Just Another Day

Today's story starts at the Oaks card club but this is not a poker story. The card room is just the setting for part one of my tale. The Oaks has an elevated rail like many card rooms. For the non-players that simply means the area around the poker tables is separated from the common area by some kind of rail or railing. In this case there is a very large wooden ballister about four feet high with heavy thick wood posts appropriately made of oak. And the common area is two steps above the playing area, so those waiting to play can watch the games quite easily from above the action but behind the rail.

Yesterday I happened to be seated at one of the outer tables facing the rail, so I could see the six or seven spectators up there. At some point I looked up and an elderly oriental gentleman was at the rail. He was old, not ancient; dressed in a hooded sweat shirt with a well worn but not frayed leather jacket as an outer garment. He was wearing a wool knit hat, you know the one size fits all winter hat, he also had on big black glasses with the side bows worn on the outside of the wool cap. So he looked just a bit odd. When I looked up a second time he was vigorously wiping down the top of the wooden rail with a paper towel. He was very diligent about his cleaning chore, once done he discarded the towel in a nearby trash bin and then began a slow inspection of the now sparkling clean two foot wide section of the top rail. He then stepped up to the rail without touching it, watched one hand of play at our table and walked away.

An hour later, I happened to look across the room to see the same gentleman cleaning a section of the rail on the far side of the card room. I kept an eye on him, when he finished his task, he again watched one hand at the nearest table and departed. I have nothing more to say about this.

On the way home, I stopped into Berkeley Bowl, a local favorite, for some groceries. Near the checkout stand  was a large five shelf display of package nuts, candies and assorted treats. While I waited in the queue, two offerings caught my attention: Organic Gummy Bears, which seems like an oxymoron. The second item was candied fennel seeds. I have nothing more to say about this either.
--
that is actually not a lime on the cat's head but a carved pomelo; some kind of chinese tradition; attribution for the picture is lost in the shadows of the internet

A Nearby Earthquake

A small earthquake occurred in Berkeley yesterday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The 2.0-magnitude quake happened at 10:37 a.m. and was centered near Panoramic Way, just southeast of Memorial Stadium on the University of California at Berkeley campus.

I can verify that report. The epicenter was only a mile away and I am up on the 8th floor. It was nowhere near the biggest jolt I have experienced; it wasn't even as moving as the one last month on the other side of the Bay. And nothing like a couple of big temblors in the middle of the night when I lived in L.A. in the early 80s.

I missed the Loma Prieta earthquake here in the Bay Area in 1989, I was living in L.A. at the time. I also missed the Northridge quake in L.A. in 1994, I was living in San Francisco then. Apparently the earth does not move when I am around, at least not big time moves.

Yes, over 400 earthquakes in California in the past week.

Why I Blog: For My New Friends

I write this blog because I want my internal ponderings of so many years to be out in the world not just swirling around in my head. I hope at times I assist others on their journey, at times perhaps make you smile and either sense relief from my rantings or motivate you to rant back at me. The pictures I include are the real pleasure of my blogging; I enjoy both finding them and sharing with you.

Recently there has been a big jump in the number of internet friends who visit this blog for the first time. Partly this comes from several online chat rooms I have joined for "professional networking" purposes. I also have begun using the net for some other leisure activities and that means many of my new friends see the facebook promos I put up whenever a blog post goes live. 

Not all of these new friends know that I am a fairly active blogger, so I thought it might be a good idea to introduce this blog to new acquaintances and perhaps to clarify to olde friends exactly why it is that I write this blog.

I hope you enjoy what leaks out from my head, my heart and my soul into this blog, if not; please block my facebook announcements, I know I am not everyone's flavor of the month.

Here is some of what you might want to know about me before investing your time reading this blog:

-I am a writer and I often use the blog to test out ideas for articles, stories, even books;

-I have a wide range of interests; some might even say perhaps a bit too wide;

-I might be considered politically liberal but I often seem too annoy my lefty friends with what I write here; I have lots of olde and new readers from all walks of life spread around the world;

-I do have an advanced degree in psychology and I do sometimes write with big words; on the other hand I like to write on a wide range of topics, in particular my Saturday posts tend to annoy my old academic friends;

-when something interests me, I will often chase it around the internet for several hours or days and report back in a blog post;

-while my political posts are heavily United States oriented, the rest of my material is not, at least I hope it isn't;

-I often tell stories about things that happened to me yesterday or thirty years ago; these stories usually have a point to them, but I often forget to mention what it is;

-There have been over 500 posts since I began in 2007. Should you want to know more, you can find a blogger's list (100 things about me) here.


If you do drop by, I invite you to use the comments section on anything that you like, hate, don't understand, really like or completely detest. I enjoy the feedback or blowback as the case may be.

Most of all - thanks for reading. Writing is such a solitary act, it really helps to know someone is listening.

The Beauty of Crying

Crying is a natural emotional response to certain feelings, usually sadness and hurt. But then people also cry under other circumstances and occasions, for instance, people cry in response to something of beauty. Stephen Sideroff

The place was the Los Angeles County Museum, the time was the fall of 1990. The exhibit was The Masters of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Annenberg Collection. Jimmy, Audrey and I entered together but soon drifted in different directions. Nearly half an hour later I noticed Audrey at the far end of a small display hall, I was at the other end, inevitably we would meet near the group at the center of the room. As we got closer the group dispersed leaving Jimmy standing alone in front of a shimmering Monet. Reaching him at the same time, we noticed his tears. We embraced him, Audrey at his waist, I around his shoulders. "There's a word beyond beauty," he said.

Some time later Jimmy and I met in front of one of the early impressionistic works and were marveling at the techniques that were simply invented by those artists. We walked together into the next room and found Audrey standing alone in front of a huge Renoir. Tears streamed down her cheeks, followed by another embrace.

Late in the day, I was standing in front of a very pointillistic work by Camille Pissarro. I was transfixed by the movement created on flat surface and the shifting of light with just a infinitesimal movement from me. I remember the scene so clearly, the picture was on a short wall section next to the opening to the next gallery. At some point I looked just slightly to the right through that opening to see Jimmy and Audrey coming towards me. I had to blink the tears from my eyes to see their smiles.

Upon the Occasion of Finding Something

Why is something always in the last place you look?

I have (had) been looking for an item for over a month. About ten minutes ago I found it! I reached into a small travel bag which should have contained only paraphenalia of a certain genre, which is precisely why I had not inspected that container in detail before. I stuck in my hand way down to the bottom and pulled out my passport. Really? Thirty days of randomly focused searching and that's where it was? 

You see today I had become semi-desperate. I missed an appointment at the DMV last month because I couldn't locate all the necessary documents to prove that I was me. I need the California Seniors ID card for another endeavor. I don't have an original social security card, neither have I a birth certificate nor a live birth document. Clearly I shall never be president.

But wait you say - don't you have a "safe place" for such documents? Well of course I do! Unfortunately, no one put the passport there. When I searched the "important document" box this morning (for the third time) the passport still wasn't there. Imagine that. Apparently three times is not a charm.

Last night I emptied the final two boxes I had hauled down from the Sebastopol storage locker, you remember Sebastopol, I live there in my friend's hut back in the early months of 2009. Twas then I began my undomiciled period and therefore rented a small closet to dump my stuff in. Those few boxes were my best and last hope for finding the passport.

I was wrong. The elusive document was here all along. The logic behind placing it in that bag escapes me, just a Duh! moment I guess. During the search I did find my 1981 passport (Antarctica) and my 1996 passport (Bali); no they were not in the same place. Also found drivers licenses expiring in 1979 (Pinckney, MI.), in 1992 (Hermosa Beach); in 2005 (San Francisco); in 2006 (Ann Arbor) and a picture of Amy & me with a lion cub at the MGM (circa 2008).

So passport found. Two boxes of sorted & resorted stuff to be discarded or recycled and one more blog post about nothing in particular. Now where did I put that grenade pin?

Upon Not Having an Accent

I don't have an accent, which is unusual because common thinking is that everyone has an accent. Linguists differ on just who does and does not have an accent but their estimates are all very high (96%+) on just how many of us do have one. I do not. I learned this from someone who would know.

In 1968 I was a student in Germany. My professor there was a wonderful gentleman named Guenther Spaltmann. He was a native german, an accomplished artist and an truly gifted linguist. He had taught himself over a dozen languages; he was an interpreter at the peace negotiations after World War II, where each speech had to be translated live into English, German, French, Russian and Italian.

On our first day of german language class, Herr Doktor had us each introduce ourselves in german. 

"Guten Morgen, Ich bin Tim Lavalli."

Dr. Spaltmann would then tell us where we were born or at least where we lived during our language acquisition years. When I spoke, he said: "You were probably raised west of Detroit but not in a close-in suburb or in eastern Iowa just over the Illinois state line." Apparently those are the two areas of the U.S. that have a complete absence of accent. What was called flat accent. 

One might think this is a good quality for public speaking or commercial voice work, but in fact the absence of accent makes one's voice a bit monotonous (as in monotone). You need some inflection and rhythm. When I began teaching in L.A. in the 70s, I added a kind of a cadence to my speech pattern to shake off the monotone. I never really mastered an accent or a dialect but the irregular up and down changes in my voice kept the class awake, most of the time.

For an overwhelmingly cool map of dialects in the US 

with clickable pronunciation guides - look here.

Upon Being Trained by a Cat

I apologize if this story is a repeat. There comes a point, apparently somewhere around five hundred blog posts, where you just can't remember all the tales you've told. I don't think I have written this one up before but if I have - well enjoy again.

This was back in the early 70s, I was sharing my place in Michigan with a couple of roommates, two dogs and three cats. My favorite was Sam, a big black cat who slept with me every night.

On one particular night I was unable to locate the land of dreams. I was awake and apparently I was going to stay awake. Sam, on the other hand, settled down by my left hand got a good dose of ear rubs and was sound asleep in minutes. I laid there for an hour, then two... somewhere in the middle of the night I was drifting a bit, not asleep yet. Sam woke up, stood up, stretched then walked across my chest and laid back down with his head in my right hand and I reflexively started petting him.

At that moment I realized he did this every night, maybe more than once. He had me trained, the paw impressions on my chest made my sleeping conscious aware of him without waking me up and when he put his head in my hand I would subconsciously scratch him until he fell back to sleep.

Trained by a cat while I was asleep. And they say dogs are smart.

Walgreen Story

On the way into the pharmacy the other day I overheard a snippet of conversation between (actor #1) the gentleman with the red bucket, collecting for I know not what charity and (actor #2) the somewhat loud talking lady on crutches. As I passed them I observed the lady was missing one leg just below the knee; the conversation went like this:

"My son gets out of prison next week."

"Parole or release."

"Oh definitely parole to a halfway house in Oakland."

"How many years he do?"

"They gave him twenty but let him out in twelve, he should never have done a day."

"What for?"

"He got the man who did this to me." She pointed at her missing leg.

When I came out of the store, the lady was gone but as I passed the man he spoke to me:

"You heard the story bout her son."

"I did."

"Ain't true."

I stopped, knowing this would be worth the time.

"I knew her back when see lost that leg from too many infections."

"Needles?"

"Yup, and she ain't got no son either. Leastwise not one that gettin' out of prison; her only child died from the same crap that took her leg."

"Sad story."

"Well nobody makes you put that poison in your body."

"No I guess not."

I dropped five bucks in his red bucket for the story and headed to my car with my physician prescribed narcotics in the clean, white pharmacy bag with the tax receipt attached.

--

Art: Decision Time by americanpsycho

Knowledge & Ignorance

"What did he know and when did he know it."

For those who may have forgotten or who are too young to remember; that question was bantered about during the Nixon/Watergate fiasco. The question was - did Tricky Dick know about the break-in; if he knew, when did he know. The same question was asked about the subsequent cover-up.

"Sometimes it's better not to know."

Now there's an adage that drives pragmatists crazy, until they are themselves in a morally ambiguous situation where it's ... well, better not to know. I think plausible deniability begins with this concept.

So when is it better to know and when not? Today's story is one of my own, a real event that happened to me over twenty years ago. I have written once before about the death of my best friend, this story unfolds three or four weeks after his death. He died of complications from AIDS, during the last year I went to Tom's various appointments with him. Sometimes I took notes, other times I asked the medical questions that weren't being asked; I kept track of things.

This was 1989, there was no internet to provide everyone with reams of information but we were in L.A. so there were resources. At some point Tom started getting a monthly AIDS update newsletter, he would read it and then pass it on to me. At some point in the final months he lost interest and the newsletters went unopened. 

Several months after his death I was cleaning out his home office and came across the newsletters including the last three or four still unopened. I was going to donate them to a local information and support program but for some reason I decided to open the last few. On the back page of one was an article titled: Progression of Disease for those with Pneumocystis Pneumonia and T-Cells under Fifty. Exactly Tom's condition so I read the article. 

I can remember sitting there in amazement as the article mirrored his last six months almost precisely. What drugs would be prescribed. What side effects to expect. What opportunistic other disease attacks to watch for. It was a retrospective telling of the end of his life. I even said out loud: "Well now you tell me." Yet I wonder...

A decade later while my mother was failing, friends and family would ask about her prognosis. What to do about estate planning, finances, bring the grandkids to see her and when? I always had the same 'lighten the mood' answer - "I could answer that question if someone could just tell me how long this play runs." Tell me when this will be over and I'll tell you how to make those type of plans.

But, of course, this is not what life or death is about. That's not how it works. But 20 years ago, if I had opened that newsletter; I would have know. How might those final weeks have been different. What might we have done or not done, if we had known. For me, not much would have changed; but there were others who delayed or denied - perhaps I could have given them better advice but who would have believed that I had a day planner for the end of days.

A Blog is Not a Life

Guilty! I offer no excuse, I have heard myself say it in various forms.

"I mentioned this in my blog."

"I have a post about that in my blog queue."

"I told this story awhile back on my blog."

I do sincerely apologize for any truncated or abandoned conversations that have sprung from my egomaniacal references to one tiny cul de sac on this infrequently traveled cyber street. Blogging like nearly every other endeavor in life has some positives and some of those other things. One of those negative qualities is the author's belief that everyone they know in the real world reads their blog and retains the essential and life altering insights the blogger believes were conveyed therein.

We really are all brilliant in our own minds. Sometimes that attitude leaks out through the keyboard.

Sorry, it will probably happen again.

--

cartoon from americanhell.com

The State of Bananas

Regular readers will notice that besides my frequent post mentions of cats, poker & politics; bananas show up a bit more often than the mean or mode of civil conversation might suggest. I like bananas, especially a perfectly ripened one. But did you know...

-the Cavendish variety, which accounts for 95%+ of all imports to the U.S. only became the banana of choice around 1950 after a fungus (Panama disease) killed the majority of the stock of the previous market favorite the Gros Michel. What we mostly eat now is the Dwarf or Nain Cavendish and unfortunately not because it is the most flavorful but because it is the right size, easily transported and until very recently disease resistant.

-bananas are either the 4th, 5th or 6th most cultivated crop in the world, but easily the number one fruit. The debate about the "most cultivated" has to do with interpretations about acreage versus output versus 'units of feed'. For instance rice produces a lot of edible tonnage per acre but crops that grow on large plants or trees may actually produce more edible material in the same ground space. The list is basically: wheat, rice, barley, corn, banana, potato.

-bananas, as we all know, are a very good source of dietary potassium; but did you know that the potassium is radioactive? When you hear a white coated talking head mentioning a "banana dose" they are referring to the amount of radioactive isotope potassium-40 found in a single banana.

-India produces the most bananas in the world, around 22 million metric tons but since most of those are consumed in country; we tend to think more bananas are growth in the big exporting nations like Columbia, Honduras and Venezuela. Worldwide 70% of all imported bananas go to the European Union and the U.S.

-I spent a long weekend in Gulfport, Mississippi one winter pre-Katrina. We had a 20th floor balcony view of the gulf and the Chiquita Banana pier. No other product was off-loaded on that pier, which took up to four container ships at a time; day and night the trucks pulled away from the docks with containers full of bananas headed all across the country.

Shopping

In some ways I am very much a boy. One of my y-chromosomal deficiencies is shopping, as has been recently chronicled thru my IKEA experience. Last month, while I was up in Weed, I took the co-pilot seat on the monthly "big shopping" trip to Yreka. Many of you city folk may not realize that when you live out in the country you really can't be running to the supermarket every other day, not when that means a 30, 40 or 50 mile drive each way. So you plan ahead. Since I was basically crashing at my friends house while the Berkeley apartment was being remodeled, I felt it only fair to make at least one shopping run, despite my aversion to commerce and over consumption, I do believe in eating.

So I took the passenger seat with my hostess one Tuesday afternoon and we hit the road with an empty trunk and a bin of tote bags. I discovered only after we were on the road north that the modus operandi for a "Big Shop" allowed for side trips, which in this case meant we would be stopping at The Spawn of the Devil Store (Wal-Mart) and the Dollar Store. I had clearly not taken enough medication to get me through this forced march of consumerism, but I felt obligated since the Wal-Mart stop included chemicals for the spa, which I used every single day. And yes, I cannot tell a lie - I bought an item that was not on the shopping list and was not edible, it truly is a vortex of evil and impulse spending.

But this post is not about any of what I have meandered on about thus far. Nah, tis about our checkout experience from the Arkansas-China outlet store. We had finished in the garden section (spa products) and since there was an open register with only one other customer, we decided to checkout there. Did I mention we had bough a month's supply of individual serving meals for both the cat and the dog, on sale don't you know. Let's just say we had a full basket in excess of eighty individual items. But only one person in the queue in front of us and she had exactly six items. We were good.

I now change professional garb and step in my psychologist demeanor. The lady in front of us wanted to divided her purchases into two groups, not unreasonable she could have been picking up a few things for a friend. However, I heard her say:

"I only buy food on this card." and she produced a Visa debit card, which was then followed by having to guess several times at her passcode and then not having enough in her account to cover the four food items. I made the assumption that she was poor and considered paying for her food items.

She and the slow burn clerk then switched to a second card, which was a $25 gift Wal-Mart debit card someone had given her for Christmas (our story takes place in March). That had enough remaining balance to cover the food items, but having to put food on anything but her food debit card as very disconcerting to our slowly becoming bizarre shopper.

By this time two more shoppers had pulled up behind us, but when another register was opened they bum rushed it and did not allow the next in line (me!) to take my rightful place. So we stayed behind our single shopper, who had now moved on to her non-food items and another card, this time a credit card. This card went through but there was an issue with one of the items, which apparently had been listed as on sale for $2.59 but was showing up on the register as $2.89. A call could have gone out for a price check but the register clerk decided not to go there and keyed in the 30 cent savings. Methinks the large male in line may have influenced her decision, but I was only standing that close to hear the next bit of disturbed dialog.

All items are now purchased, but wait. There is the matter of cashback, which I (because now I am paying very close attention) understand goes only on the credit card, but this was the credit card that had to be used in place of the first debit card that did not have enough credit to debit the four food items; so the concern is whether one can cope with using the credit card twice in the same day. I am not sure if this is because the credit card gets frightened if removed from the wallet more than once a day or if perhaps two transactions dated the same day on the monthly statement resembles the sign of satan. I'm just speculating here.

Our shopper is not poor; I inferred this from the Lexus key she pulled out when searching her cavernous purse. Not poor but definitely certifiable. Wait, you say, too harsh an assessment. OK then, she finally decides she can indeed use the card twice and runs it through the card reader again in order to get three dollars cash back. Three dollars!

Hold on, you say again, maybe she is poor. She finally gets her three bucks and tucks them into her wallet with what I can see is a stack of bills totaling at least several hundred dollars.

I would say more but I was busy stacking thirty individual cat dinners in succulent gravy on the checkout counter. Eventually our queued up shopper drifts away into whatever universe she alone inhabits and the checkout lady turns her attention to me, I say:

"There are thirty of these cat dinners if you want to scan just one."

"They make us run them through one at a time," she sighs.

"I'll want to put these on separate credit cards."

I couldn't resist.

Are You Getting Enough?

This is how the conversation went:

"So how are you; you getting enough?"

"Could you be more specific?"

"Any noun that could possibly end that question will do."

"For instance . . . "

"Are you getting enough sleep, sex, peace, calm, tranquility, bacon . . . "

She laughed and answered - no.

I took her for breakfast at The Pork Store, it would be hubris to suggest I could conjure peace.

Fractals of the Past

Fractals of My Past: Serial Cerebral Eruptions in Both Hypnagogic 

and Hypnopompic States of Consciousness.

Sometimes the olde academic creeps out and we must have long titles with a strategically placed colon. What that jumble of mumble title refers to is a series of events I encountered not long ago, in which I experienced for several days a recurring pattern of thought. These thoughts occurred just as I was falling asleep, that transitional phase between wakefulness and sleep is called the hypnagogic state. They also happened in the early morning as I transitioned back from sleep to wakefulness or what is labeled the hypnopompic state.


Now we all experience some fairly jumbled mind-space imagery at times in the spaces between sleep and not-sleep. This is not unusual at all. But for two days, both morning and night I had a series of remembrances that were all of a very similar content. I vividly recalled incidents from my life in which I was either guilty of a social faux pas or some form of minor embarrassment. All of these events I regret but only in the incrementally smallest manner possible; anything less and I would not even be able to recall them. They were what are known clinically in the psychological profession as minor oopsies.


Yet time after time I would wake or drift towards sleep and find myself reliving yet another such memory. After several such incidents, I shook myself and began to consciously imprint a mental suggestion to avoid such cerebral cobwebs; a little shrink trick you can use when you start thinking about snakes or spiders or old girlfriends. But I stopped myself and decided to let the silly string play out on this one.


There was that too flippant comeback to the nice married lady at the Manhattan Beach party.


The rude slip of the tongue to the nun on the playground in third grade.


The unintentional sexual innuendo to that redhead and instead of politely withdrawing I followed-up, I wonder if she ever forgave me.


That tiny white lie that exploded in West Hollywood, how was I to know she had been to that motel?


I estimate that over two days there were at least ten or twelve of these mental machinations that welled up from the depths of my subconscious. The last was so vivid it awoke me at 3 a.m. but it was the last. The parade of mortification was gone as suddenly as it had begun and I was left with run of the mill prurient fantasies to lull me to sleep.


Strange what goes bump in the near night and dark mornings.

IKEA Adventures

I had my first IKEA experience last week. Normally that would not be worth a blog post but when does anything normal make it to the blog? This is after all an adventure in observing the nearly normal, usually half-a-bubble-off happenings. Now I are not a shopper, like many males I do not have the shopping gene. Recently, however, I have observed that there are shoppers and there are closet shoppers. There are people, my friends among them, who do not have shopper in their DNA but they do have consumer hard-wired somewhere. I think its the nature/nurture thing or maybe just advertising propaganda.

Not me. I really find commercial outings distasteful, plus I have really been divesting for the past decade. But I needed a bed, with my bad back and the newly remodeled apartment, I just had to bite the Discover card and buy a bed. After some online research and a bewildering array of sales that seem to go on 24/7 and 365, I decided to try the land of unfinished Scandinavian excess. So I went to the local IKEA in Emeryville with the intention of buying a bed and only a bed. 

I put on my best anthropologist demeanor, prepared to observe the purchasing rituals of the americanus consumerosis, but I should have been better prepared. Like all wide-eyed field researchers I went into the wild unprepared with even the simplest of equipment. First of all, who would have thought that I needed a map . . .

I had no warning. My colleagues who are not shoppers have, as I, never been to the land of IKEA. Those who have had an IKEA experience thought nothing of allowing a virgin ikeadite to venture out alone. I think they were probably getting back at me for the time I told them it was OK to get the ground beetle ceviche in Honduras. Also probably why no one told me to "try the meatballs" while I was waiting in one of the many lines I encountered at IKEA.

Now less you think I was swallowed by the whale of housewares, I will tell you that I left the land of blue and yellow with only a purchase receipt for a bed, a mattress and a delivery invoice for the following day. Had that been it, as they say, you would not be reading this blog post. But no. After locating the bedroom corner of the IKEA wilderness and ferreting out the order form and golf pencil ritual; not to mention the local knowledge that the "bed" display room is different than the "mattress" room. Confident that I had followed the unwritten rules and traditions, I made my selection and communicated with a less than eager staffer in something I call Ikean English value added dialect. There was some walkie-talkie communication with someone in the warehouse which contained idiomatic expressions I could not decipher and hence the later to be revealed cultural clash.

No I ordered slacks and a table cloth.

The next day my mattress was delivered but not my slated platform base, instead I got two king box spring units, not my order. I called the IKEA hotline, got a real person with no accent, she understood the problem, quickly got me a return order reference number but we jointly decided I had better go back to the store and get the correct item code on the slated platform base. So I returned for part two of my IKEA adventure, found my way to the bed section, not the mattress room and discovered the secret hidden slated bed base code (Sultan Laxeby 001.259.72). I then proceeded to the customer service desk as instructed, only to find there is no customer service desk. Three blue&yellow consultations later, having visited the Information Kiosk, the Information Desk and finally the Return Room, I found a helpful person, who had to leave the Return Room to consult with the delivery manager who advised her to advise me that since I already had a apparently precious return order reference number . . . they would call me to arrange for a pick-up and delivery of my desired product.

This is where my IKEA adventure stands today, no call yet, mattress on the floor, slated platform bed base lingering in some cold, sterile warehouse awaiting the third act appropriately titled: Some Assembly Required.

UPDATE (3/29): Five days now and another long phone conversation initiated by me, I now await the alleged return call to schedule the exchange and new delivery.

UPDATE (3/30): Call came this morning. Delivery tomorrow, wonder if this time we got it right.

UPDATE (3/31): Nope, still haven't got all the parts I thought I had ordered.

UPDATE (4/1): Made a third trip to IKEA, vowed never to return and now need to get a friend to visit and help me put all the pieces together.

Coming Home?

Home - 1. a house, apartment or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family or household.

             2. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.

In one sense I am coming home today, that would be the the sense expressed in the first definition above. If any place can be called my usual residence in the past several years, then the Berkeley apartment qualifies. Today after 112 days of remodeling, I am moving back in. Pictures to follow soon.

Domestic affections is another thing entirely. I don't really know if I simply no longer feel such emotions or just currently have no interest in that direction. Semi-nomadic feels comfortable and not at all foreign as I had anticipated. This gives me something to ponder as I place my minimalist domestic stuff in the renewed space high up in the low clouds of Berkeley.

Remember Coming Home (Fonda, Voight, Dern) one of the first two major films that took on the subject of the Vietnam War. They both came out in 1978, less than three years after the U.S. exit from Vietnam; the other film was The Deer Hunter (DeNiro, Walken, Streep). The picture below is the one most remember from Coming Home, Fonda and the crippled veteran she falls in love with Jon Voight. The picture at the top is of Fonda and Bruce Dern, her husband; the other factor in the film's equation. I much preferred The Deer Hunter but no one would have got the reference if I titled this post - Searching for Bambi? 


Nevermind, nothing to see here, move along.

And yes the apartment is nearly 100% new, so what am I bitchin' about?

Tune Stuck in My Head

From the moment I could talk

I was ordered to listen.
-Cat Stevens

For three days those lyrics were stuck in my head. They come from an old Cat Stevens song called Father and Son. I checked the lyrics, they have nothing to do with why I the tune kept going round and round in my brain. No, I hadn't heard the song on an old oldies station. Sure I knew the song, I liked Cat Stevens back before he found his own fundamental way to the divine.

And I wasn't hearing the whole song, at times not even the music, just those eleven words. Was I silenced as a child - absolutely not. I, we were all encouraged to be vocal. I also learned early to watch, listen and observe before I acted or spoke.

I had two older brothers and growing up I got to observe them getting into all sorts of trouble. My oft learned lesson was - well don't do that or at least don't do it that way. I was always a good student of staying out of trouble. Which brings me to today's story, which has nothing to do with those lyrics.

I suppose I was about nine or ten; it was a Sunday afternoon, I came downstairs heading for the bathroom. I know it was a Sunday afternoon because my father was home. He was never home during the week, he was always at the pharmacy, which was only half a mile away but he was never actually home, except on Sunday afternoons. He was sitting in his chair with the Sunday Detroit Times unfurled in his hands.

As I passed the kitchen, my mother came out and said something to me; I have no idea what she said but I am reminded of a cartoon character who opens her mouth and some off key trombone notes come out - you know just noize. It probably began: "Timothy, why didn't you do this" or "Have you done that." It was mean, she was being a nag and I didn't deserve it. I don't know if my parents were having a little tiff or if she was just looking for a target to bitch at. But I was in the line of fire.

Problem was, without thinking I said: "Don't you snap at me! I got all A's on my report card."

Now, nothing wrong with that response but the way I said it - it came out way too sassy. We did not use that tone with adults. Talking back to adults was a mortal sin in our house. I wanted to swallow the words as soon as they came out. My content was fine. My delivery, however, had just turned this into a potential shit storm for me and all I had been doing was just walking by.

There was a long moment of silence, a long moment. Then my father brought the two sides of his paper together, turned the edge of the next page and open it up again and kept on reading without saying a word. My mother stared at him, turned with the loudest silence I had ever heard and headed back into the kitchen.

As it turned out I had invoked the magic words - good grades and not just good grades - perfect grades. All three of us knew my mother was just bitching to bitch, but she had picked the wrong target and my father was not going to take the bait and deflect her foul mood onto me. I was just passing through on the way to the bathroom.

So maybe there is a little something there from the Cat Stevens' song. The lyrics tell a story of a father giving advice to his son; advice the son is not going to take. Well I heard my father's unspoken advice that day; I heard it and I remembered it.

If you're doing your job and getting it right, don't take shit from anyone that isn't yours to begin with. I didn't and I don't. Thanks Dad.

A Disappointing Anniversary

I'm annoyed today. It will pass but today I am annoyed. You see it was a full year ago that I moved into the Berkeley co-op apartment with the truly spectacular view. True the decor left something to be desired but I have low expectations in those areas. There was much debate about remodeling, I was against it. My position was - you don't put money into the place until you are ready to sell. But my voice was advisory only, I did not have a vote.

Then in the late fall a decision was made to move ahead with a complete top-to-bottom remodel. I moved everything out and vacated the space on December 8th. The completion deadline was spoken of as being "the end of the year," now I have enough real estate experience to know that any date a contractor gives you should be multiplied by at least a factor of two. So I expected perhaps late January and would have been only mildly surprised by a February return date.

Well today is the one year anniversary of moving into the apartment and now over three months since I moved out and as you might guess I am not back in yet and expect it will minimally be another week or two even three before I do get back in and even then I expect there will be half a dozen pick-up items that won't be done and will take several more weeks or even months to finish.


Grumble. Mumble. Like a frustrated cheetah when the antelope gets away.

I'm annoyed today. It will pass.

Saved by a Collie

I told a friend a childhood story the other night and she said: "Have you blogged that yet?" Wow I have really infected my friends with this blog. But no I have not told my collie story and I should, so I will.

We grew up with two Blue Merle collies. Kerry was the first and Shane the second. They were each with us about a decade. We got Kerry soon after we moved out of Detroit, so I was just about two at the time. A little over a year later a house was being built across the street from us; the basement had been dug but heavy rains had delayed further work and there was about three feet of standing water in the hole.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon a 3 year old Timothy wandered away and a semi-frantic search was underway when someone spotted the wagging white underside of Kerry's tail through the bushes across the street. They ran over and found me half-in and half-out of the basement hole, a laid out Kerry sprawled across my body with her teeth holding onto my belt. I don't know if I would have drowned, how tall are 3 year olds? Needless to say everyone was happy not to have tested the science of kid and muddy water in a hole.

Those were wonderful dogs, we had cats too of course and as I grew up I became a devoted feline lover but Kerry and Shane hold a special place in my heart, perhaps a bit more special for the collie that may well have saved my life.

--

photo: that is a blue merle collie, not one of ours but the closest I could get in an internet search, I wonder if any of my siblings have old photos of those dogs.

Conscious Control of Emotions

Here's the scenario, the scene and the set-up: 


Someone I knew and was voluntarily interacting with had the potential to really mess with my life. History told me this person could easily do something selfish, nasty, even evil. I knew this. When it inevitably happened I reacted as if I knew it were coming . . . because I did - snakes do not change their nature. I had consciously armored myself for this eventuality and dealt with it without emotional upset. I calmly made other plans and moved on.


Then I went to sleep . . . 


We really can learn to control our emotions consciously. We really can't or shouldn't learn to do that with our subconscious. I experienced a night of anxiety, anger and abandonment. It was ever so fascinating because each time I awoke I knew exactly what was going on - my subconscious was processing the selfish betrayal of someone who just isn't worth the price of warm spit to me. That doesn't mean the deep animal brain of my paleolithic ancestors did not want to hack him or her to shreds with a blunt stone axe. But no, I am civilized - I would use a well-honed blade and get the carnage over with quickly.


But no, I am civilized and evolved and I did what properly matured and restrained humanoids do -- triple scoop, hot fudge, no sprinkles.