Rain Forest

I want some rain. I'm tired of this endless summer in the middle of January. The redwood forest wants some rain too. It has been waiting for months for a healthy rain. I'm desperate about rain because without rain there is no future and for me, having no future at all is the very heart of desperation. If I can't look forward to something, it's just depressing. If the future is meadows of wildflowers then I have something to look forward to and even if the future is a deluge, I still have something to look forward to.

But at last there is some hope. The weather forecast guaranteed rain and I believed it so I cleaned the rain gutters. That just goes to show how desperate I've been because I wasn't thinking very well about what I was doing and the rain never came. That must have been caused by cleaning the gutters. Everyone knows that. I'm just too desperate to think straight.

Maybe I should have washed the car to compensate for the effect of cleaning the gutters. It's the idea of reverse psychology on the weather. If the high tech weather forecasts don't bring rain and washing the car doesn't work, I can try planning a garden party, or maybe try doing a rain dance with praying and pleading and such.

And maybe God hears my prayers and embarrassing whining and watches me hoofing the dry dirt and has sympathy for me, but He doesn't know any better than I do about how to bring the rain. I would be so disappointed to find out that He isn't the Rainmaker either, but He is compassionate so He goes out to His driveway and washes His car. He uses reverse psychology on Mother Nature too, but doesn't let on. I can just imagine Him washing His car with some gigantic jiffy car wash wand He found in a garage sale after the Flood. You remember, the Flood that Noah got away from with all the animals? Noah probably didn't live in New Orleans back then.

I don't know if His car washing really brings rain either but last night's downpour left the forest clean and sparkling with drops of water on the tips of the redwood fronds, and the tree trunks are dark, soaked poles reaching up through the ground fog and occasional rays of sun. When you live in a redwood forest, the rain comes from the forest and not the sky. That's because the forest is a couple hundred feet high and we lowly humans live at the bottom of these tall trees. Mostly all you see when you look up is endless trees. There isn't much sky to be seen. The forest makes the rain and drinks in the rain. We humans get soaked in the splashing drops, something like getting caught by His hose and car wash wand.

But when it comes to God washing His car, maybe He doesn't really have the Mercedes Benz that Janis Joplin asked Him for. Maybe He drives something else that doesn't have the high maintenance of engine check lights and better-than-your-Porche status (and cleaner than your Porche, too). Maybe He drives a redwood forest and He did wash it last night and these dripping woods are the rain that quenches my hope for a future of wildflowers and the glee of squirting my wife with the car wash wand on hot summer afternoons.

I kind of imagine I've got a little inside deal with Him because I don't drive a redwood forest to the gym (they get horrible gas mileage, but who cares when you're God) and I don't mind driving the muddy disaster that my car becomes when I wash it in our dirt road in July. Thats when there usually is an unseasonable rainstorm that destroys our carefully planned midsummer deck party and also destroys my fresh car wash job. He's standing above His forest with His biblical-sized car wash wand giggling and I have the only muddy car in the gym parking lot.

I don't care, though. It's part of the sacrifice I have to make for the joy of a meadow of wildflowers and the pristine glow of a clean redwood forest and besides, no one would recognize me in a clean car.

DJ Dance

There is a real, old time dance hall in town complete with a hardwood floor and wood plaques on the walls from the local square dance groups. I don't know when the place was built but it must have been in the 40's if not earlier. It looks as if the walls are batt and board with shingle siding and it looks like more rooms were added on over time. No matter how it came to be, it feels like a place with hoop skirts and a caller and fiddlers and it's been that way forever.

But now on Friday nights there are DJ dance jams in this hall. This just doesn't make sense to me, not that I've ever square danced, but just the idea of DJ dancing sounds like it can't be anything like stepping and swinging but more like smashing and pounding. Just what is DJ dance and why would anyone want to do it? Can't I just stay home and put a couple of records on and get the same thing?

Okay, I'm not that old but I'll admit that I still own a turntable that's stored away somewhere. The last time I used it was to transcribe South Pacific onto a CD. Enzio Pinza was singing and it's hard to find that record re-released on CD. I'm not going to keep listening to records. That's just silly old-timey sentimentality. So I could just put a couple of CDs on and dance in my living room.

Who needs the DJ? But then again, I'm not too old to learn new tricks so I got up my courage to check the place out last Friday. It isn't that I don't know how to shuffle around on the dance floor but isn't DJ music the same thing as the music kids play in what I call thump-thump cars? You know, those flashy looking Hondas with the blue lights in the wheel wells and humongous speakers in the trunk that works like an Osterizer on your brain when one of them pulls up next to you at a stop light. I wouldn't want to be in that car or for that matter, in any room with that noise.

"I hope you'll like the selections tonight," the DJ says after a few cuts of curious but not dancable bliss-out flute and conga. I guess this is the warm-up for the heavy brain damage to come. The DJ is a woman in her 40's just like most of the other people in the place. "Some of it is going to be, well, kind of hard for some people and I'm sorry about that, but other selections I've made are more mellow."

What did I get myself into here? Hard to take music? Does that mean that head banging, loud, go nowhere bump-bump noise at the stop light? Do I have to put up with that? Or do I even know what the DJ is talking about? What I did notice is that the DJ is a she and she isn't young enough to be my grand daughter like the girl I imagine in the passenger seat of that thumping Honda.

None of this makes any sense and I'm quick to jump to the conclusion that I won't like it. I won't like the "hard to take" selections and the "more mellow" cuts will sound like funeral dirges. Why did I pay ten dollars to dance to something I'll hate? Or, more to the point, why do I hate everything? Why do I assume that everything that is new to me is going to be horrible? This is just contrary to the way I think I'm living my life but I have no intention of admitting that. I'd rather hold onto the past than forge ahead.

When she put on the real music, (I don't know how DJs put on music. It's probably all coming off one USB memory chip) I was hit in the face with a combination of rap and reggae. Now I know what to do with the reggae because that was popular after disco got stale, but the rap? That's back to the loud Honda and people that are too young to even have a driver's license, right?

Wrong. I'm not going to let this get the best of me.

On the way to the gym this afternoon, I saw a kid on the corner in front of the surf shop and he was doing some kind of dance with his shoulders and arms and hands and wearing an iPod. As I waited for the traffic I thought about all that pumping iron I do at the gym trying to be macho. Could I actually put that gym torture to good use doing the act with the shoulders and arms?

I tried putting the arms and shoulders movement on the rap rhythm. Isn't that what rap dance is all about? There's even a new hand sign, (new to me, anyway) called 'low five'. It's a kind of a greeting that is the opposite of 'high five'. It probably takes a forward movement of the chest and shoulder while keeping the upper arm and forearm stiff and the palm facing back, not forward. The 'bros from the 'hood do that I imagine, but a search of urbandictionary.com didn't clear it up for me. But who cares about the etymology? The shoulder and arm moves pops along with the back beat and takes much less energy than trying to keep my thighs going that fast. Conserving body energy is something that old people all know about.

Then I added the reggae part to my hips and thighs which is a swaying two-step with the downbeat missing. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but it was fun. Really fun. I just tranced out with the loud, steady back beat penetrating my brain like meditation drumming and the syncopated rap going through my chest and shoulders like a charmer's snake with bad back spasms. I just closed my eyes and didn't care what was going on around me. There was no red light I was waiting for and no old "I've never done this so it must be bad" ideas running through my throbbing head.

At least nothing was going to stop me until I felt a woman's arm around my shoulders that made my eyes pop open like pinball bumpers.

"Hi. I'm Carrie. It looks like you're having fun with the music." It was the DJ. "I guess you're new here. This is the mellow part I was talking about," she said but I was stepping to what I thought was the hard to take music. "You might want to save your energy for later," Carrie said. I might have wanted to do that but it was too late to change my dance card now. I was having a blast and went right on until the party was over. This could be my new addiction but really, I'm still too old for this.

Hmm. I wonder how much those Hondas with the speakers and the blue lights in the wheel wells cost. Somehow I don't think I could just add those touches to my pre-century VW hippie camper.

But then maybe I could be getting too old for that last century, out-of-it, hippie stuff too.



Dress Code

"What are you doing coming in here like that?" the bouncer asked me as I showed her my ticket.

Now the bouncer looked like some teenage amazon wearing an outfit that didn't even begin to cover her and left me incapable of meeting her eyes as I'd already been blinded by her other assets. Was she standing there with an "OLD HIPPIES NOT ALLOWED" sign that I was too dazed to see? Wasn't she too young to even be out at that hour of night?

Maybe it was the way I was dressed that made her suspicious. I'll admit that nothing fits me right anymore because of my obsession to lose weight and therefore live forever. I was actually wearing a pair of what I call dress shorts that I've probably kept in the back of a drawer for several decades waiting for some special occasion, but, really, what would the occasion be for wearing something that should have been donated to the Good Will long before I even moved into the house we live in now?

These shorts are reminiscent of khaki trousers with flap pockets and cuffs and it could be that I haven't lost enough weight yet for them to fit me so they don't look like I'm wearing a pre-teen size. But these shorts are in very good condition. They aren't old hippie clothes which tend to be torn T shirts that might have had some design or tie dye on them in the last millennium.

So maybe I don't know what to wear out anymore. All the boys these days are wearing what I call 'dork shorts' which are what used to be called 'baggies' (a clothing style, not the thing for the leftover half a sandwich). They look ridiculous, like calf length skirts with athletic logos. If those shorts don't look like they came from the Good Will reject box, I don't know what does. But perhaps I'm out of style.

"You come here dancing a lot," she said looking me up and down. I guess she has a right to do that if she really is the bouncer. "But I have to tell you that those shorts you are wearing just won't do here."

Now wait a minute. Here is a young woman, barely old enough to be my grand daughter and apparently not old enough to know that she isn't wearing enough clothes to cover the places that should be covered, telling me that my shorts (which are older than she is) just won't do in a crowded, dimly lit bar that smells like a combination of spilled beer and old roaches (the kind that you would use the baggie that was holding the leftover sandwich for).

This is starting to sound like an Old Hippie bust in disguise. She is trying to blame my shorts instead of my age and I'm not going to take the bait. I'll just gloss over her dress code critique and play the straight, 'glad to meet you' line.

"Yep. That's me. I've been dancing here for awhile now," I say. "I'm Roger."

"Yes, I know you are Roger. I'm Kelly and this is my boyfriend of the moment," the bombshell bouncer says looking down her nose at me as if I'm not good enough for this joint. A guy was standing next to her, speechless. "I want to tell you one thing, Roger. I've been here for years too and one thing is for certain- you and I are going to be stuck here together for a long time to come and I don't want to have to look at you in those shorts. They are just too short and out of style."

Uh oh. It's starting to look like I'm not going to be able to weasel my way around my hopelessly out of touch attire and she is a fire breathing young woman so I'd better make amends. I pathetically agree that my shorts are too short and I'll try to do better. Will that let me pass muster?

"Do you really mean that," she demands. Her eyes are blazing while the guy that was standing next to her is backing into the wall behind him as if it might mercifully absorb him. "Will you really do that for me? Do you think I'm worth doing that for? Do you think I'm worth it?"

I'd like to answer her question and then squirm out of her piercing gaze but I never get the chance.

"You know something? I think I am worth it. I think I'm worth you getting dressed in cool shorts so I won't have to look at you dressed like that. I think I'm worth you doing that for me." She wasn't kidding and I was getting the idea that she wasn't there to stop fights but to start them and I was the next guy in line. I was really starting to understand why her 'boyfriend of the moment' was trying to be invisible when it dawned on me that she had left me a move in this verbal skirmish.

She was asking me if she was worth it, and I happen to believe that all people are worth it. That's an old hippie concept, the idea that people are inherently worthwhile and that everyone is worthy. 'Love and peace, brother' became an empty slogan but the meaning in those words is real. The closeness and intimacy of love is real, and in our own youth we tried to really live that way through the Summer of Love and in the old hippie communes.

"Yes, of course you are worth it, Kelly." I'm excited and enthusiastic now because I mean it and I hope that everyone in the room picks up on that. Hippies give off good vibes, you know, and old hippies giveoff good vibes that are really sage too. I'm proud of my insight that Kelly is as human and as worthy as everyone as I lock on to her darting blue eyes at close range. But she is well armed and ready to take me to the next man-eating level.

"And just why do you think I am worth it, Roger," she said spitting my name out like a well deserved death sentence.

The chips were down. I had to shake off her blinding energy field and shake off the youth-knows-best death blow and meet her as a worthy human but I had to get even closer than that. I needed to meet her as the woman she was and it couldn't be done from a distance. How could I touch her, connect with the she-warrior, especially with her temporary boyfriend bodyguard standing right there with all the blood drained from his face.

"Because you are Beautiful," I replied with a simple smile. With that word, beautiful, her eyes turned from energy bazookas to warm molten pools and her gaze wandered off into the dancing crowd. I had gotten inside of her. I had gotten inside of her youth with its style-is-everything power field and inside of that place where we all hide our feelings of being undeserving and insignificant.

"Why, yes," she murmured. "Yes. That's right." Her voice trailed off as if in a trance. In that moment the 60's love generation met the running-on-empty hungry young cowgirl searching for something truly satisfying in a loud dive packed with come-ons and I-love-yous in the same old sleazy lines.

Kelly saw something in that moment and it was her own beauty. Old hippies know about that beauty where we all are brothers and sisters, and old hippies know where the fun is. I let the rhythm of an old Grateful Dead song fill my thighs (and threaten to split the seams of my antique shorts) as I slipped away from her off into the dance.

Pizza Crash Blues

Some people are doing okay but some people are suffering during these times. The president and congress are suffering and the executives are suffering and the office workers and assembly line workers are suffering. The milkmaids are suffering because no one trusts even milk anymore and the ditch diggers are suffering because rich people don\'t need any more ditches.

The streets are suffering because there is no more asphalt and the wires are suffering because there is too much junk and spam and our eyes are suffering because there is only spam. It grows in the corners of the room like dust bunnies and the broom has lost it\'s bristles.

The inheritances are all gone on frivolous desires and the desires are gone because no one can afford them anymore. The banks are suffering because there isn\'t any more money and the money is suffering because there is just too much of it stacked up around the printing press. The intelligentsia are suffering because they don\'t seem to get it right and even thinking is suffering because there is too much gloom. Las Vegas is suffering because everyone knows the bets are all bad and even the plush carpeted floors around the slot machines are suffering from cigarette buts and crumpled tickets that weren\'t the winners. Even the winners are suffering because they want to win again and know that it isn\'t in the cards.

"Pizza," my wife half blurted and then tried to take the word back as we pulled out of the home improvement yard. Now I have a hard time denying people pizza because it makes them happy. Pizza is a joyful meal; fresh and hot and spicy. How could anyone deny their loved ones pizza, so I swing out towards downtown but I also hold my tongue.
"Why are we going this way?" she asked.

We\'re headed away from the road back home and we\'ve just had a mini, four day weekend visiting friends and going to the hot springs on an unseasonably balmy mid January week.

"It\'s because of some naughty word you used," I told her in my usual confusing way.

"I said pizza!\' she said with a big grin but I still didn\'t want to give in to pizza. I still wanted to hold out on imagining that first bite of hot pizza and imagining the satisfaction in my belly. We find a perfect parking place right on the street across from the pizza restaurant and I must admit that this place has the very best pizza ever. But I\'m still holding back.

"Pizza is supposed to be really high in cholesterol," I say, dropping the bomb on the perfect finish to the perfect weekend.

In fact, we didn\'t go to the gym all week and my wife has been very good at spending time sweating on the stationary bike and taking niacin which makes your skin itch all over from the inside. Anyway, we could just go stand outside of the restaurant with it\'s sidewalk tables like what I imagine a real Italian pizzeria looks like. We don\'t have to walk in.

This is just adding more misery to the already huge pile of misery and I\'m doing it on purpose. There we are under the canopy next to the tables still set with white tablecloths and silverware and I\'m going to make cholesterol the big heart breaker of the night. We don\'t have any health anymore because who wants to give up joy for health and we don\'t have joy because we don\'t have any pizza and we don\'t have pizza because we are long on suffering after being long on the stock market.

"It\'s all in the cheese," she adds but she is hopeful and how can anyone say being hopeful is out of style these days?
"Their pizza isn\'t really cheesy and they even have some that don\'t have cheese at all," I say. Now I\'m working at saving the day, saving the pleasure, saving the fun, saving our hope for the future and we better starting taking up that fun quick because it\'s now 8:30 and the place closes at 9:00.

Mushroom Mania sounds interesting and doesn\'t have any cheese but the Prima is really the best and it does have cheese but its mozzarella and that\'s low fat, isn\'t it? We order a huge pizza, half Mania and half Prima. I eat all the appetizer rolls dipping each bite into fresh grated parmesan. It would be cruel to not give myself that pleasure. I\'ve been on the endless cholesterol battleground myself and I do mean endless. The pizza is great as always.

This war for healthy hearts is not going to stop till death do us part. The health plan is broken because too many people are sick and the people are sick because we have no fun in our lives and we have no fun because now the piper must be paid and we have to go back to work and compete in the office and factory floor and we learn to compete with each other because we compete with ourselves trying not to eat pizza.

Have another slice.

 

  1. Decking
  2. Planning
  3. Old addictions
  4. Resolutions