Me Speaking

If you like baseball, you know the score. Baseball players stand alert and astutely prepared in every inning of the game. No player knows what’s going to happen. Every player can expect only the unexpected. Players on defense tense their muscles and focus their minds to react properly to the trajectory of the ball in play. The batter trains his eyes to smash a hit. The infield and outfield players poise themselves to deny it. In baseball, as in the game of life, competition breeds tension between those desiring to win. People in real life tauten for the unexpected too because life guarantees unexpected turns of event. If you know about baseball, you're aware a baseball coach trains his team to win. He practices his team. His ball players gain proficiency and expertise with repeated practice. The spirit of the team escalates the more it realizes improvement due to practice. The practice instills confidence. When the ball game starts, the players act instinctively to do what t...

Fingerprints identify with 100% accuracy. They spell on your flesh the mark of you. That you are indeed unique. But we have not been formed in a vacuum. We not only have traits and predispositions genetically inherited, but also the customization of time and place which form and mold us as well. Much of the family, religious and cultural influences that had molded me by the time I entered young adulthood were part of a self-structure I tried to dislodge. These influences felt like clamps bolting me in an intolerable juxtaposition. Their pressures did not contain me in a temperate way, it seemed; rather, they stifled in a way that punished my individuality. I revolted and attempted, so to speak, to break out of jail, not only in personal sense but in public sense. Drugs smashed the gates of inhibition which denied pleasure the fullness of its enjoyment. I lived on little and learned the lifestyle of the poor. I joined in protest which seethed against war in Vietnam . ...

If you don’t read books, you’re missing out, period. I would say this is true so much so that for those of you who have never made a practice of reading books---train yourself to read. If you strive to overcome natural disinclination, you’ll likely discover the reward worth the payment of time and energy. Everybody has interests. Begin by reading a book on a subject of interest. It's not only a way to learn, it feeds an innate hunger to know. If you have relapsed; if you used to read books but don’t anymore, start reading again. You’ll likely find that without realizing, you wholeheartedly miss the pleasure of reading an outstanding book. For a time I myself experienced book reading relapse. I attribute part of this to years of working tiresome graveyard shift hours---part to being enamored of digital chat rooms---and part to the internet in general. Binge watching popular Netflix TV series grabs plenty of time and interferes with book reading mode. To learn how to navigat...

Sometimes people get in a mood. It’s a feeling of defeatism . It can be dispiriting when you count your defeats and conclude you’ve lost too many battles. You feel hamstrung by what you think is a malediction. You back away from challenges for fear of another defeat. Maybe you think the term “lazy” applies to you when it’s simply part of many aspects to your character. I’ve recently been feeling these kinds of ways; but not now. I’m focusing on writing a post and whenever I do that it feeds the sense there are winning ways about me. Counting your victories balances the scale between defeat and victory. That’s why it’s a good thing. Small victories add up. Maybe you finished reading a book about the Middle Ages. Maybe you had a front end alignment completed on your car. Maybe you’ve maintained a worthwhile relationship with a friend or sibling for a good many years. The point is we live with our defeats and victories; they amalgamate into shades so that none of us can claim an...

We do communicate with other drivers. We signal intent. Honk different types of honks. Ask and give directions, offer courtesies. You’re entering traffic from a Starbucks, but the street is packed with cars. A driver nods and lets you know get in ahead of me. Who hasn't felt appreciative when that happened? I like to drive, and curious about how drivers act sometimes. I remember a night in North Beach in San Francisco. Traffic was stalled. Somebody honked. I honked too. The other driver honked again and back and forth we messed around honking for fun. Let’s say you fall asleep at a red light and don’t go when it turns green. A simple honk would nudge you back into business. But when the driver behind honks with a blast that is plainly rude. There are intermittent honks, blaring honks and notification honks when you see somebody you know and want to attract their attention. Headlights signal too.  If you're in the fast lane, and see a car in back with its headlights g...

Food has always attracted me, but as something more than a means of sustenance. Sweet foods especially have been this way. I was raised, practically, on sugar food . I ate candy bars, donuts, pastry and pancakes. A daily habit I had when in high school was to buy a cinnamon roll and eat it before the first class. It didn’t take long to discover by doing such eating I could sooth myself. Sweets produced a relief that felt like amelioration. I could depend on the feeling if I ate sweets. And always, the pleasure of eating sweet tasting food itself was a primary factor in the simple quest to feel better. I was never overweight until I reached my thirties. When I got a job as a newspaper reporter, especially, I found the pressures of reporting and writing under deadline hard to handle. Everyday I’d eat big lunches at McDonald’s. I may have seemed ravenous on account of hunger, but this eating was not a response to hunger. I was eating to cope with the stress of the job. My stom...

I don't agree with every policy enacted by Israel . I don't like it when Jewish settlers occupy disputed territory. It's as important for the Palestinians to have an independent state as it is for the Jews to have an independent state. Statehood for Palestinians is a crucial determinent to ending violence in that region, but it must be a state that recognizes the right of Israel to exist. What has it meant to be Jewish throughout most of history? It has meant being hated. It has meant being vulnerable and without rights. It has meant being excluded, banished and subject to pogroms throughout the middle ages. Throughout Russia and Eastern Europe well into the modern age, being Jewish has meant being regarded as having a malignancy. The Holocaust was an eruption of anti-Jewish hatred without parallel. Despite this, Jewish people in Israel and all over the world have secured and maintain a vibrant and lively culture of intellectual pursuit and study. In their books of reli...

Filters in faucet heads keep water clean. Filters in people do the same in the waters of human contact, but they’re not uniform---not mass produced. Although everybody agrees we need filters for ourselves, people don’t agree on what needs filtering. Some people allow into the pool of public interaction what other people filter out---there is no one size fits all filter. A friend recently told me my filter has big holes in it. She said I have privacies that need preservation which I’m willing to advertise on billboards. I do have an inherit dislike of hiding the forbidden and secretive. I generally want to expose, not hide. I want to talk about subjects not usually discussed. I want out in the open honesty. Still, some matters I fully intend to keep secret. Filters have something to do with perspective. When you look at a wood finish from one perspective, the color and shade look dark---from a different perspective it can look way light. The same finish when looked at from differen...

With Netflix and other streaming view sites, watching TV is more like watching Computer. One reason? Well, at Hulu you can go back to the late 50s and early 60s to watch multiple episodes of Bonanza or Rawhide on your computer. I’ve wanted to re-watch the 1981 German sub war movie “Das Boot” for years---but not until I joined Hulu this week at $7.99 a month did I find a way to do that---same with the “I Claudius” BBC series of the late 70s. Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards I don’t have a TV and that’s no bother. It insulates me from an overload of news. Yet with Netflix and Hulu, I indulge for the sake of enjoyment, and keep up with news by selecting online articles to read that fall into areas of personal interest. The web is replete with news and differing opinion about “ binge watching .” People talk about the phenomena and the dramatic series that spin the phenomena into life. I wondered if chat forums exist geared to discuss specific shows---yes, at AMC...

I barely could see my boat. Howling wind and driving rain churned the water into surging waves that bucked, pitched and rocked every boat in Gate 5. I was going to skull out and board my boat, but before doing that, Rico and I had talked. I had a World War 1 German Army rifle. Rico and I agreed on a signal. If I needed help, I would fire two shots to alert Rico. He said he would then come out to do a rescue. I reached my cabin cruiser, the waves pitching my dinghy and cabin cruiser so much I had to wait until the right time; then I leaped aboard the boat and tied off my dinghy. I felt the boat moving strangely and clambered to the deck and pulled on the anchor line until I see the rope torn in two. My weight had been enough to add sufficient strain to tear apart the rope. My cabin cruiser now with no anchor was being swept towards Tiburon in this major storm at night, and I went for my rifle. I fired two shots into the sky. I remember my cabin cruiser passed a 30 foot steel hu...