July 30th, 2007

What are we passionate about?

When I was young I was passionate about...well, about a great many things. I was passionate about art, music, reading, and writing. I was passionate about photography. And I was passionate about my friendships. In my early twenties, having just experienced the throws of a rather trying Depression, I became passionate about the human psyche and what causes us to turn in against ourselves. I went to school to become a therapist in hopes of helping others find their way on a (hopefully) much easier road than I had found. About six years ago I became passionate about a six or seven little girl without a dad who I wanted to grow up having a good life without the mental and emotional obstacles so many of us find ourselves up against.

So many of our passions start out in curiosity but as we grow older it seems that many are, in part, reactions to difficulty and adversity. Sure, I knew I was passionate about psychology because I wanted to understand emotional difficulties and share that knowledge with others but I've also found that as I heal myself I feel a preportionate leveling off of passion in that area. And no, it's not that I don't have compassion for those suffering from Depression it's just that not being presently depressed I'm not driven to go out there and save the world as I so often felt compelled to do in my early twenties.

There's a certain comfort that comes with healing ones heart and soul and, so it seems, a leveling off of passions that were so often fueled by the fires of my inner termoil.

Perhaps I'm an odd-ball but the more I'd like to think I'm unique the more I find I have in common with others. I think our passions, as our moods, are like the tides, coming in and out with the cycles of the moon. Yes, some of us have passions so deep that they always seem quite intense but I think most of us are swimming in the constant evolutionary process of exploring our passions as they in turn explore us.

July 26th, 2007

I know someone that challenges me. They accept me for who I am but there's no sitting on my butt and taking the easy route, no, they tell me when I could be doing better, when I've stepped on their toes, and when I should consider another point of view.

I know someone that loves me. Regardless of what I say or do, "good" or "bad", they're always there for me. They shop when they would rather not and they listen when the things I say are hard to hear. They give me a hug when I need one or space when I need it too.

I know someone that reminds me. That I am not perfect. That I am not done. That I am not alone. That I am not all that…but enough.

I know someone that encourages me. To eat better. To exercise more. To be more thoughtful. To be more outspoken. To be a better person.

I know someone who when I look at I see myself, my weaknesses, my potential, my hopes and my fears. I know someone who reminds me there is a reason to hope, and to smile.

July 24th, 2007

Confidence, as defined by the dictionary, is, "belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance."

If, by that explanation, I examine myself in my writing I would say I'm not terribly confident. I feel like the proverbial monkey trying to write Shakespeare on an old type writer, banging away randomly at keys, hoping that something I say will make a difference in your life. I feel similarly lacking in other areas. Stopping smoking. Having a regular sleep cycle. Eating healthier. Keeping up on house and yard work. Keeping up at work-work. Writing every day in my journal. Oh, and the eternal angst of my life, working on my book.

So I can't in all honesty say I have a great deal of confidence in myself as of late. I do, however, have a different sort of confidence I call, for lack of a better word, "Faith". No, I'm not talking religious Faith as in I believe in Jesus Christ as God's only begotten son and my personal savoir. No, I'm talking about a kind of Faith that can be proven with observation, a kind of Faith that recognizes that with each passing day we will encounter failures and successes, struggles and rewards. We, that's you and I, get caught up in our personal stories and don't always see the "big picture" but when we do we recognize there's a reason behind our arguments, behind world poverty and hunger, behind war. In a world such as this the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" has no home. Things happen to people because the universe, for all its perceived failings, knows exactly what it's doing. It's known for billions of years and will continue to do its job perfectly for billions more, perhaps for what we call eternity.

All things are as they should be and all things will be as they should. No, I wouldn't be particularly happy if someone ran into me this afternoon on my way home but then, that's just how things are supposed to work. I have confidence in moving forward and in the knowledge that I have the potential to take what I have now and make it more as I wish it to be later…and to roll with the punches along the way.

July 9th, 2007

Just a few unrelated things I wanted to share tonight.

Item #1: First, this picture which I randomly found on the net. I have about 6 hard drives in or connected to my home machine having about a terrabyte of cumulative disk space.

I am so not the hobbit!

Item #2: I was researching Near Death Experiences (NDE's) the other night and ran across a study which quoted the following interesting factoid:

"It is interesting to see that the largest group of NDErs place themselves within the moderate category (45.2%), while people who label themselves as conservative are 26% and liberals account for 28.8% of the NDE population. This fact by itself is not significant because each person subjectively placed themselves in a non-defined category of conservative, moderate, or liberal. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how many people changed within each category. The trend being that the more liberal a person is before the NDE, the less likely they will be to change religions (16.7%). Conversely, the more conservative a person is before the NDE, the more likely they will change religions (50%)."

To read the entire study browse to: http://www.nderf.org/religion_spirituality.htm

Item #3: I'm a firm believer that a true democracy is a balanced democracy. Currently America is owned by the very rich who, though they have only one vote like you and I, the momentum of their money undermines the average voice. I heard a speech about campaign finance reform and a great program which I believe should replace the current system of financincing by the very rich, corporations, and special interest groups. Take a moment to visit http://www.just6dollars.org/ to learn more!

Take care and goodnight!

July 9th, 2007

When I was a wee tot my diet consisted of three square meals a day as well as two daily portions of cartoons. The meals were of your normal meat and potato variety and the cartoons were split into morning (i.e. Bugs Bunny and Popeye) and the afternoon (Transformers and G.I. Joe)--oh, and Friday night's my brother and I would huddle up in our sleeping bags on the living room floor in preparation for the Saturday mornings cartoon extravaganza.

One of my most cherished childhood memories was of the weekday morning cartoons which were shown on a locally owned television station known as KPTV12 out of Portland, Oregon. Sure, we had the big three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) but morning shows were morning shows, geared to adults loosing weight or those interested in a man-woman team bantering irreverent jokes back and forth. KPTV12, though, was the home of a man who all children knew as Ramblin Rod, a man with a cardigan jacket which was home to a thousand buttons, a man who always had a smile on his face, a man who made children feel good about themselves and a man who started every cartoon yelling out, "Now it's time for another Bugs Bunny cartoon! Here we goooooo!!!!"

I recently thought to Google Ramblin Rod and to my dismay learned that he had died only a few years ago. Others, I'd found, had had the same late awakening and found themselves, like me, overcome with a sense of sadness. Ramblin Rod had been such an integral and beloved aspect of our childhoods. We watched for him every morning as he came onto the studio set in that make believe boat. We watched him interview his audience of two to twelve year olds and laughed at some of the questions he asked or how shy some of the kids were as they handed him buttons to add to his collection. We watched the "smile contest" portion of the show, trying to figure out what kids would have the best smiles and win the prizes. And yes, we all dreamed of being on that small set of bleechers watching cartoons with the only adult out there that seemed to get it.

He was way cool!

Unfortunately my brother and I never got to be on the show as my parents weren't about to travel over a hundred miles just so we could meet a childhood icon and watch Road Runner cartoons with him but I can say we met him years back at the Bend River Mall while he was signing autographs (and yes, we both gave him pins as that was absolutely the thing to do when meeting such an icon). On researching his life I found he'd been doing the show for well over thirty years and though I didn't realize it at the time, many of the voiceovers for KPTV12 were what I'd grown up listening to("Stay tuned for tonight's ten o'clock movie!", etc.). Likewise, the show was the last of its breed. Everyone's heard of the Howdy Doody Show and other such local home-grown children's programs from the fifties and sixties, but all of those died out but one which was broadcast out of a little locally owned TV station, also one of the last of its kind.

And then all that changed. In 1992 or thereabouts KPTV12 was bought out by Fox which introduced The Simpson's to America as well as a new breed of biased journalism consumed and love by those who agree with it while despised by those who call it propaganda (or "Fox News" for short). The Ramblin Rod Show, though, was such a flagship of the station that it stuck around for a few more years until 1997 when Ramblin Rod Anders retired from the limelight. If he had continued on I would have taken my six or seven year old daughter to see him. Her chance for fame, to win a smile contest, get some soda pop, and scream and shout as the cartoons rolled. What fun!

If my daughter wanted to be on a television show in good old 2007 I'd have to spend a thousand dollars to get us to Disneyworld where we could be part of a live studio audience for some bland children's sit-com. It wouldn't be local, none of her friends would be watching and say, "Wow! Mom, I'm in her class!", and she wouldn't get a chance to interact with someone she had an emotional bond with. And lets be real, not all kids get to go to Disneyworld--many families are just too poor and The Ramblin Rod show was right here and included kids of all shapes, sizes, colours, and economic backgrounds.

The best hope my daughter has of getting on TV is having some local news station cover a school shooting she survived while the bobbing male-female heads make irreverent jokes. Or better yet, when she gets older she could make history as on Cops or scare the hell out of us (men) by becoming a Bridezilla.

Ah, the American Dream!

According to my understanding of U.S. law, the airwaves are owned by the people. When I was a kid this was marginally true. Out of about 8 stations, one was locally owned (KPTV12) and the other was publicly owned (PBS). But today I have two or three hundred stations and only two appear to be publicly owned in any way, shape, or form, those being PBS and a little known satellite station called LinkTV. Even then, what voice do those stations give the average person, how many children get to be on PBS to shout out their love of childhood (except those lucky enough to land an episode of Seseme Street, most likely filmed in LA or New York)? If you have cable in my area you might have one or two public access cable channels giving you a voice but to my knowledge there's no such medium on satellite.

What use is free speech if you don't have a voice?

For those who are unaware we aren't exactly the recipients of a free media. Free, I would think, implies diverse but how can our media be diverse if 95%+ of radio, television, newspapers, and the like, are owned by ten companies (http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html) that more or less decide what we hear, say, taste, and smell? Sure, you can find local varieties and what not but like KPTV12--pre-Fox--they're a dying breed and at some point all we'll have to choose from is Big Macs, Whoppers, and Jumbo Jacks.

True diversity will only survive in the bowls of large cities and the outskirts of country towns.

It's times like this I think we should thank God the backbone of the Internet was designed for military use (i.e. robust) and the World Wide Web was designed by a geek working at CERN just trying to make it easier to send multi-media content from one computer to another without FTP'ing it up. Can you imagine what it would be like if corporations had designed TCP/IP, the protocol for transferring information over the internet? They would have added ID's to each packet of information going back and forth so you could be charged for every byte uploaded or downloaded!

The internet has the potential to be a medium for over six billion free voices singing in harmony or disharmony but always singing freely. Maybe my daughter can't enjoy winning a smile contest but she can reach out there and make a difference by having a voice in this new place that you and I are only beginning to explore.

The best thing about the internet?

You can utter the Seven Dirty Words without fear of hurting little Johnny's fragile psyche. And with school shootings happening more and more frequently I really have to scratch my head that we as a culture are so worried about a kid hearing the word "fuck" when (to my limited knowledge) it's not the cause of murder, rape, drug abuse, violence, poverty, starvation, a barely adequate educational system, and teen pregnancy.

But what do I know, I'm just a simple pygmie making my mark on the world.

July 8th, 2007

I was an inquisitive youth. I wanted to know the how and why of everything so when my cheap plastic Fisher Price record player stopped working I took it apart and when the bike wouldn't brake right I pulled tools from the garage wall and started fiddling around.

My curiosity didn't just extend to mechanical or electronic problems but to mind and spirit as well. I remember being three years old and commenting how God (e.g. our Lutheran pastor at that time) was the oldest man on the earth. I remember being shy and meeting the new next door neighbor kids when I was six or seven and being astounded with how outgoing they were (people could be outgoing, imagine that!). And of course I remember my entry into the world of dream analysis.

Third or Fourth grade, I recon. It started out on the playground. My best friend and I didn't care much for team sports and were only so entertained by monkey bars and what have you so as we so often did we turned to the intellectual which included sharing dreams we'd had. It wasn't long before we started asking ourselves where these dreams came from and, being highly imaginative youths, we thought that during the night our minds left our bodies and traveled through the universe to distant places where we might experience strange and mysterious phenomena. I can even recall sketching pictures of my theory and then discussing what steps would be necessary to prove them true (or disprove them, though honestly I had every hope that my "out of body" theory would hold water).

It did not.

And so began my exploration of dreams. What did they mean? Where did they come from? Why do they happen?

Do you know, for instance, that herbivores do not dream? True story. Only carnivores dream. We dream because in some respect all carnivores are problem solvers and our brains, while "dormant", are analyzing, reworking, problem solving.

Over the years I've examined various belief systems and scientific understandings about sleep and dream and these have, in turn, helped me better understand myself. I've learned to understand at what times of the night I'll dream, when I'll remember dreams better, and what influences their length and intensity. I've learned to examine them from a metaphorical standpoint, that the imagery in dreams are archetypical, not literal. The meaning of water in a dream cannot be inferred from a book with a hard coded definition but it must be extrapolated from the fabric of our lives, choices, perceptions, and views.

July 6th, 2007

Why can't I just give you the cliff notes? I've already written them, a bulleted list of ideas. One, two, three. They're in order, they're in some form of understandable English, and…and they allow you to fill in the gaps. I mean, why should I sit here, spend 10 - 30 minutes filling in the story when you can do it too! Think of it as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" or "Which Way" online journal! Easy for you. Easy for me. Okay, okay, I must admit, I don't get paid to sit here and write (now that I think about it I pay to keep The Temple standing) and maybe I'm just complaining. Communication isn't easy. Why can't we just mind meld, magically be on the same page, just get each other? You Grok?! Oh, but no, you're stuck in that body, I'm stuck in this one, and our brains aren't connected so we rely on vibrations in the air and squiggles on the paper. How archaic is that?

Won't you just accept the cliff notes?

July 5th, 2007

Sometimes things just don't go as planned.

For instance, I have about four or five journal entries that I've completed, one of which I was planning on posting tonight, but I'm not posting it. I got to work at 9am then asked Vipassana what time I needed to pick up the kid from karate (8pm) so planned on leaving work at five, stopping at the grocery store to pick up flowers, and surprising my partner with them, but I left at 6pm frustrated, tired, and feeling hopeless. Sometimes it feels like nothing in my life has gone as planned.

The universe has a way of humbling me.

So here I am at home writing. Nothing's gone the way I'd hoped today. I feel alone. I feel tired. I feel alone.

July 4th, 2007

On this Fourth of July, 2007, I did what any proud patriotic American would do: I slept in. Every hour or so I'd wake up, take a contemplative look at the clock before examining the last dream I'd had, then settle down into another. Dream after dream flowed through my mind, hinting, providing clues, teaching.

I stood at the crossroads of Wainwright and Johnson creek road just east of Prineville, Oregon. The canal I have crossed over a thousand times was there, full, and strongly flowing. I wondered how many children might enjoy floating down it in a rubber dingy. It was then I noticed that the bridge leading up to my old home was missing and that much of the countryside was flooded. The road on the other side of the canal was crumbling and covered in patches of grass and weeds.

Not to be thwarted I waded through the canal and continued through the water soaked fields. None of the farm houses that had once spotted the area were present. Where had everyone gone? Wouldn't other children grow up enjoying these same fields as I once did? Was this the end?

I finally reached the house and it too had changed. I don't recall much, just being outside the shed. Our old cat Taffee was lying on his back, begging me to rub his belly. I noticed he still had both eyes which struck me as worrisome as I knew he'd lost one in a fight many, many years ago. I came to accept that for whatever reason this place was no longer habitable and wondered why my parents, when they'd moved, hadn't taken Taffee with them.

Then I woke up.

My dreams are often strange and sometimes it's not altogether easy to extrapolate their meaning. In this case, the underlying themes were self evident: change and the loss of youth. Having had any number of similar dreams as of late, visions of my old home becoming more and more distant, I've come to recognize their importance and examine my personal feelings of aging.

I'm not a twenty-something anymore and though many would guess I'm in my late twenties, I inch closer and closer to my mid-thirties. I no longer live in apartments, attend college, run around in my car with the stereo cranked. No, I am a homeowner with plenty of lawn work to do, a full time job with ever present responsibilities, and a car radio endlessly tuned to National Public Radio. I can no longer eat without my body having something to say about it. I can't bowl without my wrist muscles feeling sore the day afterwards.

I am by no means "old" but I've come to realize I'm no longer young. There's no going back. Fourth of July fireworks, while entertaining enough, are now for my daughter to enjoy as I watch on from behind the barbeque.

It's time to let go while not forgetting to take the cat.