Li Chang-wu (a Chinese ghost story)

Li Chang-wu

By Li Ching-liang  (ca. 790 C.E.), translation by Rick Harrington
(for an introduction to this story, see the previous post)

Li Chang-wu , known as  Li Fei, came from Chang-shan [in modern Ting County, Hopeh]. He was very quick and clever at learning everything from the time of his birth. He was also well read, and very accomplished in letters. Although he heId a good opinion of himself because of his moral standards, he never put on airs. But, having a nice face, he had a pleasant effect on all who met him.

He was best of friends with Ts'ui Hsin from Ch'ing-ho [in modern Hopeh]. Hsin was also a refined gentleman, who notably owned a large collection of antique objects. Because of Chang-wu's quickness and intelligence, Hsin often called on him for discussion and debate. On those occasions, Chang-wu was always able to penetrate beneath the surface meanings and search out the hidden origins of things. His contemporaries compared him to Chang Hua of the Chin.

In the third year of the Chen-yuan reign period (785-804], Ts'ui Hsin was transferred to Hua-chou  [in modern Honan at the city of Cheng-chou] as assistant magistrate, where Chang-wu paid him a visit from Ch'ang-an. After a few days, while he was out strolling along a street in the northern part of the city he saw an extremely beautiful woman. To make an excuse he said to Hsin, "I must visit with some relatives outside of the county." He then went on to take apartments in the home of this fair woman. The master of the house was named Wang, and this was his son's wife. Chang-wu was delighted with her and they engaged in a secret affair.  He stayed there for over a month, spending upwards of thirty thousand, the girl's contribution doubling that amount. Their two hearts became coupled in harmony; their happiness was complete.

Not long after, some business came up and Chang-wu was called back to Ch'ang-an.  Tenderly, they took leave of one another.  Chang-wu gave her a bolt of silk depicting "mandarin ducks with necks entwined" in its weave, and presented a poem which went:

The duck and drake silk,

Who knows from how many threads it’s woven?

After parting, when we see to be re-entwined in love,

We will long for the time before we parted.

The girl gave him in return one white jade finger-ring and also presented him with a poem which went:

Twisting the finger-ring, thinking of the other;

Seeing the ring will strengthen your thoughts of me.

I wish you forever to fondle it,

Following the ring around without end.

Chang-wu had a servant named Yang Kuo. The son's wife gave him a thousand in cash as a reward for his diligence in serving his master.

They parted and eight or nine years went by. Chang-wu's home was in Ch'ang-an, so he had no means to communicate with her.  In the eleventh year of the Chen-yuan reign period, since his friend Chang Yuan-tsung lived in Hsia-kuei County [neighboring Hua-chou], Chang-wu again went from the capital to visit Yuan. Struck with thoughts of former joys, he turned his carriage across the Wei River to ask after the girl. It was dark when he got to Hua-chou. He planned to stay at the Wang family’s rooming house, but when he got to the gate it was desolate. There were only benches outside for guests. Chang-wu could only imagine that they had passed away, or had given up their trade for farming and moved to the country. Or perhaps they had simply been invited to some relatives' for a gathering from which they had yet to return. So he rested for a moment at their gate, thinking of looking for other lodgings. Then he saw a woman, their neighbor to the east, and went over to speak to her.

"The elders of the Wang family have gathered up all their affairs and set out traveling. The son's wife has been dead for two whole years," she said.

After going into more detail, she said, “My surname is Yang, the sixth born. I am the wife of their eastern neighbor. . . .  what is the gentleman’s surname?”

Chang-wu informed her.

“Did you have a servant by the name of Yang? Yang Kuo, wasn’t it?” she inquired again.

He said he did. This caused her to burst into tears, saying, "Since my marriage, I have been in this neighborhood for five years. I was close to Madame Wang. She would often say, 'My husband's residence is really like an official post station. I've seen a lot of men pass through. Many have tried to flirt with me, always throwing their money around - giving me sweet talk and vows. But I would never be moved. Then some years ago there was a refined Mr. Li who stayed for a while in our house. When I first saw him, I lost myself to him unwittingly. Afterwards I secretly served by his pillow and mat, and truly experienced blissful love. Now I have been parted with him for several years. With my heart longing I have been able neither to eat all day nor sleep all night. I have been led all over by my husband, so I would not be able to see him even if he were to return. Since I cannot trust the others in my family, I ask you to seek his identity by appearance and name if he should come. If he comes close to the description, I bid you serve him respectfully and reveal to him my feelings. If there is a servant by the name of Yang Kuo, then it surely is he.'”

"Before two or three years had passed, as the girl lay ill on her death bed, she reiterated her commission, saying, 'I am of a humble position, but I was fortunate enough to receive the gentleman's affection. I have long yearned for him, and now I have become ill. It is doubtful that I will be cured. About my former request: if by chance he should come here I wish you to convey my grief held even in death, and the remorse of this eternal parting.  Beg him to stop here so that our spirits may meet in the world of shadows. '"

Chang-wu then entreated the woman to open the gate. He ordered his servants to buy fodder and foodstuffs. Just as he was about to lay out his bedroll, a woman carrying a broom came out of the house to sweep the ground. She was unknown even to the neighbor's wife. The report from one of Chang-wu's servants was that she said she was someone from the house. He then pressed her with questions himself.

“The dead woman of the Wang family feels the depth of your love,” she said slowly in reply. She would like to meet with you, but she was afraid that the living would be frightened, so she has sent me ahed to let you know.”

"This is exactly the reason I have come here,” replied Chang-wu. "Even though the light and the dark are two different roads and men are properly afraid, feelings of longing get through. Of this I really have no doubt." His statement finished, the woman carrying the broom departed joyfully. Presently, she opened the door, not to be seen again.

Food and drink were prepared and the sacrifices brought out. After taking the meal by himself, Chang-wu went to bed. The light which was to the southeast of the bed suddenly flickered at about the second watch [9-11 p.m.]. This occurred two or three times. Chang-wu knew something strange was taking place. He ordered the candle moved to the further end of the wall, the southeast corner of the room, whereupon he heard a stirring in the northern corner. What seemed like a human form gradually appeared. As the form advanced five or six paces, one could make out its face and see its clothes. It was the wife of the proprietor's son. There was nothing different from her previous appearance; only her movements seemed lighter and quicker and her voice softer and more clear.

Chang-wu got down from the bed and took her in his arms. It was truly the joy of a lifetime.

"Ever since I have been on the register of the dead I have forgotten all of my relations," she said. “But my heart is tied to you as it was before."

Chang-wu made love to her with extra tenderness, and nothing seemed different; only she would constantly ask someone to look for the Morning Star. When it appeared, she would be able to linger no longer, but would have to leave. Between their moments of love, she commended the neighbor woman, Yang-shih, saying with gratitude, "Without this person, who would have conveyed my deep grief?"

When it came to the fifth watch [3-5 a.m.] someone said it was time for her to return. The girl tearfully got down from the bed and went out the gate arm in arm with Chang-wu. They gazed up at the Milky Way and she began to sob in her grief. She went back into the house where she unfastened an embroidered purse which was on the sash of her skirt. From the bag she took an object and presented it to Chang-wu.  It had the blue-green color of the heavens; it was hard and fine. It was cold like jade and shaped like a small leaf.

Chang-wu didn’t recognize it. The girl said, “This is called the Mo-ho jewel. It comes from the Mystery Garden of the K’un-lun Mountains and is not come by easily even there. I was recently lolling on the Western Summit with the Lady Goddess of Jade City when I saw this thing on top of a mound of jewels. I was enchanted and aked her about it. The Lady Goddess then took it and gave it to me, saying, ‘Whenever  the immortals of the Celestial Caves find this gem, they all consider it glorious.’ Since you are acquainted with esoteric ways and have a knowledge of fine things, I present it to you. You must cherish it forever. There is nothing like it in the human world.”

Then she presented him with a poem which went:

The Milky Way is already sloping down;

The spirits have to make their crossing.

I wish you to return and embrace me once more.

Till the end of heaven we will hereafter be parted.

Chang-wu took a white jade jeweled hairpin to requite her and matched her poem with a reply which went:

It is destiny that the obscure and the clear be separate;

Who can say if there will ever be a fair reunion?

I bid you farewell, for parted we must be.

Yet I lament: for what place are you bound?

They clung to each other and wept for a while. Then the girl presented another poem:

Before when we parted, we longed for another meeting;

Now when we part it will be until the end of heaven.

The new sorrow together with the old grieving,

Are forever bound in the reaches of the deep underworld.

Chang-wu answered her:

Another meeting cannot be expected, forever and ever;

By our former grief we have already sought each other out.

Along the road of our parting there will be no travel or news.

By what means shall I convey my heart’s love?

Their hearts spoken and their parting complete, she crossed over to the northwest corner. She took a few steps and turned around again to look at him.

“Master Li, don’t suppress your thoughts of this person from the underworld,” she said, wiping away her tears. Then she stood transfixed in her sobs again.

But seeing that the sky was about tot lighten, she hastened to the corner, and that was the last she was seen. The empty room was left with a vacant feeling; only the cold lamp flickered, nearly burning out.

Chang-wu hurriedly packed and left Hsia-kuei Prefecture to return to Wu-ting village in Ch’ang-an. The prefect of Hisa-kuei and a certain Chang Yüan-tsung drank wine and feasted with him. After they had all had a fair amount of drink, Chang-wu, caught up in his own thoughts, composed a poem to commemorate the events. The poem went:

As the rivers do not flow back west, nor does the moon remain full,

They cause a man to lament upon the ancient city wall;

In the desolate morning light we shall part at the forked road,

Not knowing how many years will pass before we meet again.

Having chanted the poem, he parted with the prefect and other officials. He traveled for a few miles alone and along the way started to compose and chant poems again to vent his feelings. He suddenly heard a sigh of appreciation in the air. It was a tone strained with melancholy. He listened more carefully. It was none other than the wife of Mr. Wang's son.

"In the world of darkness we have our alotted area of movement," she was heard saying. "After we part from this time, there will never be a day when there can be intercourse. I knew of your caring thoughts, and so I braved the guards of the underworld to come from afar and bid you farewell. Take care of yourself always.” Chang-wu felt for her even more than before.

When he got back to Ch’ang-an he spoke of all this with his comrade in the study of the Tao, Li Tsu of Lung-hsi  [in modern Kansu]. Li was movd by the sincerity of his feelings nad composed a poem:

The pebbles have sunk into the vastness of the ocean,

The man with the sword is parted by the breadth of the heavens.

You know there will be no day of reunion;

The sorrow of a torn heart; the sadness of the setting sun.

Chang-wu by now was working for the provincial governor at Tung-p’ing [modern Yün-cheng in Shantung]. Making use of his leisure, he asked a jeweler to look at the Mo-ho gem he had received. The jeweler knew nothing about it and dared not cut it. Later he was sent to Ta-liang [i.e., K’ai-feng, in modern Honan] on a mission, where he again called upon a jeweler, who this time was able to make something of it. Following its natural shape, he cut it into the likeness of a dentate oak leaf. Whenever he was sent to the capital, he kept this jewel close to his breast.

Once he was on a street in the eastern part of the city when he chanced to see a Buddhist monk of foreign origin who suddenly approached his horse and bowed.

“The gentleman has a precious gem upon his breast,” he said. “Might I beg to see it?”

He led Li to a quiet spot where it was brought out for inspection. The monk turned it over for a bit and said, “This is a most precious thing which comes from Heaven. It is not to be found in the world of men.”

Whenever Chang-wu passed through Hua-chou, he called on Yang-shih. He does so to this day.

I Have Heat!

Maybe someday soon I'll generate some light. But I've been driving around all winter on the assumption that I need a new heater core (OK, I'm being metonymic or something. I mean my car needs the heater core, of course), and that it would either take days of my time (plus skin off my knuckles and a lot of frustration) or lots of money to replace it. Then I found this post on the Internet telling me what I wanted to hear. And I believed it.

Sure, I could be using this event to grasp at some deeper meaning. Like perhaps that my dealer is just trying to rip me off. Well, I dealt with that in my last post, plus these are the guys who gave me 300K miles in the first place. I think their diagnosis was just a generic bandwagon certainty, like medical diagnoses, and a lot of other diagnoses, for instance. It certainly doesn't mean I'm more clever than they are. Sure, I got lucky, but what the hell does that mean?

OK, so there's more. On the way over to Canada (hey, I apparently like border crossings, plus it's where I have access to a garage, and it's a nice day, and I wanted to see the beach . . . . ) where I was going to work on the car, I pulled off to the side of the road to let a siren squealing cop go by. But the cop pulled off after me, and the very nice officer told me I had gone through a red light. I know I had pushed the limit of yellow, but these intervals are pushing my limits, and I was pretty sure that I hadn't gone through any red light. It's not something I generally do, unless I'm really daydreaming. She let me off - I was grateful. More good luck!

My sister tells me that in Seattle now they just take your picture and you don't even get a chance to tell your story. Well, in this case, I think that would have played in my favor. Who knows?

I do know that without a mental picture of what was really going on with the heater core, I couldn't have fixed it. This is the same thing that enabled me to deal with stuck bolts and parts on the other old VW I'd been working on in Seattle when I was out there recently. The young fellow I was helping was almost certainly stronger than I am, but didn't have the experience of having done this particular kind of work before. Without that felt sense of how much ooomph it will take to crack a bolt, you're just wailing against a blank resistance, and are as likely to break something as to break it loose. Which in fact did happen plenty of times. I'm just sayin' . . .

That's what I was seeking out on the Internet. That's what's so difficult to find on the Internet - actual understanding when you go seeking recommendations to fix cars, say. Rather than pompous certainties from people who are reaching just like you are.

I'm going to try to hang back from pompous certainties myself, and am certainly not about to ask you to just believe me. To take my word for what I know. I can tell you that the picture in my mind, so to speak, involves what they call a vapor lock combined with an alternate path for the cooling liquid to take in case this path (through the heater core) is blocked.

Getting the air out turns out to be very tricky, since the hoses aren't at the highest spot on the car. But it does explain the strange pattern of sometimes some heat and sometimes none, which was happening in a way quite contrary to the theory offered by the dealer's mechanics, which led to the conclusion of a clogged heater core.  Indeed, clogged heater cores are a "known problem" with this car, and so why would they want to look any further?

You can see where I'm going with this, right? Wrong! I'm not about to second guess my medical diagnosis, although it was a bit disconcerting to call today and find the message saying "if you require advice about your blood thinner medication, you may dial 1 immediately," almost as though they were either targeting me with the message machine, or the whole world is now on blood thinner medication for some strange reason. OK, maybe I'm doing a little bit of second guessing, but I'm not about to stop the blood thinners. Yet.

So here's the way I think it goes. You can't really understand anything without some more or less narrative frame in which to assemble the relevant facts. Well, from which you can decide what's relevant in the first place. These narrative frames differ culture to culture, and over time in the same culture. I know this. It's what I studied in college, among other things.

So, I promised you a ghost story. It follows. First, though, I want to give a little context. This is a story I translated from the (classical) Chinese about thirty years ago, during that same period when I was living aboard my newly acquired old wooden sailboat. I did the translation while living aboard, as a matter of fact. And it was published, which makes it my only published writing, er, translation, I mean, you know, published and cataloged in the Library of Congress kind of published.

I should have picked one about foxes, which are often the ghostly apparition of lovely ladies, speaking of cross-cultural congruences, given the number of foxes, automotive and literal, which grace my life, and have graced it lately, but instead I give you a very generic ghost story. You will see that it reaches not only for sense in the form of strange happenstance, but you may not know that it does actually, historically, reach for narrative sense in the manner of a form to tell stories.

As in the West, storytelling is also the invention of the romantic in China, to make a mild pun, which I think simply means a kind of happy ending tale. Something to give a sense of where we're going, along with an enhanced desire to get there.

I guess that sense comes from making conclusions, shapes, points. Actually, though, sense comes from a kind of congruence between the facts "out there" and the metaphorical shapes with which you might contain those unruly facts in and by your mind. Narrative fiction must, in fact, conform to the shapes lots of people have, and these people have to want to read it. That, in particular, is where the dialogic part comes in. You can't get meaning all by yourself, I'm afraid. No, actually, I'm NOT afraid. Indeed, I'm so not afraid that I used to sleep in graveyards when I would travel by bike or motorcycle. They were always peaceful, and had mown grass to pitch my tent. But I digress.

At some future time, I'll write more about the interesting contrasts between Chinese and Western literary solutions, and how these remain quite evidently relevant to events in current history. It's pretty useful stuff. Well, not just useful, but downright critical, given the impending and potentially catastrophic occasions for misunderstanding cropping up around intellectual property, censorship, legal protections, teaparty anger and the like. But first, the story (next post).

Ghost Hunting

I guess ghost hunting is a "real" activity, indulged by folks who are skeptical of skepticism. It seems kind of silly to me on the face of it. I'm sure that people do actually "see" ghosts, but people also hallucinate and misinterpret data all the time. Well, more likely they impose familiar and conclusive "shapes" on things they just don't understand.

Advertising takes advantage of this, as does the newly faddish preoccupation with "gaming" (as in gambling folks). It really bothers me that our government is falling into this cesspool of immorality; almost as much as it does that Native Americans find it OK to pander (payback's a bitch). People simply don't have the basic math to understand what's going on. If they did, they'd be clamoring for "socialized" medicine, but I won't get into that just yet.

I think there are lots of basic science experiments that can prove how easily crowds of people can be induced to "see" the same nonentity. The other day at a "paranormalist" discussion, the leader played this old parlor trick: "How do you spell 'silk'?" which is a really hard word to hear. So people strain and try out S.I.L.K., and then the question is asked, "so, what do cows drink?" and almost everyone spontaneously answers "milk!" which is or course wrong, but just goes to show the power of suggestion.

So, in a given context, creepy surroundings, a certain kind of weather maybe; whatever it takes to lead people to the edge of what they feel solid about, a certain percentage will undoubtedly "see" something and even claim it has an objective existence, quite apart from their seeing it. Take God for instance. People are quite willing to kill or be killed over their certainty about the reality of this reified construct of so many people's lively imagination. Short of the kill or be killed part, I'm fine with the notion that God is real. But you have to stay well short of believing in ghosts to keep me with you.

Surely we all know the experience of something out of the corner of our eyes. Sometimes it turns out to be a mouse or a rat, which is upsetting enough. But sometimes - like the other day when I felt that I stepped on a soft spot in the floor of the movie rental place - it's a bit more disconcerting. I couldn't find the soft spot again, and so I was left with a kind of creepie sense that I had entered the bozone. There was lots of noise from the movie trailers being played overhead. I was contemplating what fantasy projection to rent. These things happen. But it leaves you shaky for a moment.

Plus, I have actually had the real-life experience of losing my mind, which, believe me, is plenty disconcerting. Good thing no-one around me was encouraging me in that particular direction, or I might never have come back. And I know for a fact that oftentimes the inteventions of medical professionals can push people who have lost their mind right over the edge into permanent oblivion. It's not something we know a lot about still, and it's usually our certainties that do the most damage. Like bleeding people for illness.

One of the things which it is my particular burden to be clear about is that right at that same fringe where God becomes real, there is another phenomenon in the realm of science proper (as opposed, for instance to the provabilty of God's existence, which will forever be outside of the scientific method, by its very definition, and thank God for that!) where it is impossible to tell even in principle if what is perceived is projected from ones mind or extant apart from it, so to speak "objectively."

It has become familiar to equate these realms with the supposed strangeness of quantum physics. Metaphorically at least, I would have to agree that it is true that the territory where the proper boundary between mind and matter really exists is as fringey as that of quantum physics. In other words, it just simply doesn't make much difference at the level where our existence gets carried on. Or any difference at all, really.

But of course I maintain that it does make a difference. Quantum reality is no different from what we mean by "random" in the course of daily living. Quantum physics simply explores the realm in physical reality beyond which it becomes impossible even in principle to make predictions or to locate things with any certainty. It's cool stuff.

Of course, a lot of what people think of as random is anything but random. We all know the uncomfortable feeling of watching someone we love do things which tip the scale away from good health and prosperity. (It's always harder to see these things in oneself, ho ho). It would be like watching someone stroke a rabbit's foot while wanking a one armed bandit at some state-sponsored monopoly gambling emporium. Sad.

But how come, while relatively unware of the volcano eruption in Iceland, I end up renting a movie made in Iceland about a kid who survives an avalanche by crawling into his personal grave after being released from a prison confinement which was plainly terrorizing to witness up on the screen? Sure, I must have been subliminally aware of the nearness of Iceland to everyone's life just now; that place where the iceflows are melting prematurely and now where the volcanic ash will cool the earth back down even as it gathers in more snow melting sun to the glaciers.

I don't really care. Subliminal just simply means beyond the pale of my control. And most of us accept that there's lots of stuff beyond that pale. The roll of dice if nothing else.

We just don't have good and clear language for these things is all. Or, well, the language we have has grown not just obsolete, but downright scary. It's the religious language which was functional back before the age of scientific reason. And these days it seems only to lead to idiocy in the place of leadership. In that, I'm glad to be near ground zero for skeptical humanism. Albeit in the thick of the most religious communitiy on earth, as documented somewhere . . .

It is my particular burden to propose that language; the proper language for our post-modern existence. No scientist, no philosopher, no master of letters. I simply find that I have crossed enough intellectual boundaries in the course of my lengthening life to believe that language as we use it has become dysfunctional. Like a crazy person who's lost his bearings, it no longer makes any referential sense.

The proposal I make is as game changing as the one Einstein made from the perspective of physics and math. And consider that in 30 short years or so, his reformulation would lead as if inexorably to the possibility and then almost immediately the reality of The Bomb.

I take this historical fact as the basis for my newfound and extravagant hope for humanity on the planet. (I've never lost hope for the planet, since she will surely survive our plague upon her, the old girl. She's survived worse!)

Humanity on the planet is, as everyone who's not nuts knows, very near its brink. Beyond that pale, who knows? Goddists everywhere think that they do, but in reality (ho ho ho ho ho squared) they are only reciting the patriarchal leavings of those who, like the first Emperor of the Qin dynasty, namesake of China, have a hard time with their own mortality.

Yes indeedy, I'm suggesting that all we need is a bit of linguistic shiftyness and we'll have a shot at survival. Extravagant? Well, compared to all the incredible engineering we've done, I hardly think so. And I'm not one to disparage the pleasures of our engineering. Take Windows 7 for instance . . . (I hope you appreciate the incredible discipline I'm showing here, not to digress too much along my way!!)

Or how about travelling to the moon, or jet planes or skyscrapers or all sorts of things which have become more, well, ahem, grounded lately.

Enough!

I simply observe that the random happenings which impinge on a person's life do indeed engender an emotional response. Try though we might to remain impassive against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, very few of us are as accomplished as that grasshopper character David Karradine once portrayed, and look what happened to the real man! Tempting fate for a bit of temporal pleasure is not exactly the kind of impassivity that's meant by accomplishment in martial arts.

Anyhow, these emotional responses "in" us might as well be ascribed to reality "out there." We might as well call them real, and not just the projection of our fevered imaginations.

It's this boundary which interests me. If you are an astute reader (and you'd almost have to be to get this far) you will have noticed that this is the very same boundary which describes the existence or non-existence of things like God or ghosts or, you know, paranormal stuff. Well, consider how paranormal our very existence is in the first place, and you'll get an idea of what I think about that silly term. Sheesh!

So these emotional responses to random-seeming events, they're perfectly predictable. How many times lately have you heard the term "he'd have to have a heart of stone" not to be moved. Most recently, I heard this said regarding the Pope listening to the victims of sexual abuse as perpetrated by officers of his Church.

But then you'd have to have a heart of stone to be in any position of leadership, right? Since you would be, by definition, in some position to relieve lots of misery, but you'd still have to pick and choose. I heard dear Madeleine Albright the other day disavowing any knoweldge of the genocide in Rwanda which was occurring under her watch, which was pretty disingenuous of her on the face of it. Will Sarah Palin also disavow the horrors wrought by her cheerleading fanning of flames after it predictably occurs? I'm guessing the answer to that is obvious in advance.

So, the proportion among us of people who simply don't feel pain and suffering or joy or rapture when it occurs in the world around them is likely very similar to the proportion who sees ghosts. These people may be the only ones paying attention, or they may be nuts, or they may be the only ones to harden their perceptive or emotional faculties against the obvious. But to maintain a strict dividing line between what is real and what is in the mind and therefore not real would be the very pinnacle of idiocy.

Which is precisely where, collectively, we all live now. At the pinnacle of idiocy, no different, really, from that spot in a lifeboat all alone with screaming drowning people all around and you just can't save them all. You can't feed everyone out the back door of your mansion. So what, you should just do nothing at all? Blame the stupid people for not knowing how to swim? (OK, sorry about breaking that promise again, not to digress too much)

I'm a happy guy right at the moment. I just clicked a couple of buttons to buy some stuff off the Internet for less than the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I ended thereby my internal battle (tie me to the mast!!) about holding back from spending maybe $40 bucks for these same devices over the counter, which is like real money when you're unemployed. It's like I didn't even have to make a decision. Chump change. Cool! Someday, I'll give you a quick digression about what this episode and more like it mean for our "economy." I promise.

A quick change of mind is all we need to change the world. Stop speaking as though emotions were not real. What was it I saw on the special about the terrible state of Detroit last night? Up in the court room where those guilty serially of growing up black were being brought for arraignment? "Justice is reason overcoming passion." Some silly claptrap like that.

Hello! That's simply not true. Half the time when reason overcomes passion, it's the cause of the apathy that's the cause of the cause for people acting beastly.

I'm just tired of the presumption that there's only one world, one truth, one reality. There are at least as many as there are people, and when people start interrelating, the math goes critical really really fast. Which makes change trivial. But it won't happen for so long as we think we're in charge of everything.

Now, excuse me a bit. I found an idea on the internet about how I might be able get heat going again in my car. It's probably a pipe-dream representation, having nothing at all to do with reality (or the dealer, who said I need a heater core, which is really expensive to install). But the author of this tip says the dealers always say that and that they're almost always wrong. It's not that they are trying to rip you off - hell, at my place there was only one mechanic even willing to take on the project to remove my dashboard - it's just that they all get on the same bandwagon. The more certainty there is the more certain people get. You know how that goes.

Anyhow, next time, I promise, I'll just go ahead and post the ghost story that I'm going to read at the Spirit Way Project conference coming up in a few days. See you there!!

Another Day in the Life of a Techie

Each day there is a new letter in my mailbox from the health insurance company. It is part of our cultural birthright to detest bills in the mail, but bills are predictable and very clearly dependent on our own actions. They are our responsibility to pay, no matter how much we might dream about their getting lost. These insurance company notices are different.

And, as a technophile, each day I marvel at the cool new stuff out there to capture my lust to buy things. As a cheapskate, I've found that I can earn compound interest regarding technology purchases by following my most basic rule of economic survival: don't ever buy anything (or repair anything on your car) until you absolutely must, or until not spending the money will cost more than spending it. This avoids the regret of sunken costs, such as might be incurred by purchasing a satellite radio before you discover Pandora on your smartphone. Or getting a really good deal before the better one comes out. Especially, it avoids closets full of now obsolete gadgets which seemed really useful in their day.

Think ever cheaper memory and storage costs, and ever changing standards for how to present stuff. You don't really need it. You just want it. And looking is as good as it will ever get. Trust me.

But it's always fun to look and imagine the things you could do if money were no object. It's almost unbelievable now how many wires I have coming out from my tiny new laptop, just to take advantage of all the legacy stuff I hate to throw away. An old CRT, a keyboard I once liked, the scanner my daughter got for free with her MacBook, but didn't have room for in her dorm room, the KVM switch will allows me to share files for backup purposes by seamlessly navigating to an ancient computer which still works and therefore won't grace a landfill yet. I could keep going on, but you probably get the idea.

The trouble is that as a techie, I actually do spend more time trying to understand the gizmo in its context than I do deploying it for its supposed purpose. I have no use for the stuff beyond writing here, but I am fascinated by it! Take my new smartphone, for instance. There is a whole slew of stuff it simply doesn't do so well as the broken one it replaced. Some of this can be traced to new ways for the various companies involved in the transaction to make money where maybe they used to be looking for market advantage by giving away some bundled cool processes for free.

Some of this is because the new stuff was pushed out the door too fast, just to keep up with something Apple will always be able to do better. And some of it is because no company seems to employ thoughtful users like me, who are always more interested to examine all the ins and outs and logic trees. I spend more time optimizing my usage than using my devices. And, to tell the truth, I could not possibly care less about most of the stuff they seem to gear these devices toward; games and amusements and social engagement tools.

I'm a reader and a thinker and a seeker after good information, who would, however, really appreciate new and clever ways to do it better. Just like any fool embedded in our cultural certainties, I remain both surprised and disappointed when new isn't better. It's almost always better in whatever category forced the newness. The screen size, for instance, or its resolution. But it's almost always not better under the covers, ho ho.

The assumption always is that the very best person for a particular job is the one who's been hired to do it, right? Our economy rewards skill and competence. Well, or maybe it just rewards boldness and self-promotion, since I sure would never let something with my name on it go out the door with as many flaws as much new technology contains. I would never sacrifice my reputation for a few more bucks on the near side. Any good company should know this.

But I suspect that the economy generally works rather more like the economics of the health insurance industry than not. Some people would like to think that its perverse economics of screw the customer is some sort of anomaly. But it's not. Bold self promotion to take advantage of people's gullibility generally makes a lot of money.

Each time I find a new envelope from my health insurance company, I feel something more like terror than the common  dread of yet another bill. Reliably, each new envelope contains a new denial of coverage. In addition to the "contracted" amount which they have found some technical reason to deny, there is the amount I will have to pay without their bargaining power to lower it. This is terrorism, plain and simple. And still somehow I am made to feel as though this might be my responsibility for not having mastered their arcane rules as well as they have. Like I'm supposed to know ahead of time what will be paid, despite what my doctor tells me I need.

The IRS might come back at me for having done my taxes wrong, and I will be liable for the charges plus a fine. The cellphone company might ding me for usage when I cross borders which are in the sky and not clearly marked on the land. I might not have closely read some fine print I clicked off on, and be found responsible for theft of intellectual property when I do some technical manipulations to lend a friend an electronic copy of a song or a book or a film or whatever. Even though Amazon helpfully offers to lend me a hand reselling old hard-copies of stuff I buy new cheaper on my Kindle, but can never resell. Yes, new is indeed better. Newly descended responsibility and fault.

As you can see, I'm having a hard time understanding how to write, or what I'm doing up here anymore. I used to think I had something important to say, but, of course, it's more the quality of how you say it that counts, and just like when I sing Cohen's Hallelujah over and over again with my guitar, it's never going to sound very good, even if I were able to memorize it. I just don't have it in me.

But, you know, everyone needs a gimmick, right? I heard about this guy who wrote a book called the Year of  Living Biblically, or something like that. I hear he's not a great writer, but he has some kind of genuine faith now, plus a readership. And then there's Julia and Julia, and people have always done stuff like rowing boats across the Atlantic. It never works, like going into the wild, there's just nothing there to be found that can't be found inside yourself if only you know how to look.

So, I'm performing these almost daily calculations in my head about the cost to transport stuff out West where the job prospects are better. I'm pretty employable. I have quite well refined Microsoftie skills. I "get" technology and can make it work really well. Plus I'm incredibly good with security, if anybody's willing to listen (which they're usually not). I have a background as a Chinese teacher, and understand just a bit more about Chinese tradition that most Chinese do, simply because I know that culture in a comparative sense, and that's the only way really to know anything. Knowledge is dialogic, no matter what claptrap anybody tries to sell you about there being only "one truth" (I actually heard that the other day), or even only one reality.

It's all metaphorical, and there's no kind of root understanding except for the body, and these days my body isn't all that reliable either. Among my calculations is the danger to attempt existence without health insurance. It's going to run out in a few months anyhow, likely before we get sensible new regulation, since a year is almost up since I quit my last job. (quitting isn't accounted for among the "socialist" help packages on offer) I have a couple of critical medical specialist appointments in the summer just before it runs out; one for the heart, one for the lungs. But it's hard to imagine that these will actually mean anything significant for my health. The cost of them would be terrorizing without the insurance, but it's not so fun either to live in terror of your own body's possible betrayal in the first place.

Then there's the car. Already with 300,000 miles on it, it would seem a bit silly to pay to have a trailer hitch installed just to tow a trailer across the country because it's that much cheaper than to rent a truck (and pull the car on a trailer for its preservation). I don't even need a car here in Buffalo, where everything I need is within a walk. And the insurance (that insurance again!) costs a bundle. Using the car to cross the country with a trailer would surely be the end of it.

Just yesterday, I finally "disposed of" my old wooden sailboat. Both it and I have grown too old together. Her engine is beyond saving, and the cost now to own such a plaything - like the cost to pay for your own healthcare - has grown grotesque. Even were I to live aboard as I once did, the cost for the dock would exceed the cost to rent and heat a nice apartment. Not to mention hauling and painting and repairing. A boat requires a bit more critical care than a house.

Of course, I'd long since betrayed the old girl. Leaving her high and dry for seven long years while I indulged my hermetic desire to do nothing other than read, watch movies and fulfill my obligations as a good Dad. Last night late, my older daughter crowed to me that she had gotten her new laptop, and that it was totally outside of my recommendations or, apparently, even my awareness of the existence of this particular gem.

Anyone who knows me is familiar with how painful it is to ask me for a recommendation on a technology purchase. "It's all a question of money and desire, and these things I can't help you with." But I can offer pretty good orientation among the terms if you have that first part sorted out. Only Dads can know how happy it makes me to see my daughter do that much better than I could have done with or for her. (No, I'm not telling what she got - it's not relevant here!)

You know, I loved sailing when I did it every chance I could get. Down in the hold of that old boat, I achieved a kind of epiphany which has stayed with me ever since. But I lack the skill - utterly - to sing it out in any way that you will be able to stand.

So, this morning, still quite frozen from my drive last night from Canandagua, where I was invited to join as family for dinner among good friends there after having dropped off the last of the boat parts from my apartment's basement storage, I watched a movie I'd picked up according to my usual random methods. (It's easy to know what to avoid, but sometimes it's hard to know what to watch in a positive sense). Nói it's called. A bleak and frigid-to-watch film about isolation, made in Iceland, from the perspective of disaffected youth. A perspective I've never left, if you want to know the obvious truth.

My car's heater core is clogged just like the arteries (veins?) in my lungs. The cost to repair it far exceeds the value of the car. I am led to believe that I could not do it myself, although there isn't much I haven't done with cars. But having spent a few weeks recently in Seattle squirming under really old cars in the cold (I still have an occult splinter in my thumb to "show" for it, peeled from the soft metal of the car's underbelly, while muscling loose her bearings), and my body protests at the thought of any more car wrestling.

So, here's my gimmick. I have a date to transport my younger daughter back from the Big Apple at the beginning of May. She has earned an academic scholarship to a much more suitable college than the one which placed her on Manhattan, where she thought she wanted to be. As you can see, I'm bursting with pride about both of my daughters, and feel fairly confident of having discharged my responsibilities as well as can be expected (you know, given human shortcomings, the dangers out there, and all that).

Sure, they're sad to see the boat go, but as with me when Mom gave away my beagle while I was at summer camp, they also know that they never properly loved the boat. Mom thinks this harmed me somehow, and she feels guilty, but it didn't and she needn't, although it seems to be in her genes to feel guilty, so I'm glad to oblige the need. I don't want my daughters to feel guilty that they never really wanted to sail all that much. Just happy for me that I don't have that absurd lust any more. That the boat has a good new home with a fine woodworker (although it was just a bit disconcerting to find a newly cut-apart old and clearly rotten sailboat just off to the side of the spot my boat now occupies).

I'm hoping they're happy that Dad is free!

Anyhow, the car should still be worth a few bucks. And the apartment would be perfectly comfortable for anyone - say a newly divorced guy - who needs a fully equipped and non-fussy place to live on short notice. Apart from my books, there's nothing here I have a very hard time disposing of, except for the financial calculations. And these have moved into the realm of the same strangeness which makes people still love cars when "public transport" costs a small fraction of the cost to drive. My math is not nearly sophisticated enough to undertand how keeping my old stuff might make financial sense.

So, I think I'll just simply take off on foot. I have a miniature laptop and a permanent connection over the cellular grid for phone and  for voice and for internet and for texting. Shoes are pretty cheap, and I have a brand new pair. (I wonder how many miles a pair of shoes gets? Stay tuned and I'll find out!). I learned on my recent trip out West that I can live pretty indefinitely with what fits into the overhead bin on an airplane, and I never even touched half of what I'd packed, including an extra pair of shoes! Plus the weather is getting nice.

A hat, a small backpack, enough money to keep in contact and to buy a bed most nights. For my body, it's at least as good a cure as all the expensive testing they propose for it. Even buying prepared food and staying in motels with hot water and battery-charging electricity should cost a lot less than to transport all my stuff. (I never did understand the sense of driving a Winnebago when the cost to own it so far exceeds the cost to stay at the finest hotels).

Sure, flying would be the cheapest way, but I'm back to that employability thing again. I've recently discovered that nobody talks to anybody on airplanes anymore. I guess we're all afraid of one another, maybe checking each other out to see if someone's harboring a bomb or something. I figure, walking I would have a much better chance of learning stuff than by flying.

Sure, I did this once already on a motorcycle, after trying it on a bicycle (which was just nuts with all the truck traffic and hooting from cars. You make too good a target on two wheels). It wasn't the fault of the conveyance that I didn't make a whole lot of human contact from my motorcycle. It was my own damned hermetic predilection. It became more of a silent geography tour, indulging my almost incredible rapture with aloneness. It was like sailing alone in a squall. My very favorite pastime. So, I figure, walking, I'll have a better chance to be taken out of myself.

I think I have just enough money to make it West while still meeting all of my obligations. Plus, it would make a really good gimmick to get people to be interested in what I write about.

Someone will surely die along my way. It might be me, or I might have to take a few plane rides, but these can be fitted into the budget. It's not like I'll be heading out into the wild, though friends and family will likely call me crazy. I've been called that and worse before, and I've earned it! I might as well do what I'm good at.

Well, it's an idea. We'll see how close I come to pulling it off. Meanwhile, I have a script to prepare for reading at an Earth Spirit "conference" I plan to attend. I'll post it up here in case you're interested.

'Later

Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets at Subversive Theatre

Some days I do things which are plainly absurd. Today I bicycled down to the Niagara River to watch the kickoff event of "Boom Days." Boom Days are some sort of new Buffalo identity exercise, relating to the strange fact that each spring there comes a day when the "ice boom" is removed from the head end of the Niagara River.

The boom is placed to keep ice from clogging water intakes for power production from the drop down the same escarpment which provides the famous Falls. Enough water flows down this river to shrink our puny aspirations to the scale of that big red ball they dropped off the Peace Bridge.

There are mixed feelings about the overall beneficence of this boom, and so this is a kind of making lemonade when life hands you lemons thing. You can see the family resemblance to Buffalo wings. You can see the reachy punning. As if we were about to soar. As if these are boom times for Buffalo. As if our falling were only symbolic; yet another Blizzard Ball, in red, follow it down and drink and be merry.

I'd thought I would be joining some sort of crowd, but instead I found myself practically solo on the scene. A beautiful day, and I had the pedestrian-friendly breakwater which divides the river from the canal almost to myself.

I'd first scouted out the riverfront and determined that there wouldn't be any observers from the Olmstead Park, nor from the Frank Lloyd Wright boathouse at the Rowing Club. I'd pretty much decided that the whole thing was another mixup on my part until I saw the big red  Edward M. Cotter fireboat coming down the canal alongside the River. Then sure enough, there was the big red ball ready to be tipped over the edge. A lot of fuss just for me, don't you think?

That's about how absurd the situation was, presented by Eve Ensler's play, Necessary Targets staged at Subversive Theatre this month. American professionals credentialed and documented  in traumatic stress disorders get sent to Bosnia after the genocide, as if they could help. You don't realize until the moment the characters do how surprisingly absurd this premise is. As absurd as a ball drop event which nobody attends. You want to help. You want to participate, and you find yourself alone and unequipped.

A prominent and well published therapist is honored to be selected by the President. A younger counterpart is glad to find a way to escape her personal horrors, which we learn are ever present in the flashback of sleep when she stays home. The women they meet in Bosnia have lived through things so utterly unthinkable from the perspective of an upscale psychology practice Stateside - or even from that of  the shattered lives that practice helps - that it seems absurd to imagine that there could be any human contact across the divide. Suddenly absurd. These well-meaning travelers both find themselves over their heads. As if in a rapids heading for a falls.

Even the horrors of warfare can't compare to the horrors of atrocities committed by people just like us. Who can imagine neighbors gone wild with machetes and rape? In warfare, all the players are geared up for atrocity. The civilians learn quickly to expect it. But neighbors to neighbors right in front of our eyes, and even one's own children kill or get killed in the moments of mindlessness. Right upon entry, the lead practitioner, played with supreme confidence by Jane Cudmore, projects a contained version of the same sort of panic a wild animal must feel when corralled for the first time. It is not accouuntalbe that this troupe of actors has as little experience as the playbill says they do. There are other facts of life leaking into these performances.

I am not a well-educated theater-goer by any estimate, but I've seen a fair amount. I have never been taken so near my edge of comfort as I was by this production. I've been among the audience back in the gonzo days of street theater in SoHo before it was SoHo. The East Village before it was domesticated. But the raw emotions released on this stage made me realize why I could never do what these actors do. The strain to remain just this side of the edge of utter discomposure would be far more than I could take. I would need complete revitalizing sessions between each scene. I would need vacations.

Which can only stand in as metaphor for what was being portrayed. Women who were without place and without comfort and who could not come close to depending even on each other any longer, though each other was all they had. Because each of them was already beyond her edge of holding things together. Each of them was utterly beyond any limit for containing her once and former personality. Psychological talk of how good boundaries lead to good health dissolved like a face in tears once the "therapeutic" talking actually got started.

Yes, how utterly absurd to think that the world could possibly want or appreciate help from us, who are so preoccupied with some sort of politically correct decency of behavior and thought and process and education. Except that these Bosnian women were in need of someone to care for them as they had become; smelly ethnic symbols of pitiable lives. Still alive, still people, still trying to distinguish themselves from what their people had descended into for reasons unaccountable to us who strain in seeming raw anger against people who disagree with us politically. For whom "baby killer" is a reachy metaphor compared to what went on in actuality "over there."

"Baby killer" relates with the same abstract and purely metaphorical remove to the horror of rape as presented here. It has become an abstract problem of sexual continence, boy scout morality; something to be counselled away from by soothing priestly mannish voices. It's well known that Ensler doesn't shy away from the challenges to humanity of our sexuality. It is this which is ever front and center both for the deadened women, and by extreme remove at the core of the psychological practice which empowers the visitors from civilization to this ravaged wasteland. As if repression could contain this much feeling.

I would like - reallly I would - to find some way to participate in the life of this city of mine. I would love something which is less absurd than to patronize from some perspective of expertise or elite education. But the city seems sewn up from above. Expertise is already owned by an elite with closed ranks. Take a swan dive out into the rapids, or fly away to more welcoming places.

I suppose I can only bear witness. On the way back from the ball drop, I passed by that famous house rebuilt by the television inspired crew. Of course, there was a for sale sign. Who, when presented the chance, wouldn't want out from that particular neighborhood when handed the chance? No, wait, I think I'm too quick to jump the gun. This was just a sign from the builder who took the lead in the rebuilding, right? Someone used to building upscale mini-mansions for the better educated, lighter colored denizens of our suburbs. It was hard for me to imagine living there, among the blighted, blasted out remnants of our city before its descent.

As Eve Ensler stated in her presentation of this staged work, the real warfare is what comes afterward, among the women and not among the men. The part we saw on TV was the staged reality. The lived reality doesn't play well. The women are forgotten and, well, there are only a few psychologists brave or famous enough to stay beyond the established protocols of love.

We are our own necessary targets. This is how the visitors to Bosnia finally understood themselves. The tortured and tormented women needed someone to pummel and to hurt who would, however, remain beyond the beatings. Who would strain to understand that these acts of violence came from somewhere beside themselves. From the displacement which exist in each of us between our lust and our humanity.

Sometimes domestic tranquility spills over. Sometimes tears are inevitable. And sometimes they power change which is good. I had to leave as soon as the applause ended, since I could hardly trust myself to say the right thing or to behave properly in front of people who had exposed so much. But you should see this play. Follow the bouncing ball. It ends happily. It floats. The discovery of how stark our privileged lives really are is the only thing which can instigate real change. And no Sarah, YOU keep the change. Honest, I've got more than enough. I can spare it.

The Blinded Side

Well, I finished the movie, and ate Sunday brunch in that renovated yup-scale restaurant I'd wanted so much to disparage. I move quickly, don't you think? I still don't know the actual fate of the other more pricey restaurant which had seemed to be closing (their website now shows only the suburban location). And I forgot to mention running into a Buffalo Boy at the Greek restaurant in Seattle where I'd eaten with family on the way out of town. Pricier and not nearly so good as what can be had for cheap in Buffalo, I was glad to find out that this Buffalo place didn't renovate their menu right along with the decor.

I should really stick around someplace long enough to get a newspaper subscription again. I just ate at that closed restaurant before heading out West, and then they tell me just this morning that the renovated Acropolis has already been open two or three weeks. I guess I just wasn't paying attention when I walked by during their renovations? But I could swear I ate there. It's all a bit disconcerting. Maybe I was laid up in the hospital or something. Or maybe the switch from snow to spring has me all mixed up. Or. . .

As to the Sandra Bullock movie, well, I'm afraid I have to say that it wasn't very convincing. They'd abstracted all the essential elements for a cinematic narrative which would have to trump whatever the reality really was. Whatever it was, it couldn't possibly have born much relation to the essentialized and slimmed down story presented up on screen. That one was just way too happy. Hell, even the lives I slipped into at that party last night - which are pretty happy lives - have more tragedy than the Blind Side showed. Lots more.

So, it is at least ironic that Jesse James shed a tear hearing the same words that we all shed tears for along with Sandra at her Oscar acceptance speech. Sandra must thank her lucky stars that she called out Merle Streep as her lover, and not that guy who'd previously married a porn star. Which makes me look at that Orange County Cycle show (that's Orange County New York, folks) in a whole new light, as yet another drama of Cain and Abel and prodigality and how affection gets displayed or not. And where's the Mom in that show anyhow? Huh? Such strange bedfellows reality and TV make.

So, I'm working through this pile of mail which had built up while I was away. Almost everything now has some sort of identifying information on it, which just makes me think that I must trot out to buy a shredder like everyone else in the world who isn't wanting to become a millionaire by parading their realities on TV. It's a funny world, alright. I parade my realities all over the place just like the rest of us, but I resist getting a shredder as some sort of absurd lipstick on a pig for someone whose life is all on display anyhow. Although I do wish I'd get rid of my big fat face staring out at the world. I just don't have any other acceptable pictures is all. And isn't shredding what you do on a skateboard in Venice Beach, say, like I watched? I am so confused!

The Blind Side

I'm still operating on West Coast time, I guess. I tried to muster the energy last night at least to watch a rented movie, since I certainly had no energy to write. And I have such a backlog of things I want to write about now, it's almost oppressive.

I started watching the Blind Side, the one with that lovely Sandra Bullock who was recently so blind sided herself.

I want to go on record, before I muster the energy to finish it, that I'd like to know how they salvage the dignity of that big black boy. Especially going up against Precious as the movie does. So far, it looks as though he'll owe it all to Sandra, which would not be what I would call dignified for the character of the big black kid.

Walking back from my welcome-home blood draw this morning, the woman walking in front of me was nearly blind sided by a Buffalo cop who'd sped out from his green light to make a left turn right into her sprightly step. She kept patting her chest in mock collapse and real shock.

I guess the cop was watching his on-board computer, having just come away from that massive conclave of police, fire, and rescue vehicles that I'd wanted to kibitz on along my return walk. No evidence by the time I got there, except for the remark of some other passers by that the  hot dog stand seems to be still open. I can only guess that it was the spot in danger.

We always need to worry around here about businesses disappearing for this or that good reason. On the other side of the spectrum, I was a little bit non-plussed to learn that one of my favorite breakfast haunts has now gone the way of all flesh - but in this case, I mean that they removed all the old kitschy comfortable Formica and Naugahyde to trend in the direction of the suburbanite cool-magnet my neighborhood aspires to. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the other trendy spot which suddenly looks closed. Or the seedy bar now looking like it's being transformed into a restaurant.



Then in the barber shop, right there on the front page of the local section of the News was the report of the grand opening of the new Confucius Institute, which I'd witnessed myself, right off the red-eye, curious to see what I was missing.

Down the page was a report of Wolf Blitzer, revisiting the high school from which he'd graduated where many of my friends and relatives attended. I either never knew that factoid, or I'd forgotten it. I think I knew that he was a UB grad.

Further back in the paper was a report of the death, apparently by pulmonary embolism, of a quite young man who was featured since he'd been the famous victim of a child kidnapping case way back when.

Blind sided then and again just now, by the very thing which might have killed yours truly. Which just goes to show you.

Tonight (in a few minutes actually) I'll attend the welcome back to Buffalo party of some really good friends of my parents' generation. I'm not the kind of guy who merits parties of any sort myself, the accomplishment of my Master's Degree being so much beneath expectation for instance, or my return from anywhere since I'm always gone.

I think you have to instigate these things somehow yourself, or have some significant other to do it for you, like I did for my Master's degreed ex wife. I'm not an instigator. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm just saying. Maybe you have to be social to some significant degree, or moneyed. I should have a housewarming for this apartment before I leave it again.

Most of my time out West was spent messing around with cars, and to tell the truth, I'm kind of pleased with myself.  I pasted back together my daughter's old VW yet again. It wasn't much: fabricating a spring for the gas cap cover, finding a guy to weld the muffler, replacing the brakes for peanuts for my little peanut who'd worn them to naught on Seattle's artificially tamed hills. Just enough to keep the rustbucket moving, and by the time I left she (or is it Bob?) was driving really well. (I learned about Seattle's hills as if by magic when, on the way out of town, I discovered this really cool museum but a short walk from where I was staying!)

While out there I learned that the father of my other daughter's first semester roommate shot himself on Easter day. Talk about a blind side. Since the guy was retired from the NYC police force while still really young, you have to think that there was something in him that was really really hard to talk about. Something the rest of his family was blind to.

In the pile of mail I retrieved from the Post Office when I got back yesterday, along with the census notice and the census reminder notice, there was an entire new stack of notices from the various health insurance companies I'm involved with. Mostly new rejection notices, plus a mandatory notice that I might be eligible (NOT!) for a government subsidy in case I left my job involuntarily. I just don't qualify for much of anything these days. It makes me tired in advance to ponder the calls I'll have to make against all the new health insurance denials.

Some day soon, I promise, I'll write up my observations on this country's wonderful health care system, since I've apparently been on assignment to catch out its shortcomings. I feel like one of those test cases against the tax preparation or computer repair industry, where you purposefully hobble the computer, or pose a relatively complex tax question, just to see what the proportion is of  "correct" responses might be. In the case of tax preparation, you could add in the IRS just for comic relief, since they're not able actually to give you tax prep. advice. Just the facts and the information.

I discover that I have no writing style anymore. As if I ever did. Maybe this is a good thing. Nothing is better than something if the something is only in your imagination, right? It's all uphill from here. Or is it down? In any case, it can't get any worse!! I just hope I don't get blind sided by some new discovery of what it is I lack. Or have too much of. Can't wait to see this house right around the corner from me. It's in a really nice neighborhood. It's almost amazing what you can find right around the corner even though nobody ever told you about it.

Oh yeah, and I have this confession to make. I got myself a laptop out west. Like all laptops on the less expensive than Apple side of things, this one came pre-loaded with Windows as its OS. I'd thought that I was sworn off Windows in favor of Linux. But it seems I'm not. There's something nice about having things just work and not having to think about them, and about having all the details thought out and fully engineered. Even though copyright is only created for the Big Guys. I have to pick my battles anymore. And I got sick of the endless updates. I guess I told you that already. Welcome back!