Searching for Our Missing Psychic

A few weeks ago I read a headline in the paper, "Family Concerned for Missing Psychic". I kept thinking, he's a psychic--didn't he know this was going to happen? If the family is really concerned, why don't they hire another psychic? Things like this bother me. There are questions you never get to ask, and no one ever answers.

It's funny how we paralyze ourselves in a crisis, or a seeming crisis. All the power belongs to us, the power to love, or heal, or run screaming from the room, but we wring our hands and surrender it at every turn. Missing psychics are funny, but we do the same thing with alcoholism or anger or family conflict. We wait for things to change. We wait for news or permission. We distract ourselves and make weird bargains. After the first of the year, we say to ourselves, or when I get my new job. Things will get better. We're just having a rough time right now.

The thing is, things don't get better unless we acknowledge where we're hurting and change. The hurt and anger we feel are trying to tell us something important. And we have an essential choice, to either stay stuck and ignore the lesson, or be still and hear what is in our hearts. Too often in our lives we'll scream at the top of our lungs about the dishes or the phone bill, but we have the hardest time telling each other what we really need. We live with what's missing and let it overtake us. We live with a huge hole in our hearts.

Or, we could hire a psychic. If his family ever finds him.

Never Say Diet

I don't believe in diets. I don't believe in the guilt and denial, and I know intuitively and inherently that they don't work. Here's the inescapable truth of most diets: cut calories, lower metabolism, return to normal, rebound. It's a negative cycle, a myth, a lie promulgated by an entire industry of quick fixes, foods and pills and plans. Diets don't work. They never have. There's no secret to weight loss, and no magic fix.

Only one thing works: eat a little less, and increase your activity. It's common sense.

I love to eat. I love chocolate, cereal, fruit, ice cream, pork chops, potato chips, grilled cheese sandwiches, nuts, pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, cottage cheese, soup, beans, tomatoes, cake, peanut butter sandwiches, cheetos, cheezits, green beans, bacon, steak, hamburger, bagels, rolls, aspargus, milk, stir fry, pizza, spaghetti, cookies, and a 5,000 other things that don't come immediately to mind. I love food. I enjoy eating, and logically and realistically, I'm not the kind who could wake up one day and say, okay, rice cake and kiwi fruit for breakfast, cottage cheese and tuna for lunch, 4 oz. steak for dinner. It's just not happening.

I worked out five times this week. I tried to eat a little slower and a little less. I lost about 2 pounds. Tonight I had a big meal and probably gained it back.

They say your metabolism slows down every seven years. I'm not eating more than I used to, and I've been walking and bicycling 20 miles a week, but in the last three months I've gained 15 pounds.

Part of it, I'm sure, is stress. I started a Duck football blog that I'm writing 1500 words a day for. Work is stressful. My wife lost her job. I worry constantly about money. I need to start meditating again, regularly. It calms me. It slows me down. It keeps me in a better place.

I don't think I've really accepted the seriousness of what I'm up against. I hit 240. That's too much. It isn't vanity that is driving my concern about this (although that's a factor). It's the knowledge I will hit 250 or 260 if I don't change something.

Dr. Phil says you can't change what you don't acknowledge. Acknowledgement is one thing. Real change is another.

Freed From a Mineshaft of Our Own

The world is watching as the Chilean miners are rescued after being trapped for 69 days under 700,000 tons of rock, and I can't help but feel as I scan the news reports that we find the story so compelling because it foretells our own.

Sometimes we feel as trapped as the miners, sweltering in a cramped space of debt or uncertainty. We worry about foreclosure or loved ones far from home, about losing our jobs or losing our battle against loneliness or fear.

Each man emerges from the slender capsule and reunites with family or clutches the flag and our hearts leap with him, knowing it's a story of courage and triumph, a reminder that almost anything can be endured, that within the hearts and minds of ordinary people there is a fierceness and a will that can overcome circumstances, uncertainty, and an agony of waiting.

They made it. They stayed unified and faithful and focused forward, and they made it through 69 days without knowing and 17 days with no contact with the outside world. They worked together. They made 48 hours of rations last two and half weeks. They endured the ordeal of confinement and the risk of rescue, and they did with faith and courage and will, simple men in a great, almost impossible trial.

For once, the news on the front page was good. And it taught us something unforgettable about ourselves.

I Can't Change What I Don't Acknowledge.

Dr. Phil always says you can't change what you don't acknowledge, so here goes: I'm getting fat. I eat too much, my metabolism has slowed down, and I don't exercise enough, although I do walk and bicycle about 20 miles a week to work.

I have to make lasting changes in my habits, and stop letting the Duck blog rule my life and swallow up my time.

Beginning today I'm going to eat differently, take time to do stretching and relaxation exercises to lower my stress, and I'm going to the gym four days a week. I need to go in a different direction before these bad habits get out of control and the weight gain becomes permanent. I got on the scale at the doctor yesterday and I weighed 241 in street clothes. Enough. It stops now. I am going to make conscious changes and stick with them.

The first thing I noticed is that my tee shirt rides up over my belly when I'm sleeping. I hate feeling uncomfortable in my own body, and I'm going to fix it.

What I've Come to Believe, A Few Weeks Shy of 55

In this life, you've got to believe in something or you'll fall for anything.
----variously attributed to
Alexander Hamilton, G.K. Chesterton or Malcolm X

Live like you were dying.
----Tim McGraw, in a country song

Life can be brutal and sorrowful and discouraging. Yet there are moments that surprise you with their mercy and grace. I have lived an unwise life with many unthoughtful moments and wrong turns, wrong choices and self-inflicted miseries. but there are moments that stand out for tenderness and beauty and redemption, and I would not have missed a moment of it.

You come to a place where good enough has to be good enough, here you stop comparing yourself to the crowd or counting your bank balance as a measure of your worth, and simply breathe. Simply turn to the one next to you and hold her in your arms and declare your love, and let all the anxious striving melt away like an idol carved in ice. The striving has no permanence. It has no power to save you.

In the end we are what we choose to be, what we believed in, what we lived for. There isn't any need to justify our choices to anyone outside our precious circle, and within that circle every moment is sacred.

Whatever time I have left, I am going to spend it living and loving without regret. I'll remark on the world's follies with passing interest, but I won't share in them. I'm happy right here where I am.

If the bastards want to fire me or shoot me or take the bed I sleep in, that's just fine. There's nothing they can take from me I haven't already let go of, and the sacred things they could never touch. My love and my hope are beyond bargaining, and stronger than all fear.

The Worst Words in All the World

Mandatory Overtime.

The edict came from the director of operations a couple of weeks ago. Everyone on the floor had to complete ten hours of overtime by the end of the month. I worked last night until midnight, and had to return this morning by 8, walking home an hour last night and riding the bike this morning. I stuffed a loaf of cheese bread in the side pocket of my cargo pants for breakfast.

This is my day off. It's a perfect Indian Summer Day and my other blog has gotten 12,500 hits for the month.

There are a hundred other places I'd rather be than here. They couldn't pay me enough to make this worthwhile, and they don't. Uncle Sam takes half the money anyway.

The Growing List of Things I Don't Understand

When I was 20 I knew everything, but now I'm five years from being three times that there's a growing list of things I don't understand.

Why do women ask questions when they don't really want an answer? Why do people say bad things about themselves when you give them a compliment?

How come no one knows how to merge? Why do people lead by being rude and nasty, when if they simply asked courteously I'd do everything I could to help them? Does this work well in other areas of their life?

Why does my favorite football coach antagonize the media every day on every question? He persists in his East Coast brusqueness when they are just doing their job, and their job promotes his job, and earns him the cushy corner office with the carpet and leather-bound chairs.

We pulled out all the combat troops out of Iraq, but left behind 50,000 in non-combat roles. Isn't there a strong likelihood that 50,000 Americans, in an unstable country with a history of 5000 years of mayhem and religious fanaticism, are likely to become a target for insurgents, that retaliation, sabotage, terrorism, hostage-taking and suicide bombings are a certainty, and within a year there'll be a act of reprisal so horrific it's likely to pull us back into this mess? The war in Iraq has been the longest in U.S. history. It has cost 4,000 American lives and billions of dollars. It plunged us into centuries-old hatreds and sealed the fate of the world. If we're leaving we ought to leave. It seems to me we should have left the day after Saddam Hussein was captured. I don't understand global politics. Most days I don't want to.

Why do I pull all my putts to the right, and if work really hard at correcting this, I start pushing them to the left? How can a hole four feet away be so hard to reach? If it exasperates me so much, why do I always come back tomorrow? It's a game for fools, which explains my fascination with it.

The list grows daily and is inexhaustible. Why does my family leave a quarter cup of milk in the bottom of the jug? Why do we fall asleep with the light on and kick off the covers? Why does everyone charge a fee to make a payment, and answer the phone with annoying recorded voices that ask a dozen irritating questions before you can get to a real person?

In a just world, lemon meringue pie would be good for you, and all the vitamins would be in a bacon. To reach 60 you have to let go of foolish hopes for justice and logic and consistency. Just tap the brakes until everyone joins the stream of traffic. Eventually we'll all get where we're going, and someone will wake up and turn off the lights.

Grumpy Old Man III

I'm rapidly becoming the old man I vowed never to be. When I wake up in the morning I take a silent inventory of what hurts. My back. My shoulder. My hip. I clear my throat with that same disgusting suck of snot my father used to do. I'm cranky and irritable. I'd just as soon go back to sleep.

Even into my forties I was an athlete. I played a 150 games of softball a summer and when I stopped doing that I practiced golf four hours a day. Although you'd never tell from the current state of my game. I ran. I lifted weights. I felt a dozen years younger than my age.

Yesterday we went out to the nine-hole pasture where we play our casual rounds, and everything hurt. It hurt to sit or stand or swing a club. I left a four-foot putt an inch short. My chips skittered short of the green. I made 34, a decent score for my skill level, but didn't enjoy a single moment. My mindset sucked. The other day at work I had chest pains and a stabbing pain on the right side of my face. I called my wife at lunch and she urged me to go to the doctor. I told I couldn't, because I'd get an occurence for leaving shift. My boss is a peach of a guy. We take 2000 calls a month, many of them from cranks and abusers and fools. When he does our monthly evaluation he pulls out our very worst customer survey of the month, and bases his evaluation on that. He's a head hunter, a despot, a fat man with tiny hands and a small mind. I'd like to choke him. I'd go real slow.

I should go to the gym and stretch my aches and wounds, but I'm going to go to bed and start this day over. This time I'll try to wake up on the right side of the bed. I'll have a little dish of ice cream and flip off a cop on the way to work. Maybe he'll shoot me.

Don't mind me, I'm only kidding. After all I'm just a grumpy old man. I have four days off starting tomorrow. Maybe I'll go hiking and clear my head.

Effusive Praise for Mediocrity

I watch "America's Got Talent" every week, but the show confuses me. Piers Morgan buzzes a juggler off the show if he misses one ball, or a magician if he fumbles a single card, but singers get a free pass. A singer can utterly butcher a song, flat, toneless, barely controlling her breathing, a 65% rendition of a song done far better by the original artist, and Morgan and the other judges praise their courage and improvement. Why are the standards so much lower for vocalists?

Last week a female contestant covered "Right Now" by Carrie Underwood. She shouted the chorus and was painfully flat in the first verse, but somehow the panel gave her massive credit for showing up. A young man did a county fair talent show version of John Mayer, miserable and mediocre, and you'd have thought he nailed it. An unknown singer ought to be exceptional to be passed forward, because everybody thinks they can sing. American Idol and its various imitators have given far too many people false hope. Hope is a good thing, but not when it's based on delusion and low standards.

Complicating things even further is the fact that many popular, successful acts aren't that talented. Musicians are so digitally enhanced and overdubbed in the studio that many careers are forged simply because the "artist" looks good vamping in a video. They even lip-synch in live performances. It's fundamentally dishonest. A performer that is the authentic, total package is rare.

I was stunned by the 10-year-old girl who sang a classical song, Jackie Evancho from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She truly had a stunning voice. Some of the performer who advance on the show get far too much credit merely for getting through a 90-second performance. I hope next time she performs a crossover tune, a popular ballad, to give the audience a broader frame of reference for appreciating her talent. It will make the difference between true artistry and singing well enough more apparent.

A Quick Update from Chaos Central

We're trying again. She came to me crying and I took her to my arms, and Saturday after work we went dancing. The last few days have been gentle and sweet. For her birthday I bought her a black amethyst gift set from Bath and Body Works, some pink golf balls and flowers and a bottle of wine. Things are quieter and gentler, and I'm hopeful we can stay out of the storms.

The Ducks open fall practice today, and Ethan loves his golf club. Stephanie had to keep it out of range of the TV. He plays with it all the time. Work is going better. It's tough to maintain when your life is uncertain and chaotic, especially when people start in about how a tiled picture on their television is the worst thing that ever happened to them.

We're going to play golf today and the sun is coming out. I know I am strong enough to endure anything and blessed with life and health. The details we will sort out.

Finding A Pattern That Works for Me

I write three blogs now, labors of love, this one, one on affirmations, Envision Your Best Self Daily , and The Duck Stops Here, which is about Duck Football. None of the three are going to make me rich. Let's be honest, none of the three are going to make me a dime. But all of the experts say the secret to true success and true happiness is to find your passion and follow it. At some point I'll add a poker blog and a golf blog, and the chief benefit of all that blogging will be that I'm writing every day. Writing is life, hope, and engagement. Writing is the exercise and the discipline that gives life to my heart and mind. Oh, I have to admit, a good deal of the time I don't have a whole lot to say. But in writing you discover your voice, and the effort to dedicate and develop yourself is more than worth it. It engages me. It gives me hope, and the means to reflect and to grow. It isn't a seamless or quick process. It's something you dig out of the ground, like mining for gold. You have to move around a lot of dirt to get to the priceless stuff. You have to keep believing the priceless stuff is within you. I fervently believe it is.

I made an important discovery today, or more accurately, an important rediscovery. The best time for me to write is in the dead of the night, The dark early morning hours when the apartment is quiet and everyone is asleep. That's the time when it can't get sidetracked by the demands of the day or heat or noise or pressing obligations. It's the sacred time that isn't clogged up with anything else. This is the best time for me to write. This is when I am the most trusting and the most clear and the most earnestly committed.

I don't often want this to be the subject. It's dangerous to be writing about writing, navel contemplation to the ninth degree, holding a keyboard like the guy on the Cream of Wheat box holding a box of Cream of Wheat that has a picture of a guy holding a box of Cream of Wheat. You can get lost in paradoxes or redundancy. There's far more interesting stuff to consider.

Tonight however I needed to make a declaration. I want to write, and I want to write every day, and the best time for me to do that is in the wee hours of the morning when every thing is dead silent and the years and memories come back to me. I can make out the outlines of the shadows. I can hear the voice of God and the music in the stillness. I can't write when someone is watching me with suspicious or distrusting eyes. I can't write in chaos and clamor. I need quiet. I grew up in a chaotic house of seven children and two dysfunctional adults who were either in a frenzy of codependent ecstasy or screaming misery and nightmare violence. The quiet soothes me and takes me back to my safest place. I crave quiet and stillness. I'm terrified of meanness, sarcasm, anger and demeaning brutality. I have no stomach for hurt. There's a shame within me I'd give almost anything to avoid revisiting. Except when I'm writing. When I'm writing I'm not afraid of anything, which is why I want to do it more than anything in the world. I'm glad I got that out. I don't do it to slight anyone or ignore anyone or hurt their feelings. I do it because it's the most necessary and vital journey of my life.

Here's What I Gotta Do

1. Eat with more forethought and attentiveness. Eat sensibly. Control my portions. Eat smaller meals more often. Mix in some vegetables. Don't eat merely for comfort or entertainment. Drink more water--don't fall into the trap of eating because I'm thirsty, eating because I'm bored, eating to pass the time or accompany the television. Take time to focus on and enjoy my food, take small bites, really chew and taste the food. Don't gobble. Avoid eating mindlessly or indifferently. Avoid eating on the run or while occupied or preoccupied with something else. Part of the benefit of saying a blessing over food is to remind us that food is a blessing, a celebration of safety and provision and abundance, and the act of eating is an acceptance of mercy and sustenance and grace. It's foolish to take the food I eat for granted. It's a grievous detriment to my health and well-being. Mix in some exercise and activity. Get moving. Don't be a slug, or a slave to habit. Get started. Don't waste the day, particularly my leisure hours, which are precious and hard-earned.

2. Stop harboring murderers and thieves. Anger, worry, frustration and hurt are the soul-destroyers and silent killers. They age us by the minute and rob our lives of joy and hope. Examine why I have these feelings. Let go of things I can't control, and develop a plan to do something about the things I can change. Take the first step. Declare my intentions. Stand up for myself and what is important. Stop wasting time in misery or inattention, reflect on my life, and change its direction. What is my purpose? What is my plan? What am doing about it? I have to realize that bad habits and mindless pastimes and stored misery will keep me stuck forever, but only if I allow it. Move forward. Be honest with myself and others. Reach out instead of clamming up and suffering.

3. Make a list. Make several lists. I ought to have a bucket list, a list of goals, a list of obligations and issues and problems to solve, a list for the day, a list for the month and year. I ought to pray over those lists with same devotion I pray over my food, because these tasks and hopes and assignments are the abundance I am given to "eat" in life. I spend too much time staying numb and keeping occupied, while the undone and unexamined and unaddressed pile up around me. I am lazy in heart and failing life. Most of the time I merely exist. This is harsh criticism, but warranted. All the important things I ignore. So many of the trivial things obsess me.

4. Get a new job. My present job is a perfectly honorable and good job, for someone else. It doesn't interest or engage me. I spend my work day being abused by toxic people over something that isn't my fault and doesn't matter at all, something that wastes time and rots their brains. It is eight hours of misery and drudgery and fear and anxiety and unpleasantness. I dread climbing the stairs to work. I have a lousy shift, a terrible boss, and poor pay. And it's my own damn fault. I didn't plan, I didn't apply my skills and resources, and I haven't researched or prepared a better solution.

5. If I want to write, if I say I want to write, I have to write. Every day. I can't allow myself to be bullied by harshness or sneering criticism, by blow-back. I can't worry about the reaction. I have to write what I see and feel and observe and know and stop hiding. I have to write like my life depends on it, because it does.

That's it for now. There's a lot more I gotta do and consider, but that's a start. Stay tuned.

The Power of the List

Schindler had one. Nixon had one. Every man who gets sent to the grocery store for more than two items ought to have one.

There is an innate power in making a list. It's the beginning of commitment. It's the first step in making a concrete plan for any purpose. Any time I make a list, of my chores, my goals, or my tasks for the day, I create a useful road map toward getting where I want to go.

I had a list today with sixteen things on it and I got fifteen of them done with a half hour to spare. I had four hours, and defeated the time suck and inattention that might have swallowed up the day. I was organized. I was systematic. I avoided false steps or distraction. I feel better already.

There is an old saying, "how do you eat an elephant?" Answer: one bite at a time. Anything, any task, any problem, any goal, any budget, becomes more manageable and doable when you divide it into parts. The path becomes clearer. The first and subsequent steps become more obvious. It becomes easier too to make adjustments. When the plan falls apart or runs into a snag it's easier to prioritize and reschedule.

I like simple lists because they don't seem cumbersome or restrictive. They give me just enough structure to orient myself. My time flows more surely. There's a satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

For the rest of my days I resolve to be a list maker and a list achiever. That's important, because I'm getting to the point where I need to compose a bucket list, a list I'm already starting to compile in my head. Next week I have a four-day weekend; I'm taking two vacation days for a much-needed mini-holiday. I have another one the third week of August. It will be a great time for knocking more things off my list.

No one ever has enough time or money. But by using the power of the list, we can make the most of what we have, and recognize with better clarity how much of each we have left. That's a powerful tool for a better, more rewarding, less stressful life.

A Perfect Day

The sweetest music in the world is the delighted chuckle of a small child. I gave Ethan a ride on my shoulders, and you'd have thought he was the star of the circus. I bought him a used eight iron for 6.99 and watched him devour his mother's chicken salad. I held baby Elizabeth and she urped all over the shirt I was wearing to work. She cuddled against my chest and I rubbed her tiny back. Kourtney is growing up to be a confident and well-adjusted preteen, in seventh grade in the fall. She gave up soccer for competitive dance.

In all the ways that count I am a rich man. Louis Oosthuizen won the British Open, but I got to play putt-putt with my grandson on a summer day. I'll wear the urp like a trophy and remember it forever.

The Trailer Trash Returns to Earth

He took some wonderful shots, and made a dozen putts that just burned the edges. If a handful of them had fallen or tipped or wrinkled their way into the hole he would have been in the thick of things. That didn't happen this time, and the man in the funny pants was left to face the press in sadness. He made the cut, but he's no longer part of the story. It's not his weekend for glory or redemption. John Daly fell back.

Sports are like that sometimes. The heroic effort fizzles or falls just short. Last year a 59-year-old Tom Watson needed to make just one more putt to win his four British Open and ninth major with everyone in the world rooting for him but missed the hole and then lost a playoff. We can marvel at athletes in pressure situations, and cry occasionally, when fortune fails and proves that they are human. Defeat and failure are an essential part of the story. Sometimes even victory is bittersweet. Ask Stewart Cink. Last year when he won people said it was like he defeated Santa Claus. Winning became a footnote to the story everyone hoped to read.

Tomorrow two Englishmen and a diminutive South African with a name no one can pronounce with certainty have the best chance at hoisting the Claret Jug. They'll duel in the howling wins. Louis Oosthuizen, 27 years old and never before a contender in a major championship, will try to sleep tonight with a four-shot lead. This morning countrymen Gary Player and Ernie Els called to wish him luck. Will he collapse under the pressure? No one knows. So far he has been calm and steady and in perfect rhythm, even when conditions were daunting. Tomorrow at the birthplace of Golf he has his chance to become a champion or a footnote. John Daly will putt out hours before and wave sadly to the crowd.

Tiger Woods is ten back and hasn't a chance to win. I'm delighted to say his misery continues. He deserves it. As long as he stonewalls the questions and maintains his proud indignance, he deserves every embarrassment he gets. He failed as a person and succumbed to his monstrous appetites, and so far hasn't exhibited the courage or the heart to redeem himself or change the storyline. He squandered an empire and a family. It will be curious to see when he'll gather himself for a true comeback story of his own. He lost twice this weekend, once to St. Andrews, and once to the British press. No doubt he'll find his golf swing, but will he find composure, grace, humility and perspective? He'll have to wait for another weekend to show it. For now Jack Nicklaus' legacy is safe, and his is supremely tarnished.

The most interesting stories in sports are not the results and statistics, the money won and the trophies raised. The most interesting stories are the human ones. They are the reason I watch. Tomorrow will be an interesting day, watching how these men handle victory and defeat.

Triumph of the Trailer Trash

I was raised on a poor dirt farm in Eastern Oregon, sixty acres of skinny cows, sagebrush and sand. I was hoeing and milking and driving farm trucks by the age of nine, a hired hand. We were dirt poor. One of the strongest memories of my childhood was the day the lineman came to shut off our electricity one summer. When I was ten my father parked a truck in Prosser, Washington. We had five loads of watermelons to sell, a summer's work of hard labor that had raised blisters on our backs, and now the crop was ready and it was time to cash in. He told me I could eat dinner in the restaurant across the street, and that I should sleep in the truck. He had to go to The Dalles with another load. This one was left to me.

In two days I made $163 selling watermelons three for a dollar. This was 1965, when gas was twenty nine cents a gallon and a hamburger was twenty nine cents. I kept the money in a paper sack under the bench seat of the truck, a beat down old Chevy with rusted paint. On the third day the Prosser cops came and asked me where my parents were. They took me to the station and filled out a bunch of forms, and drove me to juvenile hall. I spent the night in solitary detention. There was a stack of magazines on a bench, Boy's Life and Sports Illustrated, and when I grew tired of reading I kicked the walls. The next day a caseworker drove me the 55 miles home.

We were trailer trash, pure and simple. We didn't live in a trailer, not literally, just a rundown two bedroom farm house, three kids to a bed. My grandfather built us a shotgun third bedroom on one of his vacations. My mother had another child, my sister Monika, the same year. All the younger ones were towheads. One year we were so poor at Christmas my parents cut down a shrub from the backyard. My parents were all was fighting and making up. He left home for months at a time. He drove long haul truck and worked construction. One summer she and a woman she knew were going through some boxes he left behind, and found a box of condoms. Six children and he took condoms with him on the road. Eastern Oregon winters are bitter cold, not Midwest cold, but the wind bites right through you. The house was always filled with tension and uncertainty. It had sawdust insulation, and mice. My mother cried to herself. I'd find her in the kitchen, muttering and distressed, speaking German. "Mama, what's wrong?" "Nothing. Go back to bed."

This morning the British Open is on as I write this, and John Daly is the early leader at minus five. Daly has had a tumultuous life, four wives, alcoholism, drunken brawls and embarrassing run-ins with the PGA brass. He squandered a fortune in tournament winnings and got fat and lost his swing. He went dry and fell off the wagon and made comebacks and vowed to give up golf altogether, lost his tour card and got into tournaments only on past victories and with sponsorship exemptions. He was suspended, fined, ridiculed and broken. He cut a country album and chain smoked and hit a drive off a beer can. He shot 84s and 63s, sometimes within weeks of each other. He missed cuts and had loud, embarrassing scenes with enraged gold digger wives, losing millions to bad judgment and free spending and excess and dissipation, making a mess and wreck and a laughing stock of himself. He wasn't cut out for success. He couldn't manage himself, take advice, or overcome his demons. He was Tonya Harding in golf cleats. And now this morning he leads the British Open at five under.

I have a soft spot for the John Dalys of the world, the guy in crazy pants guzzling Diet Dr. Cokes and trying to keep his head right. It would tickle me to see him hold it together for the weekend and thumb his nose at his critics, bring the Claret Jug back to Arkansas and conquer his chaotic nature once and for all. For all I know he could flame out by Friday afternoon. Wouldn't it be something, though, if he could do it? After all the hoopla over Tiger Woods and his sordid story and 750 million dollar divorce, to have the trailer trash from Arkansas steal the storyline and the show? Wouldn't that be delicious? That would tickle me to no end. Go John, go. Keep your mind quiet and grip it and rip it. I can't wait to see what happens next.

I'll be one hick rooting for another. If I won that kind of money I'd get my teeth fixed and throw a party. That's what trailer trash do.

A Day I'll Never Get Back

There's a certain pressure in realizing every day, every hour or minute of your life can only be lived once, and once misspent or squandered, is lost forever.

Yesterday our company had its annual employee meeting. We were summoned to a large concert hall, the buses leaving the parking lot of the call center at 7:30 in the morning, the middle of the night for me. I work till midnight and invariably waste an hour or two when I get home, for a snack and a couple of games of Internet chess or catching up on TV. This summer I'm following "The Last Comic Standing" and "America's Got Talent". Neither show has earth-shattering significance but both are entertaining.

You develop an interest in the performers and it's enjoyable to watch emerging new talent, and consider along the way the difference between genuine excellence and mediocrity, true vision and mimicry. The shows pull you in with human interest vignettes. Decidedly there's a formula, but you can't help rooting for certain contestants and mildly despising others. The hand whistling old lady repulses me; she doesn't even whistle in tune. Yet everyone patronizes her with applause. The two little boys who dance are off in their steps, but everyone raves over them because they are supposedly "cute". The troupe of eleven year old girls gave a more precise and nuanced performance but got far less credit. That's just how I saw it. You are free to disagree, and that's the beauty of it. I think the two singing girls, the heartthrob Justin Beiber clone and the blacklight fraternity brothers dance act are sure to go through, and the judge-baiting juggler and catsuit-wearing sketcher (by no means an "artist" are sure to go home. The cheesy crooner hasn't got a chance; his gestures and posture don't win the crowd. Already I'm too involved in this: it's just a show. I like the cheerful graceful good humor of host Nick Cannon. He has a generous spirit and an infectious likability, perfect for his role.

On the comic show host Craig Robinson also is perfectly placed. Everything about him is funny. His gestures, his mannerisms, his delivery are pitch-perfect and you can't help but be drawn in. Among the contestants I like Felipe Esparza, Maronzio Vance and Roy Wood Jr.. James Adomian and Jonathan Thymius weren't funny at all, Thymius doing a couple of head-scratching where-did-that-come-from bits about Aesop's Fables and Paul Giamatti as John Adams; Thymius doddering around the stage left you wondering when the jokes would start. Rachel Feinstein is gifted with a distinct voice for her characters but I don't connect to her comedy.

So in the last two nights I've spent 46 minutes on each of these, mercifully shortened by the length of the commercial time thanks to the miracle of the dvr. They eased my transition from work to leisure and accompanied my late-night dinner. TV becomes our most trusted companion and accompanies far more of time than conversation or exercise or sex. It makes me a dull person. Then again, it gives us something to talk about, something to fill the void. Could I have made a better choice?

About the employee meeting I had no choice at all. We suffered through five hours of sloganeering and pep talks, interspersed with lame skits and titled bigwigs trying to be cool. They wore Hawaiian shirts, which was supposed to make them more relatable, but it just drove home the point for me that they were the only ones among us whose compensation could allow them to afford a trip to Hawaii or anywhere else with white sand and blue water. Like most seminars and meetings the useful information conveyed in the meeting could have fit on one side of a 3x5 card. Some people bought into it with both on hands on the company Kool-aid pitcher, the sticky red sugar water running down their neck and their shirts as they pranced about in goofy costumes and waved ridiculous signs. Bubble blowing machines, air horns, noisemakers and clackers and foam applause sticks. There was even a house band that did three songs, some woman from sales incentive trying to gyrate and be Lady Gaga for ten minutes, the black man from engineering trying to be hip in a beret. They did some 70's rock and roll complete with a keyboard solo, nothing memorable, nothing that would make the second round of "America's Got Talent" nothing worth five precious hours in the middle of the day. Now the whole rhythm of my week is off; I'm behind in everything and out of my routine. I haven't had enough sleep, I've neglected my workouts and missed a day of writing. I'd have to really love something to work thirteen hours a day at it, although some people have the admirable dedication to do that every single day, mothers more than most.

As for me I'd have rather been home watching TV. Attendance was required. Having witnessed the whole tepid show I can't begin to imagine why. Nothing about it was inspiring or informative. I was neither educated or entertained. They paid me for nothing and wasted my time, the most precious thing any of us have. Not that I would have spent it any better myself. I just treasure the freedom of making my own bad choices. It's an inalienable right in an indifferent world.

Life is What Happens When You Are Making Other Plans

It's a wry observation squared, violently illustrated by John Lennon's own life, ended abruptly by a crazed fool with misplaced fascinations. We have our chore list and our bucket list but the off-kilter wheel of life neither stops or slows down for anyone. Oh, we can make our plans, but they'll be thrown off line at every turn. We can make our paths straight but life will surely add some twists and turns of its own.

I never made it to the golf course this weekend but I did enjoy a can of cold beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon, a working man's beer, reliably cold and beery, a can of suds to celebrate the end of the work week. We were knee deep in grandkids, called to baby sitting on both days. The first night I was grousing and resentful, and I let my resentment spoil the opportunity to enjoy them properly. It was only supposed to be for a couple of hours, but we ended up chained to each other until midnight, without car seats or a check-in or a plan. When their mother got home I was miffed and snarky, at my passive-aggressive best. I didn't know we were going to be home all night, I said. They were seeing Frankie's brother Pat off, he's going home to San Francisco. They had to drive him to the airport. To San Francisco? I asked, pointedly, rudeness disguised as humor, the tactic of the chagrined. I was ungraceful and not proud of myself afterward.

I lack the self-assertion to set limits, and then loathe circumstance for my own cowardice. It's as simple as the question, "When do you think you'll be back?" or "Can you leave their car seats?" or "Marie and I wanted to go to the gym and dancing for our date night; we can't watch them past 7:30." That would have given them three hours, plenty of time for a round trip to the airport and even a beer in the airport lounge, even though the lounge probably doesn't have Pabst Blue Ribbon by the can. That's a pity. Although if they did, it'd be five dollars a can, enough for a six-pack of tallboys at the store.

But I often do this, this stoking of resentment by expecting others to anticipate my unstated expectations, expecting sensitivity from the oblivious. How's that worked out so far? Sometimes we have an uncanny radar for self-deception, letting people take advantage and then building barriers of carping snippy resentment afterward. It's a very self-defeating dynamic. Ashley plays us for fools, we throw a hissy, she stalks off, lather, rinse and repeat.

Then the next day to begin the cycle anew I called to apologize to her. Wonder what Dr. Phil would say about these goings on? I suspect this pattern is repeated among the generations all over the country. It starts with the perception or rather the misperception that anyone over thirty five has one foot it the grave and nothing better to do than be a temporary depository for bored children. I love my grandkids, all six of them, but if I wanted to operate a drop-in, no-appointment- necessary daycare center I'd do it for profit. At least tell me when you're coming back for them. It shouldn't be open-ended. I shouldn't have to ask.

That said, I feel like a miserable fool for not making better use of my time with them. They are beautiful, bright, remarkable little girls. I was grumpy and disengaged. It's not their fault, not for a second. They deserved better from me.

Saturday's duty was much happier. We played on the living room with Madilyne. We played the Giraffe Game and the Bear Game and tickled her with her Glow Worm and she bounced in her Johnny Jump Up. I sang her "Take Me Out to The Ball Game" and buzzed her belly. She was seven months on Friday, happy and engaged, incredibly alert for such a little one. From the time she was two months she has been content to be on the floor and play with her toys, and she is very sweet about it. She's teething now but still in good spirits.

Usually the plans we've made aren't that important. It's the lives unfolding in front of us that are. I have to remind myself not to make the same mistake over again. When my kids were little I was too busy earning a living to live. Like almost all parents I'd give anything to have one more day with them when they were little, to play on the floor and have earnest conversations about their dollies and Hot Wheels, to act as if nothing else in the world mattered in that moment. Because nothing else does. Resentments and self-absorption can rob us of a rich opportunity to be truly alive.

The Intense Pleasures of Freedom: It's a Horrible Mistake to Take Them for Granted

We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy - he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.

---Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption

For the next two days I am a free man. I have two days that belong completely to me and my family, and I don't have to worry about work or supervisors or any of the nonsense that has dominated my thoughts for the last couple of days. I'm helping Marie's daughter Ashley move, and I'd like to take my wife dancing, but other than that, I haven't got a care in the world.

One of my favorite movies ever is The Shawshank Redemption , from which the quote above is taken. I love redemption stories, and this one is beautifully written and wonderfully acted. It endures in the memory, this story of friendship and redemption in a brutal place.

All of our lives involve a certain measure of servitude or imprisonment. It's the simple reality: man was born to toil. We are redeemed by our moments of freedom and belonging, and by the intense pleasure we can take in drinking a cold beer with the sun on our shoulders. It's my aim to never let those occasions pass without celebrating their richness. This afternoon I'm a free man. I think I'll have a cold beer, maybe sneak in nine holes after supper.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Most of us worry far more than we should. Our worries take us far beyond our actual circumstances, to things we can't control, can't predict and can't change. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse leaves me or cheats on me? What if I get sick or injured or have a wreck? Fear and worry take us to the dark corners of What Might Happen, to untold shame and embarrassment and failures. The phrase "beyond our wildest imagination" doesn't apply: most of our imaginations are pretty wild. There's a lot of anxiety in the closet, and when it starts howling and beating around, the shadows can grow pretty dark. Some of you know what I mean.

We worry, yet almost anything is survivable. We're far more resilient than we think, and sometimes it takes a stern test to teach us what we're capable of. Disaster reorders our lives in marvelous ways. The loss of a job or a love, though devastating at the time, can become our finest hour. Which doesn't mean we should be negligent, inviting disaster just for the rush of working our way out. If my life is to have a purpose I have apply my gifts conscientiously. I have to act knowing actions have consequences, and the accumulation of the small choices I make become my destiny. I have to remember to be on time and pay attention and respect my spouse's feelings and meet her needs. Living consciously and conscientiously is an antidote to worry.

Worry creeps in in the empty spaces of the day, when we are alone with our thoughts, after a bad moment or bad day when stress is having a heyday in our unoccupied and unattended brain. Night worries are the worst, just before sleep. I can work myself into a dither, and suddenly my wife's snoring and the electric fan are just unbearable. I can't get comfortable. I can't stop thinking in circles. I have to get up for a while, and occupy myself with a book or Internet chess or dime poker, just to quiet the squabbling demons of doubt and uncertainty wreaking their havoc at the door of my soul. My boss called me into the conference room again yesterday. Two months ago I'd been five minutes late coming back from lunch. He'd wrote it down and saved it, and now he had his assembled evidence. Day after day I come in seven minutes early to start up the computer off the clock, and now my job was on the line for stopping to use the toilet and wash my hands, or a sandwich line that was too long. He keeps track of every petty crime because he is a petty man. He wants the joy of lording it over me. It makes him feel important, this buffoon who can't spell ordinary words. He wants me to grovel or look distressed. I won't do either. I'm kind to the customers, even when he is petty and brutal to me. One of these days he'll get to issue his second written warning, and then the last. I'll be fired. It's just as well. I can find another lousy job somewhere else.

At a garage sale a couple of months ago, in Crescent City when we were visiting Marie's mother, I found several incredible bargains. I think I could make a living buying and selling things I find, a bookcase for a dollar, six pairs of men's casual shorts for a quarter each. Buy cheap and sell reasonable, a simple formula. Obviously I won't do that, it's too uncertain and bound to meet complications, but the elegance and craft of it appeals to me, living by your wits, being an itinerant peddler. I'm cut out for that in my farmboy soul. It's a pleasant diversion from worry, this idle contemplation, an alternate universe of a pickup and a cardboard sign and a lunch of baked chicken from Winco and a couple of pieces of fruit. A life without the small agonies and indignities of a working life, no clocks to punch, no empty slogans and acronyms to cite. There's an old bumper sticker that said, "stop the world, I want to get off." Part of me wants to get out of the world, to a place where their are no cell phones and two-year contracts, a place where there is no insipid hold music or form letters or collection notices. Oh, I'll do the right thing and be responsible. But I remember days when I had to collect pop cans to buy lunch, and I know in my heart those days were no worse than this, these days where my dignity and identity and worth are in the hands of man who hasn't had an original thought or said a meaningful prayer in his entire life, a soulless and unoriginal and fundamentally cruel man, hardly a man at all, hiding behind his petty little authority. Some people live by the credo, "I have as little authority as anyone, and I'm going to use every bit of it." I don't care what he does or says to me, or how many stern memos he misspells.

He can't do anything to me that will matter a bit six months from now. The worst that could happen is just another turn in the road.

Late on the Fourth of July

My boss is routinely rude to me, and his ordinary communications are flecked with a thinly-veiled hostility. His emails are terse and contentious. His monthly evaluations and scorecards carry the hint of a threat, of impending "corrective action." Odd thing is, my numbers this month are among the best on the team. My scored calls are strong, and I received a customer compliment last month. I process nearly eleven calls an hour, with courtesy and professionalism. I was late twenty minutes on the fourth of July, but that was the first time in three months, and it was the slowest day of the year.

Any day now I expect he'll fire me, and if he does it will be a relief. He's hostile. He's abrupt. And he has been almost from the beginning. My only hope is to perform strongly and escape his attention by choosing another shift at the next shift bid.

He's overweight and a bit of a buffoon. Recently he sent us all an email stating time cards had to be completed by Thursday, that six of us had waited until Friday and this was (sic) "unexceptable". I emailed him back, asking him for a clarification of the policy, since in a meeting just a few weeks ago he had told us specifically not to forecast our time, and this email told us to do exactly that. I apologized for my unacceptable behavior, but without italics. I've had the feeling that from the first week of working for him that something about me pissed him off, that all of our petty little run-ins and calls to his desk were vaguely personal. He fired one of my coworkers a couple of months ago, without warning. I think he enjoys that part of his job.

Our company has a weird culture. There's a lot of group-think and sloganeering. We don't really solve the customer's problems; we just apologize for them. Our engineering and technology is faulty and repeatedly fails, and in customer service, we absorb abuse and send patches that don't really work. Folks are angry to be calling back three and four times. I don't blame them. Our products are expensive. I'd fix it if I could. I'd be more thorough in troubleshooting but I have to keep my handle time down. Most of my coworkers keep their numbers looking good by evading the scheduling of trouble calls, sending resets that don't really work. We're required to sell extra products, so the good soldiers create bundled packages, offering customers a discount on their existing products and adding a third product they don't really want or need or use and usually plan to cancel later. It's a dance of cynicism and inevitable distrust. I make peace with it by politely offering new services and scheduling transfers and additions when I can. So far I've evaded the noose.

But it's coming. I have no doubt if I made some kind of mistake or was unlucky enough to encounter an angry, vindictive customer (and we have a few of those) my boss would throw me under the bus. Particularly if it made him look good, made him look decisive or organized. I have coworkers who have half the sales percentage I do, 20% lower calls per hour, glaringly low work order accuracy and deplorable attendance, but somehow I am G______'s chief target. It's a repetitive misery I choose to ignore, because I can't do anything about it. It's a fact: not everybody is going to like you. If that person is your boss, fasten your seat belts, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

You might think, why don't you just go in and talk to him, try to clear the air? You can't really clear the air on a vendetta. This conflict is like the Arabs and the Jews, it has nothing to do with reason, there's no real room for negotiation, and most of enmity is based on long-buried history so deep and hostile it's become almost primal and genetic. I remind him of someone. He doesn't like the way I speak or answer his questions. He's probably not even aware his dislike of me is so irrational and one-sided.

As much as possible I like to get along with everyone. I like harmony and peace and wholeness. I work to earn a living and pay the bills. I wish I was a good enough writer to make a living writing. I wish I could win the lottery or get saved by an act of fate or good timing. In the meantime I'll muddle along and do my best, and try never to be late again. If I lose this job I'll look for another one. I just hope I don't wind up saying, do you want fries with that?

That would be really hard for me, because all day long my heart would be screaming silently, don't eat the fries, they're bad for you. Have a salad and a nice grilled chicken breast instead.

The Sum of All Fearlessness

What's my excuse? Last winter Marie and I saw a TV documentary on The Learning Channel about Mark Goeffney, a man born with no arms who can drive and play guitar with his feet.

Time and determination are the greatest warriors. Beware of the time suck, which robs you of your power. So easily we get caught up in mindless distractions and the dead end side roads of busy-ness, when with time and determination and goals and focus we could accomplish anything.

I mumble and grouse about my lousy job and lack of accomplishment, I fume and fuss over the lost opportunities and the regrets of my life, and every day I encounter remarkable stories of people accomplishing great things by the power of their spirit and their will.

We limit ourselves. Our small choices accumulate and become our destiny. We squander what God gave us with inattention, and the chief thing I squander is my time. By living with no intention I give away precious hours that turn into years. If I were more directed, if I were selective and self-determined, I could accomplish anything.

I could even learn to play guitar.

Declaring Our Independence From a Cruel King

In a jungle shipyard in Ecuador police confiscated a diesel submarine being built by a Colombian drug cartel. It could hold a nine-man crew and ten tons of cargo, and cost over a million dollars to construct. Last week in Mexico a standoff between warring drug lords near the U.S. border killed 28 people. It's all there in yahoo news and elsewhere.

The drug trade is lethal and unstoppable. The money is too great. The madness and evil are too overwhelming. The cravings are too intense.

If they can build a submarine and equip an army, if they can make billions of dollars and ravage our streets with an insatiable sickness, what next?

The war on drugs has succeeded in nothing except making clever evil men rich. There's no winning it. The toll is senseless.

Would society be better served by legalizing and regulating drug traffic? I'm not wise enough to know. But what we are doing is not working. The evidence is all around, and mounting every day.

Wonders Never Cease

George Huber, a scientist from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has developed a process that can create gasoline from sawdust, according to a report by Jim Motavallie of Mother Nature Network. Huber estimates the fuel produced could be "price competive" with gasoline produced from oil by 2019, and the process is carbon nuetral, because the wood or grasses used absorb carbon dioxide while they are growing.

I'm a very loving and optimistic man. I want to believe in a hopeful future. I want to invite positive people into my life, good news, belief and creativity. I'm reading a book right now called Bolt of Fate by Tom Tucker, about Benjamin Franklin and the his experiments with electricity. It was the age of reason, and influential men were fascinated by science and progress, the wonders of the natural world, and the possibilities of harnessing them by the application of reason and the scientific method. Competition was fierce to explain and demonstrate natural phenomena. Papers were written. Electrical demonstrations took place in fashionable salons and scientific societies, before royalty and the elite. It turns out Franklin's famous electric kite was hoax, but the urgency and fervor over ideas in that time provided impetus to a remarkable transformation of human history. In the 1740s an English apothecary named William Watson became a celebrity by transmitting electricity forward and back across the Westminister bridge. In another experiment he transmitted it eight miles, using a simple hand-cranked machine called a Leyden jar that generated static electricity. Out of wonder and curiosity a new age was born, a technology central to our entire lives, that we understand only a little but benefit from every day. We flip a switch and wonders breath to life. It all started with questions and experiments and curiosity.

It's remarkable what human ingenuity can do. Centuries ago an explosion of ingenuity transformed the world and led to remarkable new resources and benefits, the ability to feed millions, the ability to communicate across the world in seconds. We need a new explosion of ingenuity, before the explosions of another kind undo us all.

Make Room for Music in Your Life

When my daughter was little I used to sing to her. The day she was born I sang James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot songs to her and rocked her to sleep. Then she got a little older and became a surly teenager. Once we were in the parking lot of Clackamas Town Center, heading into the mall to buy mall food or new shoes and I was absent-mindedly singing one thing or another.

"Dad, don't sing."
"Steff, Steff, Steff. I'm a good singer. I sing as good as Huey Lewis." Jauntily comparing myself to one of her favorites at the time.
"Dad, don't make me barf. Don't sing until we get back to the car."

When kids get to be teenagers fathers become the dumbest men in the world, a status we don't lose until the teens reach the mid-twenties. The blunt sword of sarcasm frequently punctures our fragile psyches. As much as I like to sing I only sing for babies and small children. I don't like performing; I can't even muster the courage to do karaoke. The songs are in too high a key and the blue highlight color that races through the lyrics throws me off. I admire people who can get up and take on a roomful of indifferent strangers for the mere payment of lukewarm applause. I'd have to be drunk enough to barf.

I Heard the News Today Oh Boy

Elian Gonzalez speaks out. He's not mad at his Miami relatives, ten years after being seized at gunpoint by federal agents, and he is happy living with his father in Cuba. Terri Horman is not talking to anyone, and she's hired Oregon's top defense lawyer. Car designer Gordon Murray has created a tiny car weighs just over 1200 lbs and gets over 70 miles to the gallon. The driver gets into the thing by hinging open the whole front, and the steering wheel is mounted in the center. It's smaller than a golf cart but can reach 90 miles an hour. I wonder if they could rig the thing to fly, shape it like the George Jetson mobile. A supertanker has been refitted and dispatched to the gulf. The Dodgers swept the Giants. The Ducks got verbal commitments from two speedy quarterbacks and two others are interested. A new study shows American lags behind in happiness. The Gaza Strip got a shipment of chocolate but were denied cement. CNN is suffering declining ratings; competing news stations garner larger audiences with loud, angry, polemic hosts. No one wants just the facts, calmly delivered. They want their commentators to take sides. Go right or go left, and don't let your hair grow gray. Jon Stewart wants to quit The Daily Show. He has a running battle with Fox News. Some rumors have him as the likely replacement for David Letterman. In life you're either a Lettermen or a Leno fan, a Bill O'Reilly, a Michael Savage or a Keith Olbermann. The calm voices are lost in the din. Larry King is retiring. He and his suspenders have long been irrelevant. Oprah's ratings are declining. Is Ryan Seacrest the least interesting least talented successful person in history? He gets paid a LOT of money for being able to look into the camera and pretend something or someone is important. New Moon/True Blood vampire werewolf supernatural fever is gripping the country. Every other movie and TV show has this escapist hyperviolent edge-of-evil element. It's a sign of boredom and decay, the ultimate attempt to distract and anesthetize the masses. In an age when we are feeling powerless and overwhelmed by the forces of mayhem and misery, create elaborate fantasies of hypersexuality and superhuman power. Imagine being able to leap twenty times the length of your body and feast on human flesh. For the oldsters there's a hot tub time machine, tame by comparison and infinitely more ridiculous. The Al Gore investigation is being reopened by the Portland Police. His credibility is destroyed. He'll retire to the Hall of Shame for ambitious, ruined men, in a suite down the hall from John Edwards and Elliot Spitzer. Spitzer's getting a new show on CNN. How far and how quickly they fall. Elin Woods gets $750 million in the divorce decree, the largest settlement ever in a celebrity divorce. Tiger Woods is expressly prohibited from introducing the children to any of his future bimbos, porno stars or coffee shop waitresses, unless he becomes married to one of them.

The news is a tumult. The news is frenzied hum and buzz. It flows unabated. It casts down like acid rain. It washes and thaws and gushes. It confuses. It titillates. It overwhelms. In the end it makes no sense, and one scandal is forgotten in the tropical storm created by another. Each new administration blames the last one for the mess we're in. And Al Gore must be thinking, "Somebody else please screw up, and get me off the front page."

Where's My Bubble City and Flying Car?

In first grade I had Mrs. Bosso. She was tall, grandmotherly, with dark hair and long red fingernails. She was kind and patient. I was fidgety and talkative and couldn't sit still, so she was the perfect teacher for first grade. I had a crush on Wendy who sat behind me, a cute, spunky girl with red hair and freckles. She was my first girlfriend. Once at recess we had a fight during a game of tag. "I'm going to run away and join the army," I announced. She pointed defiantly in the general direction of the Army. "Go!" she said. Wendy was captivating. Clearly she knew how to handle me.

The Christmas party neared and we had to draw names for gifts. I had chicken pox that week so Miss Bosso saved my slip, and early in the morning my first day back she handed it to me with a knowing smile. I was still learning to read. I opened it and looked up to Mrs. Bosso. "Who is it?" I asked hopefully. She leaned down to me with her kind face and whispered into my ear. "Wendy." she said. It was the sweetest sound my young ears had ever heard. Kindly Miss Bosso had rigged the Christmas gift exchange for a fidgety boy with chicken pox. I bought Wendy a tea set from Woolworth's, and Miss Bosso a Whitman Sampler.

By third grade I was less fidgety and had become a good student. We had Miss Brewer, strict and stern. I remember third grade science books. Near the back was a depiction of the future, complete with flying cars and gleaming cities under glass bubbles. "By the year 2010," the book intoned, "life on earth will be much different." It certainly is. TVs are much bigger and everyone has color. But where is my flying car and bubble city?

Truth is, we're lagging on the future. Too much energy went into the Cold War and the Space Race and the pursuit of the American Dream, which is more cars and more stuff. But I did read in yahoo news that a company called Terrafugia has developed the first flying car. Pretty cool. It costs $194,000 and so far 70 people have put down a deposit.

Now all we need is a bubble city and a cure for oil. The future will have to hurry, to outrace the mess we've made of the present.

Into the Mystic

I have always been fascinated by the mind-body-spirit connection and how powerful it is. Belief, expectation, optimism, fear and doubt have such power over us. I have always marveled how we can change things by choosing how we think about them, by choosing where we focus our energies.

It's curious to me to how we squander this power. We can remain stuck and miserable and feel powerless, when the decisions to make dramatic changes in our lives, outcomes and circumstances are easily within our grasp. Instead we repeat the same patterns and expect things to change.

In our jobs, our relationships and our lifestyle, we have the power but we give it away. We succumb to depression and despair and self-pity. We don't take the first step. A hunger or a hurt gnaws at our consciousness, but we rarely stop to examine why, or frame a proper response.

The hope that lies within us is stronger than any misery. It has more power. It has more resolve. We have to find the strength to let the hope win, and celebrate our abundance and our joy. Misery loves company, but more than that, it loves more misery. Misery wants to turn everything to misery. We're walking along a beautiful trail and misery is the annoying wad of spiderwebs across our face, dead and lifeless, a trap for bugs. Misery doesn't have to win.

When I start to reflect and emerge from my web of misery, I begin to see what I really want and the great value of what I have, and misery loses its grip. I'm an old man and I want the remainder of my life to be happy and well-spent. I want to embrace. I want to dance.

My Debt to a Sorrowful God

It hurts me to see someone I love living with so much anger. I can only feel I haven't done enough to fulfill her life or affirm her. I can't help but wonder if she'd be happier or more secure or more content with someone else. I can't help but think the anger arises from unmet need.

When we are suffering in our souls we become a magnet for criticism and contentiousness. Conflict and trouble find us readily, drawn to us like charged particles. Awful scenes erupt. We pick at troubles like peeling skin from a sunburn. Although we know it would be better to rub salve on them we can't resist fussing with the itch of discontent. We are prickly and irritable, can't get comfortable in our own skin. Cruel and smug adversaries invariably find us, and attack like vultures or parasites.

It's painful to watch someone you love suffer from wounds of the heart and soul, wounds you caused or deepened, wounds that haven't healed and seemingly won't. Words, reason, and discussion are no match for a deep pain of the spirit, a neglect felt in a gnawing and unreachable place.

More than anything you want your beloved to be free to play and live with confidence and assurance. More than anything you want their welcoming smile, their acceptance and devotion to your mutual adventure. When they are lost in discontentment, you feel the ache of their absence like a wound of your own. I miss her most when she's just out of reach, lost in a rage I have no words to comfort or soothe. I try, but she has too much bitter energy to vent, too much sorrow welling out of the injured child within her. Her brokenness is my burden. Her spiritual hunger is my debt to a sorrowful God.

The Art of the Perfect Day

Today was a perfect day, and in the words of the immortal Curly the Cowboy (City Slickers), "day ain't over yet." Bonus points if you can remember the scene.

Perfect days aren't an accident. We invite them into our lives, and we nurture them with an attitude of readiness and appreciation, a deep and fundamental understanding of what's important, pleasing, and joyous in life.

We welcome perfect days by projecting an attitude of welcome out into the world, by practicing a deep love of the blessings of our lives, beginning with the unsurpassable blessing of sharing precious hours with those we love and enjoy the most.

Family is more important than anything. If you're awake and have half a heart, your family should knock your socks off. Today we went golfing with Amber, Ashley and Geoffrey and it was the best day ever.

We laughed. We hit golf balls. We razzed each other and cheered each other on. We jumped up and down and performed elaborate I-just-won-the-U.S.-Open celebrations and fist pumps over every good shot. There is nothing better than being around the people who love you for who you are, have no false expectations or pretensions, and are devoted to you as you are to them. Everyone was relaxed and at home and having a good time. No one felt left out or judged or left behind. We had time together and a little money, having the time of our lives on a little par three golf course with scrubby fairways and poorly mowed greens. The two-handicappers at the Reserve in their hundred dollar golf slacks couldn't possibly have had a better time.

I made four pars. We stopped for sausage dogs, marionberry donuts and shortcake at Fir Point Farms. It was warm and sunny with a slight breeze. We saw cute toddlers and some beautiful flower baskets. We ran into some old friends, Stan and Gail Anderson, at Firpoint Farms. I got to touch my wife's butt. It was a perfect day.

Tonight we'll go out for live music and cocktails. There will be dancing, and possibly more butt touching. I shot a 33 even not putting well. I couldn't be more delighted to be alive.

These Are Days of Miracles and Wonders

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good,treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV

A quick scan of yahoo news in the morning is all the convincing needed. An earthquake in a California border town moved the entire town two and a half feet. In February a tremor in Chile, one of the largest in recorded history, slightly changed the earth's axis and moved the town ten feet. Scientists have fitted a cat with bionic legs. Another team has restored vision to a man's damaged eye using his stem cells.

Marine biologists studying sperm whales in the South Pacific have discovered the earth's largest mammals have concentrations of toxic metals in their blood and tissues, chromium,cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminum among others, that are sixteen times the level considered dangerous. Biologist Roger Payne believes these man-made contaminants threaten the whales with extinction, and could lead to the collapse of the entire food chain in the world's oceans. Much of the earth's human population depends on the seas for vital protein.

A Portland masseuse told the Oregonian former Vice President Al Gore sexually groped her in a hotel room at a luxury hotel in October 2006. He had been in town that night to give a speech at the Rose Garden on global warming, and requested a massage. The details are sordid. She recalls them with convincing detail. I'm dismayed but not surprised. Portland police never prosecuted because of a lack of sufficient evidence. The Gores announced they were separating a few weeks ago. At the time they insisted there was no affair or scandal. The timing of this story seems curious, and sad. Human failings have no limits, no boundaries, no borders. A man can seem mild-mannered and principled and well-behaved, and disgrace himself in the most common way. My life couldn't stand that kind of scrutiny. Could yours?

There's no pattern to any of this and no cohesive meaning. If I have a thesis at all in what caught my eye today it's simply to say the world around us is chaotic and uncertain and often unrewarding to view. Meaning and hope have to be personal. Your love, your worth, your belief and your admiration have to be invested in those close to you, those you truly love and know. Public figures are brought down every day in base and demeaning ways. Disasters come. Dire predictions follow. What gives meaning to life, and sustaining grace, is the child you hold in your arms and the one you love. The reliable miracle we have is each other. The wonder is we make through the chaos. And we couldn't possibly, without remembering always and holding on for dear life. We have to trust and love and rely on each other, because the world is an unmanageable mess, and the people running it aren't much better.

Take Time For a Nothing Day

Once or twice in a while, we ought to take time for a nothing day. Call in well at work. Sleep in. Leave the dishes in the sink. Take a nap instead of going to the gym. Write a one-paragraph blog post and let the dog play in the back yard. Have cereal for supper.

It's a slippery slope though. Once or twice in a while, this is recreation and rejuvenation and a tonic for your soul. Once or twice in a week, this becomes a way of life, and I become the fat, slovenly unmotivated monster, a living embodiment of the green guy in the mucous commercial.

Today is my nothing day. I played three games of dime poker and had chocolate milk for breakfast. Now it's time for my nap. I love you, but today you are all on your own.

Some Men Dream Things That Never Were

Earlier in the week I had a vision. That's not unusual for me because I'm a dreamer by nature, though a casual dreamer. Over the course of my life like many people I've fallen into the habit of discounting my own dreams. I rarely listen to them. I don't hear the hope of inspiration in the dream, and I don't hear my true path calling to me. Inwardly I dismiss it as a flight of fancy. I enjoy the trip for a moment of time and let the wind take it out of my grasp like so many dandelion seeds floating on the breeze, not realizing what I had in my hands was my own destiny and my true voice.

It's so easy to let yourself be discouraged, to slip back resignedly into your old unexpectant life with no ambitions and no dreams, just the steady, slow discouraging drumbeat of watching the clock and gathering yourself to go to work. My boss called me into his office again last night. He accused me of not reporting to work last Tuesday. He's so eager to throw me under the bus he hallucinates false evidence and misreads time reports and falsely recalls warnings that were never issued. It's become an active vendetta, a campaign of misinformation and hate. Somehow I became a target, which is terribly odd to me, because I work hard at not becoming one, maintaining the golden mean of doing my job and doing nothing to attract attention or animosity. But something about me has gotten under his skin. The numbers don't justify his vengeance. I'm neither at the top of the pack or the bottom. Maybe I remind him of someone who stole his girlfriend in eighth grade; I have utterly no idea and don't want to know. Shift bid is executed in three weeks and I just want to survive until then.

See, I did it again. I started out talking about a dream and digressed into a mundane and painful digression. You see how easy it is to lose the thread of a dream and diffuse its energy? We do it every day.

Our dreams tell us something vital about who we are and where we want to go. Often the specifics are not important. It's the energy of the dream, the urgency, the way we see ourselves living and interacting and using our talents in the dream scenario. That's the vital thing. In our dreams we are vibrant and active people. We're doing things. We're energized and alive and competing for the prize. We're strong, active, decisive. And that is what we are meant to be.

So, I want to encourage you. Don't discount your dreams. Reflect on them for a moment or two, and try to discover what they are telling you about yourself and your true hopes.

In my dream, the one that came to me and won't quite leave me alone, I bought a restaurant and bar, the place where Marie and I met. It's called the Tillicum and it used to be a warm and welcoming place with good food and good music. Over the years with bad management and absentee ownership it's become a shell of itself. A couple of weeks ago Marie and I went there on a Friday night and it was nearly empty. The shrill Irish woman who ran the place into the ground ran us out with her rude behavior. Then just this Saturday our friend Jay sent us a text and told us the place was closed. The Tilly empty and disbanded on a Saturday night, the place where Portland legend Norman Sylvester used to sing the blues and encourage the crowd to "put your hands in the air like you just don't care."

I've run restaurants and have a gift for liking people and creating community. I've run promotions and special events. I created a women's golf benefit dinner attended by a hundred people and a children's clinic attended by 300. I created them out of thin air, off a scrap of paper and a couple of lists composed at my kitchen table. I know I could save the Tilly. I know I could learn what I don't know, assemble a staff, build fierce loyalties and synergies and joys of belonging and comfort and welcome. I know I could be an agent of social change, a principled businessman and give life and joy to that neighborhood restaurant and lounge, make it a special place again. I know I could do this. I know I could find out how. I could raise the money and dream a dream big enough to start the music again in a place that is now gathering dust, a place some clown will probably turn in to another strip mall or another strip club, neither of which Beaverton needs. There are far too many of those already.

So this morning I called the real estate agent who's listing the property. He quickly sized me off as "not a serious offer", assured the property was sold but the business was still listed, but it was the wrong square footage for a restaurant. "Nobody wants a restaurant with that square footage anymore. What are you going to do with it?"

I've always thought the Tillicum was the perfect size. There was room at the bar and a place to dance and a place to eat and two pool tables in back. People came and got along and had a good time. They had great music and great food.

Of course there are all kinds of practical reasons not to get involved in this. There's certainly no guarantee of success and there's a high probability of failure. The failure rate for restaurants and bars is extremely high, particularly for owners who don't know what they are doing. People are far too ready to put other people in that category. Just because I haven't done something before doesn't mean I can't do it. The fundamentals of success in any business aren't complicated; it's just a matter of executing them over and over. Cleanliness, service, courtesy, communication, problem solving, attention to detail: I understand those things. I've practiced them all my life.

The other problem is money. Financing this particular dream would be a challenge. It would take money, someone to believe in the project and the business plan, some willing to see the vision and take the risk. Just because that hasn't happened doesn't mean it can't.

I just got a call from work. I got my last choice for shift bid. I'm working for this same manager again. I had deliberately made his shifts my last six choices, but by the time I picked that was all that were left. It's telling that his shifts were all that were left. Apparently I'm not the only one trying to avoid him. The universe calls us to our destiny in a great variety of ways, even when we refuse to listen.

It could be that this particular dream is worth discarding, for a great many reasons, but one thing is clear: I want to do something more with my life. I want a bigger canvas, a larger hope, a way to earn a living that engages more of my energies and talents, where I have more say in where my life is taking me and what I produce and contribute to the world around me.

In three and a half hours, though, I'll put on the headset and have my senses assaulted afresh by insensitivity and discourtesy, horrible venting hostility over trivia and problems that could be solved without a trace of the animosity and brutal unkindness people chose to lead with. I would have be perfectly willing to help them in whatever way they'd ask if they'd simply ask, but somehow life has given them the message they'll get better results with sarcasm, profanity, and condescension. So I endure it because I have to pay the rent. I know I'm foolish to think I'd find less of it elsewhere, but the hope endures. At least if it was my place, I'd have the option of asking them to leave, if it came to that. It's comforting to think of a setting where I had that kind of autonomy and influence, though in most cases I'd handle it in another way. I just like the thought of having the option, knowing I currently work in an environment where I have very few of them.

Have You No Sense of Decency?

A quick scan of yahoo news is all the convincing anyone should ever need. There's a frenzy of excess out there. The entire world is as giddy and crazed as World Cup fans after a goal in the 85th minute.

A time share magnate in Orlando Florida has fallen on hard times. He's selling his $75 million dollar home. It's 90,000 square feet and has 23 bathrooms, 13 bedrooms and 3 pools. The garage holds twenty cars. But there's a catch: he ran out of money when the recession killed his business, and the house is unfinished. It has no carpet or interior walls. Still, it's a steal at $75 million. Maybe he'll take a little less. I think I'll have my guy call his guy.

The 17th richest woman in the world is French shampoo and cosmetics heiress Liliane Bettancourt. She was caught on tape recently plotting tax evasion, and has since declared her solemn intention to declare all her foreign assets, including the secret Swiss bank accounts. The State of Oregon garnished my wages last week because I owed them $192. The trouble was, they already deducted the same debt from my Federal tax refund. I could have used that money. $192 is six bags of groceries, or the start of the down payment on my new mansion in Florida, which has a bowling alley and a movie theater. I'm telling the guy he has to put in a putting green or it's no deal.

Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff is in the federal slammer now, but he's bragging to the other inmates that he managed to squirrel away nine billion dollars before the Feds sent him to the pokey. He gave it to three of his pals for safekeeping. One of the friends reportedly was the guy who ratted him out. If I were him I'd be worried that that one might just tell him, "What money, Bernie? I don't remember any three billion dollars. Are you sure you didn't leave it with Charles or Liliane?" Bernie is also worried his wife may be cheating on him. A new book came out that detailed his many extramarital affairs. Bernie is considered a celebrity in prison because of the scale of his crimes, and the prison inner circle provides him protection. But he's sought out the prison psychiatrist for help with his depression and anxiety.

A federal judge in New Orleans blocked a proposed moratorium on more deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, while the federal government has begun processing a $20 billion fund for compensation claims in the current Gulf oil disaster. Boy, that judge ought to take a few minutes a day to read yahoo news. It might be a good idea to slow down on more drilling until they find a way to drill without spilling so much. Like my mother used to say, I won't be around to clean up your messes forever.

General Stanley McChrystal is being summoned to the White House after he gave an interview to Rolling Stone highly critical of U.S. policy in the war in Afghanistan. He made derogatory remarks about President Obama and his staff. I guess he forgot that part in the Constitution about the Commander-in-Chief. It's a good thing the Rolling Stone doesn't interview me about my boss. But then again I don't think he reads the Rolling Stone. I'm not even sure he reads. I know he writes emails. I get a new one every day detailing the latest way I screwed up. Yesterday it was the all-important phone transfer policy. I forgot billing closed at nine. I didn't actually transfer the customer; I just dialed the extension before I remembered. But I got a memo anyway. I hate memos. They're not as bad as being summoned to the White House, but still. Maybe I should send a memo to the State of Oregon.

I Hate Tiger Woods, A Continuing Series

This meeting of the He-Man Tiger Woods Haters Club is now in session.

I hate Tiger Woods. I always have. I used to work in the golf business and it would nauseate me how 25-handicappers would come into the shop with idiot grins on their faces saying, "Didjya see what Tiger did today?" as if he were their long lost son. People bought into the marketing hype, thought they had this personal connection to this arrogant and spoiled golf savant who didn't care two cents about anyone or anything other than his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus, a much better person and a much better golfer. (Yeah that's what I said. Jack played with dignity and grace. And he set his records with 3-piece wound balls and a persimmon driver and forged irons with a sweet spot the size of a shirt button, against Hogan and Watson and Player and Palmer.) I hated the way the media fawned over Woods and gave him a pass on all his bad on-course behavior. In golf, a champion should act like one. It's what sets the sport apart from the others.

The off-course scandals just sealed the deal for me. The bizarre sleazeball behavior confirmed what I suspected all along. He's even a bad tipper, ungenerous, crude, self-absorbed. Tiger Woods was a thorough-going phony and a marketing creation. It's been fun to watch him squirm and fume and twist in the wind. Still he's always ready with an excuse. Tiger Woods has never lost a golf tournament. He's just made mental mistakes or there was something wrong with the greens.

It would tickle me if he never won another major. A whole new generation of young guns is coming along now, golfers who grew up imagining themselves lining a crucial putt to beat him on the eighteenth hole, guys from all over the world, McElroy and Ishikawa and Dustin Johnson, and some of his old whipping boys have closed the gap. Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson, two men with far better character, have rededicated themselves and racheted up their games. The intimidation factor is gone. The stare doesn't have the same chilling effect. Last season Y.E. Yang outdueled him at the PGA. Yesterday a Frenchmen ranked 361st in the world played alongside him and made par after par, unrattled. Woods shot four over on Sunday. A poised Graeme McDowell became the first European to win the U.S. Open in forty years.

Woods gave another rude two-sentence interview to the NBC after the match. The entire experience of losing his marketing empire, his wife and family and his carefully crafted and patently false public image has taught him nothing.

Next month is the Open Championship at Saint Andrews, and he will once again be lauded as the favorite. I'll be rooting against him, cheering every missed putt and profanity and thrown club.

The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Infant

Alicia is twenty and was born with a withered hand. Her mother abused drugs when she was in the womb and her fingers never developed. Her left hand is a stub with tiny baby fingers that look like toes. Her mother continued to abuse drugs throughout Alicia's life. She was raised by her grandmother and her parents divorced when she was young. She grew up homely and neglected. Her father cleaned up and started a new family. She has two younger half-brothers, whom she adores. Phillip and Ethan are eight now. They live across town, in St. Johns.

When Alicia was in her teens she started to blossom and grew a figure. She was petite with long dark hair and brown eyes. Still self-conscious about the deformed hand she hid it in long sleeves or behind her hip. Young children can be cruel. The brutal teasing will ring in her ears and night thoughts forever.

But one sweet, kind boy noticed her. She was fourteen when they fell in love. He liked her quiet way and vulnerability, and his eyes lighted on her budding figure. She wasn't homely anymore. Someone liked her. He was a good-looking boy and he smelled nice. Not good in school. An outcast like her, a boy from the neighborhood, but he was a hard worker. He got a job at a smoothie shop and hustled. They promoted him to assistant manager. Then he got a new job, a better one, waiting tables in a nice Italian restaurant. The customers liked him. He was polite and quick and had good people skills. He smelled nice and had a knack for sensing what people needed, how they wanted to be spoken to. The street smarts and basic intelligence and natural charm made him a crackjack waiter. He found he could make $35,000-$40,000 a year, most of it under the table. David and Alicia moved in together. They were nineteen now and the world was perfect. He was the only boy she had ever slept with, the first time under blankets on his mother's living room floor.

Alicia hadn't had the best upbringing, with her mother in and out of prison and her grandmother just overwhelmed trying to hold down a job and keep her raised. Alicia had trouble reading and writing and dropped out of school. The peer pressure and contemptuous looks made that an easy decision. As much as she loved David, who'd lifted her out of loneliness and the hard life of waiting for her mom to make parole, a part of her thirsted for bling and excitement and something more. They bickered and sniped at each other. She chafed under his expectations. He nagged her because she didn't keep house like his mom.

Her friends were other girls like her, dropouts and disaffected, a little ghetto in their outlook. They all wanted bling and excitement and attention. They discovered as young women budding into women, young women without careers or families or education, they had one power in life and one asset: their sexuality. One of the friends started dancing in a club. The City of Portland has more strip clubs per capita than any city in the country, and when you add in the lotion studios and adult shops and glossy magazines offering the true girlfriend experience, it is a thriving cesspool of distorted desire and easy money. The lure of easy money, it has a very strong appeal.

Alicia tried out at a juice bar and started dancing four nights a week. She bought some lucite five-inch high heels and a stripper pole for her bedroom, to practice her moves. One night she took home $750 in cash. She spread the bills out on the living room floor in a pile and sorted them. Her only other job had been a couple of years ago at Twenty Below, for minimum wage. This was the most money she had ever had in her hands at one time. The next night she made five hundred.

Everything was cool, except everything changed. She got her hair frosted and bought herself new braces. She'd always been self-conscious about her teeth, her weak chin. It was exhilarating to have the admiring eyes on her. It was exhilarating to be able to shut down the creeps with one withering glance, knowing the bouncer and the bodyguard had her back. She was the queen in this new world, the star.

At home though the strain colored everything. David struggled to deal with her new independence, the thought of those other men looking at her, the thought of the temptations and distractions that came with that kind of money and that lifestyle. They both had dabbled in drugs throughout their disaffected lives, weed and a few pain pills, but the other girls liked to party, and party hard, and they had the money to do it and they didn't have to go to work until 8 p.m.

And then Alicia found out she was pregnant.

They hadn't planned it but part of her had always wanted to have a baby with David. Once before when she was sixteen they'd gotten an abortion, but this time it felt right. At least mostly right. They were fighting a lot now, over the dancing and money and housework and his video games and what time he or she got home. Maybe a baby would make things better.

She took a break from dancing and had the baby. It was a healthy pregnancy and they had a beautiful baby girl. She nursed and the baby thrived. David was a wonderful, attentive father. Her adored his daughter, would hold her and kiss her soft cheek and talk to her in a soothing whisper.

Alicia lost the baby weight quickly, thanks to nursing and working out on the pole at home. They moved into a nicer apartment and got the baby some new things. When Merrylin was four months she went back to work, this time at Starz Caberet, an exclusive gentlemen's club on the Westside of town, in the suburbs just off I-5.

Two months went by. More piles of cash. More late nights and unwashed plates on the living room floor. The diaper pail overflowed. David's mom came over to visit and he was frantic with embarrassment. He lit into Alicia when she left, another loud and bitter fight. The baby cried for 45 minutes when she left for work. Merrylin wanted to nurse and was inconsolable. She cried herself to sleep, exhausted and screaming. When she woke up it was a little better and she ate a jar of baby food, the squash, her favorite.

Nobody knows what happens now. It's easy to be sucked in to the "glamour," the attention, the lifestyle. The new found imbalance of power at home changes everything. Now every argument is full of unstated hurt, and the temptation is great to tune it out or just escape it for a while. Every night she gets invitations, come-ons, offers, pitches, flattery and promises, and another pile of money. Women in the sex industry grow old quickly. There are a thousand ways to fall off the track or into the abyss. It's possible to have a healthy post-modern relationship with that environment and that milleu, but Alicia hasn't had the best start in life. She doesn't have the best emotional and spiritual resources for the decisions she's making, for the situations she finds herself in.

Merrylin needs her. She wants to nurse. Alicia has a little family at home, falling apart in the saddest possible way.

News of the Weirder Still

The male ego is a gluttonous monster, hungry for attention and approval. Sometimes it takes on ridiculous proportions and outrageous ambitions. Men think they can change history or take on an Army. Sometimes they succeed. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford certainly changed the world. Mozart did. Einstein did. But for every genius there are a thousand deluded quacks and a hundred lucky bumblers. Columbus and Cortez thought they conquered a new world but it in the end it was Guns Germs and Steel. Men shoot for the North Pole or Paris or the moon and miss altogether. Sometimes they fly the wrong way.

There's a part of a man that needs big dreams, although often we're not equal to them. My dad used to sit at the kitchen table and sketch and draw figures for big projects, large-scale farming or cement barges, dredging round river rock, a mobile restaurant. For years he had three fifty-pound sacks of donut flour in his garage. Once he wanted to start a trucking school. When we became adults he would call us every so often, wanting us to enlist in his schemes. He was Don Quixote and he needed a Sancho Panza. His eyes saw windmills and stars. We begged off and rolled our eyes, but truth be told, we all have windmills and stars of our own. Part of us needs them, to escape the drudgery. Nobody wants to believe that this is all there is, that we were born to be a nobody in a nothing job with no visions worth sketching out at the kitchen table. Colonel Sanders' kids probably rolled their eyes at him, and he wound up conquering the world with fried chicken.

In the news the other day was the story of a man who set out to assassinate Osama bin Laden single-handedly. Gary Brooks Faulkner is 52 and suffering from kidney failure. He saved up money from construction jobs, got on a plane in Denver to fly to Pakistan. He told friends and family he was going to climb a mountain. In Chitral, the mountainous Nortern region, Pakistani police detained him after he checked out of his hotel overnight without telling anyone. They found him carrying a pistol, a sword, a dagger, and night vision goggles. They found him in a forest, headed for the Afghan border.

He's crazed and deluded and single-minded, but so were the Wright brothers and Warren Buffet. Every man has his sound and fury. In the sixties the CIA tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar. In the seventies Nixon had his enemies list. For years J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI kept secret tapes on many prominent Americans, film and football stars, politicians. He had to have the dirt. It kept him in control. In the mid-90's bin Laden himself launched a plot to kill Bill Clinton. They wired a bridge with explosives on his visit to the Phillipines. The Secret Service picked up radio chat and diverted the motorcade.

That plot failed but another succeeded. Strangers on plane managed to change the world forever. Crazed and deluded and single-minded, they crashed three planes into tall buildings, and the world has been in the grip of sound and fury ever since. Gary Faulkner tried to strike a blow for justice, but he did succeed in reminding us that these are the crazed last days. In the larger world, justice is impossible. Insanity and evil reign forever, until the coming king.