#uncoffeed...

Question Everything.  ...then find resolution. And question again. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away,  someone taught me the Scientific Method and I believed. It just totally makes sense and can apply to everything.  But somewhere along the way, many people just stopped doing it.  Maybe they didn't believe, or believed someone or something else.  Or maybe nobody ever taught them the Scientific Method.   Replicate, People. Every Day.

I believe everyone does the best they can, at any given moment, with what they have to work with right then. I also believe for this very reason that you can't weigh other people's struggles for them. It's been a long and painful journey for me to believe these tenets enough to voice them and share in hopes that others can live a little better. I was surprised to be contacted by PCHS Class of 1983, and I can't say the contact was welcome. I didn't even graduate. On a counselor's advice I dropped out with the intention of earning a GED and proceeding to college, where my learning style would be better served. For reasons that are none of your business, that isn't what happened. When I read the email sent by the Reunion Planning Committee, I responded with anger.  I was bullied from middle school until the time I chose to stop showing up at PCHS in 1983, right before the finish line. I felt my former classmates were setting me up with this invitation,

I've finally answered my question: I know what I want.  I want to stop.  I want to stop fighting. I want to stop losing - people and in general - I want to stop dying before my time.  I want to stop being confused. I want to flow like a spring from the earth and help everything around me to grow and bloom, to move with Grace toward the completion of life-cycle, like a catalyst. I want to decay at the right moment, and I want to savor it. Annandale is, for now, a safe place to stop.  I will practice stopping. The universe is cyclical. I want to occupy my niche, curled up comfortably, at peace.

June 17 is the birthday of Maurits Cornelius Escher. You know his work; if you didn't know his name before, now you do. You're welcome. I've told you before about my awesome book club - we're reading Gödel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter for over a year now. It's a pretty dense book. The scheduled meeting was June 16, the day before Escher's birthday, so I thought we needed a birthday cake. Möbius Cupcakes?  Möbius Chicken Strips! And then I remembered reading how a bagel can be cut so that the two halves are linked. ( You, too, can make a Mathematically Correct Breakfast. ) I hied me to the dollar store, looking for plastic ants who could march along my cake like the famous Escher etching of ants on a möbius band. No ants, but I did find alligators, which relate to a different Escher work. I bought a bundt-style cake at the grocery and attempted to cut it möbius-style like the bagels. My plan was to cut, and then f

I've gone around the block and come to an undeniable truth: public opinion matters.  What your friends think about you, your life, your mate, should be noted. What you do with this information is not so cut-and-dried  (that's a farming term, if you didn't  know.)  Plan on continuing the discussion. Public opinion matters because our American society is a complex amalgam , no matter how badly certain people don't want to see it that way.  You can use the metaphor macadam if the other reminds you of uncomfortable dental visits, but I sort of like the idea that there's an element blended into the mix which is unhealthy, like mercury.  Macadam may be more accurate in describing America, as it's a collection of disparate objects which have settled and compressed into one collective substance which is comprised of individuals but becomes another entity in toto.   Y tú también. And that's my point here:  Public opinion of you helps you determine where you

What did Robert Louis Stevenson write? my name (only for about .36 of a second, but it was awkward) the layout of hotels around Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, CA the names of clouds meaning of ancillary  Chief Seattle (looked it up but promptly forgot again) what a catbird looks like where I put my owl-shaped rock how to give a fuck about my future (this one was not resolvable by internet)

Today is the birthday of one of my soulmates.  I say it like that because I never think there's only one, but this one I had the good fortune to meet. We shared 12 years, a home, and many adventures. He was a father to my baby girl twice - first when he took us as family, and then later when she ran away from me as a teenager.  In 1995, he was diagnosed with a slow-growing Astrocytoma . He died in 2002, after we'd broken up 4 times by phone. He was living with another of his soulmates by then - I make assumptions, but I'm probably right, because even I knew she was the first girl he ever had a crush on.  I remember he used to tell me his mother thought she should get a gift on his birthday, for having given birth to him.  He also believed that she was a 15-year old virgin when he was conceived, and his parents were responsible and used a condom in 1954, and that obviously the condom broke because he was born. I only laughed at him once when he told this story; you ca

Progress as a concept can be a coping mechanism for depression. It seems healthy, but it might not be. I find myself obsessively checking blog stats, trying to figure out where I can self-promote, trying to figure out what else I can sell.  I tell myself these are all means to my end-goal of Getting Out of Here. Hustle, right? Hustle needs direction, and direction does not come naturally to me. I naturally spin.  I’ve sat myself down and we’ve talked about GtFOH (it looks better with the proper acronym) to see if GtFOH is my short-term goal - I don't feel that Annandale is the place I want to die . If GtFOH is the process, what’s the destination? When will we know we’ve achieved the goal, myself asked me. My honest answer is I don’t know. I like to travel, I like to feel things for myself, and I do everything for the story. Stories are better with moving.  Also: 1.        I like walls and utilities. I know what to do without them, but I like them. 2.