... I blog over at Wordpress these days, but I maintain an account here to make it easier to comment on folks' blogspot posts.
This is my active blog:
turtle memoirs (http://turtlememoir.wordpress.com/)
Thanks.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Two (Can Be As Bad As One)
Two can be as bad as one
It’s the loneliest number since the number one… (Three Dog Night)
Nah, it can be one helluva lot worse, and two to the power of x (use your imagination to fill in the x = ? part) times lonelier. Hey, I didn’t say has to be, I said can be. Two united is heaven, two divided is… duality, with all that's come to mean.
She’s back at the table, having cleared the supper dishes and washed them, and having noticed how easily she can change the table’s function now that she’s one again, or more or less one again, at least not two with a totally separate human being body hanging around, wondering why she’s so obsessed with the computer, with writing, not so much with editing because that’s after all how she makes her living if you can call it that, but with words and lately with this Diving Deeper thing, what kind of good can possibly come out of that? and for that matter, whoever invented the computer ought to be shot.
Ok, so she’s back, alone, staring at the blank page straight ahead, or would be if she hadn’t just dropped her eyes for writing meditation. Counting the beads that appear in the shape of keys under her lowered eyelids, under her curved fingers, counting the fingers and the finger taps as they press in seeming random fashion on the keys that astonishingly translate into real words on the screen that she sneaks a peak at every now and then to satisfy the little editor self that sits beside her, inside her, well, inside her mind. NOT to be confused with who she really is.
The mind, or at least matter in the mind is not reliable, it changes from minute to minute like white fluffies chasing each other across a blue sky on the windiest of days. A shapeshifter, trickster, that’s what it is, the mind. It tells you one thing, then without warning changes it to something else entirely. Shows you a split-second shot of a small mogul and before you know it, it’s convinced you you’re facing Mt. Everest. And either you’re at the bottom with an unbelievably arduous, really impossible (except you know it’s been done) climb, or you’re at the top with no conceivable way to get down (that you can think of, and don’t forget, it’s the mind that thinks you).
Or, it makes you forget why you left the x, er, ex, ok, let stand. The unknown quantity. Out of sight, out of mind. No, that’s not it, if it were I expect that devious coyote-mind would be much less of a problem in this case. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Ah.
It’s the loneliest number since the number one… (Three Dog Night)
Nah, it can be one helluva lot worse, and two to the power of x (use your imagination to fill in the x = ? part) times lonelier. Hey, I didn’t say has to be, I said can be. Two united is heaven, two divided is… duality, with all that's come to mean.
She’s back at the table, having cleared the supper dishes and washed them, and having noticed how easily she can change the table’s function now that she’s one again, or more or less one again, at least not two with a totally separate human being body hanging around, wondering why she’s so obsessed with the computer, with writing, not so much with editing because that’s after all how she makes her living if you can call it that, but with words and lately with this Diving Deeper thing, what kind of good can possibly come out of that? and for that matter, whoever invented the computer ought to be shot.
Ok, so she’s back, alone, staring at the blank page straight ahead, or would be if she hadn’t just dropped her eyes for writing meditation. Counting the beads that appear in the shape of keys under her lowered eyelids, under her curved fingers, counting the fingers and the finger taps as they press in seeming random fashion on the keys that astonishingly translate into real words on the screen that she sneaks a peak at every now and then to satisfy the little editor self that sits beside her, inside her, well, inside her mind. NOT to be confused with who she really is.
The mind, or at least matter in the mind is not reliable, it changes from minute to minute like white fluffies chasing each other across a blue sky on the windiest of days. A shapeshifter, trickster, that’s what it is, the mind. It tells you one thing, then without warning changes it to something else entirely. Shows you a split-second shot of a small mogul and before you know it, it’s convinced you you’re facing Mt. Everest. And either you’re at the bottom with an unbelievably arduous, really impossible (except you know it’s been done) climb, or you’re at the top with no conceivable way to get down (that you can think of, and don’t forget, it’s the mind that thinks you).
Or, it makes you forget why you left the x, er, ex, ok, let stand. The unknown quantity. Out of sight, out of mind. No, that’s not it, if it were I expect that devious coyote-mind would be much less of a problem in this case. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Ah.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Life's a Gamble Anyway (Might As Well Make the Most of It)
What if I were to write as if my life depended on it? I wrote in a small notebook I keep on my night stand.
A day or two ago I was in a store waiting to pay for a few items I had picked up. As always I had joined what I thought would be the shortest line. This time the shortest line happened to be at the only till that also sold lottery tickets. The woman being served was in fact buying lottery tickets. She started by cashing in a few old tickets on which she had won a free ticket in the same lottery. No problem there, but then she couldn’t decide which of the many lotteries available she should spend her money on. So there was a lot of humming and hawing as to which lotteries she wanted to focus on, how many tickets to buy, and so on.
Five minutes later she was still at it, and I was still first in line, after her. Other shoppers had joined me in this shortest line and quickly abandoned it for the one other till that was open, which had a longer lineup but was moving. I was stuck in this one because, well, I was next in line. But, I was in no particular hurry and besides, I was fascinated by this very serious middle-aged woman buying lottery tickets as if her life depended on it. When she finally finished, her wallet was $89 lighter.
After she left I handed my purchases to the clerk, who had remained good-humoured throughout.
“Just this,” I remarked, “or wait, hmm, I don’t know, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket or two…”
She could see I was joking and smiled, but gave me the pitch anyway. “Well, Super Lotto has the biggest payout right now, $27 million,” she said, adding that she usually buys a ticket when there’s a really big payout.
“Do you win?” I asked.
She laughed. “No, but you never know, somebody has to.”
Behind me, a male customer waiting his turn at the till chuckled. He had obviously overheard our conversation. “I used to pray and pray that I would win the lottery,” he twinkled, “but I never did. One day I heard a big voice. 'James,' it boomed, 'listen to me. You’ve been praying for many years that you would win the lottery. Lately I’ve heard you grumbling about me not listening to your prayers and how maybe it’s true that I’m dead, or at least deaf. But hey, I’ve heard you all along, James. I’ve been trying to accommodate you and I’ve figured out what the problem is. So help me out a bit here, ok? Buy a damn ticket!'”
I think about that. Yes, I wanna be a writer, I wanna be a published writer, I wanna be a well-known and money-making writer. God says to me: “Help me out here, write something and don’t shelve it, don’t say, 'It’s not good enough,' don’t say, 'What if I fail, what if I get rejected?' Send it out. Give me a hand, I can't do it without your help.”
God is powerless without my help?! Guess I had it the wrong way round.
And boy, does that put me squarely in the driver’s seat!
A day or two ago I was in a store waiting to pay for a few items I had picked up. As always I had joined what I thought would be the shortest line. This time the shortest line happened to be at the only till that also sold lottery tickets. The woman being served was in fact buying lottery tickets. She started by cashing in a few old tickets on which she had won a free ticket in the same lottery. No problem there, but then she couldn’t decide which of the many lotteries available she should spend her money on. So there was a lot of humming and hawing as to which lotteries she wanted to focus on, how many tickets to buy, and so on.
Five minutes later she was still at it, and I was still first in line, after her. Other shoppers had joined me in this shortest line and quickly abandoned it for the one other till that was open, which had a longer lineup but was moving. I was stuck in this one because, well, I was next in line. But, I was in no particular hurry and besides, I was fascinated by this very serious middle-aged woman buying lottery tickets as if her life depended on it. When she finally finished, her wallet was $89 lighter.
After she left I handed my purchases to the clerk, who had remained good-humoured throughout.
“Just this,” I remarked, “or wait, hmm, I don’t know, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket or two…”
She could see I was joking and smiled, but gave me the pitch anyway. “Well, Super Lotto has the biggest payout right now, $27 million,” she said, adding that she usually buys a ticket when there’s a really big payout.
“Do you win?” I asked.
She laughed. “No, but you never know, somebody has to.”
Behind me, a male customer waiting his turn at the till chuckled. He had obviously overheard our conversation. “I used to pray and pray that I would win the lottery,” he twinkled, “but I never did. One day I heard a big voice. 'James,' it boomed, 'listen to me. You’ve been praying for many years that you would win the lottery. Lately I’ve heard you grumbling about me not listening to your prayers and how maybe it’s true that I’m dead, or at least deaf. But hey, I’ve heard you all along, James. I’ve been trying to accommodate you and I’ve figured out what the problem is. So help me out a bit here, ok? Buy a damn ticket!'”
I think about that. Yes, I wanna be a writer, I wanna be a published writer, I wanna be a well-known and money-making writer. God says to me: “Help me out here, write something and don’t shelve it, don’t say, 'It’s not good enough,' don’t say, 'What if I fail, what if I get rejected?' Send it out. Give me a hand, I can't do it without your help.”
God is powerless without my help?! Guess I had it the wrong way round.
And boy, does that put me squarely in the driver’s seat!
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
In the Beginning
She sits at the kitchen table, in front of her computer, tapping her pen, pencil, mouse buttons, keyboard keys. What will she write about today? It is the first mala, bead, word, document. The first of 108, more or less. Um..um..um...um...um, what to write? Shhh... breathe... let all be as it is.
Her fingers begin the rhythmic, non-rhythmic tapping. She has typed since she was a small child, her father bringing home the ancient Remington when he replaced it in his business with a newer version of same. He needed one to type up the bills he sent the customers who may or not pay them on time, if ever. But it’s a business, and the bills must be typed for the work that he performs, painstakingly, in his shop, repairing electric motors that people bring to him or that he collects when he makes emergency house calls to extract motors of big old washing machines and other machines that you can’t just load into the car or truck and drop off at the small shop that is her dad’s. Lucky her, she got to learn to type before they started teaching those things in her school, and importantly, when it was still fun. The Remington came with a how-to book, dad was big into how-to books, everything he knew he had learned that way. Well, and he was big into practice too, of course. Which explains why he was such a whiz at playing the old steel string guitar (he let her try and gave her the how-to books for that as well, he had long outgrown them) and the fiddle which he no longer owned one of. But you should have heard him play “Turkey in the Straw,” even years after he had last touched a fiddle, and long after his fingers had thickened up.
Yeah, so maybe with a little practice, she could actually do this 108 thing. Or at least 1. 108 begins with 1, which is more than 0 (not to mention what else it is in today’s digital age, or the tight relationship those two, the one, the nothing, carry on). 8 is her current personal year in numerology. It is also the sum of the numbers in her date of birth reduced to a single digit. 1 + 0 + 8 adds up to 9, which is what the letters of the name on her birth certificate add up to, in the way numerology tallies things. It all sounds good, promising, to her. Yes, she likes the new old focus on 1. It is everything, in a manner of speaking. You can add anything to 1: 0, 2, 13, 59, 108, -ness. But in the end, or at least where it counts, it is still just itself. What it is. One.
Her fingers begin the rhythmic, non-rhythmic tapping. She has typed since she was a small child, her father bringing home the ancient Remington when he replaced it in his business with a newer version of same. He needed one to type up the bills he sent the customers who may or not pay them on time, if ever. But it’s a business, and the bills must be typed for the work that he performs, painstakingly, in his shop, repairing electric motors that people bring to him or that he collects when he makes emergency house calls to extract motors of big old washing machines and other machines that you can’t just load into the car or truck and drop off at the small shop that is her dad’s. Lucky her, she got to learn to type before they started teaching those things in her school, and importantly, when it was still fun. The Remington came with a how-to book, dad was big into how-to books, everything he knew he had learned that way. Well, and he was big into practice too, of course. Which explains why he was such a whiz at playing the old steel string guitar (he let her try and gave her the how-to books for that as well, he had long outgrown them) and the fiddle which he no longer owned one of. But you should have heard him play “Turkey in the Straw,” even years after he had last touched a fiddle, and long after his fingers had thickened up.
Yeah, so maybe with a little practice, she could actually do this 108 thing. Or at least 1. 108 begins with 1, which is more than 0 (not to mention what else it is in today’s digital age, or the tight relationship those two, the one, the nothing, carry on). 8 is her current personal year in numerology. It is also the sum of the numbers in her date of birth reduced to a single digit. 1 + 0 + 8 adds up to 9, which is what the letters of the name on her birth certificate add up to, in the way numerology tallies things. It all sounds good, promising, to her. Yes, she likes the new old focus on 1. It is everything, in a manner of speaking. You can add anything to 1: 0, 2, 13, 59, 108, -ness. But in the end, or at least where it counts, it is still just itself. What it is. One.