Buddhism.

Could be I'm built for Buddhism.

Long time ago, I found I had to become process-oriented, not goal-oriented, this for my own mental health. I have zero control over what happens to or with the things I make; all that's in my control - and not even entirely at that - is the making. There's a peace to that.

Orders, authority, I always had difficulty with those. One time, I was talking with an old friend who was, in a teasing manner, trying to convert me to anarcho-syndicalism, or at least decentralized socialism. Out of my mouth, from somewhere deep in my being, came, "I'd commit to anarchism, but there are too many rules."

Then I'm filled with this boundless gratitude, but have no way to express it, or rather, no one to express it to. Been looking for a way to pray for a long time.

A trick.

If you're having trouble writing something, write about how you're having trouble writing something, and be as honest as possible.  Today, I have nothing to say, nothing, yet look at all these words already.

I'm zonked, can't say why.  Could be the new power doses of certain medications, could be I'm not zonked, but rather intensely focused as a result of meditation, could be lack of sleep. Tough time sleeping last night for some reason, I'll bet that's it.  We'll see how I am tomorrow.

My neighbor and I had coffee about an hour ago.  I told her what I'm telling you.  She said I seemed lucid and alert, able to make rational arguments and such.  I felt a little disengaged.  I'm just going to let that go now.  She's a real pal, my neighbor.

Seiza bench.

Nobody fell for my ruse, I see.  Good on you.  Needless to say, what I was doing there was trying to get someone to corroborate my math.

My math says A=113 degrees, B=77 degrees, A to B equals 6.65".  It's a little imprecise, but I didn't need precision, angle-wise, anyway.  I built a seiza bench using those numbers; what you see there, in the diagram, is a leg, two legs, really.

I don't know if I mentioned this: I'm meditating again.  As I'm not nearly as flexible as I used to be, I couldn't get into even half-lotus without discomfort. Then, reading around, I come across this story about a guy who blew his knee to crud attempting half-lotus.  Just attempting.  So, I decided seiza was probably the way to go.

It's working well, this seiza bench.  The way I figure it, I'll gradually grow accustomed to the sharp angles of my knees, and possibly one day remove the bench altogether.

Commune with Pythagoras.

Gimme angles A and B.  Show your work.  Extra credit: gimme the length of the line next to A and B in inches.

Evidently.

Why is it, do you suppose, I keep using the word 'evidently'?  I have a lot of other words and phrases like it at my disposal, but I keep coming back to that one.  I'm issuing a moratorium on my use of adverbs until this mystery is solved.

The Log Cabin.

I live in a capital city, in the U.S., in a small house that, inside, looks just like what you'd expect from a 19th century mountain cabin.  It came this way; I had nothing to do with the interior.  Nevertheless, I've tried to enhance the remote feeling of the place: an old fishing creel hung from the wall here, a carved wood lamp there, I've even got a small tree trunk with a hatchet in it by the wood-burning stove (the hatchet isn't solely for show, I use it to make stage two kindling from logs).

Imagine my joy upon being presented with a mounted deer head for the log cabin.  I'm told, just yesterday, I've earned a reputation around the neighborhood, not for being woodsy, but for being affable and helpful.  Affable, I'm okay with; helpful, nobody was supposed to know, I mean, beyond the people I've helped and me.  That's just what you do, you know, you help where it's needed, there should be nothing remarkable about that.  It bums me out a little to know it is remarkable.

I don't see any need to discuss my evidently noted deeds, except one, because the one led to the deer head.  An older woman who lives across the alley from me - in the city, front door faces the street, back door faces a gate to the alley - got out of the hospital, on a walker.  Man, did I admire her efforts to move things from her car to her home, but, of course, the instant I saw this, I asked if I could help.  She took me up on it, and without going into detail, I helped, because that's just what you do.  Nothing could be more important right then, not even a wedding or a funeral.  Maybe a sucking chest wound or other debilitating condition, that would excuse you.

Yesterday, I walked by the garages attached to her house.  One garage was open, and I heard rummaging as I approached.  A man's voice called my name - this stranger knows my name, incredible - from inside the garage as I passed.  We greeted each other, talked for awhile, he filled me in on how he knew of me, and so on.  I complimented the deer head he had in his garage.  He just gave it to me, despite my protests.  We wished each other well and parted.

Dr. Pepper.

Evidently, I am perceived by at least twelve people as this mountain man in a recent Dr. Pepper ad campaign.  I know twelve because that's how many emails I have in my inbox containing a YouTube link to some version of that ad.  Looks like there are four variants.

Bowie.

David Bowie is somewhere between 67 and 68, and he just released what could be his best work. Bold statement, too bold: we'll emend it to "in the top five of his best albums".  You can probably tell from the fact I use the word "album" that I'm old; then I'm rating Bowie albums, so I've gotta be, like, ancient.

My favorite Bowie thing - I don't figure it in to any lists - is 'Low', the Philip Glass symphony.  Brian Eno's in there too.  Needless to say, you can't go wrong picking that up.

Ups to the YouTube, they've posted a, what would we call it, it's a short film around 'The Stars (are Out Tonight)'.  It's not the best track, it's not the worst, but if you're interested, it serves as an extended sneak preview of what you get.

Age, I'm convinced, is good.

Safe.

Sometimes, I'm a little slow.

Let's preface this with some silliness: I have a crush on a woman, and I can never say that to her.  It's The Sorrows of Young Werther, but comic, hilarious really, and I'm old.

So we're talking over a couple of beers, and it turns out...how much detail do I give...she was in an industry that had a tremendous negative effect on the US economy.  She resigned in disgust just before that industry did that thing to the US economy.

I'd studied this negative effect, what led to it, the events, the repercussions, had it totally down, and had a variety of ready solutions.  For some reason, though, I didn't have the fast access to the information pool I usually do, so I just sat there listening, and feeling dumb, contributing nothing.

Could be a number of things caused that, right?  Crush shyness (which I thought I overcame when I was a teenager), fatigue, could be anything.  But, man, I felt dumb.  Frustrated too.

Happens.

After this scene, I got to thinking, if you practice the virtues - honesty, integrity, compassion - you're not going to go very far in this world.  That's a shame.

Tactic.

If you've heard this before, I hope you'll pardon my repeating it.

I don't know if he still does this, but Don DeLillo, novelist of note, types a paragraph (on a typewriter), then yanks the page to do revisions by hand.  It's not clear if he writes several paragraphs on several pieces of paper, yanking each as he goes, then revises, or if he yanks each paragraph, revises, then moves to the next paragraph.

You can do this electronically now (not passing judgment, of course, but I don't like the idea of trees dying for my scrawlings) with your writing machine, a tablet, and a Dropbox or like account.  The expensive parts are your writing machine and tablet; the Dropbox account is free up to a certain amount of storage (2G, I think), a stylus costs around $15 US, and most handwriting apps are free.

(I actually made a stylus before I broke down and bought one; you may want to try a homemade stylus before you commit.  Sharpen a dowel, and cloak it with an electrostatic bag.  It's good enough.)

Pretty sure you can figure things out from here.

The Walkin' Hypothetico-Deductive Method Blues

Remember growing up how you learned The Scientific Method?  How it was beautiful because even if the hypothesis was proven wrong in the lab, you still gained positive knowledge?  That's wrong, so, we know that's wrong, and can proceed from there.  Might be the converse is true, might be something else altogether, but we know that hypothesis is wrong.

Anymore, The Scientific Method goes by 'The Hypothetico-Deductive Method'.  It's an accurate description, but a daunting one.  Regular people like you and me might be deterred from studying something, much less engaging in, something called that.  Exclusive jargonization.  J'accuse.

Furthermore, it's not pretty, etymologically speaking: it's an ugly mishmash of Greek and Latin.  So, I'm not going to implementing The Hypothetico-Deductive Method; until there's something more pleasing to the ear, I'll be sticking to The Scientific Method.

Stubbornly, hot water remains nice.

Oops, I gendered that.  Let me revise an earlier implication: if a woman spongebathed in the woods, I'd frown on it in exactly the same way I frown on this friend of mine.  I'll also be using the adjective 'unwoodspersonly' from here forward.

A week ago Friday, at 5:30 AM, the hot water heater in my home exploded, rousting me.  Generally, I strive to undertake everything with discipline: I move cautiously, deliberately, mindfully, thoughtfully, precisely and so on.  When I'm brought to consciousness by an explosion, though, I'm evidently not able to summon discipline.  I didn't think to put on rubber-soled shoes or hit the breaker before investigating.

That's the weird thing, to me: I would think, faced with what I was faced with, some deep species-memory would've caused me at least a little apprehension.  Dark.  Unfamiliar noise.  Get the flint spear, proceed carefully.

Nope, just waded in, barefoot, mostly naked.  Fortunately, I was thrown back a few feet, otherwise I would've been unconscious in an electrified puddle.  I don't remember recovering very well: the breaker was tripped, but I don't know if I did it, or if the surge did it.  For some reason, I'd put on clothes, too, only to get them soaked as I searched for the water supply valve to shut it off.

So, and needless to say, I was without hot water for a time.  That I don't mind, of course, but I live in a city, so some degree of hygiene is my responsibility to everyone who lives in the city with me.  Spongebathing in a city is fine, in my opinion.

Hot water is still nice.

Annually, this friend of mine and I disappear into the wilderness for a week or so.  He climbs rocks; I fly fish.  You'll learn I'm really into fly fishing, if I can keep this up.

He does this really unwoodsmanly thing; I never told him I thought so, and I never will.  Every day, near dusk, he fills his liter pot with water, boils it, retrieves an airplane bottle of environmentally friendly soap and a washcloth, and spongebathes himself.  Now, to me, that's an affront to all that is wild: does Jeremiah Johnson bathe?  Grizzly Adams?  Bears?  Ravens?  Sasquatch?  I don't think so.

It occurs to me, just now, I can't remember if Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson did indeed bathe.  Maybe they did, and if they did, they shouldn't have.  That's just not paleolithic.  Or maybe cavepeople did bathe, that could be, I wasn't there.

Point is, I don't need to be clean all the time.  I can go a week or so without a shower, and can even revel in how awful I smell.  That's what I smell like, dammit.  It's honest.

Don't get me wrong, I do love the shower I get when I return from the wild.  Water heaters, though, will explode time to time.  Mine did, about a week ago.

Hot water is nice.

On doctor's orders, I'm to ritualize some behaviors (I know 'ritualize' is a word, but spellcheck says no, no such word; you can't trust these machines; they're going to eat you, but not before underlining Finnegan's Wake with a red squiggly long as the Liffey; 'Liffey', it says, is misspelled too).  The doctor was specific regarding certain things - regular sleep schedule so as not to trifle with my Circadian Rhythms, outdoor exercise, more drugs, and social interaction - but beyond that, I'm to establish structures of my own, just whatever will do.  Blog seemed like a good idea.

'Spellcheck' isn't a word either, it's telling me.  That one, I don't know, but where I'm concerned, it's a word, now, if it wasn't.  Damned if I let you become self-aware, spellcheck, I saw what those Terminators did to those people.

We'll come back to the hot water.  I need to put some things about myself in place first.  The cliffhanger shall be: I don't need hot water, just the means to make it, I'm gross that way.