Category Archives: muttering to myself

I’m Unlucky in This

I have not learned certain things that most people learn.  I’m not making excuses, or blaming anyone, but I have somehow avoided learning a few key lessons, and these occasionally come back to bite me, like now, late at night when they propel me from my bed in horror that robs me of my rest.

My housekeeping, for example, is pretty bad.  I don’t know where this comes from, but it’s not good.  Chaos creeps across the desk, every table, up along the walls, on the floor, and among the chaos, a lot of dust.  It occasionally overwhelms me.   A normal person, coming into my apartment, must immediately feel something is very wrong, even though the place doesn’t stink or have vermin, since I keep the kitchen and bathroom relatively sanitary.  

I tell myself that I’m a creative person, that the disorder in here is no worse than in many a working artist’s studio, that it reflects a bohemian unconcern for conventionality, but I know as I tell myself this that I am full of it.  For some reason I never learned good housekeeping.

My disdain for business, and the kind of people who do business, who possess the competitive entrepreneurial drive that keeps them at work late into the night, wakes them early in the morning to get back to their consuming ambitions.  These kind of people give me the creeps.  I don’t know exactly why that is.  I think this disdain is a bad thing, just because somebody seems to think of little but money, fame and power, chases it all day and in their dreams, does not mean they are a bad person.  I have not learned to get over this feeling, which I realize is at least partially irrational and certainly is the kind of prejudice I try to avoid.

I am unlucky in this too: I find my spirit flipped in a moment sometimes, from a rational optimism and faith that things will work out to a deep and implacable pessimism that assures me everything will go badly.  I’m not sure what it was today, though it seems to have been when I sat down and recorded a one take acoustic version of  “Brokedown Palace” that I liked very much.  I sang it while playing the guitar, overdubbed another voice and another guitar and then put a simple bass line to it, panned left.  It had the kind of space and spontaneity I am always going for, and it was take one.  I was about to mix it down and go prepare dinner for Sekhnet.

Garageband crashed, “quit unexpectedly” is how the machine put it, and when it came up again there was nothing there.  Wiped away like it never existed.  Suddenly the metaphor for death was unmistakable, the futility and vanity of human endeavor stopped me in a way it never stops the driven businessman.  A pall was cast over the day and the miraculous fact that technology let me  be a one man band and record a nice song in five minutes was lost on me completely.  And even though my subsequent recreations of the track came pretty close to the original, the idea that I’d had that inspired track stolen by a stinking machine burned me, continues to burn me.  It reminded me of the delicate pencil drawings, unlike my usual work, that a friend borrowed years ago, promising to take good care of them and get them back to me.  He lost them, has no idea what happened to them.  It burns me like that, though there is no reason for either thing to burn me.

So I am unlucky in this even as I am lucky in other things.

Fool Me Once

A very dynamic, creative and driven fellow I know asked me to do some animated titles for a political video he’s making that he’s sure will go viral.   I like the message, cute script, figured I’d do my part to try to keep the country out of the hands of nihilists (insert your favorite nihilist here).  After a round of auditions he picked a very expressive young actor to play the idiotic straw man, a sort of Joe the Plumber type.  I met and liked the kid immediately, talented and funny.   We were at the studio  to shoot some reference photos that I was going to work from.  

Only problem was, the planned one hour session stretched to about three hours, with only about 25 minutes of distracted work getting done amid many interruptions.  Oops, somebody showed up for an audition, just take a few minutes, oops, got to take that call, sorry, oops… knock on the door, guy with a walker, needs just two minutes…”Jesus, man, don’t you call to make an appointment?  I’ll be right back…”  oops, second voiceover audition, oops, I’ve got to find the adapter for the voice recorder, oops…. etc.  

At one point, as he was about to shoot something we hadn’t talked about, something I couldn’t have used if I’d wanted to, he became momentarily confused.  “Focus!” he barked at me when I pointed out what was about to happen.   I answered him as patiently as his own grandfather and we set up to shoot the frames I actually needed, the ones we’d discussed.   By the time I left, with 346 frames on my flash drive instead of the 24 I’d come for, my head was spinning.

“I need a massage,” grimaced my talented buddy rubbing his neck as his wife and secretary reminded him they had another round of auditions starting in fifteen minutes.  “I’ll leave you in peace,” I said, staggering from the studio, my eyes goggling from strings.  The work we’d agreed to do together only 25% done, and poorly done at that.

I spent hours on my own going through the 346 frames to get something like what I had planned to leave the studio with.  I stole a couple of hours each day around family celebrations and long drives to and from New Jersey to work on the animation under a tight, though never specified, deadline.  Met him yesterday to drop off the animated footage he was going to composite some photographed heads on to.  I’d told him it was a rough draft and that I’d get him a smoother version the following day.  He had me watch an audition tape on a second project and talked excitedly about possible financing from Dubai for a third project he was pitching. When I got home late last night from accompanying Sekhnet on a long good deed I had this email from my friend.

Sorry, can’t use it.  I tried hard, but it doesn’t work out!  

Fool me once, baby, that’s all I’m sayin’.

I Don’t Know the Rules

I don’t know the rules of the blogosphere, or of business, or of how not to be upset by the occasional sociopathic reaction.  I’m certain there are rules for all these things, as well as exceptions, but I’m taking a time out to say — I do not understand the rules here.  Or at least, I have not internalized them very well.

I’ll tell you the rules for working with impoverished kids, as they were taught to me when I was a teacher in Harlem.   Do not set high expectations for your students.  Keep the lesson plan simple, the goal clear, the step-by-step execution predictable and the outcome easy to quantify.  Always provide a worksheet with blanks for the kids to fill in.   The lesson plans were reviewed by people who had done their best to get out of the classroom and into supervisory positions where they could tell teachers how to teach, instead of working with children.  

It was unthinkable, in the difficult schools where I worked, that the students could actually generate ideas that could enhance their own educations.   I am currently attempting to prove that this model of motivating learning by letting creatively engaged students direct it works at least as well as the other.

The rule for success with attracting more readers to your blahg is, apparently, to immediately visit and like back anyone who sends you an email saying they like your blahg.  It seems like fair play, good form, a decent thing to do and all that.  Writing a few words praising another blog  in your blahg, or linking to it, apparently does not have the same meaning in the blogosphere.  OK, live and learn, what difference does it make anyway whether I set a personal record for most views on a given day or week or for least views?   It would appear to be mainly vanity that has most of us rattling here, to be thought thoughtful, clever, modest, deadly in the clutch, poetic.

Some turn their blahgs into lucrative businesses.  I saw one the other day, a woman who liked a couple of my posts, who appears to have done that, with 25,000 devoted followers and a host of corporations and other businesses who have signed on to be part of it.  An inspirational American success story, by the looks of it, and I wish the woman who writes and lives it every success.  She certainly deserves it, she’s an inspiration.

The more difficult thing for me is reacting well to the occasional sucker punch from a sociopath.  Anyone flipping the channels of the TV might laugh to hear me say this.   Not an hour goes by where we do not see a dramatization of this, hear a news report of it, or listen to a pious, boastful or motivational speech by one kind of highly successful sociopath or another.  These folks are often highly motivated, driven, hard-working, smart, cunning and, when necessary, ruthless.  These qualities are seen in almost every boardroom and in governments of every level.  They are leadership qualities.  Not all leaders are sociopaths, not all sociopaths are leaders, but there are enough sociopaths who are highly successful business leaders and public servants to prove the rule.

“Call me a sociopath, then,” the old sociopath might say, affecting a mocking yet convincingly hurt-looking expression, “I’ll go cry in my villa, then in my Lear Jet, I’ll sob all the way over to my pied a terre in Paris, and cry there, then I’ll sniffle through dinner, the opera and try my best to be consoled by my twenty-five year old mistress, the current silver medalist in Kama Sutra who is also Ms. Tahiti.   It sure sucks being a sociopath, though I wouldn’t be you, loser.”

I get it.  It doesn’t suck being a sociopath.  It sucks being victimized by a sociopath.  The sociopath doesn’t feel your pain, doesn’t feel his own very much, except as a goad to keep him focused.  Like a shark that needs to keep moving and eating, this type plunges endlessly forward.

It wearies me greatly to think about it anymore at the moment, except to exclaim “darn it!  Sociopaths, sheesh!”

Leap into Action

Being the samurai on the wide screen seems like an amazing life, but it takes a lifetime of devotion and practice to get to that ninety minutes that builds to the dramatically structured fight scene on that majestic hill.   The movie culminates in your death by sword, a death you don’t fear, a death you face with honor.  Then the credits roll and they ship your organs to recipients within a helicopter ride of that hilltop in ancient Japan.

For guys like me, though, the closest I come to being that samurai is trying to remain stoic after a blade has slashed my abdomen.

“Oh please!” says Sekhnet, flashing her eyes, then rolling them.

Easy for her to say.  She’s never felt that stitch across the abdomen where there never was one, three weeks after the surgery to correct what was once a minor annoyance.

“Please,” she says, “I’ve had more surgeries than anyone you know.”  And she’s right, I don’t know Dick Cheney, and my mother, who probably had as many, passed away in 2010.

But if you will excuse me, I have to get back to practicing.  And remaining stoic.

Lack of Focus

The best way to do five things badly is to multitask.  With the TV on, other tabs on the computer screen updating as you write, another device displaying messages with a tone each time a new one arrives, music in the next room loud enough to hear, and a radio playing for good measure, you might find yourself mystified that you forgot what you came into the next room to do.

“I’m losing it,” you might think, not realizing that the “it” is focus, simply remembering to shut off four of the five devices.   Shut off five of them.  There is enough noise without any of them on.

Humans in complex societies are masses of twitching nerves set off by chafing or wistful memories, the many demands of the fleeting moment and often agitated thoughts of the many possible near and distant futures ahead.  Focus is elusive, it has to be practiced every day to have a fighting chance of taking root.  

But you don’t need my blinking, trite words to remind you of that.  Besides, four other things are demanding  our twitchy attention, yea, five other things.

What was I saying?  More importantly, what did I fail to hear this time.

You play the game, you takes your chances

I’d like to be an omniscient observer sometimes, omnisciently observing, instead of grunting and bleeding in the game itself.  Become a deadpan, detached narrator, paid to craft a story that makes sense and satisfies on some level.  Anything, sometimes, rather than this.

I have had an umbilical hernia probably for years.  It is one among several medical things lurking, probably one of the more benign.  The surgeon himself made no pitch for me to have surgery, pointing out that probably half of Americans have umbilical hernias.  The treatment poses problems about as often as leaving the hernia untreated does.  It seemed to be a crap shoot.  I was convinced by the noncommittal surgeon himself not to have my belly button slit open.

Two guys I know spoke highly of the surgery.  One said since the surgery he is able to walk like a man again, with his stomach sucked in.  I’ve never been able to walk that way, even when I was skinny.  The other is a man with many fears, and his fear of an incarcerated hernia, the excruciating and sudden event (and apparently very rare) when part of the intestine is forced through the torn wall of abdominal muscle, necessitating an agonized rush to the emergency room and emergency surgery, caused him to swallow his fear of doctors and have the surgery.  “It was nothing,” he said, patting his ample belly, “and I am, truly, a complete coward.”

I fancied the hernia bothering me as I sat typing recently, felt it sometimes as I strained pumping the bike up a hill, or carrying the bike up two flights of steps after a ride.  I remembered the surgeon saying “if it starts to bother you, come back and we’ll fix it.”  I became fixated on this reasonable-sounding advice, reasonably or unreasonably, and went back for the surgery.  “Well, if it’s bothering you…” said the surgeon.

Now nine days after the surgery it’s bothering me again.  But bothering me more are the words of my old friend, a long-time pediatrician.  “Why are you having a hernia operation?” she asked me the night before the surgery, the first time she heard of it. “We see kids with hernias all the time,” she said, “we almost never operate on them, unless they’re having pain from it.”

The surgeon had a glib answer for that the next day.  In children, he pointed out, hernias often heal by themselves.  Anyway, I’d already paid my $75 co-pay, was in a gown about to go into the room for surgery, my blood pressure was 140/72, it was a little late to call off the dogs.

“Most hernias in children don’t heal by themselves,” my friend told me tonight. “that’s not why we don’t operate on them.  We don’t operate because there’s usually no reason to operate on a hernia.” 

Tonight my hernia is bothering me as I sit here typing.  It could be related to the three trips I made up the flights to my apartment last night, carrying heavy bags.  It could have to do with walking around today with a briefcase that was also a little heavy.  The surgeon did tell me to take it easy after the surgery, maybe I just overdid it a little too soon.

Or maybe there was no reason to have the operation at all, and this pain I’m feeling now, although dull enough and almost mild, is a harbinger of a problem I never had.  As pleasant as my lunch and meeting with a very intelligent woman who indicated a strong desire to help with my nonprofit was today, an opaque cloud passes in front of my memory of it.  Besides, it’s been five hours and she hasn’t replied to my thank you email.  Isn’t it as likely as not that she was just humoring me?

Oh, to be an omniscient narrator.  I’d do it for a modestly discounted fee.  I’m clearly not in any of this for the money. But if you will excuse me, I have to lie down with a hand over my stomach.

Political Research 3 Fiscal Year & Deficit

One of the most important fiscal years for the economy is the Federal Fiscal Year, which defines the U.S. government’s budget. It runs from October 1 of the prior year through September 30 of the year being described. For example:

  • FY 2012 is from October 1 2011 through September 30 2012.
  • FY 2013 is from October 1 2012 through September 30 2013.
  • FY 2014 is from October 1 2013 through September 30 2014.

(source)

Now let’s take a look at Obama’s whopping world-record deficit in fiscal 2009, 

2009 $1416 Billion Deficit

and see how he ran up that much debt so soon after taking office.

Fiscal year 2009 began on October 1, 2008 and ran through September 30, 2009.   Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009.  

Ah, screw it, read this

Be Gone, Peevishness

With the Big Brother-like power to click on a “stats” tab and see how many people have clicked on things I’ve sent them to read comes the power to be peeved, in spite of myself, in spite of my vows to do better in that department, in spite of doing better.

Excited by the other day’s news that I’ll shortly have a lab in which to prove my concept viable, I send a short email to a dozen people I think might like to share the good news, to wit:

czech this out, wehearyou.net might be moving forward in spite of it/my self.   

 
And just in time to have concrete real-world progress to discuss with the retired non-profit exec at the Small Business Administration tomorrow and with the enthusiastic and accomplished idealist, who seems very engaged by the mission, that I’m taking to lunch the following week.

mission statement in progress
https://gratuitousblahg.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/mission-statement/

In all fairness, I’ve heard huzzahs and congratulations from all but five of them, and it’s only been a couple of days.  But here’s where peevishness rears its petulant head.  I go to “stats” and look at clicks and see that only four people have clicked on the link to the good news and that only one of the twelve has clicked on the mission statement.
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Now granted, the mission statement might have been 300 tedious words, another time-sucking pit of maundering quicksand, instead of a trim, to-the-point  61 words.  Granted, it is a lot to ask that busy people volunteering to be on the board take the time to click a link and look at the evolving mission statement of the organization they’ve agreed to help steer.  I mean, I have to stop being a child and expecting people to have an attention span of more than a few seconds.  I mean, look at the multitasking, mass-market, high-pressure society we live in.  I mean, really.
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Be gone, peevishness!
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reak)
(and WTF is up with WordPress not allowing me to format after I cut and paste something into a stinking post?)

American Sphinxes

(I could not defeat a formatting idiosyncrasy of WordPress, no matter how many times I tried to reformat this.  Please pardon the unintentionally messed up. crowded, jumbled look of this post, even if I can’t.  It makes me sick.)
A fellow won a prestigious award a few years ago, if memory serves, for adding a NY Times best-selling hagiography, American Sphinx, to bookshelves bulging with mostly laudatory accounts of the life of the Author of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson.  
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I recall reading American Sphinx with a bent brow, not getting what I was looking for, except for another account of the mild, quiet, supremely controlled Founding Father coming back from his daily horseback rides with his horse whipped bloody, foam on the animal’s lips and terror in her eyes.  It was left to a slave groom to calm the traumatized animal.   This was, apparently, a regular occurrence on the plantation of our supreme advocate of Reason, Liberty and Freedom.  Even biographers who extolled Jefferson as a renaissance man and philosopher centuries ahead of his time sometimes mention the unaccountable fury he regularly vented on his horses.
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But it is other American sphinxes I am thinking of now.
 
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Though I wonder less about them these days, and am less bothered by their mysterious individual and collective silences, I confess a certain puzzlement.   If someone takes the time to send me something they’re working on I’m not likely to let it fall into silence. 
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That’s just me, I suppose, thinking it only takes a minute to find something interesting to comment on by way of encouragement, or if not, it takes even less time to tap “yup!” or “droll” or “groovy, dood.”  
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“That is just you,” goes a familiar refrain, “not everyone sits at their computer all day, thoughtfully writing and carefully reading emails.  Most people are too busy to even click on links people send them, let alone read them.”   She looks at her Blackberry and taps a few keys, laughs, hits “send”.
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“Publish something in the New York Times, then see how many of your buddies ignore your emailed op ed,” says my dead father, not unreasonably.