Category Archives: MEDITATIONS

Sweet Rhythms

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The weather has been wet and cold the last three days, so I’ve mostly been hangin’ with Baldo, Chica, and Mingo while doing stuff around the house. Today, though, I felt the need to reassert my fly fishing mentalite by watching whatever I could find on the internets.  I found one treasure of a video unlike most of the ones that are insistent on displaying fly fishing mastery, i.e. showing either multiple catches and/or hooking into the bigguns. A lot of noise, they are. (Thanks Yoda…)

I really like this one because it’s a laid back, humorous look (about 18 minutes long) at a couple of old-timers experiencing common fly fishing struggles related to choosing the right fly, getting tangled, and maybe even becoming a little impatient.  The nicely timed and appropriately tuned commentary by “The McGlynn,” whoever he is–I checked out the associated website: good, committed critical politics which is a nice plus.  I thought it was simply a promotion for a fly fishing retreat–was perfect. Continue reading →

The Fence II

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My little fence repair project is finished. I stained it this afternoon. I like it given that I kept the posts that were already in place, one of them–the big rough-looking post–being, as my brother reminded me, originally part of barbed-wire fence that bordered a wonderful horse pasture. It enclosed what would now be considered a wetland. Back then we called it a swamp because it had a ditch running east to west through the middle of it and it was soft and gooey and full of life. Continue reading →

The Fence

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So much work that can and should be done around the yard and house, but I try to do one thing at a time within a limited time frame so I don’t get bored and the work doesn’t get tedious. So this afternoon my project was fence repair on two sections of the front yard section of the east fence. I included a couple of “before” photos where I happened to catch the dilapidated, sad east sections. After a few hours of work with some help from Domingo–el viejo alcanza a los noventa y dos años el 26 de este mes– holding the slats while I pounded nails, I was finished by 7:00 pm. Now neither of us can stop looking at the two sections of happy, lovely, renewed cedar fence. We both like the beauty of the natural cedar slats so much we’re tempted to simply apply a clear stain and eventually replace all the older painted slats with new, wider slats like the 5 1/2 inch ones we installed today and simply stain them clear. (BTW. Not bad for a renegade scholar, social critic, and trouble maker, eh?) Continue reading →

Tiger’s press conference

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I just finished watching Tiger Woods’ press conference.

Unlike those television commentators I have listened to so far commenting on Tiger’s “A+” performance at his Masters’ press conference, I wasn’t very impressed with Tiger’s performance and the quality of the questions asked by the journalists in attendance. (Weak, fearful questions.)

I didn’t see much of change from his written statement to this unscripted questioning. (So how much have you paid Elin to stay in the marriage? How much have hush money have you paid to your non-marital sexual partners? Does Elin support your return to the golf tour to play in The Masters? You reference your therapy a lot, but can you be more specific about how Buddhism will help you clarify and recenter your life? You say you weren’t in that “place” before your crash to deal with your pathology properly, but honestly, if you hadn’t crashed/been caught, would you have acknowledged your need to change? Why should we believe you are committed to changing since you didn’t initiate the process on your own?) Continue reading →

Transitions. Movements.

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This past winter’s labors were light by any standard.

The fresh bag of snow melt, opened late last year and used only a handful of times, yearns to understand its neglect.

The snow shovels still propped against the tool shed yawn from boredom as if to say, “Put us away for another season already!”

The still naked deciduous peer down on the dry ground, look up at the cloudy, ambivalent sky waiting for something wet to fall.

Stripped and cut branches hang out along fences’ edges, serving as a playground for bored cats and reminder of yard work yet to be done.

Spring’s labors are but a compensation for winter’s idle, cold, dryness, a reaction to last year’s inattention to detail and order and beauty. Continue reading →

My Happiness Creed!

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Note to reader:

I wrote this piece about six weeks ago and submitted it to the “humor” page of a prestigious magazine that deals with important cultural and historical issues in the United States. Their announced acceptance/rejection time line has passed so I’m guessing that it wasn’t quite as “genial” as the writer’s guidelines advised it should be.  But I will let you, the reader, decide if I need to work on my geniality.

This is also a prelude to a piece I’ve been working on in my head for the past few days dealing with another “scientific” study that finds self-control is also contagious.  I don’t know if that piece will be satirical, but it will be critical in a thoughtful, creative way.  (I hope.)

Enjoy… Continue reading →

Tiger and the Buddhist Path

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“I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it. Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.”

Tiger Woods

From his public statement today:

2-19-2010 Continue reading →

Tiger Woods’ body found!

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(I found this piece while searching for up-to-the-minute news on the internet about Tiger Woods.  For people who want to know, indeed, who need to know, this will answer all your questions about our last, great [brown] hope.  Prepare to be stunned into pure goofiness by the following revelations! Above all, enjoy and “learn something,” as my father likes to advise me.)

By Doscats

February 18, 2010

ALGÚN LUGAR, Arizona.  In a stunning reversal of metaphorical meaning, Doscats Investigations reports that forensic linguists, cultural symbologists, and historical semiologists have discovered what appears to be the remains of Tiger Woods’ body embedded superficially on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Continue reading →

In the stream…

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Let’s see…

It’s been a while since I’ve done this writing thing.  Not that I haven’t had ideas or even motivation.  There’s plenty of worthy stuff and crap to comment on, but sometimes life’s river takes one for a ride before an exit from the current can be found in order to put things (materials and concepts) into order, so to speak.

(“Just breathe,” I remind myself.)

And so it goes.

Three weeks ago a nephew was found lying on the ground next to his vehicle, dead from a gun shot wound . There are suspicious circumstances surrounding his death that may never be completely investigated or understood.  (Sad, difficult days.) Continue reading →