She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).

Little Betty Winkle, she had a pig –

It was a little pig, not very big;

When he was alive he lived in clover,

But now he’s dead, and that’s all over.

Nurse Lovechild’s legacy - Dirge

While I was occupied overthrowing tyrants, righting wrongs, saving kitties stranded in the branches of tall trees, rescuing damsels in distress, and trying to sleep in, June became July.

It’s not like I need to apologize to my blog for benignly neglecting it; or to explain why my life lately has been filled with horrible medical calamities; natural disasters and acts of a vengeful god; exciting adventures involving unicorns and glitter; travels to exotic locals, culinary experiments that resulted in indescribable bliss, pilgrimages to religious shrines where I experienced a miraculous cure for my lifelong chronic athlete’s foot; or that I’ve finally managed to sleep late. Because who cares, right?

I also haven’t been too busy checking my Facebook page hourly to be sure I take the latest stupid test to find out what kind of musical instrument/kitchen implement/implantable medical device/Harry Potter character, or terminal disease I am. Because the internets are the only path to self-discovery through a dozen multiple choice questions yo. Nor have I been too busy reading posts by people who bloviate about something positively banal (or worse, christian extremism or political folly) and then say “share if you agree”. I do admit I’ve spent some time trying to decide which bothers me more, and instead have concluded that, sadly, I have only myself to blame that my FB page is cluttered with such crap because my choice of FB friends has been a bit indiscriminate and over-hasty. Sadly, herein art imitates life.

More importantly, I  decline to succumb to what I’ve seen so many bloggers do when they revive a dormant blog: whinge about how my recent life has sucked  - as if people might possibly give a shit or send me virtual hugs and relevant googled motivational quotes of which I would otherwise remain woefully ignorant.

It’s none of that. It’s NSA, people. They may be on to me. I think they may know what I had for breakfast (despite the fact that I swallowed the last bite as I finished the previous paragraph, and I already can’t remember what was on the plate). I fear that NSA may have discovered my secret identity, or my embarrassing sexual fetishes that involve plush toys and organic produce, or worse, my real weight.

So I’ve been hiding in my fallout shelter – or whatever the kids are calling bunkers today – reading back issues of The Paris Review and eating bloated cans of spaghetti-Os and hoping I’ll drop off the NSA radar and that my latest flare-up of paranoia will subside. Either that or I’ve been in rehab after one too many drunken blackouts where I awoke next to a dead hooker wearing a bloodstained clown costume, and lost the costume rental deposit because I didn’t use my Oxy-pen soon enough to remove the blood. And don't think I'm stupid enough to commit to the internets which one of us was wearing the clown costume.

Or maybe, - just maybe - I’ve evolved. I’ve taken my own advice that the virtual world is a pale shadow of the real world and I’d rather inhabit the 3-D world and enjoy the clover while I still can. 

Maybe I’ve found my inner deity and reconnected with the earth. 

Or maybe (and frankly, more likely)  I’ve had my medications adjusted to the point where I can actually garden a bit in nice weather without having to spend the night covered in flop-sweat while my pulse tops out at 145 before subsiding enough to let me sleep.

Maybe, I’ve decided that blathering online about my life is narcissistic and self-defeating. Maybe I've concluded that I could be enjoying an actual life in the real world, while the virtual world continues its plummet to hell without me.

( Title Credit: Lewis Carroll. Illustration credit: Yuji Kamozawa)

Madder and Madder

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.'

 -  Lewis Carroll

My kitty has a brain the size of a peanut. But it’s a peanut with three nuts inside. My dog has a brain the size of a walnut.  Turns out we may be drifting toward some sort of equilibrium, brain-wise. Because my own brain seems to be shrinking.

I lost a Q-tip the other day. Standing in front of the mirror, I dried one ear. but then when I went to dry the other ear, the Q-tip was gone. Only when I had surrendered to the cruel joke of the universe and reached for another Q-tip did I glance in the mirror and notice the first Q-tip where I’d left it.

So, although I am often mad in the sense of anger at the determination of inanimate objects to fuck with me, it turns out I may be going mad in the sense Alice meant. I’ve always said that which does not kill me makes me madder.  Little did I know, and littler still today.

Update on My Quest for Enlightment

“ ‘You may seek it with thimbles — and seek it with care;

 You may hunt it with forks and hope;

You may threaten its life with a railway-share;

 You may charm it with smiles and soap —’ ”

Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

It’s just too cold and gloomy outside. I love the winter weather in So Cal, and I love the rain: almost 4” in my backyard since rains began in mid-December. That’s almost a year’s worth. But it’s not inviting outside, so here I sit in an overheated house – bored with dehydrating fruit marinated with spices and liquor. (Although I should mention that my pears seasoned with crushed anise seeds and infused with violet liquor are awesome.)

So, trying to reach enlightenment seems like a worthwhile diversion.

And my search has been a qualified success. I have had a revelation. The search for enlightenment is what separates man from animals.  Cooped up with me when it’s too cold and rainy for a walk or a romp on the rocks in the front yard, my dog prefers to search for trouble. Or a place to pee, or  for something of questionable edibility on the floor.

I have also realized that my dog’s definition of edible – plastic objects like medicine jar lids, rubber canning gaskets, pencils, dropped silverware – is somewhat broader than hungry humans might consider possible sources of food. Perhaps that’s another thing that separates us from animals. Although I haven’t verified this by checking with Wikipedia, I am confident that humans generally don’t eat jar lids or forks. 

So is that sense of certainty on the basis of no thoughtful study or research another sign that I’m becoming enlightened? Or, in the alternative, is it a sign that I’m more like Todd Aiken than I ever suspected?

But I have learned another thing in my quest for enlightenment, and I will share it with you.  I thought that the term Bodhi Tree referred to a single tree beneath which Gautama Buddha attained supreme enlightenment. The species of his tree is generally understood to be a sacred fig (Ficus religiosa).

But it turns out that Bhodi Tree means Tree of Enlightment and may or may not be a sacred fig. According to Robert Beer, Tibetan Buddhist Symbols there have been Six Universal Buddhas, each of whom “are believed to have attained enlightenment under different trees”.   They are:

Budda              Tree

Vipashyin        Ashoka (Saraca indica)

Shikhin            Pundarika or edible white lotus tree

Vishvabhu       Sala tree (Vatica robusta, Shorea robusta)                

Krakuchandra  Shirisha tree (Acacia sirissa) 

Kanakamuni    Glomerous fig tree, or undumbara (Ficus glomerata)

Kashyapa        Banyan tree (Ficus indicia)

I have an abridged version of the above book by Beer: The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols. Strangely it lists only 5, skipping Shikhin. Either there is something about the “epochs preceding Shakyamuni” which I didn’t bother to read and would explain this; or the abridged version is abridged because it only lists 5 of the 6. From the Handbook, I was left with the impression that Gautama Buddha and his sacred fig was the sixth of the Six Universal Buddhas.

Clearly, I’ve got work to do before I will be ready to sit under whatever tree I select to be my tree of enlightenment. By then, I hope the weather improves.

Animal Fables and Claws of Calamity

“The hand of destiny drew down before the eye of my vision also the curtain of carelessness; and clear-sighted reason, and far-seeing prudence kept me behind the dark screen of ignorance and folly, and thus the whole of us were all at once overtaken with the hand of trouble and the claw of calamity.”

-  Anvar-I-Suhali, or The Lights of Canopus, Being the Persian Version of The Fables of Pilpay; or the book “Lalilah And Damnah”, Chapter III, On the Agreement of Friends and the Advantages of Their Mutually Aiding One Another.

What do you think of when you think of animal fables? Do you think about the tortoise and the hare, and the moral that slow and steady once won the race? An animal fable is a story with a moral conveyed by animals that personify various moral characteristics. Perhaps fables were concocted by teachers to provide moral guidance to students who couldn’t read or write. We don’t need fables these depraved days, and not only because we (allegedly) can read. Fables might have been helpful in the days when we didn’t worry only about what was strictly legal, but also considered moral values like integrity, honesty and compassion. You don’t need Aesop today if you have a lawyer who can interpret tax codes, locate offshore shelters, and crawl through sewers of legal loopholes that serve to enrich hares at the expense of tortoises.

Fables are intended to illustrate such moral lessons as: pride goes before a fall; or how if you’re natural prey, you should be careful before befriending a predator; or how you should never order the meatloaf at a place called Mom’s.  Apart from the fact that most of us don’t know much about the moral characteristics of lions and mice, many traditional animal fables have no moral traction these days. Some fables have been worn into smooth clichés while retaining the animal characters in the underlying story: don’t count your chickens before they hatch; don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Most of the simplistic stories attributed to Aesop include only two characters like an ant and a grasshopper. Possibly, the simple cast of characters was intended to explain the lessons at their most fundamental and un-misunderstand-able level. I have always liked animal fables, and I wondered how I could make animal fables more appealing to contemporary students.

Perhaps if I updated the characters and the settings, the fables would have more of an impact. A professor at the place I once worked has done that here.  For example, check out a contemporary interpretation of the fable ant and the grasshopper. The problem is that it’s no longer an animal fable – it’s a college student fable.

Or, perhaps animal fables have fallen out of favor these days because life is more complicated. Suppose we just need more drama and interest in our stories than old-fashioned Aesop preached? What about catchy names and places? For example, at least Ambrose Bierce’s fables included politicians, and intriguing proper place names like the City of Prosperous Obscurity. But here again, we’ve lost the animals.

So what if we kept the animals and just threw in more plot twists and complexity? The ancient Persian Lights of Canopus is a good source of more elaborate fables, for example the one about  the Crow, and the Mouse, and the Pigeon, and the Tortoise, and the Stag. There's another bonus apart from having a bigger cast. These animal fables include some of the most awesome metaphors ever, and like the example above, they mix more than a bartender in the Fox corporate suite at a Republican Party Convention. Here’s an example: “…the vessel of my life has fallen into a whirlpool, such that the mariner of deliberation is unable to set me free; and the cord of my existence is broken in such wise, that the finger-tip of thought is baffled in attempting to unite it.”  That really resonates with me although I confess I've always had a soft spot for fingertips scratching my brain.

So, then I got to thinking how about fables with more contemporary characters? I wonder what kind of moral can I make out of the fable of the Flash Drive, the Smart Card and how despite the boasts implied in their names they are outsmarted by the Spambot.  Or how about one where a woman marries a corporation? Upon consideration, this would risk offending those who consider valid marriage to be only between a man and a woman, (including between a 12-year-old girl and her rapist – a marriage that many men in Afghanistan consider to be completely reasonable). Besides, the moral of such a fable depresses me because we’ve all been screwed by a corporation at one time or another so technically, we’re already married, and we know how that one plays out. Besides, no animals.

So, what if I created my own animal fable, but make it even more spectacular by using animals whose very existence is questionable? How about a fable about involving a Squonk Hunting a Snark? Or maybe the Snark should hunt the Squonk?  According to Wikipedia (which is always 100% true) a Squonk (aka, Lacrimacorpus dissolvens) comes from Latin words meaning "tear", "body", and "dissolve". A Squonk is hard to catch. “Hunters who have attempted to catch Squonks have found that the creature is capable of evading capture by dissolving completely into a pool of tears and bubbles when cornered” - which I totally get. And only Lewis Carroll knows what a Snark is. All I have to do is figure out what moral I want these characters to illustrate. But then how could I ever top this? It’s a “fun with fables” site that is structures like a “choose your own adventure” story where you can select for the type of animal, the character trait or the moral of the story.

So, for now, I think I’m out of the animal fables business. Besides, I have to master the mixed metaphor first.  

A Lovely Vacation

“This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.
‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, “I wish you could talk!”
“We can talk,” said the Tiger-lily: “when there’s anybody worth talking to.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 1872

The life of a hermit in a hut with a calligraphy pen and some green tea has its charms. I could live high in the pointy Chinese mountains writing haiku and listening to the soft hiss of falling snow. At least for a while. And at least if I had a good wireless connection. I have recently decided however, that life is simply about finding people worth talking to.

Having spent some time with interesting extended family members recently, I realize that I am just another social animal like the rest of youse (sic) guys. I enjoy talking about what we blandly call politics, because these are interesting times and we were in an interesting place. There are many tasty topics that provide food for thought, and discussion, and disagreement. One of my brothers who didn’t make it to NYC last week, once famously refused to agree to disagree – just for the sake of keeping the conversation going. It’s just as well, because his opinions are stupid. I say that, of course, with all respect due to those who don’t happen to share my enlightened and informed opinions. The best sign I saw from an Occupy Wall Street protester was: The worst thing about censorship is XXXXX.

I proved to my satisfaction that I can’t stay up drinking with the youngsters until 3:00 in the morning. I surrendered to the chocolate on my pillow at 1:30. The next day, some of us strolled through Soho and had lunch in an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. The restroom in this place complied with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) as well as my above brother complied with the rules of civil conversation. And by this I mean that the restroom was about the size of the window on your browser, and that my brother is stupid.

So, now I’m back home looking for botanical conversations with my plants. And considering the alternative, that’s a good thing: because either my plants can talk to me, or I’m hearing voices in my head. Given these choices, I’m going outside to say good morning to my morning glories.

Retirement = Good

"I'll tell thee everything I can;
 There's little to relate.

I saw an aged aged man,

A-sitting on a gate.

"Who are you, aged man?' I said.

"and how is it you live?"

And his answer trickled through my head

Like water through a sieve.

He said "I look for butterflies

That sleep among the wheat:

I make them into mutton-pies,

And sell them in the street.

I sell them unto men,' he said,

"Who sail on stormy seas;

And that's the way I get my bread --

A trifle, if you pleae."

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Now, maybe if my job description were the second verse above, I’d aspire to love my work.

Butterflies? Check

Sleeping? Check.

Yummy pie-making? Check.

Ability to let thoughts trickle through the head like water through a sieve? O hell yes, check.

A trifle, if you please.

Caring, Hoping, and Cease Fires

"He thought he saw a Argument
That proved he was the Pope:
He looked again, and found it was
A Bar of Mottled Soap.
'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,
'Extinguishes all hope!'"
Lewis Carroll, A Strange Wild Song

The term “caregiver” has been on my mind lately. When does love fade from complex devotion into simple need? Don’t think of the myriad awful interminable little assaults to caregivers. Don’t think of the burdensome begrudged undignified duties involved in caring. I’ve been thinking of what the lover gives to the loved one. Can the loved one tell the difference between love and need? How do we need care and give care except through love?

Today, I’m wondering why can I devote lavish care to cultivating my garden (in the way Voltaire spoke of Candide, in my blog, and in my yard) while I resent demands to care for the people I live with? One could argue it means I care for the garden more than the people. I protest it’s not that simple. I think it’s a more complicated mixture of resentment at having to provide certain chores, putting up with the passive aggression and ingratitude, my growing desire to stop pretending to play nice, and needing care desperately myself.

I do know however, that I’m finding it harder and harder to muster the resources for caring. My body aches with new and strange pains, and they come more frequently and go more slowly. My spirit is exhausted by trying to steal moments alone to meditate and try to find my way back to the neighborhood of good moods. To good days and pain-free nights. To be myself again.

I think there is a cycle, or perhaps spiral, playing itself out. Good days and bad days. Honest attempts and resentful failures to connect. I’m less able to extend the good days; less able to hurry past the bad days. Our lives are spinning past, and daily we are reminded what we lose despite our best efforts to stay limber, inventive, inquisitive, interested, alive and together.

On good days I replenish reservoir of love for coming droughts, remember the promises we made each other, and do the simple math: there’s more good than bad. Way more. We’re not going anywhere, and we’ve managed to keep each other entertained pretty well over the years. It’s been a blast.

On bad days, I see old age as an unavoidable descent into indignity and dependence. Those days, I just try to remember it’s not a defeat to stop shooting first, no matter who started it. It’s the way we care for the ones we love. It’s also, incidentally, how we all care for each other. So stop shooting.