humbled

Live and learn.
Absolutely crazy move. Had a little bit of everything.. Unliftable boxes, scattered photographs in the lobby, dead car batteries, skipped meals, a little sweatin :) We even got locked IN at the old apt. Good times.

Many a lesson to be learned. Preparation, time management, follow up. Oh, and 11 month old babies do not help with moving at all. In fact... raahight. Friends on the other hand do help - much appreciated.

Sitting at work and RESTING :) Glad we are done, and looking forward to getting the place up and running.

Very humbling.

everyone is insane.. some more than others

There I was, standing in my boss' office, listening to his brainstorming of how I should deal with an issue that came up with a new account launch. Nothing earth shattering. And yet.. important enough to analyze the various ways we could proceed, and keep repeating the key points over and over. And then, in a flash of absurd awareness, he sighs and says: "God, I am repeating myself over and over. You must find me soo annoying!"

My eyeballs, which at that moment were rolled up, suddenly rolled back down and bulged a little. WTF, I thought, as thoughts of Socrates and an examined life suddenly made everything much more interesting. Could it be?! Did my manager just take a small step towards transcending his own monkey brain? I was eagerly awaiting the logical conclusion, something close to: "You know what to do, go do it."

Not so fast. Awareness disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Poof, gone. My boss was BACK, better than ever! "Ok, so what I would do, is call blah blah and email blah and cc blah and make sure that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Oh, and remember, we need to blah blah blah blah. OR. Let me see. Hmm. Maybe we should blah blah blah."

My eye balls are tired of rolling.



So. Presented with clear glimpses of our own insanity, why do we so often chose NOT to examine it deeper? To ponder fresher, more mindful ways of thinking and acting. How honest are we with ourselves, really?

WHO IS DRIVING THE BUS?

cruisin

Alvie started crawling. It happened the weekend of her turning 10 months. Poolside, on a blanket, trying to reach some random blue thing.

Incredible to watch the tipping point of discovery. Lean forward, get up on one knee, almost take off with the other, sit back down. Repeat 20 times. And then, however jittery, the second knee takes off and Alvie takes a little step, eyes gleaming with concentration and wonder. She then sits back down, relaxes into a huge smile, and joins the applause. And so begins the great crawlin.

Coming back to earth from the sublime joy, wife and I quickly understood two things.

One - gotta watch her even more now. I couldnt believe how quickly Alvie can start at point A and end at point B - head first. Gravity 101 for her, and Change 701 for us.

Two - once in the crib, Alvie proceeds to roll, crawl back, and sit up in all of about 2 seconds. Every time. Ah, Alvie, dearest, its 10pm. Why dont you give mommy and daddy a hint of free time. A whiff. Maybe a gentle breeze from Free Time city. Pretty please? My Sinatra interpretations are now useless..

All part of the struggle. Sublime, ordinary, difficult, effortless. All changing, all flowing. And yes, the struggle is enough. And then some.

volatility much?

Lets see. We've got a couple of wars going on, terror, financial anxiety, natural disasters, and pollution of untold magnitude. Add to that the fact that I am still trying to get over a head cold today, and you can understand the elevated stress levels. Kinda makes me wanna slow down and enjoy the amazing weather this early May has presented us with. The gentle breeze, the warm embrace of sunlight, the blue vastness of the sky.

Before I go outside for a stroll down Angelus Drive, some random thoughts:

- not sure I like the term 'hung parliament'.. surely we could all come up with more professional terminology.. but then again, who the hell cares what I like and what I dont like.. I am not even sure I care too much

- Jim Cramer was hilarious yesterday.. 'buy Proctor!.... sell Proctor!.... someone better be buying me dinner at Ruth's tonight!'

- several times a day I feel a strong urge to take a week off, drive down south, and spend a few days just washing and feeding birds, and..

- several times a day my wife calls and reminds me that I gotta wash and feed Alvie when I get home..

- I love push ups

- wife + baby + beer = good times

g chat status categories

Lets see..

There is your ever-optimistic-in-world-peace-and-prosperity "here is a link to a cool site that lets little Indian and Pakistani girls chat online and be friends. I am cool!"

There is the inside job "damn girl, that was one wicked night! We are cool!"

There is the amateurish "here is a link to my blog. Read it, cause I am way cool."

There is the lest-we-forget slogan "Today is Flag Day.. here is a link to all the flags ever created. Way cool!"

There is the narcissistic "on my way to loads of fun, sorry you are at work, biatches, damn, I am cool."

There is the either absurd or totally-inside-joke-like "Not sure if you will succeed.. But good luck."

There is the almost-nihilistic "its all good, mon."

What am I missing??

From the 'things I have always wanted to do but didnt even know that I did' series

We have undoubtedly all seen it in adventure movies. A fervent treasure seeker makes his way to an old book containing clues of magnificent proportions, slowly picks it up, and marveling for a second in anticipation, gently blows on it in order to get the dust off. Magic moment; so pregnant with possibilities. It's like your imagination cracking its knuckles and rolling up its sleeves.

And so there I was, in a dusty chaos of renovation, picking up a friend's copy of Christa Tippett's Speaking of Faith. Alas, the poor book spent a few days in the middle of all sorts of demolition, and was covered in dust.

Drum roll, please. Begin magic moment! I pick up the book, and noticing all the dust, slowly and very deliberately blow across its surface. Pooof! The dust rushes off the book and forms a fleeting, amorphous cloud. I could have sworn I was Indiana Jones right then.

Daydream

Gagarin suddenly realized that he was daydreaming.

In a momentary jolt of awaking awareness, he thought back through the last 5 minutes of his mind activity. 5 minutes. It turned out, he thought, that there were 3 distinct trains of thought that passed along in the space of 5 minutes.

First was a hypothetical experience with mild altering substances. Gagarin imagined himself and a few select others enjoying the roller coaster sensations of questioned and altered reality of every day. He relished in the richness - of joy, connection, and physical euphoria - this experience would allow. He may have even smiled to himself.

He then quickly switched his thoughts to his surroundings. He sat in the middle of a small wooded patch on the outskirts of a small town. He then took on a "role" of a public radio journalist, reporting on All Things Considered.

Melissa Block: .. some residents even say there is a serious problem of noise pollution. To talk more about that, we called a professional pilot - Gagarin. Welcome to the program, Gagarin.

Gagarin: Thank you, it's a pleasure.

Melissa Block: And as I understand, you are - right now - in the middle of the last wooded patch in your town?

Gagarin: That is correct.

Melissa Block: So you are surrounded by trees and can't see anyone! And what do you hear?

Gagarin: I hear noise from two different construction sites.

Melissa Block: And Gagarin, briefly, do you find it annoying?

Gagarin: It's actually not a bother. It would be nice though to hear the birds a little better.

Melissa Block: Thank you Gagarin.

Gagarin: The pleasure is all mine Melissa.

And just as quickly, Gagarin switched his thoughts again, this time to the fact that he was sitting in shade. That he enjoyed sitting in shade, and not being pounded ceaselessly by all the uvas and uvbs and maybe even some uvcs since we got them holes in the big OZO layer. Gagarin even remembered his darling wife who is so adamant about protection. He may have smiled again.

And then BAM. Awareness. Swooooosh, self-reference established, and riiiiiight back we go. Swwooooosh. And again. "I was just daydreaming, wow, just sittin in the grass and daydreaming," thought Gagarin. "I had these 3 thoughts, hmm. Interesting." Gagarin recounted all 3. "Wait? Was I aware or not? I definitely was not too present, leme tell ya. First thought I had - I was living a hypothetical event in my mind. Second, I was pretending to give a news report - how amateurish! And why to Melissa Block and not Robert Siegel?? And the third thought was about avoiding cancer. Damn." Gagarin was amazed.

He wondered how difficult of a task continuous awareness seemed to be. He also wondered at how monotonous and sterile the constant feedback looked to him in that moment. "Was I not happy just now, for 5 whole minutes, even in the midst of mindless daydreaming?" Gagarin asked himself. He knew he was.