Ooooppps...

Yesterday's post was filled with html flubs.  I don't know how it happened or it wouldn't have happened.  Good thing I still remember a bit of my html programming.  I looked at the code on the page and took out all the stuff that didn't belong there.  Now it's done but so is the damage.  If you are reading this, go back and read yesterday's post.  Now, the act you've all been waiting for...Cheryl Crow!

LDR not LDS...

Long Distance Relationship.  With the technology available to us at any given time, not the least of which is online dating, a long distance relationship is more prevalent these days than ever before.  A surfer dude in California can meet and talk to a lovely cheesehead from Wisconsin.  They email each other and move on to calling on the phone and even video visit with each other through Skype of Face Time or whatever works.  It's entirely plausible and possible.  Maybe you can arrange to meet in person.  After meeting in person, you decide you have something and want to pursue it.  Never mind the 1500 miles between you and the cost of airfare.  You visit each other and things go really well.  You decide to see each other again, maybe at Christmas or during one or the other's extended break from work or vacation.  Your time together is magic.  You fall in love, you make promises.  You think your relationship is strong.  You communicate everyday.  You do fun activities together while apart, like maybe watch a football game on tv, she in Wisconsin, you in California, all the while texting each other with commentary during the game.  It's fun and keeps you connected.

That is the important part: staying connected.  Every day.  Several times a day, if possible.  Once you stop staying in regular contact, say goodbye.  It won't work.  Many people swear by LDR's and say it makes them love their partner even more.  I don't know how that works.  Humans are social animals in need of contact, touch, feeling each other.  Good intentions and favorable accolades to each other over Skype or the phone don't hold up as well as being able to touch your partner.  The months, the miles between visits can seem like forever.  It might as well be forever.

Many couples are forced into LDR's by circumstance, say one has to move for a new job. The other partner is expected to join them.  When?  It is important to set up a time frame.  That closes the distance and makes the waiting tolerable.  There is a plan.  I think this works if the couple is married with that "'till death do us part" bit.  More of a commitment.  Many military couples are thrown into this situation.  A year and a half may pass without physical contact.  A strong determination to stay together is needed as well as a plan on how often contact is made.  In my book, contact should be made as often as possible.  As mentioned, staying connected is the only way it will work.

Talk about your future together.  Even if it's bullshit.  It helps keep the relationship positive and full of hope.  These are two other essential factors in LDR's.  Make plans for the time you can be together.  Tell each other what you will do to them/with them when you get together. Talk dirty to each other.  Whatever you can do to keep it alive.  Take my word, if you don't nurture your LDR, it will wither, the leaves will fall off, and it will die.  What could have been a very good thing will become a very dead thing.  Emptiness and loneliness will ensue.

Skype everyday.  If you are both serious about making it work, you have to see each other even if you can't touch each other.  It's important and, I think, the best way to stay connected.  Naked Skype!

In my opinion, LDR's are the hardest relationships to make work.  Or maybe it's just me.

Long Distance Relationship Statistics infographic

I have been in a few LDR's.  The last one was with a person I met online.  She lived 1300 miles away.  There were problems from the start.  Trust was a huge issue.  I had misrepresented myself online as being divorced while still legally married.  Even though I hadn't lived with my ex in two years, what I wrote in my profile and what was reality were not on par.  I did not want to deceive anyone and was asked how long I had been divorced.  It never occurred to me to lie.  "Oh, two years," would have been an answer somebody might give but, I didn't even think of it.  I explained I was still married but only technically.  I know myself and my friends who know me would understand.  I had to stay married long enough for a house refinance to go through.  No way the bank would let me refinance the house on my salary.  I had to stay married almost a year longer than planned.  That's just the way the refinance turned out.  I understand how someone who has only spoken to me on the phone would be upset about being misled. We worked through that piece of the puzzle and another trust issue that came after that.  I was invited for Christmas and drove down to be with her.  It was wonderful and we fell in love.  Too soon, I had to leave.  The romance picked up after that with texting and Skyping all over the place.  I sent her flowers, she sent me chocolate covered potato chips and a book of love poems.  It was wonderful.  We stayed connected, very happy to hear each other's voice at the other end of the phone line.  We started to make plans. Of course there were problems inherent in the relationship as there are in any LDR's.  Although we met online, she was looking forward to imminent retirement.  As far as I could tell, she had no plans other than to spend two months in Mexico.  We both agreed it would be tough but made plans to talk, text, and Skype each other.  We were happy in the relationship until she left for Mexico.  The relationship changed drastically.  I heard very little from her.  Gone were the affirmations of love, the hope of being together soon, the planning, the connection.  I have written asking for an explanation or at least a decision one way or the other as to whether we are a couple or not.  We did affirm monogamy to each other.  That was before she left.  I am still and will remain monogamous until I have reason not to be.  I have no idea if that is still ok with her.  We didn't stay connected.  As you can see from the statistics listed above, if an LDR is going to go down in flames, it usually happens four to five months into the relationship.  Guess how long we were into our relationship?  Yup, four or five months.  Also, the average distance LDR's lived from each other is listed at 125 miles.  To me, that's nothing, a two hour drive.  It's a weekend together very often. How much work do you put into an LDR?  As much as you want or need to.  Remember, it takes two to Tango.  If it seems like you are doing all the heavy lifting, maybe you are.  If you been to see your love and they haven't even mentioned coming to see you, there is a problem.  Even if there is equity in effort, decisions have to be made.  Who is going to move?  Someone has to if the relationship is to progress.  This is where I am old fashioned, I guess.  I like to be in close physical proximity to my partner.  Away time to visit friends, relatives, or just to go off with friends is all part of it.  The knowledge that your partner will be back home, that your partner lives with you or very close to you, is important.  Not knowing when you can see each other again produces a lonely anxiety that can make matters bad.  Not being able to connect is the worst feeling.  Yes, I'm still in love.  Once your heart goes there, it doesn't want to come back.  Not being connected hurts every day.  She did write once to tell me her feelings for me hadn't changed but she couldn't give what I wanted and understood if I needed to move on.  I don't need to "move on."  I need to move forward.  I"m not getting younger.

That isn't the first LDR I've been in.  When I was a young buck, traveling around the West playing in bands, I had girlfriends back home.  As I got older, I was prone to stay involved for longer and longer periods of time.  One of the last few times I was on the road, I had a beautiful, college educated blond girlfriend from the San Francisco area.  We met in a small college town in NE Oregon.  While I was travelling across Canada and Montana and Wyoming, I would call everyday.  International calls are very expensive.  This was back in the day of land lines and long distance charges.  I'm not very good at doing lonely and met another woman in Wyoming who happened to be from Minnesota.  She had split from her husband and after meeting me and dating me for three weeks, decided to go back home to Minnesota.  So, now I was making a lot more long distance phone calls, still calling the girlfriend from SF and calling the girl from Minnesota.  The girl from Minnesota was planning on coming back to Oregon with me.  I was too drunk to maintain a responsible relationship and she had two kids that looked like they could use a new set of parents.  Too many miles between us and then the connection died. I went back to Oregon about the time the girlfriend from SF came back to college.  I told her all about my time with Miss Minnesota.  She was pissed mightily for a while but understood that I didn't handle lonely well and she was gone and Miss Minnesota was there.  I think in the end, she was glad that Miss Minnesota kept me occupied. The girlfriend from SF graduated and left town.  I put her on a train to Boise.  I think she finally got married and lives in Utah now. With today's instant access technology, the world is becoming smaller and smaller with each passing day.  It is feasible to woo and be wooed online, anywhere in the world.  Although just a friendly exchange, I have communicated with a woman from China. She is a pharmacist, both of Chinese and Western medicine and manages the pharmacy she works at.  How else would I ever in my life find out about this person if not online.  LDR's present many surmountable problems if both parties are willing to put in the time.  I guess you have to ask yourself, "Is it worth it?"  LDR's are filled with loneliness, longing, and long periods apart.  You must stay busy while waiting.  I am no good at waiting although I am getting much better.  The decision is whether the waiting is worthwhile or is it just a matter of four or five months before it blows up.  You'll never know unless you go for it.  If it feels good, feels alright, what have you got to lose?  Your heartstrings?  Shit, I've lost those so many times, I can't count them anymore.  Or remember most of them.  None of them had a plan.  We were just together until we weren't.  At my age now, though, I'm still looking for that something special, that spark of life.  I know who I am, what I desire, where I want to end up.  I'm going for it, even if it is another LDR.  I'll be better prepared this time.

Here's some good advice.

I Cheat at Meditating...

I have tried meditating several times throughout my life.  Never seem to have much luck with it.  Six years ago I was diagnosed with ADD.  Several events in my life were said to be a result of my diagnosis; going to jail a couple of times, relationships, accidents, stuff like that.  Nobody ever said anything positive about being ADD.  Maybe someone should do a study on the positive aspects of ADD, like being able to multitask like a motherfucker.

It helps explain all my fruitless experiments with meditation.  Everything printed about meditation indicates the need for a "still" mind.  The purpose is to quiet the mind and be mindful of the moment.  Nothing else exists, just the timelessness of the now.  Then a certain enlightenment creeps up on you and you smile that beatific smile of a knowledgeable Buddhist.

As much as I've tried, that has never been my experience.  My mind is busy.  I have thoughts that compete for attention.  "Me next!  Me next!" says the food thought.  There is all of this mental detritus floating in and amongst the valid thoughts competing for attention.  The detritus is mixed in with the enormity of the other thoughts.  It's kind of like making tea and your tea bag bursts open.  You have all the tea leaves floating around in the tea and no matter how meticulous you are about trying to get the leaves out, you never get them all out.  Detritus.  Left over thoughts.  Thoughts from a conversation, a discussion, an argument, a promise, or a song heard weeks ago.  It's all in there.

The formal thoughts, legitimate thoughts, if you will, are still there.  They haven't been fragmented into leftover thoughts yet, although it's high time some of them were.  In the way of some sort of visual explanation, my thoughts are like floating platforms with me jumping from one to the other day after day, minute by minute.  Picture a dark room with no discernable ceiling.  Floating platforms of dry, layered clay float about, some larger with more layers, most smaller, fill the room with just enough space between them to keep them from bumping in to each other.  I am standing on one of the larger platforms.  That platform is a thought I am having as long as I'm standing on that platform.  Should I get it into my head that there is something I need on another platform, I start hopping platforms to get to it.  I'll be damn lucky if I get there.  Every time I step on a platform on my way to the platform I think I need to be on, I am filled with that platform's thoughts.  Which are now my thoughts.  In fact, all the platforms are my thoughts and seem to do ok on their own but as soon as I step on one of the platforms, my mind is adrift in the thought of that platform.  I may never make it to the platform I had originally set out for.

Meditation is meant to let the mind go and experience a platform of bliss.  That's why I cheat at meditation.  I can't keep a straight thought going sitting still.  I have done walking meditation, running meditation, drinking meditation, weed meditation.  Even weed meditation is a wash.  My thoughts become colors.  My platforms glow fluorescent green.  They bump into each other and I get paranoid.  After bumping into each other, the platforms push off from each other and then I am stuck on one platform and that platform is usually sleep.  I do not recommend weed for meditation.  Hell, I can't even recommend meditation.  It doesn't work for me.  I keep jumping from one platform to the next, thinking the thoughts of each platform on my way to another thought on another platform.

I get it.  I know.  If I train my mind, I can do it.  Stop jumping from platform to platform.  Make the platforms come together and join.  After all, they exist in the same human brain: mine.  What would be so difficult in getting them to come together?  That is the question.  Every time I sit down to meditate about it...yeah, it starts all over again.

Just stay busy.

Stephane Grapelli

Stephane Grapelli is my all time favorite violinist.  He made a name for himself playing with Django Reinhardt in"Quintette du Hot Club de France ."  This was a while ago, back in the thirties. This style of music became known as "Gypsy jazz."  Its carefree playing of the melody line showed that improvisation would shine more than sheet music could ever hope to.  The music was about virtuosity and not a stiff rendition of a song read from sheet music.  Some, including myself, think that this was the beginning of the appreciation of the jam session, where there was structure with the rhythm and bass line but plenty of room for instrumental improvisation.  Standard blues structure with a twelve bar turn around and then turn the players loose.  American jazz evolved from this.  Listen to Stephane.  Smooth, delicate, fast. Delectable.  Goes down smooth and easy.

I became a fan of Stephane's in the early 80's.  I was living in Northeast Oregon, working in a band, later to have my own band there, and working during the day.  I worked a lot. Maybe that's what saved me from becoming a crushing alcoholic. I also had to get up and go to work.  After playing until 2AM, not sleeping until 6AM, then being at work by 8AM, my body screamed for sleep and mercy.  Since my job involved travel, I slept whenever I wasn't driving.  Yeah, that's right, when I wasn't driving.  I was expected to pull my weight and drive once in a while.  If I was lucky, I remembered to save some coke from the night before and do a line or two before work.  Then I could drive.  And work.  Even talk.

I got laid off from my day job for a few months.  I began listening to the college FM station in town.  What a load of crap, I thought.  I went to the college.  I went upstairs from the library to the radio station itself.  I asked to see the station manager.  I asked him what I had to do to be a DJ.  He said you have to take the Broadcasting Class.  I signed up the next day.  I had no experience.  By the time that stint was through, I had won an award as best dj and was the most requested voice over for sponsor spots.  Since it was public radio, commercials weren't allowed but sponsorships were.  I heard my spots were still on the air four years after I left town.

After a few classes, I was on the radio.  The classes helped familiarize me with the control board, the switches, and the turntables.  The one thing I had not considered was the music.  I had talked to a dj about the music and he said he brought his own albums from home.  Yeah, I could do that.  Thing is, once I got to the radio station to work, I discovered they had a three thousand long-playing vinyl library.  My eyes popped wide open.  I was a kid in a candy store with all the money I needed.  That's how I discovered Grappelli, thumbing through the vinyl.  I think because the album title had "Boogie" in it, I decided to try and find something to play off the album, "Brandenburg Boogie," with Elena Duran and Laurie Holloway and Stephan.  Even Wikipedia does not list this album in Stephane's discography.  It is difficult to find and I got my copy off of eBay many years ago.  It is now a collector's item.  Lucky me.

It opened me up.  I wasn't ready to give up my hard ass drinking and rocking but this was a different music for me and I knew instantly that this guy knew what he was doing with the violin. He was talking with it, whispering, screaming, laughing, singing with his violin.  There was no sheet music.  His heart led his fingers up and down the fretboard as his bow left its mark on the violin's strings.  It was not like anything I'd been exposed to. It flowed like air through a window.

Pandora

The time at the radio station was pure learning.  I learned how to make awkward transitions work.  I once went from a Police song to the bluegrass hit, Rocky Top, and made it worked.  It was mentioned when I received my award.  To me, it's like putting together a soundtrack, a soundtrack for daily living.  Kind of like Pandora is now. Pandora is theoretically "intuitive," that is, it predicts what music you might like to hear.  It uses some sort of code to figure it out.  If a song comes on that you like, just rush to whatever device Pandora is coming from and hit the like button and Pandora remembers.  Weird.

I have a Wilco station on Pandora.  I watched a documentary on them called, "I am Trying To Break Your Heart."  It is about them recording "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," a breakthrough album for them. My favorite songs off of the recording are "Kamera," "Heavy Metal Drummer," and "Jesus etc."  Hell, they were even introduced by this guy at Farm Aid.  Look!  There's Beck playing lead guitar!

Let us end this type fest with this.

Book Explosion

Have you ever walked in your front door, took a look around and thought to yourself, "My God! It looks as if a bookmobile exploded here!"  Those were the exact thoughts I had when I walked in my front door this evening.  Books every which a way.  I remembered.  I was moving all my stuff out of the other building, including my two bookshelves, one of which's contents were on the living room floor.  There was still another bookshelf, one with pottery and ceramic books of all kinds, out in the second building.  It had not been packed.  It would probably take most of the day.

The ct is outside for the night.  Might get some rest.

Genetic Meanderings

Once I wondered why I looked the way I did.  Genetically speaking.  I looked at the crooked nose of my paternal grandfather and thought I saw my own nose only to be told Grandad had broken his nose in a boxing match.  He was Golden Gloves.  Still, I imagined my nose to be similar enough to his to notice a family resemblance.  By the time I was his age at this time, I would have broken my nose a time or two.  To further my point, I have a daughter by my first wife who is the spitting image of her mother, except for the nose.  It is my nose on her face.  I'm sure that's why she won't talk to me.  Genetics.  Are we predisposed by our DNA?  What about that ear lobe thing?  The one where if you have ear lobes that hang free from your skull it means something but I can't remember what.  It's a crapshoot.  I think soon enough, the world population will be genetically intermingled, much more so than now.  I think with technology and p2p video the separate cultures of the world will become more exposed to outside cultures worldwide and they, on the other hand, will be able to do the same.  This is a good thing.  I think the more we know about each other, the better able to get along, negotiate treaties, whatever, have more fun and understanding of our purpose...

Ok, and I have a dimple in the middle of my chin.  I have sawed off whiskers in it.  Where did it come from?  What chromosome forgot to fill in that space on my chin?  If it is supposed to be there, does it have purpose?  Since its always been there, I suppose it holds my skin to my chin, like an upholstery button.

I have my grandfather's liver spot on my right hand.  The lay person wouldn't notice it but I do.  In a certain bare light bulb light, I can see it.  It gets bigger but not darker.  My hairline is the same as my grandfather.  My dad had hair until he went into chemo for lung cancer.  He took after his mother's side of the family.

One thing I wonder about is my hairless right shin.  There isn't any hair for about six inches long and two inches wide down my leg.  I never really noticed on any other family member.  Most of them are women.  My leg is scarred and hairless.  For years I thought it was because I had rubbed all the follicles off my leg with a bass drum pedal.  It hasn't grown back, so I'm not sure.  I'm full of hypotheses. I wonder if I look as angular to other people as I do to myself?  Angularity.  I don't think I've ever typed that word before.  Probably never again.

I'm a genetic mop bucket.  I'm a genetic moist towelette. I'm a genetic scrubbing bubble.  I'm a genetic dollar bill.  With change. I'm genetically predisposed to listening to the wind.  I'm genetically programmed to see in 3D 24/7, with no loss in battery life.  I'm genetically sealed for your protection.  I'm genetically sanitized.  I'm genetically genetic, by predisposed geneticism. It can't be helped.  It's genetic.

Today was regular.  Sort of a one size fits all day.  Busy.  Constructive.  Rested.  Productive.  Moving a library.  Takes time. Too many books.  One building to the next.  To be useful. To be consulted.  To add to the grand feeling of the house.  Soon, it will all be done for the time being.  A house this old needs constant upkeep.  You either like it, learn to like it, or get out.  Since discovering wood floors, I have an added personal interest in this house.  Still, it wouldn't take much to nudge me out of here. The house has personality.  Any old house will.  Certain smells, creaks and cracks, echoes.  If you are in a house long enough, you get to know where each and every one of them is and how to avoid them.  Sometimes I feel that I will get moved in just in time to move out again.  I shall see.

I rented "Argo" from iTunes last night.  Very good movie but how did it win Best Picture over "Lincoln?"  There wasn't half the acting in Argo as in Lincoln and the setting of Lincoln was painstakingly real.  Argo did a good time piece for the 80's.  Maybe it's the historian in me.  Wait!  They were both history movies!  Ding ding what do I win?  I should probably stop typing now.

As Straight as a Bent Arrow...

Walking outside for the first time today, my senses were bombarded by Spring and sweet smells.  T-shirt and jeans, walking in the dirt driveway, gravel crunching as my steps carry me forward toward the black mailbox to see if someone mailed me a check for any amount at all.  I received a check for $8.83 the other day as part of a settlement with Visa/Mastercard.  Seems if you used your card between certain dates, there was some sort of kerfuffle and somebody sued which became a class action suit and I did not opt out to sue on my own so they sent me a check.  I'm sure the process of producing the check, printing the check, and mailing the check all cost more than the check was worth.  I wonder if anybody got a bigger check?  The lawyers of course.  (I still tremble at how close I came to going to law school.  My evil first wife just about had me talked into it.  Once we were divorced and she remarried, she tried to get her next husband to go to law school.  He went as far as taking the LSAT.  They are still married and he is still a wheat farmer and she is a wheat farmer's wife with a catering business.)

I have yet to spy a robin but I hear the birds in the trees singing their tweets. (Birds can't tweet using cell phones as they have no opposing thumbs.  They don't call them bird brains for nothing.)  The environs are still gray and the green of Spring is just beneath the surface, waiting to jump out of the ground and shock the shit out of everybody.  "Hey!  Spring just popped up!  Yay!  We're saved!"

The bamboo is spreading horizontally heading toward the driveway and creating an organic break from the road.  Like a growing fence.

It is March.  Time to start on the second bedroom and do the floors.  Thankfully, this room is smaller.  There is a plumbed sink and vanity in the room.  It has to come out.  The story I heard is that someone's mother had that room and, even though, the bathroom is next door, had a sink and vanity installed.  I don't know why.  Out it goes.

I think that, in addition to making clay pots when I am done teaching school, I should like to be an antiques book dealer.  There's no money in either endeavor but maybe enough to stay afloat, preferably on an air mattress.  :)  Plenty to do and I'm the guy to do it.  I am me and dang glad of it.  Would that we could all say the same.