PureSchmaltz

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Manifesting

SocialFracking

frackingzone
I’ve taken to calling those flow-interrupting comments that bomb out a conversation thread SocialFracking. There’s both good and bad SocialFrack. The good might turn a terrible tank before it crushes the shared garage. The bad kind feels like losing your mantra; you might not notice instantly, but when you do notice, you’ll have to start all over again.

I unfriend chronic SocialFrackers (colloquially referred to as simply “frackers”) because they distract me from the business at hand. They engage like under-recognized precocious children; smart-mouthed, dumb-assed, understandably unappreciated. They seem to wear their grudge on their shoulder, proudly, as if a spangly epallette. They suck all the civility out of discourse. My life’s way too short to let them hang around for long. Slip over here for more ...

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ResterRant

blindfold21
I rarely ‘eat out.’ I long ago grew weary of the blind man’s bluff game the so-called hospitality industry plays. What other industry demands that its customers choose from deliberately misleading lists of possibilities featuring the vaguest possible descriptions of their products, expecting their customer to select satisfying results? Who could possibly know what passes for hash browns here? Or home fries? Or even mashed potatoes? No way to know without sleuthing around to other customers’ plates, but even then, looks can be so deceiving.

Ask the poor (literally, slave-waged) server. Who knows what s/he might recommend? Just try and often fail to anticipate what the budding food artiste in the kitchen will produce from what the food accountant says he can spend. Even assuming the chef can cook (not a universally safe assumption), the result amounts to a crap shoot. Slip over here for more ...

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Leaving

leaving
John Gorka once noted that anyone living with their baggage packed, leaves more often than they ever come back. This spot-on observation describes the feeling for both the host and the visitor. However warm or cold any reception or stay, leavings never come easily. Nobody ever intended to stay beyond their welcome, but nobody welcomes leaving.

Leaving seems like grown up stuff, hard and ungratifying work requiring an almost inhuman discipline. I imagine that it must be good for somebody, but the repacking and the heading out cracks even hardened hearts. I seem to shrink from the backside of any adventure. Heading back’s no heading out experience, even when we take an unfamiliar route back home. Slip over here for more ...

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Stranger

stranger
I should be no stranger to being the stranger by now. I’ve spent much of my life shuttling between here and there, sometimes including somewhere else entirely. My normal state seems surrounded by strangers which I suppose qualifies me as a stranger in even most of my neighbors’ eyes. Curiously, it doesn’t feel terribly strange to me to feel like a stranger.

The first twenty or so years of my life was just the opposite, I knew many of the people I came in contact with, and they knew me. This might have been simply the result of growing up in a small city, living in the same house in the same neighborhood, never having to change schools. Understandably, I calibrated myself to recognize this state as normal, and that it must be somehow strange to be a stranger. That innocent level setting guaranteed that my next four decades would find me in exile, displaced, a stranger to almost everyone around me. Slip over here for more ...

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Scholar

Scholar
I failed to persuade them to invest in the full three and a half days. They opted for two half day ‘over-views’ instead. I reluctantly agreed, knowing nothing was likely to change from such a quick, shallow dip. This was a world-class university, overflowing with smarts, confident that their people would be able to instantly absorb any information. Problem was, I wasn’t dealing in information.

I would be received as the visiting scholar, one who’d spent his life studying his specialty, one who had distilled whole libraries into a single simple meme. Sitting in my presence should transform something. Hearing me speak, however briefly, should spark enough understanding. I wasn’t really dealing in understanding, either.

The visiting scholar holds mythical stature, expected to not merely understand, but to instantly impart understanding. As if he’d done the leg work, proved the claim, mined the ore, smelted the precious metal, and stamped the coins he’ll just hand out to anyone attending his lecture. In fact, the scholar holds more questions than answers, and might be best understood as the inheritor of the unanswerable question. This query requires caretaking, a patient, persistent, and nurturing hand to hold; one that will, in time, pass it on to a following generation. Slip over here for more ...

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VisitorPass

visitor
Remember the satisfaction a hall pass could bring? It meant that I was special, released from the regular programming, on a formally sanctioned mission away from the ordinary. Whether a restroom or an extracurricular activity called, I was on my own, traversing otherwise no-man’s land, bullet-proofed for the duration. Even if that particularly hostile assistant principal noticed me and asked, I carried a guaranteed get out of jail free card, transforming this usual suspect into a Teflon® visitor.

Supposedly all grown up now, I gain a certain self-satisfaction wearing the badge of a visiting contractor. I have a desk drawer half-filled with used visitor badges, each a testament to my past temporarily special statuses. Security would welcome me, seek my signature, then pass me a custom-made credential before opening the gates to the compound. I’d usually require an escort as if a visiting dignitary, an envoy from the future. Slip over here for more ...

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TwelfthNight

leatheryleaves
On The TwelfthDay of Christmas, night fell. A mighty Chinook wind had blown through over the eleventh night, stealing away most of the snow. Squirrels had for days been purposefully pulling huge leathery oak leaves from the layer I’d left protecting the gardens from the winter; extra nest insulation against the coming Polar Vortex bitter cold. I do not know how they know it’s coming.

The TwelfthNight isn’t about the second coming, but the first one; set aside for the feast celebrating God becoming man, not man becoming God-like. Slip over here for more ...

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EleventhDay

pied-piper-king-williams--001
An old year ended on the EleventhDay of Christmas.

The Muse and I piled old magazines high on the dining room table and started snipping images. For many New Year’s Eves before The Exile, we’d created collages for each New Year. This involved cutting pictures more or less at random from old magazines, then arranging and gluing them onto poster board. A friend who long ago introduced us to this practice insisted that the resulting ‘work’, over the following year, would manifest whatever it depicts. Slip over here for more ...

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TenthDay

palm
On the Tenth Day of Christmas the whole world went silent. The scholar in the basement stumbled upstairs into the kitchen to brew his coffee. He solemnly declared that the house had become boring. He was right.

The traveling tornado brothers left after breakfast, marking the official end of the festivities portion of this holiday. I fell into a coma-like nap. The Muse reclaimed her sewing room. Quilting subsumed her. Slip over here for more ...

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NinthDay

armbone
On the NinthDay of Christmas my family gave me some Christmas attitude.

I should have at least suspected, but I didn’t learn until nearly the end of the boyz’ visit that both were accomplished soloists. They’d given little hints of their musical abilities, but they’d been cloaked and clandestine. The last night, though, as we were finishing supper, The Muse explained that since I hadn’t pulled out the guitar during the whole visit, there would be some music that night. Slip over here for more ...

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SixthDay

airandspace
On the Sixth Day of Christmas, cabin fever settled in. Losing our minds, we decided to take the boyz to the Air and Space Muse See ‘Em.

The A&S Muse See ‘Um is conveniently located on the far side of a very scary suburban ghetto halfway to the Blue Ridge Parkway from our place, ringed with several competing layers of multiple-lane freeways which serve as parking lots most of the day. I packed a decent snack if not a lunch, and even though Georgie had weenied out on breakfast, we bravely headed out. Two minutes later he was pleading for the snack bag. (Told ya!) Slip over here for more ...

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FifthDay

220px-Calligramme
On the fifth day of Christmas I’d hoped I might see a pile of brand new poetry.

I hold this tradition, perhaps now festered into an obsession, that I spend Christmas Eve afternoon into Christmas Day dawn writing poems, creating what I’ve grown to call my annual Christmas Cycle. This year was no different. I began by collecting a few seasonal images that might prove inspiring and, as usual, by fussing a lot. Slip over here for more ...

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Home-bound 1.8-Alley-Gator

alligator1
When I was five or six years old, my grandfather took my brother and I on a little road trip. My folks were supposed to meet up with us the next morning, but this Friday afternoon, we loaded into grandpa’s red pickup and headed toward his place, a hundred and fifty miles away. This was my first excursion out into the world unaccompanied by my folks, and I left spooked. Arriving at our destination, grandpa decided we needed some entertainment, though it was already well past our usual bedtime when we arrived, so he dropped us off at the local theater, to an already in progress double feature horror show.

The main picture was a gem called The Alligator People, and it scared the socks off my brother and I. We fussed plenty, trying to decide if we could just leave or if we had to stay until the end. The Cobalt 40 scenes didn’t spook us half as much as the alligator guy did. We’d never imagined the world was anything like this. Slip over here for more ...

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Home-bound 1.7-Somewhere

somewhere
I freely admit that I over-idealize this place. I favorably compare it, weighing plusses and minuses with my thumb secretly fudging the scale. I ignore plenty, imagine some, and reframe even more to accomplish this. I claim innocence under the ‘honor thy father and mother’ clause.

Less forgivable might be my many minor slanders against our exile place, a fine, even delightful place that doesn’t seem to sit quite as comfortably on my palate. I am prejudiced against my step-mother town, where I currently, physically live, and prejudiced in favor of the mother that raised me, where I can only visit now. This judging wears me down. Slip over here for more ...

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Home-bound 1.6-SmallThings

smallthings
Our exile sits in the middle of a megalopolis, one of the recognized great metropolitan areas of the world. There, any excursion might lead to me brushing elbows with some celebrity; greatness. Noteworthy events originate there, echoing across the world. I casually stroll past landmarks, places where, in an earlier life, I travelled far to simply see. Now I barely notice my own passage by them.

Almost nothing of the internationally noteworthy class ever happens here in my home valley. Most people have never heard of this place, and nod distractedly whenever I fail to explain where and what it is. Some newspaper this week declared this valley a “wine Mecca,” whatever that means, since wine isn’t served in Mecca. The main street is predictably called Main Street. The rich seem to be getting richer and the poor, poorer, but everyone sometimes shops at the same Safeway. Slip over here for more ...

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Home-bound 1.4-BroadShoulders

broadshoulders
Topping Touchet Hill, I felt my shoulders spreading out, stretching from horizon to horizon across this wide frozen valley. The Blues an icy mirage hovering along the Eastern extent, the Columbia Gorge slipping behind. Our passage had been surprisingly effortless; haunted by grave predictions, but that freezing rain front dissipated over the Coast Range and never touched the Gorge. Multnomah Falls fell through an ice chute into a snow-frosted canopy. We fell just as effortlessly through the long, familiar rimrock and cottonwood, road screaming beneath us.

Distressed to discover that the Pheasant Grill was closed, for sale sign replacing the predictably welcoming entrance. No Honker Burger this trip. On to the aptly-named Boardman for a Bozo Burger instead. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.6-NoLedge

ledge
I left the salon conversation feeling angry. The subject: Common Core, yet another revolutionary strategy for utterly transforming the primary education system employing BIG data and frequent feedback-producing examinations. “The results will be demonstratively worse in the short-run,” our evening’s provocateur reassured us. “The data will most certainly show that our students have been performing more poorly than the old, poor data showed, but once we start measuring the right things, students scores will start to improve.”

This assertion seemed about as unlikely as every other confident prediction accompanying every other revolutionary strategy for utterly transforming primary education I’ve watched crash and burn over the last more than half century. Primary educators seem more prone to seduction by The Next BIG Thing than anyone, with the possible exception of your standard Snake Oil Salesman. The wise S.O.S. cautions their ‘fish’ that the elixir might taste unimaginably horrible and could leave the severely deficient feeling much worse in the short run. In the longer run, of course, the canny S.O.S. will have beat town, leaving no forwarding address. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.5-Dot2Dot

dot2dot
Doesn’t matter where I start. It matters THAT I start, but I could begin anywhere then work out from there. No, I do not have a picture of the end result in mind before I begin. More often, I feel inspired: some interesting thought just popped into my head, usually while distracted, often in the shower. Then, writing becomes an imperative. I must find my keyboard and start.

The first sentence just blurts out, though it’s often right and survives every editing pass to remain there on top. From there, I scan the immediate neighborhood, certain that some likely lilly pad will appear. I often hear it calling me, echoing the sound of the seed sentence, without pretense. I hop over there, listening carefully then, bending the initial inspiration only slightly to lightly echo emerging rhythm and assonance. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.4-ThreeThirty

alarmclock
The best alarm clock never rings. I set it, sure, before falling asleep the night before, but I awaken long before it ever starts ringing. Some dream woke me, still streaming story like sea foam streaking off some surfacing submarine. I turn off the alarm while fumbling for my glasses in the dark, holding a short phrase sleep passed to me to carry into this world. I slip into my slippers, quickly brush my teeth, and somehow avoid tripping over either cat as I creep downstairs to awaken my keyboard, repeating that phrase all the way.

It’s three thirty this morning; cold and dark outside. The light from my office window casts long shadows of the garden furniture across the garden wall. Not even the squirrels stir out there. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.3-PhiloSophy

PhiloSophy
“Philosophy begins when you don’t know where to look for an answer.” Philip Kerr, Hitler’s Peace

Anyone setting out to accomplish anything should encounter some daunting contradictions, otherwise they’re probably dozing at the wheel. When selecting a method, none available should exactly fit the situation. When acquiring resources, some will prove unavailable and others abundant but of undesired quality. Even selecting a goal should seem to demand encumbering compromise. No recipe ever baked a cake.

Filling these inevitable gaps seems to require a meta-understanding, acknowledgement of the gaps and acceptance of the personal responsibility for seeing them filled. While we might well rely upon experience and knowledge to guide us up to the edge of any gap, something else bridges it. Almost anything but experience and knowledge might work. Luck, even.

But being human, most of us will try to reason ourselves across. We’ll pull out the Rules of Thumb bag we keep hidden in the front hall closet or dredge up the clouded over laminated card containing what we once chose to be our ethical imperatives. Almost all of us will rely upon what feels like a sixth sense, a quiet angel who rides on one shoulder, whispering in our ear. Each of these comprise our philosophy.

Far from the distraction from action it’s sometimes characterized as being, philosophy might well be our constant, if often quiet, companion. While we might effortlessly describe technique, the reasoning and world view behind that technique remains largely undiscussable, perhaps because that reasoning seems at root unreasonable. I could mention the Münchhausen trilemma, named after the mythical hero who managed to pull himself and the horse he was riding out of quicksand by merely pulling up on his own hair; an illogical impossibility. Proving any truth or falsehood easily devolves into one of three popular techniques, hence the trilemma: Circular argument, where theory and proof reinforce each other, Regressive argument, where each proof begets another--ad infinitum, or by far the most popular, Axiomatic argument, where we “just know” it’s true. Much of what we hold to be self evident, isn’t, but an axiomatic insistence instead.













©2013 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved












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Brief 1.2-MissedUnderstanding

missedUnder
I’d perfectly stated my brilliant idea. Nobody else seemed to understand. Was I suddenly speaking Swahili? Had my thoughts turned to mush? Had I lost my silvered tongue?

My identity felt it first, turning ghostly pale. Maybe I’d become overly ego involved, no longer dealing in ideas but self. To miss understanding my idea might mean I do not exist, or exist distinctly enough. I cannot even muster a decent me without connecting with you.

I’ll try the same message louder, I might even s-l-o-w down, hoping the disconnection came from faulty volume or hasty presentation. These tactics never work. Never. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.1-Universe-ality

spectralpatterns
Franklin calls me on my shit. When my whining exceeds the limits of propriety, he pulls me over to issue a helpful warning. When I don’t quite understand how lost I’ve become, he points me home. He fairly steadfastly refuses to tell me what I really should do, but he can look down his nose at me, and even on a stop-action Hangout® display, I can see that he’s caught me out. Shortly thereafter, I catch myself out, too.

Authoring involves an awful lot of foiled self-deception and foibling self disclosure. It shaves the old pig until it squeals and scurries home. Home isn’t just where the heart resides, but it sits smack dab in the center of the universe. Franklin insists that the key to universality lies hidden in the deeply personal. The more personal, the more likely others are to find themselves peeking out through the prose. The one thing we all have in common might be that we all experience the personal, and we each recognize the presence of the universal in that seemingly least-likely place. Slip over here for more ...

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Brief 1.0-Id-Entity

cigar
Most of every writer’s day will be spent alone. Writing must be the most solitary sport, an internal Olympic competition featuring cognitive Greco-Roman wrestling, conceptual Winter Biathlon, and solitary synchronized swimming. The games always involve dredging up to translate, rediscovery more than invention, rearranging the same old notes into new-sounding tunes. Like with all games, the boundaries deeply influence play and the rules, originally arbitrary, seem inexorable now.

The trick, once mastering bald aloneness, lies in daily re-mastering it, for solitude serves as no more than soil within which unlikely seeds might sprout, where the completely cognitive and conceptual push beyond the leaf litter into space where anyone might experience them. What blooms seems so very different from the parent seed or rhizome that even the solitary gardener might mistake them for volunteers, accidents of potential, nutrients, and time. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.15-TheCall

rooster
Ever since roosters started crowing in threes, denial has been the first stage of acceptance. Each adventure worthy of the label begins with a good, old-fashioned denial of the call, for without rejecting the premise, no real adventure could ever ensue. Willing volunteers need not apply. Conscripts must go AWOL. True adventure requires denial.

The premise always proves faulty; there are no true pretenses, only false ones. Questioning any premise makes logical sense even if it renders the questioner into a huge pain in the butt. Small misconceptions explode adventure. Questioning premise produces the preconditions necessary for relationship, and adventuring is always a relational experience, even if it seems like it’s just a transaction involving nobody but me, myself, and I. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes-1.14-Premise

premise
A BriefConsultant walks into a bar. That’s a premise. What’s the punchline?

It’s one thing to pose a premise and quite another to bring down the house with a punchy punchline. Too late, once I’ve posed the premise, to change it to match the punch line. Punchline follows premise, so perhaps I’d better write the punchline first.

My favorite punchline: I would have but I needed the wool. What premise works with that?

A Client walks into a bar, announcing that he’s thought he was a sheep for thirty years. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” the bartender asks.

”I would have, but the consultant I hired to help needed the wool.” (Insert rim shot here.) Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes-1.13-Brilliance

brilliance
It hurts my eyes to think about it, my mind casts around for shadows to hide behind. My own brilliance blinds me sometimes and blindsides me the rest of the time. I have no control over it. No will or volition, no intention guides it. It gooshes around the gaskets, often unnoticed in the moment it appears. Later, when I’m cleaning up some crusty mess, I might glimpse its presence, its past presence, for it’s never present for me, just past. Like light finally washing across a familiar landscape, light that left its source light-millenia ago; far, far from home by the time it finally arrives.

It feels used up, pull-dated, expired, never inspiring. I shove through disbelief into ragged acceptance of mere possibilities. It’s never enough to suspend my unwavering disbelief, I must rough my way deep into it and struggle slime-covered back out again before any magic seems possible, let alone manifesting. Nobody’s in control of anything, really, except for some intermittent illusion almost resembling control. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes-1.12-Poison

poison
I suppose every language contains poison words, ones best avoided. These words twist back on themselves, biting their own butt, flipping their intended meaning; poisoning.

My poison word list remains gratefully short, though I constantly catch myself teetering on the edge of invoking every one of them. My list?
Should
Must
Do
Can
Is

You must read what follows because it should help you do all you can. It is the truth. Slip over here for more ...

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Xtimes-1.11-Fone

phone
It always starts with a phone call. Not the sort of call prompted by any email barrage advertisement because ads don’t apply to this sort of work. Nobody consults the yellow pages or any of the multitude of social media equivalents to find a BriefConsultant, either. Nobody would ever believe the claims such an ad would have to make to accurately represent the proposed service. This Brief Consultant could never really describe what he might do, anyway.

It follows, then, that there will be no response drafted to any Request For Proposal. This work doesn’t work that way, either. This limits the domains within which I might operate, but gratefully so. This is no retail trade. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.10-InhabitingStory

noir
I love listening to the radio because it projects better pictures than television or movies. I rarely feel a part of television or a movie because the roles are too finely cast—I can never escape being merely an observer. Books are better, but they demand my active participation as translator. Radio seems the perfect medium to fuzz the separation between here and there. Piped directly into my head, I simply close my eyes to close the distance between the story and me. I can inhabit a radio drama’s story almost as if it were my own.

When I hear you telling your story, I sometimes experience a taste of story envy. I want to inhabit your story. Your adventure might have been mine, if only I’d been there at the time. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.09-Chainge

chainge
As a veteran presenter of The Changing Change Management Conference, I could be mistaken for a master change agent. I’m not. I’m more of a skilled foot-dragger, quite sensitive to even minor disruptions in my routine. I do not warmly embrace difference. I am not hankering to champion any kind of improvement, more prepared to cope with what seems to be than sculpt something different.

I recently read a book written a little over a hundred years ago. The author complained about the mind-numbing pace of change in these modern times. We, today, feel ourselves especially vulnerable to shifting perspectives. I suspect this sense has always been a feature of modern life, modern being defined as any moment any human has been present and alive. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.08-Stalemate

stalemate
Push comes to shove before achieving stasis; an anticipated pushover stalls. No bully in the world ever expects anything but dominion. No schlemiel ever expected to stem any tide, but here we are, head-to-head, stalemated. Your will subtracted from my will equals equilibrium. My zero sum game combines with your zero sum game to yield exactly zero.

Few, head to head, reconsider the game. The strategy’s failed, the tactics moot, yet the sticky residue of win and lose holds those opposing foreheads in place. Neither can see any alternative space from there: eyes locked, imagination seized up, too. We still believe we might bull through. Relenting can’t even qualify as unthinkable because it’s unimaginable from there. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.07-UpGrade

upgrade
I innocently downloaded the iOS 7 upgrade. I claim innocence because I had no idea that I was undermining my mobile experience. Like every upgrade in the history of the world so far, this one degraded pretty much everything. I suppose some user experience expert had determined just what I needed. Like always, their expertise translated into cluelessness.

I make it a policy to always stay as far behind current as possible with everything. I have a hundred year-old lawnmower. I use a ten year old version of Adobe Acrobat®. I used a 1992 version of MS Word until I could no longer find a machine it ran on, then did not purchase the snazzy unusable more modern version. Looking at the more modern Word was enough for me to decide to be forever MicroSoft-free. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.05-Poll-Ticks

poll
I don’t remember the part of American history where the Founding Fathers ran daily polls to determine the up-to-the-moment opinion of the nascent electorate. Polls in those days would have taken months, results out-dated long before they could be tallied and summarized, let alone interpreted. So, the Founding Citizens selected Founding Fathers by a radically different process than popular election. Our country was founded upon representative selection instead.

In a representative government, individuals use popular voting to select individuals to represent their interests at the time. Interests could and did shift over time, so elections were based upon something different from fleeting partisan perspectives. In those days, character mattered. One chose their representatives more based upon how they thought rather than what they thought. This one principle might explain how a rabble of an electorate managed to select such timelessly thoughtful individuals. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.04-Righter

ah
I’m dismayed by how easily I get sucked into right/wrong reasoning, even though I probably know better. My admission qualifies as roughly equivalent to a junk food junkie confessing to his Chunky Monkey jones. Few questions meaningfully distill into black or white, wrong or right; they seem to require a broader palette to hold enough perspectives. I know this in my bones yet still find myself taking sides.

Perhaps this bi-polar perspective holds some hypnotic or addictive quality, over-riding knowledge and understanding, eliciting something akin to fight or flight responses: right or wrong. Curious behaviors emerge whenever I convince myself I’m right. My confidence and sense of certainty expands. Being right feels right, even when—perhaps especially when—only a minority share my opinion. It’s gets even weirder when I conclude I’m wrong. Then, my self-esteem seems to plummet and my very identity springs a leak. I can watch myself deflate until I disappear. Marginalized. Loser. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.02-BallGame

ballgame
My father was one heck of a baseball fan, much more than I. He remembered players’ names and stats, and understood the bones of the game at least as well as any seasoned major league scout. I love to watch the game, not because I understand very much of what I’m watching, but because I do not. I appreciate the mysterious rhythms and rituals, satisfied that the players and the coaches and many of the fans understand these like my father did. I’m more the gape-mouthed sort of fan.

I can be mistaken for a wizened watcher, especially now that my hair is turning mostly grey. I can sometimes see the difference between a fastball and a change-up, but I usually blink as the pitch passes over the plate. I doubt that I’ve ever seen a bat connect with a ball, startled awake instead by the resounding crack. I rather chase the game around the field, arriving just after every play, still deeply appreciative of the game. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.01-ScaringMyself

scaringMyself
I’m scared out of my wits most of the time. What emotion besides fear could so reliably shove me into that space beyond wits’ end? Wits sanitize and stabilize, but this crazy, changing world requires neither much sanity nor stability.

The energy that appears when moving through my terror seems the best suited for manifesting. Cowering energy never results in much, and though I generate plenty of cowering energy, even the occasional moving through energy seems to counterbalance. Neither can be stored and must be expended in the moment, in trembles or transformation; small beer or fine wine. Slip over here for more ...

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XTimes 1.00- RescueFantasies

rescue
Judging from the many, many come-ons I receive from consultants, their business depends upon rescue fantasies. A proper prospective client must firmly believe they need rescuing and their proper consultant must shamelessly tout a solid track record of doing exactly that. Why else exist?

If I have a problem, somebody’s ready to claim that they have its solution. Their material reads like Johnny Burke’s old swing tune Swinging On A Star: “you could be better than you are, you could be swinging on a star.” Under the Extended Satisfaction Plan®, I could even learn how to carry moonbeams home in a jar. I didn’t even aspire to carry moonbeams until you suggested I could. Slip over here for more ...

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