Tiger took great delight in the fact that she got to “pop my cherry” as it were, as Friday was the first time I got to drive into the MDRF property proper (it was also the first time I’d been on the property when the Faire wasn’t actually open). I almost forgot to take photos, but on the way back from the “flushies” (real bathrooms on site for use when the privvies are not in place), I remembered:

I’ve never, ever seen the White Hart Tavern empty before – or the main food service area. Yet there they are. The picture of my car is for proof that I actually drove onto the grounds. The weather was quite pleasant for the tasks at hand, with a cool cross-breeze coming now and again, rustling the leaves and stirring up the sawdust. Oh yes, there was sawdust… much sawdust…

The purpose of Friday’s trip was to work on Tiger’s booth as part of preparation for the 2010 season, and I did my usual job of being a second set of hands, eyes, etc. while someone who is more experienced with wood working and other activities directs or does the work. (Note: this is a Good Thing™ in general – I know enough about the mechanics of many things, but lack practical experience / skills, and ’tis better to let someone who does have said practical experience “do the driving” for projects where it counts.)  During the course of the day there we other friends of the Tiger who came by to work, so much was accomplished: curtain rods of Tiger’s devising were installed along with curtains, ribbons were prepared for ribbon-rope on Stub Toe Lane, and the pieces for the new front doors for the booth were cut, routed and sanded in preparation for assembly (Ben did an awesome job making the tenons for joining the top and bottom panels! Thanks to working with Ben, I also have much less trepidation at trying my hand at routing and use of a mitre saw on some of my own projects, so there was much win there as well. Of course, now I need to find a mire saw with laser guide – that was bloody marvelous.) But it got late, so assembly and painting will happen Saturday and Sunday, which I will miss because of other engagements.

Much fun was had, because Tiger has wonderful friends with a great sense of humor (and dirty minds), and because there is something about helping out a friend that makes the time and the work go much faster. I’m really looking forward to seeing the ribbons on Stub Toe Lane, and the new doors on the booth, and a happy Tiger in her home away from home this Fall at Faire. Oh, and to wearing my new ccodpieces and vests, and singing in the White Hart, and just being at Faire.

After several years of not feeling very connected to my fannish / rennie family, this felt like a bit of coming home.

I love Whole Foods Market. There are many wonderful things to eat and drink (the vegetarian chicken General Tso’s – to die for), and the ever changing variety keeps me coming back for more. I shop there at least once a week, and rarely leave without spending at least $50 to $75. It is all very wonderful, except…

…except that your cashiers seem to be challenged when it comes to packing grocery bags. Every visit I try to load my purchased onto the belt in the manner that would encourage sensible loading of my grocery bags, and yet I end up with situations such as tonight where I had to repack my bags when I got to the car.

- A daal lentil wrap, and two plastic lidded deli containers with a gallon jug of milk? Potentially disastrous.

- Strawberries and salad greens with two 1/2 gallon juice bottles in a fishnet sack? Not a good arrangement, even in a sturdier sack.

- A salad bar container (albeit “secured” with a rubber band) and a paper deli box (not “secured”) dropped (I do not use this word lightly) into a sack with a couple of Naked bottles with bruisable grapes and bananas? Disgraceful.

I did not bring this to the attention of the manager on duty, because I don’t want to get any one individual in trouble, because honestly it isn’t just any one individual cashier. I do not know if it is lack of training, lack of oversight or lack of caring, but what is lacking is “service”. Your store does such a fine job in so many other areas, with helpful and cheerful staff in various departments, that this particular failing stands out.

Attention to this one detail would significantly improve the overall experience of shopping at Whole Foods Market. It is disappointing to have an otherwise enjoyable shopping trip end with an apparent lack of consideration for the customer or the money the customer is spending for higher quality foodstuffs. I would rather have my trip take a few minutes longer knowing that I won’t have to spend the time saved re-packing my grocery bags to avert potential damage and mess in transit, and I suspect that I am not alone.

Respectfully,

J. Gregory Wright

Highlandtown

So, should I have made a stink in the store? This isn’t (as my letter states) the first time I’ve experienced grocery bagging #fail, and I really didn’t want to get someone in trouble for something that seems more systemic than just a problem with an individual. And if I am being brutally honest, I probably didn’t want to cause a scene because those kinds of things make me uncomfortable and feeling more than a little guilty even though I am the customer.

Or am I just being a whiny biotch?

Yesterday my friend Marin came over to help me address some things in the house that require two pairs of hands and an eye for proportion, balance and levelness. Marin is one of those gifts from real life for which I am immeasurably grateful – Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story of “Angelina” in his Teachings on Love, where “Angelina” is someone who steps into one’s life and somehow makes life more expansive and rich, who reminds us of the boundlessness of human love and compassion. This is not romantic love, but loving kindness, the love that can be experienced and shared when one is willing to be open, honest and truly there for someone else. Marin is an Angelina, my dharma sister, who entered my life through Twitter and stepped into the waking world to help me selflessly in many ways – moving me into my home, looking after my birds and my home while I am away chasing the Dharma, arranging and re-arranging my space so that the chi can flow better and the dralas have somewhere to land in the chaos of my life.

A note: this is a purely spontaneous post, and the last paragraph came from my feelings of unexpressed gratitude. Appreciation for one’s good fortune is, according to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, absolutely critical for the accumulation of the kind of merit that will permit one to progress along the  Buddhist path. I bow in gassho to my dharma sister Marin.

So Marin came by and helped me with hanging curtains in the front of the house and in my practice room, and re-arranging furniture in the living room and practice room. If this was all that she did, that would be more than enough, but her impending arrival was the motivation I needed to spend all of yesterday relentlessly attacking the clutter that seems poised to consume my living space and what is left of my sanity. Most of yesterday’s efforts did little more than re-arrange the items, organizing the boxes of the flotsam and jetsam of my life so that I can attack those in a more orderly fashion. The clearing of space so that I can walk around and sit down in my living room is nothing short of monumental (if you haven’t lived in the Cavern of Clutter or one of its emanations, you cannot possibly understand), and I can now tackle smaller chunks in the evening when I am home from work instead of feeling overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed is death on making progress with machete, torch and maul through the standing fields of things I own.

This was not exactly what I was going to write when I started paragraph #2. Welcome to the unbridled, untamed wildness that is my mind. And yet I am finally getting to the point I wanted to make a couple hundred words ago.

We went to dinner at this little Thai restaurant down near the waterfront on the line between Canton and Fells Point after our labors. It was a delight to find after trying to make sense out of the options for eating in Canton (read: not terribly vegetarian friendly, and although I forget if Marin is vegetarian or just sparing in her consumption of meat, it’s been a year since I gave up meat and so vegetarian is key), but I would never had found it if it weren’t for Google’s location-based search and my iPhone. The food was yummy, and we caught up a bit both with each other and on the happenings of my #twangha (Twitter sangha). During the conversation I had to admit to Marin and myself that Twitter may  be somewhat “toxic” for the likes of me, because of my confirmation issues, tendency towards anything that distracts from those things which my mind has labeled distasteful or undesirable such as housework, paying bills or generally anything that is not “fun”. I said I’d begun to see a bit of the Luddite point of view, but perhaps I should say Neo-Luddite after reading some about what was really behind the Luddite movement. I make my living from technology, I am using technology right now to expound upon my thoughts, and yet I am not convinced that technology on the whole has made things “better”, just “different”.

I’m not sure where all of this is going, and it has rather turned into a bit of a ramble, so I think I shall call it a “post” and move on. I’ve more to say on the topic of being off the grid, but for now real life beckons.

TTFN

I came home Friday, January 1 after a day spent amongst friends IRL, and as is my usual wont sat down at my computer. After checking my e-mail, the news, comments on my “be back in a few months post”, and the weather I sat there wondering what else I could do. *twitch* That is in police work what we call a clue. Time for sleep meds, a little Trism to occupy my brain while the sleep meds kicked in, and off to dreamland.

Saturday I slept in. Sat down at the computer as realized I had a bad case of “what the fuck do I do now?” Discussed some things with Nora over IM, went back for a nap, got up and eventually moseyed over to Eric & Michelle’s for MENYGWACON. I chatted, I played games, won at Carcassone and came in close in Alhambra and Gates of Lo-yang (sp?). Came home and realized that I was going to have a period of separation anxiety over this whole going dark thing. I discussed a few more thing with Nora over IM, spent some time with my feathered children, and went to bed.

When I came downstairs this morning, I realized that I needed some kind out outlet, at least for now. I have to write… that is in my blood. And hopefully sometime soon that need will be turned to more creative endeavors as I begin to free myself from the social network addiction that I now must admit to myself. I’ve got a metric ass-load of things that need doing so that I have space to work, both physically and mentally, and so I should hop to it. The real challenge will be to see how long I feel I need to keep doing this kind of mental purge before I can let go of the crutch and take those first wobbly unassisted steps away from the keyboard.

TTFN

Some will remember that I went dark from the end of January 2008 to the end of March 2008. Many of the same factors are very much in play today. Balticon is no longer the burden it once was, but I am still all too susceptible to the “winds of public opinion” in terms of how I view myself. The additional twist to the situation is that I’ve become painfully aware of how much I try to be somebody, where “somebody” appears to be the embodiment of all the things for some reason I feel that I am not, and therefore it is more desirable to be that somebody than just being myself. The wired world makes it all too easy to fan the flames of all those rampant neuroses, and all too easy to spend all of one’s available free time on such a pursuit.

As I wrote in my post two years ago, “rationing” doesn’t really seem to work for me – that requires more willpower and discipline than I currently appear to be able to muster. For me, hopping on Twitter or responding to an e-mail on a discussion list is like an alcoholic walking into a bar with a wallet full of $100 bills. Just like back then, right now I feel like the only effective way to keep this problem in check is to abstain altogether. I’m not happy about it, because I’ve met some truly incredible people on Twitter in particular, and its been the only way that I communicate with them. But I really don’t see an alternative right now… maybe if I get a better handle on who I am, or just get myself to stop trying to be somebody, I’ll be able to come back to Twitter, etc. without it becoming jet fuel for my hang-ups. And maybe not, I don’t know.

This doesn’t mean I’m disappearing off the face of the planet, or that I don’t want people to contact me. I’m not becoming a monk or a hermit, I’m not deleting my Twitter account or anything like that. I just need to be smart for once and not put myself into situations that I know are going to cause me all sorts of problems that at this point in my life I appear to be ill-equipped to handle.  If something important happens – good, bad or otherwise – I want to know. If you’re coming to town and you want to meet up, I want to know. But for now it’s going to have to be via e-mail, because I can’t just monitor Twitter and not respond – I’ve pretty much proven that much to myself by now.

I will admit that I’m a little scared as I prepare to “walk away”, “take a break”, “go dark”. I’m afraid that in four or five months time I’ll come face to face with my inability to participate in online communities without feeding my neuroses a banquet. I’m afraid that I’ll ome to the realization that life without participating in online communities is actually a much better experience. I’m afraid that I’ll come back, better prepared to work with my hang-ups and less likely to get sucked into the intakes of my neuroses, and no one will care that I’m back – I’ll be old news, a back issue, a footnote. My inner child has been throwing tantrums ever since I seriously started considering this a few weeks ago, and that is perhaps the most compelling reason to “go dark”. If there is one thing that has started to sink in from all this sitting and studying and practicing, its that if I lean into something and experience a great deal of irrational resistance and turmoil, I’ve probably touched on something that needs attention, a rut where my habitual behaviors and reactions are stuck. It doesn’t make those fears any less real in this moment, but it makes my resolve enough to actually go through with what I feel needs to happen at this point in my life.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying dark this time. Two months gave me a chance to breathe, to catch up, but I don’t think I made much in the way of progress with my head trip. So it is conceivable that I could be “dark” for three or four months, perhaps more. I need to focus my efforts on my physical health, my mental and emotional well being, making sense out of my life post-marriage (including taming the chaos of my living space), and deepening my meditation practice and Buddhist studies. All of these things have suffered from neglect while I’ve sat here in front of this computer indulging my hang-ups on Twitter and a few other online communities, and it is no one’s fault but my own. So now I must “pay for my past indulgences” if you will, and step away from the limelight of social networks and the like, in order to not only restore balance in my life but to lay a foundation for being able to work with these kinds of situations without having to so severely withdraw from the fray.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. It may have been morbid curiosity, it may have been a deep sense of caring, it may have been that which causes us to continue to watch a train wreck even when we’re pretty sure it won’t be pretty. Either way, thank you. I hope to see you again online at some point. If you’re going to Balticon this year, I’ll be there in my role of Benevolent Despot of Operations and Security, and hopefully I’ll se you there. I leave you with a senryu that popped into my head yesterday toward’s the end of a day of community sitting practice; it’s content is not terribly original, but since the words were spontaneous they bear recording.

Mind goes wandering.

Lost and uncertain, gives up,

then comes back to rest.

_/!\_ Namaste _/!\_

Metal sings with sparks
Clashing, rebounding, dancing -
arc of fatal light

Tonight’s #haikuchallenge is from OregonMJW, who is one of those folks who has a great deal of creative talent and a big heart whom I have been fortunate to meet through Twitter. Hopefully one day I will get to meet her in person, much like other good people I have encountered online and then had the good fortune to finally meet in person.

OK, enough rambling – the #haikuchallenge is “lost“:

Paw prints in fresh snow
Snow gently warms crystal gems
Marks of passing lost

My original #haikuchallenge tweet here.

Speaking of the header graphic, that’s a cutout of a photo I took while on walkabout in Patterson Park. I need to post photos from that jaunt, but not tonight.

Duck on the Water (cue Deep Purple)

I must admit that I was pretty darned proud of myself for (a) remembering that I needed new underwear while I was in a store where I could make such a purchase (as opposed to being in the produce aisle next to the visual cue of the cucumber bin), and (b) that I had lucked into a truly amazing underwear sale. I like to think of myself as frugal, or at least somewhat thrifty, because self-delusion is, IMNSHO, easier than admitting the all too painful truth revealed by my bank statement.

I am reasonably certain that the fact that I had not only found underwear in my size, but on sale, and at rock bottom prices, combined with my usual obliviousness, lead to my lapse of checking the packs of jockey shorts beyond the price tag and the size. The “Mogwai” brand should have been a warning, or at the very least, a clue. As it was I was just so damned happy to feed my self-delusions about thriftiness that I scooped up five packs of jockey shorts and headed for the check outs.

So, another way in which I am not a stereotypical guy is that I like to wash new clothes before I wear them. Things generally fit better, and I have found that the incident rate for highly irritating rashes in uncomfortable places became greatly reduced by the “wash ‘em first dummy” policy. So I get home from Target (you know, Tar-je`, the lower end cousin of the fine French retailer J.C. Pen-ne`?), dutifully removed my new soon to be close friends from their packaging, tossed them in the washing machine with some detergent, and went upstairs to get something to drink.

Imagine my surprise when I came back downstairs the next morning and found the washing machine practically overflowing with a year’s supply of underwear. I was pretty certain that I’d only bought two week’s worth, but figured that with new packaging technologies you could squeeze the tighty whiteys even tighter and therefore get more in each pack. Needless to say my delusions of frugality swelled even more, as I tossed an armload of underwear into the dryer and went back upstairs to set up my coffee IV.

I have to tell you, I was mighty happy with the Mogwai brand at first – they fit well, they were really soft and kept my dangly bits warm while I was in the computer room. I guess I’d been wearing them for three or four days when the darker nature of my deep discount underwear reared it’s ugly head. Some friends of mine had been talking up the Heat Flash podcast, and so I’d gone over to check it out right before bedtime. Rumors of Ms. Madden’s naughtiness have not been exaggerated, and when I fell asleep I was more than a little “hot and bothered”, which quite likely fueled the next chain of events.

I don’t exactly recall the exact point in the dream involving the lithe nymph and baby oil where things took a turn for the painful, but I do clearly recall the burning sensation in my dangly bits as my underwear attempted to give me an Atomic Wedgie in my sleep. As I said, the “Mogwai” brand should have been a clue, so I really have no one but myself to blame for violating both rules in the midst of my dream date.

You do know the two rules, don’t you?

(1) Keep ‘em dry

(2) Don’t feed ‘em after midnight

Truth be told, I don’t know what was more embarrassing – the ensuing trip to the emergency room (they’ll be talking about Atomic Wedgie Man and the carnivorous jockey shorts for years to come), or the visit from the weird old Chinese guy who shook his head as he delivered the “product recall notice” for my underwear and wouldn’t leave until I turned over every last pair.

So, this is what happens when one is doing battle in the Cave of Clutter, and decides that certain items have been multiplying like rabbits. Especially if one has a mind like mine, which is not simply twisted, but has actually been tied in a Gordian Knot.