en las nubes

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Comfort food

2007-01-31T02:00:00.000-06:00

"what's your favorite comfort food that reminds you of a happy moment in childhood, huh?"

A root beer float on the front porch, on a warm August night, my dad listening to baseball on the radio, while I sip and watch fireflies in the front yard.

Amen!

2006-09-10T13:38:00.000-05:00

Ask the Pilot says on Salon this week:

It dawns on me that as I've spent thousands of words and, probably, too much of readers' time analyzing this stuff over the past few weeks, I've danced and dallied around the central point. Allow me to quote Bruce Schneier, the author and security guru, who in a recent blog entry more elegantly sums things up:

"The point of terrorism is to cause terror. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want."

Bolivia

2006-01-22T16:53:00.000-06:00

(huayño by Gonzalo Hermosa (Los Kjarkas))

Ser tu bravura ser la fuerza y juventud
De tu letargo mudo la voz, la inquietud
Bolivia...
Quiero pegar un grito de liberación
Despues de un siglo y medio de humillación

Quiero tengan tus días destino mejor
Y el futuro sonría prometedor
Bolivia...
En la falda de tus cerros haré mi hogar
Donde felices los niños iran a jugar

Bolivia...

The Return

2006-01-18T23:45:00.000-06:00

Been sort of quiet around here lately.

I'll break the silence with a meme stolen from vidiot

Cities where I spent one or more nights in 2005:

San Diego, CA
San Jose, CA
Davenport, IA
Chicago, IL
Boston, MA
Arlington, TX

Heh. Not bad -- that list includes most of my favorite cities.

Shooting Star

2005-11-14T19:28:00.000-06:00

Wow. I was on my balcony this evening, looking at the night, and I saw a shooting star. It was huge and red, flaming across the western sky, looking as though it were low to the ground. Lower even than the airplanes flying overhead, landing and taking off from the airport. But that was probably an illusion.

I was so surprised. I'm sure I've seen a meteor in the sky before, but I can't remember when.

I was so surprised, I forgot to make a wish.

But, it's just as well I forgot. I don't believe in wishes any more. No wishes, no dreams, no grand goals.

Sure, those things are fine sometimes. It feels good to imagine what could be, what might be, all the possibilities and then sorting through to choose the one I'd like the best.

But, I've had it with that. No more. I'm tired of the disappointments. Tired of the wishes that fall to earth in flames, like a shooting star.

The 7 Dangerous Habits of Chronically Single People

2005-09-17T14:53:00.000-05:00

Eating badly because, frankly, cooking for one is a pain and fast food is, well, fast and cheap
Never closing the bathroom door
Licking the drips from the hot sauce bottle, because, after all, it's only your own germs you're sharing with yourself
Not restraining those bodily noises
Rinsing a spoon and leaving it out to reuse, because (see item 3)
Developing a high tolerance for dust (resulting in the side effect of a mad rush of cleaning prior to the arrival of visitors)
Self-indulgence -- doing whatever you want, whenever you want, spending money without discussion or consensus

PS, to whoever may come to visit: re item 3, I *promise* to buy a fresh bottle in advance!

PPS: is item 7 really a *dangerous* habit??

What a week!

2005-09-17T12:31:00.000-05:00

The Weekly Review at Harper's published September 13th

where, we discover, reality was as surreal as any parody

Which goddess are you?

2005-09-10T21:02:00.000-05:00

I ran across a Goddess Archetype Questionnaire the other day and decided to see how they rated me.

Out of the 7 goddesses from the Greek pantheon the questionnaire uses, it turns out that I match Persephone (underworld, mystery) by a wide margin. Following not far behind her in the rankings were Athena (career, wisdom, accomplisher) and Hestia (spiritual focus).

WAY down at the bottom of the rankings were Demeter (mother, nurturer) and Hera (wife, helpmate).

Apart from my giving, empathetic nature =) it is true that mother and wife, in the traditional sense, are not my roles.

It's also amusing to me that it's Persephone that I matched. Not because it's not apt, because it is -- very much so, I'd say. Rather, it has to do with Mictlancihuatl (Persephone's counterpart in the Aztec tradition) who I've written about before.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased to have come out on the side of these often misunderstood "dark" female spirits. Here's to the goddesses in my own personal pantheon:

Mictlancihuatl	Persephone	Medusa
More on Persephone at: Encyclopedia Mythica Wikipedia Classical Myth
	One hot mama

Dreaming 2

2005-08-20T14:10:00.000-05:00

I had a strange dream last night.

I was falling asleep. In my mind, I was not asleep yet, but later, after the dream, when I woke up and saw it was only one hour after I'd gone to bed, I realized I had been sleeping. During the dream, I didn't realize I was dreaming.

Here's the dream I had:

I was lying in my bed, here in this apartment where I am living, in the period just after going to bed while you are waiting to fall asleep. I was lying on my right side, as I usually do. With my right arm under the pillow that my head was on, as it usually is. With my left arm around another pillow and my left hand tucked under my chin, as they usually are. Lying on the right side of the bed, as I usually do. Wearing the nightshirt I usually wear.

Things started turning strange, making me feel troubled and disturbed. I noticed I had put a finger in my mouth to suck on. (But, I thought in my dream, I don't do that! ... or do I and I didn't know??? ... could there be something like that about myself I never knew??)

Then, my ex was in bed with me. He didn't do anything, but he was there. And as the moments passed, he moved closer to me, not to "do" anything, just to be close and to be in contact with me in sleep. But, I didn't want him there! I pushed him away. He moved back. I pushed him away again, saying "leave me alone". He moved back. I continued protesting, more insistently.

Then, in my dream, I got up and walked out of my bedroom. Things had changed in my apartment. Little things... my table was "the same" but items were in disarray. Other objects in the apartment were either missing or had been moved. This was disturbing ... how had those items moved? ... how could things have been changed without my having been aware of it happening? ... who changed those things??

Then, feeling strange -- disquieted and disturbed -- I woke up.

It took some moments to realize that all of that had been a dream. In the midst of it, I thought I was awake. I'd *felt* awake the whole time.

I'm trying to figure out what this dream means, what the symbolism is trying to tell me.

Missing the intimacy and touch of a partner is a typical theme of mine. But do I really not want that? Would I reject it if it was offered to me?

Or ... did my ex, in the dream, represent a failed partnership, a bad decision in choice of partners.

Maybe I'm scared (still scared) I'll make another bad choice. That I'll end up with a messed up and disturbed life, again. That I'm afraid of the possibilities of conflict, fighting, and unhappiness.

I thought I was over those things ...

In fact, I am over them. I understand love. I understand possession and how to avoid it. I understand control and how to give it up. And I know how to give myself now, without giving *up* myself.

Dreaming

2005-08-20T13:28:00.000-05:00

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night."

Edgar Allan Poe, 1917
"Eleonora"

Rain, rain come again

2005-08-17T21:43:00.000-05:00

It rained today ... !

It teased me a little on Monday, but the shower was so short, barely enough to get anything wet.

This afternoon it was a nice warm rain but with a coolness in its center, after a long spell of hot and dry. Uncountable moist drops drenching this parched space.

I went out on my balcony and stepped into the water falling from the clouds ... agua de las nubes, ya no en las nubes ...

I saw the droplets bead on my arms. I closed my eyes, and felt them strike my head, dampen my hair, moisten my cheeks.

What a feeling, what sensations ... so much of my world is in my head, not less real by being fueled by virtual interactions and written conversations and imagination, but still in my *head* ... without touch and smell, without the intense subtleties that the imagination can only reproduce as shadows.

In today's rain, I was given a little sip ... a small taste ... but now! now that I see how thirsty I've been, I want a full glass.

Tag you're it

2005-08-12T23:50:00.000-05:00

Ok, not really. I mean I tagged¹ myself, so it doesn't count.

Nevertheless, I ended up here through some vagarity of my site logs, and the guy was bold enough to put this Q&A in conjunction with his resume. He invited people to copy and use, and so, I did.

Do You have..

A nickname? ... Not really. In high school, my friends called me Saj (from my initials - pronounced "sadge"). Lately, I'm occasionally called Sarita.

A pet? ... I've had 3 cats and 2 dogs in the past (none simultaneously), but now, no. Oops... almost forgot the little lizard George, but he's not really a pet.

A car? ... 2005 MCS PW/B (Mini Cooper S, pepper white with black top and trim)

A GF / BF or Spouse? ... No (you don't want to get me started)

Kids? ... No, but I'm enjoying watching a co-worker's son grow up, and hearing the tales of the son of my best friend.

A problem? ... Occasional deep loneliness, but I do my best to ignore it.

A motto / sig? ... There's a line that separates reality from fantasy, but it's an imaginary line.

What is your..

Religion? ... Some variety of intercultural paganistic gnostic-flavored awe with the mysteries of the universe

Political leaning? ... Liberal.

Best physical features? ... Hair, eyes, and an infectious risa explosiva² (yes, that's physical ... think lungs, vocal chords, brain)

Worst physical features? ... The extra pounds I can't seem to lose.

Best personality features? ... Empathy, intelligence, honesty.

Worst personality features? ... Social insecurity, expecting perfection from myself, self-indulgence.

Pet hate? ... Maliciousness.

Worst fear? ... Violence.

Right now..

Where are you? ... At home.

What are you doing? ... Entertaining myself.

What are you listening to? ... "Chilanga Banda" by Café Tacvba

What are you watching on TV? ... CNN, but I'm not paying attention.

What are you looking forward to? ... San Jose, CA in November.

What are you not looking forward to? ... This one work project that's gonna be a bitch.

What is the nearest book you can see? ... "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell.

What are you drinking / eating? ... Water.

Who..

Is your best friend? ... My cosmic soul brother David.

Do you respect? ... Honest, intelligent, irreverent people.

Do you despise? ... well, "despise" is pretty harsh, but I avoid, or at least am wary of, anyone who is dishonest, manipulative, or just plain mean.

Makes you laugh? ... Absurdity in the form of inexpected, delightful synchronicity tinged with a little of the surreal.

Would you like to spend a day with? ... My dad. Just to see what might have happened if he'd lived.

Would you like to spend a day as? ... The me I see in my head (as opposed to the me I see in the mirror). Just to see if there's actually a difference.

Would you maroon on mars? ... umm ... is there broadband there yet?

Was your childhood hero(ine)? ... I don't think I had one.

Who or what was the last..

Movie you watched? ... "Batman Begins"

Book you read? ... currently reading: "Aztec Autumn" by Gary Jennings; last completed: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

Song you heard? ... "All Said + Done" by Dios Malos

Person you kissed? ... My ex (since I'm sure this question was intended as "kissed in some romantic way"). Otherwise, my mom

Person that made you laugh? ... Polo Jasso

Person that you argued with? ... Someone at work

Newspaper you read? ... like, in paper? the student newspaper at the university where I work. Online: The Washington Post

Thing that made you mad? ... An idiotic management decision at work

Thing that made you cry? ... A sudden, olifactory memory of something I may never smell again first hand

Band you saw live? ... yikes. That would be Marco Antonio Solís and Joan Sebasti´n a year ago. But I'm seeing Santana and Robert Plant at the beginning of October.

Accident you had? ... umm ... can't remember

How many..

Ex lovers? ... define "lover"

Previous Jobs? ... hoo boy, depends on how you count them. Let's just say I've been at it for 34 years (excluding the babysitting)

Scars? ... Spider bite on my right shin

Tattoos? ... none. not even fake ones

Piercings? ... earlobes, twice (each)

Pints a week? ... don't drink much. an occasional beer or glass of wine. or, depending on the company, something with tequila

CDs and DVDs you own? ... CDs. a couple hundred. DVDs a couple dozen (I've started late). But I still have some LPs, cassette tapes, and VHS tapes.

Books you own? ... Let's just say, if I had bookshelves in the form of the "normal" ones you might buy, they would be my biggest investment outside of my car and electronic devices

Have you ever..

Taken illegal substances? ... define "illegal" =)

Been arrested? ... nope

Fought the system? ... why bother, if you're not a masochist?

Given blood? ... nope. but I know a vampire =)

Been abroad? ... yep. but not often enough nor for a long enough period of time

Lived out a fantasy? ... yes, but only in my mind (so far)

Achieved an ambition? ... yes, amazingly enough

Had your heart broken? ... so many times, I don't think it'd survive another one

Broken someone else's heart? ... as far as I know, no, although there might have been one that was bruised a little

Cheated on someone? ... no

Fiddled your taxes? ... no. that implies there is sufficient income and assets to make fiddling worthwhile

Been in love? ... I've thought so, several times. But, in reality, just once.

Been in lust? ... Used to be, almost all the time. Now, it's been so long, I'm not sure I remember how

Stayed in the hospital? ... Nope.

What is the best..

Item you bought this week? ... Toe rings

Item you bought this year? ... My Mini Cooper

Thing that could happen today? ... Find out I'll have enough money to retire when I want to

Thing that someone could say to you? ... Sarah, I love you, please stay.

Present you ever got? ... Three times in the past 32 years friends have thrown me a great birthday party. I still don't fully understand why they did it, but I'm forever grateful.

Holiday you ever had? ... The month I spent traveling in August 1978

Favorite..

Food? ... Dairy Queen soft-serve ice cream

Music? ... The Beatles; most anything recorded in the 1960s and 1970s (pre-disco); prog of various sorts; the Mexican, Argentinian and Brasilian rock David's introduced me to; the regional Mexican I hear on the radio (how's that for eclectic)

Movies? ... "Annie Hall", "Y Tu Mam´ También", "El Callejón de los Milagros", "The Matrix"

Books? ... Charles de Lint, Tanya Huff, "Sarum" by Edward Rutherfurd

Place? ... San Francisco

TV Shows? ... I almost never watch TV anymore, even if the TV is turned on

Games? ... I'm not really a gamer. But I played Zork way back in ancient times, and I enjoy imagining worlds in Sims/Sims 2

Shop? ... Marshall Field's in Chicago, Fry's in south Arlington

Bar / pub / club ... Bear's Place in Bloomington, Indiana

¹ -- Tagging is when a blogger posts some questionaire like this and then names you as someone to blog about it next.

² -- A "risa explosiva" is a big, sudden, explosive laugh

Control-freak-ism 2: Flirting

2005-08-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

Since mid-January, I've been driving this Mini Cooper S that I absolutely love. It's cute, it's fun, and it drives REALLY well.

In fact, late April, I took a trip and while I was at my destination I rented a car. They gave me a Toyota Corolla, which was fine. After all, I drove a Corolla wagon for 14 years, and then a Nissan Sentra for another 9. Man, that Corolla felt like it was floating all over the road, and I really appreciated how my MCS handles.

Then, a coworker got a Scion, and hybrids are popular topics of conversation these days. And I got curious. I went shopping for other cars .. and NOT Mini Coopers.

I got complacent, you know?

I was already used to my Mini.

I took it for granted. I got interested in looking around, asking myself "maybe there's something else out there"

And so, I went out and flirted a little. Nothing serious. Not even a visit to a car lot after the dealership had closed. Let alone a chat with a salesman or a test drive.

Just a little mental wandering ... looking around a little.

BUT .. because I looked, I found out that everything I want in my car, I already have in my Mini. And everything I wanted in the car buying experience, I got when I bought my Mini from Moritz.

AND I realized those things ... realized them actively ... ONLY because I went out looking.

So, ladies and gentlemen, don't get so worried if that special person in your life flirts a little. Chances are, he/she will only discover anew that YOU are the one they really want after all. And now they'll know it for real, not just because they remember knowing it from when you two got together in the first place.

On being a control freak

2005-08-11T21:35:00.000-05:00

I'm going to reprint today's "horoscope" from Michael Lutin's web site
-- the daily fix section. I'm not linking to that section since, by the time you read this, what I'm going to quote will probably be gone. That's also why I'm reprinting it here.

No going on about how astrology is a bunch of hooey. Of course it is. But that's not to say there's nothing to learn there. It's like flipping a coin to make a decision -- it's not an act of giving up the decision, it's a gut-check to see how you feel about the "chance" decision the coin made. So, it's not that Jupiter has any control over anybody's life, or that the placement of stars vis-a-vis the geographic and chronologic event of your birth has anything to do with your personality. It's a way to ponder symbolism and archetype and make sense of the metaphors in your existence.

Ok, here's Michael Lutin's words for today:

It's difficult to be totally realistic and practical and keep your feet on the ground, especially when you want, crave, need and hope for a big break to help you change your life, lift you up, provide you with the kick and the push and the momentum you think you need.

So naturally you're likely to imbue a person, place or thing with powers he, she, or it can't possibly have in the hopes that this is the big one. this is what you've been waiting for.

Obviously, then, when people or opportunities turn out to be fatally flawed or just plain human, or in some way don't live up to your fantasies, hopes, dreams, wishes, and expectations, it's a letdown.

On the other hand, if you go into everything thinking it's not going to work out, then sooner or later you're going to make it so.

People have to be accepted for the human beings they are and as long as you keep your own life and don't give away all your power and put all your energy into fixing somebody who can't or won't be fixed, you'll be fine.

See, the challenge for the person who has to control everything is that they are setting themselves up for failure.

Worse, when they find these "failings" (which aren't really failings... they are just the things no one can control nor should expect to control), they have to decide ... "should I stay or should I go".

If they stay, despite the "failings" ... then they are saying that they deserve and accept failure. And it's a quick ride to misery to think that.

If they leave, because of the "failings" ... the are admitting that they were beaten by those failings (and, deep in their hearts they sense the truth ... that they're leaving something valuable behind, something they didn't HAVE to leave).

The only answer is ... LET IT BE.

Things will be as they are. You have to accept them, and let yourself see the joy and beauty and truth in them. Of course, turn and run from malicious destructiveness. Be wary of misguided maliciousness (the kind that comes when people are scared and insecure).

When you're a control freak, it's because you WANT things to turn out well.

The trick is, though, they don't turn out well unless you can let things go.

Just because you "let" things go their own way, doesn't mean they'll leave you forever. In fact, WHEN you let go, you'll find they stay around, if they were worth staying with in the first place.

How old?

2005-07-29T00:51:00.000-05:00

I have my 49th birthday in a couple of days.

As happened as I was approaching 30 and 40 ... it's not those birthdays that felt like milestones to me. 30 wasn't so special, but 28 was ... at 28 I first had the thought that I was getting older, that I felt that the years were advancing.

And now, while 50 feels like a milestone, it feels like one *now* ... I even half wish I was turning 50 this year, because I feel like marking that age now.

I say I don't feel 49. In fact, in me, in my mind, there is a me: she has characteristics, and at moments, THAT me is the one that feels real, more real than the one that looks back at me in the mirror.

She's somewhere in her mid-30s. She's about 60 pounds lighter than I am in "this" one (the one I see in the mirror). She's got the knowledge I have now though. Except for one thing... she can communicate freely in Spanish.

Despite what I see in the mirror, some of that person does show. At least the age part. People regularly put me around 30. I've got a photo from last August where I swear I look 16. Another from last August where I could be in my 20s. I even get carded occasionally.

I used to joke that it was because I never got married, never had kids, and never had a mortgage.

But, in serious moments, I've been sure it was because I was still learning .. inquisitive, curious, slurping up with gusto whatever new things caught my fancy.

That may be what keeps someone "young", but ... aging has to happen eventually, right?

I've started to get ideas about what that aging means. Not the slowing of the body, the weakening of physical senses. Those haven't really happened to me (presbyopia notwithstanding) -- not even menopause, although perimenopause has been my companion for years now.

But I've just begun to notice other things. Not even changes in thinking ... what has changed seems to be dreaming.

Not night dreaming ... but rather the nature of the world I create in my mind.

There are things that I can no longer conjure up in my dreams.

Is that what aging is? When you can't create new worlds for yourself?

In another part of my life, the past few months have been kind of a training ground. The last month or two has been a training ground for yet another little segment of my life.

I feel like the next 12 months are a continuation of that. I have 12 months to decide what I REALLY want to do to mark the 50th anniversary of my birth.

Today, I really don't know what that would be. If I had to say, today: what do I REALLY want to do ... what would be enjoyable, fulfilling ... I couldn't answer, because I don't KNOW.

And each thing I tentatively consider trying on, to see if it will fit, I find myself saying "no... I could never wear THAT! I better look for something else"

12 months to see if I can start dreaming again.

Napping

2005-07-28T01:31:00.000-05:00

enjoyed one of my favorite forms of napping this evening.

stretched out on the futon around 7:30, planning to read, but my eyelids had a different plan.

fell asleep ... had nice dreams! even though I don't remember any of them.

then, something woke me up ...

looked at the clock -- 11:20!! wow. I thought. I slept late this morning!

then, my eyes were drawn to the sliding glass door leading to the balcony, still open after today's rain and cooler temperatures, and its open vertical blinds.

dark .... it was dark outside.

I love it when I wake up from a nap and can't tell if it's morning or night -- the same day or the next day.

Sábanas frías / Ángel de amor

2005-06-25T23:40:00.000-05:00

You know, I can psychoanalyze, intellectualize, philosophize, all you want. But, in the end, it still comes down to this.

I want to somebody to sing this song to me.

Sábanas frías - Maná

Cómo me duele este frío,
aquí en mi cama.
cómo yo extraño tus besos
en madrugada.

Quisiera dormir amor
sobre tus pechos.
quisiera vivir amor
atado a tus huesos.

Estas sábanas mi amor
están muy frías.
ven a darme tu calor
y arráncame el dolor.

Epale.

Yo te quiero compartir
toda mi vida.
te comparto mi cuarto mi cama
y todo mi amor.

Vente a vivir conmigo amor
que mi sábana está fría.
Vente a vivir conmigo amor
que mi cama está vacía.
Vente a vivir conmigo amor
hiriendo a mis sentimientos.
Sábanas frías sin su amor

Y te cuidará por siempre
y donde quiera,
te amaré como uno quiere
a su bandera.

Yo te quiero compartir
todo, todo mi amor.
te comparto mi cuarto mi cama
mis besos y todo, todo mi amor.

Vente a vivir conmigo amor.
vente a vivir conmigo amor.

Sábanas frías sin su amor,
que dolor, que dolor.

And I need someone to sing this to me:

Ángel de amor -- Maná

Quién te corté las alas mi ángel
quién te arrancó los sueños hoy.
quién te arrodilló para humillarte
y quién enjauló tu alma, amor.

Déjame curarte, vida
déjame darte todo mi amor.

Ángel, ángel, ángel de amor
no te abandones
no te derrumbes amor

Quién ató tus manos, ató el deseo
quién mató tu risa, mató tu Dios
quién sangró tus labios y tu credo
por qué lo permitiste, ángel de amor

Déjame curarte vida
déjame darte todo mi amor

Ángel, ángel, ángel de amor
no te abandones
no te derrumbes amor

Ángel, ángel, ángel te doy mi amor
abre tus alas
deja tus sueños volar

Ángel, somos arena y mar
no te abandones
no te derrumbes amor

Ángel, ángel, ángel te doy mi amor
abre tus alas
deja tus sueños volar

Ángel de amor
pero mi amor ya nunca te derrumbes
ángel de amor
pero mi amor ya nunca te derrumbes

Male/Female

2005-06-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

Amid my reflections and study on the topics of love, relationships, and truth vs. selfishness, wanting, having, and manipulation, I've wandered into the topic of gnosticism.

This excerpt from an essay on Valentinus struck a chord:

Valentinians believed that God is androgynous and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad. This is related to the notion that God provides the universe with both form and substance. The feminine aspect of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. Silence is God's primordial state of tranquillity and self-awareness She is also the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial. The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First Father. Depth is the profoundly incomprehensible, all-encompassing aspect of the deity. He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form.

"Pienso luego existo"
"I think therefore I am"
or, more precisely: By thinking it, it can become so

But, as I wrote earlier, it takes two for the thought to become existence

It's all fine that my Thought is there -- the feminine aspect that makes existence possible. But, where is the masculine aspect that gives form to the existence of that Thought?

Poor little girl
With her head in the air
There's a poorly sick world all around you

Poor horny boy
One thing on his mind
That poor little girl
He must find you

There's a whole lotta love
Shaking inside of me
And I must figure out why it's there

There's a bottomless heart
That's hooked into all of you
And it's wondering how much you care

Poor little girl
With a whole in her heart
There's a poorly sick world all around you

Poor horny boy
One thing on his mind
That poor little girl
He must find you

There's a whole lotta love
Shaking inside of me
And I must figure out why it's there

There's a bottomless heart
Hooked into all of you
And it's wondering how much you care

Poor little boy
Head in a whirl
There's a phony slick world all around you

That poor little girl
With her head in the air
That poor little boy he must find you

There's a whole lotta love
Shaking inside of me
And I must figure out why it's there

There's a bottomless heart
Hooked into all of you
And it's wondering how much you care

There's a need and desire I have
To express what's inside of me
I must figure it out while it's still there

And an endless amount of
Of a joy that you touch me with
Thought it's almost too much for me to bear

Poor litte girl

Convince me

2005-06-25T00:38:00.000-05:00

This is "But what would it take, part 2"

Because, before I can say "yes", I have to be convinced.

And I have to know what will convince me before anyone will be able to do that.

Show me and tell me -- use words, actions, whatever, the method of communication doesn't matter, the specific words and actions don't matter -- only that they are true

that you want to be here. not because I might say yes. not because there's an opportunity to get into someone's pants. but because it's me you want to be with
that, at least now, you feel love for me. I don't expect promises of forever, but rather that you know, now, today, that you feel love for me
that whatever happens, we'll still be friends the next day ... even if we find we aren't supposed to be lovers, aren't supposed to be partners ... that whatever happens, it wasn't a mistake for us to feel awkward and regretful about afterwards
that I can feel free ... to tell you what I want without inhibition, without fear that you'll criticize, and to ask you to tell me what you want

Convince me of those things, and I can say yes to someone I love. Convince me that those are not true, and I will say no. But until I'm convinced, I can give no answer

Yes, No, No Answer

2005-06-24T23:14:00.000-05:00

One of the rules for negotiation between men and women has to do with navigating that "first" encounter ... in the matter of sex:

When a woman says "no", she means "yes"
And when a woman says "yes", she means "right now"

I was a little dismayed to hear that, since I never learned how to play those games, and, to be honest, I don't like playing games in relationships.

I was also puzzled ... if a woman says "no" in order to mean "yes", what about when she really means "no"? What does she say then?

The answer I got was: well, she probably won't answer.

I'm not sure that rule is very widespread in the US any more, though in my youth I think it was more so.

In any case, I can see how I could be misunderstood. Because for me:

yes = yes
no = no
and "no answer" = "convince me"

Arrive without traveling

2005-06-23T23:51:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting experience this afternoon.

About 4:30, a feeling came over me -- soothing, calming, warm and enveloping ... I felt it all around me and through me, like someone was visiting me from across the miles.

Later in the early evening, I was driving home and stopped by the Wendy's that's on my way to bring home something for dinner. It was all as usual ... Latinos at the windows, which is nice because so often I find that the Latinos I see in stores will smile and chat in a genuine way and accept my friendliness, whereas Anglos seem like they are barely there.

At the window where you pick up your food, the guy smiled and was nice, but there was a moment at the beginning of the interaction. Sort of a pause, where he looked at me and spoke. I didn't specifically hear his words, but rather I heard words in my head "Hi! You're doing ok?" ... during a moment where time was sort of suspended.

Then the moment passed, and we chatted about my car (a Mini Cooper) and then I drove away as usual.

But, not entirely as usual, because I was filled with this strange experience ... you know how truth can feel? how it's not something expressable in words, but where, deep inside, you know there is some truth?

In that feeling, someone had reached across the miles ... sending their spirit, using that chance interaction at Wendy's as a way to check in, see if I was ok, and let me know that person had thought about me.

But what would it take?

2005-06-23T22:27:00.000-05:00

Isn't it a pity
Now, isn't it a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity

Forgetting to give back ... but, even if they do give back, can we recognize what's being given?

What would it take for me to believe that I was being offered love?

There was a time when I thought it was holding hands, kissing, being willing to tell people "this is my girlfriend". But that wasn't really it. Bryan liked to hold hands, but there wasn't love there. And Jorge wasn't good at those kind of outward trappings of affection, yet, I know he felt something. Besides, I was thinking of those outward trappings in an adolescent way.

There was a time when I thought it was sex, which I suppose isn't really a surprise -- lots of girls make that mistake. I mean, when people love each other they make love, right? So, if a guy would have sex with me, then he loved me, right? Or, if not at first, if I got him to have sex with me, then he would love me afterwards, right?

ha. As we know ... WRONG and WRONG.

Flowers? Could be... I got those once and I was impressed, but nothing came of the relationship.

The words .... "I love you" ... the holy grail! You know, none of the boyfriends, not even the two partners, ever said those words to me. Even more, I've found that when it's someone you're not interested in, and who knows you're not interested, yet he keeps saying "te amo, te amo, te amo", a tiredness seeps into your being. How strange to find that the holy grail can be empty.

Yet, when a friend says "te quiero mucho amiga, cu�date" it feels like that holy grail, even though it's filled with something else.

I haven't seen the movie, but I've been told that the one valuable thing in Superman 2 was the advice: if you want a girl to fall in love with you, try poetry.

Could be ... But my response was: how do you tell if it's poetry that you should fall in love to? And not just poetry that the guy is sharing with you? His answer: "Pienso luego existo" ... think it and it will be.

Could be ... in fact, I do believe that our thoughts bring things into being

Yet ... it takes two people to be thinking the same thing into being ... doesn't it?

When I was with Jorge, I didn't think he really loved me. Toward the end, during the last few years of our relationship, I accepted that he had become accustomed to me, and even believed him during that summer in La Paz in 1987 when he remarked on how close and comfortable we were together, that he felt like we were already married.

But, living in Bolivia would have been too hard for me -- the politics, the ramifications for him of being with a white woman from the US (and it wasn't theory -- he'd seen what happened with his brother and his wife from the US). I came back to the States, and the next spring I told him I couldn't do it anymore. We had been apart since August 1985 by then, seeing each other when I would visit him, spending the summers of 1986 and 1987 with him, writing letters (no email, no MSN, in those days). But I'd lost hope ... I couldn't go month to month anymore, waiting to phone, writing letters, waiting for letters.

We still stayed in touch. I received letters until 1992. He contacted me in 1994 when his daughter was born, and again in 1997 when his son was born.

I kept all of the letters, in a box, which I didn't review although I looked in the box from time to time.

Two years ago I decided it was time, and I got the box out and collected all of the letters. Arranged them in order from oldest to newest. And started reading.

By the time I got to the letters he wrote after he returned to Bolivia in August 1986 through to the end, I knew, for the first time, how much he had loved me.

But I hadn't seen it then!

It's true, he never said it. He never really did anything that I can remember to demonstrate how he felt.

Or... maybe it was me, me who was unable to see it ...

And now, trying to say what it would take for me to believe ... I find I don't know what it is ... something to do with actions (but, not the vacuuous actions I've experienced before), something to do with words (but, not words empty of meaning)

I hope it's only true that I can't define it because there is no one who is trying to convince me that he loves me.

(or, is there, and I just can't see that it's happening?)

Las Trampas del Amor

2005-06-22T23:56:00.000-05:00

La trampa del amor by Los Kjarkas

Gonzalo Hermosa
(huayño)

Siempre he buscado en la vida
un amor muy diferente
que comience en cualquier día
y se acabe con la muerte

El amor es una trampa
como la flor de retama
no para con sus promesas
hasta llevarte a su cama

No des vueltas al asunto
escucha mejor amigo
es mejor andar soltero
que casado y sin dinero

El amor había juntado
al lobo con las ovejas
se comío a las jovencitas
despreciando a las mas viejas

El amor que había buscado
quien diría que mi suerte
me ha dejado mal parado
solo triste y desolado

But I'm going to talk about tricks of love of a different sort.

They say when you love someone, you'll give them anything. But that is not always true.

Sometimes, giving is a trick, a device by which you strive to ensure that love will be given to you for you to take. I know, because I used to do that.

When Bryan and I were breaking up, I was ... shocked, dismayed when I learned that he'd said that he believed I'd never loved him, that I wasn't capable of loving him. How could he say that, I thought! After all I'd done! All I'd put up with! His moods, all my walking on eggshells in an attempt to avoid saying something wrong (I couldn't even offer to help with carrying a large heavy object, or it would be taken as an accusation of his inadequacy). All the ways I'd submerged aspects of my personality in an attempt to be who he wanted. Ignoring the gun that I'd seen under the passenger seat of his car. Bailing him out of jail, for christ's sake.

After he left, I cried for 2 months. But even in my tears, I realized that I wasn't crying for the loss of Bryan... I was crying for the loss of the possibility of receiving love.

And I can see now that he was right. I did not love him. Even, maybe at that time, I was not capable of loving him. Maybe not anyone.

I can see now that my goal then was not to love someone, but to have someone give me love.

As a result, I couldn't see that my own giving was not appropriate ... love is not a barter system by which you can exact a pound of affection in return for a pound of loyalty.

But also, in that time, I was unable to see that in the name of that pound of loyalty, I was also sacrificing whole masses of myself. Not until it was all over, did I realize that I no longer could answer the questions: Who am I? What pleases *me*? What do I want? What will fulfil my destiny? What *is* my destiny?

Then I met my friend David, and as our friendship grew, I found myself sharing and giving, and after a while, I realized that I was not doing those things with thoughts of "what's in this for me?" In fact, as events in his life progressed, I found that the advice and support I gave could easily be to my "detriment" ... that is, if my thought was "what's in this for me?" then I could not have given it.

What does one do in that situation? Casting it in terms of "what's in this for me", oddly (for me, given my history), never rose to my mind. The only question was, what is the right thing to do? What can help a good person through difficult times? What can help a good person find his own happiness?

All this even went to its logical conclusion, and, sort of to my surprise, I realized that I could do the right thing ... I could do what it took to show my honor and respect and love for this person. Sure, it hurt, a LOT, but the hurt was different this time.

And, as it turned out, the friendship did not have to be sacrificed.

Nevertheless, I found out that I could have done it. If necessary.

I won't pretend that I'm not much happier that it did not have to be sacrificed. But I could have.

But, more than this, I have realized, again, as I have known in other situations, things are not always what they seem. Someone can give ... even give a lot ... but it is not always giving out of love.

Given with no thought of getting something back. That's the trick of (false) love: tricking someone into loving you by giving them something... by tricking them into a position where they give you what you want.

The other kind of trick is being able to tell the difference between being given real love and being tricked into a position of giving someone what they want.

I'm not sure yet if I'd be able to tell the difference. But I'm pretty sure it comes down to honesty.

This is Love

2005-06-21T00:58:00.000-05:00

Little things that will change you forever
May appear from way out of the blue
Making fools of ev'rybody who don't understand

There is one thing I've been searching for, and that is love. I know where this desire comes from, that I have. Sure, we are social beings. We need to feel human touch, we need to know that there is someone beside us. And those are certainly part of why I have searched. Yet the real reason is that, ever since just before my 7th birthday, I have been searching for the love that I lost when my father died.

My poor Mom ... I know she loved me, and would still if such coherent thoughts were still within her capabilities. But there was nothing in all of her life to teach her how to show love. It was my Dad who showered me with attention, who taught me how to spell my complete name and address in case I got lost, who taught me how to spell Mississippi (we lived 2 blocks from the Mississippi River).

My Mom would sing to me when I was falling asleep ("By baby bunting, daddy's gone a-hunting, to get a little rabbit skin to wrap the baby bunting in" -- I remember her singing that when my dad had taken our dog to go pheasant hunting, and I imagined that it was *my* dad who had gone hunting only to bring me back a treasure).

And it was because of my Mom that I already knew how to read when I started Kindergarten just weeks after my 5th birthday, in an era when learning how to read was considered to be a 1st grade activity. ... Well, my Mom doesn't take credit for that. She read to me every day, but she has always said that it was me that made her use her finger to follow the words on the page, which she attributes to my learning to read faster.

But, it was my Dad who showed me affection. That joyous, spontaneous affection that just is there, so that you hardly notice it -- it's just in the air, enveloping you like a soft warm blanket.

I remember it as being January of 1963 ... I don't really know the date, but I remember it as being dark, cold, winter, but after Christmas. I even seem to remember bits of the occasion: standing in the hallway, looking toward the kitchen, my Mom standing in the kitchen, my Dad sitting at the table.

"Chronic leukemia" they called it. I don't remember any of what they told me other than that. I was 6 1/2 years old ... of course I had no idea what chronic leukemia was, but I knew from that moment it was bad.

Over the next 6 months, I engaged in my first exercise of waiting for someone I loved to leave me ... waiting for a man, who I depended on to give me love, to leave me.

I was a smart girl. I learned how to do that too well.

I grew up. The boyfriends were few and far between, although I almost always had a crush on somebody. The boyfriends I did have always seemed just out of my reach, never interested in commitment. Even the significant relationships, the long term ones (if 7 years and 6 1/2 years are called long term), had that distance. Even the significant one that I still treasure, who I believe did love me in some way -- he never said "I love you Sarah. I want you to be with me. Please don't go."

Then, August of 2004 happened. It felt like an important time, and, in fact, I'd felt rumblings of the importance during the few months previous to August, but I didn't know why. A clue came when I took a trip home and visited my father's grave. I'd been there a couple of times before over the past couple of decades, but not like this -- I re-experienced with full sensory memory the time of my father's death. And as I was crying, I realized that, for the first time in 41 years, I was actually, finally, starting to truly release the grief ... the grief which, as a child, no one taught me to release ... and so, grief that I'd carried, packed safely away in a little box all those years.

Part of why I traveled to Clinton from Maquoketa on that trip was to take photos to share with the new friend I'd met. It wasn't *because* of him that I had that experience, which would open the door for the lessons I would learn over the next months, but he has undeniably played a part.

... little things that will change you forever ...

See, because my father died and left me, I've been looking for love ever since ... to replace that love I lost from my father. Then the replacing of that love got confused with the love people are supposed to have in the context of a couple, which gets confused with sex, and it all gets confounded by the fact that men and women are supposed to get married.

And ... growing up with my mother, who had no one to ever teach her about love. With a grandmother who was responsible for my mother's sad state. Without other relatives. Without somebody to sit me down and help me think clearly about what I was doing and what the results could be ...

I didn't understand that *having* someone is not the same as love. I wasn't able to see the little signs that would indicate that someone did love me.

I never even thought to tell myself "you deserve a man who loves you".... I'd just take whoever showed interest, and if I liked him ok, I'd hope and "try" to make it work.

But in that lack of self-confidence, I would get jealous. I was also imaginative, and so I'd think of all the terrible things that could happen ... think about them and worry, until finally they came true.

And then, when things did happen, it would be me who would beg to be taken back ... I never thought I could demand that he "do right" by me ... as though, it were not my right to ask such a thing.

I spent my time in those relationships waiting for them to leave ... I learned too well in 1963, that if you love a man so much, that he will leave you. I waited and expected, until finally it came true (be careful what you wish for).

And so, these other men left me too.

Those are the mistakes of thoughts and actions.

But, underneath all of that, the real problem was that I had no idea what love really is.

All I had learned was how to take love, and how to feel pain when the love is no longer there for you to take.

From David I have learned that that is not love -- it's selfishness. I've learned what real love is. He didn't try to teach me that. But it was from our friendship that I learned it.

I don't even really know quite why it was him ... well, yes I do. I like people, but, to be honest, most people are kind of boring. The reason I don't have a lot of friends -- real, close, friends -- is that I sense so keenly the distance between me and most people. Different interests, different priorities, such different ways of seeing things it's like we aren't even living in the same worlds.

But David ... sheesh ... were we separated at birth? Once before I felt that kind of kinship with another person, and that was with Jorge. Maybe we all lived previous lives together ... who knows ... (if you go in for that kind of fun speculative thinking)

But, not only was there that feeling of kinship, there were the similarities between the two of them ... interests, sense of humor, taste in music, intelligence, way of seeing the world ... as though the same spirit runs through the two of them.

And that spirit emerges into the physical world ... shook me up, a couple of photos that so much could have been Jorge ... looked like him, and even more, there was a style, an attitude that the two shared ... culminating in one evening in a shop, looking across the distance in the store and seeing David trying on a baseball cap ... the similarity was so striking it brought tears to my eyes.

Let me be clear ... Jorge might have been the love of my life (or the love of my life, so far), while David is my friend. But it's from David's friendship that I've learned what love really is.

I learned about trust, where you realize that you will be accepted and not criticized.
And then I learned about honesty. It's easy to be honest when you can trust that you'll be accepted and not criticized.
And then I learned more about honesty ... it's not just telling the truth to someone, it's also actions. Was there something that I would be ashamed to admit doing, because I knew it was not the best action? And if I did it anyway, would I want to lie about doing it? If so, then I should not do it.
I learned about acceptance. That to try to change someone shows that you do not love them. A person consists of all the pieces of themselves, their life, and their experiences, past and present. You have to accept all those little pieces, because the totality of them is the person you say you love.
I learned that acceptance also means sometimes you have to let people go. And you always have to be ready to let them go. If you accept all the pieces of their past and present, you have to be willing to let them go out and collect more pieces .. even if it's without you.
I don't know how I learned it, but I realized that love is not something you can ask for. If it's there, it's in the air ... for you to breathe in and enjoy and be nourished. If it's not there, it can be tempting to ask for it, but what you get is not love, but some imitation. You might imagine for a moment that it's sweet and satisfying, but the aftertaste is bitter.
And most importantly, I learned that people don't always go away. It took me two times to learn that (August and April), or maybe the first one was just a little preview for the one that I would be able to learn from.

The lessons aren't over. I still have to learn to be happy in my solitude. I have to stop thinking that it's ironic that, now that I think that I really know what I need to know to share in a real relationship with a man who loves me, it is possible that now there will never be anyone.

I have to learn to neither hope nor expect that person, but also to continue to believe that he might appear.

... to appear from way out of the blue.

Three Things

2005-06-09T23:35:00.000-05:00

Got this from here, which came from here, which came from ... well, you can trace it back.

3 names I go by: Sarah, Sarita, and Sue (but only by people who've forgotten my name)
3 screen names I've had: sajones, [one I won't disclose], and [another I won't disclose]
3 physical things I like about myself: my hair, my eyes, my risa explosiva
3 parts of my heritage: Welsh, English, German
3 things I am wearing right now: tshirt, sweatpants, my birthday suit
3 favorite bands/musical artists: The Beatles, George Harrison, Los Kjarkas
3 favorite songs: Poor Little Girl, If I Fell, Tiempo al Tiempo
3 things I want in a relationship: trust/honesty/love (that's one, because they are intertwined), synchronicity, well-placed irreverence
3 physical things about the preferred sex that appeal to me: the side of the neck (between Adam's apple and below the earlobe), eyes, the way his lips move while he speaks
3 favorite hobbies: listening to music, watching movies, surfing for cool gadgets
3 Things I want to do badly right now: cuddle with someone, cuddle with someone, cuddle with someone
3 things that scare me: treatment for breast cancer, being a failure at something, being subjected to violence
3 of my everyday essentials: my Treo, my computer, a cup of coffee
3 Careers you have considered or are considering: a social worker (thank God I didn't become one), a linguistics professor (thank God I didn't become one), a librarian web developer (thank God I was able to become one)
3 places you want to go on vacation: San Francisco, Cuidad de México, anywhere with good company
3 kids' names you like: David, Michael, Megan
3 things you want to do before you die: live outside the US, be able to communicate in Spanish, have one more partner - this time, a good relationship, with someone I love and who loves me
3 ways I am stereotypically a boy: [don't know]
3 ways I am stereotypically a girl: [don't know]
3 celeb crushes: [taking the fifth]

Gadget envy

2005-05-21T13:15:00.000-05:00

Found out about the PalmOne LifeDrive the other day. Very nice! However, WiFi hotspots are still sparse enough that I'd miss connecting using my cell plan on my Treo.

And, to be honest, even though I don't use voice all that much, I really can't see having 2 devices when 1 smart phone should do.

Interestingly, the LifeDrive uses PalmOS 5.4 (Garnet) rather than PalmOS 6.1 (Cobalt)

I've been thinking lately about the Treo series. It's been a little while now that Treo 650 has been out, though the GSM version is more recent.

What I'd really like is a Treo with gigs of storage and Wifi ... alternatively, a LifeDrive with telephony

Oh ... and a high-speed internet connection that follows me around wherever I go. =D

Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?

2005-05-16T22:31:00.000-05:00

... all we needed to know, we learned from pop music??

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind by The Lovin' Spoonful (1966)

Did you ever have to make up your mind
Pick up on one and leave the other behind
It's not often easy and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind

Did you ever have to finally decide
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide

Sometimes there's one with big blue eyes, cute as a bunny
With hair down to here, and plenty of money
And just when you think she's that one in the world
You heart gets stolen by some mousey little girl

And then you know you'd better make up your mind...
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide

Sometimes you really dig a girl the moment you kiss her
And then you get distracted by her older sister
When in walks her father and takes you a line
And says, "You better go home, son, and make up your mind"

And then you bet you'd better finally decide...
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide

Como un ave de cristal

2005-04-29T18:11:00.000-05:00

Another great song by Los Kjarkas:

Ave de Cristal

No se acaba el mundo cuando un amor se va
no se acaba el mundo y no se derrumbará

Si fue verdadero tras sus huellas volverá
si no fue sincero otro lo reemplazará

No hay lluvia en el alma que no acabe con un sol
ni se limpia el cielo cuando deja de llover

Y es el corazón como un ave de cristal
que es tan frágil de romper
tan difícil de entender

Y es el corazón como el destino tan cruel
tan difícil de torcer
y tan fácil de perder

Es el amor ... es el amor

And, you know, it's true. The world doesn't end. People do come back or you move on, even though, in the midst of it, it's impossible to believe.

Blow away blow away blow away

2005-04-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

From George Harrison of course...

Sky cleared up, day turned to bright
Closing both eyes now the head filled with light
Hard to remember what a state I was in
Instant amnesia
Yang to the Yin

Amazing how, in an instant, suddenly the world is right, as though it had never been out of balance, and how the cares that had burdened you are barely a memory.

"Destinatario incierto" por Isabelina

2005-04-10T14:49:00.000-05:00

"las palabras se acaban, nos basamos en solo miradas,
suceptibles a señales casi nulas, como estática entre nuestras manos.
se funden a causa del silencio entre nosotros."

Read the rest...

And in the end ...

2005-04-10T14:26:00.000-05:00

"And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make" they say.

This was said to me, I believe, to be a comfort, and maybe it's true that, for all the love I felt, just as much was felt in return.

But, that only increases my sense of loss -- as though it were wished of me, and came true: "Ojalá que te mueras que todo tu mundo se quede vacio" -- even though, I know that it is "for myself that I cry".

Love and Support

2005-04-03T11:50:00.000-05:00

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

--Mark Twain

Trust no one?

2005-04-01T09:10:00.000-06:00

I have made mistakes in the past, but I thought I had learned ... learned a lot.

I wanted another chance ... just one more chance to prove that this time, I could avoid those mistakes. Just one more chance to show that I really did learn those things. How to trust. How to be honest.

Well, I learned. I passed the test. I didn't make any mistakes. But it didn't matter -- I lost anyway.

Does it have to be?

2005-02-19T17:13:00.000-06:00

You know, it used to be like that. It used to be the only way, it seemed, that things could turn out. Maybe it still is, but I don't believe it anymore. Now, I believe it's like that only when you forget to be friends first, last, and in spite of everything.

It's only love when it's about the other person. If it's about you, you are not feeling love.

==============================

Carly Simon: "That's The Way I Always Heard It Should Be"

My father sits at night with no lights on
His cigarette glows in the dark.
The living room is still;
I walk by, no remark.
I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines.
I hear her call sweet dreams,
But I forgot how to dream.

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

My friends from college they're all married now;
They have their houses and their lawns.
They have their silent noons,
Tearful nights, angry dawns.
Their children hate them for the things they're not;
They hate themselves for what they are-
And yet they drink, they laugh,
Close the wound, hide the scar.

But you say it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we'll marry.

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe - all I know is what I see -
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love's debris.
You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds,
But soon you'll cage me on your shelf -
I'll never learn to be just me first
By myself.

Well O.K., it's time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me -
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be,
You want to marry me, we'll marry,
We'll marry.

Take a ch-ch-ch-chance

2005-02-06T09:31:00.000-06:00

Little child, little child
Little child won't you dance with me
I'm so sad and lonely
Baby take a chance with me

Sometimes, you DO get another chance

Ding Dong Ding Dong

2004-12-31T20:07:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! .... ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

... Now, I didn't make this ... These fireworks are courtesy of Anton
and downloadable from FlashKit

That Thing

2004-12-19T11:44:00.000-06:00

Down at the bottom of Smitten's post:

Being single doesn't bother you so much, but on nights like this you miss That Thing. The guy who would say, 'To hell with your job, you're too good for that stuff.' And, 'Hey, asshole, leave my girlfriend alone.' And, 'Go to bed. I'll get you a glass of water.' Yeah, that stuff. Miss that.

Yeah, that says it all.

"Unbreakable" or, What is a hero? And what is evil?

2004-12-01T13:57:00.000-06:00

I watched "Unbreakable" recently. Very interesting movie.

David (the Bruce Willis character) is approaching a turning point in his life, although he might not be aware of anything other than his vague discontent. His marriage hasn't been good for a while and he's trying to find a job that will entail his moving out of the house. He may be fine in his current job, but we get the sense that there is something lacking there.

Or, maybe it's just that we sense that, for him, something more general is lacking in his life... and as a result, he has distanced himself from his wife, and has contemplated change that will take him away. Which would also take him away from his son, who seems to be suffering in the coldness of the household. He has night fears which takes him to his father's or his mother's (separate) rooms. At a crucial point, when David desperately needs to get his son's attention, it is the threat of David leaving the family to move to New York that finally causes the son to break.

The movie is an exploration of superheros in comic books, and it's generally considered to be a movie to watch on different levels. But the exploration is generally seen as an exploration of the archetype of hero, the definition of superhero that comics offer.

I think there is a more human level to it than this.

I would say, David is not a superhero in the comic book sense. We might even say he is not a superhero at all, and not even a hero in the archetypal sense.

Rather, he is just a person... just a good person. If he does heroic things, those are only the things that any good person would do, given an opportunity and the resources needed to succeed.

It is those around him who make him a "hero"... that is, who define him as "hero" for themselves, who define him as "hero" because of their own needs. That he steps up to this need and performs in a heroic fashion is David doing what he is able to do on behalf of those people.

Elijah (the Samuel L. Jackson character) needs a superhero to give sense and meaning to his life. His machinations eventually allow him to turn David into the superhero Elijah needs.

Joseph (David's son) needs his dad to be a hero. The movie doesn't allow us to see a slose relationship between him and his mother. It's between the lines that we can see that, for him, the house is an empty place. His dad might be slipping away. He's growing up but still has a boy inside him too. He needs a hero, for himself. He needs to be able to see his dad as a hero, and not as a sad man who has grown distant and may soon be physically distant as well.

Does the fact that Elijah created the hero that David became make David less a hero? Is it any less true that he's a hero if it's his son that is the one that believes it?

We see Elijah as the villian, and in the comic book sense he is. In the human sense he is too -- he acts selfishly, his selfish acts cause harm to others.

But Elijah, in his own twisted way, was acting out of his needs. David responded ... acted the hero Elijah wanted him to be, and then removed Elijah from a position where his need would continue to harm others.

===========

I started out writing this thinking I would write about heros. How we all can be heros, how our acts of goodness and love can make each of us heros in the eyes of someone.

But I'm not sure that's what I'm writing about anymore.

It's the illusions I don't understand. Elijah's and Joseph's illusions that David was a hero. He WASN'T what they thought. He was skilled, he was lucky, but he was just a guy.

When is it that the illusion can become real? When you walk away from fatal accidents?

But David DID do heroic things, and by acting heroically, was a hero for two people.

If Joseph had shot the gun, proving that someting COULD hurt David, that David had some vulnerability, would all illusions have been shattered? Would that negate the heroic acts that David did and was capable of?

I need to know this, because my own illusions are so easily shattered.

Mictlancihuatl

2004-11-20T13:33:00.000-06:00

She is the wife of Mictlantecuhtli, and together they preside over the Land of the Dead, Mictlan, in Aztec mythology.

Interestingly, not much seems to be written about either of them, and even less about Mictlancihuatl. On the other hand, maybe it's not so surprising. Thanks to our Christian background, our culture has particular ideas about what death and a "Land of the Dead" might be all about. A God and Goddess of Death, from the point of view of our culture, would have to be demons, or even the devil -- in any case, not something good.

This association, combined with "All Saints Day" / "Halloween" / "Día de los muertos", leads people to believe that Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl would have to be figures to fear. Take, for example, this guy, who would assume that Mictlancihuatl would cause him harm -- I suppose to lure him into her realm of Mictlan.

To me, all this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both death and goddess-ness.

Death is just another passage in the cycle of life. Just because it is painful for those who have not yet died doesn't mean it has to be painful for the one who is experiencing that passage and who is going to or who has reached that other state -- the state of being that is post-physical life.

Besides, if it is painful for those who have not yet died, that is because they are being selfish -- they are thinking of their own loss -- the loss of love, the loss of material resources the person would have brought to them, the loss of shared experiences with the one who has died.

If the iconography of death is "gruesome", that is because we, firmly stuck in our physical existence, feel repulsed by what happens to the physical body when it dies -- when the spirit of life no longer inhabits that physical form.

Consider also "goddess-ness".

Goddesses are representations of the feminine, the female. We are accustomed to representations of some aspects of the feminine: life-giving, nurturing, caring, comforting (the "mother"); sweet, beautiful, innocent (the "virgin"); wise (the "crone"). The fact that western imagery of the crone involves an ugly, old woman hints to us that there is something else going on that has been hidden.

What has been hidden, or perhaps what had been combined by Christianity with the concept of the wise woman, is the role of the feminine in aspects of life AFTER life has ended.

And that role is the one of Mictlancihuatl.

Imagine:

a wise woman who nurtures you into your new existence post-physical life, instead of an ugly woman who lures you to your death
a woman who cries on your behalf to ease your shock of moving out of your comfortable physical existence
a woman who lovingly watches over you as you continue your existence in your new "life"

In other words: take the aspects and characteristics of the feminine, and apply them to the stage of life that comes after a person's body has died.

To me, that is the nature of Mictlancihuatl.

==============

Also, consider again the image of Mictlancihuatl above...

On first look, it might appear that she is devouring the person we can see in her mouth. But, there is another way to view this.

Notice his leg, outside her mouth. Consider: he is not being devoured... he is emerging from her mouth. Consider: she is not devouring him, she is giving birth to him.

In this view, she is assisting his emergence into his new life. That he is emerging from her mouth and not her womb is emblematic of his emergence not into his physical life (which results from emerging from her womb) but into his post-physical life (which results from his emerging from her "other end", so to speak).

Primer Acto

2004-11-06T15:35:00.000-06:00

Escuchado muchas cosas, desde que nací
Personas que preguntan de que lado yo crecí
Aquellos que me dicen que el color de mi bandera
no está en el corazón sino adentro de la cartera

Escuchado a mis hermanos criticar mi condición,
porque hablo dos idiomas, más ingles que el español
porque piensan que no siento el dolor de mi nación,
porque piensen que a este lado no nos brilla igual el sol

Escuchado mil personas que me dicen que jamás
tendré corazón hispano porque soy de por acá
Porque tuve que venirme hace mucho tiempo ya,
a buscar en estas tierras un poco de libertad

Escuchado tantas cosas que prefiero ya ignorar,
porque patria no es un sitio es tu forma de luchar
Y aunque sigan criticando, no les voy a contestar
porque la mejor palabra es la que puedes callar.....

shhhhhhhhh

Shhh! - A.B. Quintanilla y Los Kumbia Kings

Best dream / worst nightmare

2004-10-30T17:54:00.000-05:00

Someone's husband died recently. He was 56. They'd been married for 7 years ... he was the love of her life, having finally found each other after all those years ... finally enjoying life, a life together, with plans for both the times just coming up and for growing old together.

He fell asleep on the couch. She noticed he didn't come to bed, but didn't check, never dreaming that anything was wrong.

She woke up the next morning and found him. They say he had a heart attack. She says his eyes were black.

How horrible.

And how egotistical of me to think of this, but, you know, it could be me. If I found someone today, in 7 years it could be me.

My ultimate dream becoming my worst nightmare.

How .... ?

2004-10-23T22:06:00.000-05:00

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

I can think of younger days when living for my life
Was everything a man could want to do.
I could never see tomorrow, but I was never told about the sorrow.

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend a this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.

I can still feel the breeze that rustles through the trees
And misty memories of days gone by
We could never see tomorrow, noone said a word about the sorrow.

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.

There's a place

2004-10-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

Phil Collins, Both Sides, 1993

There's a Place for Us

'...There's a place for us, somewhere a time and a place.'

So here we are together
just you and me
sitting side by side
don't know why
with time just racing by
but I don't want to go

Well I don't know much about it
'cos all I am is what you see
in front of you
there's no more
feels so close and yet so far
but I don't want to go

Here I am, take my hand
here I am, please take my hand

I'd like to sit here with you if that's alright
if you don't mind I could sit and stare all night
sit here waiting for you to hold me tight

It's sad but I know it's true
you see I know you well
you'd only laugh at me
and that would hurt me so
just look at me here
you've got me pleading with you
but i don't want to go

'Cos you know that I love you so
yes you know that I love you so

Here. I will be here love
for you love, I will always be here love

If you look real close
you'll see my heart is on my sleeve
and it'll be here waiting
waiting for you, waiting for me
someone once said that if you truly, truly believe
you can make things happen
make things appear to be all that they seem
tell me do you believe?

We'll find a hideaway
together we'll find a way
somewhere, somehow, we'll find some way
there must be somewhere
there must be someplace
we can find somewhere
where they don't know my face
believe me we can find it
yes we can find it
somewhere, there's a place for us
somewhere, a time and a place for us
somewhere

But other times

2004-10-06T18:09:00.000-05:00

But then you find out that what you want and what you need are stuck off in some alternative universe... close enough so you feel their existence, but not close enough to touch, not close enough to be part of your real world.

Sometimes

2004-10-03T01:17:00.000-05:00

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you might find
You get what you need

Song of the day

2004-09-28T01:02:00.000-05:00

Me duelen tus palabras
con que matas mis ilusiones
donde mueren ilusiones
miles de sueños, miles se mueren

le daremos tiempo al tiempo
él nos dirá que sucede
a ver si esto se muere
aunque no quiera la vida
si he de vivir sin tu amor

Yo tenía para darte
alegrias que entregarte
mil caricias para darte
y mis manos pa' cuidarte
yo tenía para darte

Head in a whirl

2004-08-23T19:27:00.000-05:00

I've just finished a 3-week vacation from work. Maybe it was one of the best vacations I've had.

People asked what I did, and it's hard to answer. Just listing activities makes it sound like I didn't do much -- stayed home, chatted on MSN, went to a concert, visited my Mom, spent a weekend in Chicago for Beatlefest, took some photographs. But hidden inside each of those things I've found pieces of truth ... the kind that defies expression in words, but that fills your heart in inexplicable ways.

A friend unwittingly, unintentionally, and surely unknowingly was the catalyst for this. I hope I have the opportunity to get to know you better.

It's Too Late

2004-08-10T21:17:00.000-05:00

This song popped into my head tonight. So, here's to everyone out there who's at a turning point, ready to break away, ready for a new step...

It's Too Late
Carole King

Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time
There's something wrong here there can be no denying
One of us is changing or maybe we've just stopped trying

And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

It used to be so easy living here with you
You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool

And it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it

There'll be good times again for me and you
But we just can't stay together don't you feel it too
Still I'm glad for what we had and how I once loved you

But it's too late, baby, now it's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can't hide
And I just can't fake it

Oh, it's too late, my baby
It's too late, now darling
It's too late

Can we ever learn?

2004-08-08T21:11:00.000-05:00

On Salon.com there's a column called "Ask the Pilot". In this week's column, there's a paragraph that summarizes why I get embarrassed to be from the United States.

Excavated from the rubble of Sept. 11 could have been, and should have been, a crucial and instructive lesson beyond the expected hand-wringing over security and preparedness. Specifically, a call for American citizens to broaden their horizons and develop a smarter sense of the world's mechanisms and conflicts. Instead, we appear to be growing even more insular, myopic, and unimpressed with the fact that large numbers of people despise us for reasons a tad more complex than "they hate freedom." It's a path we follow at our own peril, and it is exactly opposite to what global tensions mandate. We can't tell the difference between an Indian, a Tibetan, and an Islamic radical. More to the point, we don't seem interested in learning what those differences are.

More on multiple universes

2004-07-31T21:28:00.000-05:00

Referring to my previous post ...

"In classical physics, [Deutch] says, there is no such thing as 'if'; the future is determined absolutely by the past."

And this is still true in a multiverse model, as long as the individual universes remain independent of one another.

Adding humans into the model: as long as the humans within an individual universe remain able to only perceive the single universe they are in, this determinism also remains true. Under the presupposition of humans experiencing only the universe they inhabit, information transfer and flow remains within the closed system of the individual universe. Things happen (information flow/transfer is initiated), other things happen as a result (information is received), and still other things happen from that (information is retransmitted). Humans have generally instantiated this in the form of "linear time" and "cause and effect".

Keep in mind that these "events" or "things happening" are also instantiations, not the "real thing" -- the events and things happening are given form by humans who perceive them and then give them names, define them, and get enough other humans to agree with the instantiation so that the social weight of the group instantiation makes the humans believe it to be real. -- Thus, for example, things that are seen in hallucinations are not "real" because they are a perception that only one human shares, while the color blue is "real" because when you point to a color and call it blue, most everyone will agree with you and even those who don't agree are disagreeing on the details of the definition, not the fact that a definition of "blue" exists. The world as a flat object used to be real until enough humans shared a different perception of the Earth.

Continuing with the article I cited in my previous post: "In the multiverse, however, there are alternatives; the quantum possibilities really happen"

We can see this scientifically (scroll to the bottom to the section "Interfering with the multiverse)

You can see the shadow of other universes using little more than a light source and two metal plates. This is the famous double-slit experiment, the touchstone of quantum weirdness.

Particles from the atomic realm such as photons, electrons or atoms are fired at the first plate, which has two vertical slits in it. The particles that go through hit the second plate on the far side.

Imagine the places that are hit show up black and that the places that are not hit show up white. After the experiment has been running for a while, and many particles have passed through the slits, the plate will be covered in vertical stripes alternating black and white. That is an interference pattern.

To make it, particles that passed through one slit have to interfere with particles that passed through the other slit. The pattern simply does not form if you shut one slit.

The strange thing is that the interference pattern forms even if particles come one at a time, with long periods in between. So what is affecting these single particles?

According to the many worlds interpretation, each particle interferes with another particle going through the other slit. What other particle? "Another particle in a neighbouring universe," says David Deutsch. He believes this is a case where two universes split apart briefly, within the experiment, then come back together again. "In my opinion, the argument for the many worlds was won with the double-slit experiment. It reveals interference between neighbouring universes, the root of all quantum phenomena."

But we can also see things in everyday life that should make us stop and consider how we should understand them: as a previously unrecognized part of the individual universe we live in, or as a glimpse of a different universe. A third option might be that it's something imaginary, but that is an option that shouldn't be chosen lightly -- it's easy to use that as a catch-all category for anything that we haven't been able to understand enough to believe in -- but we need to also realize that the fact that something was imagined by someone might be enough to make it a real part of the multiverse.

And continuing from my previous post again: "'By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,' [Deutsch] says. 'When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.'"

I'm not sure I agree with this view of the interaction between universes, apart from the idea that spreading good is beneficial and the good you spread in your universe can seep into other universes when the universes brush up against one another.

My view at the moment is that awareness of the multiverse does other things for us here in our individual universe. For one thing, it's a useful explanation for those moments of deja vu and synchronicity that are otherwise inexplicable. It also can help us keep things in perspective: there really is only today to live in because everything else is just an echo of today. And whatever we think of our current universe, there are countless others that are both better and worse.

Also consider the question of mental illness or other memory or reality disorders... We should think of treatment as nothing more than methods for helping the person deal with the universe he physically shares with the rest of us, rather than an attempt to cure the person of whatever we think he has.

The concept of many universes also applies to spirituality and religion -- in what we call mystical, pagan, or shamanistic practices, the goal is to reach into the other universes while keeping a tie with the current one. The break from those, notably with the Judeo-Christian-Muslim practices, the goal is to close off the other universes and maintain control and clarity of perception within the current universe.

Spoke too soon

2004-07-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

I should have read on in the article before writing:

Deutsch found that, almost all the time, information flows only within small pieces of the quantum calculation, and not in between those pieces. These pieces, he says, are separate universes. They feel separate and autonomous because all the information we receive through our senses has come from within one universe. As Oxford philosopher Michael Lockwood put it, "We cannot look sideways, through the multiverse, any more than we can look into the future."

Sometimes universes in Deutsch's model peel apart only locally and fleetingly, and then slap back together again. This is the cause of quantum interference, which is at the root of everything from the two-slit experiment to the basic structure of atoms.

More on this

2004-07-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

On the topic of the reality of objects in a quantum universe and the role of observation in reality:

Deutsch dismisses them all. "Some are gibberish, like the Copenhagen interpretation," he says-and the rest are just variations on the many worlds theme.

For example, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the act of observing is crucial. Observation forces an atom to make up its mind, and plump for being in only one place out of all the possible places it could be. But the Copenhagen interpretation is itself open to interpretation. What constitutes an observation? For some people, this only requires a large-scale object such as a particle detector. For others it means an interaction with some kind of conscious being.

Worse still, says Deutsch, is that in this type of interpretation you have to abandon the idea of reality. Before observation, the atom doesn't have a real position. To Deutsch, the whole thing is mysticism-throwing up our hands and saying there are some things we are not allowed to ask.

Except, Deutsch is slightly off too. He should talk to the cognitive scientists who work in psychology, philosophy, and linguistics.

It's not that observation forces an atom to make up its mind and place itself in one place of all possible places. It's that humans are only capable of experiencing one universe at a time, and so when they manage to observe an atom, what they observe is the atom in the particular universe that the humans have succeeded in tuning in to. In that particular universe, the atom is precisely where it's supposed to be and in the only place it can be. (there's nowhere you can be that isn't where you were meant to be, it's easy...)

It doesn't matter if it's a particle detector or a conscious being that makes the observation, because, in the end, it's still a human that perceives that an observation has taken place. That perception, and, by extension, observation, is all about the human -- the interplay of our physically-based senses, our physically-based mental interpretations of our senses, and our experientially-based mental interpretations of our senses. Those three things are required for perception and observation to take place, and those three things, in turn, determine the outcome of the act of perception and observation -- that is, our decision regarding what it is that we perceived and observed and what that thing we perceived means.

Imaginary or multi universe?

2004-07-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

Interesting article on a variant of multiverse theory -- that we all live in a computer simulation (we all live in a Yellow Submarine...).

The newspaper article gets part of it a little screwy:

Travel a trillion light years beyond the Andromeda galaxy, and you might find yourself in a universe where gravity is a bit stronger or electrons a bit heavier.

The vast majority of these other universes will not have the necessary fine-tuned coincidences needed for life to emerge; they are sterile and so go unseen. Only in Goldilocks universes like ours where things have fallen out just right, purely by accident, will sentient beings arise to be amazed at how ingeniously bio-friendly their universe is.

It's not that you "travel a trillion light years" or that the other universes lack what is needed for life. Both of those concepts are rooted in the metaphors that are inherent in the universe we inhabit and are thus, by definition, irrelevant to the other universes.

Even the computer simulation part is just another, this time more modern, metaphor. If it works as a metaphor, it's just because the people who thought up the metaphor have been able to lift the veil, so to speak.

Although I shouldn't complain ...

2004-05-23T15:29:00.000-05:00

I came down with a cold this week. Not news? Well, for me it's the end of an illness-free streak of 4 1/2 years, so when I felt it coming on Tuesday afternoon -- a real cold, not just symptoms that approach and then pass me by -- I couldn't believe it. It hasn't been a terribly bad cold, at least not like ones I remember, but the progress of the symptoms have been interesting to observe, probably because of that long gap in experiencing them. Tuesday afternoon: tired, chilled, with looming sore throat and headache. Tuesday evening: the acute blast of symptoms. Wednesday-Friday: sore throat gone but general stuffiness, drippyness and sneezing. Thursday through Saturday: all the crap draining down my throat -- this was yuckier than I remember. Friday night-Saturday: coughing, and Saturday my voice started to go. Today, I'm no longer congested or drippy or sneezing or even coughing and I feel better, but the voice is gone. I probably should have started taking an expectorant yesterday or even Friday rather than today.

Part 2: I found out my apartment complex is lowering rent by $10 a month for renewals. This is a nice complex in a good location, or at least has been. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but having them lower the rent makes me think they're losing renewals, which makes me wonder why.

Part 3: It's 82 degrees outside and sort of humid but not very. 82 degrees is nothing -- it'll be consistently 95+ soon, and that will last until October -- but when I went out this afternoon (to get the Coricidin, see Part 1 above) it felt like the dead of summer to me.

Dream Away

2004-04-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

Not to detract from the disease of Alzheimers, but I've wondered if there isn't a different type of thing that can be going on when an elderly person grows "confused", apart from that disease.

Think of it... you spend your whole life with your mind wrapped with the reality that our culture has created for itself and our world. You live it. You compromise to it. You spend your days-into-years thinking, worrying about things, making decisions, all in conformity to, or occasionally in defiance of, the reality of the world we've decided to share -- that we've decided to share in order to maintain some unity for ourselves and so that we can agree enough in order to have some sense of satisfaction in communicating amongst ourselves.

Maybe at some point in old age, it's possible to just stop. To let other people worry about the world-as-it-is, and to just let yourself go into whatever world you want to create for yourself. No worries about what other people will think. No need to maintain some facade for the sake of the larger society. Just the freedom to think and be however and whatever you want.

Maybe a person in that stage of life seems confused to us only because we're still stuck in our world-as-it-is.

34 Hours Later

2004-03-27T09:16:00.000-06:00

By Friday morning I'd decided I might not wait until Monday. I talked to Kris and Julie and Candy at work and after talking to them, I'd decided to call Dr. Absher's office and say I'd bring him in Saturday morning.

It was Kris who helped. She fosters cats and is very sensitive. When I told her about his disinterest in bladder control, that shook her. She only gives up on cats at the last moment, but when she heard that, her immediate reaction was that he'd given up and was telling me that by not using his litter box.

At 4:00 I called and told them and Lindsey said I could bring him in anytime after 8:15 am.

I stayed up with him all night. I watched him rest. I watched his labored breathing. I saw him refuse food. I watched him walk a few feet and have to lay down to rest before continuing. I saw him ignore a dangly-string toy.

Finally this morning at 8:00 he had his last chance. He tried. He ate a bite of the a/d, the high-fat high-palatability food that he wouldn't really be able to eat because it would aggravate his pancreatitis. I saw him walk to the kitchen to drink water. I noted that he'd been drinking quite a bit all night and hadn't urinated. He had to walk the 15 feet to his water bowl in stages. He had to stop to rest along the way. When he got there, he had to lay down with his head over the bowl to drink instead of stand. Then he finished drinking and urinated in the kitchen. But watching him drink, I knew that this really was time for him to go.

He meowed a little when I put him in his carrier. Usually he's screaming. He was quiet during the ride. Usually he meows. When I put his carrier on the bench in the vet's waiting room, he was silent... usually he's screaming. It's his distinctive characteristic, and even Thursday when we were there, Mary had noticed how quiet he was.

They really got attached to him at the vet's office. I thought it was just me, and them being nice, but Lindsey told me that he was the first cat they'd be euthanizing that they'd gotten attached to. Well, she's only been there a year or so and Mary just a couple of years. But they did love him, and that was why I was so glad to have him board with them.

So it's done. I don't know the timing, but he's probably gone now. After Thursday, they must have known it was coming, and Lindsey agreed that it was better to do it now before he started feeling totally miserable. Actually, with not eating, he'd be just starving himself anyway. Hard to believe it's been almost 10 years since Comet left. Probably the white-kitty is gone too. Now Popeye's kitty spirit will rejoin all the other kitty spirits.

Popeye the Cat

2004-03-25T23:03:00.000-06:00

I don't know how old he is, really. A vet in 1995 thought he was about 8. In January 1997, when we visited our current vet for the first time, he put Popeye's age at around 11. So, maybe he's 18.

He's a domestic short hair, black with white feet and chest, and the white on his chest comes up under his chin and curls around so he looks like he has a white mustache. A big guy too. Long, tall, 13 pounds. Bryan, with affection, used to call him the Monster.

Back in November of 1993, my ex-partner Bryan and I moved into a house we rented in Fort Worth. It was a stroke of luck really. We'd been looking for a while, and then we came on this one, a 1940s era bungalow in west Fort Worth -- Arlington Heights, though at the east edge making it almost in the Cultural District. I looked inside the windows of the empty house and all I saw was this shining. place. I knew we were going to live there -- things shine when they're right, you know.

When we moved in, there was a couple living next door who had cats who lived outdoors. There was Comet, the little yellow tabby with the long incisors, lean from being such a hunter. There was Popeye, with major attitude, who'd made himself the alpha cat, mostly because the others were happy to let him have his way because they knew he was so insecure inside. And there was the other cat, marked just like Popeye but without the mustache, whose name I can't remember.

The house we moved into had been empty for some time, and the cats had adopted our yard and front porch as their second home. We were happy to have them as surrogate guests too. For quite a while, we didn't know their names, so Comet was the sabertooth-tiger kitty (because of those incisors). Popeye was the black kitty. And his twin was the white-kitty-in-disguise. This was because, unlike Popeye, his undercoat was completely white.

The white-kitty was the sweetest, and he was Bryan's favorite. Loved being petted. Loved being affectionate with the other cats. Popeye was the most recalcitrant. Hated being petted. Ignored the other cats. But the white-kitty loved him, and Popeye appreciated that. Only the white kitty would ignore Popeye's attitude and groom him. Only from the white-kitty would Popeye tolerate such attention.

Comet was my favorite. When we moved in, he was third in the pecking order, but I cultivated him, in favor of Popeye, and he grew in status, at the expense of Popeye's.

All went well. We got acquainted with one the guys next door, the cats' owners.

Then, in the summer of 1994 disaster happened. The guys next door were planning to move to a different house a block away. In the midst of this, one morning I went outside and saw that Comet had been injured terribly in one of his eyes. It turned out that he'd been shot by a BB gun -- eventually we heard that he'd done ok, but we never saw him again, and I think they put him down.

It was about a week after the injury that the guys moved down the block, and the trauma to the other cats was absolute. They refused to stay at their new home. Popeye and the white-kitty immediately came back to our house if they were outside. And the personalities of both completely reversed.

The sweet white-kitty wouldn't let us come near him. He'd hiss and cry, and became completely antisocial. Independent, aloof Popeye craved our attention. Eventually, the guys kept the white-kitty indoors, but they decided to let Popeye come to our house as long as we didn't mind. Gradually, we kept him fed, and then, by the end of 1994, we agreed with his owner that we'd take responsibility for him.

Sometime in 1995 we turned him into an indoor cat. Another couple had moved into his old house next door, and they had a cat with whom Popeye shared a fierce territoriality. After one particularly bad fight and having to nurse the resulting abscess on Popeye's head, that was enough. He was indoors.

Well, Bryan and I broke up. He moved out. Popeye stayed with me. Where else would he go? Who else would he live with?

We moved to Arlington, and here we've been for the last 7 1/2 years.

I'm trying to remember the progression of his aging. He used to get up on the bed with me while I was reading before going to sleep. He'd put his front paws up on the front of my shoulder and start kneading. It was so nice. I called it my kitty massage. It's been a couple of years since he stopped doing that.

He used to take interest in animals outside. Dogs or cats. Birds on the balcony. It's been at least a year since he even noticed they were out there. What a difference from before. It was in May of 1997 that he bit me. And meant it. Or rather, didn't mean to bite *me*, I was just in the way. At that time, there was a cat in the neighborhood who'd climb up on my second floor balcony. This, of course, would drive Popeye crazy. One evening, the patio glass door was open, and I didn't notice the cat had climbed up on the balcony until Popeye started lunging at the screen and the two cats were about to start fighting with the screen between them. I jumped up to close the door. My hand happened to be cat-high. Popeye bit, thinking of his enemy on the balcony, but my hand was what got bit. Man, I have never experienced such pain. Not the bite itself, but the infection, which started within hours. A cat bite in anger is not the usual bites, even that draw blood. I swear cat bites in anger have a special toxicity.

Apart from that, besides paying attention to the animals outside, he'd even get territorial when other cats were around outside the apartment building -- why do I say this? Because he'd get into his litter box and spray instead of pee. He'd pee too, but it's the spraying that made me know he was feeling territorially insecure. At least it was in the vicinity of the litter box, in the bathroom, and easy to clean up!

But, it's been at least a year since he's even noticed other animals exist outside. He doesn't even notice birds on the balcony. Maybe it's been two years.

I'm trying to remember how long he's been hyperthyroidic. Maybe that's been three years. He's had times when he'd get lethargic. A year and a half ago he stopped eating once, but I'd been traveling a lot, and both I and the vet think he was just "on strike".

I just couldn't get him to eat. I tried all kinds of food. Even human food -- tuna -- which the vet said to give him as an enticement. Nothing. Until finally, in desperation, I started talking to him. I told him how frustrated I was. I told him he might be the cat, and I might only be a human, but I wasn't stupid or mean. I reminded him of how I took him in, and gave him a home. And he listened, I swear. He looked at me, looked surprised at my outburst. Then started looking ashamed. And then he got up and went to his food bowl and ate.

It was over the past weekend that I noticed the change. He's been reducing in activity gradually for years, but from about Friday he was moving even less. He started peeing over the side of his litter box. I didn't think much of it, remembering the old days, and got puppy pee pads to put under the box so I wouldn't have so much cleaning up to do. But he was also eating and drinking less. And walking slowly, as though it were uncomfortable. He'd mostly sit, rather than his usual sprawl, shifting occasionally also as though he were trying to find a comfortable position.

Then Tuesday I started noticing nothing in the litter box. By Wednesday, yesterday, after work, I confirmed that he still hadn't had a bowel movement. He was urinating, but at the doorway to the bathroom, where the litter box is, as though he got that far and said "eh, close enough..." He wouldn't actively seek his food and water. I could get him to drink and eat a little tuna if I put it right in front of him, but he'd lose interest after a few licks at the tuna and laps at the water. I also thought I noticed him breathing heavily, but I wasn't sure if it was that, or just me being hyperobservant. But Dr. Absher noticed it too, today.

So, I took him into Dr. Absher this morning. We got the bloodwork back. It's nothing specific. Maybe a little pancreatitis along with the hyperthyroidism. A little dehydrated from not drinking enough. Maybe some cardiac problems, but $1000 for an internist and tests are required to confirm that diagnosis. I'll get the thyroid results back tomorrow, but they probably won't be different.

When I got home from work in the afternoon (he'd been home alone for about 6 hours), he'd finally pooped a little, and it was well-formed, but he'd been on the glass-topped coffee table at the time, and hadn't gone to his litter box (at least the glass is easy to clean and the stool wasn't loose). And he's still peeing on the carpet -- the last time, he only got halfway to the bathroom doorway.

I'm not going to do the internist. I'll see how he is over the weekend. And then call Dr. Absher on Monday and tell him what I've decided. If he's still not happy, and especially if he hasn't rediscovered his litter box, I'm going to have to have him put to sleep.

Popeye the Cat. That's how Walgreen's knows him, how he's named on his prescription.

I think I'm ok. I'm ready for this I think. I've been afraid of having him die at home. I've been afraid of what it'd be like to make this decision. Maybe the peeing on the floor is a blessing -- makes it easier. Can't lock him in the bathroom to keep him from peeing on the carpet. Can't have him peeing on the carpet indefinitely. But it's also sad. I'll not spend some $2k a year on food, medicine, supplies, boarding, and exams. I'll have half of my bathroom cupboard, freed from litter box supplies, and space to walk where the litter box has been, which has been a third of the bathroom floor space. Half a shelf in the pantry that's had food and treats. I can travel without spending $200 on boarding. I can take off for the weekend at the last minute and not have to have arranged for boarding in advance.

I guess the house will seem empty though. I'll miss the people at the vet's office. When they told me today that, if he died at home, I could just bring his body in to them, and they'd take care of things, that was the most comforting thing I'd heard. As I told them, I was happy I could do that, and would do that in that case... because they almost feel like part of the family by now.

Even during his exam, after the preliminaries when it was clear that this was a "serious" exam, the other girl, Mary, who has liked Popeye so much, came in to watch, and she looked so sad. I'll miss those people.

But I'll still have the stories, these stories I've told tonight.

Popeye the Cat. He's had quite a life.

Quirky Alone

2004-01-09T19:13:00.000-06:00

omigod, and I always just thought I was antisocial or at least just poorly socially adjusted. quirkyalone.net

Oh, I should add

2004-01-04T15:17:00.000-06:00

Oh, I should add: that should be *ex-patriate* Iowa Democrat.

But an Iowan and an Iowa Democrat nonetheless.

Being a Democrat

2004-01-04T14:57:00.000-06:00

I love being a Democrat. Specifically, I love being an Iowa Democrat. I love that the primary season starts with the Iowa Democratic caucuses.

I'm watching the Des Moines Register debate with the Democratic presidential candidates, and it's the best run debate I've seen so far this season. A real debate, with good questions, including questions submitted by Iowa Democrats.

I'm not a Deanie, or whatever those people are called, but of these Democrats, the only one that is vaguely presidential is Howard Dean. Of course, he's not presidential in the traditional sense, but the rest of them I'd have a hard time voting for. No question, I'll vote for the Democrat, and will never vote for George W., but jeez, you've got Gebhardt, who's so 80s. Lieberman who is such a wimp. Kerry who is such a politician. Carol Moseley Braun is good, but she'll never be President. Edwards is too young. Kucinich (I think I misspelled his name) has a good heart, but his idealism, as much as I agree with his statements, needs some pragmatism.

What's interesting is that all these candidates... it's like they are there so that a complete, clear picture of the issues can be drawn. By debating and airing their positions, they are creating the Democratic platform which the final candidate will run on. And, if the candidate can integrate those positions and articulate them well, the Democrats will be giving George W. a run for his money. I'm not sure a Democrat can win, but this collection of candidates can create a platform that will finally give the Democratic party some definition again. This they will need in 2008.

And, I think the Democratic candidate will be Howard Dean.

Best line of the campaign so far: the topic was balancing the budget and it was Dean's turn. He ran through some arguments and positions and ended by agreeing with Kerry that balancing the budget won't happen right away. Then he said "but by the 6th or 7th year of my term..."

!!!

I didn't see reactions of the other candidates. the DMR moderators looked stunned then amused. The audience laughed. Dean paused, looked around, and said "What??" and gave a look like he'd been joking.

But, I don't think he was joking! I think he got caught up in the moment and came out with what he'd really been thinking, and only after backpedaled to make some comedy of it.

Honestly, I loved it. It really is refreshing to see someone playing the game and still having some truth underneath.

Catching up on reading

2003-05-30T14:57:00.000-05:00

I've been on vacation this week and catching up on my reading. In doing this, I've had the pleasure of encountering some of the worst writing I've seen in some time.

In the academic writing category, this is from "To Be Indian, to Be Bolivian: "Ethnic" and "National" Discourses of Identity" by Thomas Abercrombie, in _Nation-States and Indians in Latin America_, edited by Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991, p. 105:

"Indians" came, at least by the mid-seventeenth century, to regard themselves as civilized sons of (a solarized) Christ; their pre-Columbian ancestors as the defeated satanic race of a prehuman age; and the underworld place-deities that they continued to ritually celebrate as the sources of necessary chthonic potencies that, domesticated by Christian powers, could still sustain them (Abercrombie 1986). These anti- or pre-Christian underworld beings and powers are portrayed (by today's "Indians") in the likeness of the Spaniards' image of Indians as Others (un-Christian and without bueno policía regardless of Spanish efforts, as many colonial Spanish and contemporary urban accounts paint them). The asymmetrical power of the colonial gaze ensured the alienation of the Indian self (pushing it into the nearby and well-remembered past), but guaranteed its retention, in the shape of the transformed Indians' Other's Other.

Ok, I want to know the difference between "Indians" and Indians. One would imagine that Indians are "real" Indians while "Indians" are pseudo- or ex- Indians or Indians in name only, basically not-exactly-Indians. But that still doesn't help in understanding why he'd drop the quotation marks in some places. On the other hand, Tom's got an apparent fascination with punctuation in general -- I don't see his parenthetical phrases as particularly parenthetical -- so maybe it's got more to do with that.

Beyond that, I have to ask: did you get lost in the Others?

And in the category of academic trying to write for a popular audience, from _Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping_, by Paco Underhilll, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 12:

[added later: let me correct myself. Paco isn't an academic. So he has even fewer excuses for producing the following "paragraph" (a paragraph only by 2 criteria: it goes on for several lines, and it's set apart by indentation)]

Well, if, say, anthropology had devoted a branch to the study of modern shoppers in situ, a fancy Latin way of saying shoppers out shopping, interacting with retail environments (not only stores, but also banks and restaurants), including but not limited to every rack, shelf, counter and table display of merchandise, every sign, banner, brochure, directional aid and computerized interactive informational fixture, the entrances and exits, the windows and walls, the elevators and escalators and stairs and ramps, the cashier lines and teller lines and counter lines and restroom lines, and every inch of every aisle -- in short, every nook and cranny from the farthest reaches of the parking lot to the deepest penetration of the store itself -- that would be the start of the science of shopping. And if anthropology has already been studying all of that ... and not simply studying the store, but what, exactly human beings do in it, where they go and don't go, and by what path they go there; what they see and fail to see, or read and decline to read; and how they deal with the objects they come upon, how they shop, you might say -- the precise anatomical mechanics and behavioral psychology of how they pull a sweater from a rack to examine it, or read a box of heartburn pills or a fast-food restaurant menu, or deploy a shopping basket, or react to the sight of a line at the ATMs ... again, as I say, if anthropology had been paying attention, and not just paying attention but then collating, digesting, tabulating and cross-referencing every little bit of data, from the extremely broad (How many people enter this store on a typical Saturday morning broken down by age, sex and size of shopper group?) to the extremely narrow (Do more male supermarket shoppers under thirty-five who read the nutritional information on the side panel of a cereal box actually buy the cereal compared to those who just look at the picture on the front?), well, then we wouldn't have had to try to invent the science of shopping.

I want to know, who was Paco's editor at Simon Schuster and where was he/she when ol' Paco submitted his manuscript. It occurs to me that, after reading the above paragraph, the poor editor resigned Paco to hopeless status and just sent the MSS through, being fearful of reading further.

Actually, I myself haven't gotten much farther than that, but I'm going to keep going.

Tom Abercrombie's article actually improved some following his exercise in jargon quoted above. Maybe Paco's book will improve as well.

Black white gray

2003-04-06T16:40:00.000-05:00

There's an article in today's New York Times Magazine.

I think that article expresses a key characteristic of what's going on in the US now -- the complicated, mixed feelings and opinions I hold and, I suspect, more than a few people hold -- at least those who are letting themselves think about it.

There have been a couple of key points over the past 40 years in American social-political life. One was the realization that the justification for the Vietnam War that they'd been given wasn't valid. Another was Watergate, when whatever trust people had in American politics was shattered.

In a way, however difficult those two were, I think that both were simple compared to the thinking that Americans are facing and will be facing as the active war phase of current events comes to an end. Maybe that's why people are watching FOXNews ... whatever else FOXNews is, it presents things as though they were simple, and in the face of nothing being simple, maybe that's part of the appeal.

War reporting

2003-04-05T13:40:00.000-06:00

With the war in Afghanistan in late 2001, the complaint was the limited access to military sources that reporters had. And, as they recalled the 1991 Gulf War, the media had the same complaint. So, this time, there are embedded reporters ... reporters who went through a training program and who agreed to the military's rules of embedding, and in exchange, travel with a unit, file reports, and transmit what's billed as real-time video. Thus, from this, we're supposed to feel as though we have a true view of the war, and even the things the military doesn't allow the reporter to say or show at a particular time will be available as a record of the war after it's over.

Maybe that's true, who knows. But, nevertheless, one of the interesting things with watching this war is the information war that's going on.

Last night seems particularly telling. We see Walt Rogers filing audio and video supporting the impression that the US has control of the Saddam/Baghdad International Airport (you know... the US admits they don't have *secure* control of the airport, but they're already renaming it... propaganda is part of war, I don't fault them for that, manipulation is a tactic, but we still have to recognize it as a tactic and not necessarily a reflection of anything else).

US Central Command starts saying they have military in "central Baghdad" or "the heart of Baghdad" (depending on what time it was you heard them talking). Simultaneously, we see the static video shot of somewhere in what's presumably central Baghdad with cars, taxis, buses, all moving in what looks like a normal manner.

The Iraqi information minister does his daily briefing, and says they've defeated the US military at the airport and once they finish cleaning up, they can take the press out there to show them they have control of the airport.

Nic Robertson calls in to say his sources in Baghdad have seen some of the US military in the streets, not a lot, and not seeming to be doing a lot, but there. But Nic is in Jordan. But it's Nic, who we would ordinarily trust to provide an accurate report.

Rula Amin reports that the Arabic press has reporters in Baghdad who don't really contradict the Iraqi information minister, at least as they report on the Arabic language media. But she's in Jordan too, and working for CNN, but she's also filed in past situations (e.g., re: Israel and Palestine) with an Arab slant.

A few days ago, the topic of reports was selling water to Iraqis in the south. Reports varied: the UK were selling water and the US deplored it. the US was selling water and the UK deplored it. Maybe they both were selling water. Maybe neither was.

The point is, who knows what the reality is.

.....

I notice that, now that things are starting in the north, it's Brent Sadler who's with the Peshmurga and filing on their activities with US Special Forces as they approach Mosul. I really don't have a sense of him as a reporter, just that he's been the CNN Beirut bureau chief for some time.

But, with Brent with the Peshmurga, the question is, where's Ben Wedeman? Is he not with the Peshmurga because they're with the US Special Forces and so embedding rules would apply? .... ah ... well, Brent in a filing at this moment (1:27 pm CST) mentioned Ben as being with another group of the Kurdish army. Man, it seems like whatever is the more dangerous situation at a given time, that'll be where Ben Wedeman is. God bless his wife (I'm assuming he has one).

......

Now, the US military is using the offer of citizenship to people with green cards if they enlist. Who needs a draft if you can bribe people into drafting themselves? Sheesh.

.....

It's reported that some among the US citizenry complain that 24/7 war reporting is causing them anxiety, interrupting sleep, generally making them uncomfortable and unhappy. So, the advice is that they not watch. Duh.

Yet, it's outrageous that they're complaining. They *can* just turn off the TV, or at least change channels. But more importantly, for them, turning off the TV is actually an option. Consider the people who are in the middle of the whole thing: armies on both sides, reporters, citizenry. Its seems like the least we can do, here in the calm, prosperous, safety of our living rooms, to watch the war, become involved in whatever unpleasantness we're shown, to live the war in our imaginations while others are forced to live it in real life. How else can we have any idea of what's really going on. How else can we develop and maintain some sense of understanding of the human conditions there. How else can we keep ourselves from the propaganda that's coloring media reports from both sides.

CNN had an antiwar night last night

2003-03-30T19:59:00.000-06:00

CNN had an antiwar night last night. Well, not precisely antiwar, but for about 3 hours of primetime, the message from analysts, including ex-US military, and reporters, mostly not embedded but some embedded as well, was that this war is a big mistake. We're pretty much back to normal today, still, of what's available on broadcast and cable here, CNN is the best choice.

And for the Bill Hemmers who wouldn't know hard news if it hit him in the face -- or unless his producer spoke in his ear -- there are the Ben Wedemans. He interviewed Al-Qaeda guys who were at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001. In February 2002 he was in Pakistan reporting Daniel Pearl's abduction and murder. A month later he was in the West Bank during the terrible siege by the Israeli army. Back in fall 2000 he was shot while covering a story in Gaza. And a year after the West Bank siege, he's in northern Iraq with other CNN Middle East bureau chiefs: Jane Arraf who was in Baghdad before she was expelled and Brent Sadler from Beirut.

Aaron Brown was talking to him during a report the other night. Aaron mentioned being embedded in northern Iraq and then corrected himself, confirming with Ben that Ben wasn't embedded, and then adding "and knowing you, you probably prefer it that way", meaning not being embedded. Ben didn't respond -- it was the end of the spot -- and who knows, but my sense is that Aaron probably made a true statement.

I trust Ben Wedeman's reports, and I look forward to thte stories he tells. I hope he's got a book in him from his years of living in the Middle East and observing the world. The book of his reporting observations is written in the CNN archives, but the book of his own observations isn't part of that.

Horizontal and vertical prayer

2003-03-09T15:01:00.000-06:00

Who'd have thought a movie critic would clear up a lifetime of puzzlement about religion.

Religion as such was never much of a part of my childhood. We were Episcopalians, but the times I remember going to church with my parents I can practically count on one hand. As a young child (my childhood has two parts: before and after my dad died, which was about a month before my 7th birthday) my favorite holiday was May Day, when I'd make paper-woven baskets, fill them with violets picked from the yard, and leave them on the doorsteps of our neighbors.

But I was always interested in religion, and as an older child and a teenager, I even started going to church, belatedly got myself confirmed, and even taught Sunday School for a while.

At the same time, at youth group meetings, our priest almost just told me to shut up, because I kept asking those questions -- you know, like, just who was it that Cain married? and what about those dinosaur fossils? why did Mary have to be a virgin -- and wouldn't it have been even more miraculous that a normally born human being would become the Son of God?

And then there was the time when I was in college that he got so worried about how I was getting involved with Judaism that he drove the 90 minutes to drop in on me to try to convince me out of it. Sheesh.

I liked the Episcopal Church though -- I liked the singing and the structure of the services, but mostly I respected that nobody seemed to really much care what people believed ... whatever they believed was between them and God (or whatever). Everybody was happy to leave it that way, and the point of actually going to church was to provide some social or psychological benefit not some religious benefit. Even a religious benefit of communing with your creator privately-in-public was that in-public part ... you could commune at home or anywhere privately, but for some reason, doing it privately-in-public filled some need of its own, and not a religious one.

It's just that I was always looking for something else -- what came before in human's religious thought? (thus the explorations in Judaism) Out of respect, I refrain from asking the question of my Muslim friends, the one that goes "[X Middle Eastern country] has such a long, ancient history ... don't you wonder about the religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of your ancestors before Muslims from another country came in and converted people?" (which actually stands for the question "don't you ever feel the urge to explore your pre-Islamic roots?" which is even less respectful)

So, over the years I dispossessed myself of organized religion. Although the standard explanations held, I still felt vaguely disquieted. Maybe I just didn't believe enough to want to find people who shared my beliefs. Maybe I was just masking antisocial tendencies by not wanting to join up with people for the purposes of something religious.

But I never really believed those things, and while I know that I thought that religion as an institution was about politics and social control rather than spirituality, it all finally came into focus with the distinction between the horizontal and the vertical. Thanks Roger!

Changing the subject ....

Here's an update on the UTA student who was deported. They gave his friends 25 minutes to get his things together and drive to Dallas to give them to him to take home with him. What's the point, when it takes 25 minutes just to drive to Dallas from UTA, let alone packing up his stuff, getting it into the car, and then parking once you get there.

The print version of The Shorthorn had a sidebar to that story:

The Road to Jordan

Jordanian graduate student Tahir Ibrahim Aletewi's month-long detention by U.S. authorities ended Thursday [Feb 28, 2002] with his deportation to Jordan. His departure is the latest in a joint terrorism task force investigation that apparently began last year.

Spring 2002 FBI and INS agents initiate regular interviews with Aletewi at his apartment on Center Street near campus. Friends familiar with the questioning say they began as informal conversations, and at one point officials attempted to recruit Aletewi to provide intelligence.

Sept. 10 The State Department notifies Aletewi by a letter sent to his family's residence in Jordan that his student visa has been revoked. According to friends, Aletewi was later assured that the matter was resolved by one of the immigration officials who had been interviewing him.

Fall/Winter 2002 Aletewi tells friends that the federal interviews are growing more intense as agents pointedly question him about his political and religious views.

Jan. 31 Federal agents ask for and are given consent to search Aletewi's apartment and later ask him to accompany them to their office for an interview. He later tells friends that he was interrogated extensively over the next week while being held at the Euless City Jail.

Feb. 2 After not hearing from Aletewi for two nights, roommates try contacting the FBI, but cannot reach anyone on a Sunday.

Feb. 3 FBI Special Agent Robert Fowler notifies Aletewi's roommates that he is in federal custody awaiting a deportation hearing for violating his student status. The detainee is allowed to speak with friends on the phone, and, later that week, receive visitors after he is transferred to the Dallas County Jail.

Feb. 7 U.S. Immigration Judge Anthony Rogers orders Aletewi deported, reportedly within five days. A court spokeswoman now says there was no time stipulation on the order.

Feb. 22 A friend is allowed to visit Aletewi in jail for the first time since the judge's ruling, the friend says.

Feb. 27 Aletewi is deported, according to a government source. He is not known to have contact with any friends here since his departure.

Oh boy ....

2003-03-05T19:47:00.000-06:00

Oh boy ....

here's a version from the Albany paper

Amazing -- at least people in Albany are protesting.

But, hearing about how wearing a t-shirt can get you arrested, after hearing about the draft of "Patriot Act II" ... boy, makes you start thinking about all those frequent flyer miles you've got saved up...

On rattansifan.tripod.com

2003-03-02T13:10:00.000-06:00

http://rattansifan.tripod.com/

I like that site and try to visit every weekend to see what she's got to say. Sure, it's a fan site -- appealing to newsies, CNN-lovers, those lucky enough to see Shihab on CNN (I never do, but I only see CNN US which rarely includes its international feeds anymore). But she's always got something insightful to say. Since the page changes more or less weekly, I'll reprint her essay below:

"Why, of course the people don't want war ... but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

-- Nazi military leader Hermann Goering interviewed by G.M. Gilbert, Nuremberg trials, 1946. From Gilbert's "Nuremberg Diary."

I Ain't Too Proud to Beg

for our "leaders" to rethink our military's spring agenda, but it seems a lot of Americans are. In an article in the 3/02/03 NY Times by Tom Zeller, Mark A. Schulman, the president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research gives us one take on the matter:

"It's the general thrust of things, the symbolism and the ideas those symbols evoke," Mr. Schulman said. "That's what people take away with them."

If that's true, then assuming anything less than the worst of Mr. Hussein, particularly with the monthslong buildup toward war, may simply seem unpatriotic to a sizable chunk of the populace.

"To say that there is no involvement of Saddam Hussein in Sept. 11 is implicitly to question what our leaders are saying," Mr. Schulman said. "And that is to start down a road toward suspicion and Watergate-like politics that no one wants."

So, I guess, what this boils down to is that a large chunk of the population of this country is too proud to admit that it may have elected a self-serving, power-hungry, megalomaniac for a president. Ouch, the truth hurts, doesn't it?

But it doesn't hurt quite as much, I wouldn't imagine, as the pain those innocent Iraqis who lose their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children will feel. And I shouldn't even have to mention the pain those U.S. servicepeople's children, whose sad faces have already been so extensively presented to us in news footage from shipyards and military bases in practically every state, will feel when they find out their mothers and fathers won't be coming home because they've been killed in this selfish war.

Oh, but to this administration, the numbers of "collateral damage" look fine, good, very promising, I'm sure -- nothing that can't be quickly forgotten or supressed sufficiently with large amounts of cash or the application of a little carefully applied pressure to the media. Ah, the pursuit of happiness in its ugliest form ever. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would weep.

I've never been so close to denying my American citizenship as I am right now. But I'm not alone. Nope. My father, a moderate until this past year (he even voted for Reagan the first time around -- do you realize the shame I feel at admitting that?), told me that Canada's looking pretty good to him. He feels unrepresented by the democrats in congress. He feels the problems of this country's senior citizens are being ignored. And, like his daughter, he's embarrassed by how uninformed and easily fooled so much of this population is.

My dad served in the Navy in the 50's. His dad was in the Navy during WWII in the Pacific. There's an American Legion post in Arizona named after this grandfather of mine. We are not an unpatriotic family. We are, however, a family who makes use of each and every liberty afforded to us: we vote; we right letters to our congresspeople when we don't like something; when we sing the national anthem, we sing it like we mean it ... or, at least, we did. But lately, every week, it seems, another of those much coveted liberties vanishes in the interest of "national security". We ain't buyin' that angle. And if the left-brained 68 year old engineer and his 38 year old right-brained (he may argue bird-brained) artist daughter agree on something, well, that is news. In this case, pretty bad news.

We both agree this current administration is the last bunch of people who should be responsible for setting up any democracies anywhere. We're both convinced that if a democracy is defined as government ruled by the voice of the people then France, Germany and Turkey are far better examples right now than the government of this country or its so-called allies. If things don't change pretty soon, Canada may want to think about putting on the coffee and changing the sheets in the spare room because company's coming. Let the proud sheep be herded into the barracks by the madmen. Their slaughter is nothing we care to watch. Angela

Keeping Quiet
by Pablo Neruda
translated by Alastair Reid

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
(Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.)

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve,
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Penelope in Montreal sent me this in email. She was nice enough to let me put it on the site. Please, if you're against the idea of a war with Iraq, find a demonstration in your area and show the world how you feel.

"I have to tell you my war story.

On the weekend I was cleaning out stuff at my parents' place, and I found a letter that my grandfather had written to my uncle (my father's brother) during the war. I brought it home in order to send it to my aunt who is the sole remaining member of the family. What is so sad is that it is dated 18 June 1944 and my uncle was killed on 25 June 1944, which of course means he died before the letter arrived. It was returned and I guess my grandparents decided to save it. What I couldn't handle were statements like "when you and Garry (my dad) get home, we are going to have a big party". By the time I was halfway through the letter I was sobbing. Then he talks about an officer in my uncles division who was killed and he says "we all know that not everybody comes back". The idea that my uncle died while the letter was in transit is too much. Then he told him some mundane stuff like "your cousin got married and we went to the wedding". And even that simple stuff was making me cry. By the time I got to the end I was bawling hysterically. Quite an experience, really. I could just feel the heartbreak my grandparents suffered when they got THE telegram a few weeks later. They kept that telegram too. How awful.

I wish those who are rah rahing for war would think of things like this. It's so damn sad."

The US Presidency is trying to have a war -- if only this time it'd be a war where nobody came.

Too much complication in the world

2003-02-23T13:07:00.000-06:00

See, this from the New York Times is what I've been trying to talk about.

Too much complication in the world. I can't do anything about it. I can just live day by day, go to work, try to be nice, try to have people be nice to me, have a lifestyle I can pay for, and try to have it work out that I can afford to live after I'm not able to work and earn money anymore.

Last weekend I bought a copy of "The Sims" -- the Deluxe edition, so it's got the extra doodads to give to your Sims that the "Livin' Large" expansion pack provided. It's a pretty engrossing game, at least so far. Though, it occurs to me that it's a version of playing Barbies (i.e., a potentially solitary activity where you control everything) and of playing whatever games we played as kids with our friends -- house, cowboys & indians, other invented scenarios we played out in the backyards and open spaces in our neighborhoods.

Like in real human life, life as a Sim can be hard, unless "God" (or whatever you want to call it) mysteriously blesses you with a lot of money (i.e., the human player uses the money cheat to finance Sims families). And like in real life, when fate seems to do something good (i.e., the human player decides paying bills is a drag and deletes the mailbox), there can be unforeseen consequences (without a mailbox, you can't interact with people who come to visit so you eventually die of loneliness, and the visitors can't leave the lot so they eventually die of whatever they're in need of -- if this goes on long enough, the whole neighborhood will die).

But even God can get help to make things better again (i.e., the human player can get a nifty little program somebody made that will put the mailboxes back on the lots), if God is so inclined. Of course, that means God is willing to intervene, that God actually is interested in the well-being of his/her/its Sims, that God is actually watching the game, that God is actually there.

Ok ... no theological stuff right now ....

As far as we know, he made no threats

2003-02-14T19:04:00.000-06:00

The Shorthorn (which, by the way, is the student newspaper at the University of Texas at Arlington) ran an editorial today related to the topic of the UTA student who was deported:

As far as we know, he made no threats, he conspired in no plots and he built no bombs. But in post-9/11 America, just admitting to certain thoughts can be enough to change your world forever.

A week ago, U.S. Immigration Judge D. Anthony Rogers ordered Aletewi deported (within five days) based on an FBI interview in which he allegedly said that possible U.S. military action in Iraq had revived thoughts of being a martyr, The Shorthorn reported Tuesday. You can be deported for what you think, even if you never do a single thing wrong.

Also in today's Shorthorn there was an article reporting on a memo we all got on Wednesday telling us what to do if the FBI comes calling looking for information.

If they come without a court order, we don't have to say anything. We can defer all responsibility to the campus. But with a court order, not only do we have to provide whatever information is asked, we are forbidden to say anything to anyone else ... we can't tell anyone what they were asking about, we can't even tell anyone that the FBI was there. Not a friend, not a family member, not a workplace supervisor. Presumably, not even our own attorney.

Boy, if that doesn't encourage someone to keep a low profile, I don't know what does.

Hmmm... so ... if an FBI agent comes with a warrant and asks me questions ... and then later a different agent comes asking me questions about the time when the first agent talked to me ... heh.

But the point is, where does it stop? How many steps does it take for it all to have gone too far, and we find ourselves living in a country under unsupportable conditions?

Is this why reality shows are so popular, when they're barely reality? Is it because real reality is getting too freaky?

Points of view ...

2003-02-12T20:11:00.000-06:00

Three of the people I work with:

one girl, I know when she hears music, it's not what I hear. I can't confidently put into words what it is, since I can't hear it, but I'm thinking it's a type of multidimensionality that she can hear. Maybe it's not uncommon. Or maybe it's normal among musicians. I don't know. But it's out of my experience.

another girl, she's got to see color, shape, and visual composition differently from me. What it is, I can't say for sure, but it's the only explanation I can come up with for why our reactions to the visual are so different between her and me.

and then there's the guy who makes magic with color, image, layout and visual design, and he's color blind. I believe that "most people" would think that someone who's color blind isn't supposed to be able to put colors together effectively. There's more to it than memorizing a color wheel, after all.

We get access to a point of view, and because we have a reason to believe it, trust it, accept it as valid, we then say it's true. How do we know that the reasons to trust, believe, and accept are themselves trustworthy? When we later get access to a different point of view, with its own reasons to believe, trust and accept as valid, how do we decide which to "vote" for?

A guy from UTA is being deported. It's reported that he confessed to once considering becoming a suicide bomber, however the deportation seems to be based on his student immigration status.

Yet his friends wonder about the confession:

"We don't know why he said that -- we know it's not true," said Khan, a permanent resident from Pakistan who lives one apartment down from Aletewi and considers him a roommate. "He abhorred the idea of suicide bombing. It is a complete mystery to us."

But they do have a theory: After a week of interrogation and jail, Aletewi made up a confession to speed his return to Jordan.

"We think maybe he decided to just get out," Hussain said.

and also from The Shorthorn article:

A Dallas representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said interrogations of Middle Eastern students became routine after Sept. 11, 2001.

"There are people from specific countries whom they question all the time," said Michael Linz, an ACLU cooperating attorney. "You hear anecdotes all the time about law enforcement telling people things would be easier if they just admitted to this or that, and off they go."

Points of view: .... he's a nascient terrorist .... he's a guy who discusses political philosophies, mentally explores alternative pathways, but who rejected the option of taking a path of violence .... he just wanted some peace and said what they wanted to hear ...

We can't know which of those is "real" ... were his friends deluded about his political beliefs? did he really represent a threat to anyone's safety? does the deportation of a person in this way "succeed" in that it promotes fear, distrust, and the suppression of individuals' discussion of political or philosophical topics?

Is my co-worker imagining multidimensionality that isn't there in the music she hears? Or am I just unable to hear the truth?

Unforseen consequences

2003-02-08T19:49:00.000-06:00

unforeseen consequences --

once I said 'yes' when I should've said 'no'. Although 'yes' wasn't the right answer then, if I'd said 'no' I wouldn't be living a dream now -- I know that's true -- I'm sure an alternate chain of events wouldn't have led to where I am

once I said 'no' when i should have said 'yes'. At that time and place and point in life 'yes' likely would have been disastrous, but because I said 'no', I closed a door that can't be reopened, the path that led from that door is now unexplorable, and a different dream is unavailable for living

why can't roads be clear so you can see the landscape, where you're going, what's ahead. It's a defect of perception, us not being able to do that

and all this (overly ?) philosophical (crap ?) is because I'm afraid a war's going to start in 3 weeks or so

Bush likes to say this is Saddam's last chance.

maybe it's *our* last chance to find an alternative to destruction

if we say 'yes', will we wish we'd said 'no'?
if we say 'no', will we find we should have said 'yes'?

... experimenting ....

2003-02-08T16:26:00.000-06:00

ok ... the template for this page's look, one of the choices of pre-made templates at blogger.com, is called "Sandbox at Night". I hope you like the look -- I do. Besides, "Sandbox at Night" is a pretty fitting concept for a place like this