The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Closing a Door

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October 19, 2018, Medford Oregon –– Tomorrow a big truck with moving guys comes, and nearly all my home is packed into boxes. The last few weeks have been overshadowed. As the leaves were turning gold and falling from the huge tree out front, I worried that packing up seemed overwhelming, but bit by bit …

The view from my kitchen window

Behind the house of the neighbor across the street, her name is Linda, her trees have turned bright and colorful. It’s Autumn.

The neighbors next door had yet another fiesta last Friday. Although it’s sometimes noisy near my bedroom window, I like the sounds, men talking in Spanish, kids yelling and running around.

A Change in the Air

After tomorrow, I don’t live here any more.

I’ve felt this before. Maybe you have, too …

It’s time to go, and the rooms become empty again, until finally the place looks vacant like the day you moved in. And you walk around these empty rooms, and whether or not you liked the time spent there, nostalgia comes over you.

In my bedroom, in my mind I again see gooddog Charlie. This is where he died, not that long ago. I feel like I am abandoning him, because I am leaving the room. I miss him and feel like somehow I am also leaving him behind, because it’s the place where I hold his memory.

But he will not miss me here.

No Reason to Be Here

A few years ago, I moved here with Susan, before she lost her sight and went away to learn how to be a blind person. I thought it likely that the relationship was completely gone. I felt no different toward her, but had to accept letting it go.

A few months ago I was surprised to hear from her reaching out by phone again. And a few trips to visit over the last few months where she’d landed again in Mount Shasta. Surprised and happy to discover the relationship was not gone after all. And so I am moving back to Mount Shasta.

Unlike some other moves in the past, this time I do not have the feeling of  moving forward. I feel like I am moving backward, retreating. But it’s what I want to do. I cannot remain, no reason. Though I’ve made a few good friends here, there is nothing to keep me in Medford.

I just didn’t have any other place that called to me.

Until now.

 

Travels With No Charlie

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Medford, Oregon, June 6, 2018 — This morning as usual, I got up and dressed, and then I took myself for a walk.

As some of you know, usually gooddog Charlie takes me for my morning walk, but not today. Because last night at 8 o’clock my good Charlie died.

And this morning when I returned from my walk, his body was still lying upon his bed, his eyes open as if seeing something very faint and very far away.

And he remained so very, very still.

What Happened

A year ago, on our morning walk to the little hidden park a block away, while I was petting him and putting his leash back on, I discovered a lump on his chest. About the size of a half lemon. A few days later, the vet said she didn’t know what it was, but we should take it out.

She quoted an amazing amount of money, and frankly I didn’t have it. And over this year, [Read more…]

Creation and Destruction, and Everything In-Between

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Safeway parking lot, Balboa Avenue, San Francisco, February 1975 — 

“You must face annihilation over and over again to discover what is indistructable in yourself.”
— Pema Chodron

This quote started me thinking (years later in 2018), because actually, creation, persistence (survival), and destruction are in a way all parts of the same thing.

It is the cycle of all things in the physical universe. Like you are born, you live for a time, and then you pass away. As does your car, a banana, a city, a mountain, or the Earth.

This universal cycle of action was first described in the Upanishads, and we still refer to the three ‘gods’ Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer).

And it is good when you have all three in your skillset, because when you can at will create something, mutate and change it and preserve it, and then destroy it, then in fact you are in control of [Read more…]

Rodeo Drive

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Beverly Hills, California, 1969: As the night clerk at the Beverly Rodeo Hyatt House, on fashionable Rodeo Drive, I met interesting people.

I’ve seen Hendrix stumble out of the elevator, on his way out to gig, so stoned that he couldn’t get through the door because he was holding his guitar case sideways.

Chuck Berry signed in one night with a young woman, giving me his American Express. He wasn’t doing his duck walk, so I wasn’t sure it was Chuck Berry, and later I called American Express. As it turns out, they called his home. He wasn’t there, but his wife was.

Ginger Baker (of the rock band Cream) and I broke into the kitchen one night to make sandwiches. Taj Mahal said hello. David Nelson was in and out. Miles stayed there sometimes.

But the most interesting guest was Ralph D.

Plenty of Mooolah!Ralph D. was a well-to-do guy in the real estate business, short and squatty, nicely groomed with nice suits, from La Jolla. Often, he stayed overnight at the Beverly Rodeo Hyatt House. He liked dinner in the Chez Voltaire room, and he liked the bar pretty well, too.

In that bar, a hooker named Gina was often in and out, in a manner of speaking, and she was Ralph D’s favorite. Alas, she appeared to fall in love with him, and this didn’t really work out for her. But that’s another story.

One day I asked Ralph D. how he made so much money. He didn’t exactly answer my question, but what he said was much more valuable. He said, “If you want to make a lot of money, you need to work in a field in which it is possible to make a lot of money.”

That made me stop and think!

I’m embarrassed to say, now, that my paucity of vision, then, only let me see part of this truth. I did see that working as a desk clerk would not be a field in which it would be possible to make a lot of money.

I pondered this idea, and realized that, as long as I worked for someone else, they would be making part of the money from my labor. Therefore, I figured, it would be wiser to work for myself. Then I could collect the payment to the worker (me) and also the payment to the employer (me).

Now, looky back, it’s clear that he really meant: you can make more in some fields, like Real Estate, than in other occupations, but I didn’t really grasp that key point then.

But years later …

Years later, in San Francisco, I made my first attempt to use the valuable information he had given me. I decided to become a freelance bookkeeper. I would work for myself! I’d make the money of the employee (me) but also the money of the employer (also me), since I was working for myself. What a great idea!

Yes, bookkeeping would be the field in which I would make a lot of money.

Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw!

Yep. Live and learn, bucky, live and learn. Some of us slower than others. Yep.

 

Are You a Pirate?

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In one of the last scenes in the fun movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the heroine makes a statement about the leading man. She says, lovingly, “He’s a pirate.”

As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.

And so … why is it a good thing to be a pirate?

[Read more…]

I Gotta Espress Mysef!

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Medford, Oregon, March 28, 2017: A friend on Facebook was wailing about expressing her feelings, and the resulting reactions from others that didn’t go well. And it took me back, to remember …

I don’t remember where or when, or what had just happened, but I recall the exact moment, so many years ago, that I had a brainstorm, and I realized that I didn’t need to share every thought I had, every view, every observation, every opinion.

I realized that everyone else around me was busy living their own lives, and that at any given moment they had their own battles (sometimes bigger than mine, and certainly bigger to them). So there were good times for me to share my views, and (lots of times) to not share my views at all.

And I felt — But I gotta express myself! — and then realized that no, actually, I didn’t gotta, and sometimes it would be self-destructive for me to do so, or damaging or hurtful to others around me, in spite of my powerful urge to do so.

Well, my life didn’t change over night, but over years, it did.

And now I sometimes share “who I am” and sometimes I don’t. Because, really, you are who you are, but what you do — talk, express yourself, remain silent, wave your arms, sit quietly — these are just behaviors.

Who you are is an eternal truth, and only evolves over time as you learn and grow. But mere behaviors? They are within your control, to select (or not) in each moment to advance your survival, and the survival of those around you.

That’s my two cents. Maybe it might be a useful viewpoint to explore.

Or maybe not.

Writing and Marketing

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Medford Oregon, January 23, 2016:  Two writer friends and I had coffee yesterday, because they wanted to talk about marketing their books. One of them has published a couple of books but his last one has not sold much yet. The other fellow is still working on his book. Both books are novels.

I confessed that although I’ve written several books and have published them in one way or another, I’m no big expert on this subject.

However, as the get-together unfolded, between my marketing experiences and their ideas we actually did put together a couple of plans that seem very likely to be effective.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

Today, I got an email from one of them, and in his email he said:

“All very interesting, and I want to know more, but my purist streak pulls me back to the Dark Side, to wit: Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

As I began to respond to his question, it reawakened something I learned many years ago from my client Jerry Richardson, the author of “Powers of Persuasion,” which became a national best-seller, about how we humans leave out parts of sentences. I have found it very useful over the years. Perhaps you will find interesting this response to my writer friend —

Hi,

To answer your question —

You asked: “Why don’t I just learn how to write a Story that makes a reader want to burn through it before lunch because I have made this huge promise and they are hungry for their payoff?”

Errors of Omission

Your answer is inside your question. All English-speakers engage in a practice that linguists would call “omission” or “deletion.” We delete parts of the sentence because they are “understood.” An example: [Read more…]

An Implosion of Life and Love

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Medford, Oregon June 27, 2015 — Since she lost her vision, Susan has remained stand-offish, edgy, sometimes crying alone in her room. Coming to terms, but it’s hard. She doesn’t want comforting from me. Doesn’t want to be touched or held. Sometimes friendly; sometimes not exactly.

A few weeks ago near the beginning of the month, at the table she said we need to talk. You never really want to hear those words.

The story, made simple, is this: She said she didn’t want to be in a relationship any more. She says she feels like a different person. She says she finds it uncomfortable living in this house with me, as she doesn’t feel she has enough space of her own. I am “too big a personality.” I think that means too noisy, when I’m talking on the phone with clients, always present in the house for I work here. She says it’s too much for her current state of mind.

She’s going to move out just before July first. She’s paid her share of rent for June. Her daughter Saradevi has offered that Susan can live with her, and she’s going. Oddly, Saradevi has recently moved to the teeny-tiny town of Caspar, near Fort Bragg on the Mendocino coast, in a tiny house out in the middle of nowhere.

Since Susan’s catastrophe, which wiped out her artist work and her bookselling business, I have been focusing on my work, to get more clients and income, thinking how to increase our income, for she cannot work and her social-security check is small. But now it seems that’s not to matter much. I love her as intensely as ever. But she doesn’t want me to take care of her.

My belief up to this point was that we would spend the rest of our lives together.

And now, the plan has changed. [Read more…]

 
 

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