fact--cat people vs. dog people!

Posting from Trabant Coffeeshop, while the Trabant Cosmonaut looks on...

Mt. Rainier was visible from the UW campus today, but I couldn't get a decent pic. In person, the mountain looks huge and dominates the land for miles around. Through the lense of my cell phone camera, it was either invisible, or it looked dinky, which is very un-mountain-like, and you don't want to bruise a mountain's pride.


There's the keyboard. Begin typing!

So. Cat people vs. dog people.

I realized yesterday that I am obsessed with the "dog person" mentality. At the B&N down the hill, I found myself poring over the two books on puppy rearing by the Monks of New Sketes.

It must have been something about my week spent watching over Nellie, the little scotty dog, that has me interested in this topic. While dealing with the dog, I found myself having to assume the virtue and purposely exert my dominance over the doggie, like a true dog person does naturally.

It was taxing, but interesting.

Normally, I am a cat person through and through. It's a laid back, "live and let live" sort of mindset, and you accept that you cannot dominate or manipulate a cat.

As a cat person, you understand the value of a good nap in the afternoon.

The cat will get on your lap when it's good and ready, usually only after you ignore it.

Cats are territorial, but as long as you don't intrude or mess with its turf, no problem.

The key phrase I've heard is:
"Dogs have masters; cats have staff."

So, taking on the role of "Master" when dealing with this little doggie was a bit strange. When you walk her, she's always taking off to investigate a scent, and as Master, you must pop the leash and apply a firm "No!"

The New Sketes monks assert that when you apply proper discipline, the dog will ultimately appreciate and respect you for it. They're pack animals after all, and you are the Alpha head of the pack in the dog's world.

This is so alien to a cat person.

And it made me wonder about the dog people out there, and I began to suspect this explicitly dominant/submissive relationship paradigm would color and affect how such a person relates to the world.

Their's would be a world of dominance games and perpetual jostling for their place in the pack. Perhaps they would seek to "pop the leash" on those they seek to dominate, and then expect us to appreciate and love them for their firm correction of our wayward path.

Maybe that's what has baffled me my entire life.

I'm a cat person in a dog person's world.

fact--there is hope!

It snowed a few days ago, and I took a cell phone pic of a snowy University Way and 45th when I stepped out of Trabant Coffeeshop...

Today, I'm posting from Mr. Spot's Chai House in Ballard.

Hope for the House Team Circle

We had a wonderful moment in the house team circle meeting today, a moment when everybody played their notes in time!

At least as individuals.

GM and I were discussing the next exercise variation while the metronome clicked away in the background. While we talked, Igor K played the arpeggio figure under examination, and I noticed that he was dead on to the metronome, with his notes evenly spaced. Igor stopped, and then MB played the figure dead on to the metronome. Then GM played it dead on. Then I played it dead on.

Dang! How did that happen?

Then we played it as a group, and we were all over the place.

So, we now know we can nail it when we play the figure solo. This means we have hope.

All we have to do now is be able to play it dead on as a group. I'm not sure how this will happen. Eventually, if we play together long enough, I suppose it'll happen.

Sleeping on Air

I got an air mattress from my folks, and now I'm sleeping in queen-sized plushness instead of in a sleeping bag on a concrete floor. Progress!

Morning Pages

I've taken up Morning Pages again. I've been struggling with a "stuck" sort of feeling, and I'm hoping this can help. The various practices I adopted from The Artist's Way so many years ago seemed to help. Around 1995, I was in a serious rut. I found that book, began working, and things got better. Who knows?

Granted, my life has been changing at warp speed since I left Cincinnati and moved to Seattle. I have only lived here since September, but it feels like long time.

Although, "feeling stuck" maybe doesn't quite capture it. In a way, it's more about having the strength to hold on and stay in the boat as it flies over the rapids. When things really get going, something in me wants to throw on the brakes and call a time out.

This feeling of "Whoah! Wait a minute there!" and the internal personal resistance that ensues whenever things start to really move may be my own special form of "stuckness." It's one of my personal foibles that I happen to be able to see, sort of, out of the corner of my inner eye.

There are others, but this one has been a persistent gremlin for a long time and will probably always be with me--whether it actually counts as part of "who I am" is another question. I actually experience it as a sort of otherness within myself.

I can begin to see it, but doing something about it is something else entirely, and I'm stubborn.

I've found this manifesting in several ways, lately. I'd rather not get into tiresome details. Just take my word for it.

BR's Challenge

In the TTA meeting today, BR offered us the challenge to look at our guitar playing, pick a specific aspect that we want to improve, and do something about it. It could be something we each know we have to work on, but for whatever reason we have been lazy and haven't gotten around to addressing it. He challenged us to finally do something about this nagging aspect of our guitar playing that has been holding us back.

If we didn't know what thing was, we had the others to help us find it.

I think most people knew immediately what they needed to do. I know I have a list of things, so I better get busy making my list and figuring out specifics.

BR illustrated by telling us about an aspect of his drumming that has nagged at him for 20 years, and that he recently finally saw what it was and decided he would finally do something about it. He had talked to his colleagues in the world of professional drummers about it for years. It was apparently physically uncomfortable enough that it was destroying his enjoyment of drumming, even though as a professional he delivered and made it look and sound good.

Wow...

MB Goes Super Locrian

Later on, MB was gracious enough to hold a Super Locrian figure I've been playing around with, while I tried out a harmony part and a couple of bass lines.

It sounded surprisingly good. I've played these parts as overdubs in ProTools in an effort to see how they sounded together, and they never sounded satisfying like they did today in real time with another guitarist.

What's up with that? The notes are the notes, right? Shouldn't the mathematics of the notes and intervals, at least on some level, add up to the same thing?

Strange.

NST Classical?

Then TB rehearsed some of his NST classical guitar music in preparation for the upcoming CGT show, with the whole team as test audience.

Wow! Again!

I was surprised that he was playing in New Standard Tuning. I had always assumed gut or nylon strings wouldn't be able to hold the tension of the upward-tuned strings without snapping.

So much for assumptions.

Making the Breakthrough

In other areas, I'm pondering what it will take to break into the technical communication field, and I'll be consulting one of my professors. I experienced my break into book publishing as a tough slog, so I want to get it right this time.

Also, in the last few days, I finally admitted or understood that I felt (perhaps mortally) offended over something that happened months and months ago, before I got to Seattle. I've been experiencing a bit of resistance toward a specific task, and I couldn't seem to explain it. Now I know.

On some level, my attitude is, "Yeah, well, so what? Get over it, already. Do what you said you would do." I believe part of this situation involved an unspoken, unconsidered bit of presumption on my part, so it's not like I'm some kind wounded innocent.

But still, "it" resists and throws up roadblocks. What do I have to do to get this heedless, mule-stubborn animal I inhabit to cooperate?

I'm not very kind or forgiving toward "it" sometimes.

Anyway, now that I at least see it, maybe there is hope.

Coriander--Yuck!

Oh, yeah. I've decided I don't much care for the bitter taste of coriander when I make a curry. My bottle of curry powder already has coriander mixed in, so my recipes may be going overboard when they call for adding coriander. Or I'm not cooking it right and allowing it to mellow. Or I happened to get a bad, overly-bitter batch of it.

None of the curries I've had in Indian restaurants have tasted bitter like this.

As it is, it reminds me of nutmeg, and I don't really care for nutmeg most of the time.

Alright, I'm out of here.

lots of guitar practice

I was up at 6:00 AM on Saturday for guitar calisthenics, sitting, and then a House Circle session with CG following breakfast at Vera's (I had the Greek omelette, while BR told tales from his life on the road as a professional drummer with a Big Famous Rock Band). Near the end of the session CG led us into an arrangement of a song from Donnie Darko and broadcast our playing over his iPhone to TM, who is a huge Donnie Darko fan.

The Tuning the Air team was scheduled to check out a possible performance space in Seattle Center, but I didn't feel well and decided to go home.

I felt better after a short nap and did a batch of laundry.

Later, I found myself picking up the guitar and playing over various ideas I've been collecting, including more variations from the G7/B Lydian Augmented +V (Super Locrian) mode I've been playing around with. I found an intriguing variation that layers a diminished triad over an augmented triad, both built off the same root. The same motif also made a pretty cool bass line/riff.

This eventually morphed into work on quieting sympathetic tension in my left hand fingers, as well as work counting "Eye of the Needle" in 13/4.


Then I headed out to the Good Shephard Chapel performance space for the Seattle Improvised Music benefit, featuring about 25 different musicians performing one-minute improvised solos. A lot of these were quite avante-garde, and my favorite was a clarinet player who played a wide range of percussive breath sounds I didn't know were available from the instrument. The program mentioned there are workshops on Saturdays. Maybe I'll take my Ovation to one of these soon and check it out. I would like to get to know more musicians.

On Sunday, I felt inspired to play more guitar. Except for a journey to the Ave for a cappuccino, I played guitar pretty much all day, with breaks now and then to listen to an album of Celtic guitar duets I picked up at the Dusty Strings guitar store in Fremont. Such gorgeous melodies.

This reminds me that I need to resume work on the Dinny McLaughlin fiddle reels transcribed in his autobiography, From Barefoot Days.


I met Dinny about two years ago on my trip to the Inishowen Peninsula in the north of Ireland. Seamus, a friend of the family in Ireland, took us out to hear Dinny perform at a local pub. Later, Seamus called Dinny up, and I wound up over at Dinny's cottage playing NST bits for him, including one of his reels in D Major that I had quickly sat down and learned from the sheet music (1st position at the nut seemed to give the best, most fiddle-like tone).


Dinny was very gracious, and he seemed touched that I had gone to the trouble to learn some of his music.

Back here in Seattle on Sunday night, I took a break from playing guitar to visit the B&N Cafe down the hill and read a book on composing for jazz. I was tempted to buy it, because it had a good collection of melody writing techniques, things I had seen before, but explained in a slightly different way that was insightful and interesting.

I also read a new book on the Beatles. I've been reading a lot of books on the Beatles lately, but I mainly find myself searching around for all of the references to Bob Dylan and their various meetings. The relationship between Dylan and the Beatles fascinates me for some reason. I feel like I'm searching for some kind of insight about what they meant to each other and how they co-existed in the zeitgeist of the time, but I have no idea what that might be.

After the cafe closed, I dropped by QFC for groceries, and headed home to play more guitar.

Next thing I knew it was 2:00 AM. Then to bed.

back in the groove

I'm back.

Short summary of Stuff That Happened Since I Last Posted:

CHRISTMAS

Mom and Dad flew out, and we spent a week in a hotel suite in Bellevue. I had never been to Bellevue before, and I heard it was a nice place. It was indeed clean and tidy, but it was also quintessential American strip mall/parking lagoon hell, which is not quite my bag. There were bus stops, but you would really need a car if you wanted to have a real life there, and I recently divorced my car. So I guess I won't be moving there any time soon.

It's exactly the sort of place that will be totally unlivable once Peak Oil and economic trouble really kicks in, and we may not have to wait much longer.

So, yes, a very nice place...if you like that sort of thing.

We also went out and "saw the sights," including the Space Needle and the science fiction museum. We also made an ill-advised attempt to drive around the Olympic Peninsula in a single day. Everything in this part of the country is much farther apart than it appears on the map, and so we drove long way out, just past Aberdeen.

We had a nice seafood dinner near the Pacific Ocean, then gave up on driving all the way around and came back.

Aberdeen looked quite desolate. Naturally, I found myself trying to imagine Kurt Cobain growing up there. (For some reason, the place reminded me of the little town in Indiana where Gus Grissom, the astronaut, was born and raised.)

We also visited Bainbridge Island, which was also a nice area. I think I would quickly get bored if I attempted to live there, though.

I enjoy my family's company. We always laugh and have a good time. We share a slightly surreal sense of humor and enjoy wordplay.

I'm finally outfitted to cook again, and after New Year's, I got out the Vegan With A Vengeance cookbook and whipped up some spinach curry and scrambled tofu. (I'm not vegan—it's just something I'm dabbling in right now.)

Once I was back in the house and got in the kitchen, I also noticed that all of the lock hinges were bent up (tenants can claim a cabinet and secure it with a padlock). Somebody had come in there and gone through the kitchen trying to force open all of the cabinets, maybe with a crowbar. My lock and latch held, but the would-be thief had broken somebody else's cabinet open. I don't think they took anything, though. The open cabinet was full of rice and cooking oil, and that was it.

So much for all of the amazing valuables that had to be hiding out in the crappy kitchen cabinets of this crappy house. Oh, well.

HOUSE SITTING

I spent a week around New Year's house sitting for some friends, and taking care of their cats, gerbils, and their little scotty dog. I picked up a lot of dog poop, played catch, and did my best to prevent too many dust-ups when one of the cats snuck downstairs into the dog's domain.

I also got sick on New Year's Eve and spent the entire evening laying around feeling out of it. Aches and chills. It was too bad, because I had bought a bottle of Cruzan dark rum, and I was looking forward to busting that open over at TS's party.

Later on, I made a veggie stir fry with lots of coriander, cumin, and pepper, and I swear the spices broke my fever.

THE BUS RIDE FROM HELL™

(Special "Mea Culpa" Note added 2/26/08: to avoid any further misunderstanding—because some misunderstood—I must note that Drunk Guy, Spastic Guy, and Probation Lady were all white. In other words, the Bus Ride From Hell™ was an "equal opportunity" irritating experience. Lefty academic deconstructionists may now commence with, um, deconstructing the unexamined racial biases and implicit power relations of our Eurocentric dominant culture as they colonize our discourse and manifest in the following prose, or whatever.)

To get to the airport, I took a bus from U District, and then transferred downtown to another bus headed toward Seatac. (BTW, I really like Seattle's downtown area—unlike Cincinnati, people actually go downtown in Seattle, and the area looks prosperous and busy.)

I sat near the front of the bus, and I now understand that I must never again sit on the benches near the front, especially if I'm going on a long bus ride. Aggressive drunks and other riff-raff tend to collapse onto the benches near the front, and so if I want to avoid such persons, I should make a point of moving farther to the back so that I'm out of range.

Anyway, first in our lineup...

Drunk Guy

Drunk Guy sat down directly to my left. His nose was running, and he appeared to be drooling. He was relatively well-dressed and yuppie in a North Face sort of way, and I thought he dressed "young" relative to the crinkly droop of his face.

I'm convinced he had been drinking heavily for a long, long time, and that it had prematurely pickled him.

He looked at me and said, "Ahm drung..."

I asked him if he was going to be OK. He seemed to attempt a reply, but was otherwise too drunk to speak. I was sincerely concerned, and my inquiry seemed to immunize me from any direct harassment later on in the bus ride. Thank God.

As the journey wore on, Drunk Guy became unable to control himself and wouldn't shut up despite repeated warnings from the driver.

And even then, it seemed like only about one out of every four impulses to say something actually made it out of his mouth. Sometimes you could tell he wanted to say something, but he was usually too impaired for his vocal mechanism to produce any sound. You could see him try to speak and then give up.

When he did speak, it wasn't clear how it related to anything:

"There ain nuh ole peeble rahdin thiz buzzz..."

"Gheezuz zuvvered ahn tha crozz...!"

Riders sitting right next to him began to openly tell him to shut up. The driver warned him to shut up. New riders would get on and sit down next to him, and you could see it dawn on their faces that they were sitting next to a cretin.

Eventually, the driver stopped the bus and kicked the guy off.

Drunk Guy's last words as he stood at the front of the bus:

"Yall can kizz mah big whaht azzzzz!!"

The Weird Black Kids

The sat across from each other and babbled in a secret language:

"Digga? Zigga? Meligga?" said one.

"Bigga? Gigga? Wigga-Digga?" said the other.

Then they laughed uncontrollably.

The one sitting to my left turned toward me.

"Ya got a quarter?"

"No"

Back to their secret language.

"Wigga? Higga? Digga-Wigga?"

More laughter.

The one across the aisle turned to the man next to him.

"Ya got a quarter?"

"No."

The African couple a few seats over—"African," as in from Nigeria, in Africa—sat and stared at the weird American kids. Of all the people on the bus, these two seemed to be the only ones with any sort of personal presence or sense of dignity. They seemed genuinely shocked.

The Old Toothless Black Guy

He looked at me. Then he looked at me again. I seemed familiar. He rubbed his chin in deep thought and squinted at me through his glasses.

Had he seen me before somewhere? Could he figure it out?

Yeah, maybe he had. I was That Guy. He was sure of it.

"Is you...Michaels?" he asked.

"No."

But he kept looking at me, trying to figure out where he had seen me before. Maybe I was famous.

Yeah, famous people ride the bus all the time.

Spastic Guy

Spastic Guy got on the bus in the deep south side of Seattle, right before the driver kicked off Drunk Guy.

Spastic Guy had an enormous overbite and a strange body odor somewhere between raw cake batter and a rancid latte. When he spoke, he sounded like Goofy speaking with the voice of Donald Duck. He would flap his hands and then suck on the straw poking out of his hot chocolate.

He sat down next to me on the bench and leaned against me with his filthy quilted jacket.

After Drunk Guy left, Spastic Guy kept leaning against me, oblivious. I asked him to please scoot down a little bit, and he shot down the bench like a rocket, squawking and flapping his hands in horror.

The bus driver offered Spastic Guy the opportunity to be kicked off with Drunk Guy.

A crowd of black kids got on the bus and immediately zeroed in on Spastic Guy:

"Look like somebody got Down Syndrome!"

"What's that smell? Smell like somebody been eatin' fried eggs!"

Meanwhile, somebody else burned a joint in the back of the bus.

Probation Lady

Probation Lady talked a lot. About being on probation. And how her "Old Man" was in jail.

She moved to Seattle because it was someplace she could "find an Old Man who would be home on time."

Fun facts I learned about Probation Lady:
1) She was on probation
2) Her "Old Man" was in jail
3) She was going in for surgery on the 7th (outpatient)
4) She couldn't drink or smoke weed because she was on probation (and it sucked)
5) Her "Old Man" was in jail, and he had been transferred upstate
6) She was going in for surgery on the 7th (outpatient)
7) She was on probation
8) Her "Old Man" was in jail, and he had broken probation and was arrested for assault
9) She was on probation, and she was going in for surgery on the 7th (outpatient)

All the best, Probation Lady, wherever you are...