I don’t often post pictures on my website, and even less of my family, but this picture was just intriguing to me. First, this is the odd contrast between the huge ball and my smaller daughter. Then you notice the poor dog wanting to go outside, but stuck inside the glass. Then you notice that while it is summer, my boy is wearing rain boots on the deck.

At this stage, my home is paradise… even an Eden. A place where my kids don’t have to worry about the hell that swirls about the world. A place where I get to (sometimes) forget about the hell. They’ll learn about all that all too soon, and I will have to remember as well, but right now, summer is endless.

I’m not exactly sure where this comes from, but I’ve heard others recite similar feelings— that whenever life is good, I’ve always felt like I should be on my guard, for the bad won’t be too far behind. While the validity of such a statement may actually be true (everyone’s life runs in cycles), it has a terrible attitude of ruining the moment. One’s life then becomes a series of “downs” followed not by “ups”, but by moments of “fear”. Life is wonderful at each moment, and its a shame I have to remind myself of that.

In cleaning out an old box found in my closet, I discovered an old diary… er, journal to us men. I wrote it around 10 years ago during a time of turmoil in my life… I couldn’t do anything more than sit down to read it.

In fact, I feel like dancin’…

40 years ago today, I was born. Strange that I don’t remember it well. Anyway when we turned 30, everyone sends us those black cards, and talk about our party as a “wake”. It was cute then, but now it is getting serious.

Why doesn’t time seem real? I mean, a bit more than 10 years ago, I escaped from the land of my forefathers and relocated to the Pacific Northwest. It just doesn’t seem like 10 years…

Getting old sucks. I know, I know, its probably just a mid-life crisis, since I am turning 40 next month, but still. I can’t help but think, what all infirmed geisers think… if I had just taken better care of myself when I was younger.

Well, if you are still a lad, take a bit of advice from an old fart…

Today the peace and tranquility that I’ve been working on for years is about to end. Today, the nightmare arrives in my home… not in the form of a grisly, eyeless zombie or in the form of a gargantuan flying spaghetti monster… this will be in the form of a puppy.

But puppies are so cute, and friendly, and happy to be near you, why would you call something so cute a nightmare?

If you remove the cute façade, what’s left? A hyper-active annoyance that shits and sheds and whines all night long. No thanks.

Once upon a time, I attended a high school history class put on by Lawrence Esplin, who actually got me interested in the subject. In one of his classes, he described the term, Renaissance Man, which so inspired me, that I decided that would be my goal. And now that my goate is gray, I realize that concept was one of the primary mottos of my life.

Had a strange dream last night that for some reason, I’m willing to share here.

In this dream, me and my family and a friend of mine and his family (who often hang out together), were … well, up in the clouds. We weren’t exactly flying— more like floating, and hanging out together. I was aware of others in the same area and in the same condition.

I hate labels. Once someone’s initial impression attaches a yellow piece of paper with the chicken-scratching- psuedo-scientific babbeltalk derived from a self-help book, it’s impossible to change that person’s projection… er, perspective. No matter what you do thereafter, you can’t change the views of the push-pin pusher.

Okay boys and girls, it is time to play everyone’s favorite game… Synchronistic Interpretation! What? You don’t remember the rules? Let me refresh your conscious… This is the game where I tell you a strange event that occurred to me, and each of you try to interpret it as Jung would in such a metaphoric way that it becomes a message to me from Life.

Ready to play?

On the last page of the latest issue of the Utne Reader, there is an article about Tony Deifell, a photographer who had a 12 year old ask him the question, “Why do you do what you do?” He found it more difficult to answer this to him than to the regular stream of people (read the article).

I suppose the most difficult person to answer this question to would be ourselves. So, in true Socratic form, this is a good question to regularly ask ourselves, and I thought that I would respond and explain myself… mainly to myself.

I started doing Yoga many years ago after I threw my back out, and the doctor recommended “stretching.” I never took a class or found any formal routine, I would glance through books or magazines and would incorporate any poses that I found interesting. Over the years, I’ve settled into a routine that works well for me.

I do my routine twice a day. I first do the routine when I get up, and it is a peaceful awakening before I start my morning meditation. My second routine just before bedtime is quite the opposite, and usually becomes a full-contact sport.

Last night, I had a dream that I thought I would share:

I went scuba diving… except that I didn’t have the gear nor a boat, as I left from the shore, swam out to the place I wanted to dive, and went down. Even though I didn’t have the scuba gear, I could breath just fine and explored the ruins of an ancient city. Took some pictures of the encrusted remnants as well as the sealife… including a shark.

I was having such a good time, that I lost track of the time until I noticed that it was getting dark. I started to return to the surface, and purposely slowed myself … no sense in getting nitrogen bubbles in the blood, right? By the time I surfaced, it was night. I figured that before I start swimming for shore, I should look around to see some lights in order to figure out which direction the shore was.

The other day I was working out on a machine at the gym I go to, and this woman gets on the machine next to me. I know I’m just working out for myself and I’d like to think that I was above petty competition, but I can glance out of the corner of my eye to compare the red readout on her machine with the one in front of me.

I just can’t help myself, and I had to pick up the pace to make sure that the RPMs listed on my machine were higher than the RPMs on her machine, etc. It is usually a struggle to make sure that I don’t get shown up by these perky 20 year olds, but this time, I was doing pretty good. When my 1/2 hour was up, I got off and for the first time, got to notice the woman. She was 6 months pregnant. Great, I am so glad to really know my level.

Today was one of those days that will stand out in my memory for hours.

I was having lunch with a friend of my from work, and noticed out the window a couple of young men fluffing their cock feathers. My friend said, “Looks like we’re going to see a fight.” They went back and forth with one man getting in his car, only to get back out and stick out his chest. One time in the car finally took hold, and he drove away.

A few seconds later, another young man comes out of the same convenience store wearing the store uniform holding a two foot pipe and starts running after the car.

The other day, my wife called to me to come out in the backyard to see my Buddha wearing a “coon-skin hat.” When I came out, it did look like my Buddha was trying to be Davy Crockett, as there was a Red squirrel (tamiasciurus hudsonicus) perched on top of his head. The squirrel obviously enjoyed the viewed, as he was there long enough for me to go get my camera and return to take a number of pictures of him.

I put his large statue in the center of my garden to bring a sort of calmness to my thoughts— a message to be undisturbed in the midst of the swirling chaos I call my life. How could one be more undisturbed than to let a squirrel squat on your head?

To be completely honest, when I placed this statue in my garden, I fully expected to spend a lot of time giving Buddha a shampoo to get the bird crap out. But surprisingly, the birds have had quite a bit of respect for him. Either that, or there are just so many other targets around. But for all the time this squirrel roosted there, he didn’t poop on him either.

That’s nice of wildlife, not to shit on what we like.

Twisting an old meme, David Chin, listed what he would take with him to a deserted island… and then leave, and asks, what you would leave there.

Tonight I’m seeing pictures.

The first one is of a portrait of a man with black hair, but gears, wheels and mechanical parts are strewn across what would be his face. Six smoke stacks belching pollution protrude from his skull. The caption underneath reads: “Mind”

Forgive me, Readership, for I have sinned. It has been … well, let’s just say I’ve never confessed my sins before as I’ve always felt I was an honest man, but my integrity has now been compromised.

My nephew, Colt Marshall, won a national award through Cartoon Network for a short movie that he made. The contest asked the contestants to make a video based on a verb.

You may have caught him on Cartoon Network (I can’t imagine my readership would have, however), but they edited it quite a bit. You can, however, see the Director’s Cut.

It’s been a few years since you died, but I still miss you. I miss your stories, your cookies, your chuckling laugh…

I often see your spunky personality in my daughter’s impish eyes… and really wish you could have met her. Oh, and I have a boy now too. He’s a big boy and even feels heavier than he looks. He’s extremely ticklish and so much fun to get him laughing.

I’ve so much to say that I really don’t know what to say… so maybe I’ll just sit here for a few more minutes and listen to another one of your stories.

Thanks

Just reading some of Nicole’s latest adventures in New York, and this sentence stopped me:

A place isn’t really a place anymore once you wake up in it.

First of all, I want to state how proud I am of my mother. She’s fabulous. Normally children aren’t proud of their parents… or at least, it isn’t mentioned because… well, it often is just understood.

You might have remembered my shock from last year, when she casually mentioned that she was working on her web site… in HTML, mind you. But she continues to astonish me.

This evening, as I was putting my almost three year old daughter with insomnia to bed, I spent a lot of time as a boy staring at the dark waiting for sleep to visit— a trait I feel I may have passed on to my children— so consequently, I’m fairly sympathetic to her plight, and lay down with her in bed until she’s asleep.

This evening we spent some quality time together watching the headlights of passing cars form rectangular window shapes that began on one side of the wall only to travel to the other… slowly at first, and then building speed until it blew into the far wall only to go out in a flash.

A child who couldn’t sleep and the midnight headlight race, caught me in a mental association from my own childhood.

I first ran across this meme on Adriaan’s web site of people publishing pictures of their workspace … that is, the area where they make their work, make their web site, and execute their creative ideas. What the hell, it might make reveal more of my blogging persona.

Of course, this got me thinking… should I clean up and represent my workspace as is, or how I want it to be? I’ve been working on my taxes, and I’ve had lots of receipts and papers strewn around the room like the aftermath of a small tornado. Well, alright, I won’t clean, but I just might tidy things up by stacking those papers… effectively spell-checking my environment.

I borrowed a copy of Roger-Pol Droit’s Astonish Yourself (you may have remembered my previous comments on this book), and I’ve been having a bit of fun with this book. I’ve been opening up the book every day at breakfast to some random experiment and trying to find some time during the day to give it a whirl.

Today’s was #28: Look at People from a Moving Car…

I was really planning on doing something fun for “Leap Day” … but kinda forgot until I sat down to work this evening and realized the date.

Dagburnit. I missed it.

I don’t often write commentaries on my own poetry … and I’m sure this poem needs no explanatory notes, but I have some musings that I just can’t shoehorn in…

After reading this poem, if you are a parent, a nostalgic smile will crack across your face. Its a smile I’ve seen on many a grayed-hair person who pats my hand with an aura of been-there-done-that. Its also a smile I’ve caught on myself as I thumb through old photographs and home movies. Old? Heh … the one I almost cried over today is only 6 months old.

But that little girl in that picture who couldn’t talk is gone. Replaced by a little girl who constantly talks despite the fact that she still can’t pronounce most of her consonants.

I miss that little girl. I miss the struggle to understand her and her often creative way at communication. I miss the little toddling girl before her. And the crawling girl before her. And the girl who could barely roll over… yeah, I miss her too.

“Daddy hold me!” she says, though she could have said, “I’d like a little more attention.”

“I’m sorry honey, but I’m already holding your baby brother.”

“Hold me, peas?” she says, though she could have said, “You better hold me now because soon you won’t be able to … and you just might miss this little girl.” Yeah, it doesn’t take long before I’m bouncing around the room holding a child in each arm.

Today, like many other days, found my two year old poking her head in my den and whispering loud enough for me to actually hear, “Me no bodder Daddy?” When she saw me smiling, she knew it was ok to actually bother me. Jumping into my arms, she yelled, “Pay rough, Daddy!” I obliged by tickling her until she got the hiccups and I told her that I needed to get back to work.

I thought how nice it is to work from home so that I could take little tickle breaks like that. It was then that I noticed Nicole’s quick story about her Sunday, er… quickie. This gave me a nostalgic smile, now that my quick breaks have drastically changed.

Lois over at Heart@Work came up with this fab idea on letting people write on her blog about why they blog— sure letting other people update your website is a renege, but the series of articles have been quite interesting. Interesting enough to get me to write my other thoughts on the subject.

Now don’t get me wrong, as I love my daughter and I love my new son, and I am glad they are here— but as I mentioned before, having a second child is not twice the work, it is more like three-times the work. And I hate to publicly admit this, but I don’t enjoy taking care of both of them at the same time.

Nicole posted an interesting idea— If your life was a movie, what songs would be on the soundtrack? I often think about soundtracks and background music as I edit my home movies… I mean, when your baby is learning to walk, what should the music be? Yeah, the odd time signatures from a King Crimson song come to mind as a toddler doesn’t exactly keep a beat…

But what would my soundtrack include?

On my way home from a meeting, I stopped at the store to pick up a few groceries (its amazing how much faster you can shop without the rest of the family). As I was leaving the checkout counter, the bagger was cleaning up and found one of those disposable coffee cups with a lid, and asked me if it was mine.

Wanting to be entertaining, but never good on my feet, I said, “If it is full, hot and what I want, I’ll have some.” Of course it wasn’t until after those words left my mouth and started hovering there in the air that I realized that I had just uttered the strangest euphemism… ever.

Well, with all the inclement weather the Pacific Northwest area is having, we are all just waiting around for Spring to come and let us out of our houses. Freezing rain created a nice coat of ice on top of a few inches of snow… and we just aren’t equipped for this sort of thing.

This evening my daughter hopped on my back and said, “Go, Hee-hor” (I have no idea why she calls horses that), and while I was trotting around the room, I said to my wife sitting nearby, “Hey, take a look at this stud.” (Yes, I can get away with comments like that since my children are under the age of two).

She deadpanned a reply, “Yup … until Monday.”

I’m starting to leave notes and tasks for myself— things to do in the Spring of 2008. But while my Palm can schedule activities like that, I gotta wonder if I won’t be trading in for a new gadget by then.

Last night I caught an episode of Smallville and I was surprised at how much I liked it. I normally don’t like that super hero genre, but not for reasons you’d expect. Allow me to illustrate by way of a story…

Now that my daughter is 2½, this is the first year that she gets holidays in general. Halloween frightened her, and she wouldn't dress up or go around to visit the neighbors. Even the bribing of "free candy" didn't lure her, "Me no like Hawoween," she would say.

But Christmas is different, because the treats come to us … via the chimney.

Granted, lately I’ve had this “death obsession” … had to get my will and trust set up, increase my life insurance, etc. but this mid-life-death-thing insisted that I get a physical. I was feeling pretty good while I sat there filling out the form … eat well, no family diseases, etc. Felt pretty good even after the pokin’ and proddin’ and jabbin’.

But I got a phone call a couple of days later from the nurse about my lab results. Everything looked pretty good. “So, what’s the cholesterol level?” I ask…

So I celebrated my 38th birthday this weekend (you can read one of my birthday presents from one of my friends), and I often muse on the thought: Is this birthday my mid-life? No, not that I’m in a crisis or anything (no hair plugs and hot car for this guy), and it isn’t that I wonder if I am finally in my prime… the top of my form… never better.

I guess it is more just a morbid curiosity.

Just ran across this Onion spoof about a man who’s mother discovers his blog. Love this quote:

[He] said that the idea of his mother immersing herself in the boring details of his life is just as frightening as the idea of her discovering his misconduct… “With the raw materials in my blog, she could actually construct an accurate picture of who I am. This is f**king serious.”

Now I don’t recount my sexual exploits or my illicit drug use on this web site, but it did get me thinking… are we more comfortable with spilling our souls to a faceless public than to our own family. Yeah, I think I’m in that category.

The other day I was talkin’ with my mother (Gail Bunker, in case you’ve never met her) via Jabber, and she mentioned that she was just about done updating her web site… she casually mentioned that Notepad was pretty limited.

“Notepad? Are you telling me you are ‘coding’ your web pages in HTML?” I asked.

“Yeah. Can’t seem to allocate enough budget to buy something like FrontPage, and I can’t wait for the technical people to get around to it, so I just thought that I would edit the pages myself,” she replied. (You can see her Celebrity Concert Series web site).

I’m impressed. I’ll admit that I was pretty stunned when I got email from my eighty year old Grandmother, but this … this is really worth braggin’ about to all my geek friends.

Sometimes I just want to write… you understand, right? My therapy session. As you can tell by this picture, I’ve had a bit of a distraction as of late, so when my family is asleep, and I have a few minutes to myself, I just want to write and express all the emotion inside this block on my shoulders.

But I can’t. I’m so drained and tired, I just don’t know what to write.

Been rather distracted lately on account of the wonderful birth of my son (hopes that explains the lack of posting as of late). He’s really quite beautiful and like most infants inspire the best in their parents.

I decided that I really needed to clean up my web site, and get all of my pages under the same template and do various tidying up. This included resetting my poetry, which got me to reading some of my old… well, stuff.

Political parties, that is. That’s right, I, a sworn and swearin’ independent my entire voting life, changed parties today. Why? Well, that is the purpose of this page …

A couple of months ago, I was reading some editorials (some in the Utne Reader) about the fact that liberals are so staunch about debate, seeing both sides of an issue, and discussion in general that we don’t exhibit any clear messages or directions. Your conservatives wave this morality banner (even though morality doesn’t always play in their politics)… but it is something that people identify with.

A bit ominous of a title… I’ve noticed that we all lead many smaller lives compressed between our birth and death. Sometimes the death of one life and the birth of the next is planned and celebrated— like a wedding. Other times, they are sudden. And still other lives shift subtly from one to another…

Of course I deal with guilt whenever I think about my daughter’s development. Every parent who takes this job seriously deals with it. My sister often remarked that she had two savings funds for her son… one for college and one for his therapy bills.

Once upon a time, I enjoyed flying on business. It was a way for me to see the country on someone else’s dime. I also enjoyed the actual travel time as it gave me some down time to catch up on reading and to re-evaluate my insides.

As a kid I use to love stories of Sherlock Holmes and his ability to analyze people by little clues and how others would think he was psychic. I guess we all really do this sort of analysis and categorization for each person we meet. It is almost instinctual to judge and label them.

This evening, I took my little family out to eat at our favorite Thai restaurant, and while we were eating there was this man watching us. Not that this is any different, my two year old angel is often the center of attention at a restaurant (and not always for positive reasons).

And one particular point, when my daughter was exclaiming about her desires, my wife noticed him staring and said, “Yes, we are trying to savor these moments as well.”

He replied, “Most certainly. When you are my age, you will certainly miss them.”

After almost 9 solid months of rubbing my wife’s feet without reciprocation, my wife got me a gift certificate for a full hour massage … that’s right, a full hour at one of those spas. At first I was taken aback when they asked me my shoe size, but once I put my tootsies in those therapeutic sandals and walked into a private changing room with a sauna, I realized the best kept secret that every pampered wife from snob hill knows.

And I could get used to this.

While I’d like to think that the reason my books in my book bag… er purse don’t change very often is because of the limited time I have to read. The startup company, the children (well, soon to be children), and everything takes its toll on my time.

But I should just admit the truth… I’m really just a slow reader. While friends whiz through novels in a single evening, I’m laboriously reading a single chapter. I’ve taken speed reading courses, but I don’t like it. I enjoy reading, and I guess that while I wish I could read more, I enjoy reading slow.

When I was a child, my parents would throw me and my herd of siblings into our bedrooms to “go to sleep.” Of course, my makeup has always been to want to nap in the afternoon and hoot with the owls. So I would spend a large time staring at the ceiling. As opposed to being bored, I was always entertained by that lovely creation— thoughts.

Over the long weekend, I was conversing with family members over our barbeque about my funeral. Hey, it’s a topic. Besides, I wanted to make sure that everyone understood my wishes … just in case I outlive a lot of people and become a crotchety old man with no teeth who likes to cheat at chess.

Last evening, after putting my daughter to bed, I stayed up late and painted this picture of my new baby’s room (we’re having a boy in November, if I forgot to tell you). After the paint dried, I put it in a frame and hung it up to see … well, if it matched the room’s paint.

My wife asked me if I dated it. I hadn’t. She then suggested that I put a little note in it… What a great idea. Writing the note for my son brought back similar emotions to writing my daughter a pre-birth poem. I need to write him one as well…

I’m not fond of the embarrassing things that my two year old daughter makes me do. The public tantrums are nothing compared to making me draw purple dinosaurs on my driveway. I mean, what will the neighbors think of me? The shame … I just hope it rains soon.

My two year old daughter gets some kiddie books in the mail every few weeks. One of the books showed the two characters making masks with one of the masks hovering over them. She immediately focused on that mask (you can see them here), so I told her that the “kid animals” were making masks and we could make one. She was quite upset by that suggestion. Her interest in pointing out the mask were purely based on a dislike for them.

There’s nothing worse than hauling an 80lb laptop back and forth between home and work. So, I did what any one else would do— I got a computer for work. With my laptop now spending expansive amounts of time in one place, I don’t really need to haul the laptop’s backpack either … in its empty state, it still feels like I’m carrying bricks.

I have finally decided on my ultimate goal for old age. This came to me as I was rubbing my two year old daughter’s feet (she saw my work on Mommy, and wanted in). Anyway, my goal:

I want to be as cute and entertaining to Flora when I am ninety as she is to me at age two.

Last year, I gutted my basement and refinished it to be my dream office. And I was happy, but my wife was not. After the carpet was put down, she immediately called the purveyor and started complaining about the faulty installation, the misinformation when purchasing, and the frayed seams.

I for one, put a rug over the seam, and with my poor eyes, I still can’t seem the mistakes during installation. But while I didn’t want that carpet in the first place, I didn’t want it replaced. I didn’t want to tear down my completely functional office (which I’ve become accustomed to) just to replace the carpet.

I don’t know why, but I figured that the world should see some of the chalk art I did for my daughter. Alright, she didn’t exactly ask for an illustration from Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice in Wonderland, but she did appreciate it.

Do you have your own web site? If you do, then you know the frustration of maintaining it … Don’t you just hate being at a party, and some stranger walks up to you and says, “When you going to update that web site of yours? Your ‘Whassnew’ section is 4 months old.”

So we did what everyone has done … we convert part of our web site to be a “blog” and get some engine to help out. Does it help? Well, MovableType certainly replaced a half-dozen drunkenly written Perl scripts … wait a minute, I thought all Perl scripts were written in a drunken stupor? Wait, that was all Perl scripts look like they’ve been written in a drunken stupor.

So I decided to improve upon my sidewalk messages by incorporating my friend Po's advice … To write impermanent messages with chalk. So after drawing a small zoo for my two year old daughter, I went to the base of the driveway and wrote the following message for the odd assortment of joggers and school-kids …

I needed a break … so I piled my girls into the car and went to the beach for the weekend. Had a great time, as it was cooler out there than in the city. My daughter had a great time playing in the sand, and it started out like a wonderful vacation. I just didn't end that way.

One of my favorite restaurants is Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant on the east side of the river across from downtown Portland (Oregon), and my little two year old daughter loves it just as much. You wouldn't think it, but it is quite the family restaurant. No, there aren't any toys or crayons, but there sure are a lot of kids that show up there each night.

When I was a child, i was a music snob … well, not as an child per se, for my childhood was spent lip sync'ing to Abba with my sisters. That's right, one can't be too proud of the music of their childhood.

Anyway, in my younger years, I became a music snob. At least I wanted to be.

When I got off the bus today on my way to work, I was waiting at a traffic signal before crossing the street. I noticed something off the corner of my eye … a little sparrow was hovering around one of the traffic lights. Then I noticed that it was building a nest in it.

Everyone does it … now admit it, you have too. You know what you do in the privacy of your home, late at night, in front of the computer … you type your own name into the Google search engine …

I know, the shame … the embarrassment of it. If your family just knew you were ego surfin' … What would your friends think of you?

I had another event this morning on my way to work. It was raining quite a bit on my walk to work … well, my 20 minute walk to catch the correct bus. But as I was saying … since it was raining, I had my hood on and had it synched pretty tight as I walked. It doesn't do well for visibility, but it does keep me a bit drier.

As I was walking, I noticed in a pool of water, the reflection of a raven flying onto a perch. I just had to look up and noticed that he flew to a fence right next to me as I was walking.

There once was a time when I walked. I mean, I really walked. There was a time when I would stop and watch a flock of geese fly to warmer climates. There was a time when I would stop to watch a squirrel bound through a neighbors yard. There was a time when I would pause to watch ravens playing tag with a plastic spoon.

I always thought that I could handle the big trials. I guess, this is why I am plagued with the trivial and small. For instance, when my baby daughter tripped and slit her nose open, I was very calm and took care of her and my frantic . I even drove carefully on the way to the hospital to stitch her up.

But this last week, my daughter has been whiny and irritable … and I just can't deal with that. I found my patience was constantly plucked and bowed, and while I never lost my cool … I wanted to.

A friend talked me into using Bookpool.com for some computer books that I needed, granted their web site doesn't have as much information about the books, but I generally could find what I was looking for and the cost is less … but at what cost?

Had a very interesting commute to work this morning, and thought I would jot it down while the memory was fresh. I hopped on the bus this morning and immediately started looking for a place to park myself. The bus was in the "just getting full" stage where it wasn't quite obvious where the proper place to sit would be. I mean, there is a protocol for everything in our lives … including choosing a seat on the bus. You first look for an empty bench, and then you look for a long bench with few people on it, etc. It is funny, but people are like gases … they must fill all available space with a maximum space between them.

This morning, while having my usual breakfast of tea and toast, I stopped to notice the table where I was eating. I smiled as I noted the italian-ness of the decor … a sort of casual beauty that my wife should be famous for.

It wasn't any of the individual pieces, but the arrangement of a vase of cut roses next to the stack of un-opened mail. It just captured the essence of my bride so much that I just had to take a picture. And that got me thinking more about just how lucky I am.

There is nothing like a good ol' fashioned hard drive crash to make you realize that just like your den, and your mind, there is a lot of junk there that could be cleaned out. The reason you hadn't cleaned it out earlier is because there is some good stuff there.

With my recent hard drive crash, I lost a lot of data. Some certainly could have been tossed, but others … sigh. I'm going to miss some of those programs as I start to rewrite them … and I can't imagine re-ripping my entire collection (500+) CDs. Oh well, that's life without RAID and limited backups.

After having some terrible Chinese food that I'm still paying for, I opened up my fortune cookie and read:

You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.

I guess that is why I like fortune cookies (and probably why I put up with MSG-infused lunches), is that they can say just about anything, and whoever gets it will pat themself on the back and say "Yes, I do know the higher truth about spelunking."

You remember my discussion I had previously about birds building a nest on my patio … twice? Well, this evening when I got home, my mention that this second crop of birds were getting pretty large. I thought I would show my baby daughter the birds in the nest. Well, when I lifted her up close to the nest, one of the birds freaked out and flew out of the nest.

Read another wonderful article in this issue of Tricycle (Spring 2002). It began with a story about how the author felt regret after seeing the expression of joy on the face of his 8 month old son.

A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love.

—from The Pity of Love, W. B. Yeats

He explained his reaction to his pain:

These moments with an infant in a crib—moments stolen from sleep—were likely the last such moments in my life… And from that night and for a long time after, my experience of my children came to be infused with this pity of love.

A friend of mine brought me to the attention of an article in Oprah's magazine on the difference between fun and faux fun (see link). His list got me started thinking about if there were things that I do because I think they are fun, but not really … Of course, this may take a little bit of work and revision to actually recognize the differences in my feelings towards my activities.

This morning, as I was washing out my tea cup, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a raven strutting around my front yard. He had a large slice of pita bread in his beak, and seemed to be showing it off more than eating it. The bread was so bright in the morning sun that it looked like this bird was holding a paper with a message on it.

I not sure what started me thinking about this … perhaps it is the comments I get from my family and in-laws of “you’re not going to try to raise your child as a vegetarian are you?” While I often try to re-evaluate myself and my internal baggage, external comments like these seem to bring it up all over again.

I sometimes wonder why I allow comments to my postings here, because if anyone were to post a comment on my website that didn’t agree with my views (and on my web site, my views are always correct , I just feel I must reply with a rebuttal.

Early this spring, a pair of robins decided to build a next on my wisteria trellis on the edge of my patio. Of course everyone has an opinion concerning this, "That is so messy, you should knock it down …"

Today, my Grandmother would have been 98 years old. I sure miss her. It is amazing how we cherish people more once they're gone... too bad. A friend of mine just had his father pass away, and I sent him the following quote from the Tao Te Ching:

All things arise together;
In their arising is their return.
Now they flower,
and flowering
Sink homeward,
Returning to the root.
The return to the root is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be.

I love words. That ability to communicate and convey emotions and thoughts in stories and poetry. It is wonderful, and I can understand how every culture talks about a god coming down from heaven to give the gift of writing to the human masses.

The Japanese term, wabi-sabi may be a state of mind, but it wasn't my state. But through other "life choices," I was led, nah, it was more like dragged-kicking-and-screaming into this state.

A friend of mine, Najma, wrote me an interesting email concerning the troubles associated with her name. Her name translates as Morning Star... I responded with:

I was invited to go to a concert in an outdoor amphitheater to see the Indigo Girls. I have kind of mixed feelings about the concert. While their fans thought they did a wonderful job, I felt somewhat bored. I realize that some are fans, so before you flame me, allow me to explain ...

As a little boy, you tend to have certain constants in your life. Grandma was one of those for me. I always knew where to find her. So even though my conscious mind knew of her mortality, my Spirit didn’t want to accept this. In this way, the expected news of her passing because quite unexpected.