November 2009:

Activities:
Hurry up and wait; listen and repeat; live and learn; give and take; try and try again...yonder and right here, inside and out, macro and mini, directly and obliquely.

Interests:
My favorite travel agents: arms and legs, bikes, canoes, kayaks, skis, and imagination. Wildflowers, wild words, brave minds, playful art, and the smorgasbord of sound - raw and prepared - move me, too.

Tendencies:
A bit watchful and timid in novel situations. Easily marooned in thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow. A talker. Literal-minded. Delighted to re-locate deeper into the back-country, just as soon as I finish the fifteen tasks on my desk. Always looking for creative ways to alternate (essential) solitude - in some form - with the companionship I love. Too tidy, even for myself. Attuned to sound. Unassertive at times...but working on it. A procrastinator. Love sniffing flowers. Biggest vice: chocolate. Raised by clever Jewish and Quaker wolves, so I avoid Christmas, Easter, Walmart and most things grandiose, sentimental, or ostentatious - unless they're musical.

Favorite 'dharma' teachers:
This month: Tara Brach; Jack Kornfield; Pema Chodron; Gershon Winkler.

Eros's jukebox:
A lushly quiet, sexy voice. Musicality. Body language that is lithe, balanced, strong, playful and gentle. A lover of wildness Out There and a friend to the wildness inside. Curious and wonder-ful. A bit spontaneous. Light enough for kindness, heavy enough for courage. A laugher, a dancer. Offers affordable admission to the work-in-progress that is him, right now.

Favorite Music:
By someone I've never heard before, usually. WFMU (Jersey City), KBGA (Missoula), and various bloggers figure prominently.

Favorite movies:
Arty furrinners' films, or Mystery Science Theater 3000. Earnest, ironic, irreverent, satirical, cryptic, silly.

Favorite Books:
This month: "The Botany of Desire," by Michael Pollan; "Kitchen Confidential," by Anthony Bourdain; "It Can't Happen Here," by Sinclair Lewis (thanks, Peace Mouse!); "Ariadne's Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind," by Anthony Lewis; "Three Cups of Tea," by Greg Mortenson; four editions of "The Whitefish Review" borrowed from a co-worker; fifteen field guides and four cookbooks I borrowed from the library; and the by-God Merriam Webster English Dictionary.

Favorite Quotations:

"Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop." - H.L. Mencken

"Everybody's afraid of change, but they still vote for it." - co-worker #1

"...The only war that matters is the war against the imagination
All other wars are subsumed in it..."
- Diane di Prima

"...the nature of modern broadcasting is that nothing is feared - not bombast or repetition or bile - so much as silence." - Pico Iyer

"Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth."
- Elizabeth Gilbert (and many masterful writers)

"I make the most of all that comes,
And the least of all that goes."
- Sara Teasdale

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
- Dorothy Parker

"Giving up television may have been more important for my health than giving up smoking."
- Rainer Komers

"Computers: you can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. One nice thing, though, is that you can shoot them, push 'em off a desk, etc. But don't tell THEM that."
- co-worker #2

"As you pass a graveyard, all you hear is muttering and complaining. Nobody says anything - there's just this low moaning and bitching, coming from six feet under."
- Malachy McCourt

"A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."
- Franz Kafka

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."
- George Washington Carver

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

"Art doesn't start out hallowed. It starts personal, an emergency."
- Joan Acocella

"If it's mechanical, force it."
- local acquaintance #1

"I can't go to sleep if I'm not an astronaut. Astronauts WANT to go to sleep."
- family member, at age three

"I keep wondering why people are staring. Then I remember I'm wearing horns."
- local acquaintance #2

(Just in case this profile's not wordy/nerdy enough:)
Here's a fairly organic Facebook ad-lib that I received and passed along. You can infer a thing or two from my responses, but also from my deviation from the stated rules. I chose titles from twenty-eight poets, not one of them Ogden Nash.

"Using only poem titles from one poet, answer these questions. Pass it on. Do not repeat a title. Repost as "My Life According to [poet]."

"My Life According to Ogden Nash"

Are you a male or female?
Women in Profile: Bas-Relief, Left Section Missing

Describe yourself:
I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied

How do you feel?
The Pleasure's in Walking Through

Describe where you currently live:
Bewitched Playground

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Landscape with Horse Named Popcorn

Dream vacation:
Laughing Time

Where do you feel safe?
Blackberrying

Your favorite form of transportation:
How to Accompany the Moon Without Walking

What's the weather like?
The Afternoon Sun

Your favorite time of day:
Morning

Your relationships:
The Considerate Soft-Shelled Phizzint

Your friendships:
The Benefactors

Your fear:
Baby Ate a Microchip

Your greatest regret:
Shame

Your dream job:
Doctor Frolic

Your alma mater:
The Consolations of Sociobiology

Your name, if you could change it:
Schemhammphorasch

Your favorite color:
Nothing But Color

Your favorite food:
Seaweeds

Your favorite part of the body:
The Best of the Body

Your biggest pet peeve:
Noisy Noisy

Your worst habit:
Saving Minutes

Your death:
A Posthumous Poetics

Your religion:
Earth Science

Your daily routine:
Several Errands

Your philosophy of life:
Taking Notice

Your soul's present condition:
Something Childish, But Very Natural

Your best advice:
Seeing For a Moment

Lastly: email me with your theories about whether or not phermones can hitchhike the Internet. Is this process completely biophobic, or can dating profiles emit a whiff of oo-lah-lah? Or is it all in the photos? :)

for fun:

Explore, hike, bike, ski, canoe, kayak, swim, visit friends, read, write, take pictures, meditate, listen to diverse kinds of music and audio, watch odd movies, get lost in Wikipedia, feel grateful, squander time spontaneously.

my job:

I'm a radio producer. I'm forever indebted to those who took a chance and gave me the opportunity to do this work, among a group that feels like family.

my religion:

I'm under the influence of the Judaism of my upbringing, Friends schooling, love of wildness, Buddhist mindfulness techniques I've learned in the past twelve years, and much more.

my education:

Like Zonker Harris (minus the weed), the longer I stayed in college, the farther I meandered from graduating. This non-achievement has begun to feel as much like a mile-marker as an albatross.

favorite hot spots:

Favorite place to eat: the raspberry patch. Best travel destination: any open mind. Great date-bait: skiing; learning a card game; admiring doggies on Waterworks Hill; or something I haven't thought up that will sound just right at the time.

favorite things:

Great conversations, great listening. Exploring backcountry with kindred spirits. Art, foreign, documentary and 'B' films. Live theatre, bookstores, strange and beautiful music and radio and Internet. Satire. Wildflowers, picking huckleberries.

last read: (from earlier in 2009)

Time's been eating my bookworm tendencies for breakfast. In recent months, I've read or skimmed these: Terry Tempest Williams: "Finding Beauty in a Broken World;" Chrysti Smith: "Verbivore's Feast;" Eric Weiner: "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search For the World's Happiest Places in the World;" Jay Griffiths: "A Sideways Look at Time;" David James Duncan: "God Laughs and Plays;" Jean Chevalier: "The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols;" and Sinclair Lewis:"It Can't Happen Here."

Curiosity. High-speed verbosity. Green salads. Organizing and cleaning up, except when I'm not. I'm good with color. A cheerful fascination with complexity, even complex disaster. Listening, except when I'm distracted, which is frequently. Research. Parallel parking. Non-sequiturs. Exploring. A bad French accent. Skiing all day. Carrying a complete survival kit in my 'McGyver' bag, then forgetting what's inside. Retaining in my head a maximum of three terrible jokes. Usually looking before I leap, sometimes grinding to an indecisive halt. Arriving in time for the free food.

They lurch into the sharp edge of the collective unconscious, then fall backwards into the pillowy field of Earth's blue-green bacteria.

I dig Louise Erdrich. I swoon for David James Duncan. I never met an Irish writer I didn't love. I plan to imbibe in more poetry. Instead of watching movies, I stream WFMU or New Dimensions (hipsters vs. hippies) while searching the Internet for something or other. Audio: strange and beautiful, obscure and weird, warhorse and popular and unpopular and unspeakable. Food: moss, bark, huckleberries and very dark chocolate.

Life; my glasses; family and friends; wild and cultivated beauty; and mindfulness.

what's next, what's past, and sometimes what's present.

Working till mid-evening, then luxuriating in the possibilities of the weekend. Or focusing on packing to leave town for two days. Or enjoying flickering lights, laughter or a long walk.

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

If you've placed the seventeen brightly-colored machine tools into the bathtub, or if you're the one who held the giraffe.