Enjoy the Show

"Moneyball" should be much Oscar nominated. Actors, director, writing, adaptation, film editing, the works!

I like the occasional baseball game, but I would not call myself a fan. After seeing this movie, I have a new found respect for the game and now have some understanding of the essence of the debate between statistics  team building and let's call it the intangibles, heart, fate, intensity, collegiality.

But what I found most about the movie is that it translated to all walks of life and causes us to pause about the decisions we have made, the ones we ought to have made, and the ones we will make in the future, even if the future before us is relatively short.

The movie is based on the true story of Billy Beane, 44 years old circa the beginning of the 21st century, and working as the GM of the Oakland Athletics. As told to us in spare flashbacks, as a young high school graduate, he had the choice of a lucrative baseball contract based upon the opinion of the scouts that he was an all around player (could do most or all of the positions) who would be big in the world of baseball, or going to Stanford University. He could not do both. He chose baseball, and his career was let's say, lackluster. Some said he did not have the fire in the belly or lacked confidence, but he was washed up pretty early as a player. Still he loved the game and stayed in it behind the scenes.

When we meet him he is terse, not apparently easy to get along with, divorced, cynical. He does not attend the games. He has tried to make the A's competitive with teams like the Yankees, with none of the money that those teams have to spend on talent or anything else. Unable to get more money and meeting a young man working for the Cleveland Indians from whom he tries to pry some decent players, he becomes fascinated by the young man's assessment of  players based on rather complicated statistical templates.  In this scenario, players that might be good for a team are not the ones that traditional baseball expertise would choose. In fact, traditional baseball would avoid these players like the plague. Beane hires the nerdy, portly kid (based upon a true character I am told who declined to allow his real name to be used for the movie) and over objection from back room to team manager, he cobbles together a motley crue of players, includng an oldster at 37 and a young decent hitting injured kid who used to be a catcher, to whom he assigns first base, which has never been his position.  The common denominator statistically of all these guys, is that they get on base.

At first it is a mess. The team loses every game. The press and the pundits attack wildly as is their characteristic to do. They blame Beane.  Then suddenly just before the All Star game, the A's start to win, to an unprecendented 20 games, a record maker. The press, in its infinite wisdom, now offers its accolades not to Beane but to the manager of the team (a finely tuned performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman). 

There is not, however, a happy ending. The Oakland A's do not win the World Series. They lose. The general conclusion of those in the know is that the method of team building did not work. As Beane says, it is does not matter what happens before the final game. You lose. It's all bad even, especially the successes that led up to it. You and yours are duds.

One perspicacious owner, however, of the Boston Red Sox, still encumbered by the Curse of the Bambino, sees something in Beane and his method (actually the brain child of another man not in baseball), and offers him the largest sum ever for a General Manager.

Beane does not take it.

Purportedly using the statistical method (and those in baseball know can rightly debate whether or not any method alone explains failure or success in baseball; this is beyond my expertise), without Beane, as everyone knows the Sox ultimately broke the Curse.

Meanwhile, Beane is still with the Athletics today.

Why did he turn down the Sox? Because he once made a decision based on the promise of money, and the guarantee of a success that never came. Now, as a song by his young daughter, reminds him, it isn't about success it is about the "show".  It is about what you love.  It is about making that difference. It is about those intangibles, and damn the opinions of the press or other knowing pundits, who in truth and in fact, have no great insight into reality.

In the eyes of the world, Beane is a loser, but in every way that matters, he is a winner.

I loved this movie. An un-baseball baseball movie appealing to fans and non-fans alike.

Go, see it. Brad, you weren't on my unimportant list of great actors before,  but this performance really was exceptional. Good for you! Good for us!

Enjoy the show, folks. It is very short. Make the decisions you believe are best, not the ones that others press upon you.

If I Didn't Have to Work I'd. . . .

You know you have said it. More than once. "If I didn't have to work, I'd finally get to do all those things that I really wanted to do all my life!" There. The reason you don't do all the things you want to do is because your job is in the way. That's it. That's where the blame lies. Ok, not blame, that's what the reason is.

Some early observations, and we'll see if there is any advice to come out of them.

Before I was tossed unceremoniously onto my professional a--, I had already been making lists, lots of them, careful ones and scribbled ones, of all the things I wanted to do just as soon as I was "free". They included, but were not limited to (she said in lawyer speak): writing those scripts for ideas I have had for ages, and two book ideas, working with animals at places like Shambala (big cats), my veterinarian, TLC, Animal Avengers, Best Friends (a little unrealistic as they are in Utah, but I still love them), oil painting, returning to the piano (in that regard a bit more than a year ago I had the entire piano refurbished and the pin board replaced--that happened after the refurbishing and a sudden problem developing with the block), singing, working with a particular charity that I have enormous affection for (Sisters Servants of Mary), acting, or otherwise using my voice and animated nature, reading as much as possible, getting another degree, developing my Christian faith, including systematic spiritual direction and the one that everybody jumps for immediately when you talk about not working--travelling.

A large part of the difficulty is contextual. Having a job (or for that matter going to school from K to post graduate), means there are prompts to either your extrinsic or intrinsic motivations. An example. Not all kids want to go to school, (they are not intrinsically motivated) but they have to--they are prompted by that mandate; they are motivated because the having to go motivates them. The kids that like school, well, they are already intrinsically motivated, but the prompt of having to is a nice frame for the day. I think I am mostly an intrinsically motivated person. I always have had ideas of things to do, like learning, but up to July 2011, there was always some kind of prompt, whether it be my mother (who demanded my education, God Bless her), my schools (which demanded my excellence, as did my mother) or having to make a living (which was a combination of ambition and survival). Contextually, then, I now have no external prompt (the job of 25 years is simply poof! courtesy of that delightful thing called "we're going in a different direction") or frame for my intrinsic motivators. Now, if I were 27 (when I came to California) rather than my current lot older age, my wanting to "get ahead" or "make money"  would readily be adjunct to my intrinsic motivation, as it did back then. I am entirely dependent on my intrinsic motivation, sans an externally imposed frame.

This nicely leads to the psychological challenge. Just doing things because I like to, or see a need for it, unconnected to a goal of some form of achievement (having to get a degree, to get a job, to make a living, to advance in the ranks of whatever I am doing) is unfamiliar to me. To the extent that "achievement " is still an internal motivator and it is also somewhat externally motivated as I clearly worry that my not DOING something tangible ("yes, I did publish that book and am making oodles of money) will be cause me to be denominated as "poor Djin she just hasn't figured out what to do with the rest of her life". Ouch.

People have suggested that I open my own law practice. Ouch again. I am a lousy business person and I just spent 25 years seeing what happens to lawyers in private practice who aren't business people. And, the truth of me is that I was not very happy with what I saw prior to my career of the world of private practice. It was actually quite ugly and it ate me up. Where I worked allowed me to sleep at night. I "achieved" there. I went from lowly trial deputy to manager and teacher. And then it was over.  My  view of achievement (internally or externally motivated), and how it is measured and rewarded was pretty well completely blown out of the water when my career ended in five minutes.

I won't go further down the other part of that psychological road (it would be a VERY VERY long blog entry as opposed to just a VERY long blog entry) but suffice it to say after being severed from a successfully performed job, and having never had a family of one's own, one (that is me) wonders about the overall meaning of (my) life. There is the lingering question of what went before so abruptly cancelled by someone you did not even know--what the heck was THAT all about?

Still intrinsically motivated  or not I sometimes wonder if I am a failure at "being free"  Here I am three months in and I haven't completed anything. Shouldn't I have? I guess, and here is another observation, maybe advice to myself and others, it depends on how you define completion, and achievement and success. You know.  Happiness is not about what you have. Happiness is not about the career. Happiness is not about outward success. Blah blah blah.

Now that the flurry of social activity, post firing, has diminished. I have a painting sitting out in my backyard (the one I wrote about like two months ago) which is in rough now, but I just realized I better get that uncompleted thing out of the yard because it looks like it is going to rain. I have taken one in a series of voice artist classes which were a balls, but in hiatus until the beginning of next month, I am wondering where that is going (although I said, and I meant it, I just wanted to have fun and IF it went somewhere gravy on the mashed potatoes).  I am working on two charity projects, one that is new and the other established, and I am not exactly making earthshaking contributions to either, although both have taken a measure of time. I have six story ideas for treatments and scripts and I have begun one (there are actually multiple pages). I have read several books and am in the middle of several more. I have been to the Getty Villa.  I have planned a small trip. And intend others. Will I stay an active lawyer? Well, I'm all paid up for 2011, and a lawyer I remain, but who knows what 2012 will bring.

But today, a gloomy Saturday (weather wise) I haven't done much and it makes me fear that I will become a couch potato 

Being free is not as easy as it seems. Just look at Adam and Eve. They were free. Look what a mess they made! I digress.

What's my point? Heck, I am not sure. Oh, yeah. One might be that "the grass is greener on the other side". Yeah, it's a cliche. But they are out there for a reason. One's happiness or fulfillment is not merely about having the time or freedom to do what you will. And given the cosmic realities, there is no such thing as doing as you will; in fact, maybe it is not a good thing. We are free to do what we ought. I am digressing into philosophical stuff again. The other is that adaptation is key. Things change. You have to accept it, like it or not (I don't like it) and deal with it. The good side is that there is an adventure to be had in the change. Whenever I have simply allowed the adventure to unfold (admittedly rare for me) it has been golden. Advice if you are in my situation, which really, when you think about it is unique (not rich, but having enough, I think), grab it with gusto. Stop trying to make it fit into some pre-conceived notion of a proper outcome. And that old adage, "Be in the present moment". It's really true. When you have had the experience, hasn't it been wonderful?

?Now THIS is free!? --Persephone the Cat.

It is worth that moment to have it be a little challenging on the way. It's kind of like learning a new language or to play an instrument; when you don't know how to, it is really hard, but it does get easier.

Let me end this admittedly rambled entry with some of my "successes" at living in the moment. I think they are worth the struggle that consist of "being free". Watching a mourning dove figure out that a bag held the seed it wanted and, while eyeballing me suspiciously, hopping up to it and plunging its head inside in triumph. Attending Mass more and discovering the richness of my faith, while "resting in the Lord" (ok, holy roller stuff over now). Sitting at the Dialog Cafe with a friend for two or more hours discussing a million different things (This has happened more than once, with different friends). Getting a lovely donation from a young friend for one of the charities I mentioned, just because he trusts and respects me. Getting closer to his family, and his lovely little daughter. Giving her one of my childhood books (The House at Pooh Corner)--kind of keeping the generational thread attached to people I care about, however long or however short that acquaintance may be. Being able to drive my uncle home from the hospital in the middle of what would otherwise have been a work day, seeing so much of my own father in him (the last of the boys of a family of 7) and appreciating as I did not before, what I see, in some look or expression. Writing not only for my own blog, but for someone else's. Making one or two new non-lawyer friends. Being able to take showers in the middle of the day, something I am about to do.

Life is, as one of my best friends says, unfolding just as it should.

Oh, What a Mess!

It is 12:15 a.m. The Djinn is not asleep. So, I shall share a slightly dismal piece of an otherwise fine day because the moral is:  close all detergent containers tightly! 'Cause if you don't you'll have an hour or two of clean up, and alas, quite repetitive cursing (another subject "How Cursing Gets in the Way of Holiness"- look for it on this blog-maybe, or did I do it already. Probably.), for which only you can blame yourself and not the cat that tried to get on the shelf to look out the window thus causing the whole thing to fall.

I had heard the crash, but in my house, with four cats, two of which I ended up with by default, but I guess, alas, I am one of those cat ladys, (Darn), usually nothing serious has fallen, or nothing that cannot be tossed or repaired, so I continued to sit outside as the sun was going down. When I came inside I had the most lovely whiff of linen scented detergent. At first the scent comforted me. And then I realized I hadn't washed anything today. I did yesterday though. And I remembered I had not closed the cap tightly. Why hadn't I? Who knows? I just didn't. I looked to where it had all fallen. To the left of and behind my washing machine in a very small utility porch with an abundance of stuff. A sea of blue goo.

It was like a Rube Goldberg game. Pull out the wire shelf and move it over. Get the cat box out of the way. Clean up the remnants on the floor of the pine litter that was thrown out of the box at last usage. Pull out the washing machine. Find under the washing machine old gunk that has seeped into the goo of the laundry detergent. Grab LOTS of paper towels. Sit on the floor.

In case you are wondering. This is not me. This is an analogy picture. It was way more messy. And I wasn't dressed as nice.

Curse. Throw a couple of things into a hallway. Curse some more. Apologize to God for all the cursing. Lament that I am incapable of holiness. Look for someone to blame. Oh, yeah, I am to blame. I hate that. Keep cats from inspecting the goo which will lead to footprints on my rug.

Two hours later. Did you know that if you Google this problem, spilled liquid laundry detergent, you find out that it is very hard to clean up? Tell me about it. At least I sort of figured out late in the game that you can sweep up the stuff into a dust pan to thin it out on the floor. The brush had to spend time soaking for a long time afterwood. It is done. The floor is very clean. I congratulate myself on the herculean task well done.

I tighten the caps on every cleaning item in the area.

The end. Good night.

Praying at Dawn

My friends and former colleagues know that I am not a morning person. A night person, yes. Even when I was a kid and I was allowed to I could stay up into the wee hours. I always wonder how it was I made it to 8:30 classes in college. Probably only as long as I had to do so.

At  work too, I would come in early as long as my role required, but when flex time was available, I was johnny on the spot to use it. Come in later. Leave later. Stay up later, and begin again.

I am guessing that my religious vocation does not reside in a monastery where matins are 4:30 and they are in bed by I forget when, but way before I even think about it.

I have been involved in assisting a couple of charities and the new head of one, Catholic Relief Services, was making the keynote speech at a Prayer Breakfast today. I was invited by someone in the organization. I am the liason between him and my former pastor, who could not attend. Great. Delightful. A worthwhile event. It began with the rosary in the Cathedral of the Lady of Angels at 6:30 a.m. followed by Mass at 7, and breakfast out in the massive patio at 7:45. I am  usually just rolling over for another hour, or two at 7:45 on an average day.

I had committed myself to attending. I wanted to attend. And whatever else is true about me, once I make that kind of commitment, I usually follow through (I am having a pang of guilt as there was a recent occasion in which I backed out of a commitment, though it was not an early morning one. But it remains a rarity.) So after a lovely dinner with friends last night, and a lament that it would be dark when my archaic alarm clock blasted me out of bed around 5:30 or a bit earlier, I sucked it up and knew I would carry on as promised.

Oh, and that 5:30 came quickly. My eyes burned. My cats wondered how they could have lucked out for so early a meal. I said to myself, "It's only a few hours and then I can come home and take a nap!"

I was out the door and at the Cathedral at 6:30 for the beginning of the first decade of the Luminous mysteries, each decade led by a different bishop of Los Angeles, presided over by the newest Archbishop, Jose Gomez. That the cavernous church was more than two thirds filled astounded me. I was ashamed (a little) of my early moring resistance. More people came in as the decades passed. I found myself in the meditative rhythm and grateful to be a participant.. Although I tend to prefer saying the rosary by myself, or I think I do because I do, saying it with oh, 500 people somehow was a comfort of community, even more so when Mass began and having recently begun reading about the Fathers of the Church, and some of their writings, realized that the community to which I was connected extended two thousand years backward in time.

By the time Mass was over it was fully light, though neither warm nor sunny, more like San Francisco foggy.  Carolyn Woo, the speaker, was raised in Hong Kong, amid the Catholic minority by nuns and she praised her education in particular, and the role of that education in general,more so in these challenging times all over trhe world. There was a table of parochial school kids next to me, in the proverbial uniform. There had been plenty of kids passing me in their plaid skirts and tailored jackets. I remember it well, me the graduate of a Bronx equivalent. It was the best education. And it was in no way narrow. I read all the great books even the ones that might be considered a little racy by those days standards. I learned history not by rote, but by looking at the writings of the American revolutionaries and aware of the nuance and strife that begot a nation of amazing principle. It was all coming back to me in that courtyard listening to the speech. Do you know we even said the Pledge of Allegiance? I haven't said that since I was a kid. It was a revelatory touch of the past, a good part of the past that I realized had formed me. And I missed. I met the impressive Ms. Woo and spent some time listening to her ideas among a small group of lucky participants. And then it was nearly noon. The sun had broken out and the rest of the day was before me. The morning of prayer and meditation and reflections on a Catholic education were over. I was truly glad I had not given into my sloth.

As I write it is after 11 p.m. I have been up nearly 17 hours of a 24 hour day.  I never got to take that nap. I started reading about Latria and Sacrifice in a theology book loaned to me (and it was challenging stuff; I only got through 8 pages before I was exhausted).

Still, I don't think even I, late night denizen, has it in me to spend much more time out of my bed. I think I have to acknowledge that I won't be up for prayer at :6:30 tomorrow morning. 

  Good night my friends. Sleep tight. That's my plan too.

The Contagion of Entitlement

My buds, Len Speaks and Mr. Anonymous from the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith Apartments hied ourselves to a movie at the Arclight last evening. This movie, about a breakout of a mysterious disease that takes millions of lives worldwide, but most quickly Gwenyth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet, for purposes of the fictional celebrity fatalities, was, how shall I say it, AWFUL. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+. Oh, well chacon a son gout as the French are wont to say. Miserable script. It was, as Len Speaks pointed out, a kind of revert to the disaster films of yore. Bet you don't remember "The Swarm"? Kinda like that, only lucky for "Contagion" not quite so bad. And what in the world is happening to us in the time passing department when Matt Damon is the father of a teenager. Matt "Good Will Hunting" teenager is now somewhere close to or in his 40s.  And Jude Law, I still don't know if his character was a good guy or a bad guy. In fact, I did not understand his character at all. But believe it or not, this entry is NOT about this movie, which I shall forget forthwith.

It is about another contagion. My comrades and I entered an empty elevator followed by only two other women. Just us four. My friends were talking to me and I was about to respond, when I realized that I had failed to hear one of the women ask me to hit their floor. I mean, I thought they were talking to each other and not to me. I heard the second "request" if that was what it was, which seemed to be more a remonstration for my, what my dad used to refer to as "lese majeste" (which is very very bad behaviot), failure to have acted promptly on the first edict. I now refocused on them and they were clearly, how shall I put it, put out at my failure. I did not realize I had an obligation in the first place. Had I heard I would have pushed the button, promptly and with an appropriate bow, but I did not. I was unnerved that somehow I had committed some kind of faux pas when the button could easily had been pushed by one of them, and blurted out the apology and explanation. "Oh, I'm sorry, I did not hear you" to a kind of noblesse oblige that they would let it go "this time" attitude. I now cannot remember what exactly they said in reply but it was a kind of "don't worry about it" which implied that there had been an obligation missed and they were kindly not going to banish me from further ventures to the Arclight. Had I been alone, I would have mulled this small event over in my mind, and not been sure whether I was the culprit, an uncivil boor who did not keep her ears wide open for requests for floors. But both my companions were taken aback by the interchange.
I mean, ok, nobody died here, but I agree with Len Speaks, that occasions like this make me feel inclined toward a life of the hermit.

Now, I go all Christian on you, and point out, mostly to myself, that this of course is the opposite of what I must do. I must somehow see Christ behind the mask of these souls out on a Saturday night and expecting the world to be their butlers and maids. I will say this much. Lord, it is very very hard.

I guess the last thing I have to say to my elevator companions who were so very disappointed in me, a stranger who failed to hear "Four please" on the first iteration and to myself as well, "The first shall be last and the last first".

I swear, if I had heard you ladies the first time, I would have immediately pushed the button. But maybe your expectations of others--unreasonable. How's about that?  But alas, not in this world of entitlement. Talk about something that will kill a society.

A Short Reflection Ten Years On

It is about to be at end, this decade anniversary of the worst attack on the United States in its history. It is nearly midnight in New York as I begin writing, where it all happened, where 3,000 people were eradicated by two planes deliberately smashed into the World Trade Center and nearly 9 p.m. here in Los Angeles where I write.

I was almost inclined to write nothing in this forum. Has not everything been said?
Indeed, probably there is nothing useful to add, certainly nothing novel. But I guess I want to record for my personal posterity that I was one of those many who never forgot. It is not likely worth much, but it is my small offering.

I was waking far earlier than is my wont that morning. I turned on the radio. I think both towers had been struck. I rolled over in my bed to turn up the sound. There could be no imagining this.  As a New Yorker, I knew those buildings well. I worked mere blocks away as a college student, on John Street. I recall the day Phillipe Petit walked between them. When I was a college student and post college student, those buildings were still new and talked about as a new image of New York. I only went inside a couple of times over the years. I have to admit I never liked the height (110 stories), just like I am not much fond of flying.  I did have one occasion to go to Windows on the World on the very top and I recall the massive high speed elevator shaking all the way up to a wind chorus. It was an overcast day so I never got the view of the city and the harbor, but it did feel that I was truly in the clouds, not unlike Olympus itself. I was happy to be on the ground floor again at the end of the festivities and remember that I was not inclined to a another visit to the top. I also recall that I wondered how someone could get out of the building quickly in the case of fire. I knew they could not.

Two planes? That cannot have been an accident. Quickly terrorism became our primary (it had been out there but not like this before) watchword. And then the North Tower came down. How could a building of that height come down at all let alone that quickly? The people waving white handkerchiefs out the floors above the inferno--some of them jumped to a certain death and the majority were pulverized into the white and gray ash that were the remains of the entire structure. People just like us.  People just like me. People who minutes before were considering a break from their desks. People who had been at the beach a day or two before for a last bit of summer. People who had plans. People who had a right to their lives.

I did not lose any family or friends in that destructive evil act by people for whom we simply should not make any excuse (although for the last ten years that is what we have done as a society in a political correct stupor) but I know that the stories of lives cut off unnecessarily have been repeated this weekend among those families that did.  Good thing. We want to circumvent the growth of a generation that finds this horrific event a boring piece of history that has no significance for them. It might be, with Grace, that generation that brings us back to the founding values of our socieity. I defer to Dennis Prager on what these three are, E Pluribus Unum, In God we Trust and Liberty. By refusing to embrace our values and to promote them, even to the point of being forbidden to do so, we continue to cooperate in the destruction of the American Experiment.

There is nothing that can justify the vile acts on September 11, 2001. It remains the acts we must condemn, regardless of who perpetrated them. And then, there are the acts of those who tried to save others, fireman, police, the clergyman, Fr. Michael Judge who was the first known death of the attack and many unknown heroes. Their acts of goodness give us hope that we can retrieve our natrional soul..

In February 2002, only five months after the attack I went with a friend back to my hometown. We visited the site. By then it was mostly clear of the building and human dust aftermath. But it was still very fresh. You had to walk on wooden planks to get around. There were construction vans gathered in spaces that used to be where the buildings stood. A couple of initial memorials, like the workers on a beam, reminding us that something would rise there again, were up.

On this piece of wood:  As we walked through the Valley of Death We Feared no evil.

There were the makeshift memorials, sheets on which you could write your message, and pleas about loved ones still lingering. They are not the best pictures, but they are ones reflecting my visit which I still remember as poignant.

Pray for all those who died, and those first responders who have suffered physically and psychologically, since. Pray that our nation will remember its roots, its Creator centered roots.

A Short Tale of Irk, and Grudging Repentance.

Ok, there is no such word as "irk". That is there is no noun "irk". You can be "irked". Or someone you know can be "irksome". I don't care. I want to tell you about my being "irked" and it is a tale of being so, so I have created a noun.

I live in most assuredly urban surroundings in Los Angeles. To me, though, coming from where I do, as you know I do, where I live manages to have a suburban element that no similar neighborhood in New York could achieve. In the middle of several thoroughfares, at night, and even in the day, it is fairly quiet. There are hummingbirds, and doves, and sparrows. You hear crows here like you might in some idyllic country setting early in a morning.

So, for me that little gazebo my neighbors of old built in the mostly parking space back yard, to which I added jasmine and bouganvilla, and the little strip of grass that only recently began to grow in the hard dusty ground on which dogs and cats used to pee and poop, has become something of a cause celebre for me. I want it protected.

Let me back up. I like my neighbors very much. I even went to the wedding of one who still lives in our building and one who is now residing in a small house not far from here. I won't say that I am perfect, or that I never leave a mess anywhere, but I do try not to disturb my neighbors with my stuff. To the extent that I ever have, and recently by the way, you should see how quick they are to remonstrate with me. So, for example, last week I finally had the time to do a garage sale and I had moved some stuff into the gazebo for placement the next morning in the front. Pretty quickly I was asked if it were staying there, as in laws were visiting the next day and they were hoping it would be clean. It would be. It was.

One of my cats, Bleu, likes to run into the common hallway and sit upstairs. He has never disturbed anything. One night I did not realize he was out there, as usually I do, and he was out there, all night. You guessed it. He pooped. He had no choice. He could not knock at the door. I found him out there the next morning. I did not realize there was poop or I would have cleaned it up immediately. Instead of coming to me about it, another neighbor, again someone I like, complained to the landlord.

Meanwhile, I have one neighbor whose several projects over the years have rendered the back yard a frequent junk shop complete with greasy pavement (he does use product to clean it off), and throws his dirty clothes in a bucket in some major cleaning chemicals on our porch. I have two others who smoke and then throw the remains of the cigarette over their upstairs bannisters where I run into them.  Back in the day of my former neighbor, essentially a florist shop was run out of our back yard. She was getting started, and is doing deservedly well, but geez. Oh, and the big one that has happened for all the years I have lived here?: Whenever one of my neighbors has a visitor, they don't park on the street, but squish into our back yard. I have never done this. Never. If anything, I'd give up my space so that my visitor can park there. I have never complained, and certainly never to our landlord. I used to figure that I would buy some good will for one of my quirks, like for example, the accident of Bleu being outside in the hallway all night. Or my shoes outside the door. Oh, and  on those occasions when someone picks me up for some social gathering, maybe they'd be a little more patient before honking. After all, their friends have been known to park there and leave the car.

So much for that. Not enough good will, it appears. So, back to the strip of grass. I have more time, as I am in and out on various projects during the day, to water and to coax that intransigent patch to a true green. I fertilized. I plucked. And I figured that seeing this my neighbors would not need to be told that parking a car on it was well, discourteous. No. So I got  some pliable fencing at the 99c store and fenced in the little space. I even wrote a note explaining without rancor that I was trying to nurture the space of our little backyard retreat, and there was fencing to do that, and I want you to know.

The other day I came out and found that the fencing had mostly been removed. The next night someone was on the grass again, someone who did not live here. That really went well. I tried to be nice. Explain. Request.
And dismissed out of hand. 

Well, those little fencing things will now retire to my garage as I surely cannot enforce it. I could be a snitch and go to my landlord, but really, do I want to escalate over grass? And really it is about not being valued by the world at large.  I haven't had great luck with that lately, being fired and all  (with other good people) after 25 years of service, reaching management, doing well there, at least according to all those evaluations, so that the organization could go in a "different direction" which still has not come to fruition as far as I have heard from the survivors. So, in this very very small thing, I asked for something, and I was ignored.

Well I am still watering the grass, expecting it to be decimiated, but I am trying to look at and tame this need to be seen and heard and respected. Or wanting the rest of the world to conform to my memory of long dead days of civility.

I have to repent of my need to be, what did the Lord say, to be first at the table, and accept a smallness from which I do believe we not only achieve humility that draws us closer to God, but also brings peace.

Bet you did not see that coming? It is my repentence I seek, not theirs.

I have to stop being irked. These things are passing. There is much more, above the things of earth, with which to contend while I have the chance. Good luck to me.  I am very fond of my irk.

Strange (but Pleasant) Final Night (for me) at the Hollywood Bowl

The offerings this season were overall much more enjoyable than last year's--in no small measure perhaps due to the guest reappearance of the wonderful John Mauceri for the Fantasia presentation with the Orchestra.

But our last appearance at the Bowl, me, Len, of Len Speaks, Mr. Anonymous of the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith Apartments, and guest attendees Leo and Connie, was by far the best in my humble blogging view. Courtesy of uncharacteristic weather patterns for southern California, it also had a mysterious and rather symbolic cast.

We started off the evening with a soujourn for dinner at the Rooftop Grill. That is always a treat. And it seemed, perhaps because I was especially hungry, but still, this meal was exceptional. A discrete cloud cover had been with us all day, making the temperature rather pleasant, though you could feel the moisture in the air. And a particular white sun kissed billow hung over the mountains, you know, the kind that you feel you can scoop up when you fly over them on some trip cross country. And then, there was this full size, right out of the movies (this being Hollywood apropos) rainbow for the diners to consume visually. Actually, there was a double rainbow, the second not quite so spectacular, but clearly there. I have seen other partial rainbows in my life, including some in Hawaii, that tropical locale, but never have a seen the kind where you could believe that you might find a pot of gold at the end thereof. It created a stir in the crowd, cell cameras flashing. I had forgotten mine and I was regretful of my inability to immediately post on Facebook, but there were plenty of such posts no doubt around me!

Given the unsettled nature of my life seeing a rainbow was a particularly good sign, and for me, it had a lovely Providential cast. It was, as well, a reminder of the glory of Creation. I couldn't have felt more at peace and enjoying this spectacle in the place that, during the summer, is one of my absolute favorite locales, as readers of this blog know.

The rainbow lasted a long time and by the time it faded, we were off for our musical offering, hosted by Alex Trebek, questions about film clips that we were offered that we answered using complimentary phosphorus sticks, blue, green and red.

As the sun was going down, the still present clouds and those moving in with the actual threat of rain were tinged a miraculous red. More pictures were snapped. At one point, as we moved from one spot to another, the micro-climate that is LA became manifest. In steps you went from needing a sweater to needing to doff it. A little eerie actually. . . .

And then there were the clips, and the music, from Big Country, Singin' in the Rain, To Kill a Mockingbird., High Noon.  The films were mostly old ones, except for Sleepless in Seattle, and something about the fact of the voices of long dead stars echoing in the canyon that is the Bowl, along with the music, made me wistful about the fast passing of life and the good fortune I have had in seeing these performances, in the past, and at that moment. During the theme from To Kill a Mockingbird I thought of my dad. I thought of the clarity of honor and the obligation to carry it on that seems to have been lost to us. I cried a little in honor of a world of heroes now mostly gone.

But continuing in the strangeness of the evening was the clip from The Bride of Frankenstein, you know, the lightning created wife for Boris Karloff--Elsa Lanchester. As the lightening was crackling on the screen, "It's alive! It's alive!", so was the lightening by the hills just beyond us sparking. And as the wind on the screen increased a significant blast touched us. Leo said he really liked these special effects.  And it sure smacked of traditional Hollywood magic, courtesy, however, of that major director, Mother Nature.

I cannot wait to see what next season has in store for us!