Thanksgiving Zen

Nothing fills the mind with peace quite like a belly full of yummy food.

Turkey, herb dressing, oyster dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, peas, hot rolls, yams (didn't eat those, myself), and four kinds of pie: pecan, apple (from scratch), pumpkin, and lemon icebox. White wine. Lovely conversation.

Burp.

So I totally indulged myself and then pretty much went to bed and slept for 12 hours.

BLISS

OK, seriously

I'm tired of having to defend the name of my blog. I can be all zen and pretentious if I want.

SRO

I think I've finally found my seat at the bar here at NOHSC. I'm not at the corners, which threw me off, because I like sitting at corners. And it's right near the beer taps, which again, I don't usually like. But I can't see my fat face in any mirrors urging me to order some sort of lite beer crap, and I can turn and see Musetta through the window when she's on her perch. It's a nice middle seat, protected, or at least settled between the embankments.

I like it.

Halfway up the stairs is a stair where I sit.
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
It's not at the bottom, it's not at the top.
But this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs isn't up and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts run round my head.
It isn't really anywhere, it's somewhere else instead.

-A.A. Milne & Robin

fish sandwich

Current fave thing on the menu at NOHSC is the blackened fish sandwich. Fortunately, the "blackened" is very low-key, basically just nicely seasoned, not that crusted with pepper stuff. They use the fish of the day, so today it's Mahi Mahi. Very nice. I see this sandwich and me having a good relationship. I know most people are ga-ga about the burgers, but that's a little heavy IMO. What Elmo would call a "sometimes food."

The best part of knitting is the giving

Hee. I just made another knitting pact -- you know, where you are friends with someone, and you pledge to make them something knitted. I just told Aha (I have no idea how she spells it in real life, but that's how it sounds) that I would knit her a Toorie hat in gray and black for her daughter.

It's kind of odd when you start knitting. First, you make stuff that isn't very good. You make a scarf for yourself and your mother, or a friend. Then you make a hat for yourself and your mother and your sister and maybe a friend. Then...suddenly, everyone you know has a hat and a scarf and a purse or something like that, and they really don't want anymore.

Now, a lot of people at this point find new recipients. They make prayer shawls and stuff for the homeless and all that. And then other people (like me, and I'm sooooooooooooo special) decide to kick it up notch and make CLOTHES.

Seriously, it's a different world, making clothes. You have to worry about gauge and bust size and all that. But it's also way more cool. A scarf is nice, but a sweater...that's clothing.

So what a treat to find a way to make hats that people want. The bartender here is a sweetie, and she wants a hat for her daughter. What a gift!

80s Music

Okay, seriously. I don't get it. When I was young (you know, before the flood), I listened to contemporary pop music, and I loved it. I also loved classical music and jazz and other stuff, but I recognized the value (however unconsciously) of being a part of my world and listening to the music of...I dunno know how to say it. Music of the now, of right this minute. I knew 99% of what I was listening to would fade away into obscurity, and that was fine. It was new.

Take on me.
Take me on.
I'll be gone.
In a day or two!

(The lyrics themselves seemed to acknowledge that tomorrow's music would take care of itself.)

Frankly, if you liked something two years old by the time I was a senior in high school, you were WEIRD. You weren't allowed to like a song much past the time you managed to memorize the lyrics.

And so I made a sort of pact with myself that I would never become one of "those people," the kind who end up only listening to the music they grew up with -- leftover '60s people, or people still stuck on big band jazz and bemoaning "the devil's music" when they should be enjoying the new stuff that comes along. People who still think Elvis is corrupting the young with "Hound Dog."

So I listened to Eric Clapton, Yes, Duran Duran, Foreigner, Van Halen, Billy Joel, J. Geils Band, The Go-Go's, Culture Club, The Cure, Fleetwood Mac, Soft Cell, Cyndi Lauper, Adam Ant, David Bowie, The Thompson Twins, Dire Straights, The Police, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Wham!, Pat Benatar, and Men at Work, and I enjoyed the tunes, confident that they would be replaced by other tunes with different musical influences. Back then, I envisioned an ocean of music and a lifetime of musical pleasure.

And then rap came along. And I'm sorry. Ew. No melody? Just percussion? Bitch-hating lyrics? Impossible to dance to? (unless you're a noodle on crack) And then hip-hop, which to me sounds just like rap. And then...

OMG! I realized I had become one of "those people" after all, someone who thinks contemporary music is junk.

So, I retreated to the generation before mine, listening to a lot of classic rock. I was a denier of reality and proud of it. An old fart in support hose. A droopy fogey unable to deal with the hip new generation behind me. A stick in the mud. I cranked up the Eagles, America, The Guess Who, Three Dog Night, Norman Greenbaum, even disco, and David Bowie ('70s version), and I reveled in my totally-not-hipness.

And now here I am, 2011, in yet another bar/restaurant/whatever, and they're playing '80s music.

WTF?

Is it possible that contemporary popular music is, in fact, bad? I mean, there are people are in their teens, 20s, and 30s in this place with free wi-fi. The music is meant to attract them. Why aren't they listening to the music being made right now? You know, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Usher, Akron, Snoop Dog, and all those people?

Personally, the problem for me is that the contemporary pop music that I do like basically sounds like '80s music. Pink. Adele. Isn't that Duran Duran again? Could this aversion to the music of 2011 (whatever that's supposed to be) possibly be true of...other people?

I would really like to blame this on my being in some old folks' place, pathetically listening to the AM Radio and debating whether Clinton were a good President. But I hear '80s music, it seems, wherever I go. It's in the mall, on the street (you know, when they broadcast from the back of a truck to draw a crowd), in bars and restaurants, and on about half the radio stations. (Satellite radio is too niche-vertical to give me any clue.)

So, what the hell is going on?

Why isn't popular music popular?

Or is it somehow just me?

Wow, I'm about as far from Zen as can be

I'm about as far from a Zen state in my life, mind, body, and heart right now as I have ever been, and I had a dream last night that proved it.

I'm in Japan -- Tokyo. There's nothing in my dream about the recent horrors and tragedies there. I'm excited to be there, and I'm looking forward to shopping, dressing in something extreme, going out, etc.

However, I'm there on some sort of business, and there are other people from the company with me. I have these very specific times and places to be, yet when I get to them, there's always something wrong -- things are rescheduled, people don't show up, etc.

My hotel room is far away from the places I need to be at the hotel. So I start using other places to change in and out of business and casual clothing. I do this once on a balcony, but I hate it because I'm visible to others.

Eventually, I start keeping my clothing and other things I've brought in an elevator. There's a closet there and some shelves, and I hang my clothes all around. But I have to keep an eye on everything, because I don't want the staff or thieves to take my stuff -- including my computer, my fancy iPod that reminds me of stuff I need to do, and shoes. Lots and lots of shoes.

I remember one demonstration at the convention clearly. They have a model of a tall building and some computer graphics to show why the building wasn't destroyed, only damaged, by a bomb. I remember seeing this sort of origami rendering (in computer graphics) of watching the building's insides rise up through the building due to the explosion on the ground floor. But the debris didn't actually overflow over the sides of the building, so the speaker was talking about how this did minimal damage, as opposed to what happened at the World Trade Center. I remember thinking that it did a lot of damage, IMO. I thought about all the office equipment and furniture and stuff crushed inside the building. I didn't think about the people.

Okay, so some people I've become friendly with are going on a train trip to a cool part of Tokyo, and I'm invited. I want to get dressed in my fancy, cool clothes, which include a wonderful white feather boa with black feather at the end. I get a special haircut to match it, but I totally screw up my make-up. With effort, I wipe most of it off.

The dream shifts here. I'm talking with a woman who is excited to be there, but new to the area. Instead of being in Tokyo, we're at the UCLA campus. I offer to show her around. I take her up the right side of the big, red, curving staircase in the lobby, then show her all the twists and corridors to come down the left side. I offer to show her my favorite spot in the whole campus (this place in Royce Hall where you can look up the bell tower), but she's not interested and not impressed with the staircase thing. She decides she'd rather go it alone, and we (now back in Tokyo) part ways in the lobby.

In the lobby, a crowd has gathered around one of the women I've met at the conference. She has a knife and has gone insane, threatening everyone. I skirt around her and get back to my elevator.

I need to be ready at 4 PM to go with the others on the train. I go into the elevator, and it's full of my stuff. I start sorting, and at first it's a large, but doable task.

Then I realize it's 10 minutes to 4! I look around. My bed is in the elevator now, and tons of stuff. I start throwing things in bags and boxes, but there is so much! I have all these little do-dads and things. And it seems to get bigger when I turn around.

Then I realize that I can't take the elevator back to my room directly. I have to relay my stuff through the express elevator that goes to the 15th floor. So I take the stuff out of the first elevator and put it in the second elevator (the office workers don't like that, but I promise I'll be just a few minutes). The doors to the elevator start sticking, but I'm muscling through them now.

Back to the first elevator, where I get dressed in this rad outfit and then run around looking for the people going on the trip. I finally find them, and they admire my outfit, but they know about the elevator problem and offer to help, but I can tell they don't want to. I take their help anyway.

We run around trying to unload the first elevator and then put the stuff in the second elevator. I don't understand how I have so much stuff. How did I get it packed into my suitcases for the trip to Japan?

Finally, I get a load to the hotel room, which is a mess and chock-full of stuff. I decide I can leave the bed in the elevator.

I miss one of the elevator cars, and I get into another car to find that two guys are using it themselves, with two little beds of their own.

I get on the train to the fun thing in my outfit. I don't have fun. I wear the wrong shoes and my feet hurt.




Nope, not Zen.