Sometimes life feels like an uphill road.  It’s a matter of
perspective.  Attitude has a lot to do with it, too.  If I
allow myself to think in those terms, I start finding myself saying
things (to myself) like, “It is so hard to…” or “I’m too tired to…”
or (horror of horrors) “I can’t….”

I still  haven’t got the knack of keeping my attitude sunny and
upbeat all the time, and from where I sit now such a denial of the ups
and downs of reality seems insane.  In the attitude department,
I’m a whole lot better off than I used to be.  There was a time in
my life, about forty or fifty years ago, when those defeatist attitudes
were all I had, besides fantasies.  That’s pathetic, living
between daydreams of happiness that I believed to be impossible and a
perceived reality that was uniformly tough and challenging when it
wasn’t actually more than I felt I could bear.

Little things sometimes get to me.  A while ago, I missed a call
from Greyfox because I was in the bathroom, the computer was connected
to the internet, and CallWave took the message.  Living apart from
my spouse, I rely on such phone calls for whatever day-to-day
interaction there is in our relationship.

Because his cell plan gives him more off-peak minutes than the
“anytime” ones, we do most of our talking at night and on
weekends.  Yesterday, Doug had an online D&D session all day,
and by the time he got offline so that I could get a phone call
through, I was yawning and so was Greyfox.  It was a brief
conversation and I don’t recall anything but the yawns.

We had another conversation this morning when Greyfox called to tell me
that his cell battery was almost dead.  He was going to put it in
the charger last night, but it was inaccessible and he didn’t have the
energy to rearrange his clutter to get to it.  He called to say
that he was going to find that charger and would be incommunicado until
this evening.

Then I walked in and saw the CallWave box showing the number of one of
the pay phones he often uses when he’s in town.  His message was
35 seconds long and the sound of his voice made me kick myself because
there wasn’t really any good reason for the computer to have been left
online while I went to the bathroom.

There wasn’t any good reason to disconnect it, either, really, and
there’s a good chance that the phone’s answering machine would have
taken that same message if I had disconnected.  I’m a fool for
beating myself up for missing out on a little common everyday
pleasure.  Life is full of them, now that I stop and think about
it.  But stupid, self-defeating habits are hard to break.

Even before I missed that call today, I had been thinking about degrees
of difficulty and how the hard times are easier to bear when I don’t
keep telling myself how hard it is.  Enough already!  I have
heard it all before.  I know just how difficult it is sometimes,
to breathe, to move this body from point A to point B, to accomplish a
simple, complex, or strenuous task.  I know, already.

Another thing I know:  it’s all a lot easier when I remember the
attitude secret.  Back when I kept getting in my own way with all
the pathos and pessimism, in some ways I had it a lot easier than I
appreciated.  Now that physical tasks are harder, I can use all
the help I can get, and an optimistic, can-do attitude helps a lot.

A moment ago, Doug stuck his head around the corner and said, “It
should be possible to rent a megaphone somewhere, shouldn’t it?”

Immediately, I got the image of the open cone shape of an old megaphone
like Rudy Vallee sang through and cheerleaders of a past century
utilized to enable their voices to be heard at the back of the
stands.  Realizing that wasn’t what Doug wanted to rent, I shook
off the image and asked, “You mean the electronic bullhorn, don’t you?”

After he acknowledged my surmise, I asked him what use he might have
for a bullhorn.  He said he was thinking about calling, “slogans
from rooftops and introducing some randomness into people’s
lives.”  Just now he wandered over and read over my shoulder,
explaining, “It wouldn’t be anything objectionable;  just
something to make people think.”  Then he laughed and said that to
some people thinking would be objectionable.

Earlier, after he had made that “randomness” remark, I had thought for
a moment before saying, “Confrontational theater… When I was about
your age, I was doing that.  Riding with the bikers, when we got
off the bikes and walked the streets, we were doing confrontational
theater.  We called it ‘freaking the straights,’ or ‘bugging the
citizens.’”

That concept of confrontational theater has been occuring to my mind at intervals ever since icepickphil mentioned it to me in an email in connection with the old sTp
family.  Phil  had found my Xanga through a websearch. 
Sadly, my reference to the revolutionary communes, the “families” of
the ‘sixties and early ‘seventies, such as sTp and the Assholes I met
in Boulder, is one of very few to be found on the web.  It’s a
part of history that deserves to be more widely known.

The idea, on those occasions when the “theater” was premeditated and
not just our spontaneous drug-fueled craziness, was to wake up Joe
Citizen by putting strangeness right in his face where he couldn’t
ignore it.  The Merry Pranksters did it to extremes with a
paisley-painted bus and electric Kool-Aid. 

The grody young biker “Grace” and I did it in Denny’s, traipsing among
the tables in black leather as our cohort headed in a pack for the big
booth in back.  His style was to stop, gain eye contact with a
diner, point to a half-eaten steak or a pristine pork chop, and ask
politely, “Are you going to eat that?” as he picked it up.  I
wouldn’t ask.  I’d just slide by a table and snag a piece of toast
or handful of fries.  If a half-eaten slice of pie tempted me, I’d
snag it and pick up a fork from the next table, sometimes right from
the fingers of the diner there.

The great beauty of these events was their spontaneity.  The first
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test just happened.  Its success engendered
all the rest.  The first time Grace and Gross (yeah, that’s me)
grossed out the breakfast crowd at Denny’s, we were on our way home from
a weekend run and were hungry.  None but the two of us had the
blood-sugar sensitivity that rendered us incapable of waiting for the
waitress to take our orders and bring our food.  Walking through
that restaurant, stoned and starving, he and I picked up a few items
that had been left behind by departed diners.

The stunned looks from other patrons and the approbation of our peers
motivated us not only to repeat the performance, but to embroider on
it, taking it to ever greater heights of chutzpah.  Within a year
or so, when a pack of Hells Angels pulled into a Denny’s parking lot,
the manager would lock the door and call the cops. 

Accustomed to being rousted wherever we went, it was rare for anyone to
be carrying contraband substances or armament.  We’d be milling
around innocently by the door and windows, shading our eyes as we
peered in at the bewildered customers and anxious staff.  One time
the cops compelled a couple of bikers to tear decorative patches from
their clothing because their messages were obscene, but to the best of
my recollection that’s the most severe penalty any of us ever suffered
for our misdemeanors. Eventually, we’d stop at Denny’s for effect, even
if we didn’t want to eat.  Everyone I knew thought that the
entertainment value made it worth the inconvenience.  We’d pile
back on the bikes, roar out of the parking lot, and if we were hungry
we’d pull in at the next available eatery.

Our subculture in that Vietnam war era was as fragmented and disparate
as the mainstream culture then and now. Some hippies were facing down
National Guard troops with flowers, while other kids with the same
clothing and hairstyles were building bombs to blow up the National
Guard armories.   The “official” Hells Angels position was
adamantly anti-drug (except for alcohol), and some Angels I knew were
making weekend runs to Mexico to bring back commercial quantities of
big fat white-cross benzedrine tabs.  But one thing that the
flower children, bikers, speed-freaks and violent revolutionaries had
in common was their theatricality, putting on a show for the bystanding
citizens and the media.

This idea of confrontational theater had been percolating through my
brain for weeks when it caromed off some other memories from that era
and met up with something I’d absorbed from recent events.  
That other stray memory from the late sixties was a chance meeting, in
the course of a drug deal, with some student militants.  It came
up in the course of conversation that they were planning an assault on
the ROTC building on campus.  It went like this:

The discussion was a common one at the time.  Ulrike Meinhof
was a cultural icon to most of those in our subculture who had heard of
her, and just a common criminal, a smart girl gone bad, to most of the
mainstream who had heard of her.  There were more people in both
camps who had never heard of her than you might think.  Terrorism
was something that happened in Europe, Asia and Africa, not here. 
Thus, we could sit around, get stoned, and discuss whether it was worth
taking a few innocent lives to get the attention of the entrenched
power structure and bring about a more egalitarian setup.

Finally, it has occurred to me that terrorism is a form of
confrontational theater.  I thought briefly about calling it the
ultimate form of confrontational theater but, sure enough, if I say
that, some newer and bigger form would come along and prove me wrong.

 
 

This morning as the sun rose I stood with my back to the woodstove
drinking coffee, and watched through the hazy plastic sheeting over the
east window as the warm-colored glow turned from deep red-orange
through brilliant coral to soft peach.  Now it is mostly gray,
with just a hint of pink.  I know that the warmth of that glow was
far away, about 93 million miles, it seems.  The outdoor temp this
morning is about minus four and the indoor temp about fifty thanks to
Doug’s all-night efforts to keep the woodstove full and hot.

When I caught my first glimpse of the color this morning, I thought
about grabbing the camera and rushing out there to catch the light
before it faded.  I looked down at my sheepskin slippers, and over
to the single sno-jog I’ve been able to find, and opted to stay where I
was.  A bit later, as the color not only lasted but intensified, I
felt a twinge of guilt for not hopping to it.

I dismissed that feeling immediately.  I have been hopping to far
too many and too strenuous tasks lately.  The fibromyalgia
self-management course in which I enrolled as a test subject counsels
that we be only as active as we can be without increasing our pain and
fatigue.  It is a hard line to discern until I have already passed
it, and I have been passing it quite consistently lately.  This
self-destructive behavior has to stop.

I’ll do some more poking around in the clutter and try today to
discover where the cats hid my other old sno jog.  I know where
the newer pair is, but they are not appropriate for a quick dash out
the door with the camera.  The old ones are creased, cracked,
stretched-out and loose, with that extra space filled by two pairs of
felt innersoles to insulate the bottoms of my feet.  The new ones
are town shoes, trim and uncreased, and have no room for extra
insulation.

So that’s my plan for today:  find a boot.  Go ahead and laugh, but it is a bigger job than you might think, and I don’t have a lot of available energy to use.

You don’t need to read this.  I need to write it.  If it’s
over your head or beneath your notice, and you’d prefer the sort of
superficial weather reports and personal daily diary posts you’ve been
getting from me lately, just scroll down to the bottom.

---

In response to

yesterday’s political rant, I received a wish for, “…a heart at

peace, and love for the whole world.”  I suppose that indicates

the difficulties of, first, always accurately conveying what I’m

thinking and feeling, and, also, having what I say received and

understood without being filtered and distorted by the consciousnesses

of my readers.  I’m thinking that a perfect accomplishment of both

of those ambitions is probably impossible as long as the medium of

communication is words, but that won’t stop me from trying to get as

close to the ideal as I can.

As I read those words, “a heart at peace, and love for the whole

world,” I paused in reflection for a moment, a little systems check,

and confirmed that indeed I do have a heart at peace, and I  feel universal

unconditional love.  That’s not exactly what the writer wished for

me; the Universe is greater than this one little planetary “world,” but

I think I come close enough.  Should I thank the writer for the

wish, maybe, on the theory that it came true and caused my elevated

state of consciousness?  Hell no, friends!   Although I cannot honestly

say I reached that state without a lot of help, I certainly have been

there long before that wish ever occurred to that writer.

Love, as I have said here many times before, is a troublesome and
questionable word.   It means so many things to various
people that it is, in effect, meaningless unless it is defined for any
given instance.  My love for the beings of this Universe is not
erotic, not the dependent, clinging and expectant “love” of a child for
a parent.  There is no way in which my universal unconditional
love can be expressed as a need or desire.  It didn’t happen to me
– I didn’t just fall into it or have it dropped into my lap.  I
made the choice to love, and I have frequently made the same choice
every time I have been confronted with a personal dilemma or
interpersonal conflict.  When I am in doubt about the correct
course of action, I ask myself, “What would Love do?”

I don’t judge my fellow beings.  When a four-legged animal’s
behavior becomes a bother or a threat to me and mine, I take action to
evict it from my space or eliminate the threat.  I don’t blame
cats for acting feline or dogs for doing what dogs naturally do. 
I don’t go out and track down bears, wolves, moose or other critters to
interfere with them, nor do I interfere with their peaceful
co-existence in my neighborhood and yard.  To some extent, my
behavior toward my fellow domestic primates (the hairless apes) follows
the same rules.

I love them all.  It’s not the airy-fairy, warm and fuzzy,
nurturing, I-want-to-buy-the-world-a-Coke, feeling that I’ve heard some
people express.  It is, at its base, simply a certainty that we
are all One.  I love them as I love myself, and that’s where I run
up against the disapproval of some of my fellow beings.  I accept
myself wholly and unconditionally, and I am scrupulous in continually
checking and correcting my behavior.  In my Universal love for all
my fellows, I am equally scrupulous about freely checking and
correcting their behavior.  Greyfox kids around at Twelve-Step
meetings by saying that I do a perfect Tenth Step:  when he is
wrong, I promptly admit it.

Not that I would ever act to
keep anyone from engaging in a behavior that wasn’t harming me or
mine.  I’m actually fairly laissez faire, even in matters such as
second-hand smoke.  Nobody smokes in my house, but I don’t take
any action to stop people from smoking on their own turf.  I’ll
speak up sometimes, and say that I’m allergic to tobacco, but more
often I am likely to just leave the smoky place.  It depends
entirely on the situation.  If I choose to leave, it’s not in
anger but in self-preservation, but people don’t always perceive it
that way.  If I reveal my allergy, it is not with any expectation
of special treatment, but that is also frequently misunderstood.

Our cultural programming makes it difficult for some people to
understand that I can accept and approve of them unconditionally, while
not accepting or approving of all their behavior.  It is a very
old idea, a “love the sinner, hate the sin,” thing, although I don’t
tend to think in terms of sin and sinners.  I simply draw a
distinction between beings and their behavior.   As I have
stated emphatically many times, notably in my Emotional Self-Control Tool Kit
post, one of my life’s ruling injunctions is, “Do nothing to damage
your self-esteem.”  Unfortunately for the complacency,
self-delusion and denial of some people, my self-esteem demands that I
speak up and say what I see when I see someone behaving in a
destructive, imprudent, fear-driven or foolish manner.  I don’t
resort to ad hominem insults, but too many people take my criticism of
their behavior as if it were a judgement on them.

There is one very important way in which I choose not to treat other
people as I treat myself.  I go easy on everyone but me.  I
demand higher standards of behavior from me that from you.  I
recognize that not everyone has had my advantages, hasn’t encountered
the same excellent teachers I have (perhaps because they were not ready
for them?).  I know that most people are culture-bound and either
willingly or unwillingly misled.  I accept that as a fact, but not
as something that needs to remain so.  I endeavor always to
comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

---

The sun is up and it is beginning
to warm up.  It is up to three degrees above zero Fahrenheit
now.  I overdid yesterday, taping the poly sheeting over the big
front window while Doug was asleep.  That job had been on hold for
a few days because I wanted to have him around for ground support to
save me all the climbing up and down, but each day when he awoke I had
been already too fatigued to tackle the job.

I started it in the morning while I was still fresh, and before it was
half done — plants moved out of the way, book shelves cleared so I
could reach behind them, plastic sheet positioned and “tacked” in place
at corners with strips of duct tape, and the first few long strips of
duct tape applied to seal down the edges — I was saying to myself, “I
should stop.  I need to take a break.”  My stubborn self
wanted to get it done, so I didn’t stop until I couldn’t climb back up
on the bed after one of my descents.

Finally, I did stop for a break and bit by bit got the plants hung back
on their hooks in the half of the window that I’d gotten sealed. 
When Doug awoke yesterday afternoon, he moved a few plants away from
the end I hadn’t done, taped down those edges, and replaced those
plants.  This morning before he went to bed the two of us sealed
the bathroom window and taped a square of poly sheet over the exhaust
fan hole in the ceiling, the single worst heat leak in the whole place,
except for the front door, which the cats can open, but which they
never bother to completely close.  Thanks be to gravity and an
off-plumb trailer that the door does swing back into contact with the
frame after they pass through. 

I was so cold in here yesterday that for a few hours I stretched bungee
cords across the door and restricted feline access.  The bungees
are still hanging there from the time a couple of winters back when I
thought it would be prudent to have some way to deter or at least
discourage a bear from just leaning on the door, swinging it open, and
walking in.  That was right after Doug shot the moose, when there
was still blood and guts on the snow in the yard, and I was wary of
bears.  How the door came to be not only unlockable, but without
even a functioning latch, is one I’ve told before, but I neglected to
record the link to that story.

It seems to me that it gets harder and harder to parody politics, now
that the politicians appear to be creating their own satire.  The
silliest thing about it all is that they have every appearance of being
serious about it.

A couple of years ago, jibjab.com generated half a million (daily?) web
hits and a little flurry of litigation with their “This Land” joke
video, in which Bush called Kerry a liberal sissy and Kerry called Prez
Shrub a right-wing nut job.

This week Kerry, speaking to a group of students, recommended that they
attend to their schooling or get, “stuck in Iraq.”  The White
House’s spin machine jumped on it, called it an insult to our troops,
and demanded an apology.

I think Kerry only compounded the gaffe by saying it was a “botched
joke” on Bush.  Is it a slur on the troops to truthfully suggest
that many of them got there because of their limited career choices
with a less than sterling educational background?  Couldn’t he
have found some statistics to support his statement?  Maybe he is
a sissy.

Is the administration really trying to deny that a substantial portion
of their all-volunteer army accepted that path as an alternative to
incarceration, or for the promise of vocational training that the
recruiters offered? 

Here in this Alaskan valley, I know several young men who went into the
military because they lacked either the tuition or the grades to get
into college and couldn’t find lawful employment around here. 
Some of the ones who didn’t go that route are now operating meth labs,
growing bud, or sitting in jail.

At one end of the military system, we have recruiters cheating, forging
and faking records in order to squeeze in some unqualified recruits,
while the Commander in Chief is up there at the other end boasting
about how “smart” his cannon fodder is.

They are not necessarily stupid because they grasped onto one of the
few promises of economic survival they were offered, but their current
predicament suggests that they might have lacked forethought, or the
foresight they could have gained from a closer study of history and
current events.

Here in my home state, the families of a National Guard unit are making
a lot of noise over the fact that their service men and women have had
their Iraq deployments extended.  I have heard some sound bites
from those very same National Guard troops, back when they were
originally about to be deployed, saying that when they joined the
Guard, they never expected to go to war.

Were they lied to by recruiters?  Did they fail to read the
contract they signed?  Were they listening to what they were
parroting when they were sworn in?  Was their education so
deficient that they never quite caught onto the connection between the
military and war?

I’ll cut them this slack:  they are young.  I’m not.  I
am a lifelong student of history and current events.  I was born
during a war — World War TWO, the next big war that came after the
Great War to End All Wars.  I grew up amid men of my father’s
generation with hooks for hands and psychological quirks that people
called “shell shock” behind their backs.

A major formative event of my youth was the Vietnam “conflict”, an
undeclared war against which my subcultural cohort protested. 
From that war many of my current friends returned minus a few body
parts.  The addictions they acquired in that jungle still plague
them.  Many of them are certified nut jobs, in and out of jail for
their violent outbursts.  Even the ones that don’t have it that
bad carry psychic scars that still cause them nightmares. 

This deplorable debacle in Iraq is to me just another war, caused by
just a different set of madmen, flexing their muscles, trying to prove
their manhood, outdo their fathers, and make their fortunes all at the
same time.  I am offended by Bush’s calling his troops “smart”
while using them this way, putting them in harm’s way.  Just
saying something doesn’t make it so, dammit!