Social experimentation

For the last several days, I've been conducting a social experiment using social media. I'm afraid the outcome doesn't say much about our society.

The posed question was if we can still conduct human discourse over issues. For my efforts, I've been called a poopy-head.

Okay, no one used those exact words. But it seemed the direction most wanted to go and tried to drag me.

The recent past was chosen because an election fell in those days. I'll admit the sample was only my 160 or so "friends" on Facebook. And not all of those likely had a chance to view my enticements. I stated a viewpoint on issues or outcomes and waited to see how others responded. To be honest, I didn't always believe the stances I took. But they were meant to inspire response. They ranged from health care to defense and into taxation.

For the purposes of discussion, I'm using progressive (which I find arrogant for a bunch that is as stalled as their counterparts) and conservative labels here because I do believe the current major parties have pretty much made themselves indistinguishable and irrelevant when it comes to issues.

I found that when I tried to get response on an issue or got debate, it was most often schoolyard. I don't completely blame the respondents. This is the current methodology. Call names, point fingers, regurgitate slanted "facts" and play to stereotypes.
* "I won't stop being sick until Obama is gone." No policy reason.
*"We have to throw out the Democrats ruining the budget." No response on what programs to cut that will make a meaningful dent.
* "Pelosi is an idiot." Although I didn't disagree, no action that indicates such was proffered as evidence.
* "Obamacare must be repealed." No one could tell me what horrible impact proves this (since it has yet to be implemented) or an idea of how to make health care work so the poor don't drain the system and die needlessly.

There were a few who when asked to (1) prove it, and (2) offer solutions, actually gave it a shot. But even some intelligent and well considered answers always contained a stereotype or attempt at slander. Unfortunately, most never went any farther than repeating when some radio or television pundit had said in the last 45 days without giving credit. When asked for back up, I was told I could "look it up for myself" or given a reference that had a kernel of truth that had been twisted into a cornfield of conspiracy.

Does anyone think anymore?

I caught some a bit off guard, and was complimented for it at times. I tried not to belittle opinions based on facts. There were times people made their point intelligently and I admitted I simply disagreed with the philosophy but accepted their logic. When pressed, I offered solutions to some problems that were more middle of the road than standard progressive.

But here was the fact I found most fascinating. I know some of it is because of the outcome of those ongoing elections. But it's a trend I'd seen before I conducted my little experiment. Every conversation I had, every post by another that gave me a chance to move into a different genre, was me vs. a conservative element. They responded, they posted, they fought back.

Not once did another of a progressive viewpoint add to my argument. I got personal notes encouraging me to keep fighting. But not once did anyone else actually speak up.

I believe we have absolutely no chance in this nation until we can say I think this because of this, this and this. And have all the "this" be concrete facts instead of fear and conjecture. We have no opportunity for such conversation when one side sits silent unwilling to both talk and listen.

My great hope has always been that what we hear most is the severe minority. That reality lies somewhere right in the middle. But people are swayed by the screaming on the ends. We just might have a big majority willing and able to go somewhere if we could hear and process the reality behind the emotion of everything going on right now.

But the Facebook I've seen is of millions with mouths open and ears and minds shut.

The little whys

All of us sometimes wonder why the world is so harsh, why innocents get hurt seemingly needlessly and why we can't all just be a little more rational.

It can make you crazy. Especially if you have a natural tendency for obsession as I do. So one of my releases is to let go of the big whys and spend some fun time with the little whys. Quite often, they involve my dog, Rusty.

Observing him is one of the great and small pleasures in my life. He and I have only been together since last summer, and he's still growing up. So the changes and behaviors are often new to us both.

An example is his reliance versus independence. Almost all of the time, Rusty is exactly at my side one step back. While I'm doing the mundane or the important, that is the post he chooses. He's fairly wise about avoiding my sudden moves and his apparently tender feet. It's a good thing because something about his golden retriever breed makes him almost silent. I have no idea how something about 70 pounds and a big swishy high tail can appear and disappear without a sound. But I don't get much space. Just enough.

Until fall approached. And I noticed the other side. He wants that back door open to ensure his ability to return to his post. But he'd rather be outside again and again exploring a small space he ought to have down pat by now. If I'd join out there, he'd be in heaven. He could fulfill his duty and curiousity all at once.

I don't understand his sense of obligation and alternate sense of freedom and adventure. But I recognize it.

And then there's his sense of organization. Regularly each day, he has to put his toys away - by his order, not mine. Sometimes they are gathered and placed on my bathroom floor. He has a couch upon which he can sit before an upstairs window and watch the world go by. Most often, it is upon that window sill the toys are stored. A squeaky ball, what's left of the end of a rope chew and whatever current chewbone he has been provided. Nothing he steals, only what he is given and shown is his. If you take them down and play with them, they will eventually be returned to the spot by him.

On the other hand, Rusty fulfills his need to chew with fireplace logs. Like many people, there's a log pile in the back corner of the back yard. He chooses his logs from there. Drags them into a shady spot under the big oak where he can keep an eye on everything and sharpens his amazingly white teeth on a hardwood. In comparison to his other belongings, however, these logs never get put back. In fact, when oak stops tasting so good, cedar becomes a new challenge. But within a few feet of the oak log. This changes at least four times over a couple of days. The wood pile is soon a wood strewn. And even when I go and reassemble the pile, he repeats the sloppying process.

Today I was smirking at these seeming dichotomies when it struck me. He's not confusing. Rusty is Rickie. Not in the exact behaviors, but in the incongruities. I am never middle of the road, aware I choose the bar ditches to see what surprise is hidden there. And I switch from left to right constantly. I do some things consistently because I believe it is my duty, my responsibility. And every now and then I say screw it and do whatever I want completely upon whim. Because it feels right to me.

I sometimes feel guilty about my inability to be consistent. But then I laugh aloud at the silliness that is Rusty's behavior. And see how his doing those things make him do the Goofy Dance, straight up in the air, body twisting and tongue lolling. He doesn't try to understand them, he just does them and finds it makes him happy.

I'm going to come up with more little whys and just enjoy them. Hell, maybe even find myself in a Goofy Dance every now and then.

Demon dance

"Devils and demons dance in my head"

I wrote that line when I was 18. Wrote it without understanding that I might recognize the struggle going on, but I still hadn't looked the characters in the eye. And that meant they would continue their disrupting dance for decades.

The blog post immediately prior to this was to remind me that point again. Inside the commentary, I can see ongoing actions that would be detrimental for way too long. And the unpublished memory of that same day adds to that understanding.

I come from a family and world where dealing with feelings was not taught, not displayed and not respected. That's tough on a highly sensitive man. But I learned the lesson of taking the feeling and shoving it farther down. And down. With whatever weight was required.

The prior post is my finding a feeling I couldn't hold back. The unpublished part is that after that funeral, I had to drive across the Texas Panhandle to the family burial site. It's a landscape where you can see any oncoming vehicle on the tiny two-lane ribbons literally miles and tens of minutes before you cross. So I loaded up on beer feeling invincible on those roads and too vulnerable inside.

It was the latest lesson I'd learned. If you need help getting those feelings out of the way, drown them, anesthetize them.

Here's the problem with any method of ignoring - it doesn't work. Never. For decades I put away feelings, jammed them way down until I couldn't see them anymore. But they kept knocking and probing until some incidental thing happened that created a crack. And while it seemed the incidental thing was being way overblown, in reality it was just pressure spewing everywhere and all of the sudden.

It never failed. I got a reputation for having a quick temper. But it wasn't really that. It was the voracity of the temper when it came out that made it seem so full blown and sudden.

The physical result was I've found years later I've repeatedly broken my hands and wrists. I've never seen a doctor over that specifically, never worn a cast, but only learned of the breaks and heals from a body scan looking for something in my back. Valuing people, I'm almost always hit inanimate objects - walls, trees, signs.

The emotional results is deeper and more prevalent scars. Those closest to me could never tell what was coming. Because I didn't know. But I had no idea how I felt at any moment, even in the midst of rage. And for anyone who cares about you, that's a precarious place to be. When it came to my emotional punches, I threw them right to the face of those who least deserved it.

I feel almost fortunate to have known people who were strong enough themselves to reach a point of refusing those emotional blows. With losing them, I have learned.

These days, I try to recognize what I feel. I try to let it be. Those around me still sometimes don't like it. But they get it in more bite-sized pieces that mean they can digest it and we can all move on. And I can feel at peace much more often, instead of having so many things fermenting inside my psyche.

If you're one of those who gets my bluntness, my uncomfortable honesty, who I tell I like immensely even when it makes them a tad squirmy, believe it's for the better. Better than dancing with the devil in the dark with no idea where the edge of the stage is.

The importance of a bologna sandwich

(This was written in 1989 and is transcribed unedited)

It was only a bologna sandwich, didn't even contain mustard. But it was one of the best tasting things I've ever had.

The sandwich was served at the small, sticker-infested Lefors, Tex., park. The park was just a concrete picnic table, a couple of swings and a marble state historical marker of an 1800s army attack on some Cheyennes which recovered two kidnapped white women.

It would seem the vistas couldn't have led to the sandwiches' exquisite taste, but that was a large part of it. The bread was slathered with sweet West Texas sunshine and the entire sandwich was sprinkled with the mystery and history of the small canyons winds had dug into the slight rolls of the land.

It was also a specially prepared sandwich, made by my Grandmother. I had been kind of dumped on her most of the times between my second and fifth birthdays. We were a strange team, a woman in her forties and a child still forming trusts and beliefs. But she took me when no one else did, and even at that early age I seemed to realize it.

The reason the sandwich comes to mind is a return visit to the park today. It's almost 30 years later and I've returned to Lefors to bury my Grandmother.

Wandering around the town alone just before the services, I was drawn to some regular stops - the water tower we hiked to each day of Vacation Bible School and the muddy fork of the Red River.

But for some reason, for the first time, I was drawn to return to the park. The taste of that sandwich came to me immediately, but it seemed like a small memory to demand my subconscious to make the trip.

As I looked across the little canyons though I found the trip's reason. Moving across the road at the top of the ridge was the vehicle bringing my Grandmother's body from the nearby larger town of Pampa.

Although my Grandmother was a church woman, that building filled with mourners wasn't where she wanted to say goodbye. This park, those times, the taste of that sandwich, were her farewell.

Finally, I cried.

Antithesis

I have lost my identity. Not to some Internet thieves, but to a 65-pound ball of play called Rusty the Goofball.

I had a friend tell me once that I was remembered though small encounters because I'm somewhat gregarious. But that seems to have been overwhelmed by Rusty.

Someone stopped me at the gym one day to ask if I owned a red retriever. "I saw you sitting in the median with what has to be the best behaved dog on Earth." Well, at times.

If we go to restaurant patios, pretty waitresses bring Rusty a bowl of water. My chances of getting a refill are much more limited. Friends question his well being before mine. The homeless guys working the nearby street corners know him. A neighbor greets me with "how is the happiest puppy on Earth?"

He is hard to overlook. He needs to greet everyone. I mean everyone. When he does cross a street, our system is he must sit, wait and then when I say go he turns around to put a portion of his leash in his mouth, do a vertical leap and then cross. The vertical leap is fairly common. All feet in the air, tail slashing, body twisted. The goofiest dance you've ever seen. Pure joy.

He eats lemons, tomatoes and tree logs. He steals paper money, tears it into pieces, but doesn't eat the pieces.

All this is actually a life reminder. It was one year ago today, I lost my best friend at that time. Often, he had been my only friend. It left a gaping hole. One I honestly questioned I'd survive. Not just from that single incident, but that it was the topping on a series of blows that brought me to my knees and now lower.

Months later, Rusty came along in happenstance. It just turned out he was the right personality with the right instinct for me. Not a me that was with the previous friend, but the me right now. In fact, he helped create the me right now.

In the reality that true loyalty goes both ways, I don't forget Sam, sometimes miss him. I remember the pain he was in the final days. The look of abject fear when he was taken in for the final decision I had to make is emblazoned in my consciousness. Yet I also remember the experiences we shared, the times we went through together and the support Sam provided.

As importantly, I look at then and now and realize how one day in life can be the antithesis of another. For the feelings of one year ago today, I get to view the wild abandon with which Rusty rushes across a yard, bounds into the air to pounce on a football with a full growl and then come back at me like a fullback at a goal line. I am daily amazed at the hours he can spend sitting on a couch in an upstairs room looking out the window, nose awiggle and eyes vigilant for whatever the world brings by. I can absorb some of the ecstasy that comes with getting to go for a walk, even though it happens every day. I can appreciate how he wants to hurry to a street corner so he can do his sit, wait, go process and prove his behavior.

You know what today is like. Sometimes that's not all that good. You can't ever guess what tomorrow will be. Sometimes that's better than you could ever imagine.

Loneliness

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

A friend brought this quote attributed to Mark Twain to my attention several days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

Part of it is I've known several people to whom this applies. I've watched them fear spending even a few hours alone with themselves. It's as if they fear some voice in their head won't be drowned out by the sounds of others. It isn't limited by gender or age.

They go to extremes to not be forced into listening to that internal sound. Quite often, I've seen it lead them to substance abuse. They seek out places where they know there will be other people, and in the time between being away from their jobs and being asleep, they've often targeted bars as their only reliable safe haven. And constantly being in the bar usually meant consuming the products. They're quite often the first ones there for happy hour. And they don't leave until they've passed the point of caring about whatever drove them there in the first place.

Sometimes those same people find the time of day to be a constraint. Weekends can be the worst for them because they find they can't spend a full 18 hours in a bar. They try movies to be around others and fill the blank spaces. But there are only so many movies a weekend one can absorb.

I find these same people don't know themselves very well. Maybe that's obvious because if you're afraid to face the screaming in your head, you never get to the normal conversation with yourself that leads to understanding.

It's possible that's exactly what they want, to be avoid the introduction to themselves. Because there always seems to be this hint they don't like themselves very well. It all becomes a recipe for a very sour life. Those who don't like themselves don't like to be alone. So they go to bars where the liquor helps them forget they don't like themselves. The two factors together make them drink to abuse. Which doesn't make themselves any better and still hasn't done a thing about the sound in their head.

Ah, but the thoughts haven't just been judgemental. Because Mr. Twain was glancing at me too.

It isn't that I don't like to be alone. Sometimes I crave it and force it. I right out disappear. And I've been told by some that I have an ability to be in a room filled with people and be alone. I can put up a shell that puts anyone around on the outside.

But I also seem addicted to others. Sooner or later, I need stimulus, contact, input and connection. Maybe I see too much of myself, don't like enough of it, and need to drown it out just like those I've observed. Maybe it's just a human condition, the pack mentality of the human being. Maybe I need reinforcement in that I'm alright and somebody does like me.

I try to make a balance. I insist I be alone and look myself in the eye so I can develop a comfort with myself. I call it facing my demons. If I see them and they're taking over, I try remediation. I just have to force myself to not just see the brightly colored weaknesses in me and look through to the greys that are the good parts. Then I need to count up the two categories and make sure the less vibrants outnumber the look-at-me factors.

Sometimes I'm lonely. Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with myself. But I have to consciously ensure I don't carry loneliness just because I don't like me. I have to fix me if that's true. And that's a better cure for loneliness than hiding in a bar with strangers.

Baptism

I should have known it was coming. After all, it's about to rain.

It's an odd historically accurate fact. Whenever I set my heart aflame to see if I can destroy it, storms come. Not just gentle showers like some bad country song, but tropical depression-crack-the-lightening-pounding-downpour storm.

I've tried to think of it as some type of baptism, washing away the pain of the just passed sins and giving me a new start. But that's not me. I keep bits and pieces of everyone, good and bad. I have been fortunate enough over the last few years to use those keepsakes as learning tools, what to repeat and what to let go.

But most recently I went back to old reactive habits. I felt-acted-thought. That means if my feelings were irrational, I acted irrationally and only then thought through the realities. I had learned to rearrange, to feel-think-act. I guess somewhere inside me there's a real disorder that instinctively changes that.

It's hard for people outside to deal with the "act" in the middle instead of end. They don't understand what's coming at them. The more I try to explain, the more insane it turns. Sooner or later, their only remaining move is to just leave.

You'd think I'd recognize it in the middle of it. But I guess that's part of the insanity that grows. Internal blindness.

But the outcome is crystal clear. And is always followed by the storms. Maybe it's the storms that slap me in the head and make me pay attention. There was one time when I traveled to a coast and was caught in a storm of a century that turned angry at the coastline and traveled back up my path to flood my home area. It was immediately after I'd gone overwhelming.

I've spent the last weekend in that insanity. I've made a mess of something that was simple and important. It all went on when the first front gently came through, forced Texas summer to surrender its dominance and turned the air crisp for a few hours each morning and evening. But last night was when I set it all afire. And awoke to warnings a tropical storm was bearing down on me with buckets of rain.

For the next few days, I'll be trapped. Both in by the weather and my actions. They will be in my face. There will be nowhere to run. I'll try to use one to make me clean again. But there are some sins with which you just have to look in the eye and live.

Fear of feelings

Men get accused of being emotionally cloaked. Usually by women. But my experience is, no one really wants to know.
There are lots of kinds of writing. Some used to vent, some hoped for publication, some to let something personal out. Most people draw lines with their expression. They choose the size of their audience based on the content. Often how well you know some people and trust them helps limit the size of the chosen audience. It can come down just to what they can handle.
I had one writer coach me that "you don't want to let them see you go to the bathroom." Her point was there the general reading public has one comfort level, those who know you may have a greater level. It's often up to the writer to know their readership and provide only appropriate fodder.
One of those defining lines seems to be emotion. Just as there are many types of general writing, there are sub-genres of emotional writing. There is just finding the right way to express others' emotion. There is helping others "re-feel" something, to tap into what may be dormant. There is expressing emotional contact between two people. And just expressing your own emotion.
The boundaries can cross. For example, in this blog, I've expressed deep emotion about losing a friend. But discovered others had similar feelings from similar experiences, and my personal expression brought them back to those.
But I've also learned that something about our culture makes many of us, maybe most of us, uncomfortable facing many emotions. Not just our own, but those shared or raw.
I find this especially true when I share anything rhythmic or rhyming, call it poetry or lyrics. Somewhat because of copyright laws, and somewhat because I find those types of things more personal, I don't post them on this writing outlet. But if something comes out I personally like, I'll sometimes share it one on one.
What's funny to me is how uncomfortable that makes so many people because they take it personally. If there's a reference to a hair or eye color, for example, the blonde or green-eyed automatically think it's about them. And the state of our relationship may not call for expressions of current or past emotional ties. So, they squirm. If not disappear.
That's most interesting because my most recent string of personal ties has been pretty limited. So I compile, take the feelings for one and another and put them together, one verse may be about one person, the chorus about another.
But there are those that are completely about one person or one experience. I used to practice the philosophy that if someone caused something to be created, it was in part theirs and they deserved to see it.
But despite constant conversations throughout my life that included requests of "just be honest with me" or "don't be afraid to express yourself," that isn't how life works. People think they want to know. They don't.
Maybe it's our society that makes us afraid of feelings. But even those who are societal rebels have blanched at my emotional honesty. Maybe it's that there's so little honest expression, it's the unexpected that can't be dealt with. Or maybe we're just a repressed, withdrawn, afraid bunch of people.
I don't want to be that pessimistic. But I want to respect others' boundaries. I want to be honest with them. I don't want to chase them away.
So there's an entire world of words out there just waiting for their father to die. Because only when no one has to look the holder of the expressed emotions in the eye do those who earned them feel comfortable with them.
I wish I knew how people feel about me. I wish they knew how I feel about them. But when we go from a superficial shout to an honest whisper, it seems no one wants to listen.

Trust

I've been pondering trust quite a bit lately. Taken in some other folks opinions, looked at my own levels of trust and just let the philosophy run around in my head.
I think trust is critical to the human condition. It's not just personal relationships, but trust is a vital cog in our business lives too. Who we do business with and how open and free we are with those transactions is based on how much trust exists.
Our ability to trust probably comes from myriad sources. It has to start with our upbringing. And not just with what we're told, but the actions we see and feel - absorb - before we're even cognizant that's what we're doing. Do we feel totally safe and supported in our childhood environments? If so, trust probably comes much easier throughout our adulthood. If we question it, or if we lack it, we're probably much more careful, if not even incapable.
I won't say we can't develop the ability to trust. I started to say if we're loved down the road, it probably increases our trust-ability. But it struck me that the ability to love and be loved probably starts and ends with trust first.
Some of this consideration comes from observations of other people lately. There's a couple who indicated levels of trust that made me bold enough to make honest statements to them. Their reaction was fear (the anti-trust, I suppose) and they visibly retracted their indications of trust.
Another is someone who has every reason not to trust due to a difficult childhood and bad choices as an adult. Under a disguise of independence, this person didn't trust anyone really and stated trust wasn't expected. But the bit of trust I did give was violated greatly. I severed the relationship.
Several weeks later, a note came back stating this person had recognized what refusing to trust and honor trust had done to life overall. A new leaf was trying to be turned. The question was if trust lost could be re-earned. We're seeing.
Another can never trust in what is, but constantly expresses distrust and asks for reinforcement. It's overly dramatic and completely insulting. Friends should provide support, but each of us has to absorb that and carry that strength inside somewhat. The past can make us suspicious. But we can't alter it. We can only believe in what is right now. We have to trust in what is, not what has been done to us.
But at the root of it is myself. I'm very miserly with my trust. I protect with a shell of bravado and bullshit. And then I complain about the vacuum I find myself in.
Yet too often when I've given in to my desire to trust, I've been disappointed. Sometimes, that's human frailty. Sometimes it's unexpressed expectations on my part. And in general, it's fear, that old habit of believing history is bound to repeat itself.
I hope that recognizing all that makes me more willing to trust. I hope I now find the right people in which to trust and am making better people decisions. I pray that finding trust honored by the right people will fortify me.
I guess in the end, what I have to do is trust myself.

Reunion

About a week ago, I went to a high school reunion. It was typical of those types of things. Liquor flowed, people told stories about one another they hope their children never hear. I saw people I'd seen in recent months and some I hadn't seen in more than three decades.

I don't consider high school a great time in my life. In a sea of 750 or so faces in my graduating class, I most often felt on the fringe. Some of that was simply being a teenager, some of it my attitude, some of it social class realities. But it's not something I hold in an idealized memory.

But time does even things out. I'm not sure caste systems and cliques ever completely disappear, but the boundaries fade greatly. You stop fearing speaking to the most beautiful girl in the class. Major jocks' physical appearance and athleticism fades. People improve their social skills and appearance.

And there's something to be said coming from the same basic time and place. Although some of those people preferred disco over country or could afford designer clothes over a single pair of torn jeans, there is some type of commonality. We talked about things we did that should mean we'd not lived to this point. And we joked we were lucky to "grow up in Mayberry."

We also recognized many of us grew up in a world that was laying the groundwork for too much substance abuse, where societal expectations often left us with absentee fathers who worked too much and parents who simply didn't know how to be emotionally honest.

But the ingredients of a safe environment and challenges under the surface were shared and created that group of people who'd survived and returned.

In addition, there were those who'd grown enough to express themselves in ways they hadn't then or in the interim. To say for their entire lives they'd held onto some little relationships that had been in that time and helped them throughout the rest of their lives. People recounted single conversations that had stayed all this time. They pointed out bonds they'd felt never frayed despite being stretched greatly by distances and time.

I saw and heard a lot of people in a lot of different ways express how important not only someone was to them, but is to them. Even if they hadn't spoken in 30 years.

I'm constantly surprised by our humanity. I think watching it and wanting to point it out is a major reason this blog exists. The human condition is so complex, unexpected and invigorating it should never be overlooked. We prove how complicated we are in the most basic simple ways. Little sentences like "thank you" or "you're important to me" are fuel for going on.

I'll raise a toast to the Class of '75. Not for the parties or the stories or the girlfriends. For the surviving humanity.

To remind myself

There's purpose for the great and the common.

". . . whether it's stories, poetry, music, whatever. None of it tells you anything new; it merely reminds you of something you already know but forgot you knew." Bill Witliff

Law and order at the Farmers' Market

It's the time of Texas bounty. The greens of watermelons, reds of tomatoes and golds of peaches are in abundance. So Rusty the Goofy Dog and I decided to take a Saturday morning trip to the local Farmers' Market.

Rusty loves to go, but he's still young enough that he hasn't gotten the complete hang of the leash yet. So I have to keep a close eye on the temperature and time of day to pick times when he can go. A Saturday morning during a rainy period where I'd spend at the most 15 minutes away seemed the perfect Rusty opportunity. I cranked down the windows halfway and headed off, with him barking a hearty "come back soon."

I returned to what had to be a riot. Police cars everywhere with lights emblazoned and even a siren honk a couple of times. Unfortunately, the center of the riot seemed my truck.

Now the Farmers' Market of proximity isn't in Austin, but a little burg surrounded by Austin. The Sunset Valley residents are a tight bunch, apparently feeling a bit squeezed by the Austin City Limits signs on all sides. They have two major shopping centers within their little limits, providing an abundance of tax receipts. That cash infusion allowed them to greatly beef up their police force. Now, it's not like the neighborhoods are crime ridden. But that plethora of patrol cars also lets Sunset Valley blanket some of the adjoining major thoroughfares. It's kind of an example of where the Old World phrase "police state" arose. But with a nice dose of capitalism throw in from citation receipts.

And now, something about my truck had galled that impressive force.

The officer informed me that although general law was that intervention was mandated if a dog or child was in a closed vehicle and in distress, the fine citizens of Sunset Valley had ordained to take it step farther. No dog could be left in a vehicle no matter what. And Rusty - head out the window, nose twitching in excitement and tongue at the roll ready to lick - was getting me a ticket.

She then kind of stood there. "You want my license?" I questioned. "Oh, yes sir," she said. I began to question who was in charge of this scene at the moment. Had a gotten the Valley's hire du jour?

Another car arrived. While Officer Confused ran my particulars, he came over to chat. "She make you roll down the windows?" Officer Two asked of his cohort. I told that's how they were when The Force descended on me. Officer Two shook his head and requested I take Rusty out. It's your clean uniform, I thought as I complied.

The so feared for Rusty bounded out and straight over to Officer Two, swishing tail flying. He did his goofy dance, all four feet into the air and headed twisted with an emphatic "Pet me! Pet me!" Yeah, it's a good thing the vigilant Sunset Valley force had been around to save Rusty from trauma.

Officer Two told me the emergency had been declared because a resident had called in a dog in distress locked in a car with the windows rolled up. Although he said nothing more, his demeanor and head angle made it clear he found this entire exercise a bit extreme. I'll admit, the law, but extreme.

Officer Confused came back with my clean record and offered me a warning to record our encounter. Obviously, I carry the air of a repeat offender. She wasn't too thrilled when I questioned why she needed my phone number, I'd identified myself and that was enough. I might have stood my rights grounds except all this standing in the parking lot waiting for the police to protect Rusty was getting him a bit heated. He would have been basking in air conditioning long ago if he didn't have to stand here waiting for saving. So I just gave away personal information and took my long pink punishment.

I'm glad there's a sentiment to protect the weaker of our world. It's too obvious there are those who think only of themselves and society might need to raise the stakes. But I also believe there's a line where people should mind their own damned business. There's a law to try and protect animals. The people of Sunset Valley don't need to step over the line and force their patrol cars to step needlessly in my business. There's not a crime wave at the Farmers' Market. There's not a threat to Rusty beyond whether he might bruise his nose making his ball squeak.

I'd like to let the complainant step forward and take a face full of Rusty slobber as evidence things are okay this side of the line.

Friendship expectations

I used to have a rule. Every friend got one strike. One mistake, one failure, and I no longer used the title friend for that person.
I thought at that time that I wanted my number of friends to be very limited. This was before friend had been minimalized by social networking, and my definition was as tight as my rules. It was appropriate few could qualify.
But the one strike rule was one to which I couldn't live up. And in reality, keeping my definition and rules so strict was simply a self-fulfilling prophesy. I came into friendship expecting to be disappointed, to be left, and therefore I did every thing I could to make it more likely.
Today I'm more likely to use the word friend in description. But in my heart, I'm not much more lenient.
Superficially, I'm a very social animal. But the reality is there's always a guard up, I'm always sort of inside looking out, peering over the character that is conducting the socialization. I'm now aware I'm fortunate to have a wide cast of acquaintances. But whether I'd internally admit many - if any - of them to the list of friends is highly questionable.
One astute person I know describes my usual haunt, with a standing cast of characters, as "easy." She claims the reason I choose the spot is because the others in attendance don't challenge me. And that although I'll sometimes complain of boredom, the reality is I'm most comfortable with the assurance I can coast. No one in the equation asks much of the other.
I know a young lady who I've described as a friend. But she's wildly inconsistent, disappearing for extended periods of time and becoming completely uncommunicative. Since I can't count on her, in my heart I don't consider her a friend. Some of it I write off to youth, some to personal issues about which she's confided in me but with which I'm uncertain she has come to terms. But the lack of unaccountability leaves me reticent.
Recently, a third party questioned our relationship to her. Without hesitation, she stated that she believed I'd do anything for her, that she could completely count upon me and I was therefore her friend. She'd never said anything even similar to that to me. But the third party passed it on with some incredulation at her vehemence.
When I've been in crisis, I've gone old school Texan. I don't turn to others. I try to "man up." It really doesn't work. While I'm internalizing, the pain is an infection festering. It's been my karma to have people unknowingly step up and do little things that catch my attention, make me call myself lucky. But it's been just that, luck, that has kept me alive and going.
Maybe that's because I have such strict internal friendship rules, am so careful, am so doubting, that I don't really believe I have anywhere to turn. Whatever vows of friendship and support have been made at me in the past, my expectation of failure is greater than my trust.
So, I guess the circle is do I really have friends? Am I ignoring what exists? Or are my standards reasonable for a designation I want to have special meaning? Or do I set unreachable standards in the belief I ought to expect failure that is bound to happen?
I hate a paragraph of questions. I expect myself to be more self aware than that. But experience shows I don't know the answer. I'm at one end of a friendship spectrum or the other. I just don't know where I really stand.

Don't act your age

I recently slept outside.
Now this is no small decision. After all, there's been a few decades pass since I entered this Earth. The ground and I became much less friendly a long time ago.
Part of it was that it was Earth Day. Part of it was that there was a meteor shower expected that night. Part was the weather cooperated. A big part was that I simply found my tent again.
I know I recalled elementary school years camping out in backyards. That would be in a more trusting, safe time. A friend and I would throw up tents and wait for the adult world to settle in. Then we'd roam the neighborhood some, through backyards that didn't have fencing distinctly marking territory. It was like taking to the prairie before barbed wire. We were limited only by our imaginations and braveries.
We go into our freezers in the garage and sneak way too many Fudgesicles. We'd swear that we were going to listen to the wind and our own tales right through the night and see the sunrise.
I doubt we ever really made it too far past midnight.
Then we'd creak out of the tent when awakened by the dawn, finding the frozen treat wrappers scattered all over the yard and feeling the sticky still on our hands. Usually, we'd part ways and go inside to warm comfortable beds for a few more hours, with a pact we'd say we'd seen every single-digit hour in the a.m. right up to sunrise.
It felt so good to remember all of it that I convinced myself a night in the outside dark would do me good. I didn't know what kind of good, but good.
My tent has netting over the top for which you can remove the cover and see up to the stars. I thought it a good viewing point for the after-midnight meteor shower.
I expected to make it to the shower easily as I hadn't been sleeping well anyway. Awakened at all hours by myself, random thoughts then keeping me from slipping back. Not worries really, often just questions or possibilities, those both out there and already missed. I guess the kind of stuff that sits in the back of a mind that lives long enough.
But I didn't make it to the celestial show. Nor did my expectations of cool night weather, humidity or hard ground keep me from sleep. It came on kind of easy and unexpected as a real love. Only daylight roused me.
And I realized why I'd really wanted to sleep outside, why I conjured up those long ago days and why the difficult elements didn't deter me from sleeping solidly. It was a feeling with which I awoke.
It was simply innocence.
Simple little things done completely on my own for my own edification give me something back. Something seemingly lost in everyone I know no matter their age. You can't really describe it, but you know it. It's when something feels pure and real. I had to call it innocence.
In the beginning I noted I'd done this recently, but the Earth Day reference shows it was weeks and weeks ago. In the interim I've thought it through and considered referencing it here. But I think I feared it would be tainted.
Instead, I decided to use the experience in hopes it might encourage someone else to seek their innocence. It's still there for everyone. They just have their own special version.
I fear as we get older, we give up on innocence. I more greatly fear as time goes on giving up happens earlier and earlier in life as life seems to get tougher in general. As more give up, it makes it harder on others and influences them to give up. It's a downward spiral.
Unless we don't let time beat us down and we still reach for innocence. Even if it's just a pilfered Fudgsicle with a friend at 10:30 at night. If we'll just ignore the common wisdom that says sleeping in the night air on the ground is no good for a body after a certain age. Because the truth is, the good it does for the soul completely heals the body.

Man of epiphany

I've been accused of being overly dramatic. I'll concede I have a tendency to overreact. But I think it's partially because I don't seem to learn slow and steady like most. While most seem to travel a path of consideration, time passed, understanding and resolution, I get struck by lightening.
I have moments of epiphany.
I can pinpoint the exact place and moment when I realized I was free from a past relationship. The same for my seeing a long-term relationship was over. I can stand in the same spot where I understood how much wasted time I spent in yesterdays and worrying about uncontrollable tomorrows while never giving right now notice or a chance.
I think others may believe they experience the same. But in observing, I find they refer to the exact remembrance of others' words in those moments, or simply looks upon faces. For me, it only comes solitary.
There are those who would call my sudden understanding divine intervention. I don't disagree. Sometimes understanding arrives like a thought in my head, a feeling in my soul, that was totally absent immediately prior. Sometimes it comes when I'm trying to construct something like this and it comes out somewhere my conscious had never envisioned.
It's not like I don't put myself through hell to get to this nirvana. I just never understand I'm traveling until I get to the destination. And that is a total surprise.
I've been accused of being mercurial. This is one of the reasons. It's because I don't understand until I'm there. And this enlightenment is strong and solid. It alters my behavior and function completely and irrevocably.
That's because I am an excellent liar - to myself. I tell myself something is true even though it makes me uncomfortable. But when the actual truth strikes me, it's undeniable. Most importantly, a simple indescribable feeling that truth is complete reality makes it impossible to ignore. It becomes dominant.
I'm grateful it happens. I spent a large portion of my life ignoring the slight nagging that something didn't ring true and had disconnected the real voice that sometimes spoke out of the blue. For all those years, I was fading. When I let myself hear the voice again, it came more often and louder. When I became conscious of it, my life began to alter.
I can't predict or ask for my moments of understanding. They don't have a trigger. They just are suddenly there. But then I guess that is a definition of epiphany.

Blessed friendship

I'm fortunate that I get to encounter a lot of people. I'm a sociable guy most of the time. I'm even more fortunate that a few of those part with some impression. It seems favorable - most of the time.
Some of those folks I see very regularly. And in some circles, that is identified as the creation of friendships.
But I was recently reminded of the special chemistry that creates real friendship. It's a lesson I'm especially thankful for.
The lesson came in the return of a long-time friend. We'd been separated by miles and some sort of discomfort for years. But reuniting was quite simply easy.
Despite the gaps, we were immediately comfortable. It stemmed from a sense we know each other beyond the surface. We have history, good and bad, which has let us see inside one another. We have shared experience that has tightened the bonds. We didn't deeply delve into the whys and what ifs of what had gone before. We just slipped into now and let what we each are, and what we are together, be. We are intimate in our physical reaction to one another and our comfortable laughter. More than half a decade of disconnect didn't exist.
In more than half a century of life, I think there are maybe four people like this for me. One I see sporadically, another seldom, a third not in years. And then this fourth.
But for all of them, it's as if time doesn't pass. This friend has a somewhat cynical theory that "people don't change." But instead of coming off jaded, it came off as connection. I think the friend believes people grow and become more aware, but that there is a core value system. We count on the good and bad in that value system, the fact we recognize it in one another, as a strong part of friendship. And it lets us pick up wherever time paused for us.
I've become a settler. I can often label friendship, maybe even love, in relationships that fall short of expectations. If that's all there is for an extended time, that's what you take.
But visits like this one, friends like this one, remind me something more is possible. I hope it makes me hold out for better. Because when you have friends who justify these expectations, who are like no others for some reasons you can't even identify, you feel blessed.