Dry Bones Dance

Weapons of Mass Creation

My friend Jen and I went to Ten Thousand Villages yesterday to hear from Jules DeVraes, and how he and his kids manage to grow 6,000 pounds of food a year on 1/5 of an acre in Pasadena. Jen and I live on the same property and we have been talking about starting a garden since I moved in here.

Last year, we never quite managed to get past the talking phase, but we MEAN it this year. Really. At any rate, it is pretty amazing what the DeVraes have managed to do on their property. They even support themselves through farming by selling produce to high-end restaurants. This year, they are shooting for 10,000 pounds of food. They wash clothes by hand, have hand-cranked appliances, and use solar ovens in the summer. Their property is next door to a Muslim school, which uses their property as a science lab of sorts.

We don't have a lot of room on the property, since the entire front yard is covered by a big, beautiful oak tree. We've asked around about what might grow in 100% shade, and the answer so far is "Dirt." Most of the rest is driveway and parking, but we do have this spot on the south side of the house where we could do a couple of box gardens. The key is to start small.

Unprecedented post entirely about technology

My computer had some sort of stroke yesterday. It shut down and refused to start up again, no matter what nasty things I said to it. This has happened twice before, and both times it spontaneously resurrected itself after a few hours. Third time has not been the charm, and at the moment, it's as functional as a doorstop. Fortunately, in a surprising burst of advance planning and responsibility, I backed up everything on an external hard drive on Sunday.

I knew I would need a new computer soon, what with the spontaneous shut downs, and the fact that it kept getting slower and slower and louder and louder. So, rather than lose at least a day of work and income to patch it together for a couple of months, it seemed to make more sense to just buy a new one.

How to Fuck Up

I'm not usually very linky, because what could possibly be more interesting than the inside of my head? However, this is a fabulous post. It is not actually about how to fuck up. I, for one, need no help in that area. It does tell you what to do when you DO fuck up, and if everyone followed this process, the world would be a much happier place.

I'll wait here while you go check it out.

Stream of Consciousness Blogging with no socially redeeming value

I took my Little Sister to a movie on Sunday. (Big Brother/Big Sister Little Sister, not my biological little sister. She makes more money than I do, so she can pay for her own damn movie ticket.) It was a WORLD PREMIER - admittedly one with relatively minor stars, but it involved free tickets and free popcorn, so what's not to love?

Every so often, I find things like this entertaining, but it turns out my little sister is absolutely and utterly uninterested in celebrities. It is terribly refreshing that we have not once had to discuss Lindsay Lohan or the Olsen twins. The movie started late, and we were two rows behind Henry Winkler and one of the lesser Baldwin brothers, so I tried to unsuccessfully explain The Fonz to a 13 year old who had never heard of Happy Days. Then we saw the guy who was in that show with Bob Newhart - not the one with Suzanne Pleshette - the one where they had the inn in Vermont. Before that, he was in Bosom Buddies with Tom Hanks. I tried to explain the plot of Bosom Buddies, but that was a lost cause, and I don't think she really knows who Tom Hanks is anyway. She had certainly never heard of the other guy, who turned out to be Peter Scolari. I know this because I saw it in the movie credits.

Now Taking Suggestions

The theme of this year for me is getting out of survival mode, and I have dubbed 2008 as the "Year of Achieving Financial Solvency." Business is pretty good at the moment, and I have begun saving and chipping away at my credit card debt. However, my current retirement plan is to die young. I have begun to think that this might not be a good idea. Since I am self-employed, I don't have a 401(k) or pension or anything, so I think that having a sit-down with a financial planner-type person is probably an excellent idea.

I'm doing my own research on the subject, but in the interest of being thorough, if any of you have any suggestions for finding a good financial planner and questions I should ask in an initial meeting, by all means, make a note of them in the comments section. I'm looking for someone who won't look at me like I have two heads when I say that I want to be socially responsible in my investments, so if there's an ethical investment network somewhere, it would be great if you could point me in their direction. (It would also be nice if said individual wouldn't take a look at my current paltry retirement portfolio and immediately assume that I must be an idiot. Possibly that is too much to hope for.)

I'm also open to suggestions for any good books on financial planning, saving for retirement, and getting your financial act together generally.

The IRS and enlightenment

I had a moment of epiphany this week. It's how I tend to work, I've found - muddling around for a while and feeling like I'll never figure anything out until one day, something clicks, and I know what to do. In this case, my moment of epiphany was triggered by someone saying something she had said 25 times before, except this time I finally realized that what she was saying was A) right, and B) blindingly obvious. There was also what we shall hereafter refer to as the Income Tax Fiasco of 2008, that was...illuminating. (I would tell you more about it, but that would make me look really really stupid.)

At any rate, I've been sitting with my last post, and knew I needed to let go, but I couldn't figure out what exactly I was holding on to. The IRS is not generally regarded as a mechanism of enlightenment, but this week, I owe my 1040 form and FICA a debt of gratitude for helping me get past my ego long enough for me to be able to hear someone state the aforementioned blindingly obvious truth about myself.

If you are here, you are prepared

I'm still reading Diane Shainberg's Chasing Elephants and came across this quote from Jae Jah Noh:

Even though one may not be prepared to face some form of truth, still, if he is willing, he is ready. Readiness has nothing to do with preparedness. One is never prepared, there is no preparation for life. If you are here, you are prepared.

How do you know when you are ready? You are ready when you are willing to be ready.

I like this, because I don't think I've ever been prepared for anything that was important. I still feel ill-prepared, so I guess I would have made a lousy Boy Scout. But how can I be completely prepared for something I've never done before or don't know how to do? On some level, it's always a surprise. I haven't walked into any job I've had with all the skills or knowledge I needed to it, and for the most part, the training has been, "Hey, we're glad you're here. There's your desk, the coffee's over there, let me know if you have any questions, and good luck to you!" I actually kind of like learning by doing, jumping in and figuring it out as I go along.

The hardest thing we will ever give up is our suffering

“The hardest thing we will ever give up is our suffering.”

I’m reading Chasing Elephants: Healing Psychologically with Buddhist Wisdom by Diane Shainberg, and I’ve been thinking about that sentence since I read it a couple of days ago. A year ago, I would have yelled at this book, “Damn, honey, I’ve been trying to give up my suffering for years. I just can’t find anyone to take it.” Now though, in many ways, I think it’s true.

Things happen in this world – bad things, sometimes bad beyond believing. Loved ones die, sometimes hard and slow. Loved ones kill us, sometimes hard and slow. What with war and racism and inequality and all our interpersonal violence, it seems absurd to think that we are hoarding suffering as if we might run out. And yet, we do. (and by we, I mean me.) All the what ifs, the scripts other people wrote for us that we keep following, the voices in our heads, our constructions of How Things Are Supposed to Be (but Aren’t) – that’s the shit that makes us crazy. That’s the stuff that makes us hear, “You’re a bad person, unloved and unlovable.” every time we hear a criticism, the stuff that makes us go into anxiety overdrive every time things don’t go according to plan, the stuff that makes us beat ourselves up over and over again for being fallible and human. Much of my up and down right now is dictated by events that are long over and the ways I still let that define me. I want some sort of acknowledgment from the Universe that Bad Things Happened, and I’m finding it extraordinarily hard to pry my fingers away from things that cause me pain, but feel like part of my identity.

Obama's speech and lying to get a paycheck

Because there’s not enough discussion of Obama’s recent speech and Jeremiah Wright, I thought I’d jump in. I’ve read the entire text three times, and it is, without question, one of the best speeches I’ve heard a politician give in my lifetime, and far and away the best political speech I’ve ever heard about race in America. It wasn’t that the speech was profoundly brilliant – he just told the truth and didn’t pander. Sadly, that is so incredibly rare, that the speech stands out.

For many people, especially those of the paler variety, discussing race in America – no matter how you do it or what you say – is so emotional and fraught with land mines, that this speech might lose him the election. (That pro-Obama media bias Clinton was so worried about has sure turned around in a hurry, no?) But you know what? I want him to win, but I would almost rather he make this speech and lose, then win by doing what the spin doctors dictate.

I won’t analyze the speech, but I will say this about Jeremiah Wright: Here’s a selection of Christy quotes from the past six weeks:

Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: My arms are tired

I think I’ve run out of ammunition for the moment – although I reserve the right to lob more explosives if the mood should take me. When I started this little series, I wasn’t sure where I was going with it or what difference it would make. So, boys and girls, what have we learned from this?

I don’t know what you think, but I have not been struck by lightning. I will take that as a sign that it’s okay to let go of Jesus. I’ve been feeling stuck for months, and I’m tired of fighting through all of this. I need to de-Jesus my life a bit more, and do more spiritual exploring. Whoever Jesus is or isn’t, s/he will still be there whenever I’m ready to hang out again.