Road map to Immortality

On the path to greatness now.  Found the formula. 

It is Thorsten Pattberg’s 12 Step Program: How to Live Forever.

I was skeptical at first.  Remember Steve Martin’s 2 Step plan to becoming a millionaire and never paying taxes?

Step 1:  Get a million dollars.
Step 2:  Never pay taxes.

But no.  It’s not like that.  Thorsten Pattberg is the real deal.  And we’re not talking about a zombie revolution here either.  Not that shallow, reanimated walking-the-planet, vampire-living-in-a-casket-during-daylight sort of eternal life. 

Pattberg has mapped out how to live forever in the hearts and minds of the Universal History of the World!  

That has always been a goal of mine.

Don’t know him?  Out of Peking University?  Oh Pattberg’s the guy.  He’s featured on Big Think right alongsideauthorities on brain function and meditation, predicting politics and maps ofNorth Sea bivalves.  Yeah.  So.

I figured I’d just go ahead and get started.  With the legacy thing, you know.  No time like the right now.

So, here we go.  Just gonna jump in with Step 1.  Ready…

Step 1:  Be that kind of person. 

Now I wasn’t totally clear on his concept at first, but right out of the chute, I think I can safely say I am some kind of a person.  I’ve had a lot of character building along the way.  People tell me all the time.  Or at least they ask, “What happened to you?” 

I’ve always taken that as a sign.

But let’s see what Thorsten says…  “Are you a person who has little ego or commits to selfless behavior for the betterment of the human race?”

Well yeah.  All the time.  I mean every day I’m doing something that is just so remarkably nice you wouldn’t believe it. 

And I NEVER say anything to anyone about it.  I’m just that kind of person – altruistic to the extreme.  Dazzlingly so.  And so modest that no one ever knows exactly how truly generous and self-sacrificing I am. 

That’s the beauty of it actually.  No one knows, so no one can say anything to the contrary!

So, I clearly have a leg up on Step 1.  I’m there.  Let’s move on already.

Step 2:  Have a great idea.

TP – for the sake of efficiency, that’s how I’ll refer to Thorsten Pattberg from here on out.  TP says, “You need a plan, a system, a manifesto, a mission.  Write it down.”

OK.  This one’s a little tougher.  I mean I write stuff down every week, as you well know.  And thank you, by the way, for knowing that.  It means a lot to me.  Honestly.

And Hallelujah!  TP is actually fairly lenient on this point.  He says the great idea can be in the form of a book, an unpublished manuscript, an essay, a drawing, a diary, a couple of poems, a draft for a constitution, or just a few lines of thought.

Heck, I’ll dash off a couple of poems this afternoon.  Do I have an unpublished manuscript??  Essays?!  Ha!  I am replete!  I doodle in the margins ALL the time!  Done and done. 

So, it seems I am well along the way to interminable, er, everlasting impact.

And I love this part:  He goes on to say, “Your great idea … will forever distract the critic's eye away from your over-the-top personality toward that genius.”

It’s as though he’s playing right into my hands!

So let’s just jump ahead.  Cut to the unending bottom line.

Let’s see:  Step 4:  Be a force of creation.  Check.  Step 6:  Know that followers will follow.  Check.

Step 10:  Become an exemplar person.  A hero.  OK.  In all humility, check.

Ah, here we go –
 
Step 12:  Carefully plan your legacy.  “Ideally,” he says, “you should have died before age 40.  If you live longer, your genius has probably left you.  [But] the shock of your death will make people say good things about you that they would never have said about a living or elderly person.”

Very funny.  Who knew TP was such a jokester?

And if, in the sense of building an eternal legacy, I’ve had the misfortune of having lived too long?  “Keep creating,” he says.  “Do saintly work.”

Gotcha Thorsten!  That’s just me all over.

Miss Manners has left the building

Judith Martin ~ aka Miss Manners ~ like Santa she knows when you've messed up!

Let me just begin by saying there is a waitress at that restaurant who is pregnant.  She’d be about seven or eight months along by now, by my calculations.

So perhaps a person can be granted the tiniest shred of empathy.

Both waitresses are young – of child-bearing age.  Both wear their hair up.  Both have names that begin with “J.”  (Not their real first initial; this thin veneer is part of my flustered, bumbling attempt to explain the explainable.)

Some days they worked together, the J’s, almost interchangeably, one coming to the table then the other.  Both with flawless skin and sweet dispositions.

Then their shifts changed, I guess.  I didn’t really note the specifics.  Obviously.  

All I know is that I was having breakfast again last week with my smart and sassy friends, all witty and urbane and full of good breeding.  I am just there trying to blend.  An Oklahoma girl through and through.

One of the J’s was working her way around the circumference of our circular table, taking our particular orders for eggs scrambled soft or hard, oatmeal with or without raisins, tea or no – just hot water, a latte, all on separate checks.

J did this with her characteristic good humor.  She has learned the names of most of the regulars and caters to our whims and eccentricities as though it is her pleasure.

Inch by inch she worked herself around toward me until she came to a spot where my neighbor’s chair cinched in close to a jutting corner of the room.  Up on her toes J stretched, drew a breath and sucked in her girth to pass between.

We smiled and chuckled and, and, and…here it comes...God help me...with the kindest most motherly affection I truly felt in my heart of hearts, I said, “You made it!”

And I patted her belly.

I know.  That in itself is so far beyond the pale that you may be swooning.  Take a moment and brace yourself.  There’s more.

“I’ve forgotten your due date,” I said.

You have probably figured out already that this was not the pregnant J.  This was the other J.  The one with her hair up and the lovely smile.  The one who is in the prime of her fertility, but alas, not with child.

That one.

“Oh, I’m not pregnant,” she said, her smile a wistful memory.  “You must be thinking of J.”

The other J.  Of course!  The other one with the hair and the smile and the bun in the oven.  The one who is probably due right about now.  That J.

I have an internal Thesaurus that began rifling through all the synonyms for “clumsy.”  I think they began to flash across the neon billboard on my forehead:  awkward; inept; inelegant; gauche.

J, though, was gracious as ever.  She accepted my apology readily.  She understood how I had mistaken her for the other J.  Ha ha ha, we laughed uncomfortably.  She went on about her duties, seemingly unfazed.

My clever well-mannered friends chatted on, having not heard my gaffe.  I glanced under the table to see if there was room for me there, but no.

So I sat slumped, wearing my self-made dunce cap.  What a ridiculous thing!  How in the world?!!

Who says that?  Who does that?  OMG.  I do.

I have no theory to explain how good intentions and affection can become entangled with ungainliness in such a way.  And why?

Normally, when I make a fool of myself this way (yes, sadly, for me this seems to be normal) it is when I am feeling especially smart and showing it off.  That is when I usually mess up.  I figure it’s the Universe thumping me on the head and keeping me in my place.  I must deserve it.  But did she?

I went to her and apologized again for hurting her feelings.  She pretended not to know what I meant.  Then, she said, “Oh!  That?!  Don’t worry about it!”

I told her I wouldn’t.  So I won’t.  Not after this anyway.  I’m done with it.  Not another thought.  So help me.

Fate in the New Year

I am become an accidental redhead.  Though some might say it was meant to be.

Some of us might be upset by such a thing, a sudden reddening of the hair. 

After all, we go to our hairdressers for the usual.  Like always, our girl slathers gobs of glop atop our crowns like licorice frosting on a vanilla cupcake.  

For the uninitiated among you (the un-vain who don’t color their gray) (oh, and the men) it is normal to sit like a super hero on hold, under fluorescent lights with your cape on backwards waiting for the gooey chemical concoction to make everything old new again.

And the gunk is never the color of the end product.  So we don’t worry if we look like we are about to tar a rooftop, right?  No!  A biological miracle is transpiring under the plastic – add asphalt to white roots and they come out blonde!

I have been through it a billion times.  Or so.  Easy peasy.  Old Carolyn in.  Young gray-free Carolyn out.

So I don’t know if some crazy New Year’s bug bit me, but this time my girl and I agreed to “create some contrast.”  To add some low-lights for depth and texture – that is hair salon speak for taking a step into the seldom-visited extremely scary realm of a teeny tiny change.

And what I now see in the sunlight is why so few boldly go where hair color is altered. 

We are not courageous.  No.  We color our gray – period.  And we live in that established safe zone.  Free parking for 50 years at the curb of the very same color we have worn since 7^th grade. 

We most certainly do not go RED!

So.  When my darling girl seated me at the sink and gently massaged my scalp, rinsing the goop away with a pleasant if Stepford-ish smile, I was unconcerned.  “I think you’re going to like it,” she said.

I always say that redheads are valued in my family.  My mom was a redhead.  Both my grandmothers were redheads.  (My stepmother is a redhead too…so this may be a story about my dad, but we will get to that another time.)

My parents and grandparents dreamed of a redheaded baby girl to carry the family flame!  But alas.  Willful from birth, I did not oblige.

Not to be denied, my mom’s feisty mom devised a plan.  She offered to keep baby Carolyn overnight so the new parents could have a break from the overdose of darling I no doubt delivered, even in my blondeness. 

But when they came to pick me up next morning…what’s this?  Redheaded baby Carolyn?!!

That’s right.  Grandma Maddux dyed my baby hair red.

I have tried to imagine that morning many times over the years.  The looks on their faces.  I picture the scene as a cartoon line drawing.  Grandma Maddux beaming with pride as she passed me back to my mom. And my parents flabbergasted, tilting back on their heels.

Did Grandma believe my parents would begin covering my blonde roots from that point forward?

And phase two – after the initial disbelief – were they angry?  Did they laugh?  Cry?  They protected me from those details.  And baby hair kind of falls away, so no real harm done.  I guess.

But it was prophetic.  My fate was sealed.  From that day forward all things have conspired to bring me to this fiery point in time.

“I didn’t expect it to be so red,” I said to my girl.

“It’s not red,” she said, and we commenced a philosophical discussion in which we had to agree that carrot-top is in the eye of the beholder. 

To her my blonde is textured with brown, and therefore in her world, blonde and brown it is. 

But I see these “low lights” as bright red lights.  Not strawberry blonde.  Not auburn.  They’re red.  And there are a lot of them.  Blonde is a shy minority. 

And if it looks red to me, it is indeed red.

But here’s the thing:  I kind of like it.  I can’t claim it’s in my genes, but it is my destiny. 


This one’s for you, Grandma!  Happy New Year!  

Good, for goodness sake!

He sees you when you’re sleeping!?

Well that’s just great.

Set aside for the moment the inherent creepiness of that idea – Billy Bob Thornton in a red velvet suit window peeping on a middle-aged woman. 

Hey!  I could be middle-aged!  What with modern science and life expectancies extended every year, 126 isn’t so unrealistic, is it?

Set it aside.  Santa’s not the National Security Administration after all.  Or, maybe he is more like the NSA that we want to believe.  The NSA’s benign, right?  Only checking in to see if we have been bad.  Totally disinterested if we have been good.  Right. 

Yep, that’s it.  The NSA is just keeping us on our Goody Two Shoes’ toes.  Like Santa.

So, if Santa sees a middle-aged woman sleeping with her mouth open, just as an example, she wouldn’t get demerits for that, would she?

Santa would still remember her modest Christmas wishes.  He would not be so grossed out that he crossed her off his list, would he?  Would he??

And why is it that only little kids sleep with their mouths closed, anyway?  They already have a leg up at the Bureau of the Cute and Adorable.  It is only in the autumn of one’s years that one’s chin relaxes, sags and ultimately lets go, only perfunctorily guarding one’s uvula.  We are the ones who need special consideration!

But surely Santa overlooks mouth breathing.  Surely.  He still knows she’s a good girl.  A dry tongue wouldn’t put him off, would it?  Everyone loves a parakeet!

And this whole thing with drool – again, endearing in the little ones, but for the rest of us, a sad soggy scenario, not appealing to Santa I fear.

And how does that phenomenon play itself out anyway?  Does a person just drool herself all the way to a dry mouth?  It is out of her control, you know.  She’s being judged while she SLEEPS! 

And still watching when I’m awake?  Relentless!  And utterly unfair.  How can a person bear up under this kind of scrutiny?

OK, I am mostly nice.  That counts for something, doesn’t it? 

I mean honestly, who doesn’t take the cream cheese frosting out of another lady’s shopping cart on occasion?  That’s not truly naughty!  I spent MINUTES scanning the shelves for it to no avail.

Geez!  Where’s the harm?  She found it the first time; she’ll find it again!  Come on Santa!  Cut a girl a break!

And the way I see it, I contributed to the greater good when I sat through a second green light after that mean man behind me honked so rudely and said unkind things when I absentmindedly sat through the first green light.  I’m sure he came away feeling philosophical.  I helped him understand that rushing through life robs it of its joy.  He must surely have paid it forward!

See?  Santa??

I am wondering what your perspective is on things like this.  I mean, what is your method of calculation on the good-bad spectrum?  Are there baskets or goalposts, points of any kind?  It is not so clear cut!  Shades of gray, Santa!  You have to inject some subjectivity!

I think those spontaneous acts of charity in traffic count for more than the fake ones everyone else points to this time of year.  So what if you are tripping around doing “random acts of kindness”?  Whoopti-frickin’-do! 

Let’s just cut to the chase on this thing:  You have the goodies and I want ‘em. 

I have made a good faith effort not to W. C. Fields it all over town.  That is to say I kept most of my cantankerousness to myself.  Anything you heard to the contrary was an unintentional burst of irritability brought on by all those perfect little people who are so annoying to the rest of us.  Don’t believe everything you hear Santa.  Everyone has an agenda.


So let loose with the largesse Santa Baby, or I alert the NSA to your brand of terrorism – nighttime peeping and list-keeping and playing of favorites!  I haven’t lived this many years to be cut out of the booty!


That’s right.  Two can play at this game.  When I’m good, I’m very good.  But when I’m bad…make a note of it.

Moral of the story: Don't be too sure of yourself

  

Doomsday minister Harold Camping could have used some Hunch Farming.

Sparks & Honey, Cultural Strategists and coiners of the phrase “hunch farming,” say since we are already crowd-sourcing complex problem resolution, fundraising and political support; so why not farm our “hunches” from the masses? 

Of course with names like Sparks & Honey, it is hard to take them seriously.  It’s like getting your technology updates from Abercrombie & Fitch, or Peaches & Herb.

Nevertheless, they assure us that science is confirming the power of collective consciousness and intuition.

For example, they cite the phenomenon of social chatter spiking globally in the period leading up to the 2011 tsunami and before September 11th, “like birds instinctively warning the forest of a predator.”

And a prophecy about the end of the world is as good a place as any for hunch farming.

If only Sparks & Honey had been around to help the Reverend Camping market his concept.

They suggest basing prognostications not on mathematics as he did, but on the intuitive powers of the collective consciousness.

But the Reverend Camping tried to create his own chatter.  And then he didn’t listen to it.  Because he knew he was right, after all.

You remember Harold Camping, the California preacher who calculated the end of the world would arrive on May 21, 2011.  Via his radio ministry and as many as 5,000 billboards across the country, Camping flapped around trying to create frenzy around his prediction of global demise. 

He got all of us in a lather about it.  Or at least some of us. 

Actually, nobody I know got excited, but play along.

According to his former partner at the Family Radio Network, Camping was bull-headed.  He had a mathematical formula for working all this out and he was sure of himself. 

In fact, he was so certain that on May 22, 2011, the morning after his soothsaying flopped, amid a flustered flurry of harrumphs and mad re-calculations, he admitted only to an error in his arithmetic and announced the new and improved date of doom to be October 21, 2011.

As I recall, he said something like, “Oops.  I see where I went off,” before releasing the October date.  A master of denial, even though he was so publicly and undeniably wrong, he still knew he was right.

Camping exhorted his followers to shed their jobs, homes and bank accounts in preparation for the rapture.  Gotta travel light on the way up, it seems.

And amazingly, many who had not already done so stripped down to a carry-on and one small personal item and began gazing upward in anticipation of the new date.

On the morning of October 22, when once more he woke up with the rest of us, Mayans and assorted other non-believers, well, you can imagine.  He was chagrined.

The world had not ended again!  Camping had no choice but to accept that in spite of his calculus, his superior intellect and his pipeline to God, he really was wrong. 

In a letter to his followers he confessed he had no evidence the rapture was coming anytime soon.  He said he wasn't trying to work out any future dates and skulked off with a slide rule in his hand and cloud over his head.

And now, Reverend Harold Camping has died this week, before the world did.

One good thing about dying is that he cannot be embarrassed anymore about all the glaring blunders he made while alive on the planet.

Unless there actually is an afterlife.  In that case he must be way past chagrin.  That’s like an eternally red face.  He will never live that down!

That’s why I gave up being right all the time.  It just does not pay.  There is no joy in it for one thing.  When all is said and done, what do you have – “I told you so”?

And if you are wrong – all that celebration from everyone who wanted you to be wrong!  It may not be the end of the world, but it is intolerable for a know-it-all like me.

So I have retired from the throne. 


I leave all the divination to the birds.  

Keep your mitts off my daydreams!

Who is this upstart brainpickings.org?  What do they know anyway?

I came across this article on the site, “The Art of Constructive Daydreaming.”  It’s written by Maria Popova, who calls herself a “cultural curator.”  She is founder and Editor in Chief of Brain Pickings.

Popova talks about the “science of fantasy” and “imaginative escapism,” calling them essential elements of a satisfying mental life.

Now don’t get me wrong!  I am in full possession of a thoroughly satisfying mental life, if I do say so myself.  And I do say so. 

Why on any given day, my internal flights of fancy make Walter Mitty look like Casper Milquetoast.  I achieve imaginary greatness with regularity.  Oh yes!  I soar above my mundane actual life and fly virtually alongside Wonder Woman.  She does fly, doesn’t she?  In my daydreams she does; and time after time I edge her out.

You could say I’m in the same daydreaming league as some of the greats:  Truly famous creators like T. S. Eliot who called his flights of fancy “idea incubation;” Alexander Graham Bell who dressed up the habit with the moniker “unconscious cerebration:” and Lewis Carroll who applied the pragmatic appellation “mental mastication.”

Whatever you want to call it, I can incubate, celebrate, er, cerebrate and chew with the best of them. 

So you can understand how totally annoyed I am to find this come-lately Popova who has to ruin it for the rest of us long-time practitioners of the delicate art of whiling away the time.  She just had to dredge up the research, wave it in our faces and act like she knows something about something. 

To wit:  She sites Yale psychologist Jerome L. Singer and his foundational investigation of daylight ponderings.  His findings, published in The Inner World of Daydreaming, described three core styles of daydreaming:

·        Positive Constructive Daydreaming – a process fairly free of psychological conflict, in which playful, vivid, wishful imagery drives creative thought;

·        Guilty-dysphoric Daydreaming – driven by a combination of ambitiousness, anguishing fantasies of heroism, failure, and aggression, and obsessive reliving of trauma, a mode particularly correlated with PTSD; and

·        Poor Attentional Control – typical of the anxious, the distractible, and those having difficulties concentrating.

Thanks a lot Ms. Popova!  Now I feel like I have to analyze my own daydreaming habits and therefore psychoanalyze myself!  Where’s the fun in that?  Wouldn’t you much rather doze in the sunshine and dream about pina coladas?

But OK, here goes – It’s pretty obvious – I am surely the Positive Constructive Daydreamer, right?  In my daydreams, I imagine myself to be playful and free of conflict, not the crabby misanthrope who’s on the edge of road rage.  My vivid imagery drives my powerful creativity.  Yeah that’s it.

OK…that feels a little forced. 

But even if I do feel guilty for everything that ever went wrong anywhere, surely I am not “dysphoric”?!!  Do my Wonder Woman daydreams reveal an “anguishing fantasy of heroism”?  Yikes! 

When is a cigar just a cigar?

Of course, for me, the real truth probably lies behind Door #3: Poor Attentional Control.  I guess I have to face it:  I’m distractible.  It’s no fun to concentrate!  Too many pretty, shiny objects in the vicinity of my keyboard.

I would much rather don my cape and combat crime.  As soon as I finish this column.

Carolyn will matriculate to 4^th grade, but she must learn to pay attention, follow directions and stay on task.

Humbug!

A Peter Cottontail Christmas

The Christmas Bunny 

I did it again.  I said the cursed words – “I’ll remember.”

I don’t remember.  Yet, like a crazy person, I continue to promise myself that I will remember.  And I believe myself! 

I must have an honest face.

For example, I might say to myself in a reasonable tone, “Carolyn, there’s no need to make a note of when you give the cats their flea treatment.  Yes, you do have at your disposal a perfectly good spot right on the package expressly for the purpose of making a note so you don’t coat your cats with flea goop so often that they wind up looking like Jersey Boys.  But why?  You will remember today as the day of their treatment.  Why it’s the Friday before the Wednesday you go to your six month check up with the dentist!” 

And so, I bypass the logical step of making a note.  I tell myself I’ll remember the extraordinary moment when I crack open the ampule and let the stuff ooze onto their little kitty napes.

In that moment, I truly believe I will remember.  But I never remember.  At the time of their next treatment, the cats are either flea-bitten or oily.

I guess I forget that I reminded myself that I quit remembering some years back. 

Thank goodness it’s not the terrifying kind of memory loss, the kind where you can’t remember that you have a car.  No, happily, I know I have a car.  Pretty sure.  Let me just go check….yep!  Car!

Whew.

It’s that other kind of forgetfulness.  The stupid avoidable kind.

Here’s how it came to my attention this time:  Long ago I read a tip for spreading out the expense and stress of Christmas shopping – when people’s birthdays come around, buy them their birthday present AND a Christmas present! 

Deliver the birthday stuff and tuck the Christmas stuff safely away until December.  Then, voila!  All shopping is done except for those few people who might have December birthdays! 

Isn’t that just the best system?!

It is!  Except for this one thing:  I don’t know where I stashed that present, that really cool perfect gift I bought for my BFF back in March, on the occasion of her birth.  The one I was so proud of and so sure she would love. 

WHERE IS IT??!!!

And so, yet again, my Christmas preparations consist of an Easter Egg Hunt!

You would think a rational person such as I would secure her collection of gifts in a central, secure location, a logical place, a guest room closet, for example.  Nope.

So I checked all the shelves in all the closets looking for my friend’s gift.  Under all the beds.

A surge of hope only to be dashed again when a miss-matched partial case of Two Buck Chuck turns up.  Nothing but sad, undrinkable wine.

And it doesn’t help to have a couple of greasy kitties dogging you from room to room with their “you never learn, do you?” eyes.

My friend has that quirky cool sense of style.  When I see something I know she’ll like I buy it right then and set it aside.  It makes me feel good to be so well-prepared, in advance.  Efficient.  Thoughtful.

Stress and expense dispersed....Throughout the house.  In safe places.  Where only Santa and the Easter Bunny can find them.