That is, if the Boeing Company doesn't take yet another cut out of its work force at the new year. They've got the downsize mania that afflicts American business. They think of workers as burdens rather than resources for future growth. Dilbert calls it "brightsizing. That's where all the bright people leave." You'd think that a Ph.D. and twenty years experience, and 50 publications wouldn't have to argue every year for continuing employment. Feh. "The floggings will continue until morale is restored." The say it's a good place to work in good times; I hope to experience that. At least they're not busting the unions.
Politics was bitter this year. The Blue Meanies won. I have relegated my political rant to an Appendix The Gingrich who Stole Christmas" so that Those with a Distaste for Truth, Those who Don't Appreciate Invective, and Those who Already Understand may proceed to the Joke of the Year:
Q. What 's the difference between between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?
A. One is a flaming Nazi gas bag; the other is merely a dirigible.
Nature being perverse, I am mentally and physically in better shape this year than last. The antidepressant therapy was a success, followed by cognitive therapy (listening to depressing thought, confronting it, and refuting it logically). Therapist says "you're better now." The chemicals were needed at the beginning of the depression in order to gain enough energy to do the cognitive stuff. I recommend the book "Feeling Good" by David Burns. M.D. to anybody interested in it. I did well even after having had an auto collision last February that sent me to lawyers and chiropractor and such. Glad that's about over. I found another '81 diesel Rabbit to replace the one that was totaled. If I could keep the floors dry I would be happier. I had a first signal of high blood glucose this year, but seem to have it under control with Nile Spice soup and Louise's Nonfat Potato Chips, both recommended. Ah, Diet Jell-O, how far we have come.
Travel this year got me to Boston in April, to D.C. in October, and to San Francisco for Thanksgiving. Wonderful times with friends old and new in all those places. I have a much better love life on the road than at home. Go figure. A week of little activity midsummer in Wolf Creek, Oregon, near the Rogue River. Also drove to the Rainbow Family Gathering in Wyoming, which though we were driven out by a forest fire that may have been deliberately set, driven out by a forest fire, was social and fun. I got views from each side of Hells Canyon of the Snake River on the way there and back, though the postcard view can only be gotten from an aircraft! In the canyon, waiting for the boat excursion, I was reading "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. (I started in 1973 and finished later this year). Down in the canyon, I was reading the section about Kekule's dream of a snake biting its tail, and the discovery of benzene. Too much Channeling of the Snake, as a rattlesnake pulled up beside me during my reading. He went away when I made a noise. My traveling companion had instead to talk with a Christian Fundamentalist who tried to convert him. Of the two, rattlers easier to deal with.
The seven crossings of the Snake I made on that trip helped in the design for this year's card. It is based on a 7/2 heptagram design that I saw in the Riverside Church, Boston, representing the Sevenfold Gifts of the Holy Spirit ("Tu Septiformis Munere" in the great hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus") though maybe they were "SeRptiformis Munere" at the Snake. The Seven Chakras of Kundalini Yoga: I leave it as an exercise for the reader to identify them with Snake River Crossings, (Crown at Yellowstone, Anus at Tri Cities?) and a visualization of some modes of a torsional spring that I saw at Visualization '94, a technical conference I go to. All confluent in the sort of surfboard starched paper star thingie that you see as this year's block print.
Kultcha My favorite singing was the Washington State Composers concert that Pro Music did last Spring, and a fabulous "Song for a Stolen Soul" by Robert Kechley. Two operas this year, Janacek's "Cunning Little Vixen" in Seattle and Boito's "Mefistofele" in SF, with devilish Samuel Ramey. Dance Delight was Jeff Bickford Company "Inhabit" in July, performed on the bluff overlooking Puget Sound at Discovery Park. In the background a slow procession of lamplighters along the horizon line, and in front of them, a solo soprano and cello accompany Zen, Victorian, and Pacific Northwest Coast Indian imagery. A three ring circus that worked exceedingly well. You had to be there... Saw "Angels in America" in San Francisco which, for all the special effects, was a return to the theatrical virtues of good script writing and good acting. See it when it comes near you! The movies produced a new heart throb in Brad Pitt in "Interview with the Vampire." Tom Cruise was cold-blooded, not a likable quality in a vampire, Antonio Banderas's Armand was more the part. Maybe it will trigger a return to longer hair on men (a fetish for us coiffure-impaired).
Love still awaits. The fundamental lament of my life has been never to have found a long term physical lover. Though I do get to go to the Opera, and to travel, the prospect of an empty bed every night has often been Depressing. I've learned to cope, tand o make the best of situational solitude. The bright sign this year has been an opportunity to express love to some men in a way that found some acceptance. Modest progress, but real. Said goodbye this year to Uncle Mike, the former Western Polish Knockout Artist, who died at age 87 back in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, they didn't recite "The Face on the Barroom Floor" at his funeral. I think we have it on tape, though... A couple of distant friends passed away of AIDS. The rate is slowing down, or at least I hope to think it is, thank God for that!
Akbar, one of my cats, disappeared at the end of September, after the last thing I heard was an irate neighbor spewing "it's that cat again." Guess he got mud on her car. I hope for her sake that no foul play was involved. I prefer to think that he found the Alley Cat life of his father more appealing than my bed and board. Jeff is still here, bitchy as ever, and growing his black hair long for the winter.
Plans for the future. I hope to have enough pennies saved by March to put a down payment on a little house with a dry basement, where I can access my books, and a kitchen that has another horizontal surface besides the kitchen table. Later next year, I have an invitation to teach a course in Bonn, Germany in September, expenses paid! . A month later there is a total eclipse of the sun in India and Southeast Asia. I'm going to try to get to it.
Upbeat closing thought from my diary of a Grateful Dead show in Seattle in the company of a friend C. and a Vitamin X. [... a skinny guy in row in front, tripping, raises a victory sign. I think of making a double one, but think of Nixon, so revert to a double form of the ICXC blessing that Byzantine priests and the Pope use, which I used at the disco Heaven in London (it seemed apropos). Two gays in front with short hair, an unfortunate fashion in my aesthetical view. . C. asks why am I pursuing my lust? My short answer is that if it were just lust, I could buy it" No, it's the long term sexual connection that I seek. Break, take the rest of the X and hydrate at the fountains. Don't feel horny or speedy, as I had anticipated. C. stays with me during the second half. Raise hands in blessing, dance a little jig beneath the rising moon, meditate bodhicitta loving kindness. Cosmic appropriateness of Moon, Venus, Saturn( ?), and Space Needle. Even Boeing airplanes in their approach pattern to SeaTac look graceful in this twilight. Think of 1991 Baja eclipse, to which C. also went and the "conjunctio" between planets and people there. Thoughts of Teilhard's Omega Point, Jerry an avatar, a tender and plaintive ballad of standing on the moon, looking at the luminous Earth, seeing the Gulf of Mexico as a tear, preferring still to be on San Francisco Bay with a beloved. Song for the travelers on our spacefaring planet.
Quote to C.: "Ich fuehl' ein Luft von anderen Planeten," [I feel a breeze from other planets], soprano solo from Schoenberg's 1910 Second String Quartet that introduced atonality to Western music, and foreshadowedof much of the century. The band does a big amplitude modulation that sounds rather like the effect of opening and closing ones outer ear at a rapid rate. Silliness of Beer Barrel Polka, fun of Sugar Magnolia, and a final Coda of "Liberty and Freedom [Victory!] ."
The subversive radical idea that this country was founded on. Not the dead-handed greed of a Gingrich! The gentle folk at this assembly have suffered too much of right wing puritans who sentence drug addicts ( a medical problem, not a criminal one!) to death rather than provide clean needle exchanges, because "they deserve it." AIDS patients who could use the appetite stimulation from cannabis can't have it , because it reminds the right wing of our opposition to their atrocities in Vietnam, (they're still sore after 25 years) and besides PWA's "deserve it."
Hell No! It is the right wing that "deserves it!" May they reap what they have sown...
Victory over the Blue Meanies!
Your Adorable Annual Anarchist,
David Kerlick