My Blog

permanence

daDa — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:15:04 GMT

For years I kept a journal. At first it was handwritten in a slew of spiral notebooks. Then I "advanced" to digital and could write so quickly, but all my handwriting and little jotted sketches were gone. I put all these things on a big permanent fast-moving disk. For those days. Then the technology changed and I did not get my data transferred to the new media fast enough. I lost 3 years of journals. Then I stopped writing in my journal. If it could all be lost so quickly, why bother? Our lives are written in sand. I know I'm slow on the ball, but recently I had an insight. Go ahead and journal in your blog. Write knowing anybody can read it. But don't care if nobody does. If no one reads it, it's just my thought process, exactly as if I'd written in a private journal in the first place. But if people do, we may find things in common, and how cool is that. I know this is an insight that people younger than I am come to like fish swimming in water. But I'm an old fogey and it's just dawning on me.

Professional Dithering

daDa — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:43:07 GMT

Okay, so why have I put off writing this presentation for so long? And now I leave for this conference the day after tomorrow and I will have no more time to prepare. Yes being hanged in the morning has a way of concentrating the mind, but still. I supposedly enjoy my job, and I'm a smart guy. It doesn't take me long to figure out what has to be said. But I am resistant. Here's why. I'm doing this case presentation of a boy with autism with whom I've worked the last 2 years. (Confidentiality: No identifying info.) During that time he has made a miraculous entry into the social world, and I have no doubt that our work with him in our group has been one of the major motivating features. And I've even got some great video of his emergence into joyful interaction with friends. However, this presentation is supposed to be so steeped in this particular methodology that we use, that I fear I will lose the main story in a forest of minutiae. And it's this forest of minutiae that I am supposed to be growing all around this child and his therapy with us. I would rather have the freedom to describe what has happened using the general developmental framework. But I am not willing to go back to graduate school (that's why I'm not an academic) and I am not willing to get to that level of intellectual intensity at this time in my life. Finding a peaceful balance between work and home is far more important to me. But this is wrecking my 4th of July. So I am resisting this whole conference, not just my part in it. Good news/bad news is that I just had a kidney stone a few days ago and so the doctor has legitimately prescribed Vicodin. When I asked him if I could travel, he said sure, just use the Vicodin if you need it. So I may end up going through this whole conference legitimately altered. That would be fine with me. My boss said, "You'd sure have a lot of explaining to do." (!!!)

dreamblog #3 (short)

daDa — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:56:09 GMT

a friend tells me a mutual friend makes $936 million a year. "That's almost a billion dollars!" I say. "Yup," says my friend. "It's a lot of money." I wonder why I don't make that kind of money.

daDA to Daddio

daDa — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:50:07 GMT

It's like a whole new me. Serena said daDA was pretentious and scrunched up her nose. Daddio she could say, in fact sometimes does say, sort of post-ironically. As if a name that was hip in the 50's would still (or again) be a half-century later. I mean I'm an old-timer but I'm not that old! Still Daddio fits me in a way daDA didn't. So 23 skiddoo, here's lookin' at you kid, and if you need anything, just whistle. - Daddio

Kudos to Josh Holiday!

daDa — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:40:47 GMT

I've been listening to Josh Holiday's "Kung Fu" a few weeks now and his stuff has saturated my brain. It keeps going at a nice steady fast bpm that keeps me moving when I put it on my iPod and take a walk. And it makes the walk feel like going to get me some playa dust. Nice! - daDA

An Open Letter to Obama Supporters

daDa — Sun, 11 May 2008 07:09:12 GMT

Damn we're in a festive mood here as we exult in our candidate's presumptive victory in the Democratic Primaries of the 2008 Presidential Election! Rahm Emanuel himself has now said it. The superdelegates are going to just start piling on as it becomes evident that Obama has won. At the risk of sounding "hopeful" (what a terrible thing to be!), what really excites me is the hope that Obama really does mean what he says about practicing politics in an entirely different way. I think it's a message that resonates throughout the American public. I hope we have a series of debates between him and McCain. I think it would be so amazing to see them -- totally opposite world views when it comes to Iraq. It will be interesting to see if McCain can keep his temper in check. They would each have to state their claim as strongly as they could. I can't think of anyone better qualified to do that than Barack. So that is my hope for Obama. I know that's an awful lot of hope to lay one on man. Doing that has a way of being its own undoing. But that's part of what I love about Obama: it never has been about one man. Obama is the cresting wave of a movement, a crashing tsunami of a smart, 21st century mediatory approach to human conflict that is capable of regaining America's respect in the world community -- not to mention our national self-respect, after the abominations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. I realize that the superlative of that sentence gets conservatives going, and suddenly there's a backlash, and you wish you'd never said anything. But what I like about Obama is that he is about trying to prevent the backlash by trying to understand each other in the first place. Unfortunately, he did get a little down in the mud as he got a little winded fending off that pit bull ... (Sorry, Hillary supporters!). But exhasuting as it's been, there's no doubt it's made him a better candidate. Oh, and also, I strongly support Russ Warner here in our district (Monrovia - Pasadena - Duarte and up in the hills too, I think La Canada, La Crescenta, etc). He just sent out a great mailer in which his 20-something year old son, in full military dress and home after 18 months in Iraq, says he called his dad from Iraq to ask him to run, so that thousands of more soldiers wouldn't have to perish in the same manner he'd seen so many of his friends do already. Pretty strong stuff for a local fight in a Republican majority district. It's exciting to see our long-held views expressed so strongly and sincerely. It's as if all the values we've seen rejected outright for 7 long ignored years, are finally beginning to emerge, stronger than ever. It literally feels like a lifting of oppression. Some people are saying Obama may be the next RFK. I think he may be greater. - daDA --------------------------------- Go Obama! www.barackobama.com ---------------------------------

dreamblog #2

daDa — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:06:42 GMT

When I was 17, I had a dream that influenced the rest of my life. I was looking at the mountains to the north of my home, the mountains that had always meant a sense of direction to me. All my life those mountains had been north. And I was about to travel beyond them. Suddenly the mountains vanished, and I panicked. I was terrified that I could no longer see the mountains and thus know which way I was facing or where I was going. I was completely lost. I had no idea where I was. So I thought I'd take a look around. First thing I noticed was people. Lots of people. Some in small groups, like families, some walking individually or with a few other people. And they were on this hilly landscape, everywhere you looked there were all these ups and downs, and in some places these people were struggling, but in other places they were finding it relatively easy, Suddenly, I realized that the mountainside was green. Everywhere, all along the entire mountain, green grass had sprung up, and the lost hikers luxuriated in their travails through the fertile hillsides. Some of the paths were exceedingly difficult, but they were all full of beauty. The mountains that had been lost to me, were actually all around me. I could not find my way within the very mountains that I thought had disappeared. Now it's going on 30 years since I had that dream, and it stays with me. For instance, whenever I've had a job that just seemed wrong for me, I think of how I need to find that fertile ground again, how I need to reconnect to it.

dreamblog #1

daDa — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:17:57 GMT

An old professor who I never liked literally throws a book at me and tells me to look it up. I'm pissed off at him, so I leave the book on the ground and go tell him he's full of shit. Meanwhile the thing I needed to learn has not been learned. I've been suggesting to myself that I lucid dream every night. In the absence of actually getting lucid, though, I try to go back to sleep to see how else the dream might turn out. So this morning I thought, I know, I'll tell the prof something so witty, so elegant, that he will recognize the error of his ways and he will show me what part of that book I'm supposed to read. But each time I fell asleep, I couldn't get lucid. Later I realized instead of blaming the prof (who after all is just some spllntered part of my own psyche), I could just read the damn book!