Michele and I enjoyed our first swim of the season today. The pool water has been clearer every day since Thursday, and the air temps have been in the middle to upper eighties. I flipped the heater on Thursday morning with the water temp hovering around 66 degrees. By that evening the water was a toasty 86 degrees.
Friday was out as we were celebrating my birthday with dinner out on my parents. But today was another story. After helping a friend drop a new pool liner in his above ground this morning I came home and vacuumed the bottom and sides of ours. About 2:00 o’clock we slipped into our suits and jumped in for ninety minutes of bliss.
It has been a long seven months since we were last in the water in September. And we had missed it. We’re both pleasantly tired this evening, but already looking forward to another dip tomorrow.
Some fun in the summer sun.
This week’s coverage of the torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq sickens me. That the ordinary citizens of Iraq are likening the occupying United States force to Saddam Hussien is a damning indictment.
President Bush’s weak apology to the families of the tortured was embarrassing for me as a citizen of the United States. Secretary Rumsfeld’s arrogance and hubris about the entire situation in Iraq in general, and this most recent revaluation in specific is an indication of how out of control this “war” in Iraq has gotten.
I am reminded of the scene in “Gandhi” at the salt plant where the British beat down row after row of unarmed men as they approach the gates. The line that keeps ringing through my head is delivered by Martin Sheen, “What ever moral ascendancy the British held was lost here today.”
The razor thin moral argument for regime change in Iraq has been lost with the acts of barbarity, inhumanity, and cruelty by the United States towards the people of Iraq. Now, maybe, we the people of the United States can stand up and speak out to affect regime change here at home by removing the Bush war machine from power.
Forty-three things about me in honor of my Forty-Third birthday:
We have a pool. A nice in-ground pool. 29 x 13 feet, heated, fiberglass, hubba-hubba pool.
Our neighbor has maple trees. Maple trees are bad. Maple trees make maple seeds. Billions and billions of seeds.
As a child I loved these seeds as they were primitive helicopters, spinning slowly to the ground. My parents had a single red maple tree that produced these seeds. I played with them for hours.
As an adult I have declared war on these SEEDS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.™
My neighbor has about 47 billion maple trees. Okay, maybe not that many, but the six or eight or 52 thousand trees that he does have produce about 47 billion seeds.
Every day.
Really.
We’ve got so many of these seeds of destruction on our driveway that the seams in the concrete are outlined by the tails standing up. In a few days I will have to ascend to the roof, leaf blower in hand, to empty the gutters of billions and billions of the seeds, lest they germinate and I have maple shoots on my roof.
Our pool, naturally, is a magnet for these miracles of of reproductive genius. At least twice a day I have to empty several thousand refugees from the neighbor’s trees from the skimmer basket. Netting them off the pool surface is Sisyphian task; no sooner do you get to the last net’s worth of seeds than the wind blows and several zillion more are spiraling gracefully down into the water.
I. Hate. Maple. Seeds.
Anyone out there got a chain saw they’d like to loan me on a dark night?
I know that most people celebrate Cinco de Mayo, but myself, I’m into Siete de Mayo. Specifically the one 43 years ago.
That’s right, in just two days I’ll be a whopping 43 years young. If I live to be 86 I’m middle aged. Three of my four grandparents made it to 90, so I figure I’ve got a couple more years yet before the long downhill slide. Or not.
All I want this year for my birthday is a job. Nothing fancy please, Just 9 to 5. Maybe a lunch break. Some light coding, maybe a application design or two. Put a big red bow on it and I’m there.
This entry is the three-hundred-ninety-seventh posting to my site. The oldest dates back to December of 1999. We were living in Vancouver Washington then, enjoying the mild climate of the Pacific Northwest.
A lot has happened in the intervening four years, two major cross-country moves, jobs lost and found, and lost yet again. The tiny seeds of spirituality inside of me have germinated and grown. The relationship with my beautiful wife has blossomed and has continued to be the most profound aspect of my life.
I written of hopes and sorrows, good foods, and high technology here. This site has become a touchstone of my life. I turn here when I have need of expressing my inner self. Knowing that it can be read by anyone, and not knowing who is reading it, is the point. This is my form of confession, and you the reader are the priest.
So thank you dear reader, though your unknown eyes I have seen myself more clearly.
As I approach the end of week seven of unemployment, life goes on. Bills are getting paid, maple seeds are netted off the pool, and groceries are bought and consumed. The trash gets taken out, and the kitty litter gets changed. Dishes and clothes are dirtied and washed.
It is all starting to feel normal, or at least less out of control. On the one hand I think having a feeling of normalcy is good as it makes being here at home safe. Without a place of safety I’m not sure we could get through this period. So much of our lives outside of our home continues to be out of control.
Our combined search for employment has been largely fruitless. I am starting to grow weary of the process of crafting cover letters. After more than 100 applications across the country I am weary of the whole search. Worse than the tiredness I feel is the sense of doubt the lack of response has given me. It is very hard not to to beat myself up saying, “the only thing common to those 100 applications is me.”
The potential buyer for the house has vanished into thin air. Repeated calls to the number they left only get a message service, and the messages I’ve left have been ignored. I’m ready for the next buyer, however, a contract template is loaded on my computer, ready to filled in and printed. The next offer won’t be considered real until there is earnest money and a signed contract.
My birthday is later this week, May 7th to be exact. My parents have offered to drive over and take us out to dinner. I keep going back and forth over whether to accept their offer or not. To often in the past I have set aside my needs of the moment to try and take care of them. With both of their children out of work presently, I know they are full of unexpressed and unmet emotional needs. An evening with them will be difficult at best. I should call and ask for a rain check.
I realize that depression is setting in, getting a deeper hold on me. Forcing myself to do the little everyday things that I normally would do is helping. Letting myself off the hook for ignoring or putting off larger things is helping too. However I must strike a balance between taking care of myself in the moment and making sure I have a future that is away from this depression. I would feel so much better if I didn’t feel so bad.
Life goes on and on.
I saw this over at Burningbird this evening.
Quite simple one of the best statements on what is needed in America today.
The past week has been long and stressful. On Tuesday Michele got an e-mail from her prospect in Chapel Hill asking her to call and set up a face to face interview. A time was open on Thursday, just two days later, so we scurried around Tuesday afternoon and evening making our preparations.
I, too, it appeared, had a potential opportunity in the Raleigh area. I had gotten an e-mail about a technical writer position, and had filled out a skills survey. We were both thinking it would be fantastic to move to a new city with both of us having jobs. By the end of the business day Tuesday however, I had received an e-mail saying that while I was a strong project management candidate I didn’t have the technical writing focus they wanted.
Wednesday we drove for 14 hours to cover the 865 miles between our home and Chapel Hill. Much of it in heavy rain. By the time we arrived there were were both utterly exhausted and spent. Luckily her interview wasn’t until Thursday afternoon so we had time to sleep in in the morning.
Michele had a long night, awake several times with worry and excitement, about three a.m. she finally managed to fall asleep and stay asleep. In the morning we scouted out the location of her interview and then relaxed in our room. I dropped her off just before her two o’clock interview and went back to the room to wait. We had picked up a street map for Raleigh, and also one for Durham and Chapel Hill. I was going to scout out high end apartments for us to look at on Friday.
She called my at 3:40 saying she was through. When I picked her up she said that the interview had not gone well. Over the phone the company gave the impression of being small and creatively focused, with flexibility towards its employees. In person it was obvious that there were some growing pains as this company was rapidly growing. The overriding sense that Michele got while there was that upper management was struggling with how to scale from a small company to a larger one. Money was tight and getting tighter. In the end Michele decided that she didn’t want to move just to work for them. If we already lived in the area, maybe.
So we started home early. Not wanting a repeat of our 14 hour drive we left Thursday evening around 5:00 p.m. and drove for about five hours. Along the way we talked through her experience at the interview and it became clearer with every mile that it wasn’t a place she wanted to work. We were both disappointed.
Friday we were up at 5:00 a.m. local time and started driving. Our conversation this day was about the potential contract option I had cooking. Through a friend I had learned of an open contract that needed filling for two months, with a potential for a year long contract in July. We were both pleased to have this parachute to use now that a quick move to Chapel Hill was out of the picture.
Imagine our dismay to get home that evening only to receive an e-mail saying the agency had gone with another candidate, one with prior experience there. Now, not only didn’t either of us have a job in the Raleigh-Durham area, we didn’t have our parachute here to fall back upon. I also was informed via e-mail that an instructor position I had applied for with a local consulting firm had been given to someone else.
We spent the weekend licking our wounds and worrying about our future. In the span of a few days we had gone from upbeat and optimistic to crushed and fearful. We are back to where we started over 5 weeks ago, only now we were exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally. Finding the energy to keep going would be tougher than ever.
Sunday night during dinner Michele discovered one of her molars had cracked. She had been complaining that the tooth, which had been sore due to a sever maxillary sinusitis infection, had felt funny since the infection cleared up a week or so ago. Not painful, just funny. I went to the drugstore and got a little dentist’s mirror and probe. Sure enough, the tooth is cracked. So today we have to call the dentist for an emergency appointment to have the process of repairing it started.
We are battered and beaten mentally from the strain of trying to figure out what to do next. We have worked extremely hard to keep as many options open as possible, but the toll of not knowing where we’ll be or what we’ll be doing is blunting our once sharp thoughts.
We are spent physically, and starting to breakdown. Michele’s tooth being cracked isn’t a result of our situation, but it sure feels like an indication that we are falling apart physically. I’ve only had two decent night’s sleep in over a month; both of those were aided by Tylenol PM.
We are wiped out emotionally. The roller coaster ride from potential job e-mail to a thanks, but no thanks letter, has been repeated enough that we are losing our ability and desire to care. Depression is setting in, and setting in deep. Add to our situation worry over my brother and his family ( he is also out of work ) and we get no respite from our fears anywhere we turn.
All we need is one or two lucky breaks and we’ll be fine. My fear this morning is that we are too far gone emotionally, physically, and mentally to recognize a lucky break even if it presents itself. When this whole mess started in March I was afraid of the future, afraid that ending this life might be the easier way out. Now I am too tired to see beyond making it to lunch today. I’ve lost my fear of ending this life. What scares me in a very detached way are these two questions: Have I lost my fear because at some deep level I know it’ll all work out? Or have I lost my fear because I just don’t care anymore?
Once upon a time, in college, I took a course about religion. It wasn’t so much a comparative study of different religions as it was a glossary of terminology with which to discuss religion. I’ve forgotten most of the material but one concept stands out to this day.
The question of whether God is eternal or everlasting is a key one as how you answer determines whether or not you have free will. There is also a problem with the idea of God being all-knowing.
Eternal was defined as outside of time, no beginning and no ending, and no sense of now. If God were eternal, s/he would know everything that had ever happened, and s/he would also know everything that is ever going to happen.
Everlasting was defined as being inside of time, a beginning and existence up to now, and continued existence forever. If God were everlasting s/he would have knowledge of everything that had ever happened in the past, but s/he would have no more knowledge of the future than you or I.
God can’t be all-knowing if s/he is everlasting, since everlasting doesn’t allow for knowledge of the future. On the other hand, God can be all-knowing if s/he is eternal; you just have to give up free will.
Or do you?
Since the time I took this course, more than two decades ago, I have come to believe that my essence ( soul if you will ) has many, many lifetimes on the physical plane. I believe that all of us have an essence and further, that we all came from a central source. God, or the Tao. The purpose of each essence is the same: to learn and grow from experiences on the physical plane of existence. Each lifetime, each incarnation, contains new bits of information the essence needs on its journey back to God.
Our essence doesn’t die when the current physical body dies. It continues on, it is everlasting. Contained within my essence, and yours, is all the knowledge from all the incarnations you’ve had before. Call it instinct, call it genetic memory, call it voodoo, it is there. Some of us are better at tapping into this reservoir of knowledge than others, but the knowledge is there. We don’t know what the future will be, but we do know our entire past at some deep level. This fits the definition of everlasting.
Which, in a epiphany I had this morning talking to Michele, leaves God free to be eternal and all knowing. S/he knows every possible future for every one of us. No one set future that robs us of free will, but each and every possible future from this point forward.
We are all part of the Tao, part of God, on a journey through a multitude of incarnations as human beings. Each of us is everlasting, and we are each tied to a common eternal being.