So, what to do when this isn’t it? The answer is accept it but sometimes that's not as easily done as it is said. Why? Obviously because I have expectations of spring, of myself, of the Universe that's supposed to be conspiring to drag me into the Light of Self-awareness. Dum, dum, dum, duuuuummmm. This is it! This is as good as it gets right now! The truth is that if I were willing to accept this right now moment and let it stand alone, apart from my expectations, desires, thoughts and feelings it would be perfect. But noooooo, I'm not going to do that until I've suffered enough. How much is enough? That's easy. Enough is when I say so. Why won't I say so? I must still be working out some of the drama queen history of this life I'm experiencing. You see, I come from Irish roots and we Irish love our drama. At least the Irish family from which I came simmered in high drama. A holiday was not allowed to pass without some high drama involving drinking, fighting, screwing, blood and police. May this be the last cycle of drama withdrawal for me. Ah, there it is! Now I can fly because I've found my happy thought. Already I can feel my soul soar above the mind and its intricate web of sticky thoughts and feelings it uses to ensnare us and keep us repeating our drama based history of ordinary crap. Thank you for reading, or not reading. It worked. I looked at it, told the truth about it, accepted it and watched it drop away. Who rocks?

Turns out, because I know you didn't click the link I left for you, I'm going to tell you what was there. If you're still reading. Wait! If you're still reading you may already have clicked the link and gotten the information about my wrongness. New title: Your Wrongness. Uses: Yes (No) Your Wrongness. You don't have to address me by my new title but I expect some of you will. Because you're like that. You've got to love the whole idea of the mild Chinese curse and then the stronger curses that follow it.

1. May you live in interesting times. 
   
2. May you come to the attention of those in authority.
3. May you find what you are looking for.

It turns out, as with much that is wrong, it may be based in fact but has been warped with time and misuse. The curse may well be based on the Chinese proverb, It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period. Whether you agree or not isn't really the point. The point now is that we act as if we know things that we don't know and that makes us a little weird, wonky and untrustworthy. If you go around telling people things that aren't true as if you knew that they are true you're not adding to the truthfulness and reality of our collective life. That's all I want to say now. Thank you.

Peter Pan was a very short book and I finished it yesterday but couldn't take it back until after using it to read parts for the talk I gave this morning. It will be in the next Phat Podcast. Reading Peter Pan was so wonderful that I decided there was another movie I'd seen and loved that came from a book. Well, thought I to myself, if Peter Pan the book was so much more excellent than Peter Pan the movie it is reasonable to think Dune the book will be much better than Dune the movie. Though I am a slow reader I am not a slow learner. I got online and found the library so I could see if the closest branch had the book. They did and I put it on hold. I was rather distressed by the whole process because they said they'd let me know when it came it. I wanted to tell them, You already have it, you silly library people! It seemed prudent not to since I was a new member and that might not look good on my record, if they keep such things. I think they do because they fine you money if you don't bring the book back in the amount of time they give you to read it. The puzzling thing to me is they give you the same amount of time to read Peter Pan, which as we've already said is a short book, as they do Dune which is a big book with much smaller print. Oh, the pressure for an admitted slow reader. What's worse is I went and found the book and brought it to the checkout desk only to have the girl tell me I had one on hold. They have a whole section where you're supposed to go pick up the book you have on hold. I didn't know that. She went and got the book for me and asked which one I wanted. They're the same aren't they? Library people are very smart because all they do is read all day and night. They must not always read the right books though because there are huge holes in their knowledge base.

She opens both of the books and tells me to examine the print to see with which one I'm more comfortable. Who says things like that? I took the one she'd already checked out for me because I didn't have my reading glasses on and couldn't see the print in either one anyway. Then she tells me when I have to have it back before they start fining me and adds, Depending on how fast a reader you are you can renew it. Since I've already declared to the world, like an alcoholic in an AA meeting, Hello, my name is James and I'm a slow reader., I didn't feel hurt by her insinuation. It's not like I have it tattooed on my forehead. I wonder to myself if people can tell when they look at me that I'm a slow reader? Meh, let them know. I want to get the book home so I can start reading it. As if to even the score when she tells me I can call the number at the bottom of the ticket to renew it I say, Or I can renew it online. I may be slow but I'm not ignorant. She smiles at the old gentleman and acquiesces. I'd like to stay and chat some more about my adventures at Club Library and all the real members who are quick readers, good readers, practiced readers and good club members but I've got the fat book here on the desk in front of me and I really want to get after it. Messiahs make me cry in the most wonderful way because I think humanity needs to be saved from itself.

What book did I get at the library you ask? Oh see? Not only am I a slow reader, but one who digresses as well. Tsk, tsk and tut, tut. Peter Pan! It was in the juvenile section at the library. As a juvenile I never read it, but you've probably surmised that already. The things I remember reading as a child were not children's books. Somehow I got into reading the books my mother read and she read some strange ones. Titles like, Truth Stranger Than Fiction and Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet. Seems there are a number of Truth, Stranger Than Fiction books today. None of them are the strange true stories of super human feats and paranormal activities of mind over matter and the like I read as a child. Those books made Dick, Jane and Spot seem dull by comparison. I might have enjoyed Peter Pan as a child but Mary Martin flying around in tights on television each year made me think I knew the story. Why bother? If you saw the special on TV or watched the Disney movie you already knew all about it. Reading was always work in school so the idea of doing it for pleasure never occurred to me. Why Peter Pan? You might wonder. I needed some of the text to use as an example for a talk I'll give in the morning. A strange thing happened while searching for the text. I had to read some of the book. It was so much fun to read and see the story I thought I knew unfold in rich detail that I read the whole book.

Never having read Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, The Little Prince and other children's books when I was a child left me to find them and read them later in life. It's fine with me. J.M. Barrie copyrighted Peter Pan in 1911. The children then must have been better readers than today's youth because some of the words he used I had to look up in the dictionary. Perhaps it's not a children's book at all. Maybe it was written for adults who never had a childhood, like I. Never having had children I never read children's books to them so I had to find them on my own, rummaging around in used bookstores or hearing about them from someone who did have a childhood. So here I am, soon to be sixty-two, finding that I have the time and heart to have a childhood. It takes an uncomplicated heart to see the truth of life. Unfortunately it doesn't take long to complicate a heart and drive the childhood right out of it. If our childhood was driven out of us rather than allowed to slip away, we must work much of our adult life to unravel the mysteries of the heart, discarding the things that are of no use. Sadly that amounts to almost everything acquired during our lives. The cheery bit in all this is that earning childhood is much more rewarding than the one given us. The later childhood is prized while the first isn't usually appreciated until it's gone. There's a difference between being childish and childlike. I prefer the latter and am glad to have it.

Have I genuinely learnt this lesson completely? No, but I'm getting closer. Honest. I'm learning that when I visit my (ahem) xanga friends, if I want to stay friends, I need to wear my cheerleader outfit. Since I don't have one that I can don in a xanga phone booth I just mill around xangadu in these grungy observer coveralls. They're clean even if not very stylish. The problem, in my line of work, is that you see much stuff. Sometimes it's stuff people don't want you to see because they're embarrassed by it. Other times they don't want you to see it because they don't know it's there and it would embarrass them if they did. Once upon a time, when I was about to go onstage with some folks, I told one of the girls she had lipstick on her teeth. Her reaction was so bizarrely over the top I didn't know if she was serious or not for a few moments. She read me the riot act and told me to never, ever, under any circumstances point something like that out to her again. Silly me, I thought she'd want to know she looked like a clown had slipped her the tongue before she went out on stage and announced to the whole world she'd been intimate with a clown. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of people? Not I. Well, I'm saying not I because that's what I'm supposed to say to stay friends. If I really do know and you haven't figured it out yet you'll have to go out there with the lipstick on your teeth now because I'm not saying anything. I'm an observer here.

The thing about understanding is that not everyone shares it. Some people understand better than others. Most people don't understand very well at all. They've never learnt it. *smile* Why should they? What would you rather have, a wheel barrow full of five thousand dollar bills or understanding? Go ahead, lie to yourself and the rest of us. I won't tell. I'm an observer here. See? I am learning. People don't know they're defensive. How could they? They simply think they're explaining that you're mistaken if you see something they don't see. It's not self-justification if you know you're right. And we're always right about anything that really matters because if we weren't we'd find out what was right and then be that. How? We'd just change. Yeah, change is really easy. You just say, presto chango and snap your fingers and it's done. You never have to concern yourself with that again. If other people don't see how much you've changed they obviously have an axe to grind. Inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was this horrible bit of advice: Know yourself. Of course we all do (in imagination if nowhere else) so there's no need to look. The awful thing is that when you begin to know yourself you also begin to know other selves. They don't agree, unless they too have really made the excruciating effort to know themselves as well. To know yourself is to understand yourself to a greater degree. It leads to all kinds of unsavory facts about our kind. Facts that a cheerleader would never notice, or mention if they did notice. You can be a good observer and not mention them too. I'm working on it. Have a nice day you wonderful, beautiful, hunk of perfection.

Rather than race around on a motorcycle looking fast, young and sporty I pass many hours a day in meditation sometimes so deep it's an effort to rejoin the animals with whom I share the house. Rather than thinking big thoughts I often feel as if I'm standing behind the thoughts, the mind, the emotions and him, It, James. From that vantage point the meaning of everything is altered. Perhaps altered isn't the right word. It's not that the meaning is altered as much as the meaning takes on a new dimension. It becomes fuller and deeper with an entirely different center of gravity. It's like a painting. Sometimes an artist will frame a part or section of a larger painting because the composition works better. The rest is discarded. It's not that it ceases to exist but that it has less meaning than once it did. Another example could be an iceberg in the quickly diminishing, once frozen north. When we see the part that's above the waterline it has a certain mass and center of gravity, a certain meaning. If we can then view what is beneath the waterline, the meaning of the chunk of ice takes on a new dimension with a vastly different center of gravity and mass.

At some point one may be able to see that all of life is a preparation for death. Some pass the portal better prepared than others but everyone passes. What seems important at the end of the ride is, more often than not, very different from what appeared important at the beginning or in the middle of the ride. A few weeks ago I was conversing with a young woman I've never met. She is a Woo Woo. A Woo Woo is what I call a person who wants to give peace a chance, teaches Yoga, meditates, eats more consciously and in general tries to live a conscious life. She said something that stuck to some part of me. It's taken me weeks to assimilate it because it wasn't just verbal. She said, I married a redneck. It wasn't a complaint. It was a happy fact. Happy because she accepted him as he is, for what he is and had no desire to change him in any way. They couldn't have much in common in an outer way. She's a Woo Woo and he's a Redneck. Polar opposites. She loves him. I could feel it, hear it and taste it. It struck me because I married a redneck too. For a long time I wasn't happy about it. I kept thinking I'd made a mistake. That somehow she had changed and reverted back to her redneck ways. Sometimes she would say things that were so NOT what I thought it looked like we were in two different worlds. Then, I realized that we are in two different worlds. What I also realized is that my world, the reality of which I have consciously become an integral part, dictates that I love everyone in every world without conditions or requirements, expectations or demands. I can do that and be happy or revert to what once was and figure it all out so I have a good reason for not loving the rednecks.

Now it's old news repeatedly as the trillions add up on a daily basis. The Banksters have done it again and taxpayers want blood. Green blood. The problem is it's their green blood that is being shed. The sentiment is, Let the millionaires and billionaires go under. It serves them right for being such greedy bastards. What's so difficult for taxpayers to understand is that if the Banksters go down we all go with them. They are the clay pillars that support the system in which all of us have become entangled. Vengeance is never the answer but it's difficult to see that when we're so angry. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will insure a country of the blind and toothless. If we want to knock it all down and start again we run the very real risk of waking up to a Mad Max society where anarchy is the order of the day and the survival of the fittest will mean we go back to might makes right. It may seem like a good idea, as most fantasies do, until the blood being spilled in the streets is no longer the green of finances. Most people have no idea how thin the thread is from which our world hangs. The fires of rage can burn that thread far more quickly than we know. Vengeance is not the answer. There are no quick, easy answers. Raging and hitting back, punishing and getting even will only leave us broken and angry instead of just bewildered and angry. If it did, our foray into Iraq would have solved our problems already. Take a chill pill, appreciate what you have, kiss your loved ones and be kind today. Tomorrow may bring something far worse than you see in the movies.

A well coiffed and smartly dressed woman approached me in the produce section of the grocery. She had the hint of a smile as if she recognized me. I didn't know her so I smiled politely and briefly and went on my way. She came up behind me and said, I'm the lady you wouldn't let merge. I must have looked puzzled. On the road . . . you wouldn't let me merge. Then I remembered being stuck behind a car doing about twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. When I finally got a chance to pass her she sped up and began to merge into the side of the car. I figured she was happy enough to mosey along before there was no need to get stuck behind her again. The light must have dawned on my face because she said, in a rather indignant manner, What was that about? I could tell by her tone there was no way this could end well so I said, I didn't think you knew what you were doing. Oops. That was the trigger. She flared back, I knew what I was doing! You're something else. Stupidly I said, And you're special? That was dumb but it was already out of my mouth. She turned on her heel in a huff saying, Yes, I am special. Well, once you start being dumb it's hard to stop isn't it? I said, You think so.

Now we're here and I'm thinking of how we feel entitled. I live in snootyville and drive a snooty German car and live in a big, snooty house and buy my clothes a the snooty designer store and have my snooty hair coiffed at Jacques Penné so I'm entitled to merge whenever I damned well please and you'd better remember that! Meh. Whatever. The way I figure it is our cars and money; clothes and hair; houses and social clubs don't really entitle us. If they did she should have been pleased to not have been allowed to merge. She was driving a snooty VW something or other that wasn't a bug and I was driving a Mercedes. As I recall a friend of mine, who was stationed in Germany, telling me of a Mercedes Benz commercial he saw there that announced: Mercedes Benz. The only car in the world with a built in right of way. If I had it to do again I still wouldn't want to be stuck behind her for a few more miles. She really didn't look like she knew what she was doing. I looked for her in the store and never did see her again. That's when it dawned on me that she had followed me into the store just to tell me how entitled she was. Yawn.