Amie's Bailout Plan

1. Take it on the chin. We are in the "pay later" of the "buy now" plan. A "long and painful recession" is the inevitable consequence for individuals and nations that live beyond their means.

2. Move swiftly to comprehend the new paradigm. Jim Lehrer tried mightily last night to get both of the candidates to address the new economic reality in which we find ourselves, but to no avail. Both cannot see the rest for the trees.

3. Use the 700 Billion (since everyone seems to think we have it) to provide HUGE tax incentives for reclaiming and retooling local manufacturing, to develop not just alternative energy, but LESS energy usage, to devise realistic medical care cost management (medical care costs are cited as one of the biggest causes of outsourcing), federally insured mortgages, with federal oversight on lending policies, etc. etc. In other words fix the problem, don't just postpone it. 

4. Harness the power of the media to educate our culture that unbridled greed is the cause of the suffering that will occur during our long and painful recession. 

5. Do not believe George Bush or anyone in his administration regarding whether the sky is falling. Do you remember what happened the last time he said this? 

6. Do not wake up tomorrow and make believe that this economic crisis is not going to affect you. Either through crushing taxes to repay this debt, through stock market losses, or through a long and painful recession,  your spending habits are going to change. This will either feel like devastation or like adventure on the high seas depending on how you view your economic life. I am entitled to say this based on my own life experience in which I spent a number of years very very poor, but never felt discouraged. I have my parents who lived through the depression to thank for that. You might be in the process of becoming those very same parents!

Time is the Fire

"Time is the fire in which we all burn." Delmore Schwartz, poet.

Early this morning I was blogging by the pool. Now I am sitting in the spine surgeon's office considering time and fire- its significance for living in the now. I imagine myself in AZ tomorrow, breathing the desert, saying hello to my roses. That's tomorrow, but where am I now?

We have had an intense week of living in the then. Set up an apartment for one or more months, planned our itinerary for the holidays, making ready for possible medical intervention, and now, plotting a strategy to consider surgery for my back. A titanium disc replacement at L5, to be precise.

I reached a low point when my family went on a hot air balloon ride- something I was afraid to do when Papa was a licensed balloon pilot, but something I would have happily experienced now. Instead I was at home barely able to walk to the kitchen to get my coffee. Steps brought tears to my eyes.

I am on a new page with my back now. Before I will move forth with surgery, I will try a much more aggressive course of medication- steroids, NSAIDS, newer nerve pain meds, and injections. In the meantime I will try to access more help on the rhuematological side, try to regain my ability to eat animal protein, for I cannot imagine how my body can make bone to complement the titanium disk if it is not properly nourished.

As I contemplate all this, I am thinking about time and fire. Am I imagining that I will live forever, free of pain and wild? Would living in the now look more like learning to live with these infirmities? Learning to cultivate the cerebral and travel less? There is much to think about. My two hours of airplane samadhi tomorrow will be a welcome breather.

Do You Believe This?

1. Do you believe that adding more debt is a good way to handle bankruptcy?

2. Do you believe that the government should be a conduit from  your taxes to bank owners, stockholders, wall street executives, etc.?

3. Do you believe in the "buy now pay later" plan? 

4. Do you really believe that your life will improve in the long run if you, your family, and your neighbors do not learn how to use seriously less energy, and have less debt?

5. Do you trust President Bush's recommendations about how to repair the damage that has been tolerated during his administration? Another way to ask this is: Have you heard President Bush suggest doing anything differently than the way it has been done during his administration?

6. Do you trust governmental bureaucracy to create well thought-out, carefully considered policies regarding our country's economic future in a few short days or even weeks in an economic climate that experts from all political perspectives have characterized as a "whole new ball game?"

This is NOT very Zen. But, I do believe in staying awake, aware, and active in the face of oncoming harm, where we have some ability to influence the outcome. This bailout proposal is a destructive continuation of what has brought us to this point and should not be allowed to roll out.

Shots From Nomad Land

We found a brand new apartment complex two miles from H & V, backing up to a golf course, which has a short-term apartment lease for very little money. Always the nomads, we took it for a month+ stay at Christmas time. Might as well freeze our tushies off in Dallas as Tucson while trying to make ourselves useful.

Our plans: Help put a radiant barrier in the youngbloood's animal house, access back doctor central for Amie, enjoy Christmas with the family, see if you can golf in Dallas in winter, dumpster dive for recreation in order to furnish it for the month or so.

About the dumpster diving. It began yesterday with an ironing board set out in a trash. Looked a lot like a suitcase work surface to me. If we could spend the $$ on the apartment, why would we not spend the $10 to buy another ironing board at Target? A) extreme desire not to buy another made in China item, B) extreme desire not to add another expendible item to the landfill, and C) sport.

My sequence has begun again about wasting. This time it is HUGE. I am outraged by the financial situation of our country. A crisis fueled by debt for things young people have been programmed to think they MUST HAVE in order to avoid lack and social ostracism. Imported rather than made here because that makes the big dogs richer. And NOW the rest of the world wants the bailout, too. We'll give it to them. We have to, since we now depend on Asia for the most basic of our needs. We have sold the farm, and I am outraged. This wouldn't hurt so bad if I hadn't seen exactly the same thing happen in one generation in Micronesia, where the U.S was the China, and Micronesia was us.

This is not a good thought pattern for a person on large doses of cortico steroids. I am not even sure I could sit still in the Zendo.

Surreal Dallas

Dallas is always a potpourri of surreal experiences, and this visit is NO exception. Several are highlights:

1. Here for a week, and planning a longer stay in winter, I continued the ever-exhausting and discouraging quest for help for my inflammatory body and back. We had no problem getting an appointment- apparently the back surgeons need business. Our first visit was something for a SNL skit. We'd call it "spine surgeons on speed." It was the most bizarre wham-bam-thank you mam doctor visit I have ever experienced, with the most amazing sales job for massive doses of medications that I have ever encountered. I need to write the script for this skit, but of course I don't really want to relive the experience. All that said, I am trying the new super-steroid dosage. It will be diagnostic, so I will give it a whirl for a short period so that we can learn how much of this is being caused by inflammation vs other issues that may be involved. Geez.

2. Always enviromentally scanning for housing options to deal with our desire to be closer to our children, we visited another "planned community," this one called Frisco Lakes. The sales pitch was great! The community facilities are exquisite and lush, the housing ridiculously cheap. So we went home and picked out our floorplan, then returned the next day to learn more about the sites, etc. First, we learned that the houselets are so close to each other that if you sneeze you will need to wipe your neighbor's window. Second we learned that it will be in contruction for many years to come. Third, the builders (Pulte) were not willing to modify even one single shelf of their demi-prefab construction. You need only to have seen the vast cattle ranches and flat expanses of Texas to empathize with the intense  "being put out to pasture" feeling of this 55-Up sprawling complex located on the very fringes of Frisco. Sad, because the golf course location was a real attraction to Papa. There is more, of course, but won't fill the blog with this one. However we did find an even more ridiculously priced apartment on a golf course, so will give that more consideration for perhaps a month-long visit.

3. This is the good one- Papa and the kids went on a hot air balloon ride yesterday. Up, up in the air in a beautiful balloon. I missed the whole thing being flat on my back and all FUBAR, but it was a tale to tell, with pictures on their blog www.vinceandholly.blogspot.com.

4. Our friends from the Guam days are experiencing the serious illness of an elderly parent in Seattle, so we will stay on another week to house/pet sit while they tend to that. Occasionally nomads are in the right place at the right time to render some aid. We count it a blessing.

5. We are in a household of five pets. I have to admit this is very great fun. The youngbloods and their animals are always great fun. 

6. A warning to all: Do NOT play Monopoly with Holly unless you play to kill.

That's the news that's fit to print.

Being the Diaspora

We are tucking the last items into our suitcases as we head southward. These transitions are always bittersweet. Heading northward we cringe to think of the cold and rain, but look forward to a summer of activity with the family. Heading southward, our bones ache for the sun, our minds for the peaceful environment, but we always feel lonely until we find our stride in our Arizona lives.

These times make me think of the diaspora- God's chosen people dispersed after the fall of the temple, nomads who must hold the temple in their hearts instead of having it in the world as brick and mortar.  It is not an easy task- holding on to identity and purpose as one migrates. 

I regret that we live in a culture that demands this in order to keep the family ties we cherish. I do not take it as a given, having lived for so many years in an island culture where the family compound was a way of life. Yet, I am grateful that we are not doing it to flee starvation, bombed cities, or economic dearth. It is a choice we make, so we accept its challenges in order to have its rewards. 

Ripe and Juicy

We celebrated my daughter's birthday last night, a few days early. She herself and her whole household are a mise en scene of everything ripe and juicy! She is in that wholeness of life that the forties bring. Boisterous energy explodes from the living room full of big and small men wrestling. The living room itself is full of soft places to land. And she, in her silk pajamas, is a Rubenesque beauty, reposing in the chair. I, laying on the couch, am going to seed, but this resplendent group of vigorous younger people connects me to a more energetic time in my life. How satisfying.

A Thin Edge of Viability

I am on a thin edge of viability. The house doors and windows are closed now, trapping the mold spores inside. My body is in full revolt against those allergens, and I am further insulting it with a new exercise program which has laid me low on the days I have implemented it. 

I am at a deep tired after a very busy and eventful season. I have met the absolute limit of how much medication I can take. Mental aberration meets me at the end of that leash. It is frustrating to be so vulnerable to the environment, and I am grateful that Papa and I have the means to travel, so that we can enjoy the best of summer here in the Pacific Northwest with our family, then return to the sun that warms and heals.  

A Potter's Sabbath Prayer

A potter's hands, worn raw, can read the clay.

They're useful on this dark and muddy path.

My smoke-greased lamp cannot divine the way,

But nerve-bare fingers feel You in the swath.

My left brain doubts You rose and walked that day.

My right brain, though, perceiving You in clay, 

Directs my hand to sculpt an earthen prayer:

Your shroud behind You falling through the air.

More Passion Spent

Papa and I chuckled knowlingly during "All Passion Spent" at the 85 year old heroine's statement about how annoying it is to have someone else exerting his/her will upon us, especially at this age when we have had a lifetime of experience in which to develop our own will. Annoying is the perfect word, because it implies a somewhat benign stimulus which irritates, but one to which we have no intention of yielding.

That was the chuckle, but here is the problem. We still have wills, and we still do try to exert them on each other. The problem is that whatever methods we use to do this, we really do to ourselves as well. Do we become barking seals? Do we manipulate with disparagement? Do we manipulate with grumpiness and abrasiveness? We are like puppies being cage trained- learning not to poop in the cage, because to do so is to poop on ourselves

The hardest thing in marriage (in my experience) has been the ongoing process of learning not to poop in the cage while melding two wills into one functional spiritual and operational unit. Doing this is delicate work, because each has a purpose and a destiny completely separate from the other even while we are one in the world and in the spirit.

I am motivated to write about this because my son is at the (recurring) turning point in marriage where one becomes aware of estrangement and loneliness, and then one seeks ways to resolve it without pooping in the cage. It really boils down to taking personal responsibility for creating the emotional environment you want to have in your home. Continue blaming and continue suffering, or roll up your sleeves and get to work on yourself. Those are pretty much the choices.

These are the passions spent, no doubt. I am still warmed and amused by the characters in the story, who are harvesting the lifetime of these kinds of experiences, for better or worse. Papa and I are getting to that place too, after 32 years.

All Passion Spent

Papa and I watched "All Passion Spent," a totally delightful, wry three-part series from British television. It was the story of a very elderly woman, her family and her life after the death of her husband.

You could call it a coming of age story for oldsters. It was a glorious portrayal of the entire landscape of old age- the adult children, society's expectations vs one's own, the value (and the capacity) of enjoying the moment. But most importantly, it portrayed life's enduring energy for growth and development, with or without impetuous passion.

One of the great benefits of our going on strike against Comcast and its neverending bill wars is that we have to be intentional about everything we watch. I had become conscious of our tendency to use TV as a drug at the tired end of the day. Cable television has too much "junk food" available for that appetite.

We are finding ourselves well sated by a nightly episode of some quality TV series which we have spent some energy selecting. We have further found that if we do not want to venture to the library or video purveyor for our evening's entertainment, we can download it from iTunes with absolutely no quarrelous expenditure of energy regarding the bill.

My prediction is that the internet will soon provide access to all of our video media desires, thus obviating the cable companies, which have bedeviled the bill payer in our house for years. The passion spent on these tricksters over the years has been considerable and detrimental, and I am glad to be done with it.

Today I Bent the Truth

"Today I bent the truth in order to be kind, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true." Robert Brault. I don't think I can add to that!