Don't Worry

"Happiness is not a permanent state. Happiness is not a thing we achieve. We do not find the secret to happiness and then everything is just great. Happiness comes in moments between sad moments and everyday ordinary moments. Happiness is there for you to notice and reach for and touch."  ~Bryant McGill

Remember Me?

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This has nothing to do with politics, ideologies, or current events.  It's just my favorite Dean Martin album.

Flowers and Bees

The late rains have given our flowers a second season!

Gene Wilder

I don't think he ever played an unkind character, and if he had it wouldn't have been believable.

Our world was nicer with him in it.

Perspective

Maybe the universe isn't really impossibly big.  Maybe we are just very, very, small.

Somehow that idea is a lot less scary for me.

Footprints

Excerpted from Eternal Troubadour:  the Improbable Life of Tiny Tim by Justin Martell, ©2016:

Shortly after Tiny died, Sue's father joined her at the hospital.

"How is he?" He asked.

"He's gone," Sue replied.

A nurse delivered Tiny's wedding ring and a Celtic cross necklace Sue had given him very recently.  Then she and her father said a prayer in the hospital chapel and left.  The same limousine that had ferried Tiny and Sue to the benefit now took her home.  As she stepped out of the limo, she was greeted by  the "most unbearable sight of the evening":  the footprints she and Tiny had left in the snow on the way out of the house.

It's always something that gets you:  fading footprints in the snow, a song on the radio, a blinking light on the answering machine; something that remind us that we don't know, can't know, didn't know.

Improbable

"Even after we were married, sometimes I'd be driving along and I'd look over and he'd be sitting there in the car and I'd be shocked all over again.  I'd think, 'Tiny Tim is in my car, and I'm married to him.'  You'd think I'd get used to it, but I don't think I ever did."  ~Tiny Tim's widow, Miss Sue, from Eternal Troubadour:  the Improbable Life of Tiny Tim by Justin Martell, ©2016

Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile!

I’m a big guy with long hair and a full beard, and I was told that my appearance scares people.

I don’t want to scare people, so I’ve made a real effort to wear a hint of a smile when I’m out in public, and it’s really worked well for me.

More often than not the people around me start to smile, too, which makes me smile even more, which makes them smile more.

It has a very enjoyable rebound effect, and I recommend it.

:)

The best of all possible worlds

Every four years we're given two new candidates, and people divide up into teams.  We're told that one candidate has been Anointed by the Gods to usher in a new era of Peace and Prosperity, while the other candidate is the Spawn of Satan who will surely be The Ruin of Us All.

And every four years we're told, "No, this year it's really true!"

I'll just let you guys fight it out among yourselves.

I have to cultivate my garden.

 

Get Inside

“Just because your world is falling apart doesn’t mean you have to fall apart. When everything seems crazy, you be calm. Don’t let the outer chaos you are facing get inside of you.” — Bryant McGill

I don't want to break these chains...

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The video features beautiful girls, but the lyrics fit better if you think of them as the personification of  his addictions.

Full lyrics HERE.

Stand By Me

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Sommer Season All Year wrote a wonderful post about music, which you can read HERE, and included this video.

Full lyrics available HERE.

But I think

From the preface to Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology Volume 9:  Navajo Political Process by Aubrey W. Williams, Jr., ©1970:

Meetings
by an unknown Navajo

For long time
      there have been meetings
      of many men
      for many days.
At the meetings
      there is talking
      talking
      talking.
Some this way,
      some that way.
In the morning
      when my father
      leaves for meeting
      he says to us,
      “When I come here again
      then I will know
      if it be best
      to have many sheep
      or a few sheep,
      to use the land
      or let it sleep.”
But
      when my father
      comes home from meeting
      he does not know
      which talking way to follow.
Tonight
      when my father
      came home from meeting
      he just sat looking
      and looking.
Then my mother
      spoke to me.
She said
      “A meeting is like rain.
      When there is little talk
      now and then,
      here and there,
      it is good.
It makes thoughts grow as
      little rain makes corn grow.
But big talk, too much,
      is like a flood
      taking things of long
      standing before it.”
My mother
      said this to me,
      but I think
      she wanted my father
      to hear it.

Go on and sing your songs!

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There's an idea

"The idea is not to confront bad ideas, but to come up with good ideas-- otherwise, your enemies define the game and you are the loyal opposition."  ~Terence McKenna

And

I Worried
by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Is As

"A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being, while an act of cruelty to an animal is as bad as an act of cruelty to a human being."  ~Mohammed (source)

Soul Patrol

What about a soul patrol, a traveling band whose job is to show up at angry protests and rallies and transform them into a community dance?

— Ron Davison (@iamrondavison) August 15, 2016

Except for calling it a "Soul Patrol," I really like this idea.

Opening the Door

"He was sincere, and he was caring, and he was loving, and he was not like other people.  The fact of his acceptance and embrace was different among certain kinds of people-- many just saw him as weirder than weird and that was that, but there were many others that found him delightful.  In a way, his acceptance was part of opening the door to a general acceptance of people who were not like other people-- they didn't have to be marginalized."  ~Peter Yarrow on Tiny Tim, in Eternal Troubadour:  the Improbable Life of Tiny Tim by Justin Martell, ©2016

Never

"I might have never made it, but I never would have quit."  ~Tiny Tim

Choice

"Humour allows us to see that ultimately things don’t make sense. The only thing that truly makes sense is letting go of anything we continue to hold on to. Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion. Of course, we all feel that they’re real: my drama, your drama, our confrontations. We create these elaborate scenarios and then react to them. But there is nothing really happening outside our mind! This is karma’s cosmic joke. You can laugh about the irony of this, or you can stick with your scenario. It’s your choice."  ~Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Pan

Fantasy by Sydney Long, circa 1917 (via Krishna Drop)

I love the scale.

 

Role Models

There are a lot of people who I admire, but these four stand out:

• Venerable Solanus Casey was the doorman at the monastery. I’m sure that wasn’t what he had in mind when joined the Capuchin Order, and he could have easily become discouraged and melancholy, but he didn’t. He remained generous and welcoming, and more than fifty years after his death people still remember him for his kindness and are pushing to make him a saint.

Personally, I get crabby at times. I’m a little too easily discouraged. It would take a generous editing of my life story to consider me for sainthood.  (Also, I'm pretty sure you have to be Catholic.)

When I think of him, I think of a man who crafted something beautiful out of whatever circumstances he found himself in.  That's the kind of person I want to be.

• Tiny Tim is, simply, the epitome of the American Dream. His dream was an odd one- he wanted to sing songs from the 1920s, in white-face, in falsetto, accompanied only by his ukulele- but he worked at it, and he made his dream come true.

He was asked once if he ever tired of singing Tip-toe through the Tulips, and his response was, “Every time I sing that song people smile. Who could get tired of that?”

He gives me hope for my (more pedestrian) dreams.  He demonstrated that there's hope for all of us.

• John Lennon I admire not for his musical talent so much as his persistence. The song didn’t bring world peace? Let’s go to Amsterdam and try a bed-in. That didn’t work? Let’s try a marketing blitz.  That didn't work?  On to the next thing.

He wasn’t perfect, but his setbacks never stopped him from trying again. Unfortunately, he was taken from us before he found the combination that worked. It’s on us now to find it.

• St. Joseph-- you know- Jesus’ Stepfather-- didn’t go out and do Great Deeds. He didn’t feed the multitudes, heal the sick, or even preach great sermons. He just stayed cool when things got weird.

Myself, I would have made a great Hobbit. I’m easily rattled, and not inclined towards adventures.

But Joseph was man who, encountering an Angel of the Lord as he turned in for the night, didn’t bat an eye. When it was time to go to Bethlehem, he just grabbed a donkey and went. No complaining, no hand-wringing, no indulgent freak-outs; just assess the situation and react accordingly.  (The Dude abides.)

–

And now, as I’m looking over my list, the two dominant traits I see are kindness and persistence.

So I know where my work lies.

Will Not Trouble You

"The three states come and go, but you are always there. It is like a cinema. The screen is always there but several types of pictures appear on the screen and then disappear. Nothing sticks to the screen, it remains a screen. Similarly, you remain your own Self in all the three states. If you know that, the three states will not trouble you, just as the pictures which appear on the screen do not stick to it. On the screen, you sometimes see a huge ocean with endless waves; that disappears. Another time, you see fire spreading all around; that too disappears. The screen is there on both occasions. Did the screen get wet with the water, or did it get burned by the fire?  Nothing affected the screen. In the same way, the things that happen during the wakeful, dream and sleep states do not affect you at all; you remain your own Self."  ~Ramana Maharshi

This is Chinatown

The headlines say "Trump Says He’d Try Americans At Gitmo. Which Is Illegal."

But does that even matter anymore?  There are a lot of things that are "illegal:"

• Torturing People


• Holding people indefinitely without charges


• Denying people bail

So at this point it's a little late to start pointing towards the constitution, feigning surprise and outrage.

The government is going to do whatever it wants.  Your laws have no power here.

Math

From CBS News:

The military campaigns in Iraq and Syria have taken 45,000 enemy combatants off the battlefield and reduced the total number of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters to as few as 15,000, the top U.S. commander for the fight against ISIS said Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland said that both the quality and number of IS fighters is declining, and he warned that it is difficult to determine accurate numbers. Earlier estimates put the number of ISIS fighters between 19,000 and 25,000, but U.S. officials say the range is now roughly 15,000 to 20,000.

When you take the previous highest estimate and subtract the current lowest estimate, you get

25,000 - 15,000 = 45,000

Yep!  It all checks out!

"They couldn't take that chance."

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I love the gentleness.  All the humor springs from affection.

 

Five

In this excerpt from the article "Teaching Mindfulness to Young People" in the September 2016 issue of The Lions Roar, Ofuso Jones-Quartery (aka Born I Music) describes a simple exercise he uses to teach meditation to young people:

"Finger Breathing"

In this exercise, the students hold out their left hand and, with their right pointer finger, trace around each left-hand finger.  Each time they trace upward they breathe in; each time they trace downward the breathe out.  By the time they've done the whole left hand they've taken five focused breaths, then they trace in reverse to make it ten.  This is something they can practice discreetly by putting their left hands on their laps and tracing and breathing at any point in the day when they need to focus, come back to the moment, or relax.

Not Good and Bad

Excerpted from the article "Cultivate the Good" by Sharon Salzberg in the September 2016 issue of The Lion's Roar:

This passage is one of my favorites from the Buddha's teaching:

WE CAN DO IT

Abandon what is unskillful,
One can abandon the unskillful,
If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do so.
If this abandoning of the unskillful would bring harm and suffering,
I would not ask you to abandon it.
But the abandoning of the unskillful brings benefits and happiness,
Therefore, I say, "Abandon what is unskillful."
Cultivate the good.
You can cultivate the good.
If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.
If the cultivation of the good would bring harm and suffering,
I would not ask you to cultivate it.
But the cultivation of the good brings benefits and happiness,
Therefore, I say,"Cultivate the good."

I think this beautifully exemplifies the extraordinary compassion of the Buddha.  The mind of the Buddha sees not good and bad people, but suffering and the end of suffering, and exhorts those heading toward suffering through greed or anger or fear to take care, to pay attention, to see how much more they are capable of, rather than condemning them.  He sees those heading toward the end of suffering through wisdom and loving-kindness and rejoices for them.

Blame it on Rio

I wish every sport had weight classes.  I’d like to see Heavyweight Pole Vault and Rhythmic Dance.

There’s an obvious joke there- I’m picturing an NFL Lineman prancing across the mat trailing a ribbon- but I’m serious, too.

Different bodies have different abilities.  When short people play basketball, the game is subtly different than when tall people play.

I want to see what the other bodies can do.

Iran, Iran so far away

$400 million dollars is a lot of money to pay for someone who isn’t a spy.

But I’m sure it wasn’t a ransom.  It’s pretty common for presidents to settle lawsuits secretly, with a plane-load of cash in the middle of the night.

Now move along, there’s nothing to see here.

Wasps & Bees

I love mud dauber wasp nests.

Each cell, at one time, had a single egg and was packed solid with tasty spiders for the baby mud daubers to grow on.  They grew up alone in the dark, pupated, and then hatched out and flew away into a world they had never seen before.

This one is a little unusual, in that it only had one tenant.  Typically they are re-used by solitary bees.  I found it in a shed, and I guess our little bee buddies didn’t look there.

 

Laughter

"Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter."  ~Longchenpa (1308–1364)

Calm

Shape to the Sea and Mount Boron
Sylvie Bertrand, French, b.1967-

You can really feel this moment, and the colors have you looking at the same spot on the horizon that he is.

Chronic

"I don’t want to use this as an excuse, and it’s come up so many times, but my stomach ailment has been one of the biggest barriers that stopped us from touring. I was dealing with it for a long time. But after a person experiences chronic pain for five years, by the time that fifth year ends, you’re literally insane. I couldn’t cope with anything. I was as schizophrenic as a wet cat that’s been beaten."  ~Kurt Cobain, The Rolling Stone Interview, 01/27/1994 (via MissFlapper)

Have you ever dove deep into the water and stayed down too long, and you find yourself desperately clawing towards the surface,  feeling like your lungs are going to burst?  Do you remember the feeling when you finally break through and take that long, deep, breath of air?

That's how it feels for me when my back stops hurting.

I remember when Kurt died, people like Andy Rooney couldn't wait to criticize, almost gleeful that the rock star came to a sad end.

They didn't know how lucky they were not to understand.

His Way

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Nobody on earth could sing this song the way Sid did it.  That was the point.

Pigs with Mustaches

Animal Farm is kind of an interesting story.  It didn't become a "classic" because it was well-written, it became a classic precisely because it was not:  the allegory was so ham-fisted that even the thickest students couldn't fail to grasp it.

It made the Important Point that under Capitalism you will be slaughtered, whereas under Communism there will be bickering and inequality, so you should…  Umm…  Well, he doesn't really say.  I guess he didn't really have any advice to give, he just wanted to warn people not to be too happy because it always turns out the same.

George Orwell also wrote 1984, so it's safe to say he wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs.  Typically when I'm seated next to someone like him at dinner parties I try to steer the conversation to a nice neutral subject like sports, but I'm not sure that would work with him:

"So, George, how do you think the Cowboys will do this year?"
"I foresee pointless suffering and tragedy, followed by death."

There's not really a point to this post.  I just wanted to warn people that life is short, so be as happy as you can.

(Tom the Dancing Bug is on the web HERE.)