My Favorite Clean Joke

What do you call an agnostic, insomniac with dislexia?

A person that lays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.

Driving Through Nebraska, Memorial Day Weekend, 1982

I have a growing ache in the back of my head
being fed by the car bouncing on this rough road,
the sound of the rain pounding on the roof,
the windshield wipers’ flip flop flip flop
never in time with Muddy Waters
and never fast enough to clear the glass.

Or is it my eyes that are soaked and bleary
from hours of that broken yellow line
forever flashing past me past me past me
not quite in sink with Robert Johnson’s
cut time tempo or the regular rhythm of the tires
thumping over expansion cracks?

Night or day it remains the same gray
Nebraska sky falling like static on the hood
as I speed on with a notion in my head
that I should pull off or turn around
or let the rain, windshield and pavement take me to a quiet place
where there is no weather or rhythms or blues.

I can hear Chicago behind me laughing a great belly laugh
at the white boy playing blues in south side clubs
that have pigs’ feet pickled in jars
next to bottles of Tabasco sauce. Polite applause
and the slurping of hog flesh stained pink and hot
are my last memories of that blues scene.

But before every radio station turned to country
and I turned them off, I ventured into this storm
rolling over the midwest. The finger of God
extends over the heartland, beckoning home
the faithful or evil or whoever is fool enough
to pull down his pants and wave his genitals in the wind.

A Crappy Day

It’s been one of those days. Tired and cranky, I went to work, put my best foot forward, got through the day, and tired and cranky I went home. Now I’m sitting here on my lazy butt typing useless words into my blog. What a life.

I’m ready for summer. I’m ready to spend my weekends in the woods, standing in the river and whipping my fly around until it gently lights on the water were a trout, either cutthroat or rainbow, rises to the occasion and pulls it under. He’ll give me a good fight, and without laying a hand on him, I’ll flick the hook from his mouth. He’ll be a little worse for the wear, but much wiser for it.

Or maybe I’ll go to the beach and fly my kites. I’ll float my long dragon kite up to mark my territory, unfurl my wind socks into the breeze and fire my stunt kite up to twirl and dodge back and forth in the wind. And I’ll lay back in the shade of my car and nap, my little buddy by my side.

Or maybe I’ll spend the day in Seattle, playing my guitar and singing in the market where the aroma of fresh vegetables, flowers, and the fare from open-air restaurants is thick and sweet in the air. I’ll peruse shops that smell of nag chompa, where bells ring gently and the music is exotic and calming. I’ll walk the streets as the shadows grow long and the night comes alive with all sorts of strange and wonderful sites.

Hmph. Seems like I’m always waiting to do something else.

Orion's Death

It happened again last night;
walking the dog,
wondering how he thinks without words,
Orion’s sword dangling in the sky--
that middle one’s a million times a million.

Then his sword bent,
his body flew apart,
stars shot in every direction
while my watch rusted away
and the fading dog star howled one last time.

It did not end,
it went on without me--beyond words.

Sharp, noiseless slaps and then gone,
leaving no frame of reference,
only empty pain.

I would dig my eyes out with my fingers
to gain such ignorance.

The Writer's Life

Scibble scribble scribble
Scratch sigh erase scribble
Stop think scratch
Crossout cuss crumple
Sigh
Think think think
Wander ponder think
Laugh smile nod
Scribble scribble scribble
Scratch scribble scratch
Pause think smile
Scribble scribble scratch scribble
Read frown smile
sigh
Scribble scribble
Scratch
Scribble scratch

Preying on Youth, Online and Off

So I just saw this story on KOMO about a website called myspace.com. The gist of the thing was how teenagers post personal material about themselves on the web. Of course this attracts pedophiles that prey on these kids, often with tragic results. Teenagers, being teenagers, hold the mistaken assumption that they are somehow invulnerable and could never fall victim to such predators. Kids do not understand the concept of mortality.

This is exactly why they make easy prey for the military. Just as it is illegal for pedophiles to cruise the high school looking for victims, it should also be illegal for military recruiters to troll our educational institutions for their fodder. After all, the pedophile and the recruiter both count on youth’s delusion of invulnerability to get what they want. Kids do not understand the reality of coming home without all of their parts or in a body bag, and it is that sense of immortality that the military exploits. But somehow this exploitation, which endangers the lives of young people, is acceptable.

We all want our children safe from predators. I simply think that we need to expand the definition of predator.

So I'm sitting here...

...wondering what I should write about. The Olympics, Cheney shooting people, arctic blasts, the war. So much fucked up stuff, so little time.

So I was listening to the radio, NPR, and they were talking about the Abu Graid (SP?) prison scandal re-emerging in light of all the protests concerning the Mohammad cartoons. The commentary included a statement about folks in the Arab world having a misperception about how we here in the west view them and their culture.

Misperception. My thought is that there is no such thing as a misperception. There is only perception, there is nothing mis about it.

A person perceives what he or she perceives. Just because it is not what we think the person should perceive does not invalidate the perception. We may not want someone to perceive us in one way or another and we may try to change that perception, perhaps successfully, but perception falls under the category of relative truth. All perception is valid at the time that the perception comes into being. Circumstances may change, which may alter perception, but perception is a moment by moment thing that is in constant flux.

In short, perception is created by the one doing the perceiving, not the person or thing being perceived. And those perceptions are influenced entirely by past experience and conditioning. In fact, I will go out on a limb here and say that a person has absolutely no control on how they are perceived. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the beholded.

A person's perception comes from within. All perceptions are colored by past experiences which are also subject to perceptions tainted by prior events and their accompanying perceptions... And so on, forever.

One implication to this view is the notion that all the qualities that we see in others are actually qualities within ourselves. Whether we see a person as caring or indifferent, cruel or compassionate, good or evil, those are perceptions that we project onto them. Further, the greater capacity that we have within ourselves for compassion, the more compassion we will perceive in others. Therefore if you want to live in a kinder more compassionate world, become kind and compassionate and your perception of the world will change in that direction. And as others view you in this light, it may draw the kindness and compassion from within them.

We can change the world, if we start with ourselves.