Life Like Water

“Pseudoconservativism is among other things a disorder in relation to authority, characterized by an inability to find other modes for human relationship than those of more or less complete domination or submission … The pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition … [He] sees his own country as being so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion; and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure it may experience in getting its way in the world … cannot possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to its having been betrayed.”
- Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, 1965.

My wife is wonderful

Briefly switching to another theme template to make this thing readable again.

There is nothing more humbling than doing yoga with a five year old.

E: Touch the ground Daddy, you’re supposed to touch the ground like this.
J: I’m trying sweetheart. Daddy can’t quite do that just yet.
E: No Daddy, like this. See? It’s easy.
E: What was that sound, Daddy?
J: That was my spine sweetie. Daddy has to stop for today.

Head hurts so much. I itch I ich all over. Must be some kind of flu. I cant keep anythin down. Im so hungrey but jst sick .

I want the iching and the headache to go away.

So I turned 39 the other day. I didn’t make a big deal about it because I wasn’t certain how I felt about approaching the big “four oh”. Saturday I had a nice time with Jyllian, Josette and Jim; we went out to a local Italian place Jyllian remembered from when she was a kid and had an interesting take on Italian food. Afterwards we had coffee at a local spot and had a nice conversation.

The funny thing is that there was a definite theme to my gifts this year. I received two books on Buddhism (How to Practice by the Dalai Lama and The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche), a decorative Buddha head in the Malaysian style, a shirt and a pair of shorts. To paraphrase Captain Esteban from Zorro the Gay Blade, I think they’re trying to tell me something…

I also got a kitten but, to be fair, that’s Emily’s cat and not mine. Two kittens were abandoned at out vets office and were destined for the animal shelter and to be put to sleep. We took one, I little girl “cow cat” named Haru (who at this moment is attacking my leg). The boys were pretty freaked out at first but everyone is getting used to everyone else.

I’m also adding a new category to this blog: Fit by Forty. I picked up a copy of Body for Life by Bill Phillips and even if I don’t get my six pack back it won’t continue to be a pony keg.

Because I occasionally find gems like this

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One time there was a goddam Yankee moved to Arkansas, and got elected to the Legislature. The first thing he done was put in a bill to make Arkansas rhyme with Kansas, just because it is spelled that way. The Arkansawyers got pretty mad, of course, so they begun to stomp and holler. There was one old man that hollered louder than anybody else, and finally the rest of ‘em quietened down to hear what he had to say.”Mr Speaker, God damn your soul,” says he, “I’ve been trying to get the floor for thirty minutes, but all you do is squirm around like a dog with a flea in his ass! I’m Senator Cassius F Johnson from Johnson County, where we raise men with peckers on, and the women are glad of it. Why, gentlemen, at the tender age of sixteen them girls can throw their left tit over their right shoulder, and squirt milk up their ass-hole as the occasion demands! When I was fourteen years old my prick was big as a roasting-ear, the pride and joy of the whole goddam settlement. Gentlemen, I could piss half-way across the Ouachita!”

Everybody clapped when they heard that, but the Speaker begun to holler “Out of order! Out of order!” and pound on his desk.

“You’re goddam right it was out of order,” says Senator Johnson, “otherwise I could have pissed clear across the son-of-a-biatch! That’s the kind of folks we raise in Johnson County, gentlemen, and we ain’t never been dictated to by nobody. And now comes this pusillanimous blue-bellied Yankee who wants to change the name of Arkansas! Why Mister Speaker, he compares the great state of Arkansas to Kansas! You might as well liken the noonday sun in all its glory to the feeble glow of a lightning-bug’s ass, or the fragrance of an American Beauty rose to the foul quintessence of a Mexican burro’s fart! Can all the power of this Assembly enlarge the puny penis of a Peruvian prince to a ponderous Pagan prick, or the tiny testicles of a Turkish tyrant to the bulky bollyz of a Roman gladiator? Change the name of Arkansas? Great God Almighty damn! No, gentlemen! Hell fire, no!”

What the God damn hell is things a-coming to, anyhow? Why, gentlemen, it’s got so a man can’t take down his pants for a good country shiat without getting his ass full of birdshot. Change the name of Arkansas? Great God Almighty damn! You may piss on Jefferson’s grave, gentlemen. You may shiat down the White House steps, and use the Declaration of Independence for a corncob. You may rape the Goddess of Liberty at high noon, and wipe your tallywhacker on the Star Spangled Banner. You may do all this, gentlemen, and more. But you can’t change the name of Arkansas! Not while one patriot lives to prevent such desecration! Change the name of Arkansas? Hell fire, no!”

History don’t tell us what happened after that, but everybody knows the Yankee’s bill was killed, dead as a whore’s turd in a piss-pot. Them son-of-a-biatches up North think the whole thing was just a joke, and some of ‘em claim Senator Johnson didn’t make no speech at all. But every true-blooded Arkansawyer knows that Senator Cassius M. Johnson jumped into the breech that day, to save the Bear State from treason and disgrace. We ain’t going to forget it, neither.

At least that’s what my wife says.

My cat is a drooling farting megalomaniac. What the hell does that say about me?

I spend a fair amount of time reading and occasionally posting to the political threads on fark.com.  It isn’t a terribly worthwhile way to spend my time but I do occassionally learn something.  The trade off is that I see a lot of flame wars and hysterical posturing.  On the whole it’s pretty depressing that people refuse to come to an agreement solely so that they can have an excuse to argue.

There is one good thing that comes from it though.  After having read a particularly egregious flame war where the same people argue the same points, present the same evidence and are met with the same denials, I can look out my window into my back yard.  The fence could use some mending and there are leaves to rake and burn.  The bare flower beds will need attention come spring as will the complete absence of flower beds in front.  There’s a bit of an erosion issue over by the double gate that I’ll need to figure out but, apart from that, I’ve gotten most of the drainage problems sorted.

I can’t affect the budget deficit or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are people who hold their beliefs in the defiance of logic. evidence and basic reason whose minds I cannot change. I can’t shape the world or direct it down the paths I believe are ethical and good.

I can, however, bring order and beauty to a small part of the world. I can work ethically and contribute in a small way to the betterment of millions of lives. I can exercise, meditate and cultivate compassion. I can raise my daughter such that she has the opportunity to be strong, loving, gentle and wise. I think that’s probably enough work for anyone.

The last few weeks have been hard. It’s hurt. A lot.

It’s one thing to think about the pain and transience of our lives when things are going well and another entirely when it sneaks up behind you, knocks you down and starts kicking you in the stomach. We grow up beliving that all options are open to us, all paths available. It’s hard when you realize that some ways are now closed and that there are things that we’ll never do or feel again. We can’t go back, we can only go forward.

Jyllian told me one time about how if you ever wanted to switch places with anyone, that to be perfectly honest, you had to take everything that they had. Leaving nothing out. At the same time you had to abandon everything of your own. Your experiences, your memories, the very essence of who your are. You can’t look at someones life from the outside, pick the good parts and splice them into your own life. It’s all or nothing.

I think the same thing goes when we look back at our lives and wish we’d taken a slightly different path. We’re the accumulation of our experiences and even a slight change would require an abandonment of everything we now have. I couldn’t have left Santa Barbara for San Francisco at any other time and still be sitting here in my office listening to my daughter thump around upstairs. I couldn’t have met and married my wife at any other time and had the marriage I cherish today. The forks in the road don’t ever converge again.

Looking at what I have now and the opportunities before me there is no way I would take that gamble that turning right instead of left would have produced a better outcome. It’s a bittersweet waste of time to even speculate on what might have been. There’s no way to know and no way to go back.

What I have is going to hurt for a while. Like an old football injury, there will be moments to come when an unexpected turn of thought will cause it to ache again for the rest of my life. But it’s all or nothing. What I have hurts but is wonderful as well.