I was stopped at the light this morning, southbound on 2200 West, going to turn left to eastbound 5400 South. The light turned green, I saw the intersection was clear, and proceeded to turn left. Two lanes out, I saw an SUV headed towards me, not trying to stop. The speed limit on 5400 is 45 mph. I honked, but saw that the driver wasn’t stopping, so I decided to get out of Dodge as fast as I could. Only it wasn’t fast enough.
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© 2013 H.K. Longmore
Outside world in turmoil
Inside I simmer and boil
“The centre cannot hold”
One says, grave-cold.
Au contraire, I dare
To contradict mon frère:
All things centrifuge contained
Against the wall splayed
Save one—the Center.
In deep cold winter
Or hot dry summer,
Dancing to different drummer
Clothed in silken broadcloth,
Or in ashen sackcloth
Impervious to external enticing
The only Sure Advice.
Thus when skin crawls
With portent of gall,
Or by desire seduced
Will to restrain reduced,
To the Center hold.
Splay not, be bold,
Add to your mettle:
Utilize the Force Centripetal!
I have gained new insight into Matthew 7:14: “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
Take this narrows. If this were the way that leads to life, in the first place it is hard to find. If we had not been with someone who already knew it was there, we would not have seen it; nor is it likely that we would have found it if we had been looking for it.
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Posted in essays
Tagged atonement, become as a child, hiking, Saint George, sin, straight and narrow
When eating real licorice, such as RJ’s Licorice (imported from New Zealand), one must remember to eat it in moderation if one hopes to get any sleep at night, or else have some of “the one that coats”–yes, the pink stuff–on hand.
Last night I was pondering recent happenings in my life, which included what could have been déjà vu if only it weren’t clearly a separate and distinct occurrence. I came to a conclusion that should be fairly obvious, but it took two data points, and several years transpired before I acquired the second. When I am passing by or walking away from someone, feeling hurt or slighted but doing my best to bury the pain, and in my mind I tell them where they can go or I visualize the synapses of my brain firing such that all my phalanges form a fist but for one finger, it is a sure sign that my relationship with that person, whatever that relationship may be, is in peril. And thus applies this quote:
“But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.” – JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Which is great from the perspective of me being able to write some potentially great poetry. But if I could choose between the relationship being “in peril or broken forever” versus never writing a good poem about that relationship or that person, I’d choose the latter.
A corollary to this conclusion is that at such times, I should probably just let myself feel the pain and stop trying to numb it by the commands I mentally issue to the other person. Otherwise I start a downward spiral that, if not quickly corrected, spills over into other relationships.
Posted in commentary, journal, quotes
Tagged bliss and glad life, introspection, jrr tolkien, relationships, self reflection
Lies cannot be reasoned with. No matter how much logic you apply, a lie will just expand to fill all available space. No, in order to combat a lie, you must not reason with it; you must expose it. This is exceedingly difficult for lies about future intent.
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Posted in commentary
Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids…and How to Correct Them
Glad that I was not overprotected.
There’s that famous saying about changing those things you can and accepting those things you can’t. What it doesn’t detail is what to do to help yourself accept those things you can’t change. Or perhaps, those things that you could change, and want desperately to, but are bound by duty or by honor to accept. This latter case is especially difficult compared to those things you just can’t change. So what does one do? I leave it as an open question for my readers (all zero of you 😉 ).
Today I have found I am grateful that I never did put that old racquetball away; taking it out of my car and slamming it against the cinder block wall at the back of the building was the vent in my teapot.
These tips were in my FB news feed today (shared with a photo from http://www.facebook.com/eve.bass). Some of them sound pretty legit, and I’ll have to try them out. Others, either because of the way they are worded or the actual ideas suggested I’m going to have to pass on. Here are my favorites, either way.
2) Cornstarch: Untangle Knots
Sprinkling cornstarch into tough knots, such as shoe laces helps loosen them.
I’m always making a rat’s nest of knots when I winterize people’s swamp coolers. Then in the spring I have to deal with my mess. I’ll have to give this a try when spring finally decides to stop teasing us and get on in earnest. But, I think I’d prefer to use nutrient-less white flour: flour just sounds better to me than starch.
Posted in commentary
Some spammers are now using the ploy of video footage of the recent tragedy at the Boston Marathon to try to hook unsuspecting fish. What is wrong with these people? Have they not even a shred of decency?
<conspiracy-theorist>Maybe the spammers did it, so they could have a more enticing hook?</conspiracy-theorist>
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So, if anyone reading this blog is a friend, dear or otherwise, and is offended at the suggestion that they might be a monster because they willingly give up their privacy, I apologize. You may be a cute monster, a dear monster, even a hot monster, but still a monster by Milan Kundera’s estimation.
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 | Esther Longmore on Not In |
| The Impact of Therap… on Out to Lunch | |
| Summer’s Tail… on Teepee Valves | |
| Ow. | Henry Hurdles… on Teepee Valves | |
| Vacant Echoes | Musi… on Trashed |
Musings of a Kunderian Monster 
Web Stats and the Stalker in Me
I finally shared a link to a blog post on my running blog yesterday, and I got a decent number of hits. According to WordPress’ stats, there were 30+ views, and 12 visitors. I was pretty excited that at least ten people were interested enough to check it out, out of all my 230+ FB friends. Then I wanted to know more. Who viewed it? What pages did they visit? Back when I had my website hosted with a shell account, I could access the Apache web log and see IP addresses, referring urls, user agents. I wrote a script to convert IP addresses to hostnames where possible, filtering out my own IP addresses, and enjoyed analyzing the results.
Usually there would be a bunch of lookups by various search engines, some of which respected my robots.txt, some that didn’t (they weren’t major search engines, so I didn’t really care about blocking them). And every now and again I’d get entries that were clearly someone that was interested in either me or what I had to say (perhaps stalking me?). Those were the fun ones. Who is the domain name registered to, or if the IP address could not be converted to a hostname, what entity is the address assigned to? Occasionally I was able to get enough information that if needed, I could have built the beginnings of a court case about someone stalking me.
Sadly, the web stats offered by WordPress just aren’t as comprehensive. Maybe they have an option to pay to be able to view the access logs, seeing how they like to charge for just about everything else. (What? seriously? you want me to pay how much per year just to be able to edit CSS? Okay, fine. Maybe I will.) But whatever the case is, you, my readers, are safe for now. I doubt I’ll be paying to read access logs anytime soon; the stalker in me will simply have to go back in the closet.
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Posted in commentary
Tagged curiosity, online stalking, web statistics