November 2002

My cold is like the Oregon winter, it hangs on long after it has worn out its welcome.

"America's low-wage workers," [Barbara] Ehrenreich concluded, "are the nation's principal philanthropists. We are all in debt to them for clean homes and workplaces, food service, and the care of our children and the elderly. As one worker told me, 'You give and you give.' It is time to end the involuntary philanthropy of the poor.” – Michael Funke, “Ehrenreich urges economic justice movement,” Northwest Labor Press, Nov. 15, 2002

Working-class people are exploited by the middle and upper classes, who force us to work for low wages, often without medical insurance, with no job security, to provide them with low cost goods and services. We should try to stop them from doing this. They owe us, and it’s time to collect.

In 2000, 46.5 percent of the 1,579,566 total arrests for drug abuse violations were for cannabis – a total of 734,497. Of those, 646,042 people were arrested for possession alone.  Source: Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation – Portland IndyMedia

Check this animation out. Translation here.  From Salon.

Dream:

Wandering around, trying to find a quiet place to write. Find some kind of old shed with interesting junk. Decide I'm going to glue things on backgrounds to make art.  Will call my studio Poor White Trash.

Response from a friend: “Yeah, that's a cool dream.  Seems like art that embodies a sense of mystery always has its roots in the detritus that floats around in the unconscious – trash as art....”

Yes, and perhaps poverty as art.  I'm going to have to think about that one.

I’m not as “nice” a person as I was 20 years ago, mainly because I’m much more defined, much less tentative. I think most of us go through this change as we get older. I’ve especially noticed it in women. Women in their 50s know who they are.

A lot of churning goes on in the lives of poor people. There is never a comfortable place to sit, so we have to keep trying new things. We are experimentalists.

I’ve been immersed in politics and struggling with my hatred of selfishness, of the pig American, and my attraction to revolution, killing. But you can’t kill selfishness.

Maybe I should just spend the rest of my life writing cranky letters to publishers about typos in their books.

We have to keep learning to think “outside the box,” and that’s hard because we’re continually building the box around us. Almost the whole point of thinking is to construct a coherent world view – and then die inside it.

So how do you punch a hole in the wall? (Metaphor shift alert.) Natalie Goldberg says you open up the “wild mind,” the unconscious, by writing.

If this form bothers you, remember that it’s part of the content.

Reality is a beach dissolving under our feet.  As we speak.

All magic is outside the box.

Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what’s important is left after you’ve explained everything else. Ideally, if anything were any good, it would be indescribable. – Edward Gorey, quoted in Willamette Week

I didn’t expect retirement to feel so … decadent.

The rest of the world is so busy busy busy, and I’m watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Perhaps I’m not clear on the concept.

Startup.com is an interesting documentary. A world I wouldn’t know otherwise, guys in their 20s raising millions for a dot com that crashes, a 90s story.

This is the part of life that comes just before you turn into a box of fine gray powder. I’ve got to make the most of it.

The problem in winter is, how do I keep it from shutting me down?

I wonder, in Natalie Goldberg’s books on writing, if she writes such short chapters because she knows our monkey minds cannot concentrate for long? Or perhaps, like me, she’s a miniaturist.

Recently in a dream I went back to Eugene, looking for a friend from 20 years ago. Couldn’t find her. Someone told me she had used a wire to cut off her own head. I didn’t believe that, because I remembered hearing from her after we both left Eugene.

To write we have to listen, which is foreign to our culture. Listen to the world breathing around us.

The heart of Goldberg’s method seems to be self acceptance. If you’re lonely, for example, don’t add to the burden by being ashamed of it.

I think we Americans are afraid of writing because we are afraid of the loss of control of the mind that writing entails. – Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

Maybe I have an advantage, since I’ve never had control.

I keep wishing for coffee, which my body will not tolerate, to wake up, to not feel tired. There must be another way. I’m using a light box for half an hour after I get out of bed. I’m still not fully awake, two and a half hours later.

Twenty-three percent of people say they would steal if they couldn’t get caught. – Brad Meltzer, The Millionaires

That’s probably the same percent as poor people, who are entitled to steal, as long as they don’t do it from each other.

Night is when I see the most magic.

Americans put all of their intelligence into their work. Nothing left over for politics.

The main problem I have with politics isn’t losing, it’s the lack of order. In writing I can embrace chaos, although some wish I wouldn’t. In politics I need order. It’s a left brain thing.

Well all right, I didn’t exactly embrace chaos in writing: this is the only way I can do it. Afterwards I made up theories about it, to keep myself entertained. Always make a virtue out of necessity.

A study … suggests that sedentary middle-aged men start experiencing problems usually associated with senior citizens – Lou Schuler, The Testosterone Advantage Plan

Retirement is a “get out of jail free” card.

A lot of us have become numb to loneliness. We’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve matured, become more independent, don’t need a mate. We’ll just have friends. So much less demanding. Besides, we’re too old. Maturity does that to you.

For a long time the idea has been going around that we’re not supposed to need others. Resulting in a lot of emotionally amputated people.

So much of reality is not intuitive.

At its core, “left” is not about peace, environmentalism, abortion, gay rights, capital punishment or gun control. It is about the redistribution of income. Downward. To achieve more equality.

… I am convinced that when we write a book or make a film we are abnormal beings holding forth to normal people. Sometimes our madness is accepted, sometimes it is rejected. – movie director Francois Truffaut, in Bradbury, an Illustrated life, by Jerry Weist. About the work of SF writer Ray Bradbury.

Leadership, oddly enough, often involves taking oneself out of the center of the picture, and putting someone else in. Find people’s strengths and develop them. If you’re constantly talking you’re probably not leading.

A lover of novelty has no choice but to get old. I’ve done middle age.

Enjoying Dennis Johnson’s account, in his book Seek, of being totally ripped on psilocybin mushrooms, I feel like such a wimp for not having taken an hallucinogenic in 20 years. But for me it’s dangerous, because I see this world, and my place in it, as truly awful. Or rather I don’t see it, as much as I can manage. Hallucinogenics strip away the veil. Blinded by the dark.

A 77 year-old activist I know says it’s “hard to advance from a defensive position.”

Why do we call people we take care of, for money, “clients?” Wouldn’t “dependants” be more like it?

In Wild Mind Natalie Goldberg writes about the process you use to pry your mind loose from its death grip on normal thinking – so you can write. Who would have guessed, in my case, that this would be a problem?

The election: I don’t think Americans are divided into hawks and doves. More likely into pigs and sheep. Republicans are pigs, Democrats are sheep.

Forge the elephant and the donkey. How did that ever get started?

With this election we’ve moved into a political Dark Age. We’ve been here before, most notably during the Reagan years. How do those of us on the left survive this time? I can only read so many political essays on the Internet before I feel like screaming.

The election is over, we lost, everything stops. I still want to do Great Things, but have no energy. The sky is gray, dim at midday, the sun gone south, what should we do?

Forgotten Dreams

We find happiness, if we do, under some bush or rock, stumble across it by accident … or not.

At some point I have to ask myself, does watching two straight hours of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns actually make me a better person?

What we were looking for in politics was salvation, and mostly we didn’t find it. What we did find, in Oregon: a higher minimum wage, medical marijuana, doctor-assisted suicide.

Sigmund Freud was once quoted as saying, “Ah, thank you for showing me all of mankind’s lofty ideals. Now let me introduce you to the basement.” – James Lee Burke, Jolie Blon’s Bounce

In Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg says that writing is about learning to accept your whole mind, whole self. Most of us accept only a small part of ourselves, she says. That keeps us from being whole, and gets in the way of our writing – there’s too much we don’t want to tell anyone.

In my case, that I get so angry about politics I have fantasies about blowing things up. Throwing matches in dumpsters, as a political statement. I picture a night when dumpsters all over Portland are burning.

Say the first night of war with Iraq.

The part of ourselves we don’t accept, Goldberg says, is where the energy is.

I’m sleeping too much, reading until 2 in the morning and then sleeping until noon. Because I can’t think of a good enough reason not to. Life is settling into another routine. So it’s not just work that does it – we have a natural tendency to be dead.

Some time back I dreamed I was lying in bed and said, “Where are you?” The voice of a former lover replied, “Right behind you.” I woke up thinking, no you’re not.

The 60s: we wanted college to be “relevant” and work to be “meaningful.” We became cogs in the machine.

We often live life as an emergency case to get some excitement, to heighten our senses. – Goldberg

Yes, constant crisis, addiction to trouble. Don’t go there.

As a writer, I would like to be invisible. The words go out, I stay home.

There is something I want to tell you about growing old, but I don’t know what it is.

The flip side of writing is silence.

How do couples get to the point where they need a therapist to communicate? I think they get super specialized, each in their own little world, until there is no overlap. Neither wants to go into the other’s world.

“I’m getting old” is my all-purpose excuse for not doing all the things I don’t want to do anymore. Haven’t I done them enough?

I’m starting to get that old “somebody get me out of here” feeling. Too much politics. I’m not going to any more meetings. I do like the people, but they’re even crazier than I am.

Virtual reality: sometimes I wonder if there is any other kind.

Today I spent hours on the computer working on a political proposal. As Rabbit said in Winnie the Pooh, “It’s a good day for a proclamation.” Obsessed, can’t stop. Oh my God, I’m an American! Must resist, must watch squirrels, where are the squirrels? Someone cue the goddamn squirrels!

Funny how we worry about breaking invisible rules.

Experience blinds us. Bad things happen and we think, I guess that’s just how it’s going to be. I guess romance just doesn’t work. We learn the wrong things.

In dreams, the eternal search for a bathroom. And privacy. But there are no walls in dreams.

I toil not, neither do I spin….

Ideally, at some point a writer disappears into their writing, which stands alone.  I’m always trying to find a way to get it to go on without me.

Humans are inconsolable.

Death and divorce sit in the gut for years, indigestible facts.

Idea for spam email: “Want to be a new person? In just 10 days, with easy exercises, you can be someone completely different. New drivers license included. For details, send $20 to ….”

The art of poverty is simplicity.

A lot of the humor I write when I’m stoned isn’t funny unstoned. The obvious conclusion: I should always read my writing stoned.

The best stoned movie scene is in The Good Girl. Two housepainters sit on the couch chortling over the idea of paint that makes a house invisible, or paint that is a different color if you look at it from a different angle.

A friend camps out every summer in the Sierras with a hippie group. They boil peyote in a pot, them give themselves enemas with a turkey baster. He says it’s the best way to do it.

Getting lost is the only way to find yourself.

Age settles in small pockets on either side of the chin, changing the shape of the mouth.

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