China’s Olympics Opening!

Whew! Were you blown away?

I could hardly contain my amazement.

As the maze of my foggy thinking was reeling with this spectacular show, I was thinking that there is no way, that is NO WAY that the technology experts, architects or ‘entertainment in America’ experts could have TODAY presented such an advanced and full out WOW! show.

Thank you China for a wonderful in home entertainment evening.

This may not be a cab ride, but the show last night for sure was a trip.
No fare for this.
CABBY

This fare I picked up at the center of the block on a short street just above the zoo mid summer.

A family of four had folding chairs, blankets, a hamper, ice chest and ‘stuff’ that nearly filled the trunk of the cab.

There were three other cabs at the same time picking up three other groups that were to meet at the Zoo.

A picnic

In the band shell, not greatly known musicians are creating sounds of harmony, a lyric and a beat that, even if it is familiar is pretty much hard to follow hear and understand - a result of the over riding sounds of people enjoying people.

The children dance free and innocent during the music - and after.

Very small boys are in collared casual shirts, wearing leather looking vinyl sandals, bulky long shorts that are built as though for diapers, but poorly matched to the anatomy they are paired with. They look like the dressed the same dads. Only grandpa is differently clad - he has on black socks and white Velcro shoes.

Little girls are in ‘pretty’ hand-me-down or second hand store long princess dresses. Their jellies, or similar, are from the same sources or from an older sister. The ‘real pearl’ necklace on her neck is continually pulled at by the wearer - the elastic stretches freely with each jerk. The older sister is ‘bored’ and is sure everyone is staring at every move she makes, yet she is the least interesting of the gathering to observe. It is painful to watch her level of awkward self consciousness. Is puberty fun? For whom?

Both the little boys and the little girls enjoy tossing the drying fallen leaves skyward and celebrate with laughs and shrieks, joining them in falling, twirling to earth again and again. Those same leaves become worse-for-wear caused by the clutching grasps and swift brushing against the ill fitting picnic costumes.

The young moms wear chic colored short summer sleeved tops with stylish cropped pants. Middle aged (45+) women are wearing dark striped, dingy colored hemp skirts under worn appearing limp plaid print shirts that are cinched with faux Conchos threaded on a wide dark brown drapery cord looking belt. They hold hands with their similarly dressed partner. Is that a ribbon in her fraying graying braid? Grandma wears slacks, a sensible long sleeved (cuffs rolled back) pressed cotton top and has a sweater on the back of her chair. She has on her sparkling white training shoes, new stylish heavy framed glasses, and her make up is perfect.

All the adults that gather for the sheer pleasure of sharing each other in a wide open gathering have lost that palpable innocence they observe in the little ones. While here each can richly sense and vividly remember what they have lost. And wonder -where? When? Why? How? – That it got lost. They each can, however, remember when they thought they could fly by flapping their arms.

But, adults are polite and behave as expected. There are no physical boundaries, no territory or State or National border lines here. Folding outdoor chairs and blankets are spread on itchy grass, a sort of turf possession. Unknown other people (strangers) are close about but ignored as though they are not also singing maybe out of tune out loud and for sure quietly to themselves. Adults could sing aloud as if they were still children - if they just would! Aren’t manners just plain in the way some of the time? I love it when the musicians ask every one to join in: “Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea….” “This land is your land; this land is my land….” (You should here, provide your own tune and lyric.)

Each family brings enough food it seems for at least six thousand even though there will be at maximum a total of 7 adults with 9 kids. Potato salad and sandwiches of ham, turkey, cheese, tomato, lettuce on a croissant roll are the main course with three types of grapes and two types of chips. Four kinds of cookies are to follow and accompany seconds around. There are flower decorated paper plates, sturdy plastic forks and large paper napkins. Also they have iced flavored drinks and water. This is a feast by any description.

A near by FOP couple eat their Caesar salad, Frito pie and a bottle of wine for two served in glass wine glasses that match the plates and utensils with subdued colored cloth napkins. With chocolate brownies (adult brownies?) to finish, they sit in ample, sturdy Costco Big Butt chairs. There is a large soft sided cooler collapsing at their feet. Half way through the concert, they stroll off and later return sharing a bag of pop corn and ‘dippin dots’ each with a glowing wrist band. Ex-hippies with the ’Munchies’?

The zoos ancient cottonwood trees are trimmed up so high that they resemble a failing thin jungle canopy. These cottonwoods if not trimmed would be the ordinary tall, full, all limbs to the top, trees. Wonder why they are trimmed up that high? Oh well, the stars show through and the distant dark clouds are more visible this way. There are new 20’ trees planted this season around the grassy knoll and shallow hollows surrounding the face of the band shell. Will these newest trees cause some future generation similar curiosity? (Maybe the trees are trimmed like that so they won’t spook the horses with cracking falling limbs. Another story.)

A breeze rises as the sun settles beyond a perfect perch for sunrise watching (also another story,) - the ancient volcanoes - which overlook the city. There have been sweltering nights and muggy days for weeks now, so the cool flit of air across the arms is a real treat. The cottonwood leaves are sighing and rattling in the breeze way up there. With no lightning to be seen and only far off thunder faintly heard, it is a promise of a great evening.

This is the last zoo concert of the season.

Why do we wait for a concert in the park to have a picnic?

I really like to hear the harsh throaty hungry lions roar at sunset. I do like that sound, but that isn’t the reason.

Why don’t we invite others and just go to a park and laugh and enjoy each other?

Lets!

Life ambles past at a picnic. The sound that it makes seems more acceptable, and not near as loud as at other places of our day. Have you ever heard the sound a deadline makes as it rushes past?

If you read this far, the fare is paid. Yes, the meter runs when the cab is hired and stopped for a picnic. (Seems wrong).

CABBY

Sunrise over Volcanoes

Sunrise over volcanoes

Four friends are the fares for this cab ride.

We are five friends, at Dark early in the morning. We traipse out to a view unavailable where many of us live out our daily life experience.

Rain clouds from the night before are broken into scattered pieces this morning. We anticipate they will glow brightly as if on fire.

We stop for sweet rolls, everyone with their 'cupa' to hold onto.

Atop the high desert mesa (5700’ elevation) we arrive at our perch like birds awakening in the dawn. The sky lightens and has begun to glow. Camp and folding outdoor chairs are spread out close but not perfectly placed, so each arranges themselves and their chair for the ‘show.’

This is only 35 minutes from where we started. In the desert beyond the west edge of Albuquerque, above the edge of the mesa, we wait. There is a little early moaning and mumbling, all sharing the dawn.

We are overlooking the tops of ancient volcanoes and petro glyphs and have, across the Rio Grande River Valley, a view of the Sandia Mountains on the east edge of the city.

A spiritual event for some. A missed experience for some. A crisis for one causing an interruption for another. All experiences sound different and that is of interest in itself.

We all 5 share a bond of knowing each other extremely well. We in the past, via an intense shared life altering experience, had been unable to hide our real selves from each other. This few days is a chance to possibly reconnect as just a few years before. Or not.

We can see the horizon full around the four points of the compass. This is the desert. It is flat. We can see lots of developing sky color now. One of creations own displays from a place strikingly and beautifully unique if we only open our internal eyes, give up our expectations and not prejudge. The beauty of the stark terrain and the inhospitable dessert at sunrise are refreshing to me. I learn later this beauty is not appreciated by all the others.

Some want to talk, some to whisper and some just be. Differing combinations of this experience are rolling through us and are palpable when the sun is up.

A sunrise with friends, as almost anything done together with people who see each other only once a year, can be filled with wonder. At the same time it can be fraught with disappointment. Another possibility is ambivalence. It was.

The pale, and at the same time rich colors of the rising light are cast over a flat grayish dun desert. The rising dark chocolate colored tips of ancient volcanoes outlined in front of the farthest-in-the-distance fog laced blue and purple back-lighted silhouette of the mountains was one of those sights to be remembered.

Four of us later topped this same mountain taking a tram ride to be able to look back where we were observing this oft forgotten daily ritual that is as old and as wondrous as the earth and sun.

How can people let this spectacle occur and not be moved?

Sunrise is different for each of us. For some it is a reminder. For some it is an event. For some it is _______. I chose to see it as often as I am allowed and am always stunned.

If you are still reading, you know I have gone on far too long. It is a good thing the fare is paid, it would have been a big one.
CABBY

Then - Possibly now

Harry Truman gets in the cab:

If someone else can do it, so can I. Accomplishment
Honesty was the best principle. Easier to remember also.
Anything worthwhile required effort. Laziness
If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Perseverance
“You be good.” Be proud of yourself
Right was right and wrong was wrong. Ethics
Honor your father and mother. Respect and appreciation
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. Thought before action
Be of good cheer. Be strong
You are the salt of the earth. Personal uniqueness
Say what you mean, mean what you say. Think!
Keep your word. Integrity
Never get too big for your britches. Know your place
Never forget a friend. Loyalty
Loyalty, love of home and unquestioning patriotism. Ethical
Be respectful of elders. Respect experience
“I’m fine, and you?” the only response to a greeting Private and strong

Here’s one that until this morning, I didn’t know the source:
“The people’s good is the highest law.” Cicero Generous, others first.

These are what was, as a boy growing up in the Great California Sacramento Valley in the late 1940’s, ‘50’s and early ‘60’s. Can you find much of this today.
Without a thought?

I see a whole other defined life where I am now in my life. I do not have it in me to define it.

I can recall my grandfather, Louis Troyer Meisner, ‘Gramps,’ saying in such amazing sincerity, “I was born 50 years too late.”

I can remember my mom saying at the August of her life, “I was born 50 years too late.”

I am nearly there, Mom, Gramps. I am weary and downtrodden. I have experienced recently a coming down. It is really sobering and comforting to, at this age, be able to recognize it as sage and observant, not as a slippery hill that just has no footing.

I look at the clouds this summer with a renewing reverence for power and significance of living, communicating, commiting and caring. You see, I am loving powerful free.

I was told once that my Indian name would have been “Cloud Watcher.” I am that.
The power and inspiration I gain daily when I see what a complicated thing like the daily clouds can feel, seem and offer to my spirit and soul. If clouds can lift me, I wonder if that is why I am the way I am?

Why do I read what I read? Why I am so anxious to awake and greet the morning light? Is it this same locked and loaded being that causes me to reflect about the wonder of still being alive and seeing the shadow I cast? Is any of this the same for anyone else?

Do you get up in the morning and say in your head, or out loud, or just think: “Fucking A, Dale (your name) lives today.

Do you arise before the sun so you can cherish that first light? Do you have a sense of the majesty of living and being and doing, when you first arise? Do you like being up when the birds first greet each other (and you)? Do you like smelling the grass before the heat of the day causes a ‘wilt’? Do you partake of a cupa and sit to ‘see’ and ‘be’?

Do you search for the first visible cloud to affirm the arising sun? Do you sit and read for two hours and celebrate each interruption by the birds, the newspaper slapping the driveway, the sighing of the trees, the smell of your cupa, the event of your disappearing into the present of your book, the magic of early morning fresh air, the rested feeling of relaxation from sleep, the amazing experience in all of the senses freshly alive, refreshed and not distracted?

Do you like hearing others begin to stir in the morning? Do you like the alone? Do you have an expectation that is fulfilled by all of this?

If I couldn’t do some of this, preferably all of it, each day, I would like to have my end occur as a part of that shortage.

The purpose for this note isn’t clear to me, nor is the content something I expected when I started playing a particular song of such power in my life. I just knew that if I heard this song over and over while writing, I would no longer be sage and observant; I would be in the present. Damn life is good.

Have you ever flown with your arms spread wide and had your spirit lift you to laughter that rings the room? If not, why? It is possible, ask me about it…

David, you are amazing.

Song; "Go The Distance" Michael Bolton

If you’ve read this far, the fare is paid
CABBY

Stepped off the edge

Stepped off the edge.

I want to talk about what this blog list is actually all about.

1. Putting out this blog to write about what interests me...

2. To be your friend and my biggest critic.

Step off the edge ought to be the first way one would describe the thing called:

"What I do."

If excitement for "what I do" could be weighed against the necessity to do something (work), the scale of what you accept should tip to the excitement and getting the "What I do" (work) to be the same thing.

I short cut to a conclusion:
If you can say that you get to step off the edge everyday by going to, being at and doing your work each day, you are doing what you are supposed to do to fulfill your unique place in life. If not - you're not.

You might ask: "So how come I am happy and successful if I am not stepping off the edge daily?"
Because you are 'settling.' You have accepted that it is acceptable to do less than you are able to do. If your excitement and what you do are in alignment, your level of success and happiness would be richer and stronger.

You are entitled to be contributing at the step off the edge level of lifes' richness.
If you are not aware of what you consider your stepping off the edge, I can tell you how to get that information.

To find out how to learn what feels like stepping off the edge for you, e mail me @ lets-take-a-ride@hotmail.com

If you've read this far, the fare is paid.
CABBY