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Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Walk into the light



It is no longer dark when I stand at the station waiting for my morning train. I wish it was, because lately I've been on autopilot in the morning and sort of just want to sleep standing up while I wait for the train. It doesn't help that I've been listening to Moby's Long Ambients 2 album on my Calm meditation app. It was written to help you relax and sleep.

When the train finally arrives at 7:10 a.m., I am generally the first one through the second doors of the second car. It is less crowded than the first and last car and my favorite seat, one that doesn't require you to sit next to anyone, is usually open. My latest morning ritual is to grab the seat, swap my baseball cap for a stocking cap I keep in my backpack, remove my glasses and pull the stocking cap over my eyes. Then I settle back and let Moby sooth my commuting soul.

It is only a 25-minute commute. The last mile or so is through a vintage train tunnel under downtown Seattle that pops you out on the border of Pioneer Square and the International District. I usually pull off my stocking cap just as the train is pulling out of the tunnel and drifting by an acre of graffiti littered walls that face the train platforms. I rise and slip out of the door still listening to Moby and join the rest of the walking dead as we shuffle towards the stairs that rise from the train platform to the street level.

Monday, March 25, 2019

Seeing through me



I wrote my first post about turning invisible in 2005. I've repeated the sentiment umpteen times since. Considering I started fading in my early 40s, I am pretty much not here now.

I got my haircut Sunday at one of those franchise haircutting places. It's a cheap and quick haircut without frills like coffee, shampooing and head massages that tack about $40 onto the cost. The downside is that, like Forest Gump's box of chocolate, you never know what you are going to get.

But when you are invisible, it doesn't matter.

I checked in on line and drove to the place. When I walked in, this person who has cut my hair several times greeted me and took me right back to cut my hair. There was no acknowledgement that she recognized me. But I imagine they cut quite a few heads of hair in any given week and they only see people every other month or so.

To her credit, she tried to make small talk (which anyone who knows me knows I love). At one point, she asked me what I did for a living. She had asked me this same question on an earlier visit and I thought when I responded she'd remember cutting my hair before, because I'd gone in greater depth than I like about being a public transportation marketing person.

But she didn't remember me or anything I'd told her before. She asked the same questions and seemed totally oblivious to what I did or the company I work for.


Monday, March 18, 2019

Who do you think you are?


Okay, it's is another philosophical question. I admit I don't really know who I am. I thought I did for years, but I kept surprising myself. It's part of the aging process. Enlightenment comes when you realize you don't know anything, including yourself.

Part of it is that the self we grow up believing in is, according to Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, is an illusion. Of course, so is everything else. If you accept that, then you have to wrap your illusionary brain around both creating the illusion and being the illusion.

Sometimes I think I'm pretty deep. Other times I worry that I'm just a windbag. I just came out of a business meeting with a consultant. At times I imaged I was witty and engaging. Everyone laughed at my jokes, nodded and took notes. But stepping out of myself, I realize they pretty much do all those things because I am the client. Inside they were probably thinking about what they were going to have for lunch.

Part of my anxiety about finding out who I am or who I am not is that I'd find out that I am no one. But if I engage in a bit of Zen word play, finding out you are no "one" could mean that you are many.

What's that? You heard the sound of one hand clapping? I did too. And it usually only happens when I show people the face I had before I was born.


It was 20 years ago, today...

I spent my 41st birthday in New Orleans, by myself. It was an odd time in my life. I'd weathered the milestone of turning 40 and wasn't quite sure what to make of things. I didn't have a relationship. I was on a career path I wasn't sure I wanted to be on. I felt lost.

I'd been to New Orleans three times. Two of the three was just to board a cruise ship bound for Cozomel. The other time was to attend a conference. I'd never really explored the city. So I decided to book a week in the French Quarter. I stayed at the Holiday Inn Chateau Lemoyne which ironically turns out to be just a block away from the Dauphine Orleans which I stayed at a few weeks ago.

I had no real itinerary. I knew I wanted to see what St. Patrick's Day was like in New Orleans. Other than that, I had no plan. And that is how I discovered that no plan is sometimes the best plan.

Every day I'd sleep in. Then I'd set out and just walk. Most times I'd head for Royal Street and enjoy the street musicians. Then I'd usually end up in Jackson Square. That's where I spotted the photo above of a street busker. I found out later that the performer was Amanda Palmer. Palmer was the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of the duo The Dresden Dolls. But she'd started out as a street performer in San Francisco and New Orleans. I only found out that the performer was Palmer years later when I saw her on a TED talk about connections.

That kind of sums up the trip. I walked. I ate great food. I watched the St. Patrick's Day parade. I turned 41 and celebrated alone on the balcony of a restaurant on Bourbon Street. It was one of the most memorable unmemorable trips I've ever taken.

Now, 20-years later, it is my birthday and I am turning 61. I am married now. I have two children. I stayed on the same career path and can glimpse retirement down the road (but still several years away). But sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday that I was strolling up Royal Street enjoying those unscripted moments of my life.

After all, they led me to where I am now.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Blogging like it's 2006


As I stare forlornly at my blog stats, I regularly see posts I wrote back in 2006 being viewed now, thirteen years after they were written. And as I reread them, I can't help but think they were pretty darned good. I think 2006 was my peak year as a blogger. Which is pretty sad considering I was not quite two years into this medium that was relatively new at the time. The above photo is a 2006 selfie I took in the bathroom mirror (this was before I had a phone that could take selfies). I took the photo to Photoshop my face onto various things as was my habit in 2006 (and more or less every year).

I suppose part of it was that it was a new type of writing and I was still having fun exploring the options. And I hadn't been blogging long enough to have started repeating myself. I had, however, been alive long enough to start repeating myself.

As much as I'd like to believe that I blog for myself and don't need an audience, in 2006 I had an active group of people who regularly read and commented on my blog. Their positive feedback did influence my writing at the time.

For whatever reason, all of the people in my blog community at the time moved on, dropped out, or found other outlets to amuse themselves. It's not like there were thousands of people who read my blog anyway. I think at the time there were maybe ten regulars at the most. So it's not like I ever went viral or was discovered.

This was before social media really overshadowed everything, too. In retrospect, I never really rose to any degree of success as a blogger. So I can't really lament languishing in relative obscurity now.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one with a lampshade on my head at a pity party.

Monday, March 11, 2019

Me, myself and eye


Everything I've been listening to philosopher Alan Watts say about reality and enlightenment pretty much nixes a sense of self and individual existence. This adds to my confusion about figuring out who I am and puts a dead end sign on my road to self discovery.

I don't pretend to totally understand what Watts is explaining. He tends to use a lot of Greek and other ancient language words that he spells out in his lectures (as if spelling them will make them any more comprehensible). I tend to listen to Watts lectures during my morning commute on the train. And I am usually half asleep while I listen to them.

Not that being fully awake would matter (in a literal, not a spiritual sense). Most of what I glean from Watts' explanations is that most of us mistakenly assume we are separate from the world around us. Watts conjectures that we are all connected to everything. So there isn't any "you" or "I."

That is the hardest part for "me" to accept. Because I have struggled my entire life with feeling pretty much alone trying to figure out what I am doing here.

I can't say that what Watts is saying is new to me. I have been fascinated for years with the concept that time isn't really linear. Our mistake is connecting a non-existent past with a non-existent future. In doing so, we ignore the infinite now. But it is hard to comprehend an infinite now because it seems impossible to pinpoint when now is. Because the moment you utter the words now, it has slipped into a seemingly non-existent past to make room for the new now.

I'll catch that tail some day.


Monday, March 04, 2019

I ain't afraid of no ghosts


I just got back from a business trip to one of my favorite cities, New Orleans. I've visited the city seven times in the past 20-some years. And although it has a reputation of being haunted, I have never seen a ghost there. I have seen some scary people there. And I've seem some people who seem haunted. But no spirits.

When I booked the Dauphine Orleans for this trip, it was said to be haunted. It was the site of a former brothel and was said to be haunted by some of the women who worked there. There was also supposed to be a civil war soldier who appeared now an then. But with the exception of a lot of screaming coming from the streets outside my balcony windows (it was Mardi Gras time), I didn't hear or see anything remotely supernatural.


I have pretty much given up on believing in ghosts anyway. I've stayed at many supposedly haunted hotels including the Del Coronado in San Diego, the Queen Mary in Long Beach, the Geiser Grand in Oregon, Thornewood Castle in Washington and the Bourbon Orleans and the Chateau La Moyne in New Orleans. All were supposed to have ghosts. And all of them snubbed me. Though the Geiser Grand felt haunted.

I shouldn't be surprised. All of the Alan Watts philosophy lectures I've been listening to speak to death as just a respite between living. The concept of a soul trapped between living and dying doesn't really make sense.