riotheclown

One thing that I have found is consistent in life (and while I am not a hundred years old, just a bit more than half of that, I have not grown galvanized in rhetoric) is there's nothing like experience.
There are a lot of videos with people talking about the various candidates running for the office of President in the states and almost as many outside of that country and they have their "camps" and they say pretty much the same things depending on their "camp" but Susan Sarrandan said something completely outside the topic of the election that really resonated with me.( her experience )
"It's a terrible thing to reduce anyone to just being a 'concept'" --Susan Sarrandon. It is a terrible thing not because it feels bad for "the poor", the "mentally ill", the "refugees", it is a terrible thing because it allows ACTUAL crimes against ACTUAL people to be committed under the guise of policy.
There is a big difference between a "solution" and a crime. If it is a crime it should be called a crime and we should have to learn to live with it or change it. But most importantly we should not be allowed to lie about it.

I think that feeling comfortable should not be a goal in life if it involves coming up with ways to distance oneself from others. We can't pretend to have all the answers but there is great harm in pretending that questions are instead statements.

My grade five teacher used to say, "I don't know what experience is good for but it sure beats sitting on your hands".

Labyrinth was playing at the old Fox Theater in Toronto's Beaches community.

I used to live there (then "the Beach") when I was a young thing kicking it. It was run down mix of old people and artsy/hippie types. There seemed to be a pneumatic tube between the neighbourhood and Vancouver as people shifted from one to the other at a dizzying rate, before, that is, jettisoning to some other continent or plane of existence, often, finally, never to return. *sad face*

By the time I had kids the neighbourhood got too expensive for us to live in, my old employer gave up the studio there and moved to the grotty lake shore. (Now too expensive for mere mortals to live in also.)

If you go there be prepared for lots of dogs on the sidewalk. I don't hate dogs. Some dogs I love but I do hate the number of dogs in this neighbourhood, someone told me it is the highest dog to people ratio in the world after Hong Kong (note those dogs are all pocket sized, beaches dogs are all BIG). Same with kids in strollers. The place is full of rich thirty-some-things with too many dogs and way too wide strollers. Walking there is a nightmare on a sunny day. End of gripe.

I haven't been to the theatre in years. I wonder if the best make out seats are still there, the one with the arm rest broken between them... Anyway, I am glad I went. I had JUST enough money on my card for a ticket and met my friend's daughter and her daughter, 5 3/4 years old and they invited me to sit with them.

I have learned to go to movies on my own because it really is not worth missing what I want to see because I can't convert any friends to my taste. The aesthetic was quite different in those days and the fact that the Goblin King is definitely hitting on a fifteen year old girl didn't seem to bother us, but I do still love young Jennifer Connelly's plucky character and yes, of course, be still my heart, David Bowie. *sigh* The jerky film and tinny sound is forgiven. All is forgiven when eyes are looking through nostalgia's haze...

I am very nervous about wasting time. Being busy is a way of disappearing. It was a way as a child to avoid too much scrutiny or being given something to do that I didn't want to do. I think that is why I sit zazen. For a half hour or so every day I don't have to question what I am doing. Sometimes I feel as if I will explode, right there on the zafu. It is an amusing thought. It never happens. So I have to just continue to sit.

I don't know what to do.

I suppose I am busy not knowing.

Okay then. Well I guess that's that.

Only one closet left to empty.

Got hit behind the knees by something, had to just stop. the sun is shining through the basement window and as it sets it reaches all the way to the furthest wall of the basement. If I lean back from the computer I can interrupt it, but not for long. it is already below the horizon as I type this but I still am slightly blinded from watching it.

Stupid transience.

But no worries. I let it expire before and managed to re-start it months later and found all my photos were still "there".

So, no big deal. I think I will post a few photos from my galleries a day though until they shut it down.
5 days off work...geez i look old, where's my wrinkle cream!

5 days off work...geez i look old, where's my wrinkle cream!

Watched the documentary. Made me cry. What a voice. I feel ashamed for the human race that we do this to our treasure, our joy.

Really, to err is human, but to crush? Isn't that evil?

Yup. So I left it in a warm place and didn't touch it till this morning. It starts out okay but then doesn't connect to anything and I can't dial a number. my pictures are there but none of my contacts or calendar appointments.

sheesh.

If I tell you I dropped it in water will you report me to "to stupid people should not have smart phones" police?

I am going to see if it will let me enter all my contacts again.

Did I mention I moved the kitchen table and chairs and the double bed to my apartment BY MYSELF? I strong if stupid. :(

ok, I don't get people... including myself. In the last weeks I have moved a mountain of stuff around, metaphorically and physically. The day I put the mattress and box spring out for the garbage I had finally some sort of agreement between my body and mind (heart?) about what I was going through and so uncharacteristically I burst into tears and hugged the neighbour who offered me condolences as she passed, but for the most part I am just shovelling an endless driveway piled high with a history made of tiny snowflakes made of mostly nothing that, in their combined weight, feel like a planet crushing me.

But you can only shovel one shovel full at a time and that is what I have been doing. I lose my shit with someone just doing their job, it's because I think the computer should be able to get it right before it spews another bill out, after all, I TOLD THE HUMAN SHE WAS DEAD. Nobody else would miss the fact that I am a bit f**ked up, this is what grief is like, especially when the history was contentious I am told, but I do and it trips me up and lays me low. Days go by and I don't want to get dressed. If I still had cable I would watch t.v. all day for days.

And yet I can feel so happy about having my spice shelf up and laugh so hard at a dog.

Is that nuts?

I had the lid of the garbage bin fly back and hit me full on the bridge of my nose last night. It was a really strong wind and BAM!

I am waiting to see if my eyes turn black now. I am slowly turning into a thing, a battered thing that lives in a basement in Scarberia. I need an expanse of not doing physical or social activities for a while, milk baths, massages, consequence free alcoholic beverages and sunset walks along a continuous, litter-free, sandy beach.

I no title spoke to the same traveller several times. She was lovely and confused and then I learned she missed her bus and didn’t know where she was suppose to get it. She was older, maybe seventy and her bags were heavy. I offered to help her carry them up to the desk to find out where she was supposed to get the bus. They supplied an attendant to help her. As I passed her off to the woman she held my hands and we wished each other well. Later the woman who attended to her came over and said that a commendation was being written on the woman’s request and it would be passed on to my employer. Nice huh?

I also got to help a woman who left her wallet on the train. I took her to the security office and they arrange for it to be put on the returning train.

I handed out all the cards, twice as many as last week in a quarter the time. I even had a few conversations about the purpose of the on-line survey with people who actually seemed interested in sharing their thoughts (AMAZING) and then had a nice train ride home with my young co-worker __ooda who asked me her favourite question, “What was your scariest experience?” (probably not a good idea with someone like me) and we talked instead about why she liked the question.

I got home to what is less of a disaster than I thought it was, boxes all ready for donation tomorrow, had a nice warmed-over-curry and watched “The Good Wife” on Netflix AND THEN SLEPT SEVEN HOURS!

A little more money in the bank and day of sampling the human race and feeling pretty good about it. Not a bad day at a crappy job.

Current Mood: good
Current Location: basement
Current Music: clicking radiators

Backache, side ache, headache, tummy ache,

Foot ache, toothache, arm ache funny ache,

Butt ache, knee ache and a silly ache

Let’s hear the word of the LORD.

So I watched vid that said you should sleep on your left side because it is good for you. I bruised a rib on my left side and I am fighting a kidney cold (I think) and lower back strain from moving boxes and I have a limp from whatever, maybe hours of standing in the cold handing out cards to people and it occurred to me, “I sleep on my right side ALL THE TIME. Time to change!”

So I spent at least half the night on my left side and I slept SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS.

I still have a bit of a back ache but not nearly as bad as yesterday and NO LIMP.

So Praise the Internet! I am cured!

Well actually with these two:

The second row, third from the left and fourth row first remind of Chris Farley.
But he's better looking than his mom at this age...

There is an MTV "news" video MTV "news" video circulating on Facebook that is an interview with David Bowie.
I am surprised they leave it up but perhaps it is the like the Kings New Clothes story, only an honest man can see the king is naked.
It is a perfect example of Bowie's genius and part of what gets fans confused. They own parts of his life but can't swallow the whole.

As Iman says, "I fell in love with David Jones. The other thing is a persona." David Bowie was a performance and as he got older he got more nuanced and subversive. Yes, he ran into problems at times in his younger days when he got lost in the story, but that's what artist's do. But he survived and continued to jar our perceptions right up until the last.

An artist questions it's audience. We think he/she is naked, we dress him/her in what we understand, but we only become naked ourselves in our own misunderstanding.

And this is the point when we can change, when we can laugh, when we can be open and compassionate because we all are these frail and imperfect beings, naked in what we thought was our brilliance.

We are all like stranded aliens, seeking a home, a definition of selfhood and stumbling on the cost of these things, when we see our reflection.

Can we forgive ourselves? When we are at our lowest can we embrace our disolving, let go of our grasping, holding nothing but space and see there is no other, not really? And see we have a choice, it is always the same choice: fear or love.

Current Mood: happy

I haven't done any watercolour for a long time and I over worked it to it's detriment but painting this gave me something to do while I wait till they are a bit more settled and ready for visitors. This is not a birth announcement. That is for mom and dad to do. Grampa already hinted on Facebook with a post but I am holding back, as requested. ;)

It has been a month of extremes, of birth and death and Xmas (which is for me the most contradictory of holidays). As much as we would like to avoid the messiness of life, the edges are what give this jewel its brilliance.
also posted at https://wordpress.com/post/riotheclown.wordpress.com/1939

He is beautiful and his mom is too. :)

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: what a wonderful world

My mother loved to travel and she was never afraid of getting lost. It was a thrilling approach, if sometimes scary. I asked her once when I was a child what she would have done if she hadn't had kids and she told me "I'd have been a spy."

Daily walks around the neighbourhood were not just for the exercise. She was always exploring and meeting new people. (the mysterious "Torso man" comes to mind...)

Travel was her passion and she left Magrath Alberta and hardly looked back. I doubt there is a continent she didn't get to visit.

She was funny. She could laugh at herself. Her take on being in the hospital: "In here, if you're not complaining, you might be dead."

In the words of G.K. Chesterton: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered."

If you can enjoy a glass of Merlot and a bag of potato chips, please toast to this, her next GREAT adventure.

--for the memorial

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riotheclown

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