Dry Bones Dance

Ten things about being self-employed

I got a new grant-writing client last week, and have a meeting on Monday to meet with another new one, which bodes well for my much-needed financial solvency plan.

Ten things I've discovered about being self-employed:

1. It requires a high level of self-discipline, but getting paid by the hour is HIGHLY motivational.

2. Just because I can work in my pajamas doesn't mean I should. For some reason, I get more work done when I'm dressed.

This was going to be about the Jena Six

I was going to write a post about the Jena Six, about how our differing experiences of reality affect our perception of the facts, the gap between those who basically trust the system and those who don't, and the meaning of Al Sharpton. I even had a good ending line: They cut down the tree, but the roots remain.

De-gelification and guitar strings

I dug out my guitar last night for the first time in a very long time. I think I’ve touched it twice since moving to SoCal. I used to play almost daily when I was in graduate school, as a way of clearing my head from reading about hegemonic discourse and our bifurcated society or procrastinating from writing yet another paper. It took a long time to tune, since musical instruments don’t normally react very well to sitting idle for almost five years. After I stumbled through a tremendously bad rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee” , (Busted flat in Baton Rouge -pause for chord change - waiting for a train - was that a D or a G?) I looked through all the papers stuffed into my guitar case.

It was like looking through an old photo album. I wrote a song once during a moment when I thought I could be a Patty Griffin-ish singer/songwriter - a very bad song, unfortunately. There was a song a guy named Lee wrote for me from jail. (Long story. ) Then there was a whole mess of evangelical worship songs and even an Urbana songbook. Me and my three guitar lessons were never all that good, but I would occasionally get my arm twisted into leading worship for a group - once. No one ever asked for a return engagement, because the sub-culture required a level of perkiness and emotion in worship leaders that I just couldn’t manage.

Fifteen Minute Power Post

I spent hours in front of my computer researching foundations and putting together a organization budget and other things, so this will be quick.

- After my last post, you may not want to take my theater recommendations, but if you are local and dig Culture Clash, you might want to check out Zorro in Hell, now playing at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood. It was a little bit all over the place, but very funny. I think this is the last weekend, so you'll have to go very soon - like tomorrow. They said they were serving menudo at the matinee, but I think they were probably kidding.

- I ran across an organization called Hand in Hand, that creates integrated schools with Jewish, Arab, and even Druze students, and I think it's a fantastic and very hopeful thing.

- When I wasn't searching the internet for foundations, I was researching composting tumblers, because I had a conversation with my friends during our happy hour on their balcony last night, and Jen and I definitely want to compost. We are about fifteen feet from a sizable apartment building, and the compost area would be within 10 to 20 feet of one of our houses, so we really need a low odor option. So, if any of you have any composting knowledge, and want to share what kind of bin or tumbler has worked best for you, leave your composting wisdom in the comments section.

- I think I fixed the tip jar so it works, but if you try it and it doesn't, let me know.

Okay, my fifteen minutes are up. I'm going to attempt to get to bed early-ish tonight, because I have my orientation session for year three of my spiritual direction program most of the day tomorrow, and I have to be up uncharacteristically early for a Saturday.

Transvestites with chest hair and dancing carrots

My friend Jen and I went to see Week 43 of 365 Days/365 Plays last night. Really cool concept, but if you were to ask me what a couple of the plays were about, I would not be able to tell you. The one where the guy came in with a whole bunch of weapons that he kept brandishing and then layingout on the floor while a woman spread out white sheets next to a trashcan with a fire in it? Truly, I have no idea.

I like quirky, I'm fine with ambiguity, and I don't need happy endings with a soundtrack where everyone has learned a useful life lesson. I just don't like going away from an artistic performance where my only reaction is "What the hell?"

You can give me money if you want to

In honor of my fourth anniversary of blogging, I've added a tip jar to my sidebar, just in case any of you want to give me money. This may be hypocritical on my part, because I don't think I've ever given any other bloggers money - even the ones I really like - but hey, maybe I'll get enough to buy myself a fancy cup of coffee or maybe an inordinately wealthy person has been lurking here undetected and will want to give me a large gift of cash....

Okay, I'm not expecting that, but it would be nice to recoup what I pay Typepad to do this. No pressure though - do what you like.

Mother Teresa, Inner Darkness, and Icons

I've been reading about Mother Teresa's long dark night of the soul - her many years of not feeling the presence of God and the inner turmoil it caused her. I don't want to pontificate too much on Mother Teresa's spiritual experience, since I'm not her and haven't read all the letters and I don't spend my days with the dying and destitute, but I felt sorry for her - because I don't think it needed to be as hard for her as it was. (There's a good discussion of this over at AmbivaBlog, if you want to check it out.)

It can't have been easy to be Mother Teresa. Living your life surrounded by pain and poverty is hard enough, but I would imagine that was not the hardest thing for her. From what little I've read of her letters, it seems like the hardest thing was the gap she felt between Mother Teresa the Public Persona and Mother Teresa the private person. I wonder how her experience would have been different if she had felt free to be open in public about her interior spiritual reality?

This is how hot it is in my house:

I may be melting along with the candles. It was 104 today, and now at 9:30, I think it's dropped to maybe 90. I don't know - I can't tell anymore. I realize that talking about the heat isn't very interesting, but when it's 90 in my house, that's really all I have to say.

Life in Pasadena has become one long search for air conditioning and endless conversations about the weather. Tomorrow I'm going to the beach - with about 3 million other people - where it will hopefully be at least 20 degrees cooler and there will be some nice ocean breezes.

Once this heat wave breaks, maybe I will have something interesting to say....