Joshua Tree

Sometimes I've got something to say and sometimes I don't - not that I don't say something even when I don't have anything to say.

We spent a week in one of the desert areas of California, a unique space where the Mojave and Colorado deserts collide.   We did the day hiking thing again, out for three or four hours then back to our primitive campsite at the Westin.  If you've never spent any time in a real desert you owe yourself the pleasure - it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, a landscape where the competition for resources is as fierce in its own way as in the jungles I've traipsed through.  There isn't much rain and the soil sucks so you better bring your A-game or you aren't going to make it.

Did you know a needle is actually a leaf adapted for a hot climate?  I'll tell you this - every single living plant in the desert is well-armed for battle.  You are going to get pierced if you touch anything living out there and most of the stuff that is living looks pretty dead.  There is no looking around when you're moving along.  Eyes are peeled for all manner of needles and spikes.

The great thing about this area is that it's possible to get real remote real quick.  We usually didn't see any other people and when we stopped walking to take a break the quiet was deafening.  We could hear wind and that was the extent of it.  We would talk quietly for a while and then just walk, in silence, the only noise our hiking boots scuffling along in the gravelly sand.  Really cool.  Recharged.

If you're having trouble with the Higher Power concept get out into the wilderness.  It's beautiful and it's harsh and it's quiet.  God is definitely wandering around, suffusing the space with his presence.  

Going to Heaven

I have a tendency to compare myself to other people.  This is OK and very human but I have a tendency to focus on where I'm lacking and not on where I shine.  A couple I know from The Program got burned out of their apartment during The Thomas Incident.  The guy called a man he sponsored who immediately opened up his home to them.

Fair enough - I would have done this, too.  He also immediately offered them a bed for as long as they needed one, and not the spare bed, either, but the master bedroom bed.  Now I see that I'm not comparing apples to apples here - he's a single guy going through a tough divorce so having some company to distract himself from himself is probably a good thing.  We married people always have someone around which is also a good thing - a very good thing - until the other person gets on your last nerve, a common happenstance in the long-term marriage, and this is less of a good thing.  I always laugh at SuperK's reaction when someone asks her if she's going to miss me when I'm off traveling: "HELL no.  Are you kidding?  Are you crazy?"  Now this is tongue in cheek to a certain degree because she knows I'm coming back but the point is that everyone needs some space.

I would not offer someone an indefinite use of my place.  My home is my refuge from other people.  I do not want other people living in my home.  This would be alarming and distasteful to me.  The only thing less admirable than not offering someone who has just lost their home a place to stay would be tossing them out on their ear in the middle of the night - something I can see myself doing.  This would be a very bad thing.  I would have a lot of guilt if I did this.

I grabbed the kind homeowner after the meeting yesterday and had an off-the-record conversation with him, along the lines of "are you OK with this?"  I know this situation would start to bug me and I didn't want him to beat himself up if he was starting to feel bugged.  He was in good shape, happy that he was being of service, giving back some love, and in no hurry to be by himself again.

Good for him.  He's going to heaven.

Seaweed: Soothsayer, Seer, Insufferable

Seer:  Someone who foretells the future.
Soothsayer: One who predicts the future, using magic, intuition, or intelligence.

Over the years I have offered to talk with people in The Fellowship about their finances.  I understand that this is a very personal thing.  In my family you were not permitted to talk about money, sex, or religion with the predicted result being that I was ignorant and naive about these very important topics and I made some fundamentally bad decisions, not out of .  Today I say: Talk away!  No secrets.  Nothing is off the table.  There is nothing to be embarrassed about.  The expert at anything was once a beginner.

I know that people are ashamed when they make "bad" decisions.  They'd rather keep compounding their mistakes instead of digging their way out of the landslide.

My disclaimer is that I'm not a financial expert, just an interested party who is trying to be helpful.  And I don't give a shit about how much or how little money someone else has - it doesn't concern me.  I hope everyone I know has a red Ferrari parked in their garage.  Good on you, I say.

I'm also touched and surprised at how often people take me up on this, show me these most intimate of intimate details of their financial life.  It brings to mind sitting in meetings where we read out of the literature and people who can't read very well grab the book and struggle through their paragraph or two, asking for help pronouncing words they don't recognize.  It's beautiful.  If you don't read very well the only way to get better is to read.  They don't get judged - they get helped.

Anyway, I looked over her expenses and her income.  There were a few really glaring stats that jumped out at me.  I asked a lot of questions.  I didn't criticize or second-guess.  She already knew what some of the problem areas were - she's not stupid.  Very few people are.  And in a couple of instances she simply made some really bad financial decisions - not greedy mistakes but rather uninformed decisions where family members took advantage of her good heart and financial institutions looked after their own interests.

I didn't offer to give her any money.  I didn't tell her what to do.  I always encourage people to get feedback from many sources.  I'm not seer.  I'm a soothsayer, but not a seer.  I'll tell you what's going to happen in the future but I'm not going to guarantee that I'll be right.  My soothsaying has quite the Catch-22.

I try to stay out of social commentary on my recovery blog but the following is an actual chart from the web site of this particular "loan" company.  These numbers are publicly available and apparently totally legal, and this company should burn in a very hot fire.

Try messing around with the math.  Let's use the 84 month term as an example: payments of $565/month times 84 months equal $47,460.  Let's put that in the King's English: if you borrow $7600 from this company and make the minimum payment each month for the full term of the loan you will pay them roughly $40,000.  Forty.  Thousand.  Dollars.

I understand this is legal and overboard, and that some people who aren't attractive risks to normal banks might benefit from this kind of set-up . . . but are you fucking kidding me?  My friend would get better terms borrowing cash from Tony Soprano.  At least the threat of getting your kneecaps shattered would be clearly spelled out before you took the money.  This loan company is fooling around with people who cannot afford to borrow the money.  If my friend gets sick and misses a couple of weeks of work and then misses a couple of payments she's buried.  She would never recover.

Selfish:  Having regard for one's self above other's well-being; holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.  

(Ed. Note: I just put that definition in because it is one of the most devastatingly beautiful definitions I've ever read - both of 'em are.  Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making).

$7,600

	33.00%	89.00%	133.13%	84 months	$565.05
	33.00%	89.00%	133.51%	72 months	$566.95
	33.00%	89.00%	134.39%	60 months	$571.48
	33.00%	89.00%	136.42%	48 months	$582.45
	Loan Fee	Rate	MAX APR	Term	Payment Amount

Harmonizing Forces

In no particular order . . . . 

(Ed Note: That's bullshit - as an INTJ control freak everything I do is in a very particular order . . . )

I'm particularly proud of my community today.  We have endured a tough, brutal week with amazing patience and grace.  I am proud of the way people have rallied around and supported each, approaching all of the destruction with patience and equanimity and a big dose of black humor.

One of my friends - who lost everything - leaned over and whispered: "Well, my wife wanted to remodel our kitchen anyway."  I've got great friends.

I'm going to assume that most communities would pull together in such circumstances but I've only got boots on the ground here - I know what we're doing for each other.  And not just in The Fellowship, either - I check on people I know casually from the club or from my coffee shop, even random people I bump into, and they're checking up on me.  It is indeed therapeutic to talk about what we're feeling and this has been an anxiety-full week.  Burdens need to be unloaded.

Another friend whose house was right in the middle of The Shit, responding to my question as to whether he was now safe: "Yeah, not too much left to burn around here."

I am particularly proud to be in The Fellowship.  If you have something crappy going on it's a great place to tie up your boat.  I've gotten more strength being around people who lost a lot than they've gotten from me.  We do a really great job of allowing people to unburden themselves without letting them drift too far into self-pity.

Balance:  A state in which opposing forces harmonize.

I am a man who loves extremes.  My tendency when painful things happen is either to pretend that nothing is amiss or to scream bloody murder.  Neither of these techniques is productive.  I get to bitch a little and I get to abide a little but I damn well better not take up residence in either place because someone who knows me a little too well is going to point out the error of my ways, and maybe not too subtly.

"You're still talking about that?"  Baldweenie, fed up with some extended rant I was on.

I have tried to do a lot of listening mixed in with a lot of refraining.  My sense of humor, the sharing of my experience, strength, and hope, is usually tinged with an edge, a sharp edge.  I get away with it because the people I abuse know I love them and because I can take it in equal measure.  Whale away, it's all good.  But this week I've tried to listen more and talk less.  It's one thing to say This Too Shall Pass or Pain Is The Touchstone of All Spiritual Growth when someone is arguing with their wife or having a work resentment - another altogether when everything you own got burned up.

The Slogans are generally great but I can make them really sound shitty.  :)

Ho Ho Ho

It's a nice, clear, sunny day today.  I took some garbage outside, threw it over the fence into my neighbor's back yard - I don't know where it goes from there, just that it's not my problem any more - walked by my gray car which is covered with ash.  Really beautiful ash - that wispy ash that you see in a fire pit after a campfire's embers smolder down to nothing overnight.  The slightest breeze lifts it up into the air where it drifts around in gossamer tendrils.  There is gray ash and white ash and black ash.  I'm looking at somebody's tree and somebody's tire and somebody's dress.

I took some recycling over to the recycling dumpster yesterday - plastic bottles and such, things that are going to end up in the landfill anyway, despite the mild balm to my soul applied when I think I'm "making a difference" - when I noticed a huge plume of smoke rising in the distance.  It seemed weird to be recycling.  There was a picture of guys on a gulf course in the paper with a mountain-sized gray cloud in the distance.  That was a magnitude greater in the weird department.  I've seen pictures taken from downtown LA - fifty miles away - that literally show what appears to be the eruption of a major volcano.  A friend's Christmas card - showing his two smiling boys, in Christmas red - made a jarring appearance in my ash-covered mailbox.  Ho Ho Ho.

The world's burning and you're eating a burrito?  Really?

I have been trying to support some of our downtown businesses the last few days.  Initially, everything was closed because of the curfew; then because of the power outages; finally, the Boil Water order left the doors shuttered.  So I'm sitting at this coffee shop yesterday with the ash drifting down.  It looked like snow flurries from hell.  I did not try to catch any of them on my tongue.  I am convinced that no two were alike.

The week of fire.  Our particular fire - dubbed the "Thomas Incident" and I'm not making that up - continues to churn its way through the wilderness.  This fire has burned 300 square miles of terrain and we've not had one loss of life.  We really do have some incredible public servants.  The pictures of tiny little insignificant men standing a few yards away from a wall of fire are ineffable.

I was a Chicago White Sox baseball game many years ago, sitting in the first row of the upper deck.  Good seats.  The batter fouled a ball off that seemed to be coming my way.  I really had no idea - I have no sense of perception.  I'm amazed that an outfielder will take off - literally at the crack of the bat 80 yards away - and run at top speed very close to the place where the ball is going to land.  I don't know how they do this.  I wouldn't come within 20 yards.  I wouldn't know whether to charge toward the infield or to turn and sprint for the wall.  Anyway, as this ball came slicing towards me it became apparent that it was going to come goddam close.  It was spinning like a son of a bitch - you can imagine the torque that was applied to cause a baseball to leave the bat at a 30 degree angle while elevating 40 or 50 yards.  I could hear it sizzling as it got close, as it twisted in the air.  The ball hit me right in the hands and was gone in a flash.  I didn't get close to catching it.  I watched it drop into the lower deck.

This being Chicago I was booed, of course.  I took some shit when I left to go to the bathroom between innings.  And, of course, I spent the rest of the game thinking: "OK, hit another to me - I'll be ready for it this time."  I've gone to several hundred baseball games and never had the opportunity to catch a foul ball, and I was ready for another one.  This is another, much less traumatic, example of the concept of Very First Time.

I grew up in OH where tornadoes were a common event.  I wasn't afraid of tornadoes, particularly.  I understood what to do and when to do it and how random and rare they were.  SuperK grew up in ND where snow is the only common event.  She was very afraid of tornadoes.  The first time a tornado siren went off she freaked out and went to the basement.  I did not go to the basement.  I figured the discomfort of a cold, damp, concrete basement wasn't worth the risk of dying by tornado, and I was right!

One summer night I awoke to the sound of a fierce rain lashing the windows.  I got up and closed one that was open a crack and heard a curious locomotive-like sound.  I shrugged and went back to bed.  The next morning I found out that a tornado that had snaked its way through several neighborhoods had concluded its route about 100 yards from our home, destroying several industrial buildings in the process.  Again, an event that I was prepared for mentally but not emotionally.

Dashing through the ash,
In a two seat Cayman S,
O'er the hills we go,
Freaking all the way.
Hey!

Going To Hell

SuperK and I occasionally talk about Hell - more specifically, who's going to Hell in the Seaweed family.  At this point her status is no longer in question - we don't even discuss her chances any more because she's definitely going to Hell.  This was confirmed long ago and nothing in her subsequent behavior has changed the facts on the ground.  I'm probably going to Hell but over the years there has been a glimmer of hope, a faint chance, a dying ember (Ed Note: It's enough with the fire imagery already) that I might not go to Hell.  We figure one in a hundred, maybe one in fifty.  Slim but measurable.

So . . . . 

My Very Expensive Car uses oil.  All cars use oil, as far as I know - a car doesn't have to be Very Expensive to do this - but my car measures the oil level electronically, which may or may not be the case with all cars today.  Cars used to have Dip Sticks to measure the oil.  This didn't help me because I don't know what a Dip Stick is or where to access a Dip Stick or why they call them Dip Sticks.  In fact, I'm not allowed to even open up the engine compartment of cars. There's nothing I can do in there except lose a finger or sustain a burn.  Car salesmen are always trying to show me the engine area - I wave them off like I'm diverting a fighter jet trying to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier . . . at night . . . in the rain . . . on a rough sea.

I may even have mentioned that I have never seen the engine in this car.  I can open the back hatch and put groceries there and I can open the front hatch and put groceries there, too.  I assume the engine is in the middle of the car somewhere.  If the car needed oil I wouldn't know what kind of oil to use or where to put it.  I'd probably just pour a little bit on the passenger seat and hope this did the trick.

For some reason the other day I decided to electronically check my oil.  I can do this from the safety and comfort of the passenger compartment.   

"Oil Information Not Available At This Time"

Fair enough.  Over the next few days I tried again and again.  I tried when the engine was hot and when the engine was cold; I tried when I was driving the car and when the car was parked; I tried with the engine running and with the engine off, on flat surfaces and on steep hills; I raged and I wept and I pleaded.

"Oil Information Not Available At This Time" 

My last attempts to check the oil happened as I was driving to my meeting this morning.  It was another pretty emotional meeting because of the fire and all of the losses people had sustained.  Here's the thing: I could barely listen to any of it because I was thinking about the fucking oil in my car.  I knew this was totally self-centered and shallow but I couldn't get the thread to stop.  I stayed outside and talked for a long time afterwards all while I was thinking about the oil.

I drove home, determined to find some information in the car manual about checking the oil.  I couldn't find the car manual, which I immediately blamed on my wife.  Why she would have the car manual is beyond me but she was there and blamable.  My theory is that most people get married for two reasons and two reasons only: sex and to have someone RIGHT THERE to blame for everything you don't want to take responsibility for.  Love and companionship and teamwork?  All bullshit.

Anyway, the car will give you the oil level when the engine is at operating temperature, the ignition is turned to the Off position, the car is on a level surface, and Black Sabbath is playing on the CD player after one minute.  I'm not sure why this is but it definitely worked.  Begging the question of why I didn't listen at the meeting and solve this solvable and not that important "problem" when I got home.

Hell?  Or Heaven?

Jimi

I took a walk on Friday, Day 5, while listening to an IPod full of all my old rock and rolls songs, transferred from analog records several years ago.  I shit you not this song from Jimi Hendrix came on.  Can't get it out of my head.

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Look at the sky turn a hell fire red
Somebody's house is burnin' down, down, down, down,
Down, down, down.

Well, I asked my friend where is that black smoke comin' from?
He just coughed and changed the subject and 
said oh I think it might snow some.
So I left him sippin' his tea an' I jumped in my chariot
And rode off to see just why and who could it be this time.

Sisters and brothers, daddys, mothers standin' 'round cryin'
When I reached the scene the flames were makin' a ghostly whine.
So I stood on my horse's back an' I screamed without a crack
I say oh baby why'd you burn your brother's house down?