Social Media: Opiate of the Masses

Welcome to the Brave New World.

Everywhere you look people have their heads bent, their eyes staring at screens. Someone should be making neck braces so we can stare at screens in comfort. Make the braces in colors that fit our personalities. Internet providers already know what we like, what is taking them so long to get with it?

Alas, the days when people looked at one other are passing away. We are addicted to social media. What does the future hold for the human race? Shorter arms? Longer necks? Mass myopia? Should we fear technology if it separates strangers from one another? Is technology our friend or the new slave master?

In less than ten years I have seen the few become the many in regards to the number of mini-devices that are being used in public. Our devices have become our workplaces, computers, phones, TVs, and social managers. Facebook is now passé. Tumblr will be passé soon, and its founder off developing another social media platform before he turns twenty-five. Your GPS doesn't talk to you? OMG! Make a pouty face with your colon and parenthesis key, people! I do not make those icons. Or speak Internet Slang-lish. I am very uncool.

I once thought of the fascination with social media as being an ego driven thing, and a passing fad. It proclaimed the person was hip: a mover and shaker. Now it simply equates to keeping abreast of everything. The perception we have swallowed hook, line, and sinker is that the time before these devices was the Dark Ages. How quick we forget that humanity has survived without our social media gadgetry for fifty thousand years. Then it was  tête-à-tête.  We need more vis-à-vis and less voyeurism on the viewing screen. We need more humanity in our interactions, and less chatting and texting. Time savings be damned; let us proceed backwards to the more genteel times of the past, if they can be found.

Q: Do we need to be in touch so much? What are we to do when the Tree of Knowledge is at our fingertips? Do we dare not to eat the apple? Shh, I hear the sound of a snake slithering amongst the leaves of the tree. The reality is that the Internet is a mixed bag of good and bad, like life. Porn has usurped romantic love for many people, and the Internet has the most enormous database of porn the world has ever known. 

The concept of what a family looks like is endangered due to our new freedoms. Pregnancy will soon become a test tube option. Curiously, with the use of technology, the younger generation has a higher level of impotence, and it isn't just hot baths and nicotine that have done the damage. 

It has been shown that sperm counts have decreased when in proximity to cell phones and laptops. http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/04/05/researchers-find-sperm-counts-on-the-decline/  So, if trends continue, sterility will become the norm. Then you will have to grow your child at the corporation. Then you will program your child; choose its sex; and choose its career as easily as pie. Stud services will be in high demand. But why work so hard? Let the corporation do all the work for you! After all, don't they know their employment needs better than you? Relax. Isn't life grand? 

The Internet has made research, entertainment, work, and education, instantaneous experiences. The devices have come down in price to such a degree that nearly everyone has at least one of them. Technology has made us slaves. We have become lazy and dull, convinced we are more learned and on top of the world.

Example A: Tattoos. No one cared about tattoos twenty years ago but bikers, prisoners, and sailors. But now it is an ongoing fad for the young who have forgotten that art is best viewed on gallery walls and in public spaces. Most of the older generations were inoculated by having seen art and knew the difference between the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and the one made of ink under the skin of a foolish generation. The young and naïve were swayed by peer pressure to get tattoos. Few are the independent younger thinkers who said ‘No.’ 

Likewise, we have been duped by those in control of the Internet, who have brainwashed us to believe that in order to survive and excel we must participate, or be left behind. Do it or die. None of the young are saying 'No' to the Internet. They were raised on it. They need it. Or so they think. But Bill Gates didn't have the Internet when he was growing up, did he? 

As we become more urban, the implements that once were understood: the hoe, the hammer, the saw, are forgotten. When I was a boy, seeds were anyone's to use, but not now; now you can be sued for using seeds owned by corporations that once made Agent Orange, such as Monsanto.  The same is true of chips. Want to see high security? Try walking into Intel's chip making facilities, or anyplace anymore. One day you will need a card to slide through a security reader at the door of Macy's and your local grocery. Why? Because if you haven't got the right software under your skin, you can't do anything. That is where this is all going, my friends.  Big Brother Land.

In the technological badlands, human beings still live in the 19^th Century.  People still make quilts and violins by hand. People make their own wood shakes for their roofs, plant crops, and listen to nature. Nature has gotten by just fine without us, and it will get on much better when we are gone. I don’t want that day to come.

But here is my prediction: there will be a backlash to the social media madness that has gripped the world. There will large desertions from the mainstream. In Portland, young and old disenfranchised people refer to the coming Zombie Apocalypse. The unemployed, less tech members of society will be the walking dead, outcasts to be feared as being barbaric. But here’s the rub: the zombies will be the normal ones.

As robot technology improves, menial labor skills such as how to replace a toilet, dovetail a wooden joint, or make an espalier with non-GMO apples, will be more rare. Monsanto will select the next president behind the scenes. They will dictate the wars that will generate the most income for the corporations. They will own us, right down to the genetically modified organisms floating in our bloodstreams.

I am not referring to a far distant future when we are terra-forming Mars; I am suggesting this will be the reality in fifteen years. We will be known by our barcodes. Our hands and heads will be scanned to pay for our groceries and merchandise at the checkout counters. Physical money will disappear from use. Our diets will be pills that are created by the government-managed companies. Take the red pill or the blue pill; ether way you are going down the rabbit’s hole, Mr. Anderson.

This scenario has been described in sci-fi books and films for years, but most of us did not believe it would come to pass. We hoped it was simply the overactive imaginations of sci-fi writers. I grew up in the generation that was certain we would blow ourselves up long before interplanetary or interstellar travel was an everyday experience. My generation expected an Orwellian future similar to the cult film by George Lucas’s THX-1138. I was foolish to believe the internal combustion engine would one day be eliminated. No. They will not stop building coal-fired power plants, not while there is still coal in the ground. Not for hundreds of years, a time when we cannot go outside for fear of the ruined ozone that lets the UVA and UVB radiation roast us.

Should we be wary of technology? Is this a witch hunt? Should we be worried we will cook our brains by the use of these social media devices? Should we submit to having chips implanted in our heads or hands so we can be online 24/7? Many would say no, but what if your employer required it or you would not be employed? And what if grocery stores and banks required it or you could not buy food or cash your check?

But wait a minute here. Am I being a pariah? Should I be concerned when I see where the world is headed? Am I being unjustly paranoid? People feared television. People feared telephones. Isn’t the social media-craze simply another great new thing to help us experience life in a better way?

Maybe. But what if everyone’s devices suddenly went dead and we were forced to join reality? Are we so afraid of dealing with strangers that we must immerse ourselves in devices? Must we be talking to everyone 24/7? Why?

Technology is the new opiate of the masses. Should we be concerned with who is directing the flow of information? Information is a powerful tool for those in power. If we are told that terrorists have forced America into another war, can we believe what we are being told? Digital wizardry is so good that if they broadcast a terrorist bombing of an embassy in the Middle East, how would we know it was faked? Is deception not the inevitable outcome of too few people controlling the media?

What is the future of the human race if our lives revolve around social media in more tailored ways? If Google knows everything you like, every site you’ve visited, everyone you know in your circles, and is customizing your experience, then are we not all simply numbers in a cloud database? I have noticed I cannot search for anything without the words filling what I am searching for before I have finished typing. It knows me that well. Or it thinks it does. And who is “it” and who is “me” and will there come a time when I do not know the difference?

In the next Presidential election, the candidates will not travel the country. They will simply appear on our smart phones and tablets to give their speeches. The outcome will have already been worked out. Either candidate is their candidate. You only think you have freedom to choose. That is what they want you to think.

I recently watched a revealing National Geographic Bee on PBS. The finalists, ages ten to thirteen, all had roots in India or the Middle-East. They had been selected from over four million children, and were the brightest of the bright. As the older generation dies off, twelve year olds will begin to rule the world. They already do.

Do we not need holograms to take us to the next level? Do we stand on the brink of Star Wars technology? Is anything beyond the grasp of human beings if we can imagine it? Do we even need to go anywhere to do our work? Will robots take over the manual labor of the usual blue-collar occupations? And once we are free to do whatever we can imagine, do we actually need to do them if we can simply do them in our heads, as in the book ‘Feed’? And if our lives are taken over by the imaginary lives those in control want us to believe, how will we know we are generating electricity as in The Matrix? 

It has been postulated that all of this perceived existence is a sophisticated computer program. If that is so, we are already more deeply entrenched as slaves than we believe. I do not think this is the case. Not yet. But soon, very soon.

Everybody Was Karate Chop Fighting.

The secret to my surviving being hit by a car?

As a writer, it is always important to get into your characters' heads to know how they think and their motivations to do whatever you have decided they will be doing in the plot. Convincing writing is best derived from the author's personal experiences. I write this as a prologue to telling you about my latest adventure: being hit by a car while riding my bicycle.

I don't know about you, but I sometimes become a voyeur of my own life. I watch myself doing things and I analyze my motivations. In another life I was probably Sherlock Holmes. So four days ago, while riding my bike in the bike lane in the town of Beaverton, I had a front row observation of a man being hit by a car. I saw myself peddling along on an otherwise uneventful ride to Kinko's. I saw a tan colored late model Toyota sedan pull alongside me. We were side by side for perhaps fifty feet, when the driver abruptly turned right into a mini-mall entrance we were passing.

The rest of the event was compressed into time lapse imagery. I braked and started to swerve, but there was nowhere to go but A.) Over the front hood of the car. Or: B.) to bounce off and hope that asphalt was soft as a Sealy Posturepedic® bed.

I took Plan B. My front tire hit the front fender and tire of the car and my bike and I went airborne for perhaps eight feet. That was when my guardian angel suspended the laws of physics and allowed me to land on my back (and most of my right side) without breaking a bone. Being from strong and stubborn Scandinavian stock I only lay on the ground for thirty seconds or so. My glasses and hat had been knocked off by the impact and lay a few feet away. I put them on and then saw the driver of the car had come to a stop beside me. His window was down but I could not see his face. I shouted, "Pull over and park your car!"

I suppose, in hindsight, I might have said a million other things. I could have shouted, "Well, that was fun, but next time, try running over my legs!" 

The driver pulled ahead and stopped. A normal person would have gotten out of their car and rushed to my side to say something like, "Oh god, I am so sorry! Are you hurt?" But no, the driver just sat in his car and did nothing. So I sat up and slowly stood, being unsure if I was really okay, and wondering if I might be Bruce Willis's cousin and indestructible. I mention this because I fell down a flight of stairs when I was four years old, onto a slab of concrete, and only broke my collarbone. My theory is that something changed in me at that point besides lost I.Q. points.

Adrenalin is a friend in times like these. I was high on adrenalin, and though the pain was slowly being broadcast to my brain from various parts of my body, my brain was whistling some crazy lyric from the 1980s, like ". . .don't stand so, don't stand so, don't stand so close to me." The man got out of his car. He was a Japanese-American man, a dead-ringer for Pat Morita of Karate Kid fame  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMCsXl9SGgY

"Wax on, wax off," said the driver. I blinked, sure that I'd been transported to Karate Kid IV. Within a few minutes an ambulance, fire truck, and police car arrived. The officer was about to let the old man go without a ticket when an eyewitness showed up. She handed me her card, which indicated she was an off-duty policewoman. You can't get a better eyewitness than that. At that point the officer changed his mind and cited the driver, whose name was Yoichi, age 85. Yoichi was a nice guy; he said he hadn't seen me. Well, yeah, I thought, what's the alternative, that a geriatric group had put a hit on me?

The ambulance driver looked hard at me and asked if I was okay. He did not examine me. When I said I had some pain he didn't say, "Oh, sit down, let me check you out." Instead, he said, "You were lucky. You should buy a helmet. Do you want a ride to a hospital?"

I didn't think I was dying, nor did my bones feel broken or sprained, so I said I'd be fine. I didn't think the obvious: how was I going to get home? Within a few minutes everyone left. I pushed my bike in a circle for a while and then I got a call from a friend and mentioned I needed a ride home. Later, after lying on my bed for several hours, and having left a message for one of my brothers, I went to the VA Hospital in Portland. By then I was just plain silly. I was seeing the comedy of the event and was making jokes with the staff as they checked me out. They did CT scans, and one X-Ray. They wanted to X-Ray my head because my jokes were indicators I'd hit my head, but they also said by shooting my head full of radiation would adversely affect my thyroid and gray matter, so I declined their offer. Pain has a way of sneaking up on a person who has been tossed onto asphalt, but I didn't think that one through. I was loony because I knocked my noggin a wee bit.

If you have watched Scrubs, you know there are characters in hospitals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldZoJvY5i1I I recommend any aspiring comedy writer to spend half a day in their local hospital if they are running low on comic material. I had hit the Mother Lode of situational comedy. The very first thing they did, once they decided I was patient worthy, was to strap a neck brace on me. The nurse asked, before she put the brace on what my pain level was on a scale of one to ten. I said it was about five. After she put it on she asked what my pain level was and I said it was at least ten. I didn't say that to mess with her head, the brace made things worse. Later they would make me undress without taking the brace off. I think that was when I grew two inches.

The young woman who first came to look at me was a fourth year medical student named Amity, like the horror movie. She looked like she was from the South Pacific, and the doctor, whose name was Dr. Tom, seemed right out of a daytime drama. While they distracted me by probing my body with their zoological experiment of looking for my spleen, a big man named Eric was strapping my right arm with an intravenous tube just in case they wanted to give me smoothies.

My brother eventually found me. I had been prodded and probed for over two hours and there is only so much you can ask of your siblings before they walk away from you. When he came in to my curtained room I was sitting in a lotus position. He joked that it looked like the staff had taken off my legs. This is why my family has been able to weather so many recent calamities. We make jokes about everything. I told him I was the type of guy who would be making a pun and I keel over onto my head. My brother had recently spent a week in a hospital due to pneumonia. He said his blood pressure had gone down to 50 over 50. Any lower and he'd be a troglodyte crawling onto land from a primordial soup.

They were about to release me. A nurse checked my vitals once more. I had 100% oxygen level, which will probably get me on the Dean's List. My blood pressure was 130 over 70. I was underweight, and under-loved, but my bones were made of a new space age material. I don't know what the hospital did with the blood they took from me, but I expect the government will be phoning me soon to find out why I'm so tough. I suspect it is due to my ingestion of multi-vitamins and those delicious Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats http://www.bobsredmill.com/steel-cut-oats.html Or, maybe I'm just lucky.

Date Night With Mr. Booker T. Jones!

Booker T. Jones and his magic fingers in Portland.

I have always been glib, and glibness can pay off on the PDX Pipeline website (pdxpipeline.com), where there are opportunities to win free tickets to events around Portland, simply by posting comments about your worthiness to win.

I’ve never considered myself lucky, thus I was not prepared in February of this year when I won a pair of tickets to see the Portland Symphony Orchestra playing “Music of Film” at the Scottish Rite Temple in downtown. The PCO honored legendary conductor, arranger and clarinetist, Norman Leyden, who was over ninety years of age. Singer Susannah Mars performed Moon River with Leyden that evening. (If I can still feed myself at age ninety I will consider it a miracle). There was also a drawing for a piano, which I might have won had I had five dollars to buy a raffle ticket.

It was a well-heeled crowd: women were in glittery gowns, some of the men wore tuxes. The orchestra played selections from cinema classics, including Moon River, Laura, West Side Story, Bridge over the River Kwai, The Magnificent Seven, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as well as more recent films such as  Schindler’s List, Cinema Paradiso, Star Trek and several James Bond films. I would have added a few other songs, such as the soundtrack from the film, Vertigo, for example, or Bell Book and Candle, but then I am a big fan of Jimmy Stewart (and Alfred Hitchcock).

The highlight of the evening was when the crowd was encouraged to whistle along to Colonel Bogey’s March, (from the film “Bridge on the River Kwai”). My whistling caught the ear of a mother and her two beautiful teenage daughters, who complimented my whistling. They caught my attention by their speaking Romanian, which I mistook for German. During intermission in the basement the Romanians and I sampled free snacks and wine offered from staffed kiosks. 

Lightning struck twice weeks later when I won a pair of tickets to see Booker T. Jones and Charlie Hunter at Dante’s at 3^rd and Burnside on Sunday, April 14^th. It was titled the “Soul’d Out Music Festival.” This time around I had a date from POF, which stands for Plenty of Fish, http://www.pof.com/ one of the better free online dating sites. My date and I met at Powell’s Books, because it is only six blocks, (at 10^th and Burnside) from Dantes. I was the perfect date (or so I thought), arriving early to buy my date a rugelach pastry from Powell’s café display case. I also brought her an organic Guayaki Yerba Mate “Enlighten Mint” flavored drink. 

After talking for a few minutes we walked to Dantes. We passed groups of homeless men, many of whom were standing in doorways of run-down buildings. Now there is a wake-up call. But as long as you keep moving you’re safe in Portland. My natural tendency is to stop and make conversation with people who are down on their luck. It is especially heartbreaking to see young people who are homeless, standing in the rain in Portland.

When we arrived there was a line of several hundred people waiting to get in. I saw nobody over age 45 in the line. By the time we were inside there was no place to sit except the wide ledge by the front windows. It was very dark in Dantes, lit only by soft red and yellow lights, the glow of a faux tabletop charcoal fire near us, and the stage itself, which was framed by large red velvet curtains drawn back by large cords. My date and I seemed to hit it off, conversation came easily.

We were surrounded by young people who’d been lucky enough to seat themselves at the twenty of so small round tables. When the music finally started, nearly an hour later, we had to make our own dance floor by the table in front of us. My date was a reluctant and somewhat stiff dancer, (sort of like Elaine from the Seinfeld episode.) Booker T. and his two fellow musicians played a slew of familiar tunes, including Hip Hug Her, Pretty Woman, Born Under a Bad Sign, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, Dock of a Bay, and Ain’t No Sunshine When You’re Gone.

That same night, on PBS, I saw Booker T. Jones and many other musicians performing at the White House for the Obama family and their guests. Jones' White House performance occurred the week before he performed at Dantes.  So, in a second hand way, I'd shaken hands with the President.

Resveratrol: The new fountain of youth.

If Morpheus asks you, always pick the red pill if it contains Resveratrol.

Juan Ponce de León had a good idea: Find the Fountain of Youth. Alas, it didn’t work out for poor Ponce. 

But for millions of Baby Boomers, who are looking at a steady degradation of youth, there is a potential window left to reclaim their lost youth. What is the name of this magic substance? Resveratrol. It is a chemical found in red wine, red grape skins, purple grape juice, mulberries, and in smaller amounts - in peanuts. Now you know why the French are such notoriously great lovers, despite their poor diets and chain smoking. It is apparently their regular consumption of wine that has given them, 'joie de vivre!'

The “French Paradox”—the observation that mortality from coronary heart disease is relatively low in France despite relatively high levels of dietary saturated fat and cigarette smoking—led to the idea that regular consumption of red wine might provide additional protection from cardiovascular disease. Red wine contains Resveratrol and even higher levels of flavonoids. These polyphenolic compounds have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other potentially anti-atherogenic effects (in the test tube studies) and in animal models of atherosclerosis.

Personally, I have marveled at the individuals I’ve met who seemed to be in possession of a youth serum. If I must be French to be Peter Pan, sign me up. And while there are many, especially in Hollywood, and probably in France, who use plastic surgery to make it appear as if they are forever young, their internal organs don’t agree with the prima facie evidence. Because, as we all know, beauty is usually only skin deep. But Resveratrol works from the inside out by turning on the SIRT1 ‘longevity gene.’ http://www.johnsonupdaydowndaydiet.com/html/resveratrol-why-it-works.html

The largest study ever completed of organic food was done in 2007, and the results indicated that organic fruits and vegetables contain 40% more antioxidants than non-organic fruits and vegetables. So organic Resveratrol is better than non-organic Resveratrol. To obtain the potency necessary to turn on the cellular rejuvenation process, it would be necessary to drink about 300 bottles of red wine per day. I don’t know about you, but I can barely get through half a bottle of  Merlot on my own. Knowing the consumption of alcohol has negative side effects, and that no one could drink that much wine, manufacturers such as Reserveage Organics of Gainesville, Florida, put a whopping 250mg of Resveratrol per pill. Take two per day and get the benefits without the hangover.

I don’t want to grow old. Until I found Reservatrol, it seemed I was on the slippery slope of middle age. Having come from a competitive, athletic minded family, I figured I’d outrun Mother Nature. I tried running for a while, but gave it up because of laziness and lack of a running partner. I have played tennis for over thirty years, but at the present time I have no partner. Maybe staying young is all about having a partner. I do a fair amount of cycling. Both Portland and Eugene are bike friendly cities. Cycling has been good for my legs; I haven’t missed driving my car. Swimming would be the best exercise, but because of my allergy to chlorine, swimming would have to be in a saltwater pool, a lake, or the ocean. I also read about the positive boost to testosterone levels that can be achieved by short strenuous workouts. More testosterone means not only better sexual performance, but better health for a man. So I pump iron once a day. Stress is the enemy of good health. Thus, I have been working on being less stressed out. People think I am ten years younger than I am. Maybe by using Resveratrol they’ll think I’m in my early thirties. Or I’ll hover around, like Dick Clark, looking forty-five or fifty at age seventy. How I'll survive financially if I live to be 110, is another question. So obviously, if Resveratrol really works, maybe not everyone should use it. And they won't, because most people don't care about staying healthy. Because staying healthy requires discipline, and most people do not have discipline. But I may be hit by a bus, which is something not even a fountain of youth supplement can prevent.

 My commitment to consuming only organic foods has been strong the last fifteen years, and may be my ticket to living to age ninety. I have only one bad habit, and that is I don’t drink enough water; but finding water that is just water is getting ever more difficult. Tap water is so toxic I avoid it altogether. There are so many bottled waters that have fruit flavors. Bottle water is big business now. Fearing declining soda sales, huge companies like Coke have gone into the water business. Coke makes Vitamin Water, which has a pretty scary list of ingredients. My fear of Bisphenol A makes me paranoid of a lot of plastic bottled water. The fluoride they’ve added to the tap water makes me think of Nazi Germany. Pretty soon I will take up Howard Hugh’s habit of wearing white gloves. 

But I am digressing. Here are the three big benefits of Resveratrol.

• Reduces cardiovascular disease.

• Inhibits the growth of cancerous cells.

• Lengthens the lifespan of animals.

So, by now I hope you are eager to get your hands on this youth serum. And you can; though the price is a bit steep ($40 for a bottle of pills, and $30 for the tonic). But ask yourself if staying young and healthy is worth the investment. I don’t mind being a guinea pig. With Resveratrol, there appears to be no side effects.

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/resveratrol/

Dancing With Sharks in Portland.

Trust is a main ingredient in dancing, and in life.

My brother invited me to his daughter's Bat-Mitzvah last weekend. I don't speak Hebrew, but it was interesting, though I am not big on religious rituals. I avoid them if at all possible. This is what happens to a lot of ex-Catholics. The ceremony was okay, but the best part was seeing my niece's sincerity and obvious preparation to do a Bat-Mitzvah. 

Catholicism and Judaism are not that different. Yeah, there is the difference of opinion about Jesus. That's a big thing for some people, but not for me. The liturgy, especially in the orthodox Jewish congregations I've been to, remind me of mass. In Temple Beth Israel, in San Francisco, the women wear scarves like in the old Catholic masses, and are seated on the left side of the temple. The men are on the right side, bobbing incessantly. Apparently, men are always on the right side of God. So I guess a woman rabbi is a welcome idea to a lot of women. 

We didn't do much bobbing at St. Mary's; we were genuflectors (kneeling, standing, kneeling, etc.). We had first communion and confirmation, instead of Bar-Mitzvahs and Bat-Mitzvahs. We had the stiff perfunctory prayers to memorize (which I have since forgotten). Now the thought of all that stuff numbs my mind. My kind of religious experience isn't found in a building. It could be helping a stranger push their car. That is God's love in action. Faith in God is, for me, all about being genuine. I talk to God as I ride on buses, or while I peel carrots. I guess I believe in a George Burns sort of God. Maybe that makes me John Denver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNUUFVLkYII

In Denmark and Germany, my ancestors were probably Jews, Lutherans, and Catholics. Now I am not a member of any denomination. Memberships scare me. I also avoid political party affiliations. I even dropped out of Boy Scouts, but I had my reasons. I witnessed a kid plant a hatchet into his foot while pounding in a tent spike. That cured me of memberships for life.

Religious experiences are fine; I am simply not a big fan of the pageantry. Several of my brothers and one sister also attended my niece's Bat-Mitzvah. The rabbi was a woman; I had the impression she was a lesbian. I could be wrong about that. How that fits into Judaism I have no idea. She also seemed short on patience, though she was a great presenter. She reminded me of a stand up comedian. It was the little things she did, the curt way she talked to kids, and how she grabbed the challah from me. Maybe I just notice too much, or expect too much of those in the clergy. I should probably have mentioned my observation to my brother and sister-in-law, but who am I to tear down their temple? It doesn't really matter what I think about their rabbi. And possibly they would have told me more about the rabbi and I would have a different opinion. Maybe I was just looking for sharks that day.

I mention the rabbi because this is what Portland is like. People are hip or they pretend to be. But their dorsal fins are shark-like. After the Bat-Mitzvah ceremony a light lunch was served in the basement. The building is also used by The Church of Christ, so there were postings on the bulletin board about Christian events. I like the idea of a melting pot of faiths. Ultimately, we all could have gotten our beliefs wrong. Maybe we are stooges who swallowed lies. I enjoyed the communion of ideas as I ate lox and bagels, and drank Newman's Own lemonade. I gave my niece a cool CD from the Sounds True Collection, that featured a Jewish couple. One of their songs is 'Shalom,' which is like a meditation length song with only one word to remember: Shalom.  http://www.amazon.com/Shalom/dp/B0040PUKE2

I had time to kill after the ceremony so I hopped off the MAX rail at Pioneer Square, drawn by the sound of live music, where couples were dancing to swing music. I felt the stiffness of the temple ceremony sloughing away. It was balmy for the second day in March, and a few of the men had sweat marks on the backs of their dark shirts. I stood behind the five piece band checking out the dancers and the musicians. There was a man on an upright bass, a trumpet player with a muffle on the end of his horn, the lead singer sat in a chair strumming a mandolin. Brother, they were cookin.' They just needed a fiddle player, but they were doing pretty good with what they had. I didn't even catch the name of the group.

I love watching dancers. What intrigues me about men and women connecting in public is that they are often strangers to one another. This was also the case during my tango years. I am sure there is a voyeuristic element to it; but it isn't necessarily a sexual thing. I am simply amazed by humanity in all its multi-faceted beauty. On the dance floor, there are no political, religious, economic, or ethnicity barriers. You just bring your sense of timing, and ability to connect with your partner, and then you make art or you don't make art. Whenever I get down on humanity I get these doses of humanity's goodness and it really cheers me up. Why do most women love to dance and not so many men do? Women are romantics. This is why my bookcase has more books by women than men. As a man, I feel women have a great deal to teach me. And, who knows? maybe I have some things to teach them about men.

Many of the dancers appeared to know one another, so there is the possibility some of them were from dance clubs. Their steps were too well understood: Jitterbug, Charleston, and other dances of the 1920s and 30s. But wherever they got their knowledge, and chutzpah, they made my day. Some of them were hipsters, because Portland is a hipster-town. When you are walking in most parts of downtown you will quickly realize you are walking on an elaborate stage filled with characters who have made niches for themselves. Their language is cool and understated. Their common bling are tattoos, which rise up from their shirt collars or are displayed next to their rolled up sleeves. It is as if the men got their clothes from the Cherry Popping Daddies outlet store, and the women raided a retro Buffalo Exchange clothing boutique.

The same facade of confidence and showmanship pervades the work environment in downtown. When you go into the suburbs people are less hip. Further out, in the rural towns of the Willamette Valley, and almost all the towns east of the Cascade Mountains you could just as well be in the Midwest. The language is more rural too, sprinkled with the wrong tenses, euphemisms, but among the young - Internet slang is commonplace - as if heralding the demise of country lifestyles.

I was raised in the country, and I miss it. I do not care for the sound of traffic outside my window, or if I am branded uncool because I have no tattoos. I must find a way back to my roots. In the wee hours of the morning I attached a fiction manuscript to an email. It went to the Dundee Book Prize Competition. Dundee is eight hours time difference from Portland, so I only had until five in the morning to enter. I felt the presence of sharks swimming around me as I sat in bed doing the final edits to the manuscript. It had to be anonymous, so there was an element of trust. Sort of like the trust I witnessed in downtown Portland amongst the dancers. And, I suppose from my niece at her Bat-Mitzvah.

My comedic insomnia with 30 Rock.

My cure for insomnia isn’t a calcium-magnesium-zinc pill, or melatonin, or a warm glass of milk at 2AM. It is late night comedy. I have tried science shows about Galapagos iguanas, and the ancient mysteries of lost civilizations, and fallen in love with reruns of 30 Rock. It achieved what Seinfeld, The Office, and other sitcoms never could.

Stress may be at the root of my insomnia. Typically, I manage stress very well; after all I have worked in advertising for over twenty years. You get used to it. I almost never get sick, so my white cell count must be pretty high. I am almost a Vulcan in hiding my emotions. Sometimes, after a glass of wine with friends, I surprise people by my Kenneth Parcell-act-alike behavior. What I need to do is channel my inner Kenneth Parcell (Jack Mcbrayer – 30 Rock) all the time.

If I can keep a cheerful, almost naïve way of seeing the world I will get through whatever I am going through. Or maybe I just need a girlfriend. Nothing wears out a man like a girlfriend, and probably vice versa. Perhaps that is the draw to watching 30 Rock. It is, despite its many tangents, a story about people trying to find themselves and find romance. Who is the central character? Is it Liz Lemon, or all the characters combined? Or could it be that I am like Dennis Duffy, and that is why I identify with the Liz Lemons in my own romantic past. No, probably not. Probably the serious message that appeals to me is that beneath the comedy there is the bedrock that we must find ourselves, and in doing so we will find our soul mates.

Kenneth Parcell is my feel good pill before I crash out. Feel good companies have a gold mine in Jack Mcbrayer. Disney used him for Fix-It Felix in the 2012 Disney animated film Wreck-It Ralph http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Jack_McBrayer But the world is a complicated place. We are not cartoons. We have insecurities like Liz Lemon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ3rPKJBteY we are egotistical loveable nut-jobs like Tracy Jordan, http://www.nbc.com/30-rock/video/memorable-moments-with-tracy-jordan/1334584/ we enjoy power like Jack Donaghy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l0kGIIW66g - and we have all dated someone like Dennis Duffy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GSeVbj_mXg

But what if the world was made up of people like Kenneth Parcell? Would it be too scary – people helping one another with a cheerful, almost too helpful perspective? What is the charm of Kenneth? He seems to be sincere to the point of mania. As Jack Donaghy said of Kenneth, after narrowly beating Kenneth at a game of poker, "In a few years we'll either all be working for him, or be dead by his hand." I lived in Georgia for a few months in 2011. I saw a few Kenneth look-a-likes while I was there. Are all people from Stone Mountain like Kenneth? Or do they do what many men do in America on Friday nights - eat TV dinners and drink beers? Not all of them do Civil War reenactment battles. I saw a Civil War reenactment once, and the Confederate guy did not like my Yankee accent. No, not all the guys in Georgia are like Kenneth Parcell. With the exception of Atlanta, referred to as "The city of suits," by a lady lawyer I met in Decatur, where there seems to be an abundance of New Yorkers, Georgia men are like the men in any other state = straight and macho.

The cynics assume gayness when a man is too nice and too well groomed. Is it Southern culture that fosters this combination of hospitality to the point of being odd? What is wrong with being nice? Am I about to have my Midnight Cowboy moment? I hope not.

When a person’s sexuality is ambiguous it bothers people. Like, two days ago I was grocery shopping and saw a man in a dress. He was not a particularly pretty man. He would have probably called his Japanese schoolgirl dress a kilt. So I am a bigot for even mentioning him. But bigotry is comedic. I once accidentally dated a transgender guy. He fooled me, but $100,000 of surgery could make a lot of guys look like a woman. In this new world you are not supposed to raise an eyebrow when you meet a man in drag or a woman who looks like she just came from a logging camp. It is uncool to be honest. Fifty years ago people would have gotten seriously beaten up for their sexual ambiguity. I behave like Kenneth; I am polite to everyone, no matter how strange their lifestyle. You have to in this world because it is a world full of weirdness.

To further confuse and amuse viewers about Kenneth's sexual leanings, NBC/Tina Fey had Jenna and a homely girl named Hazel try to make Kenneth their boyfriend. They also had him hook up with an Asian gal, but none of Kenneth's hookups went beyond kissing. So Tina Fey was just messing with our heads. Kenneth’s true leanings are unknown, even to Kenneth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaiv0xzRLaY He could go either way – gay or straight. From Kenneth's POV, everything always works out for the best, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xi5lPn2afA Even when overtly gay guys make a play for him, Kenneth maintains his innocence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3srtDFYFc From Kenneth’s POV, staff members appear as if they are Muppets. Maybe that is the secret to his boundless joy. I am going to have to watch a lot of Sesame Street to get my brain around being nice like Kenneth Parcell, but gosh, it sure seems swell to try.

Segue

It was quite windy today; I thought I was in a Clint Eastwood movie. Leaves took refuge, like dry skinned orphaned children, in front entrance niches of businesses in downtown. Shopkeepers could not shoo the leaves away; each customer brought in more leaves until small drifts formed on the carpeted and tiled floors. I brought in leaves as I entered a stationary shop in search of letterhead. It was not just any letterhead. It had to have some tooth to it. The letterhead had to announce, “By gad, I am serious about this writing business!”

The mistress of the shop, a discerning middle-aged Hispanic woman with dark brown hair and eyes, listened to my romantic drivel about the paper I was seeking. I was not the usual customer, yet the lack of a poncho and a cigar, or the attire of a conquistador, perplexed her. The tone of my voice was remarkably similar to Eastwood’s, I was surprised by the raspy tone, as if my regular voice had gone on sabbatical and Eastwood was doing a cameo. The mistress smiled when I finished my oratorio and said, “I think I have something to make your day, Mr. Eastwood. Right this way.”

I followed her down a side aisle packed on either side with reams of paper. We perused the reams she had in stock, and quickly determined she didn’t have what I wanted, but she said she could get it by the following day. Her dark eyes flashed as she said thirty-two pound paper was my Holy Grail. Thirty-two pound letterhead is not that common. It used to be used to build ramps for storming castles. It was common when cotton was king, and trees with circumferences of twenty feet were de rigueur. It made dandy picnic plates for Victorian couples. Bamboo is the new goddess from the east. Everything is made of bamboo. It is ten million times stronger than steel. I am smitten with her, but not for letterhead. But as towels, clothes, armored personnel carriers, or flooring, she easily wins the day. But I digress.

The mistress took my order. I said it had to be ivory colored, off-white, the kind of color Dukes and Earls would regularly press their signet rings to. The kind I could precisely fold and slide into Medici style envelopes. The kind that demanded the use of red sealing wax and my cheap brass letter ‘D’ stamp. The kind that implied I was a baron with title and land. Yes, landed gentry letterhead that announced my full intention to attend a gala affair in my 1940s Bentley. The kind of paper that would inspire me to write adlib pithy poems, or dystopian query letters, sent by horseback courier to literary agents, or snooty editors who guffawed at the improper use of apostrophes. I mean the make believe paper made for mystics with Pomeranians on their laps.

The shop mistress looked at me as if I had lost my marbles, and I had of course, writers lose their minds every day they draw breath. Her nubile apprentice, a fetching blonde of forty years, turned and smiled in pity, as if I’d just emerged from the Middle Ages, or thawed from a glacier high in the Alps. As if I were Sideshow Bob, recently released from a passing circus, or a troglodyte that had crawled from beneath a dark slab of prehistoric rock.

The paper arrived in an enchanted carriage, pulled by six white stallions, and steered by two faux rat footmen from the Cinderella story. The box weighed forty pounds, though it was only 250 sheets of paper. I lifted the lid of the gold leaf covered ream. There was the scent of sultry Santa Barbara nights of long ago, when flowering vines on the trellises of Spanish Colonial villas, perched high above the sunset hued harbor, released their seductive perfume to the night. I held a sheet and remembered the embrace of a woman I had tango danced with in lonely nights long ago, when all I lived for was the sound of milonga, and the taste of mangoes..

The paper was slightly cream colored, like the Warren Lustro Dull I once had a thing for in the heyday of my advertising career. Then I was a graphic guru, a pasha of printed works, of textures and treatments for esoteric papers with which to pad my portfolio. I was no stranger to foils, fancy die cuts, embossing, and finishes. Fonts were my fortissimo then, but not now. Impressing people wasn’t my raison d’etre any longer. Now I was enamored with film and the use of words to tell a story. I had thrown off the gregarious narcissism of advertising for the solitary confinement of the ivory tower. There was only the sound of one hand clapping, and it was my own.

Words are not like dry autumn leaves that find sanctuary in the doorways of shops on windy days. They are limber and green, subtle and sultry. They easily describe pale orange leaves that once were attached to young maples in our hometowns and in the forests outside Moscow. They tell tales of the leaves as being like garments that wrapped themselves around a young couple whose love was forbidden. Hidden there by the words whose leafy disguise made the couple's love possible, the couple kissed for the first time. Stars fell from their places; meteorites plummeted with the touch of the couple's lips.  Words of love poured like the runoff from the rock laden streams. Aspen and spruce trees bent by winter snows listened to the words. Words, like leaves whipped by errant winds, turned chameleon colors of flame and rust and took their rest upon my secret manuscripts. Like spirits, they haunted my observations and dreams. They assembled when I was cogent and rational, and they spread in disarray when ideas came fast and furious, late at night and in the wee hours of the morning when testosterone ran hot and heavy, and soul and flesh ached for love and passion.

And so I found my paper; my muse. My fingertips rested upon it in the night when words, like rain, tapped upon the windows of my soul and would not let me sleep. While the world settled into dreams, late when the wolves roamed and owls glided with silent wings, I was up writing queries to editors and agents. I knew my writing was flawed but it was mine. I consoled my doubts by reminding myself that all writers are flawed or they would not be writers. Best to keep a meat cleaver handy because no story is complete without endless hacking and rewrites. I knew editors make writers digestible, and would add sprigs of herbs to my works. Literary agents would one day reach with outstretched arms for my diamonds in the rough. I recalled an editor, who liked one of my novels, writing of my bad habits that were like the telltale clues left by a homicidal murderer. Mistakes that would hang me and identify me to an editor with a detective's eye, and a jury of my peers. My flaws, in my view, were endearing speech impediments or limps. I reasoned someone with a love of the archaic ways, a literary agent or editor with the sensibilities of a 32 pound paper, would show empathy for a leper-like writer in need of healing. Would I be marooned indefinitely on Molokai? Would my magic realism and film noir tales never see the light of day? My characters came to me in the night and begged for help but I could not console them.

People in the publishing industry tend to overlook impediments if the content is intriguing, and the author can make them lots of money, or the author is related to George Clooney. It is like a racing aficionado looking at the thigh muscle of a middle-aged horse and realizing the horse could still win the Triple Crown. It would be like a recruiter for Nike taking a look at my frame and having the epiphany that with six months of training I could win the Boston Marathon. But myopia is commonplace in the publishing world. Why do I inflict this pain upon myself? Have I forgotten that rejection is the Mother of All Sorrows? Have I forgotten Brautigan? A literary life can lead to an untimely demise. Would paper, regardless of its weight, its tooth - make any difference in a world of electronic rejection? What good were wax seals? I was Van Gogh with a loaded revolver ready to blow my brains out. If I could imagine flinging my characters off the Golden Gate Bridge then what other dark things lay within my soul? Dare I expect the world to marvel at my bravery to keep going when all my organs failed but my runner's heart? Who did I think I was with my melodramatic pauses and florid descriptions? Would the world want my ceviche when it could have a cheeseburger from Micky D's? I was cut of ancient cloth, out of step with the modern age. I was the unwilling jester of the Creator of the Universe.

When your true love comes for you in the night, leave your door ajar. Let her come softly into your chamber in her blue diaphanous gown, her breasts and hips moving like ripe fruit beneath the gown's silky folds. Study her limpid eyes and pouty mouth, wet as the Sea of Cortes in moonlight. Let her lie down with you in your bed and rise up in the morning when the words are fresh in your mind, spilling through the windows like California sunshine, demanding to be written. The words will be obtuse, mystical, magical, and strange. Exhibit A. I saw a van today that had the following words emblazoned in red paint on its side: Rice furniture and appliances. Now, I know next to nothing about either offering, but if they are made of rice I might hesitate in  my purchase. If your name was Rice, would you have used it in this way to advertise your business? I have heard of bean bag chairs, but, rice bag chairs? Really? The world is full of lampoons; you need only open your eyes to see the comedy unfold.

Yesterday I emailed three queries to the same agent in Canada. There is something kinder in Canada. Maybe they know something about the literary merits of dry leaves gathering in doorways. Perhaps they remember their humble roots. Or possibly the long winters have shown them something of the need to pull together and not tear asunder, as is the American way. They are in touch with their mortality and thus, in their despair and darkness have found comfort and communion with their maker. All hail Canada, the birthplace of John Candy, and Celine Dion! All hail this Canadian literary agent, to whom I have entrusted some of my works.

You can tell a great deal from an image. Some Native Americans once believed photos stole a part of their souls. This is true. Photos are snapshots of our souls at a point in time. They show the state of our joy, or lack thereof. I settled upon the face of an agent whose face told me she was a genuine person. She hailed from England, the mother of America. She was eagerly seeking new talented writers. I suspect she is fond of the old sensibilities, the use of wax seals on quality 32 pound paper, the observations of details, and the beauty of the words. Rain still streaks my windows in the night, like the fingertips of lost children, as I lay sleeping and dreaming of better days. In the daytime the sky offers hues of gray, broken by pale blue gaps that fade towards the horizon. Clouds can change to many different colors in one day, so can fortunes. Wind drives the clouds across the sky in a never-ending dance. Words, driven by the wind like curled, pale orange leaves, find sanctuary in the doorway of your mind.