Category: Blog Post

Home

We all seek a thing called home, where we feel safe, accepted, and loved. To some, it is family around you. Others it is the town you know the best or associating with close friends. Many of us don’t feel at home, and instead long for it or even chase after it. We think that if we find the right career, the right place to live, or even enough money and health, we will be “home”.

I know people who live in Florida still ache for the change of seasons and the environment that they left in other parts of the country. They can’t feel at home in the heat and humidity.

Lord knows I have been searching for home for most of my life. I have never felt quite home, and have initiated costly mistakes in my vain quest for it.

I am learning though, that home is not always a place. For instance, I have no close family. I have friends, but not as close geographically as I would like. At the moment, I am between careers. My last great attempt to find home failed miserably. I’m not even particularly at home geographically.

This has caused me to reevaluate my definition of home.

Maybe it is not a place. Or even dependent on other people. Maybe before we find an external home we need to be at home inside our own skins. We need to accept ourselves, respect ourselves, and love ourselves. Once we feel we are home within our skin, maybe we have a better chance of finding a place or situation in this world we can also call home.

Paul Simon described my feeling the best in the song Homeward Bound:

I’m sittin’ in the railway station
Got a ticket to my destination
On a tour of one-night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one-man band

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home where my thought’s escapin’
Home where my music’s playin’
Home where my love lies waitin’
Silently for me

Every day’s an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger’s face I see
Reminds me that I long to be

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home where my thought’s escapin’
Home where my music’s playin’
Home where my love lies waitin’
Silently for me

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again
I’ll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home where my thought’s escapin’
Home where my music’s playin’
Home where my love lies waitin’
Silently for me
Silently for me

Whoever you are, I hope you are home.

Happiness is a handful of water

The construct of happiness is the most perplexing that humans have ever devised. We each must grasp it, but the nature of it is like a heap of water, impossible to grab hold of, impossible to keep from slipping through our fingers.

We travel through this life, reaching for it again and again, enjoying its cool wetness momentarily, before it flees, taking our smiles as prisoners. If we are resolved and lucky enough, we might at least remember the feeling as it slips away, but we can never truly hold it in our hearts.

Thank God animals and plants never cultivated the notion of happiness, as an object, a thing to chase after. They just are happy. They never severed it from their souls, only to run after it forever, as we did.

Artillery Fungus???

As a Florida native, I am aware that all of Florida is trying to kill us. We have alligators, thousands of snakes including boa constrictors, burmese pythons, as well as bears, bob cats, poisonous Bufo toads the size of kitchen appliances, lightning, hurricanes, HOAs, spiders, sharks, jelly fish, zombies, mosquitoes larger and more aggressive than badgers and heat and humidity which can melt granite. This just for starters. 

I thought I was OK with all that, but today my wife informed me that we now have Artillery Fungus in our yard! What the hell??? Immediately I knew this was not good. I mean, the official name is Artillery Fungus!!!  It is also know as Shotgun Fungus. Wonderful.

Apparently this fungus grows in mulch, producing spores internally. When mature, the fruiting body splits open forming a cup-like shape. I guess that is the canon? And the canon shells are the mass of spores which is known by scientists as the glebal mass. Nifty name guys. About five hours after opening the spores are blasted into the air! The discharge mechanism generates 1/10,000hp and can shoot the glebal mass six meters!
 
The spores are fungus, and look like it. Black, sticky and gooey. They land on the side of your house, your car, the Amazon delivery guy, cats and dogs.
 
How to get them off the house? Power-washing may not be effective if you wait long, especially if you have vinyl siding. You might try scraping the spores off one-by-one with a scraper or steel wool. After that there will still be a stain left, which can be taken care of with an ink eraser or possibly bleach.
 
Your car is another story. You probably just want to sell it on Ebay and buy a new one.
 
Artillery Fungus. Amazing What next? Diarrhea spewing wasps??? 
 
I can’t wait.
 
 
 
 

 

Failed Meditation Attempt

Meditation is supposed to be really good to achieve a peaceful mind and center your soul. I have friends who swear by it. I had my first directed meditation session recently at the gym I am attending. Did not work out well.
 
I enjoyed it, and did the breathing and arm stretching as directed. The person doing the directing helped us to imagine a beautiful beach and then a nice boat where we casually drifted to a small tropical island with white sandy beaches.The lighting in the room was muted, pleasant meditating music was playing, and her voice was at the perfect tone and pitch.
 
The problem is my mind. There is a five ring circus in there, along with a NASCAR race and rabbits. Yellow rabbits.  With hats. A thousand thoughts and images are swirling about in there, every day, all the time. I’ve learned to hide it very well. Some people over the years thought I was just very observant, others thought I was bored and others thought I was easily distracted. One person at a university meeting diagnosed me as possible ADHD. I’m not sure if that is the case. I can fake concentration well. My career was very successful.
 
But I could not fake meditation. Sure, I was along for the ride, the boat trip, the beach, sunshine, forests. But everything else was going on inside my head at the same time. Songs were swirling about, a 1950’s Japanese monster movie was playing, and I kept wandering off to different parts of the island that the meditation leader had not described. But I faked it well. Afterward, everyone was commenting on the experience, thanking the instructor, and they all felt relaxed. I thanked her too. But since I had not commented on the experience she asked me about it.  Inhaling deeply, I told her that it was nice, comfortable and that she did an excellent job. She asked me how I felt and did the meditation create a calm moment.
 
That’s when I told her about the gigantic 30 foot tall box of elbow macaroni that plopped down on the white sandy beach. True story, it really did. She stared at me as other participants chuckled. She closed up shop and we all left. 
 
Oh well.
 
 
 

Chasing Happiness

I find this quotation quite interesting.
 
“What man actually needs is not a tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Frankl, Viktor E.. Man’s Search for Meaning (p. 105). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.
 
One of the happiest times of my life was when I was fighting hard to achieve a specific position at work, to earn my Masters Degree, and, at the same time, wooing my girlfriend to become my wife. I never slept for two years, and I loved it. Frankl was right, happiness or contentment is not the lack of problems but the struggle to achieve something.
 
Is it the achievement or the chase? That is an excellent question. I’ve experienced stress sometimes when striving to achieve some thing, but also a sense of fulfillment, a sense of purpose. Perhaps even meaning. Maybe I was too consumed by the struggle to achieve something that all my other “problems” pale. Maybe I just am too busy to think of something to worry about. Maybe it is the thrill of the chase?
 
Walking down memory lane, I see that the pattern holds. When I am striving to achieve something in my life, struggling even, I am most happy. When I experience moments of “peace”, pools of time when I am technically in a calm peaceful position, I am not happy. Or peaceful inside.
 
I am not sure where this comes from. I know I have always been like this though. I was born into a home with alcoholic parents, death and fear. I suffered from a speech defect, anxiety and fear. But I always was striving to get better. Maybe this is a survival thing. Maybe an arrogance thing.

This is why I detest the word “Retirement”. Where is the achievement? Where is the struggle, the successes along the way? This is why I don’t tell people I am retired. I tell them I am on sabbatical.  Or that I am between jobs. Or, I am an undercover CIA operative infiltrating the Grey Panthers terrorist group. Do they still exist? I don’t know.The need to chase something meaningful is strong within me.

Dart
 

Florida?

Transitions. Effective December 30th 2020 I am back in Florida.  We left Idaho and flew across the Rocky Mountains toward our first stop, Denver.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Southwest flight was 100% packed. Not one seat empty. I sat in the middle seat at the back of the plane, giving a window seat to my wife a few aisles up. The next flight from Denver to Orlando, Florida was almost four hours, and yep, 100% full. Again, I had the middle seat.

Needless to say we waited a few days after we arrived and then got COVID19 tests.

We grabbed a hotel that accepted cats, and the next morning drove to our new house in the Placid Lakes area, SW of the town of Lake Placid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brand new house, literally finished a few days before we moved in. Metal roof, Windguard windows. Beautiful, and 99% good quality work. Sue was very happy.

But, what a transition from Boise, Idaho to South Central Florida! In culture, people,weather, family, friends and just about everything else.

Louie,one of my cats sits on the bed and his furry facial expression represents my feelings as well.

 

Putting Faith in the World

It has been a turbulent year with fires, left wing riots, right wing violence, people of no particular party riots/protests, pandemic, lock downs and the most agonizing presidential election in my memory. So many people I know from the left and the right are afraid and stressed about the conditions of the country and world. With predatory news fomenting fear in order to have higher viewer ratings or more clicks on their websites, it is easy for anyone to fall into this trap. As I have,

This is why we must connect with God on a daily basis. As I have done that this morning, I read the following:

 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:15-17

There are dozens more verses in the bible concerning this, so reading this I am wondering why I am so stressed and worried about the country and the world? I grant you we all need to be concerned about our safety and family’s safety. That is normal. And we all have a sense of justice and an idea as to what should be happening in the world, what is right, what is wrong. So there is a need to be aware of the world, and be concerned.  But ultimately, the world’s ways are evil. The world is scheduled to end at some point in time. According to the bible, the world is only going to get worse, not better. Eventually, the end will come.

In a sense, we are on a train heading full steam toward a long bridge that is down. Collapsed. So, the world, this train, is heading toward that. There can be no paradise in this world. No heaven on earth. We can find peace, love and happiness within our own small circle of friends and family, through our work, our desires, our hobbies, etc. And yes, by all means we should work to right wrongs, and help people who need help. But do so as a train passenger on a dead end railroad would do it to fellow passengers, to comfort them until the end.

Because if we are of God, it will NOT be the end. It will be the beginning of our eternal life.

I am proud to be an American. But America is changing, as is normal. The world is changing. 10,000 years from now, when we are in the other dimension or heaven or where ever, will we give two cents about America? America is our country. Not our God. We worship God, not a man made government. I think it is important to remember that.

So, I will be concerned about the things occurring in the world, I will do my part to help others, but I am not going to get stress if some say America or the world we know is fading. It’s OK. This is not my home. My home is with the Creator of the Universe.

Just my thoughts.

-Dart

 

My Life Long Dream

…is to be  a recognized writer. To have published enough fiction or humor that I can honestly say that I am a writer. An author. This has been by one and only dream since I was about 11 years old. I had been telling stories, making them up on the fly, for years. As a smaller child, Mario and I would swap stories back and forth, making them up as we spoke. But when I was about 11 years old I actually saved up my money and purchased an Underwood manual typewriter. It weight as much as a small car. Pushing the keys down hard enough to press ink off of the ribbon took muscles for an eleven year old.

I had no idea how to type, so obtained some books on learning. I practiced “She sells sea shells along the sea shore” as well as something about a brown fox jumping over a fence. Whatever, I practiced and practiced. I could not incorporate all of my fingers, and touch typing escaped me. I used two fingers on each hand and occasionally a third or my thumb. Believer it or not, many years later when applying for jobs I always scored above 65 words per minute, at a minimum. Often I scored into the 70s. 

Of course, after learning on an iron Underwood typewriter, later on when computer keyboards came along, I still punched those keps like a monster. I wound up going through at least two keyboards a year. 

I actually submitted a couple of short science fiction stories to magazines, but failed to be published.

 

Then, real life hit. College, and then jobs. I spent many years as a bank manager and then 25 years as an Assistant Dean and Director of Financial Aid at a university. Working in management my whole life, I wrote probably 10,000 words a day just in emails and office memos, annual reports and so forth.

What this did was suck all the creativity out of my writing skills. As a young man, I could write beautiful words. But after decades and decades in management, I lost that skill.

Now I am trying to achieve that dream. I have written about 35 short stories, I have two novels hovering about the 30,000 word length, and I have a hundred pieces of poetry, as well as several humor pieces. I have published seven stories. 

So, I have a lot of work to do. I have taken an online fiction writing course, I have studied, I have joined a writer’s group. But I need to do more. I especially need to work on regaining that magic I had as a child with words. 

Wish me luck..