Archive for November 2009
OUCH!
I broke my floorball stick last week. Heartbreaking loss, it is. Even Kitty seemed a bit distressed over it. I really need to improve my skills to a level that involves a lot less flailing in desperation. These things ain’t cheap! To that point, I kept my old stick, that partially fractured long ago, and have prolonged its life by creating a crude splint out of random materials at hand. It has already more than served its purpose as a backup. I think it is a pretty good strategy to play a sport that involves equipment that wears out before you do. It doesn’t always work that way, but maybe if I keep thinking like that, I can prolong the success of breaking sticks instead of tearing muscles. 
If Wishes Were…
I’ve said it before. Be careful what you wish for. All sorts of spontaneity came my way yesterday at work. Why doesn’t it ever work this well when I decide I am going to visualize being on an all expense paid luxury vacation? The hardest thing about practicing being unattached to outcomes, when it comes to work, is that outcomes are the principle objective. 
The day-job is consuming a bulk of my available resources lately. I’m always impressed by the simple and pretty much by-the-book obvious presentation of stress when it plays out in the way my mind slows down under the extra load. That response is quickly joined by a wave of fatigue that longs to be treated with sleep. If I’m payin’ just a bit of attention to the obvious, and aware enough to cut myself some slack, the stress is manageable. The fatigue is no big deal. My liver needed the sleep, anyway. I went to bed at a decent hour last night. So, bring on the day, I say!
I’m going to spend it secretly visualizing a tropical island while I’m working.
Planning Spontaneity
How in the heck does a person plan for spontaneity? Beats me. I think that I probably do a small amount of this without ever admitting to myself that it is what I’m doing. But it barely makes any sense to me. There is a mutual exclusivity to the two words. However, there is something logical within the concept. It seems to me to be a reasonable philosophy to prepare for surprises.
I saw a quote recently, that I only recollect enough to paraphrase, but the thought is simple: consider practicing being unattached to outcomes. It struck me as being a way to prepare for spontaneity. A way to allow any outcome to materialize for a given situation without being fixated on an expected result. I don’t trust that I will be able to make a sudden leap to not being attached to outcomes, but I am looking forward to giving it a little practice. We’ll see if there is any improvement in my preparedness for all things spontaneous that might happen to pop up.
Have You Ever Noticed
have you ever noticed
the energy swinging
around the space
that exists in the air
surrounding our heads
that enables the sound
of one particular song
to throw us back in time
to a room and its furniture
the window and those curtains
that have absolutely nothing
to do with the song
or the reason for remembering
how it sounded and where
we were when we heard it
that very time in which it clicked
and settled into some niche
within the catacombs of our mind
where we are whether we want to be or not
and no one else will see or hear
the totality of what is in there
regardless the methods tried
to share in story or song
or full-length feature moving picture show
the impressionist paintings
of dazzling detail we craft
in microscopic telepathic transcendental
neuropathic milliseconds for our
enrichment but also our personal hell
regardless the logic defying
reality of possibilities that our initial
perceptions were perhaps skewed
by the void we sensed
where pure sweet innocent love
was supposed to be shining
on its pillar of ultimate truth
but somehow
was not
Stuff Happens
Yesterday morning, Cyndie and I were preparing to get together with her folks for brunch, to hear stories about their recent cruise in the vicinity of Turkey. I simply followed Cyndie’s direction that she was cooking at our home and we would bring food over to their house. We loaded up the car and headed out just about 15 minutes behind schedule. When we reached the street where they live, I slowed down to let an oncoming car pass before I drove out and around a man walking with a dog, just a bit into my lane. With my primary attention on the pedestrian, I made only a brief glance to the passing car. The image that flashed in my mind was of Cyndie’s dad’s hair. A quick analysis of the car being red, with a black roof, and a passenger in the front, had me asking Cyndie if that was her dad that just passed us. She hadn’t noticed.
We pulled into their driveway and Cyndie hopped out to check their front door. All locked up! Nobody home. That pretty much confirmed it was them I saw driving away. Seems they were headed to our house for brunch. We turned around and high-tailed it back home. Cyndie was pretty upset over the miscommunication, but in the end, we all seemed able to frame it as humorous and not a critical failure. We did try to work back to discover where the confusion arose, but devoid any concrete evidence to the contrary, the general consensus was that neither Cyndie, nor her father, ever explicitly stated a planned location. Instead, each proceeded based on the perceptions they had in each of their own minds; Cyndie, of going to her parent’s house and her dad, of coming to ours.
It was a classic opportunity for individuals to allow situational circumstance to upset them and bring about a range of reactions with the potential to spiral into all manner of angst. None of us fell for it. We just acknowledged that it happened, laughed about it, and enjoyed a wonderful brunch of catching up on stories from their trip.
More Sports Speak
It is Sunday morning and after a two-week wait due to a bye in their schedule, the NFL Vikings play football again today. As if I really need more sports this weekend. Friday night, I attended the Gopher basketball game at the U of M, and yesterday morning, I was back down there to see the football team. Later, at home, I caught the hockey team in fine form on television, triumphing over Bemidji State. But this year, with Brett Favre as quarterback, watching the Vikings is once again becoming almost as interesting for me, as college sports.
One other thing has renewed my interest in professional football this year. Julian organized an online pool of competition in which we pick the winner of every NFL game each week. Brings back memories of the old ‘office pool’ I used to do when he was young. It instantly makes games that I would otherwise care less about, particularly interesting. It also forces me to become aware, if even superficially, of the status of every single team in the league.
We are competing for bragging rights, but win or lose, I have gained the increased entertainment value that playing such pools provides. As well, it has been interesting to witness how often Julian’s and my predictions appear similar. As a result, our year-to-date total is dead-even. Just last week, I was thinking that I will need to find a way to get a little distance between us. When all the participant’s selections were locked in and became visible, it became clear how difficult that is likely going to be. Julian’s and my picks were identical.
One of the tricks to getting more guesses correct than all the other people in the pool, is to pick at least one unlikely upset. The hope is that no one else will have the same selection, and then you just need your underdog team to steal a victory for you. The reality is that the odds are much greater for the outcome to go doubly against you, since being wrong instantly puts you behind everyone else. There ends up being multiple ways the game can be seen as an upset.
One easy way to assume you will get a pick that most of the others won’t choose, is to bet against the home team. That can be a hard decision to make. This year, when I finally felt the situation was right to try that ploy, it turned out perfect, except for one thing. Julian saw it exactly the same way. He and I were the only two who correctly guessed the Vikings to lose that week. Like father, like son.
Laughing at Life
Woke up this morning in just the right mood to enjoy the silly interactions that being up early together with my lovely wife can bring about. It is interesting to discover how funny, old Saturday Night Live skits can be when revisited, decades later, by way of discovering you are living the scenes of which they were poking fun. This morning we found Gilda Radner and Bill Murray’s characters, Lisa Loopner and Todd DiLaBounta, materializing. I thought it was funny enough, until Cyndie pointed out that I was being Lisa, not Todd. Ha ha, that’s so funny.
Together we found ourselves remembering some difficult times of days gone by, raising children together, and from this distance of time, were laughing about things that were far from funny back then. Then there was some mention of sleeping long enough to heal our livers, …or not. Not sure if we accomplished that, but we seem to have rested our funny bones, because they were rarin’ to go this morning.
Mary's comment response... depicts it beautifully
Finding some of the stupidest things to laugh about can be such a treasure. And cultivating the ability to laugh together, the deep belly laugh that takes your breath away, can be such a priceless treasure. It is, indeed, a reward that can be earned for the work done to develop a long-term relationship; a healthy, growing relationship. All those tough times together finally produce this. Funny, isn’t it?
Multiple Possibilities
There are so many possible truths in everything we know and see and hear. I would say the same regarding the ideas we pose about things we cannot know. I am comfortable with the presence of mystery. At the same time, I do enjoy solving a good puzzle. I am satisfied knowing there are differing possibilities within me. And not only in me; I tend to find more comfort in an authority figure who reveals some level of uncertainty about things, as opposed to professing an unwavering conviction of only one possibility.
When I was in tech-school, one of my instructors was an older man with a significant number of years military experience. He brought most of his former military practices to his teaching, which didn’t endear him to the majority of the students. One day, he began to draw out a very complicated electrical circuit on the board in the front of the room, and describe the way it worked. It just so happened that this very circuit was also in our text book. Everyone in sight had their books open, following his progress with what was depicted on the pages. After he had a majority of the circuit depicted, he made an error. We patiently waited while he tried to explain the function, expecting he would discover the problem as he talked it out. But he didn’t. He got stuck. So we tried to help him. We had the complete circuit right in front of us and his mistake was obvious. He refused our help and refused to admit that he was wrong and he became upset with us, resorting to his manner of discipline which involved some drill sergeant styled shouting.
It was really difficult to receive the remainder of his lessons, after that day.
I don’t know that I recognized it at the time, but I did take a lesson from that experience which I’m confident contributes to my interest in being able to be uncertain about something and have that be okay. However, one of the side effects of that is, I sometimes struggle to make a decision. I have a story about that, too.
One day a coworker of mine asked me a very blunt question. He said, “Does your ass ever hurt?”
I was a bit taken aback by this. Ever hurt? “What?!” I had no idea what he was after.
He asked the question again, but this time he added, “…from sitting on the fence?”
I was developing a reputation for not being able to make a decision. It was a perfectly logical question, after he provided the qualifier. A little earlier that day he had been verbally jousting with a guy he was working with on an assembly project. As I was passing by, they called me in to help settle their conflict. They asked me if the part that one of them had mounted was straight or not. I studied it for a moment and offered the conclusion that it looked straight to me. That brought a shout of victory from one party. But then, just as I was turning to walk away, I said, “But if it is off at all, it is leaning to the right.”
I left their area to renewed arguing… “See, I told you so!”
That question, later, about my ass ever hurting, was entirely appropriate, given my inconclusive contribution to their conflict. It was a classic representation of my difficulty with making a firm decision. I appreciated the humor, as well as the not so subtle message it conveyed.
Another Random Stream
The random word generator has been put into production for no other reason than simply the fact that there is no reason and therefore unmitigated silliness of the most nonsensical nature ensues for those of you with stomachs strong enough to slog through the seemingly limitless onslaught of useless rambling that is almost as painful as the wicked punishment unleashed by the television broadcast industry when it allows their all too valuable incoming financial gains from advertising to arrive via far too many versions of sales pitches associated with a certain holiday that happens pretty much most of the way into the month of December and far removed from the month of October when it all started this year unlike the smooth ‘less-is-more’ styling of years gone by which brings up the possibility that just because we are all one year older with each advancing year that goes by there must be some reason to always one-up the year before by trying more, sooner, longer, louder, bigger, faster and every other ‘er’ that relates in that regard and there goes the attempt to just leave out punctuation altogether here by needing to separate all those ‘er’s in making a point about why in the heck everything seems to need to out-do the time before and all too often folks can’t allow there to be the satisfaction of having something be just as simply good and fine as it was the previous time we enjoyed the pleasures of whatever it is we hold dear when all the world around us is crashing down in over-hyped melodrama because for some reason simply making a point isn’t good enough anymore without the extreme outlying fatalistic possibilities being threatened at every turn while the baby slides out the door with the bath water while we forget to sing together around the piano with a libation in worship of the humble act of fellowship with other actual human beings whose faces are seen not just on a book and people hold each other dear for years and then even decades from which threads become woven into a rich fabric with strength that supports in times when it is most needed like when the myriad of material possessions being hawked for our vanity finally proves entirely counter-productive toward soothing the longing that originates deep in a primordial place in our biology that was meant to drive our survival mechanism when there wasn’t anything but sticks and stones and carnivorous predators sharing the territory with our little selves to help us feel loved and worthy and hardly at risk of being harmed by someone else getting more attention than us especially when someone like Tina Turner can continue to entertain huge numbers of fans as if she was no where near achieving her 70th birthday this month which sure seems different than what 70-year-old women were doing when I was a boy and that sure says something about the fine art of keepin’ on keepin’ on if you know what I mean and I sure hope you do if you hung on this long to arrive at this destination which for all intents and purposes is in fact pretty darn similar to that place they call nowhere.
Are We There Yet?
Is this it? Is this what we have been waiting for? Have we painted our masterpiece yet? There are a few memorable milestones in our lives that get closely identified by age. Turning 16 seems to be pretty dramatic for the eligibility to earn a driver’s license. Reaching 18 and 21 years of age also mark specific privileges to be bestowed. Beyond that, many of the markers associated with the accumulating decades are rather intangible, until you hit an eligible age for medicare benefits or collecting social security.
During those in-between years, do you think there is bound to be a defining moment? If so, is it really something we will recognize? Logically, it makes sense to consider the wide range of events in a lifetime as having varying levels of significance. Many of the events may change us forever. Will one of them earn more attention than all the others? Maybe only in the movies. It is clear that we can’t all become the President, or King, or leader of our respective communities. So what will that ultimate accomplishment be for the rest of us?
When I was growing up, as the 5th of 6 kids, I had older siblings to watch, admire, and emulate. I was always impressed by their friends and the behaviors and accomplishments of the upper classes in high school. When I finally reached my Senior year in high school, it didn’t seem to correlate at all with the perceptions from my youth. It certainly didn’t feel like I “had arrived.” I just figured, then, that such a sensation must probably occur later in life.
One of those less tangible markers of increasing age that I noticed, occurred as a spectator of professional sports. For some reason, it seems to appear all at once, and suddenly the athletes for the teams I’ve been following my whole life, are younger than I am. That was a shocker. Then, like a baby boom of the baby boom, it happens again at the next level. Now, it is the coaches that are younger than I am. How the heck did that happen? Life is what happens while you are waiting for the defining moment to arrive.
Are we there yet?
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Relative Something 