When Good is not Great Enough

 Not always, but often enough, I get thin on the topic of narrative.  Not the identity type of narrative where I tell myself and others a story about who I am and all of that weaving together under the umbrella of Temporal, Causal and thematic coherence sort of structure psychologist like to deem as necessary for a healthy personal identity; no, none of that psycho-babble for me today.  The narrative I speak of is topicality; what’s worth my addressing in the world of me.

  Yes, don’t fool yourself, all of us are measuring and adjusting our course in the ‘world out there’ according to a well versed idea of how to serve the objective of ‘it’s all about me.’ Today anyway.

  When I hit these bumps in the creative road I play my guitar and sing favorite tunes.  Some of them I wrote myself, some are just those songs that I’ve mastered well enough to enjoy listening to me sing.  After fifty years of playing the guitar I have developed a smooth natural ability to improvise and fill in the song without background voices or other instrumentation.  If you’ve ever been to a coffee house and listened to really good blues, you’ll know what I’m talking about; In short, it’s art.  And I like art in all forms, but I’m partial to being in the thrill of creating it.  And that is where this theme is launched. 

  I use to dream of being a troubadour. My life plan, after leaving the Army, was to wander America playing folk music during the sunny weather, and then returning home during the winter season and write.  It was a dream, to be sure.  I learned an important lesson about the dynamics of life in America and art. 

  Art, and I mean all forms of art, have become a servant to entertainment; and that’s a pretty way of saying slave to profit.  Entertainment is a business; and like all business, the purpose is to make money. When music, at large, is captured by the Entertainment Umbrella, well it gets changed.  Not just what is necessary to make it ‘entertaining’ to the awe-jaded-public, but also the process of competition for those who wish to be paid Artist.  

In the Entertainment world, good isn’t great enough.  It has to dazzle; it has to be multifaceted; it has to mesmerize the audience.

   No longer can a good singer find sustainable work merely by a singular talent. They have to dance, and be physically appealing (of course unless you’re unusually odd looking then that can be an asset as well.)  But also today I noticed, the artist needs a personal gimmick to enhance an entertainer’s worth; to woo sympathy with a personal tale, a sad story.  A brave perseverance over woe; an ailing family member; a debilitating addiction or injury overcome in the nick of time in order to provide the presented public a monumental very best of them; the heroic effort; a tribute to satisfy an unsasiated appetite for something different.  And what better way to get into their heart’s living room than a sob story? 

Not to say that the artist isn’t talented, no, there’s no lack of talent in the world and that lesson had to be driven home into my naïve artist heart early on.  Starving for you art is just starving.  Doing nothing in order to be ready to step into your destiny is just plain foolish and advertises to anyone who’s been around that you’re an armature.  Still, the notice that being good isn’t great enough to do it for a living remains sad; because if you’re not willing to sacrifice everything to be famous, then you’re not ready for the gift of celebrity; then it’s welcome to your nightmare.  I like playing my guitar, and I like singing for others; but I’m not going to sacrifice myself on any entertainment alter to be heard.  Somewhere along the way I found my dignity and finding it liberated me from the need for recognition by strangers; a meaningless gesture of worthiness and at any cost I somehow was taught to pursue.  Yes, sometimes you wake up one day and you’re a grown up:

Just like that. 

Some Rocks can go on FOREVER

If Rocks contemplated:

Who am I?  Why am I here? Why am I me?  What have I become? Who have I become in the process of attempting to be what I want to be? Am I what I think I am? Or am I what I think the world thinks of me?  How much of me is purely trying to make others happy? Or worse yet, simply an attempt to find someplace safe to hide until I’m brave enough to admit who I am? How much of me is just thought, and I’m really just a series of physical responses to my environment? Am I nothing more than a pantomime of what I dream is unique, and in reality a circuit that is programmed to respond in a predictable manner?  Could I be something specifically unique, as maybe an improvement? An example to be emulated? Or something considerably less and forgettable?  Perhaps I’m part of a mighty bigness I can’t see? Or just the remains from past glories.  What if I were somewhere else, would I see more clearly than I do now? Most disturbing for me is

What now?

Big Thrills

I was listening to the radio the other day and the talk show host was discussing the issue of age and dating.  Callers to the station would weigh in for one position or the other.  Personally speaking, when it comes to humans and the quest to define what is the ‘appropriate ’ manner of behavior dealing with one another, I always find myself on the ‘it depends’ bench.  I mean after all, our species figured out golden rules only to invest herculean efforts into figuring out exceptions to them.

  From that conversation I was thinking about points of view and how often they change; sometimes completely around.  As for me, for instance, I can recall with exacting clarity the thrill I felt way back in my post high school years after moving out of my parents house, into my first apartment; facing the awesome grown-up-task of paying my monthly bills; Oh yeah, sitting at the kitchen table with the small pile of mail from my assorted utilities, car loan, you name it near my elbow. Then writing the checks one at a time; sweating the possibility of running out of cash before I paid them all; oh and the pure glow of self satisfaction I felt when finishing to see some dollars still remained in my account: another month solvent, yeah baby.  Well, that was decades ago and I just can’t fathom any joy out of the monthly drill now; heck it’s entirely done on line, in fact the really important bills are paid automatically.

  I wonder how long that would continue should I suddenly and unexpectedly die? I mean if my wife didn’t do all the necessary paperwork and attesting that I was in fact, departed from this plane of existence. I guess if she did nothing, the process would continue to hum along until the money ran out.  But wait, that’s deposited automatically too.  So in this meandering situationally-dependent discussion, I could in fact perish, and the banks would all be doing their monthly things for like Forever…it’s magical…which brings us to my quote for the day, that also just happens to have reference to technology again ~ in the wake of my recent interlude with its reticence at keeping me off balance and insecure.

   “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic”

Arthur C. Clarke

Technology Failed Me

Like so many of my friends and family, I don’t drift along in life so much as I paddle upstream a whole lot of the time. I believe this is the reason most of us can’t recall what it is we’ve been up to recently; especially when asked by a distant relative who happens to drop by on their way to Disneyworld.
  For instance, I lost an entire week of my life trying to catch up with the changes to my technology. It surfaced in an innocent way, as all epoch adventures do. We were watching a streaming movie and my wife mentioned that the shuttering of the picture along with the non-sync of the dialog really bothered her. So we jumped into investigating and discussing options with our Internet provider. From that, we discovered our wifi router was invented when crayons still only came in the dozen and sixteen size boxes; in other words, we needed to speed things up. Super, we purchased a new wifi that is the Sea biscuit of racing routers; hooked it up, and no great change. Comes to find out our wifi CARD in our laptop is also ancient, and oh by the way we discovered that our service provider was going to charge us to lease our modem. Does all this sound familiar? It should if you read my ruminations often enough, I wrote about it a few days ago in my post The Illusionary Choice, so without belaboring all of the rest of that phase of the adventure, let me move towards the truly amazing quality I’ve discovered from this experience.

  I had grown to trust technology to deliver up what I wanted once I learned what it was designed to do. I want it now; I want it quickly; and I do NOT want to experience ANY interruptions to said promises of performance, once they have been delivered into a routine fashion that accented my living condition; in other words, I was setting myself up for a big fall. I learned that help desks are really No Help Desks manned by people with (1) erroneous opinions about source of technological dysfunctions, and (2) Ready to blame other brands of equipment that are linked in unison to theirs in order to provide a desired result. Oh and (3) Non-native English speakers are way too polite in avoiding the sacred phrase rarely heard these days, “I don’t know.” I realize there is an art in ending a phone call. I’ve been the subject of much art as of late. But avoiding frustration is a frustrating experience. I have grown weary of being told I don’t have a problem, when I do; and most often that problem is I’m speaking with a person with few skills to tend my technical problems; if their ready-scripted-item list doesn’t do it, I’m screwed.

  That’s the crux of my problem; I’ve become ensnared into a situation of having to trust technology I don’t understand; speak technology with another human being where both of us only have a spattering of an understanding of what it is we’re talking about, or how it relates to the topic that brought the two of us together over thousands of miles and several cultures away; as well as challenging me with questions I have no idea what they mean, how to respond to them, or even how I can find the answers to the question. All the while recognizing I must participate in this dance of technological gibberish if I have any hopes of fixing the problem that is keeping me from enjoying the technology I purchased; I become the problem to the problem solver….as it were. I felt like Alice in Wonderland; frankly I’m still unconvinced I’ve returned to normbal.

  Suffice to say all of my gear is presently talking to one another, and I’ve more blue blinking lights on my desk than Hartsfield Airport has on its runways; and if you don’t know where Hartsfield Airport is, it’s in Atlanta and is the busiest Airport in the land. So I will end this chuckle with a quote from a great Albert; not me….nor my pop…but that guy who let the laws of physics out of the science box to become an issue of contemplation for the average guy on the street who still couldn’t tell you how his toaster worked; or for my generation, what’s the difference between a modem and a router.

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity” ~ Albert Einstein.

She is a Pretty Girl

She is a pretty girl

She sings her melodies

A siren of the heart

Soft spoken, tenderly

her spirit as it tries

the journey to be wise

her gentle ways can be

a hidden gift,

sublime.

The nature of the world

is neutral to events

not knowing good nor bad

will mark,

and leave its dents.

An optimistic soul

Is precious

as found pearls

she writes her sonnets so

She is

A pretty girl.

Our Innocence

I viewed the movie THE VILLAGE the other night, and in it  the main elder spoke of how they were isolated under the farce of a group of predators known as ‘those we do not speak of’ in order to retain and preserve the  ‘innocence’ that prevailed in the village. Once revealed to his daughter what the elders had done to keep the township removed from the reality of the world, she simply said, “I am sad for you, for all the elders” She knew better. 
     In order to grow, we must explore, and in gathering our experience, then we either reinforce our values and principals with the evidence that supports those agreed tenants, or we have to act on new facts and dispel the old ways ~ freeing us to replace them with something that serves our world view.  Calls into appreciation “You may be right, but how’s that working for ya?” as Dr. Phil would ask. 

     What is a great contrast for me is the day to day involvement I have in life with others who are consciously or habitually competing to be ‘right’, or to ‘win’ , to  gain ultimately the ‘power’ to dictate how things should ‘be’.  Our combined and individual struggle to obtain each of these egoic high ground positions is the basis of our collective suffering and misery.
    In the military I recognize time and again good plans going askew due to fear of punishment for speaking up; for going against the corporate culture.  So often, from the outside, civilians see wind up soldiers who follow orders without question.  That’s a perpetuated myth.  Most fail to recognize that soldiers in the Army come from hometowns that have shaped them in youth with the same collective adherence to social norms.  So, as evident with THE BORG kind of ethos, “resistance is futile”.  And resistance is the very thing we all do in face of the actual.  An amusing anecdotal irony could be “Don’t contaminate my world view with the facts”

  Too often that of which I speak is raw survival.  Don’t rock the boat, don’t call attention to yourself.  Over and over I am reminded that as we seek a safe place, we dilute our effect on the results.  So is it any wonder that everyone distances themselves from failed attempts?  In an over all appreciation to the desire to be faultless we have tacitly implied that we can spend our energy on forced ignorance.  That being innocent is equivalent to being blameless.  Clearly to me, the whole idea of making mistakes is based upon caring for the results.  If on the other hand, actions are taken in defiance or indifference, then there is an indictment.  Not to be punished, but corrected.  The error of our values is lauding avoidance and irresponsibility over achieving success in a dignified and purposeful manner.  How do we affect the whole if not at first we develop an active desire to change our own dishonesty to what it is we want?  Too long arrested by survival priorities, we neglect being present in ones own life. Our decisions wrought with fear of negative consequences becomes a series of barriers, identify with clarity, of what is ‘not’ wanted. Why not shift focus to the aspirations of your heart?  What do I desire? What do I want?  For too long most ignore, or neglect them for what is deemed pragmatic reasons, so dismissed, departed and left and gone to weed.  Dreams untended will sprout into need, and grow to desperation.  Left to languish will prevail into despondency; ultimately despair.  What is worth living for?  Always the common denominator will be ‘something that interests you’ Coming to the realization that ‘not wanting’ is not an interest in the least.  It’s a defensive pose, you can witness that creative energy is not being cultivated into wonder.  “Not wanting” or fear of punishment is not at all acceptance of consequence.  We need not ‘abdicate’ our personal responsibility for outcome of our desires.  It is delusional to relegate our ultimate delivery to happy by some external benevolent source.  I say instead, wake up from the perpetual perception of actions based upon lack.  Should an individual consider them self unworthy, undeserving, or inadequate, then they are imprisoned by that notion and have limited choices in living.  They are blinded by that viewpoint, so seek the missing pieces that will make their vision whole.

 

   Being such, they are no longer empowered and are in effect, enslaved by the notion that it just isn’t going to happen without someone else doing something. To validate such an impoverished prospect, they will become the incessant need to evaluate; to be critical and cynical of others performance.  Judging with sterile and antiseptic performance standards of objective ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ that far exceeds reasonable, are disguising tactics of  sabotage to others; for the sake of proving ones choice of victim to lack as the only true viable position to take in life.  Better to settle or give up than boldly challenge constraints of fearing removal from a constructed comfortable known delusion.

    Freedom is not a mandate to the masses.  It’s not a privilege bestowed, albeit it can be curtailed with personal agreement that it is not a birthright.  Freedom is not absence from responsibility or accountability either, that is misunderstanding of the term. Childish irresponsibility is similar, but has its roots in parental domination. If you do not take the responsibility, then someone else must, and they are your God, your King, your very master.  Innocence?  Well, it’s a period of development, but always framed by servitude to those that keep one safe.  Life calls us to explore and participate, and that is as a full fledged mature person who possesses the self confidence to deal with what life presents.  There is no right way …there is no winning the game.  There is no power over life.  We live to play, and we play for fun.  Learn to accept and not resist the rules of our being

Visitors on our way somewhere else.

Scarred for Life

   At our local gym, the vehicle of a patron was broken into; a mom van no less, shattering a side window along with, unfortunately, shattering her sense of security.  It happened in broad daylight, in a very busy parking lot, with many people coming and going without predictability; talk about bold.

  Montse and I discussed how many hassles such an event entailed for the victim.  Not just the material loss of items left in the car, or the replacement of the damaged window, but the suffering that comes with having to stop finances done by credit cards and debit cards; then there’s the joyful wait to get a new drivers license, and of all things taken for granted; the personal calendar; where important dates and appointments are kept.  Every commitment, special event, birthday and anniversary for the year and forgotten-about because the time was taken to write it down insuring it wouldn’t be inadvertently overlooked later; gone, poof, in an unsuspected moment.

  I had something similar happen to me once, and that was enough for me to have instant empathy for the woman standing distraught, giving the police officer every detail she could recall before being shaken into the here-and-now; he wrote it all down in his report, for all the recompense that would mean.  I’ve spoken to, and heard often, about the same expression by those who experienced robbery as a personal violation when these events occur.  And rightly so, it’s your stuff dammit.

  As for me, I am ever interested in the cause of my emotional upheavals.  Be they good or bad, I’m always toying with the why of it.  Why do we feel violated when the unexpected theft occurs? It is, after all, just stuff.  Like everything else in life, we make it personal.  Our stuff reflects our choices and decisions on a continuum of time.  We selected the colors, the types, brands, all of those specific details that translated ‘it’ into ‘ours.’ And then we added those choices to other choices weaving an identity of products to reflect our opinion of who we think we are in the world; as well as what we like and care about and how we want the world to see us.  Simply put: our stuff becomes a banner of who we say we are; pure and simple. 

  So of course, when our stuff is taken, then part of us is taken as well.  I’ve learned this is just another case of are attachment to externals for the sake of feeling secure in the world we define.  We live in a house, with people we say we know, on a street with neighbors we say we know, in a town we feel fairly familiar with since we know how to navigate to the places that interest us, or to the places we feel a need to go in order to feel a sense of continuation of the theme affecting our world while endeavoring to control our destiny with confidence and certainty.  When our belief in managing these known facts is challenged by unpredicted events, we are in fact, upset.  Even with the common denominator of recognizing change as a fact of life, we do it in an oblique sort of denial.  We make purposeful changes all of the time and we don’t consider them drastic; purchase clothes, paint walls, hang pictures, change cars; all of this without a lot of emotional investment or tearful good-byes to what we discard.  But when change is cast upon us without our ‘permission’ or warning, then of course there will be an emotional event to be reckoned with.  All observed by me for clarity of what is real.  The stuff I have to make my life easier, does not necessarily make it simpler.  When I invest me into my stuff, I am carrying it within the arms of my concern.  Even the stuff I forgot I have, still will haunt me when I go looking for it and can’t find it.  There is a pin-prick of loss when I realize I’ve lost track of it.  And I know too, this is exactly how I gave myself away to things….because none of it mattered until it was gone…then I felt the void of the part of me it took the place of.

  In such an incident I consider myself grateful for the lesson of robbery.  And where theft of stuff is a liberation to oneself; this, I believe is what the Buddhist mean when they say life is an illusion.

The Illusionary Choice

  I had an assigned reading in one of my business classes' years ago.  It was The Illusion of Choice by Andrew B. Schmookler.  It was a case of examining how the Market Economy shaped our destiny (that’s even on the cover of his book no less).  He wrote the book back in 1993, and this posting isn’t dedicated to him per se as it is to something he addressed in the context of the choices we think we have when deciding on commodities.  He uses a great example of restaurant menus and how over time they are narrowed down to beef, chicken, and a few items of fish and salad. But that overall, we don’t have much of a choice; and that turns out to be pretty much true; try getting calamari and you’ll see what I mean.  For my wife and me it’s glaringly so, we’re vegetarians and even the ‘items’ they claim are animal product fee, they still use butter to cook it. For anyone whose doctor just commanded they reduce sugar and salt in their diets they’ll get a rude awakening at just how much of those two ingredients are present in everything; the same is true with lactate but that’s a topic for another day.

  The sad truth of all of this is the reoccurring theme of you and I are in a situation not of our choosing.  And there are a lot of contributing reasons for that; most of them appeal to reason; which side of the road we drive on; which side do zippers work; and a continued puzzle that never has been addressed, why do they put phone hookups in the kitchen…still?

  But all of that is based on paying attention to what customers prefer and then adapting the marketing efforts to anticipate those needs; but doing that create a standard and unbeknownst to the buying public that is what is offered, and often, the only thing offered. We become trapped in a few choices by the nature of providers narrowing products they must have on hand to satisfy the purchasing public.

  This seemingly mindless process contributed to an event I had this weekend that pulled all of those apparent unconnected threads together.  I had to purchase a malware protection/cleaning software package; obviously because my family computer was being redirected without our consent. Whenever one of us wanted to research a topic, say, Andrew B Schmookler, the window for car rentals would pop up; you get the picture.  Well after trying the one or two computer cleaning tricks I learned over the years, and to no avail, I resorted to buying malware software.  While I chatted with friendly Frank as he installed the program remotely, he said something that resonated. 

   “You know these devious little programs get planted in your computer whenever you go to one of those free websites.  As you may know, nothing is free; they plant a program that collects information for marketing or worse.”

  Now never mind all the creative torture I was conjecturing in my mind for those dirty rascals who wrote such programs; those who diverted me from the bliss of drifting along in my make-believe world; I had to thank Frank, in my rebellion, for that peal of wisdom which had been hiding in the rubble of my dilemma.  He was ab-so-lute-ly correct; nothing is free.

  How did I forget such a basic lesson?  Well, I was seduced to forget it.  I finished that phone conversation with a refreshed point of view.  One phase was that I was shocked…then pissed…then distraught…many of the grieving stages I’ve learned about in my pursuits of psychological mastery.  And what died? What was the source of my grieving? Why, disillusionment is the culprit.  I had been lulled into a false sense of security.  Yes, even knowing what I do, I fell prey to the subtle manipulation of trusting without reason; sucked into the illusion of safe.

Zap.

  Expectations are by definition, unexamined and/or unspoken desires.  We’re encouraged to possess as many of those as possible.  Why? Well because we are being massaged to follow other people’s direction; like with the restaurant, the colorful menus depicting the choices they offer, presented as if the few choices offered appear abundant and meeting our desires. 

  A long, long time ago when I was interested in mastering an understanding of business, and assigned to read such books as the Illusion of choice,  I remember learning the premise for marketing was to ‘create a demand by cultivating a need; oh, along with educate the buying public on the product.’ That was back in the 80’s; now it’s just create a need.   And that need is gift wrapped with suggestions of service and performances that will rarely be tested.  When they are, believe me, there is a script of excuses on why those promises are not delivered.  Oh, and those reasons will be subtly suggesting something like in John Landis’ movie, Animal House, when Kent Dorfman, (flounder) is aghast learning how his cousin’s car was trashed on the Frat road trip.  John Belushi, (as Blutarsky) responded with, “ Hey you f*cked up, you trusted us.” 

The Kind of Friend

I wanted the kind of friend who brought exotic
Who was on fire with life
An explorer with a reckless kind of foolishness that made me

cringe to consider the danger,
as well as feel honored to have such a close companion

One possessing bravado I could count on
to steel me to consequences beyond my worst fear,
basking in the comforting notion; they desired my company.
I had this pirate kind of appetite, that I'd know a bold spirit who would
dare challenge the convention of conditions
Dance the high wire above the gravity of situation.
One with earned scars, free from any hint of regret over how they were won
The sparkle in their eye would draw my imagination into the depth of
possibilities
Churning tempest framed by dark terror; 

contrasting delight and disdain in their flashes of personal lightning
revealing an ever-present toothy grin of defiance ~ a mystical euphoric pall

to their being amazed at having not yet perished
Quelling my ancient fears,

I'd be mesmerized with such flamboyant bravery.
For they were seasoned and resourceful
I wanted a hero of hearts
A buccaneer of sorts who was a straight shooter, possessing a personal glow of specific integrity
Expert dodger of direct, sublime in response to doubtful inquiry
They'd never leave a friend in the lurch
I wanted to know them, without their acquired bejeweled flash or social flair
Inside that rascal was the divine and golden heart
The saint of compassion and purchased understanding
The fathomless well of my hope.
Yes, I wanted to taste that spice in everything I ate
I wanted the fragrance in my hair, on my clothes, inculcated into the very DNA of my skin.
I wanted the reassurance of their scent drifting into my nostrils from my pillow

Each day as my weary head inclined towards rest.
When I saw moonlight, I'd see them dancing and singing with rapture

knee high in the boiling foam of the surf,

footfalls traced in sparkling sands
When I felt the mist of a waterfall on my face, I'd close my eyes and hear their laughter.
I wanted to miss them when I was prosperous, they knew how to enjoy wealth
I hunger for their comfort when I am disheartened.
The thief of my heart who unabashedly would jut out their chin defiantly
agitated by my protest that they were taking advantage

of my good will
As if to insult their roll
Looking perplexed and confused that I should question the magic of our shared invested venture
Partner into the robust flavor of living such
Time enough for writing whimsical fantasies
First live them with abandon
I could not fathom a single solitary moment

without their skin rubbing against mine,

their heat a salve,

an energy that revived me.
Capturing the courage I so desired to have

breathing in the sea air,

canvas rustling, sea birds calling in the azure sky, "Behold"
On the adventure beyond my horizon.
in sobriety come to terms with the actual
Being present all along
Chiding with a smile, 'remember'
Welcome home to your dreams
Of being authentic
Sojourner

The source of pride

If I only knew the source of their mental illness

I could help them

“There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.” Ben Williams

  

  I have come to respect how much of my life is affected by comparisons of my behavior to my pets.  Today, it’s my dog, tomorrow perhaps my cats; or bird even.  I’m glad I am able to see the reflected care, and yes, personal dignity each of them possess; carrying themselves without duress or concern with how other perceive them. They teach me how to cultivate respect without having to infringe on any other being’s esteem.  Which reminds me of another saying I keep near:  Love is lifting another up towards their potential.

“Man is a dog’s idea of what God should be” –Holbrook Jackson

  In Our house, I must concede, where Oscar is concerned, my wife is that very object of adoration….hands down. 

The End

   “What is it you’re looking for?” he asked.

He heard her soft chuckle, very quiet, in the shadows that veiled her face.

   “You already know that”

   “No, it’s not treasure or adventure, those fireflies of your outrageousness, any of that.  What are YOU looking for?”

He waited for an answer but none was forthcoming.  She was silent, immobile.  On the other side of the arch where they stood in the half-shadows, the headlights of a car lit the stretch of the street they were standing on, before it drove past.  For a moment, the brightness outlined her face against the dark wall.

   “You know what I’m looking for,” she said finally.

   “I don’t know anything.” He sighed.

   “You know. I’ve seen you look at me, I’ve read your tales”

   “you don’t play fair”

   “Who does?”

She moved as if she were going to walk away, but instead suddenly stopped still.  She was one step away from him; he could almost feel the warmth of her skin.

   “There’s an old riddle,” she uttered after a prolonged silence.  “Are you good at solving riddles?”

   “Not very”

   “Well, I am.  And this is one of my favorites.  There’s an island.  A place inhabited by only two kinds of people – Knights and Knaves.  The knaves always lie and deceive, the knights never do…you get the situation?”

“Of course, Knights and Knaves, I get it”

   “Alright, well, one inhabitant of the island says to another; “I will lie to you and I will deceive you.”

“Understand? I will lie to you and I will deceive you.  And the question then is; who is speaking?  The Knight or the Knave? Which do you think?”

He was puzzled.

   “I don’t know.  I’d have to think about it.”

   “Fine.” She stared at him hard. “Think about it”

She was still very close. He felt a tingling in his fingertips.  His voice sounded hoarse.

   “What do you want from me?”

   “I want you to answer the riddle.”

   “That isn’t what I’m talking about.”

She tilted her head to one side.

   “I need help.” Then looked away, “I can’t do it alone”

   “There are other men in the world.”

   “Maybe...” There was another long pause. “…but you have certain virtues.”
   ”Virtues?” The word confused him.  He tried to answer, but found his mind was blank.

    “I think…”

He stood there, mouth half open, frowning in the darkness.  Then she spoke again.

    “You’re no worse than most men I know...” After a brief pause, she added, “…and you’re better than some.”

  This isn’t the conversation, he thought, irritated, of what he wanted to hear at the moment; nor was it what he wanted to talk about.  In fact, he decided, he didn’t want to have a conversation at all.  Better just to be standing beside her, sensing the warmth of her coppertone flesh.  Better to stand in the shelter of their silence, though silence was a language she controlled much better than he did.  A language she had spoken for a thousand years.  He turned, making sure she was watching him.  He glimpsed at the golden flecks in her eyes, framed by her mulit-hued brown tresses.

“And what is it you want ?” she asked point blank.

“Maybe I want you.”

  There was a long silence this time as he discovered it was much easier to say than what he had told himself it would be.  Perhaps because with their faces covered and muted in the darkness, he wouldn't have to see any flash of revulsion in his revealed vulnerability. It was so simple hearing his words before he’d thought of speaking them.  All he felt afterwards was a faint release with his surprise.

   “You are too transparent” she whispered.

She said it without moving back, standing firm even when she saw him inch forward slowly lifting his hand toward her face.  She spoke his name as you would a warning; like a small flare, a strobe flashing from her past.  She said it once…and then she repeated his name again slowly.  He moved his head to one side then the other, gently, sadly

“I’d go with you to the end,” he said

“I know”

The Exquisite Art of Yodeling

     

 Allegany Mud Wrestling, a sport yet to be recognized as truly a great American past time; to the not so elegant sport Girl Mud Wrestling, where only professionals are allowed to struggle in the public pit for profit (say that three times while eating a hard boiled egg); to a phrase mostly endeared by me, but also used to differentiate quality, The exquisite art…

  My mine travels unconventional and unpredictable paths.  Isn’t it swell to live in a society that allows one to seek employment doing what they enjoy and have a perchance? Even if they might just reside on this side of the boundary where governmental efficiencies at executing it’s mandated purpose; which is of course, punishing violators of social norms and…such as they are, values, and outright clandestine illegal vice. 

  If my oldest sister were editing my post she’d mutter, “lot’s of words…lot’s and lot’s of words.”

  Alas, it matters little how one arrives at the juice topic for discussion, just that one throws oneself into the melee when it is found…no?

  Yodeling, (or jodeling) is a form of singing that involves singing an extended note which rapidly and repeatedly changes in pitch from the vocal of chest register (or “chest voice”) to the falsetto, (or head register), making a high-low-high-low sound.  The English word yodel is derived from a German word Jodeln, (originally Austro-Bavarian language) meaning “to utter the syllable jo” (pronounced “yo” in English). The technique is used in many cultures throughout the world. Most experts agree that yodeling was used by those living in the Central Alps as a method of communication between herders and their stock or between Alpine villages, with the multi-pitched “yelling” later becoming part of the region’s traditional lore and musical expression. 

  In Persian classical music, singers frequently use tahrir, a yodeling technique. Tahrir is prevalent in Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Turkish, Afghan, and Central Asian musical tradition, and to a lesser extent Pakistani and a few Indian musical traditions.  There are cases of yodeling taking the form of krimanchuili technique in Georgian traditional music and even in Central Africa, Pygmy singers use yodels within their elaborate polyphonic singing, while in Zimbabwe sometimes yodel with playing the mbira, (you may have seen these, small hand held wooden instruments with flat-nail like prongs that make a pleasant tone when struck by thumbs).

  The Mibuti of the Congo incorporate a distinctive whistles and yodels in their songs as well. The earliest record of a yodel is 1545, where it is described as ‘the call of a cowherd from Appenzell.  

  That got me to pondering what if that’s incorrect? What if, like with so many ancient cultures, the records and the customs of yodeling were lost in the usual way? Conquest often obliterated much of a culture’s traditional qualities that are now unknown by modern man.  Never mind wars of acquisition, writing materials of the past were primitive and renowned to get damage by weather as well as insects eating ancient manuscripts in storage.  Perhaps the Great Kings and Emperors of the past yodeled all of the time and we just don’t have any historic text reference to it? 

Perhaps it was so common that no one thought to mention it while composing, say, the Oddessy, because everyone knew how to yodel and had always been doing it, why mention something so mundane? Also is the fact that along with orange and purple, nothing rhymes with it. I’d be comparable to mentioning us uttering “excuse me” when we bump into other people.  Who knows, maybe this is unique to our time of existence, just as the fragment of the commonly-well-loved-practice of yodeling during the harvest festival was embraced by all cultures eons ago.

  Hey, maybe someone was yodeling late at night keeping their neighbors up, (again), and finally someone had to resort to it by screaming out their windows, “Excuse me, people are trying to sleep!”  It might just have been that instant when both the deaths kneel for yodeling occurred along with the birthing pains of the phrase excuse me?

Or, maybe not.  

Facts that Distract

  Through this process, urban legends and rumors sneakily jump the gap between popular fiction and established fact. Here are some popular examples that you can leap on and quash immediately, establishing yourself as a joyless, antagonistic pedant.

As Seen From Space

   The Great Wall of China is often cited as the only man-made structure visible from space without magnification or image intensification, but in reality the wall is practically invisible at any altitude above 80 miles and then only under perfectly clear conditions.   As for it being the only human-built object visible from space, astronauts claim that it’s easy enough to distinguish cities from the surrounding countryside and the larger freeways and interchanges, and it’s been claimed (without much more authority than the Great Wall claims) that Romania’s massive Palace of Parliament can be made out within the confines of Bucharest.

Math and Einstein

   During the brief period in American history when physicists were celebrities, a curious rumor got started—that Albert Einstein, godlike conqueror of the atom, had failed math in high school. What a fun, relatable fact about an otherwise inaccessibly brilliant man!   Unfortunately, someone pointed this out to the man himself, who stated for the record that he had done perfectly well in math throughout his academic career. A possible source of confusion would be the fact that Einstein did fail his entrance exam to the Federal Polytechnic Institute the first time he took it, but considering he was two years younger than any other student a few snags were inevitable.

F**K
   People have some weird ideas about the etymology of curse words. The f-bomb has variously been explained as an acronym for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” punishing illegal sex-havers, “Fornication Under Consent of the King” for licensed fornicators, or even as a corruption of the phrase “pluck yew” (supposedly a term for firing a longbow at someone) when in reality it’s just a corruption of the ancient German “ficken.” 

Those explanations seem outlandish on their face, but much more pernicious is the idea that the word crap is a back-formation of British toilet builder (not inventor) Thomas Crapper, which sounds fairly legit until you find out that the first usage of “crap” in England was during the Middle Ages as a derivation of the Dutch krappen (to pluck out and separate) and the Old French crappe (rejected waste) and actually wasn’t used to refer to feces until the middle of the nineteenth century. Freakin’ weird!



The Bullet Proof Vest
  In 1969, a Detroit man named Richard Davis was shot while out on delivery, so he invented the vest for protection, and even tested it on himself.

Best Basketball movie ever
  "Space Jam," the 1996 basketball comedy starring Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, made $90 million domestically and more than $230 million globally. Coming in at a very distant second place is the 1992 comedy, "White Men Can't Jump."

Then of course there are things like list of things that distract us, and in which hardly anyone will remember but ridicule their memory for not serving up trifles when demanded.  So, you got that going for ya.