Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
One day Chuang-tzu and a friend were walking along a riverbank. Chuang-tzu pointed to the fish.
“How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!” he exclaimed.
“You are not a fish,” his friend said. “How do you know whether or not the fishes are enjoying themselves?”
“You are not me,” Chuang-tzu said. “How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?”
White Crane Kung-Fu Studio, Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, 1974: In my Kung-Fu phase, I was crazy about everything Chinese … except the interior decorating. I know that may sound just too, too gay, but aside from mysteriously grand Chinese interiors in old movies, have you ever been in a Chinese restaurant that wasn’t garish as hell?
I’ve come to learn that it’s because Red is Lucky, and no sensible Chinese person on the planet wants to be unlucky. Of course, when you think about it, that makes perfect sense. I wouldn’t either.
Back to the Kung-Fu and acupuncture. This is a story about needles and eyeballs, but it turns out OK. Just warning you …
Being temporarily Chinese myself, I ate Chinese food, learned to use chopsticks, went to the fighting movies every weekend — A tip: the movies made by Mr. Run Run Shaw are better than movies made by his brother Run Me Shaw — and of course I joined a Kung-Fu studio, where we wore the most uncomfortable shoes ever invented.
We learned weird movements named after the White Crane, and there were huge bags hanging from the ceiling, and they were filled with rocks. One bag was little, bitty gravel. Another bag was marble-sized stones. And the third filled with great whumping big rocks.
It was kind of like the three kinds of porridge in the Three Bears house, except that none of the bags was just right. The idea was that you would hit these bags with your hands.
I did it once.
But getting back to the acupuncture … The deal is that, because my Kung-Fu master was also a master acupuncturist, I had acupuncture a couple of times. And then one time he wanted to send a needle to hit a point behind my eyeball.
This was to cure me of wearing glasses.
With some misgivings, I said OK. (The needles are very fine; I figured I couldn’t bleed to death through a hole that small.)
So he sent this long and thin needle twirling into the skin, and beyond, and further and further, and …
As it turned out, I got a real good discount on my seeing-eye dog, and we’ve been very happy ever-
Just kidding. It worked fine; I didn’t go blind, and in fact I could see without my glasses for the rest of the day. Go figure.
However, I’m a big chicken. I didn’t want to do it again.
Glasses seemed safer.
Now, I’m not so sure.
But that’s life in the kung-fu movie, right? You pays your money, and you takes your chances.
The snake begged the frog for a ride across the stream.
The frog expressed fear, but the snake reassured him, pointing out that should the snake bite the frog then both would die.
The frog agreed. And mid-stream, the snake bit the frog.
“Why did you do that?” asked the frog, “Now we’ll both die.” The snake just smiled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m a snake.”
Weed, California, Saturday May 10, 2008: Usually around mid-day, the dogs and I like to take a little walk around the house and the very large vacant lot next door. It’s mostly an open field, with some tall and graceful trees at the far end.
If we have walked to the end, and walked around one or more of the trees … well, we know we’ve been somewhere.
Today, the air was cool, but the sun was warm on us, and I plodded along after Charlie the dashing young boy, and I was lost in thought, watching my feet, for the now fast-growing grasses can hide gopher holes.
And I saw …
Tiny little flowers, a pale lavender color, just tiny little things.
And I remembered … back when I was four and five and seven and nine, and visiting my grandmother’s farmhouse, and how along the paved walkway to the chicken yard and the barns beyond … on the left she kept bushy thick plants with a million tiny little flowers, in yellow and blue and purple and white.
I don’t know what they were called. I had forgotten them.
And now, those tiny, tiny flowers came back, over the years. And as I walked here in the now, I realized they were everywhere at my feet, the tiny purple flowers. Everywhere. I smiled.
“Hello,” I said, “Hello, Grandmother.”
I walked on through those tiny galaxies, and once again I felt loved.
I realize: the flowers are everywhere, if you look.
The world is filled with twilight and memories and shifting shapes, if you look. The ones who have gone have left ripples, and sometimes we feel them eddy around us. And within us as well.
Tiny flowers. Filling the world.
Weed, California, May Day, 2008: I find myself waking earlier, for the sun bangs upon the blinds, and the dogs grow restive.
Yawning, I stumble outside, following the dogs. There is white frost on the newly-long grasses, and I blink in the light. The mountain is wreathed in clouds upon its shoulders, but rises above, up into a clear pale blue sky, and bright sunlight startles me in the crisp air.
Dogs dart here and there, in a world of fantastic scents hidden in the chill. As we make our way around the house, the frozen grasses crunch beneath our feet.
Suddenly I’m startled by the little tree near the road. I’d been told it was a cherry tree, but now I know.
Upon its twisted branches, pink cherry blossoms.
YouTube, September 19, 2007: Over the last two weeks, in my spare moments (hah!) I recorded our ‘TrueTapper Eclipse’ instrument. This is our most basic instrument, and while it is perfectly suitable for a professional musician to do studio recording, any student with a summer job can afford this instrument.
The video is a demonstration of the features of the Eclipse, and the Bloggard in his guise of Traktor Topaz, strange musician from another planet, plays a couple of songs and explains how the instrument is constructed to make learning fast, and playing easy.
The video is a companion to the previous video which explains the Easy Touch-Style Method of learning to play music using the two-handed tapping technique. The Easy Touch-Style video is the first of several, and in one of the online forums, my very good friend Greg Howard suggested that I make a video playing some music.
So I thought — Why not?
So, assuming that YouTube is online and streaming just now, the Bloggard presents:
Now, at last, the neighbors can know the source of those strange flickering lights … late at night … and the … peculiar … sounds. Oh, yes. Yes, now they’ll know.
And I’ll start by hauling a couple of megatars —
But, say … I could haul *lots* more megatars in this truck!
I have purchased a house here in Northern California, and the property had adequate space, and so it happened that, thanks to the goodness of the Benevolent Universe, a new shop is being constructed there. Mobius Megatar, where I make wonderful musical instruments, has outgrown it’s space at the Secret Megatar Laboratory, and soon will have this new and larger factory shop.
The construction has trampled the once-lavish grounds, but soon our team of avid gardeners will be back on the job. In the meantime, here are some pictures —
(a) The house (left) and new shop (right):
(b) The house (left) and new shop (right):
(c) The view out the windows:
If you’d like to see more photos of the shop construction project, on our Mobius Megatar website, in the News section, open up the MegaBlog, and choose “Factory” to find lottso photos from bare ground up through the current state.
It won’t be long before we move our equipment into the new shop, and create even more Megatars for a world thirsty for easy-to-play music.
