"It's only a flesh wound..."

If you were born after 1960 this little phrase probably means little to nothing, 'less of course you're a british comedy video student, or a bored netflix customer with too much time on your hands.

Monty Python coined this shorty to draw humor into those self deprecating moments when, hammered by LIFE, we minimize the impact of the blow and pretend that, hey, it's only a flesh wound. We may be bleeding, in indescribable agony, but...no worries...flesh wound here...carry on.

Maybe it's the best. Wallowing in the tragedy of a situation doesn't cure us either, so...what SHOULD we do to end suffering?


What? You talking to ME? I haven't a clue.


I just pose the questions...I don't actually ANSWER them.

"I need some AIR!"

SO I'm sitting at the Portland Airport, slowly, painfully making my way from Oakland to Camp Sherman. Well not so much Oakland as the Bay Area. Ok, not so much the Bay Area as the EAST Bay area...San Ramon/Danville, my new kinda home. I'll get to that part maybe later but this post is more about returning home. Back to a home that you didn't even really realized you missed. Tom waits says "I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long". When I flew in to Portland just now I fell in love with that green river bound city again, like it was for the first time.

Make no mistake, It's the Metolius River I'm on my way to... and it'll nurture my soul with what I need to heal, but Portland is just ok with me. Better than ok...it's familiar; it's home.

Hard to explain to someone else how much work it is finding yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. It's just more 'work'. Oh, I like the excitement of everything being new, but returning home is like being embraced by your mother; a warm embrace that says 'Everything will be alright'. You so want to believe it will.

But on the Metolius, even there things change. My unchangeable place changes. Good friends you thought would always be there each summer, pass on or move on. It's ok, right even that they should. Because EVERYTHING is constantly changing, to return to the theme of a previous post. Still, there is so much good in returning to a familiar place. It's good to be home, if only for a short while.

'Cause I'm a road warrior now...at this late stage in my life. Rushing to tilt with windmills at my brother's firm. Feels good to be trusted that much. Feels better to know you can deliver what's needed.

So here I sit with my friend "Sapphire", on the rocks w/ olives, awaiting my plane to Bend/Redmond. Julie will meet me; isn't that sweet?

I had a the luxury of an unhurried meal at my favorite airport restaurant, Good Dog/ Bad Dog. I paid for it and Ill probably pay for it again later. But it's all salve for the wounds of being a roadie.

I like my life.

Stop! Don't Drink That! (The Sequel)

Ok so like I finished "The Hemlock Cup" and what did I learn? All Socrates quotes are, a bit like the Bible if you'll excuse the comparison, a second party reference. Sure, SOME of these admirers may have actually known Socrates...devotees, friends, enemies... but the gentleman never wrote anything down. Literacy in that period of Greek history was relatively high in city dwellers, so we might assume he simply choose NOT to write down his thoughts, trusting or not caring that others may/may not later write them down, for which all of us are the better that some did.

"I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

With this level of awareness Socrates could hardly have cared what was said about what HE was saying. And yet he's one of the most influential philosophers of any time. Likewise he noted about others that "they do not like to confess that their pretense of knowledge has been detected", a statement winning him a few detractors to be sure.

Condemned to death by the very people who had held him in so high regard he did take the sentence and swallow it, leaving us with "For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good."

What a way to go. Even if you believe in NO afterlife this parting thought works.

Stop! Don't drink that!

Ok, so I'm reading "The Hemlock Cup - Socrates, Athens and the Search for a Good Life" by B Huges. If you're like me you are only VAGUELY aware of Socrates ... wasn't he like some guy from Greece, or something? But who of us know all that much of the style and contribution of one of the greatest philosophical minds of any time?

So, so far I'm enjoying the book. It's by a historian, and she tries to place us in ancient Athens and give us pause to think about minor things like...I dunno...Democracy, maybe?

Check back. I'll know more later

Everything changes...or does it?

"The more things change the more they stay the same". I USED to subscribe to this thought. It's a superficial view of things, really; for EVERYTHING changes every moment of the day. We just choose not to pay attention at a level that can record it all.

Watch a river flow...water going by... looks the same, right? Now don't disagree with me here, it friggin' looks the same. But it's not. Look out in the forest...lotta trees, right? In fact, if you aren't paying attention all that much you might say 'lotta GREEN stuff'. Every drop of water flowing by, every tree you can see (and all those you can't see) is unique. And they're all changing. Water mixes with water and 'stuff'; trees have a bend this way or that, a branch here or there, a different genetic make up...all making them different from the next one.

We're all different, too. I mean, of COURSE we are. Still, look at a crowd of people...You're incapable of seeing it as other than a crowd, and a group of individuals standing very close together, at the same moment. Our minds can't handle that much information. Oh we can pick out individuals, but that's now what we're talkin' bout here.

So it naturally follows (ok maybe not naturally) that all this mass of nature and humanity is both unique and changing every moment. And it's JUST as hard to get it into our minds to recognize both the river, the trees, the crowd changing right before out eyes.

Ok, you're saying...So what? Good question. So what? The "so what" is we expect the things we want to stay the same to stay the same; the things we WANT to change to get on with it and change. And yet it's all changing, all the time, randomly and by design. We can't do a hell of a lot about it. Well, I guess we can..and we do. If we're cold we move toward the light. If we want to see well we move toward the light. If we want to be happy we move away from what makes us UN-happy. Wait...Don't we?

Oh, if only. Most have been known to allow themselves to fall DEEPER into a funk, further into the darkness. Come on...admit it...you, too. Why do we DO that? It's so...so unreasonable. Well, I think it's tied to this 'forever changing' thing; I'm still unraveling how it's related and I may NEVER completely understand it. I mean, why choose pain, cold, darkness, confusion, masses if we have a choice?

Crapola! Do we not have a choice? Is there NO free will, really? Are we changing so fast that we can't choose? Is this madness to try? Where am I going with this? I have NO idea. Sorry to make you read this far. (No I'm not..I meant to. Wait, did I?)

Snowshoeing the Allingham Loop

Well, we did take a break just before New Years, despite an emotional maelstrom, and got over to Black Butte Ranch before touring over to the Camp Sherman to 'do' the Allingham Loop around the Metolius, on 8" or so of new white stuff. It was cold, fun, exhilarating and distracting; god knows we needed that.

Our children...are we ever anymore than an emotional breakdown away from them? It's not what they do sometimes but what is done TO them that messes you up. The instinct is to save them, hug them...love them. Sometimes 2 out of 3 is all you can do. It'll just have to be enough. But when will this heart ache end?