and so they had no merch to clear out. Smart little capitalists...

But the country is still hungry for Obamabilia and even local places offer food and drinks to the Obama tune. Such as Ophelia's Obama Sunrise and the new Growing Young Cafe ( http://www.growingyoungcafe.com/home ) offering up the new Obamaccino (any two flavors to a regular cappuccino. Yes you can!) and i'm sure there's more locally, i just don't get out much to eateries and cafes lately...

And then there's the Etsy-Obama connection with everything from 'Hope on a Rope'

to to to "Yes we Can cans" and just about anything you could think of.

In the more traditional merch world there's Obama Condoms to keep the 'little democrat' covered, political fusion portraits of Lincoln-Obama or the cover of Time that has Obama as FDR.

There's much much more out there, but i'll leave you with the local graffiti on Obama,

From Photobasement.com

2008-11-13T13:48:00.001-08:00

From Photobasement.com
Originally uploaded by OldhaMedia

I don't know why people are so careless. He really should put the camera strap around his neck. He could drop that expensive camera and then where'd he be, eh? - just another nearly naked pervert making his niece more resolved to do better in school.

(Note: This is NOT my photo either)

Goodbye sweet nightingale - Miriam Makeba

2008-11-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

news

Miriam Makeba fan site

when i hear "i know"

2008-10-20T19:30:00.001-07:00

fence hand lens
Originally uploaded by zen

We should dedicate our lives to fighting childhood education that reinforces regurgitation of the stale, rigid and basically lazy thinking. We should also strike the phrases "i know" and "i understand" from the lexicon of our youth, which has become as glib as the word 'like' and has about as much conviction, because once you utter them there is - by implication - no further evaluation necessary. We as adults will never understand anything that we say 'we know' because everything and i mean everything is open to re-evaluation and re-assessment. If we think that there exists out there something that isn't open to interpretation or reflective evaluation, then it is the thinker who is dead, the speaker which has become zombified and entombed in his or her own stilted arrogance.

Except of course the statement i just made. :)

motorcycle intimacy

2008-10-11T07:39:00.001-07:00

little orange
Originally uploaded by zen

Just got an email from my motorcycle mechanic, Chris Finlayson of Existential Motorcycles up in Alexander, NC who says that "Little Orange," my Honda CT110 trail/road bike is ready and been given the once-over. Meticulously! Chris detailed the repair and check-up so methodically that his work read like a Zen and the Art of Motorycycle Maintenance story only without the cleaning up of the tools and philosophical ramblings. Sparse and poetic, here it is:

Disassemble clutch and check wear as per manual.
Clutch had been assembled incorrectly.
As a consiquence, the ball retainer on the release mechanism was bent and not allowing the clutch to fully engage. This is the likely cause of the slippage.
Replace with good part from donor motor.
Friction plates well within wear specs.
Centrifugal weights move freely.
Springs all within spec except one which had been bent and crushed.
Replace with spring from donor motor.
Reassemble clutch.
Top up battery with distilled water and charge.
Replace main battery ground wire, which was hanging by a couple of strands.
Clean and reoil air filter element.
Clean/lube/adjust front brake cable.
Install new NGK D8EA spark plug.
Adjust valves - intake ok - exhaust way too loose.
Check compression - 155psi - excellent.
Clean/lube/adjust throttle mechanism and cable.
Fire up engine - runs poorly.
Clean carburetor.
Adjust points - gap way too small.
Dress point surfaces with points file.
Set ignition timing with strobe light.
Fire up engine - runs lovely.
Road test - shifts erratically and jumps out of gear.
Disassemble clutch - all is correct.
Remove/disassemble shift selector mechanism.
Find broken selector arm.
Replace with part from donor motor.
Reassemble.
Road test - all is well.
Angle of rear brake arm at wheel hub suggests that the brake shoes are worn.
Remove rear wheel and inspect.
Shoes should be replaced soon.
Reassemble and rotate rear brake arm rearward on splines to restore maximum mechanical advantage at brake pedal.
Adjust brake pedal free play.
Lube and adjust chain.
Tail light unit loose on fender attached by one bolt. Remove and remount securely.

WHOAH! His relationship with my bike left me a bit jealous. I mean, my interaction with the Honda will be like this:

Inserted key and moved to the run position
Moved petcock to the 'fuel' position
Kick-started the motor - runs lovely still.
Drove down the road until exhausted - had fun.

(repeat)

His relationship with her was definitely more intimate and powerful. I feel like the cheap one-night-stand compared to his understanding of her, but i guess that's true of any great mechanic. Or perhaps it feels like i am the motorcycle's father who has allowed his daughter to date and the mechanic-boyfriend details all the varied ways he had sex with her, or at least understands her poetry or something.

My favorite line in his report is:

Reassemble and rotate rear brake arm rearward on splines to restore maximum mechanical advantage at brake pedal.

oh, bay-bee! Wow, from a mechanic's point of view that just reads like engineering porno!

I plan on picking it up next week and getting to know her a little ride at a time and then, perhaps, i will feel like i should spend some 'quality time' with her and be a little more responsive to 'her needs.' But isn't that the way it's supposed to be?

republicats and democrans

2008-10-07T21:16:00.001-07:00

two dolls
Originally uploaded by zen

The two American political parties have grown too large to sustain themselves in my opinion. Like cells whose surface area and appearances are much too small for the vastness that they contain, they need to split. Both parties. The Republicans are not all moral majority Christians whose only issues are Roe v. Wade and saying prayer in school. Nor do they all want less government and more tax breaks for the wealthy. Democrats are not all godless people who want to separate church and state. Nor are they all nutjobs who want the government to give them free tickets to ride, nor just people who want to hug trees and stop all industry for one spotted owl. Neither side are best represented by their extremists.

Brant called today and opened with “when are people going to wake up and realize that a two-party system means that there will be polarization?” Of course.

I recently went to a site that was actively pursuing a separation of church and state and I wanted to join because it’s something I believe in. The word "God" does not appear within the text of the Constitution of the United States (the Constitution is the ‘law of the land’, not the Declaration of Independence) and the site seemed very open to discussion and had articles and information that I read with interest. Then, when I tried to join, my three choices for my description were “Atheist, Agnostic and ‘don’t care.’ What? What the fuck? I can’t be a religious person who believes in the greatness of our faith in a creator and think that government should be free and distinct of any or one religion?

These cornballs were basically atheistic zealots. They are fundamentalists without religion. Not the same as Satanists because you have to believe in God to believe in Satan (in fact, you NEED Satan if you’re a Christian because how will you justify suffering? God’s All-Powerful and Indifferent Hand? It’s one of the problems with monotheism. Christians have to absolve their God from any misguidance or they look silly. But, yes, I digress.

So how to affect this change, from a one-or-two party system to a multi-party system that truly represents a democracy. The forging of alliances and bonds because no one party is in power. A president from one party, a VP from another party and an executive cabinet made up of many parties, many viewpoints.

First, trash this stinking Electorial College, I say. Go back to one-person/one-vote. Allow my vote to feel like a voice again. If you’re going to vote for McCain in Illinois this year, face it. YOUR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT. If you’re from Oklahoma and you vote for Obama, YOUR VOTE DOESN’T COUNT. It’s an antiquated system and should be junked. Also, all this stinking redistricting of people in high density areas in shapes that look like trails of smoke. District people in clean and simple ways. Try zip codes. Try geographic differences. Use mineral deposits, I don’t care, just stop fucking with the electorate.

And while I’m on a rant of sorts, start electing people who keep laws and bills simple and without riders, without pork. Create one law every other month that doesn’t do anything and attach your states stinking pork to that. The law states that all people must have, or once had moisture in their bodies. Or that swines will officially be called ‘PORK.’ THEN add bridges to nowhere and nuclear power plants and research for toilet seat design and approval for this and that. SHEESH. Stop fucking with my laws!

cruelty or kindness?

2008-10-06T12:46:00.001-07:00

self portrait in store window, originally uploaded by zen.

Longtime friend of mine, Betty, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease more than 5 years ago and have been living with Frank, her son and wife Elaine the entire time. The memory problems have gotten worse in the last year and become nearly untenable for the family and, sadly, it was time to pursue institutional care, even at Betty’s suggestion.

After checking out the best facilities and affordability, they selected a place we’ll call Golden Memories and followed the suggested transfer scheme as follows: When Betty was at her usual health-club they moved all of her furniture and belongings to her new room at Golden Memories and then picked her up from the health club telling Betty they were all going to ‘look at’ the facilities at Golden Memories. When they got there they did look at the new room and left Betty in the hands of the facilitators who occupied her with new stuff to see and do while Frank and Elaine left. They were told not to contact Betty for the next two weeks to let her ‘settle in.’ It was hard for Frank and Elaine, and it felt clandestine and somehow dishonest, but they are doing it.

I see both sides. It seems both cruel and merciful at the same time.

I’ve also seen what Betty has gone through living with her mind slipping away in front of her, the pain and the confusion, and I know both Frank and Elaine are extremely compassionate people. It saddens me and yet I see now how a huge burden has been lifted from the minds and shoulders of F&E, replaced with moments of guilt and moments of relief.

I’ve never had to live with someone with Alzheimer’s and hope that if I ever get it I will have the wherewithal to take my own life before these sweet memories drain into the dirt.

Downtown, Brevard, NC

2008-10-01T18:38:00.001-07:00

Downtown, Brevard, NC, originally uploaded by zen.

A fellow worker owns a Cessna172 and if he doesn't fly occasionally, his bones start to creak. So he asked if i wanted to tag along for a lunchtime flight - well hell yeah! Too bad i didn't have my good camera but at least i had the little sony W200 and snapped madly while we flew the 'practice area' along the road between Mills River and Lake Jocassee. I managed to hold it still enough to get a few good shots of Brevard and some surrounding area.

Plus i love being up there. It's liberating and fuels my love of maps and perspectives. But - and this is weird to my pilot friend - i have no desire to control the plane. I don't doubt i could learn it and i'm smart enough to watch what he does should there be an emergency, but be the pilot? Nope. Not interested. Not afraid either, just no desire to be in control of the plane. Better to be free of even that.

It was a half-hour of sweet heaven.

The local blogger awards

2008-09-17T13:08:00.001-07:00

Felicity's Staff of Everblogging, originally uploaded by zen.

The voting has been opened to the blogger world, so go here and vote! even if you don't vote for me. We want tons of involvement.

Also, try to be at the 3rd Annual ExtravaBlogAversaPaloozathon, which will be Saturday 27th starting at 6 pm (the awards will be around 8pm) in that great little courtyard off of Lexington Avenue connecting Carolina Lane. I'm betting it'll be a fun time.

The photo here is from the previous Blogger party held at Kyle and Jen's where Felicity ran off with awards including "Best Overall" and won the Blogger Staff of Everblogging with which she tried controlling the universe until she realized she really didn't want millions of minions begging her for a job.

gas-up sams award

2008-09-13T14:35:00.001-07:00

2p gasup sams award, originally uploaded by zen.

As of Saturday at 5pm Gas-Up still had gas and still for $3.99. I love this place. But not just for the reason of a failure to gouge people, but because they offer voter registration. They are organizing vans which will drive to the projects and other places in Asheville to get people to the voting booth. Irrespective of how they will vote.

This is a photo of their award at Sams Club. And speaking of awards, i am up for several blog awards at the Extravablogiversapaloozathon which is the compendium of local bloggers. Now, it's all in good fun and it's really a chance to acknowledge many of the people who work waaay harder than i on keeping us informed of something other than what's in my pretty little head. But if you have a mind to, vote for me for these, perhaps more frivolous, awards:

Blogger I'd Most Like to Have a Beer With
Zenscription/Zenography

Least Likely to Care About Traffic
Zenscription

Best Art/Photos
Zenography

Makes Me Feel Happiest
Zenscription

Most Inspirational
Zenography

Thank our lucky stars that i didn't get nominated for "Blogger you'd most like to see naked," because then i know it was a fake!

I'll post the link sometime this upcoming week, or check regularly at blogasheville.

We now return to your regularly scheduled drivel.

Stairwell of Stacey

2008-09-08T13:44:00.001-07:00

grandpa stencil, originally uploaded by zen.

One of the least used stairwells at work smells like my grandfather.

I can’t find a common theme there – my grandfather was quiet like the stairwell, but not completely quiet except for the slamming of doors and the scuffling of feet. People, if anyone even uses this particular stairwell, tend to talk normally in these kind of stairwells, but given that they lack carpeting or other objects to muffle the reflection of hollow sound, tend to sound like they’re entertaining guests in a maximum security prison. Again, that’s nothing like my grandfather.

What he smelled like was the warm and bony (when I knew him) smell of a clean but hard-working man. Clean for a man that worked in the Firestone factory more than 60 years. He smoked mostly half-and-half tobacco and got it in large 5 inch diameter tins that became the catch-all for lawn mower parts, nuts and nails in his garage. His study downstairs was his sanctuary which had a desk, a lazyboy-style chair and shelves of books and ledgers. He kept track of the goings-on of life, financial and otherwise in the world above his cave. He would disappear for hours mulling over an historic biography or typing a letter to his only son on his old Woodstock typewriter. It had a patchwork of carpet scraps and samples that kept the floor warm from the cold Ohio winter weather and a sliding wood door that emptied out into the sundry area of the basement. As an adult my mom and dad bought a ‘modern’ (what we now call retro) house that had a sliding door that led to the den which my dad appropriated immediately for his ongoing study of electronics and TTL (transistor to transistor logic) and carpeted sanctuary.

On one wall of my grandfather’s study was the wooden laminate propeller from a Waco plane that he and some buddies had access to for the purposes of gaining flight time. I have that propeller (or at least my cousin does nearby) and I’ve smelled it, but it has no affinity for the stairwell at work.

If you expect this piece of writing to neatly wrap up somewhere and connect old typewriters and aging wooden desks covered with layers of pipe smoke with a modern cinderblock stairwell, you might as well quit reading now. It ain’t gonna happen. I’m just exploring. And wondering why the stairwell doesn’t have that common ‘freshly painted’ kind of smell, because it’s all white and all rubber tile and metal railing sort of affair.

It’s funny. I loved my grandfather dearly and the family name of ‘soft-spoken Stacey’ was very appropriate. He was funny and keen of interest (especially, like I implied, in matters of American history), and I approach the stairwell with a sort of happy anticipation, though I haven’t sat down and closed my eyes in the stairwell just to bring back memories. When I’m going that way it’s my little secret grandfather tucked away in the recesses of the building, quietly being useful and smelling a bit like Akron, Ohio.

Perhaps there is some sort of connection after all.

miró water

2008-09-04T17:07:00.001-07:00

miró water, originally uploaded by zen.

Helen’s Dad and I had a wonderful conversation about art and perception. We discussed the idea of perfection. Of how a painter realizes there’s nothing more to do to a painting when it completes itself with respect to the artist. We factored in the ideas of the Greek architecture that created perfectly ‘looking’ straight lines by actually curving them slightly so they will be seen as straight. Of the heroic sculptor who makes the figure’s head slightly larger so that – when seen from below looks ‘right’ to the viewer’s lowly eye. And in that there was some kind of need for imperfection to seem perfect. That adding silhouetted seagulls to a pretty beach sunset didn’t move the photo towards any kind of perfection but moved it away from the natural. In the natural and seemingly imperfect world there is a kind of perfection that the rigid straight line cannot achieve. We both recognized that God, who doesn’t exist – at least in the way that we know existence – makes, second by second sublimely imperfect moments. The moments that come thru us that way we call art.

splinter photo gets some friends

2008-09-03T19:27:00.001-07:00

splinter in me thumb
Originally uploaded by zen

So a guy from WebMD emails me and asks to use the splinter picture in a slideshow for medical explanations, so i say 'sure, i'm happy to.' And today i'm emailed the result and this difficult to look at shot is among the boils and acne shots, the oozing sores and skin conditions under the arms... ugh! But still, i'm glad to help. If you really want to know more about boils than you had ever hoped, go ahead and click here! You're a brave puppy.

i'm a bit cracked

2008-08-20T22:47:00.001-07:00

torn succulent
Originally uploaded by zen

Of late i've been out of sync with my life. Not that things aren't going well, but my visual processing bogs down with the volume of photos i take and i'm processing what i do about a week after i do it. Perhaps partly Helen isn't here - she's off in Florida helping her mom out (just in time for hurricane Fay no less) but Helen and i are doing great overall. There's just a sense that my 'doing' isn't matching my 'seeing' or that there's some kind of disconnect between making my art and making my life that leaves me not in my usual state of 'ease.'

I want to process my photos right away, but for a few immediate exceptions i need to go over in that time-consuming way the raw materials of my art, the photos, with sufficient detail to glean the final product from them. When helen and i take a family or group shot she has to insist that i use her camera because she knows it'll be probably a week before i get around to the download/finalizing business of dealing with the shot. She knows she'll want to send it to people and if she relies on me, well, the urgency and the beauty of that spontenaity is lost for her.

And i don't blame her at all. She's smart like that - she doesn't in the least bit make me feel like i'm falling short of any expectations for her. She will ask after a shot i've taken on my camera if she wants to send it somewhere, and that's understandable and - like nearly everything she does - it's done with love and grace.

I still can't shake the idea though that time is cracked for me though. Cracked because it makes me use more time than necessary to mend the rift between my art and my life. I want my art to be as spontaneous as life is, as graceful as helen's words are, as immediate as the period at the end of this sentence.

I have a natural schizoid-ness that i've dealt with all my life, a scattering of talent and dismay at the time it takes to collect the proper components, but this has become a larger rift, and it feels like it's starting to dry that way.

I've spent the last week trying to catch up on my photographs along with the natural distractions of being online, moderating, doing a bit of other (and exciting art of graffiti) art, even before helen left. And i'm still not - and may never be - caught up. I'm not upset about the rift, only feeling a settling of habits on myself, like i'm becoming Scraps, the Patchwork girl of Frank Baum's Oz. Quaint, but beautiful to the Scarecrow who lacks a brain.

That's not an analogy i meant to end on, but that's the nature of being a bit cracked.

smeary legacy - a folder full of idiocy

2008-08-18T11:48:00.001-07:00

smeary legacy - a folder full of idiocy
Originally uploaded by zen

Someday, after we forget the anger, the legacy of Bush and Cheney will become an icon of buffoonery. That may take a while though considering the financial shambles they've left the country in.

I know people will want to kindle the history of ineptitude, fascism and counter-terrorism, but it will fade all too fast and we'll busy ourselves with this sick perception that we have to force democracy on others even if it means killing them.

Don't get me wrong, i love democracy and do want it for others, but whatever happened to acting like Jesus and being a good example?

the church

2008-08-16T10:52:00.001-07:00

easter greenery
Originally uploaded by zen

I don't believe that Christians are inherently bad, just the same way i feel that Russian citizens were during the cold war or the Chinese people are now - they are people were just like us who want to be loved, heard, and to be able to live in peace. Organized religion and organized nationism becomes a separate and demanding thing that, to survive and grow, uses fear to maintain followers and citizens in a collective that fears itself that God or love or Earthhood isn't enough in itself to hold together a large group - especially when that group has demands on the group in order to profit.

photographer as strongman

2008-08-14T21:29:00.001-07:00

photographer as strongman
Originally uploaded by zen

3 things: In my august (more like September) years i need to exercise; I already play video games; and I'm motivated by geekiness; So, i bought a Wii with the Wii Fit board and have been using it daily for 3 weeks. All despite the questionable statistics that say that 60% of Wii Fit purchasers use it several times and then give up (if that were true there'd be a lot more Wii Fit boards on Craigslist). I really get into it. I've done yoga before and had it fade away, fitness clubs and let them lapse and I just don't hike enough for regular toning.

When i did the Lighten Up 4 Life challenge i lost 22 lbs by using the SparkPeople website that helped me keep track, chart and anticipate changes. People don't much motivate me except perhaps my dear sweet helen, and self-help books are for people to make money on. Looking good can't motivate me because it's too late. Me? I am a child of the office - charts and games and understanding bosses motivate me and the Wii Fit has all of this. So, for now at least, it's working and i look forward to it every day. It keeps me focused on my balance, posture and weight and i get to see the little progress that minutiae provides.

So we'll just see how long this lasts and whether my mental health improves or just becomes more simplified in the process...

Overheard (woman speaking)

2008-08-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

He better know what he did that made me mad, or else i'm gonna be pissed!

the strength of one hand, waving

2008-07-29T22:12:00.001-07:00

waving reflex
Originally uploaded by zen

There are behaviorists and historians that suggest that the simple act of hand-waving began as a result of our need to show that we weren’t carrying a weapon. The ‘shaking’ portion of a wave is extra confirmation that we didn’t have some smaller weapon up the loose sleeves of our Dark Age clothing. Perhaps there’s truth in it, but nowadays it’s rare we’d wave at someone to make sure they didn’t have a Glock in their hands. In fact we use other clues to determine a person’s relative dangerousness. Waving to a dangerous person is only inviting a dangerous reaction. So, if waving is no longer about threats, what is this gesture?

I wave. I like waving. I see it as an acknowledgement in a busy and sometimes shallow world. I walk my dog in different West Asheville neighborhoods and frequently throw up a quick wave when I see a stranger meet my eyes. After all, we’re in each other’s neighborhood and perhaps I am saying “I see you and I’m not a threat,” even when the threat can be of having to have something to say to them. It’s a complex enough world that the commitment of a few minutes conversation can be a threat of sorts. So, a wave does it. Sometimes a nod.

According to those self-same behaviorists, we – as part of the primate family – all use the same basic body language when we meet, whether friend or potential foe. We raise our eyebrows. It’s the minimal greeting. It’s nearly reflex and requires work to subvert it. I know because my teenage best friend Bobby read this little tidbid in Desmond Morris’ “Naked Ape” and decided that he didn’t want to greet people, even minimally. His intention, as many shy and uncomfortable teens will bear out, was to blend into the background. To not be noticed one way or the other so that he could be himself without the judgement of his peers, and especially, girls.

So he practiced in the mirror, and practiced on me. It took weeks, but Bobby could come across a store clerk, a passerby, a party full of girls and while speakin in friendly and civil tones, have complete control over his eyebrow urge on first glance. We tried his newfound talent out at a party. We were both kinda shy around girls and hung out near a wall doing the wallflower stand, Bob even folding his arms in what I used to refer to as the “Silent Abu” stance. In the little conversations I did have one girl asked me, “What’s wrong with your friend?” and I realized that Bob was not blending in at all but sticking out with his refusal to greet others in the minimal way. He was perceived as mysterious and unfriendly, leaving people with a vague feeling of distrust. So I told him about it and he quit doing it (but still used it as an ungreeting once in a while when he felt he didn’t want to acknowledge someone.

So where was i? Oh yes, waving as acknowledgement. Acknowledging others and being acknowledged. I also tend to be a forgiving type and I’m not generally hurt when people don’t wave back or even react with a scowl at my wave because they may have a lot on their minds that really don’t concern me – or at least they don’t want to share any of it. My waving is intended to be friendly and there are people who aren’t particularly interested in even playing ‘friends.’

I remember a girlfriend of mine who confided that she was distrustful of people who smiled and waved, as if they had some secret agenda. She bristled at waving as some sort of dark contractual agreement. As if a wave required a wave back in response and she felt pressed to have a positive reaction even though she didn’t feel positive about the transaction. She similarly wasn’t fond of the phrase “good morning” which irked her that people were either pretending to be happy or so simple and profoundly stupid that they actually believed they were happy and if you acknowledge them they will lapse into what she referred to as that “How-de-do morning bullshit.” I remember walking down the hall of an office one morning and a ‘lower level suit’ (a person we referred to that was on the pecking order somewhere between a clerk and an executive), said “good morning” to her. She exploded with “What the fuck do you want from me? That I’m having a good day? That everything is rosy perfect?” She didn’t have the smoothest upbringing and looking back had plenty of reason to be an angry young woman. However, this didn’t go over well in the corporate world.

I prefer to think of her distaste for waving as the exception rather than the rule. I think most people know that waving is a ‘friendly’ and even ‘throw-away’ gesture, but that may be the nature of how we greet people in western culture. I’ve heard (but do not know from personal experience) that the wave is unknown in the East. That acknowledgement is given as a stronger experience of not just “yes, you’re there” but “I am no greater a person in god’s eyes” with the gesture of the folded hands and bow. It seems somehow a greater expression of acknowledgement, and in Asheville I do see both (and not always at BJ’s convenience store). I guess we as Americans or European background are a little more bumper-sticker in our approach to greetings.

Dang… Sleep is overtaking me like water lapping at the edges of my mental boat. I will return to this subject soon I hope.
Because I didn’t say any of the things I wanted to say about waving!

weekend highlights

2008-07-21T13:52:00.001-07:00

blackberry pickin'
Originally uploaded by zen

Fliss had a great party, lots of weight to test the virtues of her backyard wooden deck. And, it held! She provided lots of yummies like chicken and pesto and others brought goodies – Charles with the Fry-daddy who cooked up squash, onion rings and even French fries. As darkness settled over the backyard talk and beer flowed enough for Charles and I to feel confident enough (with some soft urging from Helen) to play music – though we couldn’t remember half of the songs we’d practiced the night before. Ahh well, it was fun and we met new people and I drank more than I had in a long time. Very little activity took place outside the deck-which-is-still-standing. Didn’t get to talk to too many as I was playing a lot. I did also tried young M’s standing push-scooter which I got going fast enough to throw me to a two-point face plant in the front yard.

This weekend I also picked blackberries with Bailey in tow at the Amboy dog park – the area that’s the powerline. Tons I couldn’t get to but I picked only the best of what I could reach and still ended up with a couple pounds of sweetness to the point of getting that magenta (like pokeberries) all over my hands. Bailey waited patiently for me with only a bit of whining when I would trudge in areas she couldn’t go because of the stickerbushes. Big fat junebugs fed on the sweetest, plumpest blackberries and would be startled and and act guilty when I discovered their buzzy little butts.

Susan, Fliss, Helen and I took a brief break from the heat to do a little local tubing along the French Broad. This is nowhere near an extreme sport. It’s lazy and we liked it that way – plus, we’re all so familiar with that part of the river that it was almost boring – but in a good way. Susan needed a break from all her computer tutorials, Fliss from the threat of rats and the promise of new house finances, Helen and I from the heat and, well, just because. From Hominy to the Southern Waterways take-in spot isn’t exactly an adventure, but in a way it was just as much excitement as we wanted.

After that, we met Fliss at a house she’s considering for purchase. It’s a great house, simple and sweet on the outside and beautifully twisted and bizarre on the inside. Not unlike Fliss herself. And that’s what a house should be, right? An extension of how we either see ourselves or are seen by others. It has a garage with a shop-like place in the back and strange angled ramps and earth buildups, and if you go into the house from the front (which probably won’t be the norm somehow), you sweep into what appears to be a boring little suburban SFD with average to low ceilings. Notice to your left though there appears to be a shelving unit that is so thin as to resemble a wall with the plasterboard removed. It’s protecting you from falling down an impossibly narrow staircase which leads to a glass/screen door that – under normal circumstances – should be on the outside of the house. If you look on the outside of the door, a brass plaque announces “Your Family Name” or somesuch thing that indicates it’s a sample of some kind. A sample plaque? A sample door? Certainly not a sample staircase. There’s more quirky to this house that I’m terribly certain will be better described by Fliss herself and will link to her blog from here.

I was terribly impressed with the house and don’t want any pressure on her but will be quietly disappointed if she doesn’t get it. It’s so her!

quick park visit

2008-07-18T08:41:00.001-07:00

burnt park sign
Originally uploaded by zen

On my way to work i stopped at the park that's under the Haywood Road bridge, down by the river, to - yes, i'll admit it - have a cigarette before work. There i met Matt (not his real name)

Matt is homeless and it's a conscious decision for him. He has stuff, a bicycle and camping gear and, as he informs me, recently acquired a bicycle trailer for hauling his stuff. Several days before getting the gift of the trailer he met a guy who used to work in a factory in California that made bicycle trailers. Then some kind person gave him the trailer. He loves these coincidences, in fact looks for them everywhere. He finds it fitting that he has been wanting to ride the bike to California and now knowing that he met a guy who might have helped make his trailer, feels even more certain his decision should be to go to California.

You wouldn't know to look at him but the entire right side of Matt's head has been replaced with titanium. He lost the bone part of his head on his first mission for the army in Iraq when a bomb exploded and threw him sixty feet in the air and down hard against some immovable object. Army doctors put in the titanium plate and he playfully bangs on various parts of the right side of his head for me producing a dull wooden-like sound. He was in a coma for 6 months and when he came out decided that combat was not for him (no surprise really that it should take even that much). The army offered him a Lieutenant desk-job, but Matt was done with army and has refused follow-up army treatment. He saw the explosion as a sign - Matt loves signs and coincidences.

Once, while hitch-hiking in California, he had in his few possession a Mercedes hood ornament, a very nice one, and since he hadn't gotten a ride in over an hour held it up and sang "Oh, Lord, won't you bring me a Mer-ced-eees Benz" and within a half of an hour a Mercedes stopped to pick him up which took him all the way to Corvallis Oregon where his grandmother lived. He says, "and this is the crazy part," that hood ornament was the exact one that Janis Joplin was wearing when she was filmed singing that very song. Which i doubt, but that fact folds neatly into Matts World of Coincidences.

Matt shows me another reason he wants to go to California. He has what seems to be a valid California patient ID card that gives him the right for voluntary medical marijuana use. It has his fingerprint photo on it. It looks good and i imagine for him it is real. At that point he pulls out a 1980s style pot pipe - the brass kind that i remember with a chamber for placing a bud into it so that resin can soak into it and it'll be a potent 'last high' for when he runs out. He smokes some and asks if i want any but i decline. I'm on my way to work and i've stopped smoking pot back in my 40s sometime. Besides, it's all thick gooey oil of resin in his bowl and i remember how bitter that's going to taste when he fires it up.

He also tells me that he needs to charge up the lights on his bicycle because they were almost dead last night - when he tried to find a place to crash in Woodfin. "Woodfin cops are assholes," he says. "Not like Asheville cops. This one Woodfin cop told me, 'You can't panhandle here, you can't sleep here, you can't anything here, so get out of town.'" As he smokes his resin he shakes his titanium head slowly. "Woodfin." he says and rolls his eyes. He also says "too bad you have a motorcycle, or i could have been charging my lights, you know?"

As i'm leaving he hits me up for whatever i can afford and he's been part of my morning story and i like him, so I give him a bill and some change. He then launches into a diatribe (monologue?) of the best coffee shops around Asheville and where he thinks he's gonna spend the money.

A great start to both our mornings, i think.

soft moment at work

2008-07-16T22:13:00.001-07:00

heart rainbow
Originally uploaded by zen

Today at ACA i called Raina - the Supervisor of Medical Records - about something and she answered the phone in an exasperated, hurried voice that spoke of the pressures of jobfulness. I told her what i had to say and she thanked me and we hung up.

I noticed that i also had an email from her asking me to merge a duplicate account. Patients sometimes get created with more than one account and their medical records get split between the two accounts losing clinical trackability and muddying the waters of patient care. So i merged the accounts and replied to her email with the corrected account number. I added the p.s. that i thought she sounded harried on the phone earlier and that i suggested she might breathe in a deep breath and let it out slowly and to imagine herself relaxing.

I saw her later quite a bit down the hall with a soft smile and knew she was thinking of my little permission to relax. She then pretended to float down the hall as if in water, her arms out, relaxed and dreamy. She's an avid dancer and her movements were graceful and beautiful as she ducked down another hall and out of sight.

That's all. Just a nice thing at work. It made me feel more relaxed and happy too.

Projects

2008-07-07T20:36:00.001-07:00

gravel for sale
Originally uploaded by zen

Current Creative Projects:

* An ongoing film with Susan and Charles tentatively called "Stain" about the victim of a stroke and his struggles with self. I need to go through old tapes to note and mark them and need to re-record the soundtrack.

* A CD of spoken relaxation journeys for the extra nervous, OCD or paranoid. The toughest one will be reaching that relaxation point between sleep and wakefully soiling oneself.

* Photo project - Photos in Matrix, rephotographing of photos in new and different environments

* Film project - JewPS (or Your Jewish Mother takes over TomTom). A short film about getting you from point A to point B through guilt. Somehow point B is always visiting your mother...

* Work Project - Show a version of converted patients from one EMR (GE's Logician) to another (NextGen's EMR), to the Operations Comittee, despite the fact that so little has actually been converted.

* Work Project - Start (and finish) a Letter Template in Logician that displays 8 past datapoints all within a specific patient's pregnancy (for a women's center)

* Prepare some alternative things to do while we're on vacation in Conestee. Tubing/Rafting, eating out, etc...

a little nauseated

2008-07-07T06:39:00.001-07:00

a little nauseated
Originally uploaded by zen

i awoke early this morning with huge stomach upset and diarrhea, giving me only 4 hours sleep. I have tons to do at work and while it's never a 'good time' to feel bad, this certainly isn't it either...

chain link lovers

2008-07-07T04:28:00.001-07:00

chain link lovers
Originally uploaded by zen

Men try to fix situations, women accept situations with love. Or, at least that's the generalization i feel is true at the moment. The man inside of me wants to help others by 'fixing' their situation for them, and i watch Helen work with people's problems and she consoles, empathizes and loves, not manhandle the situation.

asheville classroom

2008-06-09T13:19:00.001-07:00

asheville classroom
Originally uploaded by zen

sustainable world music pottery. channeling herbal jewelry designs. groovy lesbian 'carbon footprint' sandals. eco-friendly bluegrass tattoos. vegan crystal healing using microbrew infusions. thrice-illuminated hemp massage. manifesting green energy with tantric crafts. acoustic backpacking. sacred tiny pony-tails for sensitive new-age guys (SNAGs), avatar flavored chai tea, astrologically sensitive urban arts, the warrior’s way of tourism, kiyoshi nagata barristas, afropean tanning salons, tofu-based spiritual retreat centers, chiropractic chanting, holistic detox zombies, religious scientism thru coyote circles, fetish empowered nail emporiums, real estate walkabouts, gourmet shiatsu, auto repair thru essence realignment, LGBT gaia drumming, dijiridoo abductions, virato, embracing your inner celtic Velcro, pawn shopping using creative visualization, solar powered body modification, Cajun-based mystic beauty techniques, ethereal rafting, neo-post-hippy apathy. All this AND the Biltmore House!

we are the diversity-embracing, alternative source, synchroni-city of the south!

Actually, this was a classroom sign at the Appachia School of Holistic Herbalism down the road from me.

He's gonna GIT you!

2008-06-06T07:46:00.001-07:00

The dog knew her owner's shame.
Originally uploaded by zen

Last night giving bailey her evening constitutional, i walked down past a house where a young mom and a little girl were doing nothing out in front of their house. When the five year old girl noticed the dog she said something that excitedly translates to "Doggy!" They were both 40 feet off the roadway and i have miss Bailey Grace WaggaTaily on a leash and in no way was threatening to either the girl or the mom. Besides, Bailey isn't much interested in people on our walks; she's busy sniffing out rodent demographics, keeping a tally of rats, mice, groundhogs smells and their intensities.

The mom seemed to scowl at the childs interest and excitement. "Doggy!" she repeated to her mom. Mom replied in a quiet, ominous tone - "He's gonna GIT you!"

The child's eyes widened and she widened her stance and watched a bit more carefully our passing and then trundled closer to mom with just a hint of alarm. She wanted to be picked up which the mom refused to do.

Now, it may be that Mom had been attacked by dogs and wanted to instil caution. But the way the transaction went down it seemed more likely that Mom adored the child's reliance on her, her power over her and a reinforcement of the bond between them, using the largeness and potential scariness of the world to draw her child closer. From my point of view in an unthreatening stance it just seemed mean. Not so much to me and the inattentive dog but mean to the child. Playfully mean.

AMP and Molly Must

2008-05-26T20:26:00.001-07:00

AMP and Molly Must
Originally uploaded by zen

Finally after much wrangling over insurances and paints, comittments and the ever-present permits, Molly Must officially opened up the Lexington Avenue side of the Asheville Mural Project yesterday working with a group of diverse artists and volunteers.

Molly has been tireless and sometimes tired (like today) after gathering up all the resources and herding the artists into a collective project they can get behind. Look for updates at http://www.ashevillemuralproject.org/

asheville changes

2008-05-22T09:04:00.001-07:00

What was once this quirky little building (seen here after she was boarded up) at the corner of Broadway and Bordeaux, is now (or is soon becoming) the Pioneer Building.

he's gone

2008-05-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

nigel's halloween costume
Originally uploaded by zen

Well, Nigel has left for Florida and a life of being more on his own. Our love goes with him and so does a lot of worry for him. He's a smart man, but he's also young and that translates to concern for 'Da Mama' and 'Not Da Mama.' I'm still dealing with the repercussions of his Honda motorcycle and the subsequent repair bills, but that may work itself out - i dunno.

The photo is of him in his Halloween costume, which was funny just to watch him move around the house.

downtown reflections

2008-05-14T19:54:00.001-07:00

downtown reflections
Originally uploaded by zen

I received this wonderful Flickr email today:

INSPIRATION
I just wanted to let you know how much your photographs have inspired me...

I've thought about leaving this town so many times. I feel like everything that I loved about this place is gone or going away. Then I look at your pictures and realize that Asheville will always be a place like nowhere else in the world. It may not look like it did ten years ago, but it's unique spirit prevails.

I realize that I'm not alone in the search for a glimpse of the untamed spirit of Asheville. You seem to be there too. I'm sure someday we'll have a chance meeting camera to camera. Until then...
Thanks for the inspiration! I think I'll stick around a while longer.

----

That actually made me relook at some of my own photographs anew and appreciate them. Not only that it sent my spirit soaring!

back in the day

2008-04-20T14:18:00.001-07:00

old tricycle
Originally uploaded by zen

Why do i dislike the phrase "back in the day" so much? Perhaps because it isn't exactly a distinct time. When the Beatles were still together? Before transformers were creatures? Before the industrial revolution? When cats were considered gods (and they haven't forgotten this)? The "good ole days" is also an indistinct time period, but it has a sense of nostalgia, of fondness for times gone by...

Besides, too often what is "back in the day" to young people isn't all that far off in my mind. Jon at work used "back in the day" to indicate a time when MMORPGs were text based. Jeez! It wasn't even that long ago when there wasn't computers and we were playing D&D with little metal painted figurines.

Well, i'll tell you what. Back in the day was a long long time ago! I remember when houses cost $16 and if you wanted a pool in the back yard you were probably going to use up the better part of a $20 bill. Lawn mowers cost a quarter and they paid you to take gasoline to fill it. Back in the day the only bottled water was distilled water for your Sunbeam steam iron. The year before that we had to keep irons in a little metal plate in the fireplace. People and trees were taller, too. People lived to be several hundred years old and sometimes had bark instead of skin. Sometimes couples lived so long that they actually merged into one being. We wove furniture from mats growing in the swamps. It was a crazy time, too. People didn't abuse other people's children, only their own. And sick people tried dying first and if that didn't work they got better. Houses didn't have windows, only slits where you could poke your rifle out to shoot at your neighbor. Social security numbers only had 4 digits and telephone numbers were words. And phones were as big as sofas. Sofas sometimes occupied whole rooms and you could lose children down between cushions. Usually they'd survive on crumbs and spilled milk and crawl out as teenagers. I remember a friend's sofa that had a ladder that you had to use to get up on the thing. These were days before remotes and you had to climb back down to the floor to walk over to the TV to change the channel. Which wasn't very often because we only had 3 channels and none of them were the Weather channel. Sometimes you had to wait all day to find out what the weather was going to be like and by then it was too late. Shows were in black and white and before that, only black. We had pennies and half-pennies and quarter-pennies and there was even a coin called a 'nit' that wasn't worth anything at all! I remember the first time i saw a hundred dollar bill. It was a gift for my grandmother from the family and we blew out all but one candle and let her open the envelope and watched her eyes pop as she opened it up. That hundred dollar bill was bigger than a Mcdonald's placemat! And heavy too. Dad had to carry it to the bank for her.

All that and jokes were funnier, too. I actually look forward to looking old and saying stuff like this to young people. It certainly was magical "back in the day!"

dance of the young maples

2008-04-11T08:11:00.001-07:00

dance of the young maples
Originally uploaded by zen

Had a good night out with Brant last night - drank more than i usually do, but also got to talk with Fliss and Susan and that was very warm and wonderful too.

One of the things Brant asked me was how it was that i 'found' the pictures i do - whether it was something that i sort of trained myself to do or something that i did naturally or even if i had no idea how it happened.

It was nice of him to compliment my photography and i think in our friendly drunkeness he really meant it. But it got me thinking about how it is i see these things. Do i actually look for them or do they come to me?

Well, it's both. I've always been someone who has been looking down and seeing details that others seem to miss. Or maybe they see it too but don't remark on it. My mom gave me that gift i believe. She would walk thru a lawn and see several 4-leaf clover that she said just 'jumped out at her.' She's even found 5-leaf and one (that i know of) 6-leaf clover - the 6th leaf was sticking straight out the top. But finding money and wallets and things people are looking for has always been a talent - or call it a focus - of mine. Maybe, too, at the expense of noticing things about people. I've always thought i would have been a good student if i went to one of Tom Brown Junior's tracker school because of this kind of narrowing of attention, but that's another story.

Also, i've found that once i find something i want to photograph - a bug or seeds or a piece of wall - that i'm really horrible at altering it. Trying to make something look natural or patterned or random usually doesn't work for me, so it becomes my job to 'find the picture' with what is there, how it is there. Sort of finding a bit of order or balance in the chaos of randomness. Like the photo above - which i think is the one Brant used as an example - i didn't rearrange the elements but found a pleasing shot (to my eye) within the elements as they stood.

Gift or curse, i don't know. I do know it would drive me to madness if i couldn't photograph it!

no war graffiti

2008-04-01T17:09:00.001-07:00

no war graffiti
Originally uploaded by zen

Is peace possible without war? Perhaps the duality is necessary, and i believe you can't have life without death, but i could damn sure do without the war being the cause of death. Plenty of starvation, ignorances and lack of medical resources to accomplish all the death we need.

Too often as Americans we have peace in our words but war in our hearts.

die its

2008-03-23T10:29:00.001-07:00

laughing seeds' thali
Originally uploaded by zen

Luckily Helen and I didn't go over to Garrett's to join him in his meal. He was having water over shaved ice. A side of steamed ice cubes and of course filtered water to drink. He's a hydrotarian. You know, lives entirely off of water. And sunshine I'm sure for it's vitamin D benefits. He claims the purpose of food is to actually dilute stomach acids and pure water is the best for that, and he's probably right given his premise.

Ok, I'm kidding. We don't know a Garrett and he doesn't have a pony tail less than an inch long in his Asheville greying hair.

Myself, I'm a Ovo-Lacto-Carne-pescetarian. I restrict my diet to things that tend to grow larger over time. That is to say, I'm an omnivore. I'm not afraid of eating things with a face. I prefer to keep the volume small and the killing down, but I feel that humans have always been an eat-as-eating-can kind of group and it's why we have canine teeth. For a little bit of sinew rending. I admire people who choose to be vegetarian or even vegan, but I don't myself tape up my mouth as do some oriental Buddhist monks in order to inhale no insects accidently and kill them thereby (therebywhichtofor?). So I'm a middle of the road eater, even if it's on the side of the road.

I do like Indian food and Helen and Anu and Gopalo and I went to Laughing Seed and enjoyed it immensely. Well, except for the hippy next to us who must've been protesting the use of soap. Now, I'll go a day (or two on the weekend) without a shower, but this was real protest. Sour protest. It was overpowering only when I was down wind so I did manage to enjoy my meal. Anyway, the point was that I've been much more conscious of my eating and portions and have gotten myself below 200 lbs and working myself down to a healthy weight. Better living thru better eating, I say.

damn sappy commercials

2008-03-22T11:29:00.001-07:00

hands of love
Originally uploaded by zen

Ok, I'm a big sap. A big Asheville-type guy, but I just don't happen to have a pony-tail in my grey hair shorter than an inch. I watched an Ingles grocery store commercial that made me cry. A flippin' commercial! It starts out with a young couple at the door to grandma's house and she expresses anxiety about fitting in with everyone. He says "It's ok, you're family now." and they're ushered in to a busy family household with people running around getting ready for the big meal. "How was your honeymoon?" someone - likely a sister or cousin asks in the kitchen. Her answer is interrupted with someone else coming thru with fresh biscuits out of the oven. She asks the sweet old grandmother if she needs any help and mama looks up from a tattered card with the recipe to say "No, we've got it, thanks!" or something along those lines, but we see that grandma sees our new bride trying to fit in. Then the meal of wonderful gumbo and the family is talking non-stop and the husband confides that it's grandma's secret recipe. We watch the new bride still struggle to fit in, to get a word in edgewise, but is a bit too shy. We also see that grandma notices in a kindly way and from across the table that new-bride is struggling to be a part of the family.

Then they're saying goodbyes and they walk out the front door, and the new bride is about to tell new-groom that she likes the family, but couldn't fit in and she reaches in her pocket and finds the old tattered card with the gumbo recipe on it. Grandma can be seen smiling as she closes the door.

Sheesh, I'm so susceptible to the obvious. I should run out and watch 10 Steven Spielberg movies to be pummeled with obviousness! Then, I told my sweet Helen about the commercial and I got all teary just telling it, and we BOTH cried. I really love being open hearted, but I'm a bit too easy when it comes to having my emotions yanked around, I think.

Don't get me started on the damn John Deere commercial where mom and child get dad a hat and key for his birthday!

Games (a kind of list)

2008-03-21T09:23:00.001-07:00

zane in a first person shooter
Originally uploaded by zen

I've always loved games. Our family was a game-playing group. After dinner in the dining room might find us playing word games (Boggle, Probe), card games (What the heck, Gin rummy), board games (Monopoly), strategy games (Diplomacy, Avalon Hill war style games, chess), parlor games (charades, ) and even physical games (croquet, ping-pong, toss-a-cross). It was just a part of our life from both sides of the family. With my friends it was D&D and then later AD&D. (Recently, Gary Gygax passed away, he was a big hero).

As a young adult on my own, the card and parlor games began to take over - Gin Rummy and Trivial Pursuit and some chess among friends. But game playing got shadowed by another endeavor, playing music and "being in a band."

Technology-based games first came with Simon and Merlin, and at home dad had one of the first console games that wasn't Pong, the Bally Arcade, which we played Football endlessly. Video arcades were big when you had a pocketful of quarters.

Dad and I even wrote a machine language game on the TRS-80 which we tried to market, but the transfer medium was cassette tape and we lacked advertising dollars - it was a sort of Pac-Man ripoff called Spooks.

Since then I've had Nintendos, Playstations and later Xboxes, handhelds and PC and Mac-based games. All before the rise of the virtual gaming idea, the MMORPGs. Inexorably, the stick figure became the avatar

My first big RPG was the text-based Gemstone and Gemstone III which was role-playing with text, really. You could do what you imagined by the text-engine of the game and you could say what you wanted as a response. It was a fantastic world that brought together the elements of the idea of the interactive novel and D&D. The players were self-policing as far as In-character play and the acronym OOC (Out Of Character) was frowned upon heavily to promote true role playing (the R & P of RPG). I've played uncharacteristically angry women characters, characters with strong preferences other than my own with a history to justify it and even deaf-mute characters.

I have also played the avatar-centric RPGs of today, the online first-person-shooters based on war (Medal of Honor, Tom Clancy series stuff), and the MMORPGs (WoW, Runescape) and some sim-like games (Second Life, The Sims) and have found that roleplaying now involves more playing how you-the-player would react to given situations rather than playing a character who might be different from you. There almost isn't OOC play because few of the games I've been involved with promote developing an individual. And frequently, I'm the oldest player around (54 years old versus an average of 14)

Virtual play is still play, but it's strange how the nature of it has evolved and folded over itself. Many games seem to take the place of social interaction for many youngsters. They become Master Mages and have a second or third life of virtuality. I'm not sure I had a conclusion here, but it's a subject I'll come back to.

my father, once again

2008-03-16T10:30:00.001-07:00

dad's kiss
Originally uploaded by zen

my father, once again
enters my mind
most recently
by leaving
this world

so much he's given
i cannot call
his passing
into the next life
my loss
but my gain

dad dying
was the early
corking of a great wine
and the taste i got
made each sip precious
especially knowing
time was limited

i got to know him most
in his last months
when i took care of him
and played parent
feeding and clothing
talking late into old Akron nights
holding his hand
holding back tears
holding on

i have the rest
of my natural life
to mourn
my gain

Johnny Donutseed

2008-03-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

Johnny Donutseed is 30 foot tall. He's also make of fiberglass. He stands mutely facing the east and state road 59 in Lloyd, Florida, a throwback from a more prosperous, or certainly more ostentatious time, presumably advertising what is now the Big Bend hotel/motel/snack bar/gas station and restaurant. He wears blue jeans; has a cup of coffee in one one hand; and a donut in the other. His hat is a brown affair that resembles a cross between an upside-down cooking pot and a beaver-skin cap, but this thing on his head might also be his hair tied back in a ponytail that sticks out straight back. Over his shoulder is some odd mail sack - a square knapsack that I've decided is where he keeps his donut seeds. His expression rivals the strange dour and frozen look of Easter Island statues, yet with a country bumpkin flair. Now that Johnny Donutseed is aging poorly from over 25 years in the humid Florida sun, his face seems somehow pained.

Jennifer and I are driving from Tallahassee to Lloyd, Florida to get our first glimpse of Johnny Donutseed, but with the overt purpose of seeing Jay. Jay is a truck driver and the Jennifer's ex-lover. I am her current one, though it doesn't seem that casual because I believe that i am deeply in love with her and hope to marry her. She's driving, and I'm staving off an afternoon nap by trying to focus the A/C vents properly at me while I smoke marlboro lights. I am wearing shorts, sandals and a t-shirt and for a moment feel silly like a tourist - but this passes.

Interstate 10 stretches out of Tallahassee and the rolling panhandle country takes over quickly. It is green and lush with nearly always something in bloom. The conversation between Jennifer and I is sparse because we both need sleep, and we both hold some strange anxiousness for the meeting with Jay - each for our own reasons. Jennifer drives firmly, the short soft hair under her hat wagging in the cars artificial breeze, and her small dark sunglasses hiding her expressive blue eyes. She looks beautiful to me from her dark hat to her turned down socks beneath tennis shoes, but I'm cautious not to tell her because I fear repeating it will sound like an insincere and offhand remark and I know it will only embarrass her. I'm also less sure of what it means to be in love anymore. So I keep my appreciation of her to myself. By the time Jennifer points the car down route 59, she mentions that Lloyd wasn't that far away, really.

Parked facing Johnny Donutseed is a large tankard truck, with the tall frame of a man wearing a dark T-shirt, tight jeans, small sunglasses and leather Harley-Davidson boots getting out of the cab -- the familiar look of Jay, and his dog Scout. We park between Jay's truck and the odd visage of Johnny Donutseed. Jennifer and I get out and I am greeted by the dog while Jennifer and Jay hug warmly yet a bit stiffly. The dog's coat is thick and husky-like which seems inappropriate for the weather, yet, neither does he look uncomfortable. I shake hands with Jay and we stand, two tall men and a small woman in the short leg of a triangle while the Florida sky rains heat down us and evaporates any extra energy the moment might give us.

"I was about to leave. Didn't think you'd get here." Jay's warm half-smile, half-smirk leaps out at you and is naturally infectious, yet it's hard to read as always.

Jennifer explains our theoretical tardiness and is smiling somewhat, as I suppose I am smiling somewhat also. It's good to see Jay, and even more impressive to see him in the different environment of his work rather than the parties we've shared. Jay shows us the scars of of his recent arm-wound and the place he received the indignity. Jay can talk about slipping and falling out of the cab of a truck without making it sound like he's a buffoon. Simple fact. He fell. Scraped his forearm here where the sharp edges of metal are designed for stable footing. He describes his ordeal of blood-stained sinks and running red water without much positioning for anybody's pity. How some lady at the weigh-station told him to get it looked at. Jays scoffing expression is one of male bravado tinged with a fatalistic shrug.

The conversation lulls and I mention something about the dog who is wandering over towards the legs of Johnny Donutseed. The three of us still talking, probably about the dog, mosey in that direction, each feeling the need to keep up the talk lest a momentary lull blossom into an uncomfortable silence.

I regard the 30-foot being. From a distance he seems poised, but up close he is pitiful. Natural fiberglass patches are covering decrepit sections of his legs and shoes. From below and this close it seems as if you could fit a man's leg between his pursed lips. His eyes seem glassy. It was then I named it Johnny Donutseed. He seemed to have a New England minute-man purpose about him, but ludicrously held the accoutraments of a morning's relaxing repast. He seemed to be looking sternly towards a goal, perhaps of providing everyone with a coffee and donut in the morning, but was dressed to travel the swamps and rugged land to provide this. I slapped his hollow leg. The dog was unimpressed.

As if by consensus, but more because there was little to else to do, we decide to go into the restaurant. Jay has eaten a big breakfast already and Jennifer and I have what little hunger in us sucked out by the humid heat of midday. But it's there, and hopefully cooler, so we cross the dusty parking lot.

The restaurant/gas station/knickknack and convenience store speaks of truckers and the country. That plain and varnished pine and hint of Americana that is not yet recognized as the American peasant. We think of Russian or German peasants with their rustic dress and simple, straightforward and overweight ways in a much kinder light than we do American peasants, listening to country music, working just as hard, drinking just as hard and who are just as darkened and leathery from the sun. But happily none of the three of us feels truly out of place here. Jay is most comfortable and selects a booth seat with his back to the wall. I sit on the booth next to Jennifer, both of us facing Jay. Jay is who we've come to see. Yet, the image of Johnny Donutseed tugs at me.

There are booths with phones around the perimeter of the dining area, to provide truckers a place to get many things done at once. Eat, update their logs, check in with the home office, call a loved one, and in Jay's case to log on to an online service and 'chat' on the net - though his account has recently been canceled and he relates the story of how that came to be. As Jay relates how AOL can fuck themselves because they canceled his account for simply entering a private hack room, I find myself at a small loss because I'm hesitant to put my arms around my girl. It's not that I don't want to, it's more that Jennifer hasn't told Jay how close we are, though we all suspect he knows the extent to which Jennifer and I are romantically connected. I am following Jennifer's lead for the most part, out of deference to making this the least uncomfortable for everyone, but my arm burns with a want to hold her, though our hips are almost touching. Jennifer and I rest our forearms on the table. Jays arms are spread across the booth's wide back.

The waitress, an older woman who probably represents the romantic notion of that American peasant as much as anyone else, asks us if we want anything and we manage to scrounge up the desire for some fries and caffeinated drinks all around. Her tag says "Shirley".

As she turns to leave, I say, "Shirley, that statue out there, Johnny Donutseed," I motion with my chin. "What's his real name?"

Her eyes dart outside for the briefest moment and she shrugs. "He was here before I started working here. I don't know a thing about it." As she's walking away she offers, "Ask one of the older people here, they might know."

For a moment, I'm crushed. She looked like the oldest and most perfect candidate for that small bit of information. I mentally picture some ancient "Mel" in the back, slinging hash browns on a large black grill which is constantly being scraped by a thin chrome spatula, who's "Daddy" built the 30-foot man, and who can only remember that Daddy always referred to the statue as "Nathan"... or something like that.

In a way, I'm avoiding the more volatile situation with the three of us. While I'm relieved to find that Jennifer didn't fling herself into Jay's arms and he didn't spin her around with the pure joy of seeing someone he's missed terribly, neither was the situation clear and resolved. I don't sense Jay feeling like I'm moving in on 'his' territory as it were, but then again Jay seems held back, more reserved, even for Jay. Jennifer doesn't seem to me to be completely comfortable either. It's as if she's waiting for Jay to be Jay, and for the three of us to be the wonderful friends we have started to become; but it isn't unfolding that way. In fact it isn't unfolding at all. There seems to be some kind of stalemate in the air. As if we all hold each other in mutual check, but not mate. The subject of Jennifer's dog Pandora comes up and Jay makes a joke about dachshunds being small japanese cars. I remark that they're called Nissans now. In that light bantering style we continue to talk various pleasantries and small jokes to avoid hearing our own heartbeats.

In a way, I'm annoyed that Jennifer has not made Jay overtly aware that I am her man now. I long to state the obvious and get the possible hurts out of the way; but lately I'm even more cautious about hurting people, and a bit more distrustful of what people say. I remind myself that I've hurt someone close to me recently, and that it may not be the best thing to plunge into situations, but to allow them to unfold. My new wait-and-see attitude I've given myself. Jay and Jennifer carry emotional baggage that remains hidden to me, as do I about Deborah - the person I hurt - that is unseen by them. It all swims before me as I find myself staring out the window.

But Johnny Donutseed has seen it all, and more. Out the window I can see him looking to the eastern horizon mutely. When she delivers our order, I kid Shirley that she doesn't know the man whose butt she's forced to view all day. She makes some small joke which I forget and then the three of us joke about fat people and having to look at the crack of their asses as they lean over in loose jeans.

Still, that doesn't break the ice quite, but Jennifer, who is always prone to tucking her legs in when she sits, folds her leg over mine and places her hand on my leg. I can't tell if she's feeling more comfortable or just misses touching me as much as I long to hold her, and this is acceptable because it's almost out of sight of Jay's notice.

We eat. We smile. We all get our say in, and pretty soon the french fries are gone and more time has passed than should have. For a moment I sense that I have given Jennifer and Jay no time alone without me, that perhaps one or the other needs to quickly give the other their assessment of the situation, or me, or of harbored or love-lost feelings. I politely excuse myself to go to the truckstop bathroom. I take my time and on the way back position myself to talk to the woman who talks to truckers behind the glass about what pump they got their diesel from and whether they want a receipt. Finally my presence forces her attention away from counting bills.

"That Johnny Donutseed out there," I ask, now more confidant of my name for him, "What's his name?"

She squints at the statue like she's never seen it before. She tightens her lips. "I don't know... Lloyd?" She smirks. I doubt he represents the founding father of the small town of Lloyd, and my face must've clouded up over it. I also see her cleverness. When pressed she came up with a name despite her ambivalence about the truth. "I've never thought about it," she mumbles as she returns to her work. She doesn't care to give it much more of her immediate thought.

As I return to the booth it's apparent that the time is up, and we all amble towards the front, listlessly by isles of tire repair kits and candy bars. It's as if nothing was resolved. We pay and then open the doors back into the summer's fiery gaze. As we walk across that dusty parking lot, and towards the 30-foot man, it seems to me as if each of us have a kinship with Johnny Donutseed.

We know the loneliness of him. We share with Johnny Donutseed the position of being unable to really say what's on our minds. We each have a history that only we know, that is unknown to the locals and travelers that pass by and perhaps only known by someone connected to us far away. We all, Jay and Jennifer and Deborah and Shirley and the truckers and the woman behind the glass all share a certain ambivalence about the truth because we have to focus on what little truth we want to see. We write our personal histories in the wind that we create by our small movement. Each in our way seems to be as ridiculous and at loose ends as a man who delivers coffee throughout the panhandle of Florida and has a bag full of Donutseeds that he plants as he goes.

But nobody is Johnny Donutseed. He's a singularity that has long been forgotten - except by three people who have stood unsteadily in his shadow.

darkness

2008-03-10T12:51:00.001-07:00

buildings and sky
Originally uploaded by zen

the greatest darkness i've ever encountered was during my years of spelunking. We'd get at our destination in a cave - deep in the drippy rock intestines of the earth and shut off our carbide lamps. Yes, it was that long ago that i went caving with carbide lamps. The darkness would surround us, hug us and not let go. Usually with normal darkness our eyes would adjust within 5 or 10 minutes and we'd see something, but here - here in the photonless world the darkness would seem to press against the eyeballs. I remember even touching my eyeball because i wasn't convinced that my eyes were even open. My body seemed to grow in size and so did the surrounding rocks. Our other senses were heightened and we laughed nervously at our own disorientation.

Darkness like this only comes rarely in life, and i'm glad i experienced it - enough to know that blindness, if it ever comes to me, will be like the death of a part of me... not just because i won't be able to see my Helen's eyes or take photos or Orion's constellation or the silhouettes of buildings, because i'll still have my imagination. It will be like the death of me because i live for light and give thanks to the gods for being able to see.

2 days in Paris

2008-03-08T10:30:00.001-08:00

the 3-legged Eiffel Tower of Colgate Palmolive
Originally uploaded by zen

Helen and i watched the movie Two Days in Paris and it was a light-hearted Woody Allenish film about a relationship's development in Paris. (And yes, i know the photo isn't Paris, it's actually India - but that's just how it is since i've never been there). I would recommend the movie for a cute watch.

As with many rocky relationship films Helen and i marvel about our own relationship that thankfully lacks drama or hard-headedness in how the both of us behave. Some of the movie's misunderstandings are cultural (French and American) and the dialog is particularly sarcastic (though not dementedly so as was Juno's) but we were both struck by the way in which we don't make issues of non-issues with each other. For instance neither Helen nor i care who we've previously dated or married, but are looking to the now of how we get along. So many couples - at least early on - run aground on the jagged shoals of insecurity. The main female (and writer/director) expressed her dismay about relationships that if she detects a break-up coming she's at first hurt, then without letting that heal goes directly into another relationship until "love" comes back around and places undue stress on that relationship until it breaks up and the cycle continues.

Ours is a mature love, but not exclusively cerebral (ie filled with justifications at least that i can see) and we are both firm in who we are and have not let the insecurity of doubt try and change the other person into something we're hoping to find. We found each other and then accepted them for the path each is on and still found that we were in love. Good. Maybe it's age, maybe it's being tired of angst and drama, but it works for both of us. Well, it more than 'works.' Our love is like a flowering bush that you never know from day to day which branches will have a lovely flower, but are filled with surprise and joy about it happening.

Chicken Slugs not commercially viable... yet

2008-03-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

Yossarian News Press release, Feb 29, 2008 - It was a matter of time before someone found the right combination. It was Almont Utterban and his mixed team of scientists at Tyson Foods International that got there first - the creation of a boneless, skinless living chicken, appropriately called in the food industry a chicken-slug. "Actually, it does have a skin of sorts, but it's practically indistinquisable from the meat itself," admitted Utterban in a press conference, "but it definitely is boneless where it counts."

The animal, a product of several years of recombinant DNA work and now a registered patent of Tyson Foods International, actually does have a thin-walled skull and a rudimentary cartiledge-like appendage protecting its lungs and other vital organs. These are considered ancillary in the food processing industry because with one well-placed cut, the head, digestive and other support systems can be removed from the saleable portion of the "bird."

And bird it is not. Without feathers or bones, it is capable of only the most simple muscular movement. "If it doesn't walk like a chicken, and doesn't look like a chicken, then it isn't a chicken," stated Gill Murmount of the (Processed Edible Chicken Kitchens) East Coast Chicken Processors Guild denounced. "This is not going to affect the chicken processing industry in the least," he continued, "because the FDA is not going to approve of an animal that has less than 92% of the original DNA, and label it a 'chicken'."

But Tyson executives have high hopes. They have conducted many public taste test trials using the new chicken slug and regular animals and say that they have found very little ability for the public to discern the difference. In fact, according to their published statistics, many people preferred the chicken slug to regular chicken meat indicating that it had more flavor. This creates the only problem in the taste tests for Tysons, who admit that the industry giants, such as McDonalds and other fast-food industries, aren't much interested in the actual taste, but in the consistancy of that taste, no matter how bland. "It seems that a few of our birds are gourmet," kidded Utterban.

But there's a bigger problem. The current cost of production and preparation of the chicken-slug is still over 15 times that of current farm-bred chickens. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that the animal is sterile. It has to be created in existing fertile chicken eggs and is still a very laboratory-intensive process. "The animal lacks both reproductive and egg-making organs." smiled Utterban, "The industry will find ways of making production automated, I'm sure. And be sure that McDonaldÕs is watching what we're doing with keen interest. If we get the animal's growth and development price metrics down to comparable units, it will reduce production and processing time and cost by 1/5th the current cost. Plus, as they grow, they sort of look like chicken McNuggets already."

I wonder if they're designed in the 5 different shapes of the chicken mcnuggets. And i've heard that the industry is working on a separate egg-producing animal that looks a lot more like a termite queen than a chicken. See? Screwing around with DNA benefits everyone!

Squircles in C minor

2008-03-05T18:19:00.000-08:00

squircles in c minor from zen on Vimeo.

of money and guilt and love again

2008-03-04T07:53:00.001-08:00

1000 kronen
Originally uploaded by zen

It's hard to remember the murderous pressure of 3rd grade, but i do recall the collective exhalation of 25 9-year olds when they saw i had had brought a packet full of foreign paper money for show-and-tell. Oh my! Of course i knew nothing about the money and what countries they were from until just before looking at each one, and some i'm sure i made up. But boy-oh-boy did it wow them! I wouldn't pass the envelope around but put splayed out the money on the desk next to the teacher and let the other kids ooh and ahh over the watchful eye of the her and i.

You see, to act the hero for the day i had stolen that money from my mom's sewing machine where she had shown me once in confidence and with great reverence. Of course i intended to return it - it could only buy so much 3rd-grade love and i knew it was wrong to take. But i would have it back in the sewing machine before mom even came home from work and she wouldn't even miss it. Wouldn't she?

The plans got a bit twisted up when on the way home from school, my contraband now burning sinfully in my pocket, i realized it was one of the days i went to the babysitters instead of directly home. No problem, i could still get it in the house before mom knew anything.

Buy my mom was crafty. Or perhaps i wasn't as bold as i was in my kid's imagination. Come time to bring the packet of money in the house and i lost my nerve. I stuck the packet in the crook of the pine tree out front. It was a heavy landscape pine that had branches that only little kids could find and a perfect little place to hold the money until i could see that the coast was clear and would replace it back in the sewing machine.

Except that the mind of little zen was as easily distracted then as it is now. And i played with my cars or something and completely forgot about the little packet of money hidden in the pine tree. For days, weeks. Through rain and wind until Mom discovered a single weathered bill in the front yard! Imagine her luck! She would add it to her already large collection of ... uh oh!

The murderous pressure of 3rd grade acceptance was nothing compared to the Spanish Inquisition of an irate mother. What had i done? Where was the rest of the money? Why would i do such a thing? I was deep in dog-dirt on this one because the packet had fallen apart and there was only a few tattered bills at the base of the tree. Double-uh-oh.

For whatever reason it was a rare treat night of getting to go to McDonalds, and i had blown it. I deserved a whipping, but mom couldn't get over her loss long enough to mete out a full punishment. So on the way to Mcdonalds, i would huddle in the back of the car behind the driver's side and fall victim to the angry arm of frustration and anger every time Mom thought about her loss. She didn't really slap me or hit me so much as just grab at me in a sort of futile rage. And not only would i have deserved a good whalloping, but i believe it was a better lesson to see how much it upset my mother and caused her to cry. Stealing wasn't wrong because it gave something to you that wasn't yours, it was wrong because it hurt people when they lost those things.

This month my mom wrote me about the incident from her point of view and it made me feel proud that i learned the lesson and had such a wonderful mother:

Zen,

My last few years in high school were during the Korean War. My boyfriend, Ron (who would become my dad - zen), was off in the service as were most of his High School friends. I loved to write letters to the “boys” and would come home each school day at lunchtime and delight in receiving a letter – be it from my boyfriend or one of he other guys who would write to me. Some were Marines fighting on the lines directly in Korea, some were in the Navy and some were in the Pacific, others were Airmen.

Occasionally one GI would send me a dollar bill from a foreign country that I had never heard of before. I collected these bills in a small envelope and when I didn’t receive a letter, I would check out the bills on which had printed their names. They had no monetary value to me. They were just memories. Some of the GI’s were Ron’s friends, some were just friends of friends who had no one to write to them. I was their connection back in the “States”.

After Christmas of 1953, Ron and I got married and immediately after the wedding we left for Kansas where he was attending Wichita University. Ron had a small coupe so my personal possessions were limited to one suitcase of clothes, my sewing machine, a box of recipe cards, a cookbook and a small white envelope of foreign dollar bills.

When you took the envelope for “Show and Tell” it was not the contents that got lost, it was a part of my past. Granted, it was well time for me to let go of the past but sometimes that is hard to do. I regret hitting you all the way to McDonalds. Sometimes we place our feelings and anger over what really matters to us. My loss was pale in comparison to the wonderful, caring son I had and probably did not appreciate at that time. You have grown into a very special man and words can’t explain how proud I am of you.

AND THAT IS THE REST OF THE STORY!

Love,
Mom

Quote

2008-03-03T11:34:00.000-08:00

The future is like the present, only longer.

- Dan Quisenberry (1953-1998), relief pitcher for the Kansas City Royals and published poet.

let's have junior's ass on the flag

2008-03-02T08:24:00.001-08:00

let's have juniors ass on the flag
Originally uploaded by zen

Sam's Club is offering some kind of photo portraits. So Sams had set up a little mini-studio that tried to entice people into getting family shots. But it also boasts use of the American Flag as design element, that - in my mind - would get patriots' blood stirring. Sitting on the flag, draping the flag around people are, i'm sure, meant to show love of country, but seems to me to show disrespect for the icons that are intended to represent it.

In today's world we have US Flag underwear, flag candies, flag pillows and even flag trash along our highways of the broken magnets and ripped up flags attached to our vehicles. I don't really have a conclusion, but it seems that Americans will tolerate the gross commercialization of their symbols and turning them into pet clothing before they'll accept using the flag for protest, such as displaying it upside down as a call for distress for America. Pretty bizzare lot we are!

JAMES LEWIS

2008-03-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

... and James Lewis banged his head real hard on the cement by the corner of the house... and he cried and and cried but nobody came... and James Lewis stopped crying and just stood there by the patio... and the day didn't seem to be moving along at all... and the weather stayed the same... and for a long time nobody came out of the house or went in the house and nobody walked by on the sidewalk where he lived even though he remembered Mr. Walters the retired man always walked by here in the afternoon... and James Lewis' brother Billy didn't come home from school... and a sneaky voice whispered something in his ear.. and James Lewis began to cry outloud again... he cried that he didn't wanna die... not until his Mom came out of the house... he didn't wanna die until his Daddy came home from work... and he didn't wanna die until he was in his bed at night because that's how you died when you laid there and your breath got all hairy and graspy like when Gramma died... and so James Lewis was going to stand there until something else happened... and for more than a hundred hours the sun didn't move... and nothing else happened in the day... and he wanted to move from that spot but he couldn't... and it was like his legs were sewn to the patio by the corner of the house... and James Lewis looked up and there was another boy about his age over on the sidewalk... and James Lewis waved and said his best "Howdee!"... and the other boy looked sad and his face was all puffy... and James Lewis tried to yell in a kinda happy way "So! What's wrong? Why don't you come over here?"... and the boy began to cry and yell that he didn't want to die there without his Mommy and he was going to wait there until she came back... and James Lewis told the boy, as soft as he could from that distance, that it was okay to die... and that it was just okay... and James Lewis felt himself free of the ground and he felt the earth zoom away like an elevator floor or like looking down at the ground from a rocket launch... and James Lewis felt free... and James Lewis' mother, 4 months after her child's death, felt something ease, felt something give inside her... and she laughed over something someone said that had nothing to do with her precious James Lewis...and she knew in her heart that there was nothing more she could have done for her sweet James Lewis.

outside world

2008-02-29T20:53:00.000-08:00

outside world filmed by zen on Vimeo.

zen, the designated trip guide

2008-02-28T20:43:00.001-08:00

library 2
Originally uploaded by zen

Over at the Mountain Xpress forums, this thread is an interesting discussion of whether or not someone should take hallucinogenic mushrooms. Having been a "good trip guide" or "designated reality driver" for many people taking drugs in the past (and specializing in first-timers) i have learned techniques to prevent a person's hallucinatory experience from going awry which could prevent whatever lesson are possible from being mind-expanding. At the very least, my job has been to prevent anything bad happening to the person tripping, real, virtual or imagined. And maybe sometime i'll outline the main points, but for now i'd like to tell the story my first time as an unwilling drug guide. It was for my father.

it was 1971 and i was around 17 and still living at home, hanging on the streetcorner after dark with my buds when my Mom called me in. "Ruh roh," i thought, "what am i in trouble for now?" I came into the house and Mom told me at the top of the stairs that Dad had a question to ask me. WIth a worrisome look on her face she promptly left me with Dad in the living room.

My Dad, a nearly 40 year old former fringe beatnik was pacing the floor in an agitated state that i hadn't seen him in before. In fact his pacing was pretty self absorbed and i wasn't sure he knew i was in the room. I cleared my throat and he looked up, acknowledged me with a nod and turned to pace some more. My dad and i had a pretty glib relationship in which we could discuss most things theoretically, but i was still his kid and not beyond the discipline of "being grounded" if i did something that we both knew was wrong. However, i couldn't think of anything - at least recently - that i'd done, so i sat down and waited for the lecture. Twice he approached me, stopped and drew in his breath, and ended by shaking his head in thought and continuing to pace. Finally, he sat down on the other end of the long Scandanavian-style couch which left space for at least 2 people between us and began.

"Is it possible," he said in measured words "to 'bad trip' off of pot?"

At first i was floored. This was about him and not me? Was this a hypothetical question to trick me? Had he smoked something he thought was pot (he was a heavy cigarette smoker)? I couldn't help a Mona Lisa expression on my face. "Dad, have you smoked some marijuana?" I had to suppress the timbre of my voice wanting to sound the way a parent talks to a child who knocked over a glass vase and broke it.

He then proceeded to delineate his evening thus far, not just choosing his words carefully, but describing in an uncharacteristically detailed manner how he had rolled up two "marijuana cigarettes" down in his work den, began smoking them and timed the finish of both of them to coincide with the start of his favorite television show at the time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He had done this because pot, he had heard, was supposed to increase the hilarity and accentuate his enjoyment of things he normally liked.

At this point Mom swept past the living room towards the kitchen to exclaim, in passing, that Dad had laughed at all the wrong parts and seemed to take the show much too seriously at other times. I don't believe she was listening in the halls deliberately or anything, just not real comfortable with Dad's mixed behavior.

"Where did you get the pot?" I asked, trying not to sound accusatory. Dad looked at me and didn't answer, probably judging on what level to answer me. As a parent (It's none of your business, son). As a concerned friend (From a guy behind the Bus Station, dude). As an authority figure (I grew it myself, officer). I continued. "I only want to make sure it is real pot and not laced with something." In the late 1960s, a US government sponsored program had an herbicide paraquat sprayed on marijuana fields in South America which caused a scare about whether people were actually smoking paraquat-laced pot and doing even more damage to themselves than just regular pot.

"Gary, a dealer i know who works for the government." He responded. "I trust him that it's good and untainted pot." "Ok, that's good." I told him. "Real pot shouldn't give you a bad trip, but you also need to learn a little bit about how to handle it."

I myself had tried pot years earlier only after reading Aldous Huxley and writers in "Le Club des Hashishins" which romanticized drug use to some degree, but that's another story for another time. "What makes you feel you're having a 'bad trip'?" Dad brightened. I was approaching this as he would, from a scientific, almost medical standpoint. He stopped for a moment and i could tell turned within to sense what it was he felt was wrong at the moment.

"I think my left leg is dying." he pronounced. I guess i gave him a bit of an askance look because he looked back at me sheepishly. "Well, i'm not sure i can't feel my legs." I said, "You were using them pretty well to pace a minute ago." And we laughed. And i knew he was going to be alright. I also knew what i had to do was get his mind off of the "fact" that he smoked pot and needed to evaluate every sensation in a left-brained sort of way. He needed to relax and enjoy rather than evaluate, but he was sort-of stuck in a mindset of this-is-going-on-this-very-moment-and-i-need-to-understand-it. So i moved closer to him and opened a magazine on the table and started a sort of question/answer game with him about what he thought about each photograph. His answers were pretty normal for the most part and i could see him begin to relax into having a mission pretty quickly.

On one of the photos the printing was malformed and it produced a pretty trippy version of a pirate ship that looked kinda like one of those 3D images that you have to unfocus your eyes to see. I pointed, "What do you think about this?" i almost smirked thinking he'd say "Wow, man, that's weird!" but he looked at it only casually and said, "Some sort of printing error i suppose, but look at THIS!" He pointed to an ad for a brand new corvette and threw back his head and laughed heartily. A belly laugh. "Now that's weird!" he said, pretty much leaving me to wonder what he thought was weird about it. A few more minutes and i could tell he was starting to get bored with the analysis game and so i said "Hey! Why don't we go down to the rec room and play some Toss-Across?"

Toss Across was a Mattel game which players scored X's or O's by tossing a small bean bag at the plastic board and depending how the bean bag hit the surface either an X or an O would result. Dad liked the mindless skill of the game and so i bounded downstairs after him. Opponents stood opposite each other about 10 to 12 feet and would take turns tossing bean bags at the board. Dad tossed first and the bean bag just flopped on the corner of the board scoring nothing. Then he went and got his bean bag. I tossed my bean bag and managed to get an O but not in the critical middle. Dad went up and got my bean bag. He tossed again and then i did and each time he would retrieve the tossed bean bag until he had all 6 of the bean bags in his hot little mitts, nudging his chin towards me telling me it was my turn to go. But i didn't have any to toss and he forgot about it anyway because he began dropping bean bags on the ground and just laughing a high-pitched cackle as each one dropped. He kept dropping them and laughing. I guess he even forgot i was there so i had to interrupt him to ask him what the story was.

"Oh!" he looked up, surprised there was another human in the room. He got a bit serious for a moment and said, "You know how when you drop something it has a certain reaction? Like for instance a plate strikes the hard floor and splatters into a million shards. " he paused to let me imagine it as vividly as i'm sure he was imagining it. "Or a rubber ball takes that stored energy, compresses it and then like a coiled spring leaps back up into the air. You know?"

"Yes, i see that." Dad and i are both visual processors. Dad got a kid-like grin on his face. But a bean bag, " he said and dropped one of them from his hand to the ground, "a bean bag is unwilling to do ANYTHING!" and pealed laughter filled up the rec room with his huge infectious mirth. I laughed too. Each time he would drop another bean bag he would roar with laughter as if the bean bag were the laziest object in the universe. And it was.

And slowly as several hours unfolded father and son enjoyed Dad's 'bad trip' filled with personal and philosophical revelations until he got the munchies and several bowls of "tongue-lickin' crackers" Which is a whole other blog entry, but this was my first introduction to taking someone down the drug path to meet themselves on the other side.

Dad never smoked again to my knowledge, however. The first experience of confusion and unpleasant body sensations kinda took the thrill out of the experience. The bag of pot he got from Gary which he kept in the back of his filing cabinet, seemed to be affected by a mysteriously slow evaporation where about a bud a week would be gone until it was only stems and some flakes. It was dank and powerful. And tasted good!

gloom cookie

2008-02-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

She always disliked him for that.
uploaded by zen

gloom cookie

she's 14 years old
listens to switchblade symphony
smokes clove cigarettes when
no adults are around
her makeup always
normally a pale base
with dark eyes
blood red lips
and black fingertips
an h.p. lovecraft babe
who watches the crow
over and over again

gutter nymph
cemetery doll
a lily of the alley
a city of one

she poses for this poem
by tilting her head down
forcing her eyes up
like alex in clockwork orange,
and flipping me off

Uncle Boogie is dead.

2008-02-25T12:03:00.001-08:00

black heart of destruction
Originally uploaded by zen

Donald Voss Jr. (March 6, 1955 - February 7, 2007)

It's a shame when you get to hear from a longtime friend only because he's calling to tell you of a mutual friend that has passed away. Tom called late this Saturday to tell me that Donnie Voss had died of a failed liver. I would have loved to talk longer to Tom, but I was sick with that horrid flu and he had his infirm mother to bathe.

Donnie was always a bit of a flawed genius. His mom had died early in his life and his dad never remarried. Donnie kept some supersecret image of 'woman' in his heart that prevented his relationships with women his own age maturing into something beyond a broken fantasy.

His love of music was unparalleled and he applied those stubby fingers of his to the bass. He had real talent. Enough to get a short stint with Tower of Power during their years of high-turnover of bandmembers, and even accompanied the Rolling Stones European tour (sometime in the '70s) with an opening band. This bought him a house in California which he let people live there because they needed a place. He also studied double-bass with Stephen Brewster, who was a first chair bassist with the National Symphony Orchestra and was even looking to get in with the National Symphony until Stephen's life was cut short in an automobile accident. Donnie would play bass at home to Beethoven and mostly cry thru the piece.

But Donnie would drink. And drink heavily. In fact he died of complications involving the failure of his liver to keep up with his consumption. Alcohol gave him access to a balance he could hardly achieve elsewhere. Every positive thing in his life could be matched with an equally heavy failure thanks to alcohol. His own discomfort could be balanced by the glibness of a drunk. He also hid his condition from his dad, but then again he drank heavily enough that we all knew this would get him if an error in immediate judgement didn't. Donny would actually drink himself into the body of an aging black man whom he referred to as "Uncle Boogie," and most people referred to Don as Uncle Boogie. As Uncle Boogie, he would mostly refer to himself in the third person. "Give Uncle Boogie a fmoke!" A fmoke was a smoke, a cigarette. When Don got polluted he would be calm and breezy and Uncle Boogie, affable and a real character. He would play the most amazing stride piano and bluesy guitar in the style Big Bill Broonzy. At these times Donny wasn't black or white, he was just Uncle Boogie.

When sober, could be terribly nervous, innocent and sweet, but he could just as easily endlessly drone about some perceived injustice or annoy you with something over and over again. Almost always he was loud. The most common phrase I remember his dad saying (actually yelling from upstairs) was "Goddammit, Don! Keep it down, willya?" But downstairs was his lair. A baby grand with his grandma's pettipoint on the bench and his several basses and his late '70s Marshall amp in blue metalflake vinyl. Don was a mixture of many things, many drinks, many moods.

The only jobs I knew him to have were as a piano mover - he even helped Stevi and I move our piano - and as a grave digger, I believe at one of D.C.'s more prestigious cemeteries.

The last time I remember seeing Don, he was sober and annoying. He was proud of his current collection of musical instruments and was showing them off by playing each one a little bit. He did have a taste for the finer things such as beautifully crafted instruments, antique cars and even a beautiful old BMW motorcycle. He insisted I have a beer and then promptly and absent-mindedly put his cigarette out in it. Of course I drank it. This annoyance and some insistence on his part that I do something had me bolting from the house (he lived at his dads at this time and most of his life), and him chasing after me yelling wildly. I dove for my car and began driving off and he even tried to put his body in front of my path, but not too riskily, so I got by. In my mind I wrote him off and hadn't spoken to him except briefly by phone in some 15 years.

It's all so sad. For me the saddest part isn't his passing - I'm cool with our leaving the planet as much as I can be, but that because I wrote him off, this scant couple of paragraphs is pretty much all the recollection I have of him. Memories of Uncle Boogie had already begun disappearing as you knew him, as you tried to peer into his unfair, misshapen world.

Skimboarder

2008-02-25T07:27:00.001-08:00

skimboarder from zen on Vimeo.

I filmed this and wrote a bit of music to go with it just to try it.

The dreams of sheep

2008-02-23T08:37:00.001-08:00

sheep and angel
Originally uploaded by zen

Yes,
sheep dream of pleasing us.

The only thing they're
adamant about is
that we see
their sacrifice.
If we see that,
they go to the temples
and the sacrificial stones
and the food processing plants
happy - knowing we know.

And there
amid their own blood
they finish
the dream.

my little blue motorcycle

2008-02-21T17:52:00.001-08:00

my little blue motorcycle
Originally uploaded by zen

She's out of the shop and back on the paths of laughter and excitement. I'm thinking of naming her 'Blue Betty,' or when she acts up 'Bitchin Betty.'

Chad dropped me off at Carroll's repair and the obvious care he took in fixing it and explaining things to me i'm sure i'll take her back there if she needs anything. And then in the cold, cold late winter air i drove off on her and laughed maniacally because i couldn't help it.

There's something unexplainable about being on a motorcycle - it's a liberating moment. I'm very alive, my eyes darting everywhere, which is good because motorcycles aren't always well-seen or well-respected. Part of the subtle excitement is the fact that it still seems as if i'm a pedestrian. I didn't get inside anything, i just climbed aboard. Like riding in the back of a truck or hanging on to the side of a beach buggy. A pedestrian with a motor between his legs. A bicycle from my youth with quite a bit of power and noise that isn't playing cards clothespinned to slap against the spokes. I used to live on my bicycle growing up, stopping and talking to my buds with the bike still straddling my bike, able to scoot off into the distance at a moment's whim.

And moving down the road i'm still outside. It makes a car seem like a house with wheels or an La-z-boy chair inside a glass egg with a steering wheel instead of a remote. It's a charge! It amps me up and every trip on it a peal of laughter burbles up from somewhere inside me. No doubt the 9-year-old with his first 'big boy' bike.

She waits on the side of house for a little better weather, but i can't hold out forever...

Newtonian Diet

2008-02-19T10:41:00.001-08:00

self-portly originally uploaded by zen

Unless acted upon by a net external force, a body at dinner, will tend to remain at dinner and a body, fasting, will tend to remain fasting.
- Isaac Newton's first law of dieting

I'm on a diet. I have been a bad boy and greedy with Helen's artful cooking. She makes a sauce that if poured over gravel i would bust my teeth to eat. But even before tasting her ambrosia, in my bachelor years, i wasn't exactly mindful of what i ate. You see up until that point i really didn't like food - and saw eating as a distraction from whatever i was doing at the time, usually computing or photographing. Eating was an interruption. And so my eating habits were of convenience - read: fast food - and a lot of it so i wouldn't have to interrupt whatever i'd be doing in the next few hours. I was thin.

I also fasted. Fasting is easy for me, partly because of my antipathy for food, partly because i saw it as part of spiritual cleansing. But as i grew older, fasting stopped being a monthly event and eventually narrowed to once a year for about a week. The thing is after the 3rd day of a fast, i tend to forget about food, and the very watered-down fruit juices filled my belly without interrupting my industry.

But this is the first time i've ever looked at my growing real-estate of a belly and thought: do i have genitals? Of course i do, but my little paunch had turned into a sprawling billboard advertising my gluttony. Hmmph. I should've been warned by having to buy all new belts after moving in with Helen, but even that didn't do it. My epiphany came when i found a pile of dress-pants at Sams Club with a built-in hidden elastic strip that expanded (for when i eat, right?) and thought "What an amazing invention!" Whoah there, Vlad the Inhaler! Next i'll find myself dressing like Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Not just poor taste, but golf shirts and patterned shorts... I was getting fat. What a short, ugly word that. After discovering it for myself, on myself, i felt fat - and that's even worse.

I had never dieted before and only had narrowed my eyes at Helen when she suggested portion control. Self control isn't my strongest behavior. At work they began a health initiative at work of Lighten Up 4 Life i decided to try it despite my personal distaste 4 using numbers 2 replace words (I really h8 it). At first, educating myself in the values of calories and carbs gave me something to focus on and it was fun, but after a while that wore thin and i wasn't getting thin. But wait, i'm good at fasting, so i'll do that. While that isn't healthy for the long run, at least i would continue losing weight. But Helen isn't fasting and still making culinary art. So what to do?

The weird thing is my mind works best with simple, if strange concepts. If i continue to fast, but allow myself a small meal once in a while, that is attainable. And so that's how i look at it now. Fasting punctuated by portions of food. It's like eating desert only. I get to have the power over my eating by not doing it, but rewarding myself with lunch and dinner. And an occasional yoghurt late at night if i've been good.

So i guess i'm rewarding myself for not eating, by, um, eating. But that's what works for me and i've shed about 20 lbs in the process and will continue on this path probably until it becomes it's own habit. My future reward will allow me to watch myself peeing in the toilet. Not exactly a highlight, but some kind of twisted sense of being healthy.

gardening with language

2008-02-18T23:43:00.001-08:00

typewriter planter
Originally uploaded by zen

i don't understand words
they're not my native tongue
my language is a necklace
of proto-images
usually in deep turquoise
dipped on a field of black
gathering and collecting together
at the beginning of thought

if i hold the word 'flame'
on my tongue
it doesn't burn
flame is more like a moving ribbon
of light and licorice
but if i close my eyes
and smell the black smoking earth
and see the weeping leaves
writhe and coil in the fire's hot draw
and finally crackle to dust
it sits me on a stove's
red burner sizzling
smelling meat

words are more like plants
that clasp their space
reluctantly
and launch into flower the instant
you turn your back
to examine a different one
they squirt up from the black humus
of our beginnings
squeezed by the cadence
of light and storm
and the glib whim
and capricious fancy
of meaning

and once you learn a new word
it flowers everywhere
your mom uses it twice in a sentence
a crass commercial product
trying to be artsy whispers it lovingly
and
your minister asks you
if you know what it
really means

words get in the way of meaning
like flowers in the way of plants
suddenly
everyone's concerned with sex
instead of how we got here
and posing paradoxes
that unhinge language
from its frame

leaving the door open
to the garden of thought

a short play about death

2008-02-17T12:36:00.001-08:00

you nasty
Originally uploaded by zen

Gerald McBean
I saw Death from my back door.

Emily Pritchart
I saw Death from my back door.

Mama
I saw Death from my back door.

Billy
I saw Death from my back door.

The Judge
I saw Death from my back door.

All
We all saw Death from our back door!

worry...

2008-02-16T12:04:00.001-08:00

stencil worry girl
Originally uploaded by zen

Over at the Sniff What I'm Stepping In blog, Amy attended a seminar that boasted statistics about worry:

* Only 1 out of every 7 things you worry about will actually happen.
* Of that number that do occur, only 1 out of every 5 will have intolerable consequences.

So, as you feel worry coming on, give it a sequential number like #1 for the first worry, #2 for the second, etc...

Only when you hit #35 should you give it any measure of your concern.

But to be serious for a second, even using these statistics, worrying is clearly not a good predictor of bad things happening, and so it's not worth giving much time to it. It's a huge waste of our minds. Humans are known as the 'poor weather animals,' meaning that we tend to do best under bad conditions. It's under duress and hardship that our ability to adapt (especially with the mind) starts to shine. Interestingly, it's when we're busy adapting by applying solutions and trying answers that we worry less. It's when we have a modicum of relatively stress-free time that we begin worrying about what might happen.

Besides, we don't seem to become more prepared by worrying about something, only less surprised that it happens. It doesn't lessen the trauma or the emotional pain. Life will go on regardless of whether we predicted it or not. Whether we worry about the possibility or not.

To me the point is would i have been better off by spending the entire cruise of the Titanic hugging the lifeboats? I think not. At least that's not the kind of life i want to lead. Better to try and live fully and embrace life than cling to fears about what could happen. And what if i chose to hug the side of the Titanic that began listing, where the lifeboats couldn't be lowered? I would have not only wasted the entire cruise on an amazing ship, but i still would have hit the drink and still been among those listed as missing at sea.

Worry is mostly a waste. Let it go, Luke. Better to become more efficient with my mind at learning to live, i say.

surrender, Christopher

2008-02-14T07:25:00.001-08:00

christopher, an amazing mind
Originally uploaded by zen

Christpher Mello is off to Central America for about a year and last night was his going-away bash. All kinds of well-wishers and friends came out to see him one last time. Helen and i hugged him hard, told him we loved him and quietly wished him a safe return.

I cannot relate what an amazing mind he has an artist. His ability to intuitively help us relate to nature has been his mission for, well, as long as he can remember. He had an area at the Screen Door where he sold unique clay and found nature and iron items, many of which were crafted into living plant holders (because he included the plants). He is Gnomon. He is Hanuman. He not only is the mastermind behind 'Christopher's Garden', a place of wonder and innocence that i photograph frequently, but he's a loving man and a good friend.

Godspeed, Chris.

no MRSA for the wicked

2008-02-13T14:03:00.001-08:00

sorry honey, but i'm happily married
Originally uploaded by zen

I just got news back from a biopsy, and i don't have MRSA. MRSA, pronounced 'mersa', stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - a high falutin' way of saying a staph infection that's grown smarter than our regular strength antibiotics. I had a boil on my face and went to the doc and he did the usual (I was even thinking of naming my firstborn twins Lance and Drain) but put me on loopy and powerful antibiotics in the off-chance that i had the resistant kind of Staphylococcus. But the worst of it - and in the midst of dieting - Helen and i decided that if i were particularly pathogenic that we shouldn't kiss.

Kissing is something that we do daily. We make time for kissing. I know it sounds silly, but after a first date with Helen, i waited as long as i could (i think at most 2 days) and called her up.

"Hello. Helen?"
"Yess, is this zen?"
"Yes it is. And i was thinking, that well, i um... I'm coming over to kiss you."
"Okay."

Okay. Okay? Holy shit! I'm glad i had already showered because the winds that blew me over to her house were not strong enough. My car squealed under the pressure of me gripping the wheel at high speed. I didn't think of anything as i drove, only which direction, which lane, which path was quickest. I got there and we did nothing but kiss each other in all its manifestations: slow, fast, little kisses, big smoochy ones, neck nibbles, hair-breathing kisslets. It was amazing.

So for us kissing isn't just a greeting or a goodbye, it's a release and a necessity. A form of life of it's own that puts me right back into the heaven of being next to the most precious of beings here on this sweet Earth. And the point of all this is that i'm at work and can't wait to get home. Can't wait for her breath to mix with mine and to look into her eyes and put myself back into alignment with the universe that is kissing Helen.

No MRSA for me, nossir!

two haiku

2008-02-11T17:21:00.000-08:00

March winds come early
scattering trash in chaos;
Bobby’s out on bail.

-

waterfalls of words
gushing conversations of
brown leaves tumbling down

-

I write like Frankenstein's monster walks

2008-02-10T21:22:00.001-08:00

stencil of frank
Originally uploaded by zen

I'm stiff and unfluid. I clomp and teeter about to topple. I have to think too much about how to move from one sentence to the other and end up going in some other direction than where i thought my pen (ok keyboard) would take me. I create a sentence structure and then fill it with gravel in hopes of giving it weight. I admire the natural way Fliss, Jennifer Saylor or Edgy Mama seem so organized and meaningful in their writing, or the clarity with which Ashevegas or Scrutiny Hooligans puts things.

I hate the way i write, but...

I cannot improve without practice. And most people reading this probably wish i would practice in a private journal rather in a public place. Or start on bathroom walls. Or just not write and let my photographs speak for themselves. But, i'm gonna keep at it until either i can actually write something both meaningful and poetic, or the internet boycotts me like the townspeople with torches and pitchforks.

I write like Frankenstein's monster walks.

guess i'm a slow learner

2008-02-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

It's already the Year of the Rat and i'm still writing Monkey on all of my checks!

If you're going to brainwash me, do it in the morning

2008-02-09T06:30:00.001-08:00

When i first awaken in the morning, i am weak-minded. It's not just that i can't think very well, but my internal dialog hasn't been kickstarted. I'm in a swimmy-headed state between states of thinking. I haven't let go of my dream world and the real world hasn't made enough of an impression on me to care enough to begin the kind of regular thinking that includes to do lists and appointments. I call it 'math thinking' and Helen knows not to innundate me with too much too soon.

Helen on the other hand begins joining hands with the real world before she even wakes up i think. It's almost as if her waking mind is so strong it pries her out of the comfortable memory foam of bed. By the time her body moves it's already with the purpose and determination of expected results. I expect nothing of the day on just waking up, have no clue about results and only as they present themselves - a pile of unfinished photos on the computer, the need to change the dressing on my latest wound, whatever.

My weak mind can easily be hijacked. This morning Helen was in the kitchen making our breakfast of an egg, some weekend bacon we allow ourselves and a grapefruit halved for each of us, all while listening to Eat, Pray, Love on CD. A book i've been enjoying with her, both reading it to her at night and listening to it in the car or kitchen. But this morning, it is an endless stream of words that hijacks my brain and doesn't let my own feelings and dull experiences come back to me. I do the breakfast dishes and then have to almost run out of the kitchen to be able to hear myself think. I have only thoughts of what i'm being told. I can't start zen's day without my thinking utensils, whatever they may be. But sweet as a golden brown marshmallow, warm and satisfying, Helen turns the CD off after she notes my distress. We sit on the porch for a moment and have the small conversations of love and passing thoughts that intimate people do. And my brain settles down to be able to write this post.

And i'm awake now. And happy.

Dem Chips is Good

2008-02-08T18:53:00.001-08:00

It's a week late, but the All-Star Democratic Party Chili Cook-Off went well, but we went mostly to support our candidates with presence and money ($10 tickets and we also bid on some auction items), and to try out their chili.

While the chili was as varied as the opinions, the real winner of the day was the donkey chips to spoon it up!

asking for it

2008-02-06T21:12:00.001-08:00

yesterday i stopped by Subway eatery and noticed out back that they'd thrown out an old counter which had 2 3x10 foot panels of plastic made to look like photographic ceramic tile (tomatoes and veggies), and i just walked back in and asked the manager. He was perhaps Persian or possibly Indian and seemed intrigued with why i wanted it, but let me put them in my car despite nails and sharp metal all over the place. And all i had to do was ask!

Banner

2008-02-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Trying to get the banner worked up. I haven't been able to get it to display yet. I'm anxious to start posting so will be doing both at the same time, i guess.

test post - why am i doing this?

2008-02-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

You have a blog, zen. You have a Flickr account filled with over 14,000 photos filled with comments and conversations with friends. Well, what i don't have is a place to put my stupid thoughts, my really inane minutia, my pooh-pooh undies.

That's what this is for, and more and more people are blog straightening, cleaning house at this time like Anne in Edgy Mama and Bill in Ashevillein. I'm sure there's others, too.