I could learn something here:

Controlling random thoughts

Insight meditation can be practiced anytime, anywhere. “People who do it quickly realize that much of what goes on in their heads involves random thoughts that often have little substance,” Lazar comments. “The goal is not so much to ‘empty’ your head, but to not get caught up in random thoughts that pop into consciousness.”

…but what’s this about “living in seclusion”? Moes.

Think it’s possible to have an ocular fixation? I believe I might have one, and also one with gum. At present, hate to say this, I’m putting away a pack a day. Of gum. Trident Watermelon Twist. It doesn’t taste like watermelon or honeydew melon or cantelope, actually. It tastes like zingy juicy fruit that lasts years longer and tastes tons better. And the pack purchased yesterday with 18 sticks now only has 5. And none have been shared. I could have a problem.

Back to the ocular thing – dripping drops over the contacts is the best relief I never knew existed. Even when contacts don’t bother, drip some drops on them and it just feels excruciatingly better. Quite a lot better in fact. Enough to foster another, ahem, self-medicating behavior…of minor life luxuries. Like eye drops and Vicks inhalers and chap stick and heated seats.

What does ingesting aloe vera gel do to/for you? Really. Should we really worry about how “clean” our colons are?

When do you get books read? I’m really struggling with this; to remedy I just cancelled my newspaper subscription. Do you ever stop and look up words you don’t know?

Why is a serving of tuna so small? It’s only 2 ounces. Is it the protein? Why would the packaging say, “now with improved texture?” ew.

Caught. Must go. More drops, then back to the news releases.

Loved this one, Alex. Wonder how your new minority government is going to play things for you guys up there.

Which is a better place to ski, Big Bear or Mammoth Mountain? Anywhere else? Which has the smallest crowd? Can you tell me anything about them?

I’ll be working in Orange County for a weekend in Feb and want to make a quick drive. Pwease help.

waking up, it’s been too long.  self healthicating; reading them all, the Andrew Weils, the Deepak Chopras, the Nicholas Perricones, the Ozes.  drinking the teas, taking the omega-3s and the antioxidant cocktails.  The dried-out chinese herbs she’s passing to me over the cubicle divider each day.  Perhaps, now that the consequences of decades’ worth of ignorances are bringing themselves to light, perhaps we will achieve the physiology of 35 when we’re 50.   perhaps we’ll finally admit that the running high is finally hitting us as strongly as all the other ones.  and that we’re losing our alcohol tolerance.

sounds like we’re understanding finally.  though we still want our vices.  still want to fight for them but don’t want the consequences of them.  just a hit, just one last small one.

 unless you’re starting that ripple, you’re echoing a ripple already in motion. 

what are the true things?  what with the hedging and the speculation? what are the REAL things?  how will we know when we first see them, when we’ve already stepped in them?  what if we know, we know…but we still want to check?  what if we’ve been wrong.  will we the ability to know the difference and to wade through the rest?

Google this: “she wants revenge”.  then download ”spend the night” and “these things”

we couldn’t help it: he gave me sigur ros and i gave him david sedaris.  things to look forward to: April and May. 

susurration
noun

a whispering sound; a soft murmur

As in: Listening to the steady susurration of the Pacific while channeling Marilyn on the beach in Coronado. 

KO and I went downtown and saw a show last night, a piece that culturally speaking, I’d consider important theater. Not grand production – in fact, no production to speak of save for a leviathan American flag, effectively chosen history-spanning radio music and spontaneous lighting. But choices like these, to stage a show in this way, lays the mantle heavily and entirely on the actors. And the writers who sewed it all together. But if you’re the right kind of mimic, the accurate kind over the exaggerated kind or even the beautiful kind, then the thing is done. The conversation begun, the show, ON. The best actors are the best mimics, and these three guys owned it.

And, they were funny.

It’s thought-provoking work to treat harsh things softly and light things flamboyantly. We’re all, even the immigrants, a nation of bigots…it implied before leading us to chuckle at it, embrace it. Coagulate without requiring the loss of our own structure and physical properties. I don’t know how else you do this thing: be American with people rushing to this country and hating this country and wishing to annihilate it and wishing to assimilate within it. Heart-broken at the power-broking but valuing meritocracy. It’s difficult not to get dogged by all the fighting. It’s complicated; it’s obsessive, hyper-focused. The jerking and heaving juxtaposition, the thick-like-plaid layers upon layers of old-but-strong individualized culture. It’s not slick and aligned like a math problem. It’s dirty sticky sweating American culture.

I really don’t know how it actually is in the Bay Area in Cali, in Dade County in Miami, in NY’s borroughs. I’m read and aware – I’m an adult now – but I’ve never lived there or known the smell and the taste in my mouth so I won’t pretend that “I know” about hundreds of entrenched cultures living and making it right on top of each other. I’ve lived my entirety in bible belt country, got a really good public school education. Grew up on a cul-de-sac with kids and family dogs in every single yard. Had a tree house with a sandbox below it. Rode my bike to elementary school and the neighborhood swimming pool and to the Stop-n-Go for candy and slushies sometimes. My parents are still married. I have a brother and a sister, a familial nucleus. My parents have always been employed. I didn’t have to pay for college or my first car.

I don’t hold that experience up as an ideal or even an ideal for America, but I’ve always known that I had it easy. Now, seeing all the rich displays of others’ culture here makes me wonder about the whities, those of us without any familial remembrance of the country where we originated. What is our culture? We’ve been Americans for so long we don’t remember. Many of us so mixed, we don’t know whether we’re more Irish-descent or American Indian. Am I more Scot or Czech? Celtic? Pagan? Gentile.

My only culture is this country’s. My history, this country’s. Not European. Not British, not Spanish or Swiss. I don’t trumpet it as the best in the world. I just know, amid all the rich worldly cultures, that this is the one that I was born to.

Deep curious sighing.

Er, i meant cubicle…at work. Right the F back in it. See?

Apart from that, I’m mildly suffering from a seriously bad haircut. One that, in spite of the fact that I apply varied types of product to it and spend time running it through a straightening iron each morning, always appears to me most improved in the form of a ponytail. And that’s a bad haircut. I just can’t manage it. It looks like sh!t. The only reason i’m mildly suffering is that I don’t really care that much, just waiting on the debacle to grow long again.

Piled-up work to do. The office analogy to what my house looks like; everything not yet read, all stacked up. Pero es…

Have you seen Ghandi lately? I finished it last night and fell asleep with a pit in my stomach that rivaled the one that Hotel Rwanda left. I honestly cannot believe how well Ben Kingsley played that character. I harbor no hope in the virtue of nations. I need to see Sexy Beast. The House of Sand and Fog, like another Jennifer Connelly movie, left an asteroid crater sized-impression deep inside of me.

KO and i finally did King Kong before it left the big screen, and i highly recommend it as something to experience. To see how they chose to do it. The picture aspect is so crispy clear, it’s the clearest picture i’ve probably ever seen. Plus it’s huge…and the ape is the least of it. Kelly probably wished he could silence my spoutings of “kickass” and “holyshitthatrocked.” Just think of it as the circus but you got Cirque du Soleil instead. Plus, having watched a fantastic handful of 30’s-era films this year, I appreciated the style of easy storylines and depth-free characters in exchange for GLAMOUR and ACTION and silent longing. (not all the time, mind you, just when it’s stylistically interesting)

Kicked it with The Char last weekend in the huge and dusty house that is her new home. And for all these years I never knew that she wasn’t a beach girl. That she hadn’t grown up on the Texas coast as i had. Ridiculous sounding, I honestly know better, it’s just amazing the things we subconsciously project from our experiences to those of the people we know well. Old hat to me was squeal-inducing to her. Or perhaps i just get bored too easily now. And need those with refreshing perspectives to slap me with a cold-oceaned hand or sit me down, close my eyes, and remind me to breathe.

I honestly have to say that I had a wonderful holiday season. It was a good season; all of it, now that the holiday drunk has left me and I can look back with sober eyes. Big, huge understandings happened and a sound bit of reckoning too. Understatement, the lot of them.

Plus, the wide warm spotlight of generosity directed its soul glow right on me. And I stood bright and blinking like Sally Fields in the light for those short minutes. For a series of days, it just got better and better. And the beam even wider so I could walk around in it and stoop and look down at its edges a bit. So thoughtful, so generous, so many people, this time. All of them, surprises.

And I loved every single gesture this year. Melissa brought all kinds of awesome jewelry from Dubai, and I’m talking LOTS. One necklace looks like layers and layers of shark’s teeth (but its not), and I have no idea how one would endeavor to wear this, but I’ll not weaken to the challenge. Char drove twice to see me. And thinking about it now, I’m realizing how much it meant to me. And how I unconsciously filed it into my memory as one of the superlatives. One of the best. She was on her way home to her parents and I should have long past been on the road to mine, but she drove up in the Xbox and we left for ginger-carrot soup on a picnic table at Kraftsmen Baking. We had one of those staring-in-the-eye kind of talks, a mix of State of the Union and Just What Exactly Are You Thinking? sort of meetings. Then on her way home, even though Houston’s not on the way, she came back by the empty house and left a treasure chest on my back door step.

I was gifted really interesting chocolate that Jay and I devoured, amid champagne, on the floor of his living room in front of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  Which, by the way, is a very good movie.  Perfectly executed.  Lacking nothing.  Like chocolate and champagne.

Kelly and I put ourselves through the ringer and taught ourselves a few year’s worth of life’s lessons in the course of one miserable week, which I tried to remedy by ignoring every call, email and work necessity and staying the hell in bed. We ushered in 2006 like we never will again – and now that it’s the 11th of January, I might be able to safely say that we’re finally recovered.  From what?  Quite the good question…with many answers.  Some of them still revealing themselves to me. 

I was lucky this year, and I’m straight up admitting it.  I’ve long outgrown the entitlement perception i left college with, so nothing of my luck i honestly expected.  It just happened, cosmically perhaps, because people happen to care about me…and i won’t get into whether or not i feel that’s deserved,…   But they do, and they showed it through huge displays of personal and emotional generosity, which is what i appreciate the most.  The Gesture; my favorite subtlety.

So thank you, all.  Because i quite appreciate it.