Self-Discipline

I've been trying to teach myself self-discipline of late.  I think that it's good to every once in a while show my body who makes the calls.  The problem is, I don't like it.

Experience

I recently realized that I am an experience junky.  Like some who are really junkies, or people who crave food or money or sex or cats, I crave new experiences.  I tend to get bored easily, particularly with routine.  So I look for new things to do or new interactions to create or unusual things I have not yet done.  That's the real reason I licked the cat.

Personal Rights

I struggle to fully understand the benefits of personal rights.  I am aware that rights are a great concept, particularly in the American ideal--that we are given certain "unalienable rights" and so forth. However, I see so many problems with  rights as well.  Rights lead to a victim mentality--the sense that we are "owed" something, the feeling that we have been wronged, the feeling that we "deserve" this or that.  This thought process has created our extremely litigious nation, where we all live in fear of being sued until somebody does us wrong, then we all want to sue. 

I think that a much better idea is to teach personal responsibility rather than personal rights.  I believe that I alone am responsible for my attitude and actions, and that cannot be taken away from me.  Both bad things and good things will happen to me, and I will choose how to respond to them.  Rather focusing on what I deserve, I try to focus on how I can act.  Suffering is inevitable; what we do with it isn't.

Quote

"Doubt is part of all religion.  All the religious thinkers were doubters."  --Isaac Bashevis Singer

Quote

"There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me."  --Thomas Jefferson

Taking a Dump

There are times that I wish that taking a dump was not a family occasion.  As soon as I sit down, I have either Clare (3) or Caleb (2) to contend with. If I forget to close the door, they will come in, whacking the door against my legs until I move them. If Clare is first, Caleb will follow, and vice versa.  It is never just one of them.  Then they will both proceed to get into the medicine cabinet, the bathtub, the garbage--anything that I can't reach, all the while demanding 'juice' or 'candy'. If I remember to close the door, Caleb will get Clare, who opens the door for him.  If I lock the door, they may cry for a bit, but then I begin to see fingers appearing under the door.  First one hand, then another.  They shove toys under the door, then cry if I don't kick them back to them.  All in all, it makes for a hard bowel movement.

Overheard Conversation

While waiting for my annual endoscopy/colonoscopy:

"When I called in, the receptionist asked me if I had heard anything about the doctors.  I didn't know what to say. Does one of the doctors have an ass fetish?"

7-8-04 Spokane

The moon is full

and pours clouds,

a lunar milkshake

into atmosphere basin.

Peach shadowlight, a friend calls it.

Pumpkin moon, my daughter says,

banana moon when waning.

I hold the moon like a fruit

pit in my hands.

Overheard Conversation

Two people behind the sales counter:

". . . And that's when the other doctor came in and said, 'You are being inappropriate and need to stop.'"

Children

While getting a bottle of soda from the cooler, the door swung rapidly open, hitting a three-year-old child in the head.  He started crying, and I rapidly apologized, but the mother took it in stride. "It's okay," she said, "He's tough. And stupid."

Checking Out

When I walked in to the men's room at the doctor's office, I saw a 6'3", attractive mid-twenties man checking out how his butt looked in his jeans. He was twisted around so that he could see in the mirror, stretching his neck over his shoulder.  I wanted to tell him that it looked good to me, but I also didn't want to get beat up or raped.  Overall, I think my silence was a good decision.  

Chum

Chum

is one name, dog

salmon another, translucent

blue, green, black stripes

on chrome scales. 

In fall, hook-nosed they

work up Kennedy Creek

a few hundred yards

out of salt and into fresh 

piling stacked like cordwood fishermen say

beneath seagulls and crows

pecking at them while still alive,

softening chunked flesh disappearing

these fish, compelled upstream,

skim with fins above shallows

as a child's bath toy waddles through

water. 

This fall they were done

and sat in pools

waiting to die, stripes blackened

whitened with fungus, flesh

soft barely stuck to bones.

Some held the bottom

others floated dead above.

Carcasses everywhere like war

carnage in pieces and bits.

One nearly bones, one nearly dead.

Birds, sick with gluttony, did not bother to

pluck the eyes.

Then spring,

when the fry float downstream past parents' bodies,

move north out of Puget Sound and to the ocean. 

Mercedes

Why is it that Mercedes seems to be the vehicle of choice for despotic African countries? I have an incredibly difficult time seeing thugs holding AK-47s riding around in a Ford Taurus.

Joke

My mother gave me a bullet as a present on my 18th birthday. It was very special to me, and I kept it in my left front pocket, right over my heart.   One day, while I was walking down the street, some crazed Gideon threw a Bible out of the tenth story window, and it hit me square in the chest.  I looked down and realized that if it hadn't been for that bullet, the Bible would have killed me.

Image

Purple drops of sunlit snow.