Sunday was chilly. After a week of warm sunshine in Michigan we quickly forget that this place is 2 figurative steps away from Antarctica and we start wearing sandals and t-shirts the second there is no more snow on the ground. The sun was bright yesterday but it wasn’t creating any heat. Clouds cast shadows on my newly planted pansies; they shivered all day in the icy breeze skittering through. Poor pansies.
I left for work at 6:05pm. I was in a slump because Sunday night is usually spent lolling on my love seat recliner eating popcorn and reading trash novels. Once I got out and started working I was all right; it was only going to be a couple hours so I sucked it up and gave myself an internal beat-down for being so whine-y.
At 9PM, on my way out this guy shows up in our building asking about the bus system. He’d been waiting at a bus stop for 45 minutes and no bus went by. hmmm. the buses are supposedly running; we check the website. Yup, buses run till 12:15am. hmmm. he said he knew they were definitely running that day because that was how he came to be standing in the spot he was in. but now, at 9pm, he was stranded. we looked up different bus lines for him but they unfortunately didn’t have sunday service. shit. “okay, well, we can call you a taxi, how bout that?” “nah”, he says, “I’ll just walk, it’s colder than it looks outside.” we all agreed that it was and he went right and i went left. guilt was pressuring me to give him a ride but my brain was on a powerpoint presentation of slides showing what happens to girls who give strange men a ride home. it’s so stupid to be getting in a car and not giving the poor man a ride to his apartment. 20/20 has me paranoid and all i can think about is my inhumanity and how i am such a selfish person for not having some decency and courtesy. no way though, no way can i put this guy in my front seat and drive into the night. decency and courtesy is nice and so is not being strangled. so i pushed the radio dial on along with the heat– 93.9 had The Barenaked Ladies in their studio doing a live show. Within 60 seconds their song, Pinch Me, was welling in my ears and the lyrics go “I could walk but I’ll just drive / It’s colder than it looks outside”
The lyrics sharpened my senses–immediately I analyzed the entire evening for evidence. any evidence pointing to anything. unearthly coincidences are signs. that is just the way it goes in my world. it seemed so blatant that his last sentence was the lyric to a song i would go to my car and listen to. but, i haven’t figured out if it means anything. maybe a coincidence really is just a coincidence this time. the blaring obviousness of it makes me feel that the universe is trying to tell me something…and i am not interpreting it.
pot wafted through the plaza today. the university has been overstuffed with parents this weekend. they are busy taking their kids out to special dinners and standing in the type of lines that should lead to roller coasters but really only lead to cheap folding chairs you have to sit in; where there isn’t even a view of the stage. but the smell of pot billowing in the breeze reminded me of spring and dave matthews concerts. after my day of being the office dildo and learning i’d have to work this weekend, i left in feelings preoccupied with boredom and anxiety. the mixture is a strange hyperactive culmination that makes me strangely despondent and thirsty for beer. anyway, the pot reminded me of something jenny said last weekend. she showed up at my condo on friday night, an hour early, we were excited for our weekend of amy & jenny to begin. after 20 years of being best friends we still manage to get excited to see one another. we walked to the liquor store and picked out the items we’d pee out later. then sat in my living room, content in our moment of alcoholic reflection–in mid-moment Jenny stated “this would be way better if it were E” and then she gave her beer bottle the don’t-even-bother look a girl would give a no cha
nce guy at a bar. HAHA
Sorry i didn’t have any raver drugs, Jenny. better luck next time…
There was quite a crowd. Men in suits and men in gym shorts. People smacking gum and blatantly ignoring the ‘no cell phone’ rule. Ignorance never felt so apparent.
But then he was on stage, barefoot and smiling. He spoke about compassion and affection, he spoke about self-discipline.
The ignorance surrounding me was not for me to judge; if I wanted to be happy in my moment with the Dalai Lama I would need to choose to be happy.
One of the first things he said was “I am happy.” You fully trust and believe him. He said he wasn’t a healer and he doesn’t believe in them, itching at the back of his head he chuckled about his skin disease and remarked how he wouldn’t have it if he were able to heal himself.
The Dalai Lama has never taken a bath! This is his contribution. When he leaves a room he turns the light off.
As he spoke this I thought to myself, how elementary and basic. Everyone knows that they are supposed to do those things; turn the water off when brushing your teeth, close the refrigerator door… where is the profound wisdom?
It was there. I, in my infinite quandary of problems, had overcomplicated matters.
This man wasn’t going to sit lotus style and meditate the earth to pristine majesty. His answer was that he conserves water by not using it for bathing in a tub and when he isn’t using a room he simply switches off the light. Simple and true. This is what he can do, personally, and that is good. He is happy with this. Pollution is everywhere, natural resources are depleted, violence is surging, the gap between rich and poor is as broad as ever–our problems are overwhelming. We don’t know where to start to stop the madness. Choose one thing and do it well. I was making it too complicated because it is so complicated and in the mess of chaos one becomes indifferent. I was making myself as big as the problems themselves, taking myself too seriously. All you need to do is choose what you can do and then–do it.
Crisler Arena was steaming hot. There had to have been about 10,000 people all warming up to their own enlightening experiences. The Dalai Lama continued to converse with us, as if we were house guests coming over for a bit of lunch and tea. He entertained himself and laughed heartily after accidentally calling himself a Christian. “Obviously, I’m Buddhist,” he smiled out at the crowd and finished his thoughts about ecology and sustainability. “If this is interesting to you learn about it and experiment. If it isn’t you can go forget about it.” He gave a mighty laugh at this, waved his hands in a shoo motion and then bowed.
It was an experience I’ll remember forever.
After working at UPS long enough to have a fan base George said, “it’s time to retire”. Jenny, his daughter said, “it’s time to saran wrap my dads car”.
Unbeknown to George; he whiled away his last day innocently delivering packages without a thought that his teal grand am was in jeopardy.
3,000 feet of saran wrap was being unloaded by a manic daughter, her anti-retirement boss and “Shaky”, a woman with Parkinson’s Disease who likes to get wild.
As you can see, wild is no lie.
CONGRATULATIONS GEORGE
Slept til 8AM. It isn’t that my alarm didn’t wake me–I chose to turn it off 9 times and lie in bed. Waking up this morning was not happening, maybe I had a concussion yesterday. That will be my excuse. had concussion, was late.
That one is new. I have a friend who has a database of all the movies and music he owns. He has thousands of dvd’s and cd’s. He is generous and you can log into this database and search through his stuff and he’ll lend it to you like he’s a library. That is what I should start doing with excuses. I need to keep a database of what I say and the date it was used. Email tracking is forcing me to have to work–and if I’m going to get up to rifle through my work e-mail the least I could do is go to my fucking job. so, a db would be nice. it’d give me a chance to practice my project management skills. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple arguing about whether or not she, at one time, shared her underwear with her friend. This all originated from a poster they read that says “Passwords are like underwear. Don’t share them with friends.”
It was a lame argument but it has kept me entertained.
Sunday was an interesting day. For one, there was sunshine and for two, Main St. was closed and we got to stand in the middle of the intersection. But only after all the gigantic and grotesque puppets from Festifool danced by.
A lady across the street was walloped in the head by one of the bungeeing jugs attached to this extremely female puppet. Read the rest of this entry »
i pulled a disappearing act.
phases in my life consist of Internet hostility and boycotting anything that involves action. for the past 20 days I thought about logging into the wordpress admin site to “write blog” but just thinking about doing it gave me motion sickness. Lacking discipline is what I do best. Days and weeks are spent in disappointment in myself for lacking the discipline to be motivated and therefore not a slug. Even though today I did log in and write a little somethin’ I will most likely be even more down on myself for slacking–this is because I will be disappointed in what I’ve written and I will also be pissed b/c it only took a few minutes and I’ll wonder why I don’t spare those minutes everyday to just do it. Read the rest of this entry »
this is a sand puppy. they live in the african desert.
they live in tunnels and are cold blooded, a rarity among mammals.
they move backwards and forwards at the same speed and they are highly adapted at moving underground (wikipedia).
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a place on earth you need to visit is Treasure Mart in Kerrytown, Ann Arbor. I’m sure it isn’t in 1,000 Places To See Before You Die, which is a shame on Patricia Schultz.
Treasure Mart is a market crammed with necessities for your home, life and valuables to pass along after your death. Tables are riddled with magnificent finds. A fine painting could rest next to a tea cup, a bronzed horse could be brandished next to a sequined fur coat–you’ll need to wear your prescription lenses to this place because you could find anything anywhere!
Just look what I found.
“After a celestial day of praying to Jesus about her elongated limb syndrome (ELS), Angela rested her eyes and dreamed she was a demon train whore”
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howdy, cocksuckers. Deadwood tricked me. I rented, what i thought to be the last disc, Season 3 disc 6—but, it was the bonus features!! I was beyond depressed to learn that I had indeed finished watching Deadwood on Season 3 disc 5. I was crushed. Not that the ending was disappointing but i thought there was more; turns out i was just standing in line waiting for nothing. The feature disc was interesting; david milch talked about the dynamics between bollock and swearingen. the show was phenomenal and it’s finality has stricken me with grief. I was all snuggled down into my dual reclining love seat to wrap up seasons of filth, murder, greed and obscenities and instead I was left wanting. I heard some rumors about the possibility of a movie being made….those loopy cunts better get it started or i’ll feed them to my flesh eating pigs.
