Muse

Last thursday night I went to dinner with a lady I have known for over a year, and had an absolutely fabulous time (when was the last time you had a 3-hour dinner that only ended because one of the parties had other plans they had to get to? I thought so). It really was quite magical in a way, and I left with the wonderful sense of her essence that lingered all the way home and through the night.

Then I woke up and wrote. It has been a long while since I've written any meaningful poetry, but it was something I used to enjoy doing; I simply lost all my muses and the well seemed to have dried up. Well, it sprung again.

So I want to say this: thank you, M. It's a rare thing to find in someone, but your willingness to just go wherever our convoluted conversation took us, to let your feelings show and your inner self to reflect in your face and your colors, made you quite beautiful to me that night. So much so that you allowed me to connect to a dormant and powerful part of me that had gone AWOL for so long.

Thank you, M, for being my muse.

Oh, and here's the poem. Would be wrong not to share.

==
Ripples
Flowing through
Slicing hard
Pain

Hope
Shining elsewhere
Eternal spark
Here

A night
Eruption, Crying
Feeling wrong
Being right
The truth comes out
Tears of exhaustion
Hurt of confusion
Pleasure of numbness
Joyfully spent
Darkness sets way for dawn

New night
New life
New ripples
of energy
Bright
She is vibrant
Her colors
Emanating
Pulsating
Sensual
Desiring Touch
Wanting to Feel
Offer of Sanctuary

She says friend
Her body says love
She lays a boundary
Her eyes speak louder
She lets out a word
She bares her soul
Strong
Injured
Longing
Softness

Inifinite tenderness
Pouring out
A safe haven
A place to fall
A place to share
A place to hold
will she take it?
will she accept?

Power
Spirits connecting
Intensity unfolds
Vulnerable

Wise words from a fool

I was compiling my own post about this, but then Morgan Housel wrote it way better than I could have. Read it. Understand it. And instead of whining about some imaginary cost to taxpayers, start worrying about your stupid representatives in congress who have just voted down the rescue bill.

Ubuntu annoying problem fixed

So I have had an issue with my machine for a while... could not get my microphone to work in Skype, or anywhere else for that matter.

I tried playing with settings, to no avail; it just wouldn't do it.

I finally got it solved, so I'm going to post the solution here. It's easy: go to applications, and under "sound & video" launch "sound recorder". Then change the "record from input" setting to "capture" instead of "digital". Voila.

Thank you Paulson!

No, I'm not being sarcastic... I am truly grateful that this guy is where he is. Like most others, I have very low regard for the Bush presidency, but oh boy, credit should be given where due, and Paulson is worth lots of credit.

Actually, screw that. He's worth lots of dollars to me. To us. To all of us.

Do you realize just how awesome of a deal we just go for AIG? 80% stake, loan at 8.5% over LIBOR... this is not a government bailout, this is private vulture sale with all the trimmings. The Fannie and Freddie bailouts also have a pretty nifty return, with that juicy dividend. I mean, people, this guy is making us all a little bit richer, day by friggin day. I'm sure Buffet, who tried to buy AIG himself with terms that I am sure could not have been much farther away than Paulson's, must be sitting in his office scratching his head wondering how he missed this one.

And on to another topic: who wanted Goldman shares for $100 and didn't get any? nailing that was one of the most fun trades I had executed in a long time. Sure it might go a bit lower, but this is one stock I expect to truly outperform, and $100 is what I call fun. I'm still wondering whether to jump back in to BAC, after having had my second most successful short-term trade of the year with them in the summer (50% in 3 weeks), but the Goldman one elicited no confusion.

Racism? absolutely

Yesterday provided an unexpected and jarring experiences, one of the more notable since I came to this country almost 9 years ago. Keep in mind that I came here with no particular understanding of racial relations in the US, and in particular white-black issues. My views have not been colored by growing up in this society. With that said, I am white, and not usually perceived as a foreigner, meaning that what I do encounter in this respect is based on people's instinctive grasp of me as someone who had grown up here. The reason it is important to remember this is that I had no preconceived notions coming here about either race or racial relations. Everything I've learned, I learned from living here.

What led to the experience yesterday was my discovery that my son's passport had expired last month, as I was going through some stuff in preparation of an upcoming trip. Looking online, we discover that yesterday is the last day we can submit an application through a post-office; beyond that we would have to go to a regional office and waste the entire day there to get same-day processing.

So we pulled up the list of passport application offices in our area, and looked up the nearest ones that might be open on Saturday. We settled on the one in Berkeley. I took my son with me, and off we went.

I despise Berkeley - it's such a conceited, self-important, self-absorbed, narrow-minded, exclusionary, hateful town that I generally try to avoid having to visit. It's practically in the air. Walking the streets of Berkeley, especially around University and Shattuck, is one of the most consistently unpleasant experiences I have ever had to face regularly. It's not the "mind-your-own-business" mentality of Manhattan, which I simply dislike, but rather more along the lines of "you're-all-wrong-and-we-know-it-so-fuck-you" vibe that emanates from pretty much everyone - especially the "fuck you" part.

Having lived in the area for the past few years I generally steel myself whenever I have business in Berkley, and this was no exception. In other words, I didn't exactly expect a great experience, but this was a simple process, we'd be in and out and on our merry way. What transpired was anything but.

We got to the post office around 9:30Am, the passport office was almost empty, and soon we were up. The lady who greeted us was black and angry. Or rather, her entire demeanor changed as soon as she saw us - me and my fair-haired bespectacled white boy. She became extremely, uh, proper. Fine, I'm used to that already; it's not difficult to observe coming into this country that the black community in the US has a tremendous amount of anger seething just underneath the surface, although I've noticed a generational difference (younger folks seem more upbeat).

But it was the discussion itself that gave me chills. The hostility was palpable. When she let me know that the mother would have to be there, she sat back and crossed her fingers and had this smirk on her face, and her tone was dripping with condescension and derision.

So we went back home, grabbed mom, went back. By the time we got there a second time, the office was a lot busier, and there was a minority (hispanic) family in front of us in line. The passport lady was quite pleasant with them, even cracking a joke or two, assisting them in figuring out little things when they didn't even know what to ask, volunteering information... what one might expect from a customer service rep. As soon as they were out the door and we were next, her mood changed again. She didn't even look at us; instead she spent the next 20 minutes ever so slowly and methodically finalizing the previous family's application, making sure that every little step was taken deliberately... and slowly. In fact, once our kids started complaining that they were hungry, she became even slower. We did our best to calm them down, but it was only when a new family walked in the door - minorities again - that she sped up a bit, finished her work, and grunted in my direction.

We gave her the application, she scanned it, then stopped as her joy became perceptible when she informed us that she needed my son's social security number to complete the application. In fact, she wanted not just the number, but the card. We didn't have the number with us, but I suspect it would not have mattered; she did the whole routine of sitting back, crossing her arms, and dismissing us with one of those looks, the power stare that civil servants sometimes get knowing they can't get fired. That she could have warned me about this when she first sent me home was obvious; she had let the folks in front of us know of a number of similar little gotchas voluntarily. She chose not to.

Simply put, we were the wrong color and wrong class for that office. We had enough time to go home and back, but my wife wisely suggested that our application will most likely end up being lost if we completed it there. So we looked for an alternative.

We ended up finishing the process with the absolutely wonderful, cheerful and helpful staff at the USPS Moraga office. The lady who assisted us there was so delightful that my wife and I both agreed we'll take our daughter there again next year when her passport expires, even though that office is farther from our home than at least three others. They went out of their way to help, they made us feel welcome. The difference was so striking it took me a couple of hours just to shake the impact.

So there you have it. Berkley something like 98 and counting, me 0. At least now I've experience a bit of the racism everyone's so concerned about, although I must say, its direction was a bit surprising.

Triggers

Do you have a particular type of behavior that, exhibited by someone else, pushes all your buttons? I'm sure you do, unless you're a saint.

Well, I am recently reminded of the absolute top one that does it to me: it's when you develop a relationship with someone, who transitions from colleague to acquaintance, to friend, to close friend, and then suddenly, one day, with no explanation or even the minimum courtesy of giving notice, they go blank. You know what I mean, the way teenagers seem to handle their relationships: they will not take your calls, they will not answer your emails, they will not return your texts or voicemails.

They will delude themselves to think that "everybody is better off" this way, but the behavior is not only one of the most extreme in the world of passive-aggressive, it is also highly immature, even juvenile. It avoids the basic responsibility of facing up to your issues. There is a price to pay for friendship, and that is the price of honesty; when someone gives you their trust, you cannot simply betray it in such a fashion without at least owning to the responsibility of confronting them with whatever problem may have come up. And it is even more true if they tell you they don't understand what's going on.

A person I have come to know and appreciate and trust over the last four years had apparently decided, for some unknown reason, to behave in this exact fashion over the last couple of weeks. Why? I don't know. I have not an inkling of a clue as to what I may have said or done to precipitate this. Last we met, I gave her the three board games I ordered for her as part of my larger game order, which incidentally saved her about $30 over what she would have paid at the store. This was following a couple of months of serving repeatedly as one of her references for the dozen or so job interviews she had been undergoing, when we would chat on the phone 3 times a week because she was bored and also wanted a bit of advice and mentoring.

Then she goes blank. Not even a simple courtesy notice "sorry, I don't want to talk to you anymore, because you did ". Nothing.

I feel used.

Fly on the Wall

I just had a chance to be the fly on the wall in a discussion that took place between folks that I legitimately have very little business being involved with... and it was mind-blowing. It's tough sometimes to stay grounded when everyone around you tells you how great you are at what you do, but this is the sort of experience through which growth really comes. I know that I will cherish this moment for a long time to come.