The Search for Self...

I was going to write something about how I am an absurdist, and yet I am in some ways a sad person. Then I looked up Absurdism in Wikipedia (didn't want to make a fool of myself) and decided that if it meant reading Kirkegaard (sp?) and Camus, then no, I'm not an absurdist. What we need, perhaps, is a way to separate people who think about philosophies and people who do them. And maybe even those who live them.

Not that I've really lived a philosophy in any grand sense. I was in the Bay Area during the eighties and only went to two Cacophony events. So much of my life is in my head. But I hate philosophy--it rattles around in my head in a totally meaningless way. Good stories are different. I wish I had some.

The weather is sort of dreadful. And I feel more prey to it just sitting there. (Whoops, am I in the wrong blog?)

Do I have to be associated with "a movement"? Probably not. It does help to have a label to slap on yourself in conversation. Of course, I don't know how to talk to people... I'm too intense. Still--I'm pushing 50! I don't think I'll ever become a quiet suburban type. I'm going to be the terror of the old folks home. First off, I'll have been pushing my own chair for years! But most of all, I'm not very good at just going along to get along. (I may even have that backwards.) I get stubborn and yell out what I think is true.
It sounds like I'm bragging, and of course I love myself, but it's difficult to live this way. Always having too many odd corners to even be a square peg. Work, relationships, always seem to be outside my grasp. Yes, I've had my current job for 10 years. But I don't know if there's room for advancement. And grade increases seem to be caught in bureaucratic tangles.

I have no idea what this edition is about.
This blog is typeset in Georgia. I thought about Helvetica, but this seemed a little more daring.

What I hate..

... about the way the aftermath of these shootings plays out in our culture.

Amateur analysis. Idiots with no better understanding of why people do this and no more training than watching too much Law and Order (or reading too much true crime) offer up lack of god or mother issues or whatever cliche has been making the rounds for the past two or three shootings.

The instant replay of the whole gun debate. I'm not sure if any of this is actually new, or is everyone simply repeating what they say the last 20 times. I'm also not sure of the actual power of these debates ... discussions ... ritual calls and responses to change people's minds. Instead, we have a bunch of endlessly recycled "clever" remarks and photos with text that is supposed to be devastating to the other side, but is just the same ol' same ol', repackaged for the 21st century.

I suppose that in that first instance, any explanation is better than looking into that abyss. And for the second? Anger is better than pain, than grief--that other abyss, I suppose.

And I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. I'd like actual solutions to come about. I'd like for young white men to turn their backs on their inner monsters. (Maybe young, white men can't do that, because they aren't Klien bottles. Okay, I'm going for the familiar comfort of mixing metaphors.)
Or maybe it's because we have to do so much untwisting in order to make progress...
If we posit that we have tied ourselves into knots, culturally speaking, that we have made ourselves into (metaphoric--and not exactly a comfortable one for me to use) cripples who cannot walk straight, straighten our bodies, straighten our souls (boy the words I'm using)--then all of this Sturm und Drang is simply the mouse wheel that we run, and run, and run and never get anywhere on, because if we want to walk somewhere, directly, gayly forward, we have to do the work of untwisting the lies we tell ourselves and each other, rebalance our bodies, strengthen ourselves where we are weak, and hurt, hurt, hurt, bleed, bleed, bleed where we have tied ourselves off from the truth.
(And really and truly, I don't know what's what with the metaphors I chose. I suspect that it comes from, in part, a need for strong words to express the sort of "untwisting" I did in my head, as I tried to wrap it around the huge, tangled spaghettis of contradictions and horrors and snakes and shadows and chains and connections and sorrow that lives... somewhere... Isn't it annoying how the unexplained resists explanation?)

he only took tips

I'm not sure what to talk about.
How about tipping?
How much are we supposed to tip at cafes? I usually give 10%. I don't think it's as much work as waiter/ess, less walking for one thing. But I don't like to leave nothing. So ~10% for counter work and 15+% for table...
And bartenders. It's a dollar or two per drink. I'm beginning to think that that's bizarre, are they getting more than cocktail waitresses? and if they are, is it the old preference of male over female and mind work (mixing drinks) over schlepping things/physical?
Not that that's all that simple.

Not really a blogging breakthrough, but it may be time to slog out an entry or two to get to something deeper. Practice and all...

Dessert

You can call it irony, you can call it a plot twist, you can call it a just dessert for my wicked ways, but a couple of weeks ago, my boss took me aside and said that the Clear the Clutter people had photographed my cubicle and turned me into the Division Deputy Director as a messy cube.
I had to write a plan to get it done by end of the month.
Can I say that it was sort of like being a child.
But, I decided to do it with the best grace possible.

I only allow myself one extra fedex box. (I use them to put mixed paper in. I have a full box for white, because there's a lot of paper that goes through my hands and into the recycling.) Toss it out at the end of the week.

I'm hauling all sorts of stuff home, as well. Aegean Stables, anyone?

I don't know if I'm allowed to have a whole spindle of used cds, or if I have to take those down for recycling weekly, too.

Today, at the com center, I found two boxes... Three or four feet long, 8 to 10 inches high, about an inch deep.

I brought them home...

Off-Shoot

I am seriously getting ready to do a separate blog focused on my amputations and life in a wheelchair.
I can't think of a good title. "Without Restraint" is going to be the title of my second post. It's about public transit. Not "Hell on Wheels". Not ...
Well, I can't think of many of the rejection titles... I know there was another one with "wheels" in it though.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/S-F-Target-makes-Metreon-a-better-box-3934217.php#photo-3550879
I work near the Metreon. There's a pretty good food court, and so I like to go there. Problem. If I go to the actual court, as opposed to the restaurants that are directly on the street, I have to take one of those weird cripple elevators that some places use. You may have seen them, they are open, have room for one and are made of steel or something like that. All too often, when I take it, I cannot open the door at the bottom. Sure the guard will open it for me, but fuck that. I feel like a cattle (beeve is probably the correct word) in a chute. Thank you.
I can go around the other side. I doesn't take me long. I can zip around the building.
There's a big bank of doors, 6 or so. The one on the far left as I enter is the one with the button to open it for me to push. All of the rest of the doors open to a ramp. In front of the cripple door there's a three-riser staircase. Are they tone-deaf to the need of the disabled community to feel welcomed and part of the whole? Or are they just following the ADA the same way a 10-year old boy follows the demand that he cleans up his room--dragging his heels, following the letter not the spirit.

*eyeroll*

Plugging Away

My new thought is to rate things on a scale of one to ten and get rid of anything below a seven. Haven't done much with that, but I'm plugging away.

Over-Shopping

The over-shopping this past weekend was entangled with the whole drama with the break up of Terminal City and apparent break up of Apokiliptika... How totally banal of me, using material goods to paper over the cracks in my mind/soul/heart. How, darned, American...

This thing has been a blow to my pride... first off, there's the rejection thing. Then there's my trouble in dealing with it, with re-establishing my equilibrium.

I'll say it here. I loved Smashy and Jet and Raga. I loved Terminal City and I enjoyed hanging out at the  shade structure last year. And confronting that damn art car--um mutant vehicle.

Baggage--child of divorce (blah, blah, blah)

Am I still the Miracle Train Baby?

Dare I use that as an avatar?

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This is a very half formed blog, here for the discipline of blogging, rather than because I have a clear thought to share.

I'll leave it up. It can serve as a benchmark of how low I can go, bloggishly.