Grasshopper Thoughts, Vol. II, February 2011

Photo courtesy of
Bing images

I haven't had Grasshopper Thoughts in ages. Well, let me rephrase that. I have had them, quite often...to the tune of probably several hundred in any random day. I just haven't written about them.

Earlier tonight, I was talking with a friend who was snacking on pretzels. So the obvious questions followed. Pretzel sticks, or the traditional rounded, woven kind? Then the next question was inevitably, with dip or plain? And is it me, or does anyone else think their fingers smell like celery after they've eaten pretzels??? Something about the lye they spray on the rising dough to give pretzels that crunchy, glossy outer shell after they bake leaves a celery fragrance on them. No, I'm not kidding and I'm not imagining it. Sniff your fingers the next time you eat pretzels and tell me what you think. Celery. I promise.

So, why can't someone come up with a happy medium between ladies knee high stockings and trouser socks? Is that so hard to invent? The textile factories exist for both, so the technology is already there. There are days when knee highs, ugly things that they are, are too sheer, but that same day, trouser socks are too thick to wear with heels. It makes our feet look like sausages crammed into our high heels, and that just ruins the whole purpose of buying cute shoes. Ladies, I know you get me on this one.

Mustard seeds. I just got a big bag of them from one of my favorite online companies. Right now I have a jar of leftover pickle juice in the refrigerator, half filled with dried mustard seeds. I stumbled on that idea a couple years ago when I had finished a jar of dill pickles and had the liquid left over; there were mustard seeds swimming around in the pickling liquid. I use mustard seeds in potato salad, egg salad and a couple of other dishes, but it takes a while for them to rehydrate in the salads. So, I dumped some into the leftover pickle juice in the jar and tried them a couple days later. Et voila, instant pickled mustard seeds....and a foody addiction was born. In about two days, I'll be enjoying them again.

I don't know about you, but someone has to have the answer to why almonds and mushrooms squeak when you bite down on them. They're not sentient, or even breathing, after all. Why do they squeak??? Another random food thought, I realize, but these thoughts do take up valuable pondering time in my day. I just thought I'd pass along....and share....the torment with you. I'm very generous that way.

You know, sometimes you have a really crummy day. It starts out with just a bad moment and that's never good. For me, that happened earlier this week and within an hour, instead of the bad compounding, I was literally inundated with Sunshine Moments. They were dropping down upon me from every direction. The bad moment faded into insignificance, blotted out by the cheerful, determined rays of the sun being gifted to me. I am still feeling the effects of all that radiance, which is probably why I have all this energy late at night to Grasshopper!
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If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more of my work, you can find me at Healing Morning blog.

And the pigeons won

I know what you're thinking: "Eew, gross, a post about pigeons? Thanks, I'll pass."

I would have felt the same. Before losing the battle with them.

Pigeons are like the vermin of the sky. Dirty city birds, associated with disease.

They have conquered my balcony.

When we first moved in three years ago into this lovely apartment in Jaipur, India, I tried really hard to banish them from our otherwise unused balcony. Scarecrow, barbed wire, the whole works. I even considered getting spikes shipped from the UK, where they have pigeon prevention down to a science.

They would make spine-tingling scratching noises on my air conditioner, like fingernails on a blackboard, on the other side of the wall, just above my head. They would try to perch along every possible and impossible window ledge. They would even enter our apartment as unwelcome guests, through a window or a door left casually ajar. When we would try to chase them out, they often flew into the glass panes of the windows.

The last time we went for an extended holiday, they took over our place. Apparently we had left a door unlocked, and it had been blown open by a gust of wind. My mother-in-law found them all over the place, managed to chase them out, and thankfully did the cleanup job. But she didn't have the heart to discard the two eggs in a nest on the balcony. She's Jain.

So we waited it out. It wasn't actually that much of a bother, except for our balcony getting covered by an ever-thickening layer of their excrement. I actually enjoyed peeking at them, inspecting their growth. At first, they were fuzzy and indistinguishable from any other cute chicks. It wasn't long before they took flight.

But now, they're back. I had discarded three nest attempts. I suppose the mother was just dying to get the eggs out, because it happened so suddenly and with so little support--just a few twigs, and the concave drain-covering as a base. I also found it difficult to chuck the eggs, so decided to leave them this time.

Who am I to get in the way of Mother Nature?

--Becky blogs at BeckyBlab.

Say whaaat??!!??

Okay, immediately after I posted that last piece, I realized I was possibly pitching the right article to the wrong demographic. I am slowly growing to understand that I have different audiences in different places. Generally, most of my writing online has been rock and roll oriented, but I realize that the world is larger than that. So, let me tell you a little bit about another topic I enjoy thinking about: My lazy man's quest to become a "Spiritual Leader" - I'm not driven or ambitious enough to try and get rich doing it, but it does service my ego fairly well.

I have a creative process as a writer that is neither particularly unusual nor original. A lot of my work comes out as "automatic" or "stream of consciousness" writing - which is not to say that there is no intellectual process involved, simply that any intellectual or analytic component comes later on in the editing phase, when I realize (hopefully) what the heck I was talking about.

On some rare and very special occasions, I am visited by words the source of which I cannot trace. They quite literally come from a location within myself that is unmapped. The poem I wrote to read at my wedding falls under this category (which, if enough people express interest in reading it, I may post here as well). Yeats, among many others, claimed to have accessed some other intelligence or state of being in some of his writing. I do not purport to take a stand for or against the verity of such claims. All I know is that occasionally I have the experience of writing something, then looking at it and going "Where the heck did THAT come from?"

At this point I would like to "out" myself and confess that I am the author of this blog [link] which has heretofore been anonymous. I invite you to partake of this exercise in mostly or somewhat automatic writing as you have leisure to do so. Here is a small excerpt of that writing, to give you a taste of the sort of subject matter it deals with.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

to be loved

possibly every fear, every worry, every sorrow can be traced back to the desire to be loved, or perhaps more succinctly, the desire to feel as if we are loved. feelings are only a partial source of information, and using feelings to map reality is like trying to sew a wedding dress with one's teeth.

love is not a feeling, but an action - this is a cliche that you may already have heard many times. we do not truly understand the implications of what being truly loved is - if we did, not only would we lose completely and permanently all illusion that it is possible to not be loved, we would be consumed by the fire of love that is more ubiquitous than air.

the desire to be loved causes sorrow. it is an unquenchable desire.

the only liberation from that pain is to realize that it arises from an illusion - that we are not loved. still, it's easy enough to talk about abandoning illusion, but every human being who has ever lived has struggled a mighty struggle against their own illusion, as a hunter with a broken spear might struggle hand-t0-tusk with a wild beast.

the only proven way to liberate oneself from the illusory, addictive desire to fee loved is to love completely and totally without seeking to be loved in return.

some confuse not seeking to be loved, with rejecting love. but the rejection of love is also an illusion, like a fish rejecting water. does the fish welcome water? the fish does no such thing. the fish abides in the water. so do we abide in love, whether we see it or not. to love selflessly opens the heart to receive love more completely than any other pursuit.

to fully see reality as it is, may possibly be a great burden. but those who dare great things may dare to see beyond their fears to an underlying reality.

the reality is not simply that we are loved, although we are. the reality is not simply that to love the other is the only way to open the heart to receive love, although that also is true. the reality is not simply that we are surrounded by love everywhere and in everything, although that also is true.

the reality that holds all of these things is that everything is love, and that there is nothing that is not love. the only reality is love. everything else is illusion.

Post Deleted

I'm going to delete this post for now and possibly present it in another venue. Thanks for your patience.