The Reluctant Writer

In all my liberal arts, education-oriented, classical music , business career, I never, ever, ever, ever thought I would be sitting on a camp chair right friggin’ next to an F15 military fighter jet.

 But that’s where I’ve been for the past three days at an Air Force Base–testing two parts of the equipment – one for something in communications and one for the helmet. My task was to verify that the written instructions match what the equipment specialist does when the test is in progress. Since I’m so new at the job, someone else wrote the stuff and it was all good.

 (southern drawl) I’d tell ya more, but then I’d have ta kill ya. But since I don’t know much . . .

 Anyway, these jets are truly awesome – sleek, powerful, intricate, delicate, fast as all get out and a really beautiful design. This is electronic and defensive engineering at its finest. They are so aerodynamic, the front tip of the plane is only about 1 inch in diameter so it creates little drag as the jet slips through the atmosphere. I saw several of them take off and land while I was there which was fun to see. The noise they generate is also truly awesome and I was glad for earplugs.

 The test equipment is powered by jet fuel, so the fumes made my asthma act up and bit, and my allergies went nuts, but that was the worst of the bad part.  The true test was enduring the boredom. Most of the three days I was there was spent waiting for something or someone. An incredible amount of time disappeared without anything constructive happening. That was the hard part.

 Now I’m done with the testing and I’m packed and ready for the next leg of this week’s trip. I’m driving from Mt. Home to La Grande OR, my home town, to finish the last of the family business from my mom’s death. I have to buy a gravestone an pick up a few of her possessions including a picture I painted for her. Actually it was my first oil painting, and it’s not bad. Anyway, I’ll stay with my cousin and that will be a lot of fun.  She and I have been friends since 7^th grade, and that’s a long time ago. About 48 years. Holy Shit! Am I really almost 60? 

 Where’d the time go?  Which brings me to the next angst builder.  What do I want to be when I grow up?  When I was a kid I decided I wanted to be eccentric when I grew up. Ok – been there, done that. Will probably always be that to some extent. That’s what’s next. I don’t really want to sit next to F15 jets waiting for something or someone for very much longer. Time is just too precious.

 What’s next?

 We’ll see.

Ok, so I just deleted my last post which was really disgusting. Sorry Cele and whoever the other unfortunate reader was. (Only two people registered as two hits on that post.) I don’t know what got into me. I think I’m revisiting adolescent rebellion against propriety, society, sobriety, just for a little notoriety. Not worth it. 

This blogging thing is not natural for me. I’ve been isolated enough over the last few years that sharing anything about my private life is confusing and difficult. Add to that the fact that I am a reluctant writer. That is . . . I ponder so freakin hard and long that I get tied up in my mind and don’t even start. I have lots to say but getting  it out presents itself as an obstacle.

Maybe there’s some insecurity in there as well. That’s a big possibility. My life right now largely internal. I need to get a life and be more socially involved. My first big step was to join a book club and actually start attending the discussions. The women in the group are really bright, engaging people, and I have enjoyed the monthly meetings. Coffee group is fading away, so that’s only an occasional social diversion.

On a happy note, my new job started Feb 2. Oh yeah. I got a job as Sr. Technical Writer for NCI Inc. and I work at the Hill Air Force Base. The job entails writing and managing documentation for testing processes done on the equipment on military aircraft. NCI develops the software and testing procedures. The tech writers put their procedures into readable form; meets with engineers, compliance managers, and aircraft technicians to verify the information; attends the testing  in labs and right on the aircraft (at different air force based in the US and Europe); makes corrections and keeps version control, and finally delivers the final draft. The process involves about 5 iterations of review and testing, so it can take months or years to finish documenting a process.

It’s not my dream job because there’s a lot of down time which can be boring and some of it is a little boring to begin with. On the other hand it is my dream job because it gives me income and benefits and THERE’S A LOT OF DOWN TIME, which can be  used for my own projects. They don’t care if I continue to freelance as long as it doesn’t conflict or compete with their company work.  What could be better?

As for what’s next? I’m changing that lame-ass tag line. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m going to try to share more about who I am and what I like in a positive constructive way. Possible topics are art, jewelry, birds, aging gracefully, cats, friends, . . . stuff like that. Utah politics steams in a maddening, smelly pile but it is always entertaining.

I had an idea about my brother the other day. He committed suicide Feb of 93 and I have a small body of his writings. I’m thinking now that it has been a while and isn’t so raw, I might dig some of his stories out and put them together a little book that I can take to his class reunion next year. No one in his class knows how he died or why because my mom freaked out and forbade me to tell anyone. She told me people he had a heart condition or a brain tumor or something not true and blamed it all on the Mormon Church.  The church played its part, for sure, but that wasn’t the whole story. His psycho wife and daughter played a much bigger part, possibly influenced by the MC. I told my some of my friends in Utah, but said nothing to anyone in my home town in Oregon. Well, mom died a little over a year ago, and now I want to set me and him free and let the people in his class know that he cared about them and wrote stories about growing up with them.  What do you think? Maybe I’ll post some of it here.

Now, that wasn’t so hard to write after all.

The Seeker

C’mon Dog. Roads beckon.

We do this every day, Seeker and I.

We live on the Road. Always the Road ahead.

He picks up his staff, looks to each side,

Starting off, we begin translating the language of seeking into footsteps.

Hey Dog, need a drink?

A small grove offers shade and a deep, rippling pool of indigo.

I lap, feeling the bracing wetness

            Cold, sharp, pure

            On my flagging tongue.

He drinks, upended as if to worship some deeply unknowable god.

Then we rest quietly, fully, feeling the moment go on forever in all directions.

He surveys the fleeting Path behind us, drifts back.

How odd. He rarely looks back at our tracks melding into memory.

Doubt flicks his eyebrows, plays his eyes.

Which adventure brings him this tiny remorse?

What lingering memory betrays his faith?

Turning again, he surveys our tracks anew.

Oh, the breeze has caressed them into new steps, no longer ours.

He laughs and returns to Now, Grove, Water, Me, Him.

Laughing heartily he dandles my ears and kisses the top of my dusty head.

“Oh Dog. It’s good to be alive.”

He remembers, he savors, he seeks, he learns.

The sages have said, “Now is all we have. The Past is gone, the Future is yet to be.”

They are wrong.

Alive in each step is the memory of past roads, cool groves, patterns of knowledge . . .

Alive in each step is the promise of patterns being reconfigured into new roads,

discoverings, knowing, living, learning  . . .

All here. All in each, one . .. present . . .  step . . .

He knows this Truth:

To forget the Past and shun the Future in the Now is folly.

It’s all the same.

All roads are The One Road, all steps are on One Path.

He knows that to stop Seeking, Learning, Being, is to lose it all.

Fool that he is, He knows.

I sometimes wonder why he roams every day.

But I never wonder why I am with him.

His purpose is clear:

            To Seek, to Know, to Love.

            To Be Learning, To Be Knowing, To Be Love –

            To Be.

Everything he is, I am.

He Seeks, He Knows, He Loves, He is Love, He Is.

I Seek.

I Know.

I Love.

I am Love.

I Am.

BAILOUT!  NOW!  We are in crisis mode. Never mind that the credit/debt crisis will be handled with more DEBT!  We have to do something to bail out the banks that made bad loans.  We have to keep the CEOs happy by allowing them to have their cake and the Golden Parachutes too.

But we must act. If you don’t believe me, listen to the expert, and then ask yourself a very important question: My friends, how can we say “No” to such compelling arguments from such a stunning statesperson? Uh huh.  . . .er I mean huh  .. . well . . . just listen.:  (cut and paste into a browser – I haven’t figured out links yet.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEidkJJlD9I

I knew you would see it my way.  Now go buy a barbeque, some mooseburgers, and beer and have yourself a cookout. As long as they are blowing smoke, maybe we should smoke some salmon while we’re at it, since the smoke is so abundant. The ol’ make lemons out of lemonade theory.

How do we say “No?”

I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Also posted in the comments section of the LA Times in response to editorial by Gloria Steinam.

September 6, 2008 by Lynn Allen

Dear Gloria Steinem- Thank you for this article. I find your analysis to be thoughtful and urgent about the risks we take in potentially having such a shallow and pugnacious woman as Sarah Palin as our Vice President. She has nothing to offer us that we haven’t already seen in President Bush – a bulldog lacking depth and diplomacy; a zealot lacking compassion for civil and human rights, acting only from ideology and not reality. A truly disastrous administration.

It has little to do with gender and much to do with capability. Reading the article written by the resident of Wasilla confirmed my suspicion that Palin’s greatest talent is intimidation. This seems congruent with the way the Republicans have won elections in the past, and how they will conduct themselves yet again in this election. They can’t win on their record – it fails in almost every respect and has been listed many times here already. The Republican policies of the last eight years have been the most negative and destructive in recent history. We will suffer for decades due to Bush and Company. Electing The POW and the Pit Bull will only ensure that the suffering continues even longer.

The responses of those who oppose your views show that this pattern of winning by intimidation is rampant among those who support Palin. Her record is dismal once you see it for what it is, and yet the support howls loudly if anyone calls her on it. She herself has been vindictive in the extreme. It all fits. Like attracts like. It’s disgusting and disheartening. If this is what America is becoming it is a great travesty indeed.

But this is not likely to be corrected anytime soon because critical thinking, intellectual pursuits, and education generally are disparaged rather than embraced. If you are too smart you are a nurd, an elitist or some other epithet that brands you “other.” Back to school doesn’t mean much anymore. Since when is it a bad thing to be smart and to act smart in behalf of others?

I support you and all adventurous women in pursuing excellence, no matter their political leanings or religion. I can never support women like Palin who would constrict opportunities and denigrate those who work for the positive aspects of life in the United States. She may be female, but she’s not necessarily a friend of women or any other minority.

Keep talking. You have inspired me to speak out. In this time of political expediency I know others will as well.

Lynn Allen

URL to Steinem’s opinion in the LA Times, Sept 4, 2008:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steinem4-2008sep04,0,7915118.story

THE TRUTH ABOUT SARAH PALIN. Read this for an accounting of Sarah’s business and goverance record by someone who was there:

http://webpages.charter.net/suasponte/

If you really want to know Sarah Palin’s history (in detail) this is a “must read”. It was written by Anne Kilkenny, a resident of Wasilla, Alaska.

Job update – still unemployed but getting some assistance

Since I was laid off two months ago, I have been dealing with lots of paperwork. Unemployment papers, stuff from when I was working, stuff since I was working, my deceased mother’s papers and paper and papers. The estate was supposed to settle in June, but hasn’t yet, so I still have all that stuff lingering too. 

Anyway, I have been intermittently lax in filing all this crap and now need to find the paperwork for rolling my 401 K over from my employer to a new account. I don’t want to leave it where it was because I don’t want my former employer to have anything to do with it, so there is some urgency. Or was. I have another month to procrastinate before it’s truly a crisis. But I couldn’t find the packet from the financial firm.  So a frantic search ensued this week to find and file all the crap I should have been keeping up with, some of which I had thought I lost.

I looked for about two hours today, and guess what. I found all the retirement crap in a labeled file right on the counter. Between intermittent periods of laxness, I had a period of organization and actually took care of it. And then forgot I did it. (It’s Sometimers Disease. . . sometimes I remember, sometimes I don’t.)

In the meantime today I looked through about five lingering piles o’ crap in the office and got them sorted out. SCORE! Now they are in crap files labeled . . . “Sorta Not Crap,” “Obviously Not Crap,” “Not Obvious Crap,” and “Crap I Can’t Part With Yet.”  The miscellaneous file is labeled “Oh Crap.” A very large portion of the crap went in the paper recycling box, named . . . you guessed it . . . “Pure Crap.”

I hate filing.

In the meantime I’m trying to sort out a lot of mental crap as well. Trying to figure out what has brought me to this point in life and accessing the resources at hand to do it. One of the first resources I accessed was a couple of recordings I bought from Joan Sotkin at Prosperity Place (website) earlier this year called “How your Wounded Child is Keeping You Broke,” and “Core Money Issues,” and an e-book she wrote called “Building Your Money Muscles.” All good stuff.  I have learned a lot about how attitudes formed in childhood have remained in latent control and have kept me not only broke (at times, not always) but underemployed and underpaid. And since I never want to have a G.D. mind-sucking, soul-killing (*$(*^&$#(*&%&#Q(*&) shit desk job again, this is valuable understanding to gain. I recommend her site to anyone with money issues. She’s been through it, understands it, teaches financial healing, and does damn fine work. I recently emailed her my electronic applause and got a prompt reply back. She’s good.

Another resource has been a great book called “12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back.” It was written by two Harvard guys who consult with companies with problem employees they want to rehabilitate and keep.  Sometimes it doesn’t work, but these guys really know how to present personnel work issues in a relevant way and show how to approach correcting them realistically. My issues seem to be a mix of either “I’m not good enough for the job (I want to do),” and “The job I have isn’t good enough.” Both seem to hinge on a strong sense of shame that developed in childhood as well. See the hookup with Sotkin’s Wounded Child? 

These two resources have help me sort out Lots O’ Crap in my head and see how certain patterns of underemployment and under self-appreciation affected many aspects of my adult life. My thing seems to be shame rather than guilt, both of which are useless negative mental attitudes we learn as good little boys and girls, especially if we went to church.  I have abandoned the church thing, but struggle with the lingering mental turds it left behind. My father was also slightly abusive when I was really young. We resolved most of it before he died, but some of that lingers too. This is all fodder for self-image problems accompanied by shame.

The last two months has been all about change. I’ve been shifting into retro introspection like crazy to try to understand the patterns in my behavior that have brought me to this point and have found good resources. But how to change the patterns imbedded in my brain? Holosync Solutions. It’s a technology of sound waves that are slightly off synchrony that challenge the brain to accept a higher degree of stress or mental dissonance. The result is to bring the threshold of tolerance to stress and disharmony up. The crap in a person’s life may not change, but the degree to which a person can handle and resolve it goes higher. The website has loads of information about it. I watched, looked, and listened for about a year before I tried it, and I have liked it so far.

Yeah, yeah, I know. More crap. I don’t think this is crap. I think it’s really helping. This all began about a month before I was laid off when I sent a huge message to the Universe, “I am SO ready for change. I want to grow and progress. I am SO ready for change and TO change.” Then I got laid off.  Thus began the intensive inward searching and putting the findings together. Other things are changing too, but these are the big ones. These are the ones that affect all the others.

One of the places I go is a monthly women’s group involved in Integral Life Practice led by Diane Musho Hamilton. She is one of the teachers at the Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake where I attend meditation. Integral Life Practice is headed by Ken Wilber and you can learn more on his website. This month one of our exercises was to complete sentences like “When I was a child I was most secure when . . .” or “when I was a child I was frightened by . . .  The most important statement for me was “I made the transition from child to adult . . . “  I realized that I have never felt fully adult. A part of me has always felt like a child and has kept me from feeling completely mature, especially when I really needed to. This has rippled through my remembrance of the past (Wounded Child) and is beginning to push forward into the future for me now. (Integrated Adult)

Remember when I said I had already filed the retirement paper? That’s the kind of stuff that’s been happening. I’m actually getting organized in a meaningful way, and feeling like my Wounded Child isn’t running my life. She still gets out once in a while, but she’s feeling a lot less out of control or destructive when she does. She’s being heard, understood, recognized and acknowledged for the first time. She’s beginning to heal.

Maybe she’ll even learn to dress herself.

Maybe she’ll even end up working again soon. With something she likes.

Maybe that would be nice.

I’m glad I’ve had the time to sort this out. This is why getting laid off has been such a gift. The Universe gave me what I needed in response to my request for change, and gave it in tremendous and at times almost overwhelming abundance in ways I could not have imagined.

More on the changes in future entries. ‘Til then, I wonder . . .

What’s next?

I changed my pillow a couple of days ago, and I haven’t been sleeping as well as I usually do.

Last night, just as I tossed toward the edge of sleep, I saw a cool river flowing through a grove of trees. The sun was reflecting off the leaves and the sparkling water. I could hear cheerful, rushing river sounds and a light breeze shuffing through the trees.

Then the sounds hushed, the trees disappeared, and the lush ground turned into a light brown, dusty sand. The river slumped by reluctantly in a viscous, dull green ripple. The landscape seemed flat, dead, and incomplete, like the beginning of a painting. The water was silent, but in contrast to the landscape, it was alive. The green river was swirling with hundreds of faces.

The faces were placed on geometrically shaped heads, mostly rectangular, some round or oval. All the faces were one dimensional like simple drawings with little variation. Expressionless eyes and mouths were heavy lines evenly applied to a small, blank square, as if the artist were a prolific, well-regulated machine. Hundreds of geometric heads roiled the water.

The heads began to rise out of the water in multiple, mixed layers, tumbling over each other like ants in a mound, then sinking randomly back into the water. Dozens of rotating heads with blank faces, floating up in different layers. One face kept reappearing. Square head with pointy hair like a cartoon character. The eyes were downward slanting lines. The mouth was an open “O.” No nose, no body, no neck. Just a sleeping cartoon face. I found it hard to breathe.

I saw this anonymous face slip up from the murky water several times, linger for brief seconds, and watched it slide under the water again. Sometimes the face came with a twin, but it was mostly alone. One of a group of a dozen geometric heads – roiling in and out of the water. Never changing shape, saying nothing, hearing nothing.

I turned away and the heads and faces morphed back into the sparkling river with its lush fresh grove and bright sun. The sounds of life returned. The leafy trees brought back my breath.  

I looked for the sleeping “O” face and sensed it one last time. More like the thought of the image rather than the image itself. The effort woke me.

My dream had lasted only moments. Its oddity hazed just out of reach, seeming to beckon me back to that troubled landscape. Should I go back? Was there some purpose to my returning? Was there a message from the sleeping O face? Would the faces be the same?

My eyes closed again and welcomed the softness of my pillow as my body eased. I realized that next time the scene would be different: Changed by time and immersion into the calm darkness of deep sleep.

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

      –William Shakespeare

If life is really a play, then which act and am I in now and which part am I playing? Better yet, what parts are others playing?

I heard someone say once that each person has the starring role in the play of his or her life. I’m the star of my own life; you’re the star of yours. Remembering that makes regarding others in my life ever more interesting. I wonder sometimes how much typecasting have I done in choosing my friends. I also wonder who has cleverly written themselves into my script, and what might other see while observing my play.

Theatre has the capacity to teach us, and to transform and ultimately transcend our mundane daily lives. The most impactful play I was ever in was “Playing for Time” by Arthur Miller. The play is about the women’s orchestra that played at Auschwitz during WWII. The musicians survived by playing for the notorious Nazi leader Doctor Mengele, who adored certain classical music. The play depicts the cruelty and death of Auschwitz, but also contained some lovely music.  I played the part of Lisle and played the clarinet as part of the orchestra.

The play is extraordinary in its depiction of life for those women, but much of the transformation for me happened in the warm up exercises we did as a cast. Because the cast prisoners had to portray being beaten, and the cast guards had to portray beating them, we practiced stage techniques to prevent injury. The sticks were padded and no one was ever hurt, but we had to learn to trust each other to make sure it stayed that way. We developed a high level of respect along with the trust in each other. We also relished the parts of the play that depicted the victory of compassion.

One of the exercises we did was to play a scene with prisoners and guards mingling and in character. We felt the emotions of fear and hatred fill the stage. We began to understand our own parts – prisoners with the terrified understanding that they were hated without knowing why – the guards hating the vermin prisoners, but without a basis for it other than what they’d been told.

Then we switched parts.  It was disturbingly easy.

That’s when we all began to understand how easy it is to hate without reason; to want to rid the world of an imagined menace; to become irrationally cruel upon command. And we began to see the overwhelming fear from both sides of the scene.

As a cast we began to have compassion for both prisoners and guards. We began to understand how easy it is to slip into bigotry and cruelty reserved for monsters. We began to see our own shadow side and claim it for our own, but with the compassion and tenderness of expanded perspective.

Through the exercises, the directors brought us to greater understanding of our own selves in relation to all humanity, not just the play. It was masterful. Being a cast member in “Playing for Time” changed me forever. I played one of the three surviving members of the orchestra depicted in the last scene. Just re-reading some of the script today brought tears to my eyes in remembering the lessons and the people I encountered onstage.

In my own life, I have to determine who I will allow to direct me and how. Ultimately I direct myself, but others play their parts: co-director, stage managers, costumers, music, lights . . . more than fellow cast members. This play is open ended and will continue long after I exist stage left. 

For now I try to accept that other actors enter into my play as they are, and that they are the lead in their own play. My part in their play could be major or just a bit part. I have fired some actors from my play and have been fired from other’s plays. How I research and develop my character and interact with other actors in this act is a decision I make every day, whether I’m aware of it or not.

And every now and again I hope someone throws roses.

In My Room

I am always alone.

I am never alone.

Memories steal my solitude and hover over me — foretelling and forgetting.

My room is full of noisy memories in dark of midday and in living night.

Memories of teddybears, slippers and tabbycats.

            Muddy paw prints on my pillow revealed to Mom our midnight secret.

            Tiger could jump so high into my window.

Christmas Eve giggles with my brother,

            While Dad shook Santa bells under our window.

Father, Brother, Mother, gone. Memories linger past death.

Memories of perfume and sweat from hopeful liaisons.

            Will another offer be made?

In my room The Empress guides me past the falling Tower.

The Wheel turns, the Hermit nods.

She moves me past the Chariot and the vacillating Lovers.

She looks the Emperor in the eye and wonders when his time will come.

Sweet, Seething Death.

In the morning – resurrection for all.

I am always alone.

I am never alone.

Oh WAY COOL!  I get to post.

You know, most days slither by pretty much the same delightful way. I get up when I hear My Human’s hairless paws hit the bedroom floor upstairs. When she opens the door, I rush into her bedroom and attack the grey cat that gets to sleep with her. I NEVER get to sleep with her unless it’s on the back of the couch when she naps. She says I’m too restless, whatever that means.

Anyway, then My Human makes this vile brown liquid which smells like decaying acid bearshit and actually drinks it. Rowr it stinks. She used to get in the water box every morning and change her fur, and leave the house all day, but these days her schedule is different. She’s usually home most of the day now working on the light box with little square keys she pushes with her front toes. Her claws look so funny… they’re flat and they don’t move.  But she pushes those little keys every day. And makes more liquid bearshit.

While she’s gone I usually sleep a lot, either on the back of the couch, in the closet, or when she leaves her bedroom door open, on her bed. That’s the best because it smells like her. Right on her soft head thing. Pdpd dpdpdpd  pdpdpdpdpdpd  mmmmm zzzzzzzzz. Perfect.

When I’m not sleeping I like to annoy the brown cat she calls Beano. Beano is partially blind on her right side, and she doesn’t grok that I just want to play. So I sneak up on her right side and touch her somewhere. She whirls and hisses and growls and it’s so damn stinkin’ funny. Then I chase her.   HAHAHAHA  HAHAHAH. AHAH .rrrrrrrrrrr…. ppdpdpdpdp.  It’s funny.

I also rush the birds on the patio. Bam! Right against the glass and they allllll fluttdtdtdtdter away. Hahahahaha  haha.  She sets out little seeds the birds go nuts for. They’ll even fight each other for their own little spot on the table. The birds with the bobbing head feather are the funniest, first because of that stupid topknot, but they peck each other, flap around, and rush in circles. What a spectacle.

I love playing with dangle mouse. I get to jump way high to catch it in my mouth, hold it down and let it fly up to thump the ceiling. Whap! Then do it again and again. My human puts it behind the door at night so she can sleep. Killjoy.

My life is actually sublime. Lots of food, sleep in cozy places, and get petted a lot. It feels so good to be petted. Humans get massages, we get petted and it’s free. Ahhhhh… pdpdpdpdp…

It wasn’t always like that. The day My Human found me about a year ago I was all alone in the bushes behind a building where she used to work. She came out with another human, picked me up by the neck scruff and took me home with her. I was so hungry I couldn’t see. And terrified. I can’t remember how long I had been out there, maybe a week or two, but I was afraid to move afraid to stay and so hungry. I think she saved me. I could see a big, dark space opening up for me and I would have gone there in a couple more days. I don’t think about it much anymore because my life is pretty much perfect these days.  I purr a lot and kiss and snuggle with My Human often because I love her and I’m grateful she found me. Some people think we don’t have emotions, but they’re wrong. So wrong.

Anyway I think I’ll go eat and take a nap now, play with dangle mouse when I get up and kiss My Human.

We’ll talk again, I’m sure.

Freddie