Everywhere I turn seems like everything I see reflects the love that used to be (Holland, Dozier, Holland)

This post is in many ways a sequel to my Posterity post (see next door in the popular post section for the link).

Without wanting to toot my own horn too much (the previous post on my cool quotient did that enough for a while) - I don't ever struggle to find things to write about in this blog. Things just float to me without any effort on my part. Case in point:

I've been thinking about that George O'Malley (Grey's Anatomy) quote that was a few posts back. I've been thinking about it a lot.

Here it is again to remind you:

CRISTINA: "There's a club. The Dead Dads' Club. And you can't be in it until you're in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss... My dad died when I was nine. George, I'm really sorry you had to join the club."
GEORGE: "I... I don't know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn't."
CRISTINA: "Yeah, that never really changes."

I've considered trying to help George out with some advice but then thought, naah - too sentimental (even for a sentimental old fluff like me), too potentially didactic, too sad, too open, too personal.

So each time its floated into my brain I've been rejecting it and trying to forgot about it. But the thought wouldn't leave me alone.

Then I read some thoughts by a Zen master called Zhaozhou who lived from 778–897. He's similar to Baiyun Shouduan (another Zen master) who wrote:

I have four great vows:
When I'm hungry, I eat;
when it's cold, I put on more clothes;
when I'm tired, I stretch out and sleep;
when it gets warm, I like to find a cool breeze.

Zhaozhou seemed to enjoy whatever was happening. If it was cold he enjoyed winter and the fire; if it was hot, he loved walking in the evening. If he was happy, he laughed; if sad he was just sad. He didn't clench up against life.

I realised that I'd clenched up in my thinking and these two Zen masters gave me permission to be sad.

That's quite a relief.

The other shove I got was from a saying by Sengcan:

The great way is not difficult
if you just don't pick and choose.

As John Tarrant explains it in his excellent book Bring Me The Rhinoceros, the koan shows you two conditions for your mind: a with and a without condition. What you are either with or without is your map, your cherished beliefs, your story about how your life should be at the moment in which you find yourself.

The with condition is what, in an unexamined way, I believe to be true. Beliefs have consequences; they build their own fictional world.

In the without condition I see the world without wanting it to be different from the way it is. The koan is suggesting we live in the without condition, when we don't pick and choose.

This has all been percolating and floating around in my brain for a while and it has informed my response to George's implied question (how do I exist in a world where my dad doesn't?) and to all other members of the Dead Dads' Club. It's my way forward and my way is very peculiar to me.

It's important because without a way there is dukkha (suffering, pain, discontent, despair, unhappiness, sorrow, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration).

George's use of language is quite interesting (and deliberate I think). He doesn't say, "how do I live in a world without my dad?" Of course he will keep on living in a world without his dad. There's no suggestion in George's words or character that he is considering anything other than living. He says he doesn't know how to exist (to be) in a world that doesn't contain his dad.

I think the resonance to Hamlet is there in the background - 'to be, or not to be, that is the question'. But ultimately George isn't going through the same crisis as Hamlet.

Yes Hamlet has joined the Dead Dads' Club and he struggles throughout the play to be in a world that doesn't contain his dad. In his famous soliloquy he is considering whether to be (live) or not to be (die).

From that thought he considers what it might be like to die and the thinking leads him to the conclusion that the great unknown of death is too much to bear so he determines to 'rather bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of'.

But, again, George isn't Hamlet. He simply feels his compass, his way to be, has been removed and he no longer feels on solid ground. It's a jarring feeling losing your dad and a thing that does make you question your place in the world.

To be honest, that's how I felt upon joining the club myself (like George, not like Hamlet), and it's something I still feel from time to time at 2.55am.

That was a lengthy preamble but I needed to explain those things before the next bit so that it doesn't come across as too sentimental (even for a sentimental old fluff like me), too didactic, too sad, too open, too personal.

For what it's worth here's how I do my best to avoid dukkha and live in the world without wanting it to be different from the way it is:

• I consider my father (what would he do? is an examination I use). That way his compass is present.

• I listen to a lot of music.

• In my own way I communicate with the people I love and I send my love out to them like little lovebirds. Sometimes they are aware of this, at other times they are not. That's okay for me.

• I reflect and examine my own feelings (the unexamined life is not worth living according to Ralph Waldo Emerson).

• I allow myself to feel sad sometimes and happy at other times. If I laugh I laugh in other words. If I cry I cry in other words.

• I remember the maple leaf poem (search the blog - you'll find it) and I often recite it in my head.

• I think of myself as a Jedi knight with the force flowing through me.

• I am here now.

• I take one here now day at a time.

• I write posts like this one and I hang it out there in the blogosphere.

Love and peace - Wozza

It's cool for cats (Squeeze)

I was not a cool kid. Horror shock gasp revelation probe!!

It's true (I know, I know - hard to believe innit?).

As a kid I wore glasses from the age of 15. The migraines I'd been getting while playing football resulted in an eye sight test and lo and behold - I needed glasses! They definitely slowed the migraines down, without eradicating them completely, but they did nothing for my cool quotient (a minus number is still a minus number but it did not help).

It was even worse in summer. Dark glasses weren't an option before I got contact lenses in 1982. Instead we had to either add clip-ons to our nerdy non-designer glasses or else use graduated lenses. I went for the latter but...that's right - they subtracted from my cool quotient as well.

From 1982 to 2009 the contact lenses worked fine and I could use dark glasses with them. All fine - until I went to Qatar and the desert heat just ate the lenses. 

By this time technology had caught up with me and prescription sunglasses were possible. Not only that but I could also pick from some gnarly designer frames. I chose Police frames after finding out that curved blow-fly style lenses did not work (when I tried some all was good as long as I always stared straight ahead without ever using peripheral vision, otherwise I became dizzy as a chook). 

Those Police frames are pretty cool (check out my profile picture on the right column - cool huh!). But when I bought some new glasses last week I also got a 50% discount on any other pair of glasses so I figured I would go with new prescription sunglasses.

I have a very particular taste when it comes to watches as you know (again - check out my post in the popular post section called Time time ticking in my head). It's the same deal with glasses, but tougher.

A couple of key considerations - most obvious is my Purdzilla snozz. Let's address that puppy reet quick. Some frames just enhance the concept yunnerstand. I can do without that!

Second is what SWMBO lovingly calls my 'pixie face'. I have to steal myself when buying glasses, or...anything vaguely fashionable actually. I'm very much yer typical bloke. Bog standard some might say.

I need Her Indoors to suss out how I look in glasses (I do the same for her and don't even get me started on that tortured procedure - I dread the times we start looking for new sunglasses for her). That's what we get married for right - to have that critical unjaundiced eye whenever we need a brutal opinion. SWMBO loves these moments.

Umm Keegan's critical gaze and shake of the head are legendary. I'd love some John Lennon round frames. I try some on every time I go in to the optometrists. Every time. She just patiently shakes her head and I know she's right.

Anyway...the frames can't be curved because of the prescription element (see above for dizzy spell explanation).

I only suit black (I had the white sunglasses in the 1980s - my students at Macleans will remember them I'm sure - but this ain't the 80s anymore). I don't like mirror glasses. I need them to be fairly dark (not any of yer slight dark tint nonsense). And plain. This is sounding a lot like that list for my watch purchase huh? I have simple tastes really.

They, of course, need to be comfortable...

...and cool!

This meant a lengthy process of elimination (Brian's watch buying procedures which established a world record in considered procrastination was not beaten - ha ha yeah right, that'll happen - but I did come close), but in the end I bought some new RAY-BANs.

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talkin about! Look who just got a whole lot cooler...

Love and peace - Wozza

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good (The Animals)

This one is about our animals. Sometimes it's tough to keep track of them all but here we go.


The before restoration Jimi front

 Starting with Jimi, or as Adam calls him - the dumpster cat!

The before restoration Jimi back

The story so far - you will recall that Jacky rescued Jimi from a miserable fate a month ago. He was lying in our garage looking next to death's door. His tail had been shredded, he was malnourished and dehydrated and was maybe a day away from systems failure and a painful demise. He looked miserable!

He spent a week at the vets, had his tail amputated and then we've spent the last three weeks restoring his health (on NZ beef, cooked of course).

Our aim has been to find Jimi a good home here with a western family. An aussie lady called Peta has been working on that and she's found an animal mad South African couple who have adopted wee Jimi.
He now looks fatter and healthier and we can feel good that we gave him a second chance at life. We said farewell to the lad today and wished him our best.

Here are the latest images of him. As you see he has come a long way.

The animals we left behind in Nu Zild with friends and family while we took off on our crazy adventure in the sandpit are still on our minds.

Our cavoodle called Dookie is being looked after by some of Samantha's friends in Wellington until she returns from San Francisco in a few months time.

Bazil, our border collie with a dab of springer cross, is back at his second home with Sallie after a brief stay with Jade. Baz loves walks through Sallie's farm, lounging in the Hawke's Bay sunshine and rain. He especially loves the dead things found on the farm from time to time. Here he is visiting my Buddha shrine which Sallie is also kindly minding for us.

And that's it for the NZ contingent. Sadly Soda (my cat) has been a casualty of our overseas adventure. Entrusted to in-laws, Soda unfortunately ran away to freedom. I hope he found his own Jacky like Jimi did!

But wait...there's more. The latest addition to this menagerie has joined this weekend.

Jacky has bought a horse back in NZ. His name is Strike Irish and we are busy thinking of a new paddock name for him.

Love and peace - Wozza

You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you (Roberty Bob)

We recently said, 'Halas' to for a while.

Season Six was excellent and a real come back from the shuck an' jive weirdness of Season Five. Unfortunately Season Seven is still a month or so away from release in the UAE (this according to the shopgirl in Mall of the Emirates' Virgin Megatore last week so who knows).

So we've moved ontoSeason Six.

Now - you need to understand that Bones is definitely a SWMBO series. I think she watched some episodes a few years ago with Sallie and really liked it so we started watching Season One on hire from the local Video Ezy store in Stratford or New Plymouth. I forget which one. This was a few years back.

It was enjoyable enough in a way and we kept watching it while in Stratford. Zac Addy was a great character and I watched it often for his scenes alone. He was a really disfunctional nerd (or 'squint' to use the show's own jargon) who had little conception of social phatic communion. He was brilliant during the first three seasons and so, of course, he was written out of the show via a preposterous storyline. Uh Oh daddio I thought.

The next season without Zac had a revolving supporting cast in his role. Some of the new characters were aces but we could have killed Nigel-Murray and Daisy quite cheerfully. We hate them, and not in a good way.

[You'll need to go back to my recent post on Grey's Anatomy Season Five - the Pam's Dream Season of the Grey's Anatomy series for a sec to understand my comments on Bones Season Six]

Season Six is a major disappointment thus far (we've watched 8 episodes so far). The season started with the most inept plot strangulation to get characters back into place that I've EVER seen. I WISH they'd used a Pam's dream device!!

Anyway...this has made us even more desperate to find Grey's Anatomy Season 7 when we hit the Dubai Mall tomorrow (haircuts and Burgerfuel here we come).

In the meantime here are two of my favourite scenes from Grey's so far.

This first one is the very affecting scene after George learns of his father's death. Yes - I found it very emotional too.



The second is Bailey's advice to Derek. Like everything about Bailey (yes Jacky - it's only a show) it is honest and bang on.



Love and peace - Wozza

Breaking up is hard to do (Neil Sedaka)

Two of the people I love ended relationships this week and I'm sorry that they are going through a tough time of it.

In the past my advice to those in this predicament has been less than stellar. I remember a female student once confided in me after I could see she was clearly struggling with something. It was a break up and I immediately knew I was on shaky ground.

I did want to help her though and so I said something like the Oscar Wilde quote (The heart was meant to be broken) - that's what the heart is for. It's for getting broken and getting better and loving again. I don't think she appreciated that right then. I wonder if she remembers my moment of ill-judged advice like I do.

So I am heading into dodgy territory with this post. It might get ugly!

My own experience into the realm of the dumped and the dumper is fairly limited, as it only happened twice to me personally and even then the first episode was pretty gentle.

Back in the late 70s Phyllis and I were kind of going out together but whether we had reached boyfriend/girlfriend status together is fairly moot. Love wasn't in the air, and the guy she dumped me for has been her husband for many years now so that worked out well for us both.

Dallas was the second and worse dumper by far. As with Phyllis we had met at university (in the early 80s) and, compared to Wozza/Phyllis, we had definitely reached the boyfriend/girlfriend stage. So when she two timed me with a fellow student I was shattered. She definitely inflicted a wound and it took roughly two years for me to recover the self confidence to try again: luckily by that time I had met Jacky on February the 26th, 1983 and that was all she wrote.

In the latest cases that I mentioned above there was no third party involved - it was just a question of not quite. Not quite can be decided reasonably quickly or it can take a few years. Eventually not quite will end in sayonara. There's no other way with not quite.

What to say to the broken hearted? Clearly I need help in this area so I Googled that last question.

The advice is a mouse click away - but really all that I found were combinations of the things I understand to be true. A break up is painful for a while. It dents the pride and ego. It makes us question things about ourselves.

But after a while we realise that it wasn't meant to be, that for whatever reason it wasn't true.

Then we dust ourselves off and we get on with it again.

I've always loved the sentiment behind the song - Fools Fall In Love (for more on break up songs try my music blog in the next few days). I offer it here as a salve to the dumped.



Love and peace - Sgt Wozza and the Lonely Hearts Club Band

Time wounds all heels (Groucho Marx)

This post is dedicated to Dulcie Mary Purdy (23 April 1930 - 4 November 1983) because without Dulcie's world there would be no Wozza's world!

Bambino's new collection

Part one: Take me to my city by the bay (Train)

A mini whanau update first:

Regular readers will know that I sometimes use the expression, "you've got to take the crunchy with the smooth". On a similar theme is, "sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you". The Arabic version of  all of that is, "Yawm 'asal wa yawm basal - one day honey, one day onions".

Our heart went out to Adam and his girlfriend when we learnt that they came home yesterday to find their house had been burgled.

All his computer gear which he uses to compose his music was gone, as were clothes and other items. Definitely eaten by the bear with crunchy onions thrown in.

On an (literally) upbeat note, Adam had only just released his third Bambino collection called 20 Days, 20 Acapellas.

He has written some stunning music to go with some classic rappers. You can download your very own copy at http://bambino1.bandcamp.com/album/20-days-20-acapellas-2011
and then write a comment on this blog to tell him what a stunner he is!

One of his sisters - Fanfa, on the other hand, was oblivious to this as she landed in San Francisco to begin her latest American adventure with Jesse and his extended family.

Over to her:

So now i am here, sitting in the sunshine writing you this email. The weather is beautiful, the ocean sounds amazing and i have no studies to worry about= heaven. I'm currently at Mike and Karin's house- looking for a place to live online. There are a lot of cool places, but a lot of competition. House prices are high so everybody is looking to rent. Jesse it doing great, he is at work at the moment (hanging Christmas lights for big companies and rich people- he loves it).

Definitely eating the bear with a smooth honey marinade.

Part two: Funny, but it seems that I always wind up-a here with you; Nice to know somebody loves me (The Carpenters).

I have used the blog since day 1 to address important events. When the calendar rolls around to November 4 I get a little more introspective than usual.

My mother (Dulcie Mary Purdy) passed away on November 4, 1983. She had battled with breast cancer for five years before that and was finally released from her suffering.

At the time I was living in New Plymouth, flatting with two girls - Anne and Moira. I'd been in New Plymouth since the start of the year because I'd started work at New Plymouth Boys' High School. My first English teaching job.

On February 26, 1983 I met a girl called Jacqueline Smith. I met Jacky (a.k.a. SWMBO, a.k.a. Umm Keegan) at a fancy dress party amid celestial choirs, cupid's darts of love, blinding light, and other cosmic revelations.

We started spending time together and started getting to know each other's families along the way. F'rinstance, I flew down to Invercargill to meet her mum, Pat, and the Southland branch of Jacky's family.

I had also taken Jacky to meet mum and dad in Auckland.

By November of that year it was clear that mum's cancer was taking a big toll.

Mum, me, Deedoo, Ross, Grandma

I got the call from her doctor the week before she died.

The school was very good about giving me leave and Jacky and I travelled north.

Mum had been hospitalised at the Mater Hospital and I will never ever forget the stairwell and the walk to her room each time we went to see her.

I will never forget the last time I saw her and said goodbye and went spinning from her room into an unknown world that didn't include her.

She was my buddy and had been around for my first 26 years.

The serene and beautiful Jacky has been around for the last 28 years. I would say I have doubly blessed.

It was very fitting that I've just watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy where the Cristina Yang character says this to her patient's child:

If your mum dies you feel a lot of things. First you'll feel like you could have done more to help her but it's not true. You did everything you could. Won't feel that way but...let me tell you this - you did everything you could. And it'll hurt every time you think of her. But over time it will hurt less and less and eventually you'll remember her and it'll only hurt a little.

They certainly got that right - there will never be a time that it doesn't hurt!

Love and peace mum - Warren

I got the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu (Johnny Rivers)

I've had to take two sick days in a row this week with this stoopid cold. I really can't remember the last time I had to do that.

Yesterday was the peak day - sweats, heavy cough and nothing stemmed the nasal flow and, believe me, I tried - three different types of cold and flu tablets!

Today it's just that heavy feeling, a sore nose because of yesterday and a cough. Should be back to work tomorrow.

Being at home with a cold is weird. It's not relaxing but not boring either. It's a between time. A pause. An enforced rest.


Davy Jones and Frank Zappa's cameo in Head.

 I've been reading (Die Trying by Lee Child) and watching some videos (Head by The Monkees and Grey's Anatomy Season 6 episodes when Jacky's been around).

Whenever I'm sick and recovering I have an urge for marmite and lettuce sandwiches. This is from when I was a kid and mum would make those for me.

What else? Well I have also been watching some TED talks online and I've done a couple of posts as well.

Jimi has been keeping me company too. He has stuck close - either the other side of the couch (he didn't appear too impressed with Head), or in the shelf of the desk while I use the computer (he's there now). If I go to the kitchen to make a cuppa he follows me out and then follows me back.

[By the way - we've worked out that he's been owned by Arabic speakers rather than westerners. He looked at Jacky blankly and disdainfully when she saw him try to scratch the couch arm and shouted, "NO". But the Arabic version, "LA" - as in lar, got his attention immediately.]

Another in between activity has been taking some more photographs of him to put on the blog.

He seems to blend in to the surroundings so let's play Where's Jimi?.

Love and (cough) peace - Wozza