Yorick, we knew him well.

At approximately two o’clock p.m. on Tuesday, April 20th, a whale was spotted floating near the San Francisco Ferry Building. I saw the grim images on the local news and was heartbroken. I knew this was the whale we had been hoping to glimpse from the ferry that takes me to San Francisco during the week. Sightings were almost a daily occurrence.

Researchers determined, based on the size, that this was a juvenile and it died of starvation. When I learned this, the sad scenario began to play in my head. What we though was playfulness, may have been fraught. While we wondered at the grace in size, and elegance in movement, it wandered, confused why it wasn't feeling well.

Confusion is a scary thing. It leads to anxiety that sometimes leads to rash acts that we would not otherwise commit. Confusion impairs judgment, leading to foolishness and folly that we might recognize were we not so confused. And from the vision of this lost hapless giant, a metaphor emerged from my mind.

Like many Americans, I’m afraid for my country. I’m afraid that radical rhetoric is causing too much confusion. I’m afraid that confusion and anxiety are being used as a mechanism lead people to opinions and actions they would not normally have. I fear that what appears to be mere folly may in fact be disaster.

I decided to christen the whale as Yorick. Alas we knew him well, and his demise should encourage us to (among other things) consider Hamlet’s quandary:

To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.

Confusion does not render cohesion. Thus, as we pursue discourse, we must do so in a way that leads us "to be".

Is self doubt good?

I don’t know exactly when, but I know at some point in the not too distant past I stepped onto a path that brought me to the place I am this very moment. I knew what I wanted to do, and I set out to do it. Were it as simple as that, I don’t think I would be the person I am now. But as I think of that not so distant past I sometimes wonder how all these things came to be. How was it that I was able to do and have and make and be and arrive to this place I am at right now? Was it will? Was it fortunate circumstance? Maybe it was fate. I can’t be sure, but I continually hope that I’m headed in the right direction.

I use words like hope as opposed to know, because I’m still very doubtful about the things that I know. This is mostly because of the vast amount of things I don’t know. I don’t know the capital of Argentina or any of the elements on the periodic table, (I never took chemistry) and I still can’t spell words like entrepreneur without going back to correct them once I see the red squiggly idiot line appear below it.

I sometimes worry about my capabilities, my confidence, my conscience. I worry that I’ve become mean spirited, and arrogant, and that these things will make me unworthy for whatever comes after this existence. I think about what I failed at in this lifetime and wonder about how many ways I can make up for my shortcomings.

Self doubt, at least for me, is essential for growth. It’s how I look for ways to be a truer version of the person I want to be. But it’s a dangerous place to be, so I have to be mindful.

Yard Sale Part II - The real purging begins

After the success of last week's free sale, I started looking around my house and realized how much crap I have. In a frenzy I started purging. First to go were all the glassware odds and ends. How I ended up with so many is anyone's guess. Dozens of empty jars went to the recycling, and any glasses with less than 3 mates went into the purge box. Next came the Mikasa Chrystal Champagne flutes, which I've owned for over 20 years, but used maybe once. Into the box they went, as did all stray cups and mugs.

I then moved to the bookcases. We have several. First to go were those which I've read and don't care to read again or share with anyone. Next were those that looked interesting enough to pick up second hand at some point, but clearly were not, because they were never cracked. As a rule, classics are always retained, as are those which I want my kids to read at some point.

Once I finished with books I noticed the linen closet door bulging with sheets obviously trying to escape. So they too were liberated. How many sheets do we really need anyway? All of the double sized went, followed by at least half of the twins. Sheets were followed by table cloths which I don't even remember acquiring.

As I was doing all this, my husband went through the CDs and DVDs, and my younger son collected a milk crate's worth of VHS tapes. And to top it all off, my other son cleaned out the coat closet.

A quick posting to craigslist on Friday night, and a couple of hand-made signs Saturday morning, and we had a yard sale. The media seemed to be the most popular. We sold DVD's for $2 and CD's for a buck. We also sold a couple of guitars, and two of the coats. Nobody touched the kitchenware or linens. Oh well.

The glassware odds and ends went into a milk crate with a free sign on them and by morning they were gone. Everything else went into our spare room for the next yard sale. Eventually it will all go to Goodwill, but for now, all this stuff brought us a little money we didn't have the day before.

Yard Sales

When I was a kid, we use to get up early on Saturday mornings to look in the classifieds for Yard Sales. It was a ritual. First we marked the paper, then we plotted them on the map, and then we established a route to avoid crisscrossing and wasting gas.

It was a hoot. Very seldom did we go out looking for something specific. And almost always we came home with treasures. I usually looked for books and sheet music. My mother had a penchant for rot iron pieces.

Some days were epic. We'd make two or three trips back to the house to unload the station wagon and then go back out again. So, one can understand why I still get excited when I see boxes on a lawn and hand drawn signs.



The highlight of the year though, was when we had our own yard sale. We would prepare for weeks, set up goods like a department store, and place color coded stickers on items. My friends and I would scheme about how we would make hundreds of dollars selling baked goods and lemonade, and my mother would bring out a cash box my father made in metal works class at the local junior college. In an odd way it was like being queen for a day. It was our day to offer the things that were once part of our lives to the rest of the community. The only other events I can remember feeling as special were when my mother hosted Tupperware and Mary Kay parties.

I still stop at yard sales, but my Saturday Odessey now is pursued with surgeon like precision. Often now when I go, I am looking for something specific, and I no longer use the newspaper classifieds. Now I rely on Craigslist.

As for having my own yard sales, I'm more likely to take bags of items to Goodwill than spend days planning and setting things up in my driveway. I do sometimes have "Free Sales" though. A free sale is when you put stuff out in the yard with a sign that says "FREE". Somehow it's deeply more satisfying than the former practice. The best part is when people knock on the door and ask, "Is it really free?" "Yup," we say. And then we thank them for taking things. It's both fun and exciting.

This year is going to be a purging year for us. We are downsizing to the nth degree. We have too much stuff and it's time to simplify. We started today with a free sale. Within two hours five left-over playa bikes (in dire need of some love) went to new homes, as did a set of Star Trek NG VHS tapes, and books that fell victim to the first cut. There will likely be more to come. We may even go through the trouble of having an actual sale, but for now it's enough to know we were able to give something that someone else wanted.

"...the only thing we have to fear is..."

In 1933, at the opening of his first inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the nation, "the only thing we have to fear...is fear itself." These words were uttered at a time when unemployment was at about 25%, and two million Americans were homeless. It's easy to understand how fear could grip the country in such a situation, and why we should be leery of its effects. Fear after all is a powerful emotion that can elicit a fight or flight response, a response that is directly linked to our instinct to survive. Thus fear can also be a powerful influence upon us. It can incite, provoke and encourage behavior. So yeah, we should fear fear.

At a conference I attended recently, writer Rebecca Walker spoke to us about propaganda. She spoke of why we should be wary of it because the action it invokes may not be in our best interest, and her words resonated with me. Propaganda are messages intended to evoke action. Propaganda often relies on an emotional response, and quite often the emotion of choice is fear.

Right now in this country, there is an entire dialogue based in fear. It's the one that told us about Death Panels, American Fascism and the Nuclear Option. It's the dialogue that brought us the Tea Party, the Oath Keepers* and Survival Seeds. These are all the products of fear.

Yes, people are scared, but not rightfully so. They are scared by design. They are being told that in a country with a "free press" in the midst of the Information Age, that they can trust only one side of the story, the "Fair and Balanced" one.

Yes we should fear fear, but we should also be mindful of those who wield it.

*highly recommend this article.

Lady in Waiting, PART 2

Waiting it seems is my new past time. As I recently wrote, my whole life, as are the lives of us all, is an exercise in waiting. We wait for time to pass so that we may come to the next happening in our existence. And then, we wait for death.

Waiting invokes patience and understanding. Without these two components waiting can be aggravating, frustrating, and a source of immense stress. Anticipation coupled with a desire to achieve solutions feeds into that stress, until you want to yell out at the world, "THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS!"

Yes, I had to do some heavy duty waiting this week. And once again it involved a State of California bureaucratic system. This time it was the Secretary of State, Deborah Bowen's office.

When you call Secretary Bowen's office, the first thing the intended calming voice tells you is something along the lines of "Due to the state's fiscal problems, we are unable to answer your call, so listen to this endless phone tree so you can spend the next 20 minutes of your life listening to several possible options that may or may not solve your problem." It continues, "You may also find helpful information on the FAQ page of our website," blah blah blah.

You mean the one I got the phone number from? Uh...apparently not.

I've come to believe that phone trees are actually ironic reminders of why we should be wary of automation. Often when confronted with an automated voice I just start randomly pressing numbers and keys to try and get to someone...anyone who can tell me who I'm supposed to talk to. I've also come to believe that the people who write the copy that is uttered on those phone trees, are the same people who write standardized tests and 8th grade algebra problems. You know, the one's where a train leaves from one place and intersects a car that left from another, and you have to figure out who is going to go insane wondering which one get's there first.

After several rounds of options, I finally found the one I was looking for. "To talk to a technician press 0."

Really?!? Oh yeah baby! Give me your piped in music and tell me to stay on the line. I'm in this for the long haul. I've got a speakerphone. I can wait as long as you make me. Yeah...make me wait...I've got snacks at my desk...I could hold out for days, weeks mo...."Hello?"

"Thank you for waiting how can I help you?"

I state my case and find out I'm gonna have to wait some more, because they only update their records online once a week on Monday. Oh well.

What amazes me most about this most recent wait I had to endure, was that I was seeking basic service that any business would need. You know, businesses those money making ventures that create jobs and generate taxes so we can get out of this fiscal crisis mess thingy we're in. Services the state can no longer afford, because it doesn't earn enough income.

And yet there are still those who want to cut taxes even more. Seriously. I'm beginning to thing I should invest in a cleavage ascending fancy dress. If I'm going to be a Lady in Waiting, I might as well look the part.

Lady in Waiting

Yesterday I was a Lady in Waiting. This is the anatomy of an exercise in waiting and patience.

It starts at DMV, where experience has taught me that if you cannot wait three weeks to get an appointment, your best bet is to be there when the doors open. I've been known to be in and out within 45 minutes using this approach.

But when I arrived at about ten til eight, the line was already a couple dozen long, and the doors were not even open yet. My first instinct was to get back in the van and drive to Napa DMV, where I can get in and out in 40 minutes any time of day. But I wasn't up for the drive. How bad could it be? I do a quick survey of the paperwork in the hands of those who came before me and determined at most, maybe 10 of them were there for the same reason as I was. "This is totally doable," I tell myself.

Finally, a uniformed security guard opened the door and the line lurched forward. Just as it comes to a stop again an elderly woman asks me if she can cut in front of me. I look at the line that now snaked along the sidewalk, an additional 40 people long, and pat her frail shoulder saying, "I was waiting for you, I'm so glad you got here on time." Winking, I make space for her in front of me.

The line progresses as each party in front of me makes their case at the "START HERE" desk and receives a number for the service specific to their needs. And finally I receive my number as well: G008. Only 7 others in front of me, and it only took 17 minutes to get this far.

So, I sit down, pull out my mobile device and start looking for interesting items to ReTweet. Then I read some news, check a few emails, correspond with a colleague and check the clock again: fourty-two minutes since they opened the door. Looking up I notice that they are only on number 3 in my category and the line for the "START HERE" desk is still easily 50 people long. I read some more email and forward more tweets, but now check the clock every ten minutes or so. I see people who were in line behind me leave, happy to have finished their business, and still, there is no movement in my category. I started to become anxious and wonder, "Why aren't they calling the 'G' numbers?"

At one hour twenty minutes in I overhear the "START HERE" clerk say they are having a problem with the equipment required for my kind of transaction. It could take a while. She starts telling people to come back later. I look at the line that is still trailing out the door and then at my crumpled ticket I stuffed in my wallet and think about how maybe a drive to the wine country wouldn't have been so bad.

At the two hour mark I'm making a conscious effort to not begin heavy sighing and other signs of impatience. "It will happen when it happens," I tell myself. And finally at the 2 hour 20 minute mark it does. My number is called and I'm out the door within 20 minutes.

This wait was followed by another eight to nine minutes of hold time trying to get a doctor's appointment, waiting in line at the bank (7 minutes), at the grocery store (4 minutes), the doctors office (25 minutes), the lab (20 minutes) and the pharmacy (25 minutes).

I'm usually pretty good about waiting. It's a skill I picked up while stationed in Italy.

In Italy there are two kinds of waiting. The first involves a gaggle that produces an order based on the position of shoulders and elbows. Show no fear, and watch out for the Grannies, they're exceptionally skilled at getting to the front of these clusters.

The second kind of waiting is more enigmatic. One waits for an unspecified amount of time until the event you seek occurs. This event could be the crossing of trains, the length of a five-course meal, or the wait for death. It's a wait one cannot control, thus the wait is like a gift of unexpected time, to have a cigarette, another glass of wine, or to contemplate life thus far.

I was reminded of that kind of wait while I waited for a chance to write these things here, as I wait for the ferry I'm on right now, to traverse the gray choppy waters of the San Francisco Bay.