In which I describe the awesome side-effects of suddenly halting one’s intake of various toxins.
I smoked my last cigarette in the parking lot of a condo in Joseph, OR on August 14th.
I had been heading toward that moment for months, really, and I was ready for it. I didn’t even want that final cigarette because it was the middle of the night after a gig, I was tired, and I’d been more or less chain smoking for the entire week.
I was acutely aware of how glamorous it is to be addicted: everyone else was inside, chatting, eating, getting ready for bed, and there I was, standing in a ditch, sucking on a cigarette like a total loser. Oh, yes, I planned my quit well. I’ll never forget that last smoke.
For the next seven days I gave myself permission to eat anything and everything I wanted to. I threw out any pretense about portion control or intelligent food choices or calories. I ate Mexican food, I ate entire bags of cheesy poofs, I ate chocolate truffles. I ate brie, I ate huge salads, I ate dill pickle sunflower seeds. I cleaned my plate every single time I had a meal. And on the eighth day, I stopped and went back to my normal, non-dieting-but-still-fairly-conscious eating ways.
Today is my eleventh day of non-smoking. I’ve had many, many non-smoking milestones that I’m really proud of, but this post isn’t about that. It’s about what’s happening to my body:
I’m exhausted. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I went down for a brief nap yesterday evening – I was planning to do some late night QA testing – and slept, without moving, for ten and a half hours.
I’m fat. I’ve gained eight pounds in less than two weeks, but I can’t figure out how a little extra caloric indulgence turned into this. I think I’m retaining water in new and strange ways, because The Curseâ„¢ ended yesterday and the fifth day of my cycle is usually my skinniest day of the whole month.
I can now go hours without craving anything, but the rest of the time I have a vague, itchy, cellular drive to… something. Nothing in particular, just something.
I’ve finally figured out how to use the nicotine lozenges to their best effect, but I only manage to get six or eight miligrams of nicotine into my body each day. (I’m supposed to have eighteen per day for a month.) My quit plan has me using these things through November, and I intend to do that, but I might just forget to use them before that.
They’re great for emergency craving management, such as when I find myself in a room full of smokers, or I get into a vehicle I used to smoke in, or I’m on break in between sets at a gig, etc. but I have a hard time remembering to use them when I’m engaged in something that doesn’t remind me of smoking.
I haven’t begun any lung cleansing yet. I was expecting a lot of coughing and throat-clearing and sinus-draining, but I’ve experienced almost none of that. When I inhale, it’s free and clear and there’s no gurgling or anything. My lungs sound and feel like I just took a decongestant.
I’m hyper emotional today. I’ve misted up about five times about nothing. Again, I’m not in the emotional part of my cycle, so I’m attributing this experience to quitting as well.
Something clicked in my psyche somewhere; I no longer want to smoke. I mean, I have cravings, but I’ve figured out that there’s no such thing as “just a drag” or “just one cigarette;” I spent far too long making too many neuroreceptors for that to be possible. I either smoke, or I don’t. And I don’t want to suffer the long-term effects of smoking, so I can’t smoke.
The last time I quit, my voice responded with great suppleness within days. This time, I was expecting another rapid recovery but I’m not getting it. I don’t understand that, either.
So I’m fat, moody, unsatisfied, AND my voice sounds just like it did before I quit. In conclusion, quitting smoking appears to be just like PMS.
Only me, my babies. Only me.
In which I catch y’all up on how things are going lately.
THE SPOKANE TRIP last weekend was, on the one hand, really fun. I enjoyed getting out of town for a couple of nights. The motel bed was far more comfortable than my own. I enjoyed sight-seeing in Spokane, and eating at Frankie Doodles, and shopping (I bought jeans and a belt at Ross), and I loved the club itself to pieces. The staff was great, and the patrons were fantastic. The club comped my fettuccine alfredo even though it wasn’t from the appetizer menu, and the owner went out of his way to give us the cash he had on hand instead of paying us with just a check.
On the other hand, it was 48 hours of sophomoric ego-emo clusterfuck, the proportions of which can be reached only in the poly relationship known as “being in a band.” Nutshell: we were too loud, the club asked us to turn down – five times – and we (where “we” equals Someone Who Isn’t Me) didn’t want to; we had no set lists and Far Too Much Dead Air; and we ran out of blues material and defaulted to a bunch of old rock covers (which is fine in taverns, but not in Actual Blues Clubs that have Live Blues Bands Five Nights Per Week). I blew out my voice and went deaf in my first set. It wasn’t a raging train wreck – I mean, people danced – but we made enough amateurish mistakes to ensure that we won’t be asked back.
THE QUALITY ASSURANCE gig is going really well! The guys I report to are so swamped that I have to wait awhile for feedback, but they seem pleased with what I’ve done so far. I’m enjoying the work, which consists of making sure a software application does what it’s designed to do, and filing bugs when it doesn’t. I can work pretty much whenever I want to.
I have only the vaguest inkling of what I’m doing and how it fits into the Big Picture, but I’ve had just enough explained to me that I’m comfortable with not knowing what I don’t know. I’m a contractor, not a project manager, so I don’t need to know how it all fits together… it’s just my nature to want to fix inefficient or redundant work flows, maximize the efforts of actual human resources, and — right. Not my job!
I scrounged a card table and a folding chair so I’m no longer sitting on the floor while I’m working. My knees are happy about that.
SCHOOL STARTS IN less than a month. The WWCC web site says that financial aid packets were supposed to go out on August 20th. I haven’t received mine, and the financial aid portal shows no awards for me yet.
I can’t pay for school without aid, and if I don’t go to school I will have to pay back three months worth of unemployment benefits. I’m vaguely worried about this situation, but have decided to delay freaking out until September.
I’m hoping I’ll get the aid I need, and that I’ll get to do QA at night while going to school during the day. If it all works out, next spring I’ll have a pile of networking certifications and great references for QA work! And if I can’t get a fucking job then, I’ll switch over to my secret-until-now backup plan, which goes something like, “Uh, Be A Homeless Crack Whore In Hawaii or Something?” I always thought I’d keep my teeth, but sometimes you just gotta take a hint, am I right?
In which it’s ALL good news, people. It’s like Xmas in August, I swear.
Today is Day 5 of my smoke-free life.
I quit smoking on the 15th. I’m using 2mg lozenges for NRT and I’m “workin’ my quit” (that’s lingo from becomeanex.org) and I’m doing really well. I wasn’t even a little bit miserable on the patio at the Peony with the smokers last night, and I didn’t care when my brother smoked in the truck.
It’s easy because I had to quit. Permanent lung damage ain’t cool for anyone, but particularly not someone who loves to sing. I was noticing issues with breathing in general, I was having a hard time getting enough breath when singing, and my heart rate was permanently elevated (it had dropped the last time I quit, so I know it was the smoking). It had begun to hurt to smoke. Smoking kept me from wanting to exercise. Smoking had begun to try to kill me in earnest.
I understand, now, why people usually have to quit a few times before it sticks: you have to learn how to do it. You have to make your peace with really and truly wanting to quit. I think that for most people, it’s a complicated mental process involving amassing a host of reasons about Why Smoking Is So Bad That You’re Willing To Suffer Through Quitting, Even Though It Totally Sucks And You Will Probably Always Have Smoking Impulses Until You Die.
Working from home is freakin’ cool and I dig it.
The QA gig is great. I love it. I hope it lasts. I work with two guys in California; communication is done via email and IM and the occasional SMS. They send me projects, I log into the VPN and do them. The projects involve logging into a piece of software and testing to make sure it actually does what the build description says it should.
My little netbook hasn’t melted down yet, thankfully, but my boss said he’d send me a laptop or something here pretty soon since so many tests require access to two machines.
I’ve been working in my room, but it’s too many hours to sit on the floor and my knees are killing me. I really need to find a desk (or a desk-like item) and an office chair so that I can set up a workspace in the basement. I need another monitor, keyboard, and mouse, too. I might even need to purchase a second computer of my own so that I can have one for my personal stuff and one for work.
I need to accomplish all this over the weekend, except I’ll be out of town.
Live Music Are Better.
This weekend, I’ll be joining Coyote Kings for a two-night run at a blues & comedy club in Spokane called Bluz at the Bend. Yay hotel living! (I get to crash with the rhythm section. I hope those bitches don’t snore.)
I might take my netbook along; if the motel has a connection I could work… of course, without a monitor it might be too crazy-making. Hmm. We’ll have to see.
The Awesomest Clothing Bomb Of All Time
On Wednesday, I got this in the mail – two boxes of clothes from Sussette. She sent me a silk tank-and-skirt set from India; a silk Chinese jacket and wide-legged pants; a wrap-around skirt made of sari material; two cotton gauze trapeze tops with pockets; a tie-dyed tank dress; Thai worker’s pants; a black tunic; a tube-top half dress; a floor-length sun dress; a pink sari skirt; a black and red top; a white embroidered tunic; a silk halter top dress; and a cap-sleeved batik dress with ties.
IT WAS SO FREAKING WONDERFUL. The items are all new or very lightly used, they all fit, they’re all items I will totally wear… altogether it’s got to be hundreds of dollars worth of clothes! And all because she needed to clean out her closets!
I’m the luckiest girl ever.
Sweating and moving around and stuff.
My drummer woke up the other morning with a wild hair about fitness. He’s been texting me every single day about going walking or jogging, so today I went for a walk with him. I was going to do the first installment of Couch-to-5k (brisk 5 minute warmup walk, then alternate 60 seconds jogging with 90 seconds walking for 20 minutes, 5 minutes cool down walk after) but we walked around the reservoir instead. Halfway around, my heart rate was really high – probably too high for any real cardio benefit – and my hands swelled up like sausages.
I think these symptoms were a result of the following facts: I have avoided exercise my entire life because I don’t like it; The Curseâ„¢ is due today and I’m bloated; I haven’t been drinking enough water in general; I smoked for 25 years; it was 94 degrees F in the shade; I am 41 years old.
The good news is that I no longer smoke, The Curseâ„¢ will pass, summer will end, and I now believe – from the 200 Situps, 200 Squats, and 100 Pushups programs – that I can build up to an hour’s worth of interval training.
I’ve given up on wanting the results of physical activity to be my looking trim and cute, however. Now I just don’t want my fucking heart to explode.
Update: In conclusion, you can always tell when I’m not reading much because my sentence structure gets weird.
In which there are two good things.
Good thing the first is that yesterday I signed an NDA and a contractor’s agreement and filled out a W9, and Monday I start breaking software for money. Yay! I know no details at all about the project’s expected longevity, but who knows – I might get lucky!
Good thing the second is that today is the Bronze Blues & Brews festival in Joseph, OR. The festival ends at ten, and Coyote Kings (featuring: me!) will be the only band playing in town tonight. We’ve already invited tons of the musicians who are booked at the festival, and it should turn out to be the Best Jam Ever.
In which there might suddenly and unexpectedly be EMPLOYMENT.
Right now, I’m literally doing nothing but waiting for school to start in five weeks. I’m drawing EB, and my worker retraining application was approved so I’m not even job hunting, and I applied at WWCC and for financial aid months ago so I don’t even have that to keep me occupied.
At school, I’m slated to take a 1-year curriculum, custom-tailored to help me sit for a bunch of basic tech certifications, like A+, CCNA, and the MSCE. I lit upon this path not out of any great desire to collect paper but because the job market is still in the crapper and I’m pretty certain that the last two jobs I didn’t get were because the workforce is overqualified and the other applicants had certifications I lacked (even though very, very few can match my experience). I figured the community college would be a good way to keep myself off the market for another year of economic recovery while simultaneously making myself more hire-able.
Now a good friend of mine has threatened me with employment. He’s just started a new job at a VoIP software company and needs to build his QA team, stat. He told me today that work might start as early as Monday, and in point of fact he’s off in a meeting right this minute finding out if he has a budget for contract help yet.
As a contractor I wouldn’t receive benefits, but the pay is adequate for having to file a stupid Schedule C. Since the dev team is in another state, I’d be working from home. Hours are what are euphemistically called “start-up hours,” meaning well over 40 per week. (I’ll probably have to redesign my computer area to incorporate a chair, since not even I can sit on the floor that much without having my feet go to sleep.) Software testing should not only be interesting and engaging work – halleluia! – but here’s the icing on the cake: no dealing with end-users! None! I’d be testing and reporting and logging all day! No idiotic support calls, no billing, no metrics!
If the work proved to be permanent, I’d have to pay back the UI money I’ve received since June 20th, drop out of school, and close my financial aid application. But you know what? That would be fine with me! In fact, the only way this could suck would be if the work proved to be contract-only and temporary, and ended only after I stopped filing my weekly UI certifications. (I should be able to keep my claim open for months if I have to, as long as I’m not officially offered a permanent position as an employee.)
Anyway, if you know of any employment deities, could you please take a moment and send up a thought for me? I’d sure appreciate it!
In which a tradition is born.
A year ago, Left Coast Girlie and I went to see the Shakespeare Uncork’d production together and had such a great time we did it again this year.
Here’s how it went:
She said she’d be here at six, but for some reason I remembered it as seven and fell asleep. G’ma called up the stairs at ten of, inviting me to watch something about daredevil pilots on television and woke me; I grabbed my phone and saw that LCG was going to arrive in moments and damn it why didn’t I take a shower earlier?
I dressed quick like a bunny and we got into her car and went to the Peony, where we sucked down a couple cocktails each. We got to the amphitheatre just as the show started; the weather was perfect and the show was great. (We both totally cried when poor Hero was defamed.)
After the show, we went back to the Peony for a couple of rounds and hooked up with TonyG, Toni, and Renee. Then we picked up Jayrob and went to the Green for awhile. Afterhours was at Jayrob’s place, and LCG and I sat on the patio and hollered at each other about organized religion and spirituality until we decided we were exhausted. I threw her into the front bedroom and went to bed myself.
At eleven the next morning, I woke up and went and found LCG. I made some falafel; we watched Screamers on SyFy. She hung out until she had to pick her son up at three. It was a supremely mellow day.
Yay Shakespeare! Yay hanging out with friends half the night!
In which I tell a world full of “SEO Experts” that they’re all fucktards and that the loss of net neutrality, when it happens, will be their stupid fault.
Last week, my bro mentioned a jobs website for freelancers, said I might want to check it out.
So I did. And I signed up, and I bid on a job moving a WordPress site and the guy and I exchanged five or six messages. His last message said he’d be getting me my down payment and the server logins so I could begin the work…
That was Sunday. Haven’t heard from him since. Oh well.
Meanwhile, I get about seven messages a day from the freelancer site, telling me of work I might be interested in.
~+~+~
Okay, so, you know how sometimes you stumble across a website that offers you something for free, and maybe you’re under-caffeinated or you’ve just been lobotomized or you’ve never been on the Internet before or you’re just plain stupid, and you click on the free thing – like a button that says you can watch a movie that you know, if you think about it, isn’t even out on DVD yet – and on the next page it says you have to “click on one of these offers” before you can see your TOTALLY FREE MOVIE and so you choose something like, “Have you ever shopped at Home Depot?” and a new window opens, and you’re supposed to sign up for a Home Depot account, and after you do the movie page comes back up and says “Offer Completed! Click here for your FREE MOVIE!” and when you do, about five windows full of ads launch and you end up watching a video about the power company and there’s no way to see the movie online because it was never there in the first place because it’s still in the fucking theatres and you knew that and now you’ve signed up for something you don’t even want and somebody’s going to get paid for tricking you into doing that?
Well, I always wondered where the fuck those websites came from. There are millions of them, maybe billions, and they come from somewhere. Someone had to buy the domain and set up the hosting and install the CMS and design the theme and write the copy and build and place the ads to drive the traffic. These things, ugly and stupid and irritating as they are, don’t grow like weeds: they’re made. And they must be worth it or people wouldn’t do it.
~+~+~
In the past few days I’ve found out where they come from. Some asshole in the US or the UK, some self-styled “SEO expert,” pays people in India and Thailand to build them. Somebody like this douche, who says his areas of expertise are in “advertising, branding, Facebook, Internet marketing, PHP, SEO, Twitter, and website design,” and whose latest job posting says this:
I have set up a wordpress theme very similar to this one watchmovieonlinefree.com. I just need someone to copy paste the last 35 posts text and pictures from watchmovieonlinefree or other sources, and add 5 new ones from my choice.
This job can be done in one day, if you focus on it. I would prefer to change the content of each post, or at least add on it from other sources.
Please bid and be ready to start working on the project, give your time frame, that you will need to respect. Payment will be released once the job is done.
Yeah, he says right there that he intends to copy a site verbatim, and then “change” or “add to it a little.” Isn’t that, like, plagiarism? (Not that it matters, since the original site was built by a fucktard just like the guy who intends to steal it.) And he won’t pay until the job’s complete, even though the site’s standard is a percentage up front, a percentage at halfway, and the remainder on completion? Yeah, real honorable, buddy.
The target site itself is a lie; the movies aren’t available. They don’t exist. People fill out the offers and get bored after being bombarded with ads and crap, and they wander off to do something else because they have no recourse. They can’t complain about the fact that they were mislead, because there’s no one to complain to, and THIS IS THE SHIT THAT’S GOING TO LOSE US OUR NET NEUTRALITY. This crap – this confusing, unregulated crap – is going to cause people to think, “Oh, yeah, it would be great if there were some way to stop those guys. We need regulation.”
I literally can’t stand the advertising/marketing/SEO people. They’re making money where there is none, simply because they’re immoral fucktards and they’re capable of badgering people just to make a little ching. They’re paying overseas workers crap wages to do technical work that is immoral if not illegal, and they do it simply to make money.
Now, I like money, don’t get me wrong. But there’s a limit to what I’ll do to get it.
These people are designing misleading ads to drive traffic to sites that outright lie, and they do it in such a massive way that it’s somehow worth it to them to get a cent or two for each completion. They outsource the grunt work to India and keep the click-thru checks from big advertisers for themselves… NO ONE is getting anything decent out of it. It’s real money for imaginary services rendered. The advertisers are serving ads to badly targeted and/or confused demographics. The survey info is untargeted. The signups are full of errors and lies (I always make up information when presented with a demand for personal information). It’s all crap. It’s all greed.
I opened a ticket with the freelance site to find out what their standards are; I know I’ve seen several job listings disappear so there’s some kind of surveillance. I mean, you can’t just ask people to build you illegal automatic voting programs in public.
~+~+~
Is it some kind of mental imbalance, then? What makes the vast majority of people do real work for real pay, but misses a few immoral freakazoids who can somehow manage to sleep at night after doing what is, obviously, total crap all day long?
It’s like self-mutilation: there’s a line, but nobody can say exactly where it is. If an intelligent, competent person gets their ears pierced, nobody blinks, even though piercing one’s body hurts and carries a risk of infection or worse. Tattoos, ritual scarification, forked tongues, implants: we accept these things.
But if someone decided to, say, castrate himself, we’d all think that was going too far… but is it? Really? It’s no more extreme than the body mods you see on your typical tattoo parlor employee, in terms of pain and risk.
I think there’s a type of salespeople who are crazy like that. They act pretty much like normal people, but they’re psychologically stunted in some way that enables them to do wrong things for money and think it’s not only okay, but that it’s good. Exciting. Challenging. They’re incapable of knowing that some things just Shouldn’t Be Done.
You’re going to say, “But it doesn’t really hurt anybody.”
And I’m going to say, No, of course it’s not life-threatening to corral someone into filling out a form or taking a survey so that you can earn your couple of cents per completion… but it’s still wrong. That you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.
It’s lying, plain and simple, and lying is wrong. And making money out of nothing is also wrong. There’s an entire industry now based entirely on lies and greed. Advertiser’s greed, who think they can get real data for a couple of cents per database record. “SEO Experts'” greed, who think it’s okay to build all this crap to entrap people. End users’ greed, who want to see a pirated movie online for free.
And no, “SEO Expert” person, you don’t get to snicker and think to yourself that only the stupid end up in your trap. They’re not stupid; YOU’RE just a DICK.
And because you’re a dick, you’re going to lose the Internet for everyone. You’re going to pester and confuse the unwashed masses, and they’re not going to want a free and open Internet, and then you’re going to have to go back to scamming people in person. You fucker.
~+~+~
I applied for a couple of virtual assistant positions that looked like they might actually be real. Maybe somebody will hire me and give me something to do for the next few weeks.
~+~+~
A friend of mine told me a few days ago that he’s starting a new job soon, and will be team-building immediately after that, and asked me if I would be interested in working on a QA team? I said something along the lines of omgwtfbbq!!1 WOULD I EVAR and he said “I know you were looking forward to school” and I was all planz change omg srsly d00d.
And now I’m trying not to think about it. It was an idea, not an offer, and who knows if he’ll even get to make his own hiring decisions, or if I’m qualified (or if I’m clever enough to make myself sound like I am), but the point, I guess, is that as totally fun as school sounds I’ve just discovered I’d be way more stoked to get an interesting job.
If no interesting job presents itself before September 20th, however, I will be going back to school with a bunch of 20-somethings to study freakin’ LAN architecture. Which should make for hilarious blog posts, at the very least!
In which there’s, um. Psssh. Yeah. Whatever. Gah.
1.) Kid behind the counter: I know you look at me and see an ol’ lady, but seriously. I’m capable of irony. Hell, I’ve done your stupid shitty job and tons more just like it. Don’t roll your eyes at me, punk, when I smile at you after some conehead customer does something stupid, because I could totally beat up your mom.
2.) My hair is now about 20% gray. WTF, over?
3.) In my WordPress installation, on the Add New Post page, is a Categories window. It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for years. The only way I can edit or add categories is to go to a whole ‘nother part of the interface, which I don’t, which is why my categories suck. I’ve never been able to figure out how to fix it.
4.) There’s this website called freelancer.com. I spent an hour this morning looking at the jobs posted. My observations:
- You can get a part-time virtual assistant with pretty much my entire skillset for $200 per month. That person will live in India, and that $200 will probably go much farther there than it does here.
- There are persons or companies out there who need teams of ten or more to type CAPTCHA entries. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, unless they’re using cheap human labor to open doors for irritating fucking ‘bots. The pay is $.70 per thousand CAPTCHAs entered.
- There’s a huge market for “writers,” where “writers” equals “people who bang out enthusiastic three hundred-word articles about meaningless crap and get paid $1.50 to $3.00 per piece.”
Apparently if I wanna work in this world, I need to get new skills or move to India.
5.) I painted my nails red yesterday.
6. I have no idea if starting my EB while they were still debating EUC has fucked up my school plans or not. I have still not been awarded any financial aid, but they don’t even mail the stuff until August 20th.
7.) I sleep much too much.
8.) I cleaned my room and did my laundry, but I need to vacuum.
In which yesterday was guru purnima. (I celebrated with a Lalita Sahasranama and some midnight meditation under the full moon.)
“The great Adi Shankara (the first Shankaracharya) of the 8th century summarized the entirety of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic philosophy) in six stanzas. When a young boy of eight, wandering in the Himalayas seeking to find his guru, he encountered a sage who asked him, “Who are you?” The boy answered with these stanzas, which are known as “Nirvana Shatakam” or “Atma Shatakam.” (‘Nirvana’ is complete equanimity, peace, tranquility, freedom and joy. ‘Atma’ is the Supreme Being, the true self.) The sage the boy was talking to was Swami Govindapada Acharya, who was, indeed, the teacher he was looking for.”
NIRVANA SHATAKAM
Mano-budhy-ahankara cittani naham
na ca srotra-jihve na ca ghrana netre
Na ca vyoma bhumim na tejo na vayuh
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am neither the mind, nor the intellect, nor the ego, nor the mind stuff. I am neither the body, nor the changes of the body. I am neither the senses of hearing, taste, smell or sight. Nor am I either the earth, the fire, the air. I am existence absolute, knowledge absolute, bliss absolute. I am He, I am He.
Na ca prana samnjo na vai pancavayur
na va sapta-dhatur na va panca-kosah
Na vak-pani-padam na copastha-payu
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am neither the Prana, nor the five vital airs. I am neither the materials of the body, nor the five sheaths. Neither am I the organs of action nor objects of the senses. I am existence absolute, knowledge absolute, bliss absolute. I am He, I am He.
Na me dvesa ragau na me lobha mohau
mado naiva me naiva matsaryabhavah
Na dharmo na cartho na kamo na moksah
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I have neither aversion nor attachment, neither greed nor delusion, neither egotism nor envy. Neither Dharma nor Moksha. I have neither desire nor object of desire. I am existence absolute, knowledge absolute, bliss absolute. I am He, I am He.
Na punyam na papam na saukhyam na dukham
na mantro na tirtham na veda na yajna
Aham bhojanam naiva bhojyam na bhokta
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am neither sin nor virtue, neither pleasure nor pain, nor temple, nor worship, nor pilgrimage, nor scriptures. And I am neither the act of enjoying, the enjoyable nor the enjoyer. I am existence absolute, knowledge absolute, bliss absolute. I am He, I am He.
Na mrtyur na sanka na me jati bhedah
pita naiva me naiva mata na janma
Na bandhur na mitram gurur naiva sisya
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I have neither death, nor fear of death, nor caste. Nor was I ever born, nor had I parents, friends and relations. I have neither Guru nor disciple. I am existence absolute, knowledge absolute, bliss absolute. I am He, I am He.
Aham nirvikalpo nirakara rupo
vibhutvacca sarvatra sarvendriyanam
Na ca sangatam naiva muktir na meya
Cidananda rupah sivoham sivoham
I am untouched by the senses. I am neither Mukti nor knowable, I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time. I am in everything, I am the basis of the universe, everywhere am I. I am existence absolute, knowledge absolute, bliss absolute. I am He, I am He.
OM NAMAH SHIVAYA
In which I share my quiet Saturday afternoon.
I live upstairs in my grandmother’s house in a mustard yellow room that hasn’t been redone since the 70’s. This is the landing:
I keep my chrome citrus juicer and my bowling ball on the landing because I don’t have places for them in my room and I use them frequently enough that putting them in the attic is a pain in the arse.
I received the juicer as a wedding gift. I love it so much that I made a point of getting it from my ex-husband’s house and hauling it three thousand miles to the left coast. The bowling ball is reactive but I have it drilled as a straight ball and therefore haven’t been able break 120 with it in five years of not really trying. The poster picture is my uncle as a child; from the wall above the banister hangs a bundle of club cards from Vegas casinos.
I bought live basil from the store; it cost four dollars for three rooted basil plants. It’s been on the window sill now for four days and I think I’m considering potting it so it will last longer there on the sill above the sink, because it’s such a dear thing, a living herb plant.
I hate doing dishes but if I have to do them, this is the kitchen to do them in. Have you ever seen a bigger, better kitchen window? It’s gotta be six feet wide. Such a view.
My grandmother’s house is way cool.
I finally got a load of laundry in, after stating my intention to do so last Tuesday. Few things more satisfying than the view of a load of whites, drying on the line in the sun.
Besides also cooking and walking to the store and back and the laundry and the dishes, I read that entire book – five hundred and twenty pages – in one day.
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4 random books from my Library!
