Friday, November 25, 2005

A Dave Matthews Band moment...

I'm havin a Dave Matthews Band moment...

I was flippin channels thinking that I really should go to bed (not that I have a lot on my plate tomorrow...but that I doooo looove my sleep)

Anyway...
I came across a Dave Mathew Band special on PBS.
I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Dave Matthews Band. I'd forgotten how different his music is.

This specific concert was a weekend at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison Co. The Amphitheater seats just under 10,000 people and there sure didn't look like there were any seats left. Wow.

The particular song that initially caught my attention wasn't even a Dave Matthews song...it was it was Time of the Season (you know..."what's your name? who's your daddy? Is he rich like me?") It was done by the Zombies that 60's British rock group...and when he sang that refrain..."this is the season for love" it seemed like every person in that place sang with him.

I got all goose bumply...and it started me to thinkin...

Did ya ever wonder what it must be like to be on stage with your little ole box guitar and a couple of your buddies doing what you like to do best and realize that every single person there is singing your words with you?

I guess for a musician it's gotta kinda be like the feeling I get when I'm sitting at a stop light and we look up to spot a couple of kids (young or old) looking at me sittin purdy on our rides with envy in their eyes....or the pure unadulterated thrill of hitting my Zen in the wide open spaces...just me, the sky and my ride...are one.

*sigh*

I can't wait for spring.

Wouldn't ya just

Wouldn't ya just....
love 5 stinkin minutes

alone
with one or two of them idjits

that keep sending you email offers
to enlarge your penis??

I mean really?
what kind of idjit

gets involved in enlarging penis'
as a full time job?

certainly not rocket scientists,

certainly not nuclear physicists
and certainly not English Majors...

cos they'd be able to come up with a better name....

I mean...come on....

why would I trust anyone
with a name like
"PPBigger" or
"BigWackerNow"
or better yet...
"BiggerPPFaster"
and my all time favorite
"BiggestPPEver"!!!

that one surely took
a lot of thoughtful reflection
I'm sure...

do they think my pp is stupid?

not likely!
leave my penis alone!

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The Season of the Bike

The Season of the Bike, by Dave Karlotski

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

Friday, November 18, 2005

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

~Rudyard Kipling

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Fraser Canyon


















































Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Dreamer...

do you suppose it's possible
to live a better life
thru dreaming
than real life?

in my dreams I can be a heroine
I can stop all the suffering
I can find the secret treasure
I can stop all the injustices
I can leap tall buildings

get the picture?

I've noticed that as life
gets more and more mundane
in this middle age

my dreams are longer
more vivid
somehow more satisfying...

is it possible
to live a better life
in my dreams?

jeeez...I gotta get my motoPickle fixed
this is nuts!

Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Dr is In!

'Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.'
Dr. Suess

Friday, November 11, 2005

Strange Days












strange days in the old barn
seems people are leavin
in droves

change is upon us

everyone
just everyone
that hasn't left
is talking about leaving

change is inevitable
and it truly
felt like the end today

almost

but Monday comes
and for a few
there's a new start

and for those of us left behind
it's like a new start as well

same stuff
just in a different order

We Remember....

Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Perspective

Funny how shit happens to put your life in perspective

yesterday, my mother, whom you may remember suffers from white coat syndrome and hasn't been to a D in virtually 30 years - got the results of a passle of tests that her new Dr has run - she has to see a vascular surgeon as one of the main arteries in her neck (the one that feeds the brain on the left side of her neck) is 80% blocked...and that's what caused her eye to "black out" 2 weeks ago....

I know that they can do wonders with shunts in this arena...but she says she isn't going to the appointment with the surgeon and has forbidden me to inform my brother and sister of the situation.

I am gonna end up pissin her off and telling them...and I am gonna get her to the surgeon if I have to throw her over my shoulder to do it...the appt is on the 9th...which to me is an indication of just how urgent the Dr thinks this situation is.

the whole thing certainly puts my angst about my job in proper perspective.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings. - Helen Keller

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

A Toast to the Bride and Groom

It would seem, that once again, it falls to me to speak….Guess it’s a good thing I’m rarely at a loss for words huh?

Those of you that know me will be happy to note that I have finally made investment in Kleenex tissue stock…cos I’m a girl scout.

I could start this with a “Once Upon a Time”…but we’re all way to old to have time enough for that, so instead I’ll start from my beginning with the newlyweds.

I’ve known Brenda for virtually as long as she’s been on the Island. Not as long as many of you and longer than some of you. Right from the beginning we developed a rapport that was something like a sisterhood. Bee is my sister wise and I have, right from the beginning, been drawn to her strength of character and integrity. I like it that she strives to be the best she can be all the time, not just some of the time. I know that I’m lucky to have someone as sincere and as heartfelt on my side. I like it that we’ve become the kind of friends that allows her to tell me to shut up…even when no one else will…Bee’s been through a lot in the last couple of years and I’ve been worried about her.

A couple of years into my friendship with Bee, I happened to run into Bryan…in all honesty it was his trike that first caught my attention. I was at Clover Point with my visiting maiden aunts and the Voice of Doom and spotted his trike and virtually abandoned my family for talking to he and Gator. Gator had just recently met Ali, the love of his life and Bryan was a little bereft. I remember clearly two things from that day….I remember the maiden aunts and the Voice of Doom twittering about Bryan’s big wonderful smile and I remember feeling right from the beginning that Bryan and I would become fast friends.

So now I can fast forward to July 2004 and Bryan and I decide to ride our trikes to Salmon Arm for the Summer Stomp, just like adults. Bee, ever the social butterfly is driving her van with a gaggle of women on board. I had introduced the two of them previous to this weekend…but this was the first time they actually got to spend some time with each other. We all spent different parts of the weekend with each other and many other friends and then we returned to the Island.

So

Here’s where I could fill your ears with all kinds of stories and suppositions about destiny, and karma and things being meant to be, but what I will remember forever is a call from Bee in her oh so politically correct and professional voice asking me “if I’d mind if she was receptive to contact from Bryan as they’d twinkled at the Summer Stomp”

Twinkled says I?
What the hell is twinkled?

Apparently…twinkled they did. And inspite of the odds, and the roadblocks large and small, Bryan and Bee became a couple.

I held my breath, and I (ever the selfish one) lived for a while in abject terror that something would happen and they’d quit talking to each other. I mean really? Where the hell would I be if my best male friend and my best female friend couldn’t stand each other.

But as we can all see…luck and destiny and karma were on my side and they truly fell in love.….and as it turns out karma and destiny were taking control because through time they found out that they went to public school together, Bryan a grade behind Bee…he remembers her but she doesn’t remember him.

From the outside….I love it that they see the best and the worst of each other. I love it that they take turns being the strong one and the soft one. I love it that they work so hard at respecting each other and operating within integrity with each other. I love it that they have built a life together, and I am honored to be here at the beginning of this newest chapter.

Brenda and Bryan, May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.


May you always need one another - not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you know your fullness.


May you need one another, but not out of weakness.

May you want one another, but not out of lack.

May you entice one another, but not compel one another.

May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces.

May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!" and take no notice of small faults.

May you race to be the first to say I’m sorry.


May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's presence - no more physical than spiritual, warm and near when you are side by side, and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant cities.

May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy.

May you have love, and may you find it loving one another!

Ladies and Gentlemen please raise your glasses

A Toast!

To the Bride and Groom!