It flows by without being seen, silent and mute. Nothing stops its never ending momentum of..

"dad..."
"...hang on..."

We hardly notice it when it passes, or even what it leaves in it's wake. The changes are imperceptible. To our eyes all things remain the same. We continue to...

"Dad, this afternoon, I was laughing, and snot came out of my nose and went all the way down to my chin. I had to keep my mouth shut until mom wiped it off."
"Did you get the tissue yourself?"
"Yes."
"Why did you make mom wipe it off?"
"...uh, I don't know."
"Please run along and get in your bed please. Good night, love you."
"Love you too, dad."

Our lives continue on as if nothing has changed. But the moments pass, and the colors fade, and the people change, and the scenery shifts. If we become too complacent to notice the almost imperceptible, we become automatons, incapable of ...

"Son?"
"I was just wondering if mom was going to come down and tuck me in also?"
"I'll ask when I go up. Go get in your bed please. Love you."
"Love you too dad."

Ok, skip it. What I'm trying to say using flowery and pompous language is this; stop and smell the roses for crying out loud! I'm going to bed before he comes in here again. Sheesh!

Emotions. They're really nothing but the release of a cocktail of chemicals in the brain after external stimulation. But for us, the thinking animal, they become so much more complex it would seem. We can be floating along just fine, when something triggers an emotion. Something out of the blue, something even unexpected.

Paranoia:
Were they talking about me?

No. Not likely. But the emotion grows. The paranoia rises in the back of the mind like a dark cloud and tries to prevent rational thought from keeping it's foothold. One slip, and it's a long way back to normality. After the slip, paranoia turns to anger, anger turns to fear, fear turns to action. Try to stop it. Hard, isn't it?

But it can be stopped. The damage, however, has been done. Growing in us from day to day are complex sets of individual reactions to external stimuli. When a similar set of stimuli occurs, the emotion is stronger, and harder to control.

Depression:
I give up.

This is darkness. Selfishly turning inward and seeing worthlessness. Goaded on by thoughts of inadequacy, a whole host of chemicals are released, and remain bound. Millions suffer from this. I do, periodically. Depression is anger withdrawn and pointed inward. Misdirected angst. Wasted energy.

Emotions. We live and die feeling emotions. We are directed, lead, and follow by emotion. We love by emotion. We listen with emotion. We drive, work, play and eat by emotion. We are sometimes ruled by emotion.

Sometimes, we are ruined by emotions.

I remember my mom cutting my dad's hair. I remember him sitting in the kitchen, facing toward the television that was in the other room, with a kitchen towel draped around him, clasped together around the back with a wooden clothes pin. It was usually on a Saturday night, at the end of the evening.

I remember after my mother would cut the mostly white hair on his head, she's clip the hair above his eyebrows, then trim his ears, and then she'd attempt to trim the hair out of his nostrils also. I remember thinking how strange this was. My dad is endowed with heavy eyebrows. My friends feared my dad's eyebrows, saying that when he lowered them, they could feel the power they emanated. I used to laugh and wonder how strange it must be to have to trim the hair around one's eyes, ears, and nose.

Last night, my wife trimmed my hair. She also made sure to trim my ears, my eyebrows, and my nostrils. My sons watched.

They'd call it a Rave today, I think. But I'm not sure. It was the late 1980s, and techno-dance music was a little new, at least to me. This new friend of mine and I would disappear into the Dallas club scene for a few hours on Friday nights. One of the places we frequented was called Club A.

The place was all dark walls and colored lights. There were couches, tables, and a unisex bathroom. There was a central open "pit" for dancing. Around the top was a railing over which you could lean to watch the gyrations of 1980s teenagers to loud, rhythmic, clanging, industrial noise music that we called "techno music". There was a wide double staircase with side and center railings, and a mid-point landing down into this giant dance pit. At the top of the stairs, lights flashed and changed colors down into the pit. Television screens hung from the ceilings everywhere, showing odd and colorful videos constantly. The DJ was at the top, acting as a sort of wizard, controlling lights, beat, and smoke. If a dancer stood at the top of the stairs, he would cast a giant shadow down into the pit. Coupled with the music, the beat, and the smoke effects, the whole thing was quite theatrical and over the top. It was interesting to watch.

That was the 80s. Some of the girls wore ripped and torn tight leggings, and bold colored and patterned dresses. Some didn't. Some of the guys wore close fitting jeans and long button down shirts and had wild hair. Some didn't. We were young, we were together, all things were new. We were generation X, and we didn't even realize it.

But now we're not together, now everything has been done. We're all thirty-something professionals, fathers, mothers, or whatever. I hear that friend of mine is now a lawyer, and has a budding political career in the works. Me? I've gone into hiding.

Stop!

Why?

Don't you see that roadblock?

Oh yeah, I suppose I should stop. But what's keeping me from driving right through it, smashing cars and breaking down barriers?

You know you can't do that yet. It's not time.

But when can I go on? When can I feel more free to go the places I want to go on this road?

I don't know, just not now.

Well, this kinda sucks. Am I just supposed to sit here with the car in idle while I wait for things to change, or for my hair to get longer and more grey?

I said I don't know. Why don't you just do something benign like think about the 1980s?

Sheesh...how boring would that be?

Why don't you give it a try and find out?

Wow. You're no help. No help at all.

Thanks. I excel at keeping you from doing anything stupid. Now shut up and turn on the radio.

Look around you, can you see it? Fear. It creeps along the ground like a fog making things look different, more sinister, and bigger than they really are. There's a man in a turban working at the gas station, are you afraid of him? There's a spider in the shower, will it bite you? There's a dead bird on your front lawn, will you be next?

Fear. Paranoia. War and destruction.

They go together like ham and eggs, peanut butter and jelly, and some other culinary pairing that I can't think of right now. They distort our vision and cause us to lose our rational sense of reality. We begin to see ghosts and demons in everything. Fluoride in the water supply becomes a means of controlling our minds, not our cavities. Every Muslim man taking classes at a local college becomes a sleeper operative learning how to kill us.

Paranoia is destoying us. Paranoia and fear is destroying us all.

Make it stop. Please?

I don't even know how many days it's been now. Rain. Nonstop it seems. Since just before Christmas. Rivers rise, mud slides, and windshields smear with the oily residue off the freeway spray.

Where did winter go? What have we done to deserver this? We were pure, white, clean, cool, crisp and fresh. Then, as if some evil were perpetrated by one of us, the clouds came, and the wind and rain washed away our purity. We stared after it as it flowed into the rivers, causing it to swell and rush even faster.

There's no end in sight. I think I heard that two days ago, a man hauling a giant yacht through town, was arrested for not stopping and letting two of each kind of animal in the northwest board his vessel. The bearded man said he'd have nothing of the sort, he'd already done it once, and we were on our own this time.

Will we ever see winter again? I hope so. But right now, it looks like it's over.

Have a great weekend everyone.

I found the picture above at ChrisRodkey.com, a pacific northwest blogger. Check out his blog, it's pretty good.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

It's easy to let it seep in. Like a slow drip on a stone, it will eventually leave a mark that cannot go unnoticed. We become dented, different, and changed. Anything you use to fill in the mark it's made is gone in less time than the original material, and then you find you are hooked. If you relax, the hook stops driving deeper, and the pain relinquishes. But you are still hooked. But when you remove the source of the drip, and acknowledge the change, it's easier to manage and understand, and explain.

Beware the hooks because they are everywhere. People carry them with them. Many forms of religion and belief systems have them embedded. It's easy to get caught, and painful to get free. When whole ideologies clash, hooks fly both directions, and people in between get caught unawares. Hooked. Drawn in to things bigger than themselves, from which the only release is through the fire, through pain, through hell and death itself.

The house was dark, I was done with my breakfast and on the front porch waiting for both my ride, and the predicted snow. Sitting on the bench, there was a soft tap on the window behind my head. I turned, expecting to see my wife, telling me that my ride had called, but it wasn't her. It was our oldest son. He's six. His face was looking out of the darkness of the front living room, with a soft sort of sad grin on it. He was waving goodbye to me. He knew I was going to work. But I couldn't, not yet.

I got up and went back inside, called my work to tell them that I was running a little bit late, and sat and talked to my son for a while. I don't know why he was up early, he hasn't been sleeping well lately. He sat on the couch, under a blanket, and just looked at me as I'd sit down, then get up, pace around the room looking to see if my ride was there yet, then sit back down again. We talked about what he was going to do today, school, computer games, and just generally be six years old.

It was getting late, and I thought I might need to go ahead and go. Giving up on my ride, I got up, and he gave me the tightest hug and softest kiss he has in quite a while.

"I love you."

"I love you too dad."

"Be good for mom and your teacher today, ok?"

"Ok dad."

And I left. I walked outside just as my ride drove up. I got in, and glanced back at the front window of our living room. Framed in the darkness, I saw his face, and his hand waving at me...and his big eyes.

I know he wanted me to stay. He always does. He wanted me to stay and play all day long.

"I want you to play with me dad!"

"I know son, but I have to work sometime. You know that."

"I know."

It makes me sad sometimes. Sad that we don't get to spend as much time with out children as we'd like to. I'd be lying if I said I didn't crave adult conversation though. But there, in the darkness of the back of my mind, even while I'm fully engaged in things adult, things bigger than me, keeping this industry that I'm in flowing throughout the day, I'll see his face from time to time, filled with longing for my presence. I'll want to run to him and cast off this adult world of responsibility.

Maybe some days I should.

So, could you, like, change my grades and stuff?

Some people are fascinated by power. Or maybe they are just fascinated by things they cannot do, I don't know. Most of the time, I don't really think about things that are out of my power.

What would it take to lock down the servers if we...say...had to fire someone?

Responsibility. I suppose that's what it is. Not power, really. But I suppose if you have responsibility over something, you have a certain power over that thing.

It'd be easy for you to read someone's email, right?

Why would I want to? People worry about power. Power in the hands of the wrong people. I worry about who's hands are the right hands in the first place.

Do you?

I'm not sure how long ago I put it on my server. I don't even really remember what the post was about. I'm certain, though, that it was before I changed the format of this blog from talking, to writing. It sure has generated alot of hits today though. So, welcome everyone. Enjoy the picture. I didn't take the picture, the photographers at TV Guide did. I took it off their server some time ago, and haven't been told to remove it, and until I am, I'll serve it up here.

I really like Jon Stewart alot. His show is funny, and timely. His points are well made, and smart, in my opinion. I'm glad he either is hosting, or might be hosting, the Academy Awards this year. He is one of the voices of my generation I think. What do you think?

This is the first post of 2006, and I don't know what to say, except hello. Hello to all of you who stop by this little corner. Have a seat. Let me heat up some tea. I'll stoke the fire a bit and we'll sit and chat, shall we?

Outside it's rainy and cold. Outside there are angry people. Outside there are people who are dying, starving, cold, friendless and helpless. Outside there are people who force their ideas on others, there are people who incite wars and death. Outside there are bullets and bombs, blood and mutilation.

Let's stay inside, shall we? Here inside there's a warm fire, a nice cup of hot tea and good company. There's the laughter of children, and a sleeping cat. There are books aplenty to brows through, and a fleece blanket to cover your legs. There's soft music and pillows.

We'll go outside later, to help the friendless and the helpless if we can. We'll go out later to feed the starving, if we're able. We will go out. Don't worry about that. But for now, let's stay inside. Right now, I don't want to see the outside. I don't even want to know that it's there. How about you?