Cheesy Rat Blues

  Two sore arms keep me from sustained typing these days. And swimming, which is a bummer since I was really getting into it. I'm squeezing all I can out of my health insurance to remedy the pinched nerve and tendon issue, But I've returned to this spot in the orbit around the sun for the fiftieth time, and I am grateful to be counted among those who still walk and breath and talk and sing. My compas and my oldest, best friend Chris surprised me with a dinner on my bday, and Jody took me up to the mountains for a weekend by train to North Lake Tahoe. A cabin in the snow. It was the best bday ever! Happiness truly is having someone to share it with, and that I have gotten to do so with Jody and some of the most special people in my life, over my life, I am grateful beyond words. Spending more and more time with Jody and Lindsey and the people I love matters as much as finding peace and joy and beauty in each day. I can say I have never been this relaxed, this confident, this com...

Protect, nurture, defend, support, hug, fuel, feed, water, weed, and always make time for your Center. My Center consists of empathy and love, creativity and action, dedication and experience, self reflection, humility, service, grace, and community. My Center looks like travel with Jody, an undiscovered Blue Note jazz album, a trip to the bookstore with my sobrinos, a Glencairn glass with a little single malt in it, a wish list on the Criterion channel, handwritten letters on my stationery, couch surfing with Lindsey, comfy business casual outfits, a nice Seiko watch, dancing in the kitchen, sitting in the Crocker, recommendation letters for former students, reading a new book, visits with my amazing community. This past year has been a lot for my Center, both a struggle and a strengthening. But I don't know that I have ever had this much confidence or reassurance about my Center, or felt this good about going into a year. My Center is so much more than enough, I am all that I nee...

  "I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes - everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I am going to go out like a fucking meteor! - Audre Lorde "What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits quantity."  - William S. Burroughs So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet, we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight, measuring by eye as it falls into alignment between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky, she'll remember a recent dream and tell me. One day we'll lie down and not get up. One day, all we guard will be surrendered. Until then, we'll go on learning to recogni...

  I remember the person I used to be. I remember him very very well, and I am proud of him and also of who I am now. Genuinely proud, with love and kindness and compassion, and with sadness. And when I play this song , it feels very much that both that person I used to be and the person I am now are experiencing it, simultaneously. I sway from the pain and sadness I felt in my heart at the time to the compassion and love I feel in my heart now, and its all for the same person, for me. And for the first time in ever my life, I look back at that person with love, with pride, with appreciation, because he never gave up. He held himself with his values, his courage, and his own arms, when he would drift off for showers that lasted 15, 20, 30 minutes resting his chin on his arms as the melancholy leaked out of his pores. He faced crippling, life long depression and made a life of service for himself. This would be what he would be to the world, pushing forward in every way he could, alw...

Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own. -Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Arise from sleep, old cat, And with great yawns and stretchings... Amble out for love -Issa, Japanese Haiku Kiko and the lavender moon Out playing, makes believe Nobody can see And then he waits And then he fakes And then he bends And then he shakes He plays and plays Still playing till he Goes off to sleep Kiko and the lavender moon Out dancing making faces at A big black cat And then he flies Up to the wall Stands on one foot Doesn't even fall Dance and dance Still dancing till He goes off to sleep He always sleeps Till the sun goes down He never wakes Till no one's ar...

The title of this blog is a quote from an interview with Duke Ellington, who when asked "I thought you played piano?" said all he did was dream, all the time. These days jazz appeals to me because it sounds like dreams and dreaming, which feels safe and comforting and free. ******** I grew up in South Sacramento, in what we later learned is called Glen Elder, but which we knew as The Creek. We spent most of our school days walking to school, be it elementary or middle school, and even high school (though usually on a bike and then driving). When I went away to college, the neighborhoods that Occidental College straddled in northeast Los Angeles (Eagle Rock, Highland Park) felt very familiar to me. Not in a "ice cream parlor on the corner who's owner knows your name" but in a keep your head on a swivel for threats. I walked around some of it but knew what lots of kids from similar neighborhoods also knew, that having a quick way to get out and away in case anythi...