February 10 1999 My clean and sober date. 25 fucking years. I suppose I should write something, I don't know, encouraging, or insightful, or anyway something. Sometime around 5 years clean, I started to have more good days that bad days. And that ratio has only increased. But those first 5 years were crazy making. This was not the firs...

Audio Also in my time off the net I while visiting my best friend. Listening to music. She has an almost completely analog music system. She does not belong to a streaming service. Listens to vinyl and tape. It would be totally analog, but she does have a neighbor down the road, who will for a small fee, take downloaded FLAC files and ...

So what is this? This is a very short work, prompted by the following two quotes: “Talk, loudly and frequently and in detail, about the future you want. You can’t manifest what you don’t share.” ~ Madeline Ashby And “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within....

Caution: This is a rambling, unfinished thread. I just want to put it out in the world. I have some thoughts. ~~~~~~~~ What is a flourishing community? How do we sustain & grow better, individually, in community? Here is a start to the answer: First, We need to grasp the idea that individuality, & community are completely and universal...

The Gift Note: The other day a close friend of mine had a birthday. He had been feeling sort of at a loss, unsure of what he should be doing. So I gave him a gift, with these instructions. Instructions: Problem statement. Life ain’t fun anymore. The muse moved out. There’s a hole where the meaning used to be. Even comedy and snark seem...

Informative Transgressions As one gets older, one has a larger historical frame, and thus can notice subtle changes. I have noticed a marked increase in what I call “Informative Transgressions”. In my casual conversations with people I don’t really know, but interact with often. The tone, and the content of stories, has remarkably chan...

Xmas 2020 In the true sprit of the day. I will be out in the cold, helping to feed the homeless. Also distributing gifts of warm clothes, and camping gear. In my area the homeless population has grown by 20%, and we expect that to triple in the coming months. One thing different this year, the number of people in need, the number of pe...

A cat story. So in 1991 I move to Portland Or. Was clean and sober about 3 years. One day on my way home from work I heard some kittens crying in an abandoned house. On investigation I found two small kittens buried in refuse in a back room. Took them home, and then to a vet. One didn't make it but the other I adopted. We thought is wa...

On a personal note: My working life: For about 400 years all printing was done by wooden, steel, or lead type. Or etched metal plates, for line drawings. Now it is all done by computers and lasers. But for a brief time between these two technologies, existed photo mechanical offset printing. This is what I became expert in, working for...

Safety Third: Some time in the early 1990's I moved to a new city and needed a job badly. So I applied at several temp agencies. After working 2 or 3 truly shity jobs, the temp agency called and said, "because you showed up to work on time and worked hard at each assignment, we have a very special long term placement for you", (by the ...

My recipe for great coffee. Cold brewed coffee. So why do this? Flavor, Flavor, Flavor. Very low acidity, almost no bitterness, and best of all it is just plain simple. One can make a lot of it at one time, so no waiting in the morning. Just heat and drink. It all starts with good coffee beans. Don't scrimp on this. Good beans cost mor...

To do and notice: Some of the fabric of what most call the Internet is unraveling. The blue bird has self destructed, mastodon and other social media have grown. But also splintered the idea of one size fits all. This is generally a very good thing for most people. It is bad news for the few that had become dependent on getting the wor...

So what is this? This is a very short work, prompted by the following two quotes: “Talk, loudly and frequently and in detail, about the future you want. You can’t manifest what you don’t share.” ~ Madeline Ashby And “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within....

This started when I was about four years old we had moved to the San Juan Islands and my dad was teaching me how to swim in Puget Sound. He did this by having me climb on his back, my arms around his neck while he would swim slowly out into the bay. One morning as we got to the dock, and an old fisherman said that a pod of Orcas were v...

Random notes on: Is Buddhism a religion, or a cultural technology. "You Don't Look Like A Buddhist." When one first comes to Buddhism, one is often put off, both by the strange language, and the fact that everyone seems to be talking to each other like "insiders". As if they already know this stuff, and are repeating some inside joke. ...

My Christmas Story. Just over 37 years ago, the first time I kicked. It wasn’t the last time, Yet it was the one time it happened at Christmas. Many years ago, (1986), I was destitute, homeless, and strung-out. I finely decided to go to a medical detox and get clean. I camped out in front of the detox center for 3 days before they had ...

So I don't know if I ever explained the glyph that I use as a photo here: This is more than 60 years old, I first drew it when I was about 10 years old. So... When my oldest sister went away to college, she missed her younger siblings terribly, and we missed her. So we wrote to each other almost every day. (pen, paper, and snail mail)....

The Three Jewels as Hyperobject. One of the most common objects in modern western Buddhism is the "vow of the three jewels". Sometimes called taking refuge, or the novice precepts. There are many translations of this vow but the one I want to use as an example is the following: I take refuge in the Buddha The Buddha takes refuge in me....

The Refuge House So what is this? This is a very short work, the third in a series, prompted by the following two quotes: “Talk, loudly and frequently and in detail, about the future you want. You can’t manifest what you don’t share.” ~ Madeline Ashby And “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you di...

The tree story So this was in 1982 or 83, and I was newly married, with two small children. Living a bit out of the way in central California. I had kicked heroin in ’81 but was still drinking heavy. My wife asked me to quit and told me to go to AA. … So I thought I would give it a try, anyway I did sober up, and then life got crazy. M...

So what is this? This is a very short work, the second in a series, prompted by the following two quotes: “Talk, loudly and frequently and in detail, about the future you want. You can’t manifest what you don’t share.” ~ Madeline Ashby And “Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones...

To the youth. Ya, we fucked it all up. We old enough to know better, we did it. Yes, it is, really and totally fucked, we know that now. I could say, sorry, but that cheapens both you and me. I could blame it on forces outside my control, But that would be a lie. If we had been paying attention, but we weren't. If we had been honest, r...

She is the old women that lives at edge of the village. She lives alone yet is never lonely. She is a great and close friend to cats, dogs, birds, and all manor of woodland creatures. Young children are afraid of her. Teenagers mock her. Adults shun her. She is the crone, the hag, the harpy. She is my best friend. To those she likes, s...

Letter to a newcomer after I spoke at an NA convention. Thank you for the compliment at the end of the NA meeting. I often feel like an idiot after I share, because I can't edit out the stupid bits. So it is nice knowing someone listens. Also thanks for the questions about how to find “the right thing to do.” I thought I share a bit mo...

(this is a fictional short story, only a tiny bit autobiographical.) “So what seems to be the problem.” I am shut down by these words for they are so mundane so unexpectedly cliche that I can’t think. They are at the same moment, condescending and baneful, as if all I had to do was identify, to some certain precision, a symptom, a mala...

The Law of polarity is to understand that every problem, regardless of the complexity has a solution within itself. From the “Heart Sutra” “Here, Shariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptin...

So empty of what? Learning to put on a monks robe in the heat of northern Thailand. Being the butt of all the jokes, and at least a foot taller than all the other young novices. Eating fire, sitting till my knees broke. Waking at dawn. Wanting it so bad. I thought this was cool. The sitting was the best part, we were equals when our bu...

My hip, and irreverent take on the 4 Noble Truths. 1. You are totally fucked. 2. The reason you’re totally fucked. 3. You can unfuck yourself. 4. This is how to unfuck yourself. ~~~~~~~ 1. Ok, all crap aside, this is important. Knowing that your suffering is real, Is incredibly beneficial. This feeling of unsatisfactoriness, of not bei...

Sitting at home doomscrolling the news of pandemics, lockdowns, babies in cages, black folk shot in the back for no reason, and the slow but inevitable destruction of the habitable planet. Watching 30% of the nation cheer this destruction on. One can scream, cry, and yell until you just can’t do that anymore. Or, you can bake bread, se...

After reading Penny Red’s great post Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless , I have some words. First. Yes I consider myself a progressive, a anarcho-socialist, and a buddhist. I am also an old white guy, who has played the game on the easy setting my whole life. Not that it felt easy to me, but that daily life, school, work, love, social...