New Age Living

Today I was thinking about some things I'd done. I went into a, 'shame spiral' and was forced to implement my, 'little me inside' breathing exercises in order to strike balance back into my, 'feelings grid'. For a while my, 'neural reboot' seemed to have returned the harmony I had transferred from the, 'universal ethos' back to my, 're-weening nest', from which I was about to re-take my first tentative flight. As I sipped my organic, free trade herbal tea of calming bat droppings, I retreated to my, 'soul chamber' where I snacked on a long piece of, 'life licorice' made by caring memories and gentle experiences. After receiving, 'validation nourishment' I pushed my, 'confidence canoe' back into the, 'lake of living' and paddled along with nothing but blue skies above. As the lazy current swept me around a soft bend, there was another, 'life force' waiting for me to get within their, 'dome of dominance'. It was there that I was severely beaten about the head and face.

2/21/08 - 2/21/09

I have made it 1 year without smoking a single cigarette. 365 days. For 22 years, from 17 to 39 I smoked every single day. I smoked a lot. I probably averaged 2 1/2 packs a day, some days more, some days less. Over the last year, I went from being a big smokers rights guy to being a person who looks at a smoker and shakes his head at the stupidity on display. It is partly a defense mechanism to keep me from thinking about picking up the habit again, but truth be told, I never really struggled all that much after I decided I was done with cigarettes. Once I put 'em down there just wasn't an option for me to pick 'em up again. I can honestly say I've never really had a strong urge to start smoking again. Why did I quit you ask? I'll tell you and it might surprise you. First of all, it wasn't really for the health factor, although that is probably the biggest overall benefit I've received. It was mostly because smoking had become too much of a pain in the ass both physically and monetarily. The state where I live, like most other states, decided it was best if they told the owners of private property what they could and couldn't allow with regards to the use of a product that was legal to buy and use. In plain English it is this: you want to turn me into a social outcast, frowned upon by society and at the same time you continue to raise the price on cigarettes to pay for all the things that didn't get funded in the most recent budget? SCREW THAT! Why would I want to stand in the freezing snow and rain smoking a cigarette that came from a pack that cost me $5.12? I couldn't stand to let them win so I did something they never expected; I got completely out of the game. Now if they want to raise the price to $10.00 a pack, I say go for it! No skin off my back. It makes no difference to me if you want to give your hard earned money to some creepy son of a bitch sitting behind a desk at Phillip Morris or R.J Reynolds, and believe me they are creepy. If big brother wants to confine all the dirty smokers to a camp in the Nevada desert, just give me a little warning so I can roll up my windows when I drive by. Now when I'm standing behind a person buying smokes at the gas station I feel free. I watch them lay their money down and I begin to smile, I'm free. Free! Sometimes I even say something like,"Holy shit! How much?" playing the role of unaware non smoker, who points out the lunacy of the price paid for something that is really nothing. If your a smoker, knock yourself out, I'm not going to stop you. I was once one of you. But now that I don't smoke I don't care what you have to go through or how much you have to pay in order to smoke, if you don't like it do what I did; quit. Finally if you absolutely have to smoke, please don't do it around me. You stink.

Just A Slice.

I hardly go to Myspace anymore. It wasn’t intentional, I just kinda drifted over to Facebook through a girl I met online. It’s crazy; it feels like after 20 years, I’m backing high school. Only now I have less acne, a better haircut and a then-inconceivable appreciation of Frank Sinatra. And most significantly, I am a lot more experienced with, and a lot less nervous around members of the opposite sex. Through technology, I’m “talking” with people that 10 years ago, outside of a reunion, I would have bet the farm against ever talking to, let alone getting involved with their day to day affairs. Today however, I now know that little Mary Anderson from 6th period English burned her toast this morning and that Bob Johnson from 2nd period Math is getting caffeinated for a long night at work. When you stop and think about it, a lot of us are coming full circle. I know that we’re in the minority, those of us in our late 30’s, early 40’s and beyond when it comes to the population that makes up Facebook, but I also think those of us in that age category are the ones who appreciate it the most. There are a number of reasons for this, the first simply being that we have been separated from friends and classmates by time and distance, with no way to connect. I graduated in 1987, there were no cell phones with cameras or ipods and there was definitely no internet. Compact disks came out my senior year, before that popping a cassette into your walkman was cutting edge. With a fresh set of batteries, you’d do well to get through both sides of Def Leopards’ “Hysteria” before the gradual slowing of the tape went from a minor annoyance to a cruel joke (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, count your blessings you were born in an age when music players work using all non-moving parts.) My point is this: for kids in school today, all this technology is normal, they don’t know anything else. When they want to call their friends, they reach into their pocket, pull out their phone and make a call. Ask any of them how many times they’ve searched for a payphone when they needed to make an urgent call, I guess that it’s probably not that many. Hell, ask them what a rotary phone is. When I was in school, answering the phone ‘hello’ was a question. You didn’t know who was calling because there wasn’t any caller I.D. Hello…..? Somewhere I still have the recordings of prank phone calls we used to make to easily angered, unsuspecting victims; a pastime far too risky in today’s information age. Instead of talking, kids today type on the wall of their friends’ Facebook page, it’s the norm. And most likely, they will stay connected with these same people after they graduate and move far away from each other, following each others lives’ with ever increasing detail and in real time using things like Facebook until the next thing comes along to make Facebook antiquated. Ask any high schooler what a photo mat is; we’re back to moving parts again. Point your phone, take a picture, send it instantly anywhere in the world to as many people as you want. College graduation, point the phone. Getting engaged, point the phone. Buying a house, point the phone. First child, you get the picture, no pun intended. And I haven’t even mentioned video…. So it’s not surprising when someone of my generation joins Facebook and jumps in head first; you quickly find out there’s a lot of catching up and keeping up to do with people you never thought you’d “see” again, certainly not on a daily or weekly basis. Never mind all the people you never knew you knew! I don’t know the point of my little rambling. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounded like I was getting old. I feel like I’m all over the map here, if you’ve made it to the end, maybe you could explain to me what I was trying to get across, whether you’re next door or on the other side of the world.

The Lamp.

On my table there is a lamp. It was made by my grandpa over 26 years ago. I don't know what kind of wood it is made out of because it is covered in a thick coat of stain and, truth be told, even without the stain I wouldn't be able to tell you what kind of wood it was. My grandpa would be able to tell you though, but he's been dead for over 26 years. I can still picture the shed in the back yard; painted white tin with green striped trim and giant advertising signs leaning up against one side, gathering cob webs and dirt. That's where he kept the lathe that spun the wood that became the lamp. I can remember standing there as a young boy, watching as he put a chisel to the spinning wood. It was as if he had some kind of magical power, the ability to make this ordinary round log take on beautifully symmetrical shapes that nature never could. Perhaps it was because I was eye level with the wood, or maybe it was because it was MY grandpa who was creating the beautiful art from ordinary, everyday things that I felt drawn to that primitive spinning machine. After my grandma died, the lamps were distributed throughout my family. I heard that some of the lamps may have been thrown away, I hope that isn't true. Lately I've been thinking about replacing the cord on the lamp; making it safer with a ground plug. But like everything else my grandpa made, it seems to be working fine after all these years. So I will leave it as it is, making sure it is turned off when I'm not home. And when I do return home and it is dark and I cannot see, the first thing I do is reach for the lamp that is sitting on my table.

The Old Lady at the Store.

I was third when I got in line to pay for my groceries. I watched the cashier struggle as she passed a package of chicken breasts over the laser scanner again and again; she looked to be around 75 years old. In that instant I thought about her circumstances. What led her to be scanning food at a Super Target at her age? Was her husband still alive? Did she lose all her retirement savings when the market collapsed? She placed a zucchini on the scale and flipped through the code book, never looking up. Like anybody else doing that kind of work, I could tell she didn't want to be there and she wasn't trying to hide it. At her age she had earned the right to not have to put on a happy face for everybody that came through her line. I wondered if she had any children and if she did, why they couldn't take care of her in her golden years. Then I thought about my own mother, how she would have to work until her dying day if I was the one responsible for her well being. I Thank God my step dad is able to take good care of her and they are enjoying retirement with relatively few things to stress about, me sometimes being one. When it was my turn, I watched her scan a few things before I made a comment about it being easier in the old days when you just punched in the price on the cash register. She looked up, smiled and agreed, seeming to enjoy the human interaction that is so often gone from the little day to day things in life. As I was driving home I thought to myself, "If I don't start saving now, in 35 years that's gonna be me." At least there's still time for me. For the old lady at the store, time ran out.