the seven habits of highly effective people
i have picked up "the seven habits of highly effective people" and started to read it. i got it today from the PTA thriftstore in carrboro (money goes to the PTA). many a time i have been at a thrift store and wished that the books were actually seperated out into areas. like classics and trash novels and self-help. well this one, i am happy to say, was the fulfillment of that wish. paperbacks for fifty cents. so i picked up a bunch of them. a couple of financial ones because i need organizing principles on how to be an adult (see title of entry) and because i like the ones that have to do with ways of making money that don't resemble "work" in the traditional sense. some of the best and rarest books in my library are such finds. i found not one but *two* copies of the precious "body language". if you find this book buy it. also, if you come across the tao te ching, on the road, catcher in the rye, the naked ape, books by wilhelm reich, buy them too. i seem to do it compulsively. i like having multiple copies of woody guthrie's bio on hand too because it explains so much about the cultural history of folk music. guns germs n steel. maybe someday these will all make the shelves. inevitably the books that reach the nytimes best sellers list will make it there, dianetics (cheating to reach the goal or not) being one such book.
but i digress. i was at the thrift store today buying lamps, two five dollar ones that look like ones adults would buy for their living rooms somewhere between nineteen forty and now, if they were sturdy and/or cheap types. i also got a gin blossoms cd, which is worth two dollars. all the other cds that looked good were actually empty inside. i nearly bought the "friends" cd by accident because someone put it in something else. the ladies at the place give you a lightbulb and show you a place you can test to see if the lights work. i gave them nineteen dollars, a new twenty from the machine turned right into a real live dollar bill with a picture of a more famous and beloved president from our country's past. here, in the south. were it not for fate and the power of the industrial north (of which i am an heir if not a member) this land would have their own stars n bars money. and you could bet it would be in color. the southern bill. (any artists who care to make such a bill have my blessing, chil'en.)
going to the thrift store was part of my plan of Organizing My LIfe. i got up today and made a list. i even put the time i had to shower and eat on there. at 11 i had to get out of bed and do things. shop in carrboro. go to phydeaux where the guy who knows everything about cat piss smells tells you what to buy, exhaustively and very helpfully, and the lesbian in the black t-shirt talks about how "urine-off" (pronounced the same as a potential russian surname) was called "piss off" by a british customer of theirs. then a midget guy came in with questions about his doberman. i live in a land of wonder. when i went to the hardware store i had to go out back to get my specs cut for my lumber. i had measured my bathroom closet and decided to get some wood cut up to give me more storage space. brandi alerted me to the fine wood left sitting out by the dumpster at her place, so i was prepared. i had an elaborate scheme for it, three across and two down to secure it all into one big piece, but it proved unnecessary. no messy hammering, just three boards put up there and that's it. i put all the pillows and bed stuff on it. saved lots of room. i have a shelf above my washer and dryer in that bathroom closet and all it has is elvis on it, complete with guitar. it's cool because it's elvis but it makes me pause every time i realize that it is just a glossed up ken doll with elvis' haircut on it. even the clothes are a little bit swishier than you might expect. keep in mind i do not have a collection of such dolls, in a series with the cast of 90210 (not the 1-0 of a previous zip code shout-out, mind you). i say this because in the car with my friend on the way back down here i had to revisit issues of what is appropriate masculine behavior and what is not. i don't give a fuck really. it's true i won't wear pink and hate gay men's music as a rule of thumb, but i just could not be bothered not to like aretha franklin because it's "girl music". out there in internet land there are people being as radical as can be piercing their dyed shaven heads to show off their tatoos and fucking anyone who can't prove themselves illegal and here i am a radical for hearing quality. sheesh.
speaking of now i have an ipod, and a computer and all that stuff. now i have insurance and mortgage and real life stuff to think about, but at this point it's kind of amusing because if those self-help books have anything to say about it ("how to make it when you are cash poor" "how to live without a salary" "how to be paid 50,000 dollars a year to travel" "secrets of a bookie") there is a great deal of fun to be gotten from such activities, paid in the form of slack and a life of leisure. surely this is not what i seek, say it as i might.
anyway, i also had delicious indian food with a friend of chuck's who lives down here and is working on his second novel. his wife is about to publish her second novel. they have a baby, less than a year. it was good talking to him, enriching and full of potential. i went to target, bought back to school stuff like a franklin planner for 2006 that i had to rip out all the pages of and re-number (each day up one) to fit the rest of the 2005 school year.
so yes, organization. on tuesday i had come back from an extended weekend trip with childhood friend from here up to boston. saw family, dog, friends, did little really, spent 24+ hours talking till we got hoarse both ways up and back, and coming back wednesday i found that my head was all messed up. suddenly lonely feeling, overcome by all of the shit i had to do. and the neighbors when i came back from my bike ride and was wild-haired and carefree, they spoke of studying and bible study and orientation and soon enough school will begin. so i decided to aim myself towards the person i will be then and so i went to bed early, woke up at the alarm (and a few snoozes. i re-remembered that it takes 9 minutes between each snooze. do you see me learning?) and up and to my list and day i went. i bought some plants for my bare brick and cement front stoop, the guy who helped me there had a friendly black dog and didn't even work there. he answered all of my questions, gave me definate suggestions and spit out "bastards!" under his breath when he looked at the price of the (something, not glad)-iolas which i appreciated alot. a lady in a big sunhat, older and very much at peace with plants, gave me more advice, told me about a green leafy one i looked at, and put it in an old-school flexible flyer red cart for me to cart away. the woman who checked me out (er, the checkout lady) was a middle-aged woman and i wondered if she was native american. maybe? one of those people you look at and are not sure if they speek perfect american english or not. she did. nice lady. she gave me further advice on how to take care of my plants. i not only don't know anything about plants i don't know about watering techniques or timing nor the weather patterns of this part of the country. i am learning alot these days.
the place is called "southern states," which interested me because we don't have them up north, just dixie cups. in this town you don't have to wonder about their evil politics, though maybe the people who own it are evil you can never tell about those things really. maybe harvard owns it, like they own half of allston and brighton but nobody knew about it. maybe tom cruise has bought it under an assumed name and uses it to distribute clandestine copies of dianetics by l. ron hubbard. stranger things have happened.
i seem to have some nice neighbors, upstairs a guy who i shared beer with who likes triatholing, another guy who likes computers and his mustang, another girl with a dog with one permanently flopped ear, another girl from d.c. who is not afraid to wear her flaws out on her sleeve, another lady who has a baby and goes to bible study, a guy who is gay and has a dog, a girl who moved in and paid alot to fix the place up, came with movers and left back to chicago till school starts. they probably all saw too much of me in those first few weeks i didn't have any shades on the windows. getting shades was a big step towards actually feeling like i live here. today i put up things to hang my towels on in my closet. i fell in love with those plastic things that help you screw things into drywall (down here they call it sheetrock). do you see me acting like mr. fixit? learn, learn, learn.
and i got the computer going, learned that they didn't give me the right cord, learned where to get a cord, learned where to borrow a vaccuum cleaner, put up a shade, took things to the trash, took things to be donated, left things in my car. here the hip paper is "the independent" and you can get it free and read it if you are going out to eat meeting someone and they are late. it has the same horoscopes as the columbus alive (alas, we all know that the other paper's is better), but though it isn't top quality, at least it is a smidge of comforting unchangingness in this world. like american corporate culture. if nothing else it gives us a common point of reference. so kids in oklahoma can hate and try to scheme the same store (walmart) that the rats walking the wall on king's beach in lynn with a paring knife they found in their stepfather's kitchen drawer. too sensible or bored to use it so they leave it in the grass for me to ponder about as i take the dog out to redrock with my mom. poor ceili is 12 now, 10 years that back leg has been pulling for it's invisible brother and the wear is starting to get to her. i love ceili more than ever though. a deep and abiding love. i love my mother too, now that i am speaking of it. red rock. m'gumskit. swampscott. about the only algonquian i know how to speak, which is a shame because i am native to those shores. it is my only homeland, nearby to where all my great grandfathers and grandmothers somehow got their kin and dna together.
so now this is me acting like i am organized. i asked for advice they said do whatever you won't be able to do for five years. they said when you start, then go the extra mile. i figure if i do a thousand things i'll be able to slip some in there that are just purely for my pleasure. today i loved the hell out of a chipmunk's song, for instance. there is no arguing with your own smile.
but i digress. i was at the thrift store today buying lamps, two five dollar ones that look like ones adults would buy for their living rooms somewhere between nineteen forty and now, if they were sturdy and/or cheap types. i also got a gin blossoms cd, which is worth two dollars. all the other cds that looked good were actually empty inside. i nearly bought the "friends" cd by accident because someone put it in something else. the ladies at the place give you a lightbulb and show you a place you can test to see if the lights work. i gave them nineteen dollars, a new twenty from the machine turned right into a real live dollar bill with a picture of a more famous and beloved president from our country's past. here, in the south. were it not for fate and the power of the industrial north (of which i am an heir if not a member) this land would have their own stars n bars money. and you could bet it would be in color. the southern bill. (any artists who care to make such a bill have my blessing, chil'en.)
going to the thrift store was part of my plan of Organizing My LIfe. i got up today and made a list. i even put the time i had to shower and eat on there. at 11 i had to get out of bed and do things. shop in carrboro. go to phydeaux where the guy who knows everything about cat piss smells tells you what to buy, exhaustively and very helpfully, and the lesbian in the black t-shirt talks about how "urine-off" (pronounced the same as a potential russian surname) was called "piss off" by a british customer of theirs. then a midget guy came in with questions about his doberman. i live in a land of wonder. when i went to the hardware store i had to go out back to get my specs cut for my lumber. i had measured my bathroom closet and decided to get some wood cut up to give me more storage space. brandi alerted me to the fine wood left sitting out by the dumpster at her place, so i was prepared. i had an elaborate scheme for it, three across and two down to secure it all into one big piece, but it proved unnecessary. no messy hammering, just three boards put up there and that's it. i put all the pillows and bed stuff on it. saved lots of room. i have a shelf above my washer and dryer in that bathroom closet and all it has is elvis on it, complete with guitar. it's cool because it's elvis but it makes me pause every time i realize that it is just a glossed up ken doll with elvis' haircut on it. even the clothes are a little bit swishier than you might expect. keep in mind i do not have a collection of such dolls, in a series with the cast of 90210 (not the 1-0 of a previous zip code shout-out, mind you). i say this because in the car with my friend on the way back down here i had to revisit issues of what is appropriate masculine behavior and what is not. i don't give a fuck really. it's true i won't wear pink and hate gay men's music as a rule of thumb, but i just could not be bothered not to like aretha franklin because it's "girl music". out there in internet land there are people being as radical as can be piercing their dyed shaven heads to show off their tatoos and fucking anyone who can't prove themselves illegal and here i am a radical for hearing quality. sheesh.
speaking of now i have an ipod, and a computer and all that stuff. now i have insurance and mortgage and real life stuff to think about, but at this point it's kind of amusing because if those self-help books have anything to say about it ("how to make it when you are cash poor" "how to live without a salary" "how to be paid 50,000 dollars a year to travel" "secrets of a bookie") there is a great deal of fun to be gotten from such activities, paid in the form of slack and a life of leisure. surely this is not what i seek, say it as i might.
anyway, i also had delicious indian food with a friend of chuck's who lives down here and is working on his second novel. his wife is about to publish her second novel. they have a baby, less than a year. it was good talking to him, enriching and full of potential. i went to target, bought back to school stuff like a franklin planner for 2006 that i had to rip out all the pages of and re-number (each day up one) to fit the rest of the 2005 school year.
so yes, organization. on tuesday i had come back from an extended weekend trip with childhood friend from here up to boston. saw family, dog, friends, did little really, spent 24+ hours talking till we got hoarse both ways up and back, and coming back wednesday i found that my head was all messed up. suddenly lonely feeling, overcome by all of the shit i had to do. and the neighbors when i came back from my bike ride and was wild-haired and carefree, they spoke of studying and bible study and orientation and soon enough school will begin. so i decided to aim myself towards the person i will be then and so i went to bed early, woke up at the alarm (and a few snoozes. i re-remembered that it takes 9 minutes between each snooze. do you see me learning?) and up and to my list and day i went. i bought some plants for my bare brick and cement front stoop, the guy who helped me there had a friendly black dog and didn't even work there. he answered all of my questions, gave me definate suggestions and spit out "bastards!" under his breath when he looked at the price of the (something, not glad)-iolas which i appreciated alot. a lady in a big sunhat, older and very much at peace with plants, gave me more advice, told me about a green leafy one i looked at, and put it in an old-school flexible flyer red cart for me to cart away. the woman who checked me out (er, the checkout lady) was a middle-aged woman and i wondered if she was native american. maybe? one of those people you look at and are not sure if they speek perfect american english or not. she did. nice lady. she gave me further advice on how to take care of my plants. i not only don't know anything about plants i don't know about watering techniques or timing nor the weather patterns of this part of the country. i am learning alot these days.
the place is called "southern states," which interested me because we don't have them up north, just dixie cups. in this town you don't have to wonder about their evil politics, though maybe the people who own it are evil you can never tell about those things really. maybe harvard owns it, like they own half of allston and brighton but nobody knew about it. maybe tom cruise has bought it under an assumed name and uses it to distribute clandestine copies of dianetics by l. ron hubbard. stranger things have happened.
i seem to have some nice neighbors, upstairs a guy who i shared beer with who likes triatholing, another guy who likes computers and his mustang, another girl with a dog with one permanently flopped ear, another girl from d.c. who is not afraid to wear her flaws out on her sleeve, another lady who has a baby and goes to bible study, a guy who is gay and has a dog, a girl who moved in and paid alot to fix the place up, came with movers and left back to chicago till school starts. they probably all saw too much of me in those first few weeks i didn't have any shades on the windows. getting shades was a big step towards actually feeling like i live here. today i put up things to hang my towels on in my closet. i fell in love with those plastic things that help you screw things into drywall (down here they call it sheetrock). do you see me acting like mr. fixit? learn, learn, learn.
and i got the computer going, learned that they didn't give me the right cord, learned where to get a cord, learned where to borrow a vaccuum cleaner, put up a shade, took things to the trash, took things to be donated, left things in my car. here the hip paper is "the independent" and you can get it free and read it if you are going out to eat meeting someone and they are late. it has the same horoscopes as the columbus alive (alas, we all know that the other paper's is better), but though it isn't top quality, at least it is a smidge of comforting unchangingness in this world. like american corporate culture. if nothing else it gives us a common point of reference. so kids in oklahoma can hate and try to scheme the same store (walmart) that the rats walking the wall on king's beach in lynn with a paring knife they found in their stepfather's kitchen drawer. too sensible or bored to use it so they leave it in the grass for me to ponder about as i take the dog out to redrock with my mom. poor ceili is 12 now, 10 years that back leg has been pulling for it's invisible brother and the wear is starting to get to her. i love ceili more than ever though. a deep and abiding love. i love my mother too, now that i am speaking of it. red rock. m'gumskit. swampscott. about the only algonquian i know how to speak, which is a shame because i am native to those shores. it is my only homeland, nearby to where all my great grandfathers and grandmothers somehow got their kin and dna together.
so now this is me acting like i am organized. i asked for advice they said do whatever you won't be able to do for five years. they said when you start, then go the extra mile. i figure if i do a thousand things i'll be able to slip some in there that are just purely for my pleasure. today i loved the hell out of a chipmunk's song, for instance. there is no arguing with your own smile.