boost the junk in your trunk

last week, i had the pleasure of momentarily being a man in the way most of us contemporary males miss, but could hardly admit in fluffy-white, over-processed company---both personal and commercial. to wit[less]: with the help of my father's car club which provided a lift, tools and some eager manpower, i got to replace the faulty air suspension of my 1990 lincoln town car with a relatively cheap but effective spring and shock conversion kit! see it here on the strutmasters site.

being a 'man'? yes. getting dirty and not caring. cursing [ditto]. skinning a knuckle or two [used to be an animal hide]. sometimes joyously employing brute force to solve a problem before rational detachment could even stir its toussled, [fluffy-white, over-processed] head. having a physical problem to solve in the 'real' physical world----not one that is mediated by the now ubiquitous over-feminization with its overemphasis on feelings, process and process of process...and process of process of process, etc. a typical joke about lesbians writ large in giant bubble letters across the face of our schools and workplaces.

by no means do i sentimentalize manual labor, having done many years of it [still am] myself. however, my feelings about satisfying work with one's [my] hands are persistent. these feelings could not be put any better than matthew crawford's 'shopclass as soulcraft'! these feelings inform my decision to train as a stringed instrument repair tech after 10 years as a massage therapist-----manual labor's most literal epitome! [though one surrounded by a stubborn crust of feminization and downright fear of men and 'maleness', from which i hereby declare my personal secession]

what does the continued virtualization and soft-skill-ification of the world hold for maleness? prognosis: not good. patient lost interest in the said world long ago. fails to see relevance of self to world and world to self.

for femaleness? finally time for them to be understood? and heard? to play in a cooperative way? and touched appropriately [as only someone with similar anatomy and psyche can]? finally free from oppression? not if my experiences of female bosses with female employees is any indication!!! no, ma'am!!

moribund maleness not only effects females who want to breed and/or have a relationship with a man...but also due to the fact that women have a male aspect to their psyches...well....had...past tense...we're in this together, tethered to each other for better or worse; till divorce do us part...and this separation will be the worst one yet!

counting people/celebrities are like teeth

over-cautiously, i've been avoiding saying anything about my pretty decent stretch of timely employment with the u.s. census bureau this spring/summer. as of now, i'm wrapping up my second, and most likely final, operation. yes, in this sclerotic economy i might attract envy and/or contempt making $18.22/hr...neither of which i want----anyway, i think that my tree falling in the forest, this blog, hasn't made a sound....so fall away, proverbial tree!

there is no easy algorithmic way of summing up my checkered experiences with the people of northern new jersey: for as many who implicitly or explicitly have wanted me to turn around and return from whence i came [putting it too diplomatically] there have been just as many who seem genuinely at ease with a government employee asking for some basic information and recording it on a form.

any conflicts without as well as within have mostly arisen from the census procedure itself, which, as far as i can tell, is an emergent, chaotic, mysterious process that no one person has a grasp of----throw a swarm of people at a particular problem until it goes away. i sympathize with residents who are utterly fatigued with visits by the likes of me, with my badge and clipboard. they ask, 'you again? how many times are you going to come back?'...an unanswerable question. to say that the census process is redundant is like deja vu all over again and again!

i think the greater problem touched upon in the above paragraph is the pre-existing burnout of many people in this geographical area: there is no more room for much after everyday life extracts its considerable tax. add a ladle-full of contempt for the perceived 'invasiveness' of the current administration [despite the fact that the same ol' census would've happened the same ol' way even if mccain won and has happened for the past 220 years, regardless of the administration] and you get a potentially volatile cocktail waiting for you when you ring a random doorbell.

could thatcher's [and by association, reagan's] 'there is no such thing as society' maxim be coming home to roost? i find the prospect of dissolving the concept of society in favor of an atomized hyper-individualism an amazing, devastating step backwards based on the fallacy that we can do and have done everything ourselves, without assistance from any outside agency---the myth of the self-made person. how ironic that society and its fruits: roads, plumbing, sanitation, medicine, schooling, inherited knowledge, currency [to name a few] have spoiled us into thinking that we're an island by granting us time free from the struggle to satisfy basic needs. how we ignore the hand that feeds us...thankless little bastards!

we're so enchanted by the self-made myth, that its aberration, its shadow casts itself across most of our psyches: celebrity worship, which is a symptom of our profound disconnect with our selves and each other. let's attempt a courageous experiment:

let's ignore celebrities and see if they go away....

this time, left-handed

there has been an amazing symmetry in my life, especially the past five years. i've had the opportunity to revisit issues, people, and places that have been waiting for me during that time---very well-preserved, indeed...a time capsule...an open book with open-ended chapters, to which i now get the chance to write the conclusions and codas...hopefully with a steadier, more mature and robust hand!

this second time around, i'm having to live left-handedly, actually and metaphorically---more true to my real nature. i'm even [re]learning how to play the framedrum lefty...i'm pursuing a relationship...left-handedly! a new career: ditto! if i attempt to re-learn guitar...ditto, ditto...

i've heard it said, perhaps in an unfounded, anectdotal way, that naturally left-handed children develop problems, including stuttering, when using their right hand dominantly [by force or by choice], all of which clear up when left-dominance is reestablished. i'm finding myself clearing up my metaphorical stutterings at 39 yrs. old. one could call my focal dystonia a stutter of movement...

luckily i was never forced by my parents or the church! in fact, the gross, inherited persecution of left-handed people by the catholic church and the society based on it is due to a misunderstanding of the latin word for 'left', which is 'sinister'. this was actually explained to me by my brilliant high school latin teacher: our english word 'sinister' does have the roots of its meaning in that same latin word, but for reasons of fashion rather than hand-dominance. since the majority of people are right-dominant and have been, even in roman times, the person wearing a toga needed to have his/her right hand free for acting in the world; so, the other hand [left] was needed to hold up the other end of the sheet. the left arm extended out front with the sheet draped over it created a pocket or 'sinus' in which things could be carried innocently or concealed sinisterly...

 notice that hidden----sinister---left hand!

words, words, words....from now on my words will be left-handed...as is this blog...

dan's typical duck and weave?

so...the kitten is gone----off to a hopefully good home with a local teacher/collector of various canines and felines.

so...i wonder about a moot point for myself, an intellectual notion frozen out of life's organic flow: should i have kept it? was my not keeping it a sensible, pragmatic move or a typical, selfish duck and weave of responsibility?

however, i'm starting to know for myself that responsibility=life...and that i want to embrace life rather than evade it. i want to anchor myself in. not only the tangible, but the sticky, living networks which comprise the stuff of life, without which, i'm concluding, we are withered appendages, unfed, unwatered, atrophied----deprived of aqua vitae.

involvement, in a word....involvement in something at least larger than one's self...i wonder about what it is within me and my society that makes this process so elusive...

sudden bout of interspecies mothering cont'd

somehow the universe is making me feel universal motherhood [is this an experience i need?]: sudden responsibility for a new life and the resultant worry, joy and instant identity of it all----as well as sleep deprivation.

this morning at 3:30 am i was jolted awake by sudden, extreme white noise...or white water to be more exact. half asleep, i assumed i was dreaming it, but i wasn't! the water filter hooked into the main pipe cracked; so, all the considerable pressure was unleashed against the wall, furiosly bouncing against the hollow door of the closet containing the pipes----all of which was 2 ft away from my sleepy head! without that door i most likely would've drowned, inhaling a river of water in my sleep. my room in the basement is out of order---under water---for the second time in 3 months...hint, hint?

 for the third night in a row, my baby kitten slept in the window well. lifting him out, i am mother! this morning was no different...i suppose i keep expecting his real feline mother to take him back....i suppose he thinks the same thing....he was never so happy as when i appeared with actual feline milk [in a can from the pet store]. his whole demeanor changed after ingesting it---frisky and energetic! i tried to capture the friskiness in this series of photos...

someone is supposed to take him on monday---i wonder how i'll [we'll both] feel about that after all of this bonding?

mammalian mother surrogate

at first, i thought i was hallucinating auditorially, but yes, it was true----a slight, fearful meow was indeed peeping from the side of my house. a shivering kitten stared up at me with whatever nascent eyesight it could muster at so young an age...a week or two at the most...from the basement window well. scared, dependent and hungry...seems like the way we all enter the world...an inborn spur to reach out into the world....imagine if we didn't have to...weren't forced to!

it took about 5 minutes for the kitten to warm to me. i was no feline mother, certainly...and apologized for my built-in shortcomings. but i then submitted to the situation and asked the great Whatever, 'what the hell does one do in this situation?' to my surprise, out of the nothingness, i received a silent reply, 'be its mother...' i put my head down, offering some snuggle fur. i asked my dad for a dish of milk. i imitated the kitten's peeping. that really won him over! i must have said just the right thing in cat-speak---a bit of home for the weary tourist.  he searched for the nipple on my perplexingly non-feline physiognomy...

yeow! i immedaitely empathized with breast feeding mothers throughout mammalian history as he sank his needle teeth into my fingertip! see illustration above.

the year that was still is

another birthday comes and goes....whizzzzzzzzzzzz.......

on the day itself, i worked...it rained....some calls from those who still remember and care----a rarefied bunch whose preciousness increases in inverse proportion to their number...

the best gift, i think, for my 39th year, has been the realization that i don't have to [and cannot, at any rate] change my parents in order for me to be an independent, autonomous being...this message courtesy of my friend james...my grandmother gave me underwear...

i feel love burgeoning and flowing through me in an inner, subterranean way...wanted to record it here, since throughout my life i've experienced love, mostly not as an attachment to an object [though that's certainly happened] but rather as a state of mind/being that pre-exists the 'beloved' and is catalyzed by them and projected outwards towards them. let's see what time and space have in store...though sooner or later, odds are that love will happen, no?

my 'reverse walden' experiment [venturing back home rather than away and alone] is bearing fruit----i'm very glad to be living with my family and am trying to recapture the groundedness, honor, respect and love [filial piety] that gets lost in our culture which places 'individuality' and striking-out-on-one's-own above all else----i have done that, however and deem it overrated. i'm interested in reclaiming what gets trampled in that mad rush to ones self. right now i feel that it is deep, ancient and quite quiet about itself...it whispers hidden in plain sight...

currently on page 510 of the exceptional 'john adams' book by david mccollough. interesting to note that our country was born of nasty partisan politics and press in lockstep with each other...and much of what adams wrote at the time could be equally applied to today without modification. i suppose that this is the crux of the entire enterprise of writing history----a cyclical saga of common life with our ancestors...an aspect of the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same of time...

note to someone: write a book with exactly this premise---finding historical parallels for now, almost proving its not-newness...an 'anatomy of melancholy' for history....anatomy of history...could one person ever do this?