The Shock of Winter

Winter is cold. Let’s talk about the cold again and again. Ten degrees, 4 degrees, zero and below. Let’s comment on winter. And snow. It’s still coming down. It’s melting fast. Three inches, seven inches, 14 inches in an hour. Let’s forget that this conversation has been going on for a thousand or 10,000 years and we’re still goddamned astounded when it snows and the temperature drops and we have to light a fire or turn up the heat or close the windows. Millennia of surprised reactions to the perfectly predictable constantly changing seasons. Some are drier than others, sometimes it gets colder and windier and the snow is slightly deeper and there are icicles and frozen birdbaths, chapped lips and cold feet and you can see your breath. Someone will get hurt skiing, someone else will complain about shoveling snow. Cars won’t start. Visibility will be reduced.

We’re amazed by winter. We are shocked and baffled by the onset.

In six months it’s going to be warming up and we’ll have a whole new list of complaints and comments. About summer and the heat.

Now, it’s winter. Just like last year. And the 10,000 previous years.

Put on a sweater.

Thank you for voting

     Once more, it’s the day after Election Day. This time it went the other way. A lot of my friends are all pissy. They didn’t see this coming? They are looking for someone to blame; the non-voters, the tired, burned out citizens who simply cannot crawl to the polls, one more time, to be disappointed and lose their self respect. I’m a lifelong Dem and I’ll vote Democratic again because, so far, the alternatives are so blatantly abominable. Not the candidates, not even the Republican Party, but the on-going repression, racism, fear, disrespect, violence and fundamentalism that the candidate’s owners pay for, support and sustain.

     Why is everyone moaning so much, anyway? For the past month I’ve been seeing sanctimonious, self-congratulatory posts about how “I voted early”, “Please Vote”,  “You have to Vote”, “It’s your Civic Duty”, “Blame yourself”.

     Shut up. Didn’t they notice that we are still fighting at least three wars? That the minimum wage is so goddamn low that Americans who are fully employed, who work their asses off at hard jobs, cannot buy homes or clothes or afford decent food, schools, transportation? And how about that invasive surveillance? The armed and dangerous and out-of-control law enforcement agencies that are shooting first and then going to lunch? Women still only earn 78 cents for every dollar a worker with a penis is paid. Holy shit. Gender equality has been on the table for at least a century. Your party, whichever one, has done next to nothing since the last time we put them back behind their desks.

Starting today, again, there will be more tough talk and no action; the lobbyists and their favorite pets are moistening their lips, checking their zippers and filling their pockets with tissues. The money train is rolling and there are big smiles all around.

     We did our duty though. We cared, we argued, we scolded and we posted on Facebook. LOL. You are so cute. For our reward we get the Holiday Season. Gifts and lights and shopping and family and food and phones and blockbuster movies.

     Thanks for voting early.

The Halloween Conspiracy

It’s that time of year again. The Trifecta of Stupidity. 

Halloween

Daylight Savings

Election Day

Three big piles.

Halloween, which used to be a kid’s holiday of funny costumes and candy, has been stolen by narcissistic adults who have sexualized and monetized it.

All kinds of stuff is for sale: cardboard jack-o-lanterns, giant bags of Snickers, Halloween specials at Wal-Mart. Sleazy bars, Jean’s, Pier 23, The Gold Clown, where I used to be able to dodge the costumed kids and get wasted, are now sponsoring bullshit costume contests where a lot of lonely guys come dressed as gangsters and pimps, and marginally intelligent women get their hooker on. Nice. Don’t scare the children.

Yesterday, I heard someone in the Dentist’s office, as she was leaving, her lip numb and her mouth stuffed with cotton, say to the receptionist, “Have a happy Halloween.”

Is this a thing? I can’t get far enough away from holidays, and now they are legitimizing Halloween? Soon, I guess, they’ll be closing down the government for Halloween. Sorry, you can’t pay your ticket or meet with your public defender or file a building permit. It’s Halloween! Will we have to give presents? Fuck that.

Daylight Savings.

Now, you’ve been gorging on candy and alcohol and dreaming about sexy costumes and parties and watching horror films and celebrating the Day of the Dead and All Souls Day and All Saints Day and filling your head with every possible kind of reality-distorting fantasy that the next thing they do is change the lighting. Yep; you wake up confused, distracted and unstable. Everyone is late, they are jet-lagged and yawning and the sun isn’t coming up at the right time. You feel as if you’re in the wrong place every day. It starts to get dark around 3:00 p.m. and you’re hungry all the time. A destabilized population, hungover and tired.

A perfect time for the final Big Lie.

The perfect time to slip in... Election Day. God Bless America crashing from sugar and booze, washing off its makeup, tries to wipe the crusty buildup from its eyes and, hurry up, it's time to vote.  America has been shown Who’s The Boss. Our government. The venal, degenerate, unprincipled men and women we vote for. We have experienced their authority, their supremacy; with their mandated power, they can change the time the sunrises for Christ’s sake; they have fucked up our circadian rhythms. All-powerful liars, grabbing with both hands and failing over and over, cycle after cycle. What more can be said? Better people have commented on this waste of time. We are completely irrelevant, overlooked and disregarded until Election Day rolls around. Now, nightly come the robo-calls from local dipshits asking for the vote because they are going to (fill in the blank). Nah, no they’re not. They are going to be slurping at the trough and stuffing their pockets for as long as we let them. And don’t scold me. Do what you want, feel good about yourself, but don’t you dare berate me for not…being you, I suppose. I know, I know. All that crap about civic duty, constitution, can’t-complain-if-you-don’t-vote, our rights, patriotism, America fuck yeah. So go, do it, stand in line, chat with your fellow citizens, shit on the liberals or the conservatives. Do it. You’ll think you're better than me. And you probably are.

I can’t even get into the perfect timing of the World Series. Go Giants.

Contempt of Court

Waiting. Hoping for a heart attack or that someone would call in a bomb scare. But mostly I’m waiting, abandoned and disregarded, a hostage to jury duty and developing an acute case of Contempt of Court.

We, the jury pool, had to wait for an hour and 45 minutes before we were called into the courtroom.

Why?

No idea. I assume we were simply being marginalized and treated badly because the staff at the courthouse is incompetent and entrenched and they don’t have to get off their fat butts except to go to lunch and make sure they get to the vending machines for their breaks. Fat, fat, fat. Big hair and long nails, scraggly goatees and assess three feet wide. Bellies bulging over big belt buckles, wide sloping shoulders, pudgy hands and backs like lumpy mattresses. Tight jeans and tight short-sleeved sweaters to show off expensive poorly executed tattoos. On the Job with Our Civil Servants.

I signed in early. They made it clear on the summons. Be here at 9:30 or we can arrest you. So I was there at 9:20, signed my name and sat in one of the poorly designed plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor. I felt like a prisoner, which may be their way of creating verisimilitude for prospective jurors. Get us to empathize? I don’t think so. It’s just rude bullshit.

There is no small talk, and little eye contact. And we wait. After the first hour of nothing, I approached the desk and asked why we were waiting.

“The judge is busy with the lawyers. You’ll be called when he’s finished.”

Oh fuck you. Just fuck off, you curt, insolent monster.

“Can I go to breakfast?”

A smirk. “No, you have to wait here.”

“But you don’t know when his honor will be ready?”

“No.”

“Then, can I go to breakfast? I’m hungry.”

“He won’t be much longer.”

“But, truly, you don’t know, you have no idea right? You can’t tell me when he’ll be ready for us. Could be an hour or two more?”

“No. Can’t say. You’ll have to wait.”

“Can I go to breakfast?”

I shifted around for another forty-five minutes, trying to find a comfortable position without touching the people to either side of me. No one spoke, but suddenly we were moving, en masse, like a flock of grackles leaving a tree. We shuffled down a hallway where another grim staff member held us up. She mispronounced our names, checked us off the list and we slid into the hard church pews in the gallery of the courtroom. I should have gone to breakfast.

A dazed looking judge babbled some instructions, his outdated Beatle haircut shining in the glare of overhead lighting. He never apologized for making us waste the past two hours. He made it clear that the case would be completed today, “Even if we have to stay here until midnight.” Unfriendly and ill equipped. He sounded like a little bully.

The Prosecutor was a sloppy fat guy with a long ponytail and full beard. He was repping a stone-faced miniature cop who had arrested the (alleged) drunk driver. The Attorney for the defense had thick brown hair that was expensively cut to look boyish and casual; he ran his hand through it every thirty seconds while grinning sincerely at the jury pool.

The defendant was all dressed up in his best black t-shirt. He was an older guy, gray hair, spindly arms, red eyes and rough skin. Looked like a drinker and I don’t think he was a stranger to the proceedings. I wondered about the t-shirt.

The idiot is on trial for another drunk driving arrest and this is the way he dresses? Genius. But I was supposed to reserve judgment.

It was much to late for that.

Next, the attorneys addressed us, introducing themselves and their clients.

The defense dork made sure to tell us that the man in the dirty t-shirt was an “innocent man”. No one laughed. Except me.

I laughed because many years ago I had a friend who was a defense attorney. He had successfully represented three local cops who had been arrested for stealing televisions from a local electronics store. I saw him and his clients in a bar shortly after the trial. I’d read in the local paper that the cops were acquitted and I said, “Hey, Mike, you got those guys off? Good for you. They were innocent, huh?”

Mike said, “No one is innocent. Some people are not guilty.”

My first lesson in the law.

Over the next twenty years or so I made the acquaintance of many attorneys. I used to drink with lawyers because I liked talking about the law, logic and deceit, which was what lawyers practiced daily. We’d stay up until the early hours of the morning telling stories of crime, corruption and incompetence.

Now, in court, after we’d been seated and listened to the fatuous introductions by the principals, the defense attorney began to ask questions. He danced around and tried to get us to like him. Might have worked, too, if some of us weren’t already finished for the day after the long wait.

“Anyone ever had an interaction with law enforcement?”

A grubby old man in front of me raised his hand and jumped right the fuck in.

“I think all cops are parasites and have nothing to offer anyone. I was arrested for armed robbery when I was 14. I didn’t do it and I’ve hated cops all my life.”

Nice start. And thank you, sir.

Lawyer-boy redirects his attention to the other side of the room and asks if anyone knows the cop or the defendant?

A few locals say that they might know the cop, a wife/husband works with the State Police as a clerk or they read about the drunk driving arrest or may have dreamed about it. Standard stuff to waste more time.

It’s the Prosecutor’s turn and he asks what were our feelings about the State Police.

The guy next to me raises his hand.

“Yes sir.” The attorney looks at his seating chart. “Mr. Ellis?”

“Yeah. I saw a story where a cop walked into the back yard of someone’s home in Utah, he was looking for a fugitive, and the family dog barked at him and he shot it. He just shot the dog and didn’t even blink. There was a video of it on YouTube. I’ve read a lot of stories like that, these guys are trigger-happy and jump the gun and are always ready to shoot. I don’t trust the cops any more. It’s like they’re looking for trouble so they can kill someone. They don’t ‘protect and serve’ any more.”

Wow. Well said. Another ally.

The suit wanders away and directs a few more inane questions to the left side of the courtroom. He particularly focuses on the perspiring woman who heaves to her feet to say how much she supports the police, no one knows how difficult it is to be a cop, they put their lives on the line every day, they are our heroes. Yeah. Sure. Great. Siddown.

He ambles back and says, “Do you think you could put your past experiences aside and judge the case on the evidence?”

Then he looks directly at me and says, no shit, he says, “Sir. You look disgusted by these proceedings.”

“How right you are”.

“Can you tell us why?”

Damn. My friend Paul Broadman used to say my face was a three-act play. I have a hard time filtering my feelings. I’ve been accused of having Tourette’s syndrome. But I don’t. I just hate jury duty. Really.

“Let’s see. No, I can’t put my past experiences on ice. I have prejudices against the court and the way we, the citizens are disregarded and treated with disrespect throughout this whole performance. Also, I have trouble believing any of you. I’ve been taught that everyone in court is a liar. The defense, the prosecution, the witnesses, the judge and the bailiff, too.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“From my pal Riley. He was a pretty successful criminal defense attorney in San Francisco. He told me that everyone lies and that both of the lawyers are trying to make a movie, twisting the facts to support their client, and whoever makes the best movie, whichever attorney entertains the jury the most by using witnesses and evidence and lies and duplicity, wins. Also, I worked in the criminal justice system for over a decade and it was my experience that rich people who had resources went home after court and poor people went to jail. I’m going to find for the defense. It’s only fair.”

“Where did you work?”

“San Quentin State Prison in California.”

“Does my client (he puts his hands on the guys shoulders, massaging them), does my client look like a person who would be in San Quentin?”

“I wouldn’t attempt to say. You could be, though.”

An hour later they had seated a jury and the rest of us were dismissed after being informed that we were still eligible to serve and may be called back at any time. Our lives were still hijacked and we could be abducted and threatened. We would still be eligible to be treated with disregard, discourteously, rudely and insolently by ill-mannered inarticulate overweight men and women of the civil servant class. Can’t wait.

I’m so burned out from the joke of justice, the puppets, the bad lighting, the long waits and silly costumes. Right now I’d let Charlie Manson and Jack the Ripper walk free. After I’ve had my breakfast.

Securing Your Personal Information

 

The technology revolution has given us the gift of online shopping convenience. I buy stuff on the Internet all the time. I put in my credit card numbers. I type in my passcodes and passwords and login, username, online ID and my pet’s names and the schools I went to and my mother’s goddamn maiden name and I buy stuff. It’s easy and cheap.

Silicone Valley is the new Shangri la, the west coast paradise that is populated with young tech dorks, over paid and under laid, who are shaping our future. Ask them. They are developing necessary, indispensable, essential, important, cutting edge, progressive, forward thinking apps and tools and games, systems and software and platforms and plug-ins and programs designed to make life easier, cooler, more fun and efficient. Sure they are. You can download ringtones and movies and music and books; you can shop for shoes and watch amazing, unbelievable pornography, see eternal endless LOL cat and dog videos or read about what an asshole you are for not being a member of the NRA or a vegan. And it’s all so goddamn easy thanks to the geniuses at Apple and Amazon, Google and Facebook. Of course, most of the bullshit they are selling is simply ways of selling you more bullshit and tricking us into feeling good about it. Buy a new phone, download favorite beats, text friends, post update about it. Repeat the process infinitely. Fucking tools.

Meanwhile, it was reported today that a massive malware attack has hacked the personal info from 1000 businesses. Last week, another Russian gang ripped off “billions” of passwords and usernames. Billions with a “B”. It’s s real thing. Google it. The theft was reported by “security analysts”, which sounds like a self-negating term or a synonym for Worthless Goldbricking Assholes. There is no security so what is there to analyze? Thanks for analyzing the hell out of a catastrophe after it’s transpired. And what is the “Security Analysts” answer to these huge cyber thefts? What can we do to combat a potential worldwide financial and social disaster? Change your password. Yep. That’s what they recommend. We, the users, the clients, the morons, are supposed to use longer, harder to remember passwords with lots of capital letters and numbers and never reuse them and (I love this one) find words that are not in a dictionary.

ZZrf$666colonoscopy**happyface emoticon? That’s my new password? So, ultimately, the industry is saying “fuck you” again because they can’t be bothered, they are so busy selling us unnecessary crap, making so much money and buying new homes and hot cars and hookers and heroin that they are unwilling or incapable of safeguarding our personal information.

You know who’s going to make a lot of money? The kid who invents an app that slaps me in the face every time I put in my password to buy one more thing I don’t need and remind me that I’m about to lose everything I own. Thanks, tech wizard.

Robin Williams and Fred the Cat

Robin Williams died yesterday. He was a huge personality, well loved, respected by his peers and massively talented. I saw him perform before he went to Hollywood, when he was just a local San Francisco Bay Area comedian. After his ingenious, unique, hilarious show at the College of Marin, the school that Robin had attended and in which I was currently enrolled, I was exhilarated. A few months later he was on TV, Mork and Mindy, and I thought it was a typical sit-com made bearable by his presence. I didn’t know what had happened to the amazing iconoclast I’d seen few weeks before. It was obvious that he was now owned by the “Industry”.

Six months ago Philip Seymour Hoffman died and there were the same outcries and expressions of sorrow and anguish that I’m hearing now.

Sad guys; depressed, I guess. Dead from suicide and suicidal overdose.

“Can’t stop crying?”

That’s one I saw yesterday. I want to ask, “Why can’t you stop crying? Lots of people die every day in much worse circumstances, with fewer resources, and we don’t care. If someone you only know from TV or the movies or magazines dies, tragically or naturally, and you are plunged into such misery that you can’t stop crying then you are fucked up and will spend a lot of time feeling shitty and probably feeling sorry for yourself, too. Get help. Now.”

Jesus. Nice, huh? I wonder why I can’t seem to work up the sadness and empathy that I hear other people expressing? It’s not that I haven’t experienced some of the same despair as Williams and Hoffman. I survived, they didn’t. That’s the difference. I can't be that cold, can I?

I felt bad, really bad, when my cat Fred died. He belonged to my first wife and was four years old when I moved in. Fred was orange and white, like a 50-50 ice cream bar. He was gentle, funny and all the rest of the cat stuff that crazy people write about. As as soon as I settled in he adopted me. He’d sprawl on my lap and I’d stroke him while I read epic novels deep into the night, until 1 a.m., or later.

Every twenty minutes I would have to disturb him to get another drink. If I was tapping a razor blade on a pile of cocaine, chopping it into a consumable powder, cutting it into lines, Fred would often stand right over the blow and try to stick his paw into it. I’d brush him off the table and he bounce right back. I soon learned that I had to sneak my cocaine when the cat wasn’t looking. In fact, near the end of my drug days, that’s the way I always used dope. Alone and secretively. No one knew how much I used. Not even Fred.

There were times when I’d dump a pile of coke on the tile counter in the kitchen, snort it up quickly and head back to the TV. Once I turned around and saw Freddy licking up the residue. I wondered, for a second, if it was possible for a cat to become addicted to drugs. I certainly was, and I knew that scientists made addicts out of monkeys, so why not a housecat? How much coke was Fred consuming on a weekly basis? I felt fairly shitty about it and decided that I’d lock myself in the bathroom to hide my drug use from Fred. He still suspected though. Everyone did.

I took good care of Fred. Better than myself.

He drooled. Lots of cats drool. He would lie on my chest while I watched TV and I’d stroke his long back. His eyes would close and he’d gently knead my stomach and drip cat saliva onto my shirt. It was disgusting so I kept a paper towel next to me and I’d wipe his mouth occasionally to keep the spit from soaking me. Fred was ecstatic. He enjoyed being touched and he reflexively pawed me. I didn’t have a lot of people who let me touch them back then. If I was drinking and met someone in a bar, we’d do a few hours of touching, but innocent, non-judgmental, loving touch was rare. Fred touched me and I patted him and I mopped up his drool, too. I always had a paper towel when I sat with Fred.

Fred’s been gone for over twenty years and I still carry paper towels in my pockets. For cleanliness, wiping up spills. Sometimes I wonder if the towels are symbolic of a desire for intimate contact. To clean up afterwards. If I reach in my pants pocket I always have a paper towel. Be prepared.

I got older, so did Fred. He went from bouncing up the stairs with me when I got home from work to sitting at the bottom of the driveway and letting me carry him. When I allowed him to walk by himself I saw that he couldn’t jump from step to step any longer. He was 18 years old. My wife told me that healthy cats don’t have to be carried up stairs.

The vet, Dr. Barboni, said that Fred was old and in pain. That hurt me and I was sorry for Fred. There weren’t many choices. It was over.

I gave the veterinarian the nod. Do it.

Dr. Barboni was a kind and compassionate man with a steady gaze and a calming voice and he asked if I wanted to stay in the waiting room and I said that I’d rather be with Fred at the end.

I held my cat. He looked up at me as the doctor slipped the needle through the orange fur and under the loose skin near his flank.

Fred blinked a few times, his eyes closed and he was still.

Gone.

Dr. Barboni took care of the body and all the rest. I was sniffling and by the time I got to my car I was crying uncontrollably.

In the console of the car there was always a bottle of brandy and two or three grams of cocaine. I was always ready.

For the rest of the night I drove aimlessly, fast, and drank deeply of the brandy and used up the coke while listening to a late night jazz show on the radio. I’d never felt so bad in my entire life. I was in my forties and had lost plenty of friends, lovers, jobs, cars. I understood loss, but this was a whole new classification of agony. Fuck.

Why did I feel so wretched? Why do I still carry paper towels in my pocket? I no longer have pets. Too painful.

A year later I got sober, stopped using dope, began the rocky road away from depression and despair and back to sensibility and humanity. I didn’t sneak cocaine or drive around drunk any longer. I often wondered why I mourned Fred the cat more than I had mourned friends who had died, my dead dad, family members and lovers, and why, whenever another celebrity dies of suicide, overdose, accident, disease, old age, I have a hard time caring about it for more than a minute or two.

I finally determined, to my surprise, that I had loved Fred without restriction. Of course, I try to talk myself out of imagining that an animal can love or can feel anything remotely human but sometimes I pretend that Fred loved me, too, without limitation or expectations. I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but Fred was the most functional relationship I’d had up to that point in my life. All I needed to do was sit in a chair and dab at his drooling mouth every few minutes.

A small price to pay.

The Dangers of Meditation

I do not seek enlightenment. I know others who are in a constant quest for the will of God, the path to spirituality; they thank Him every morning that they are able to remember where they left their car keys and they pray for a cancer cure, a job, the perfect relationship. The ones so engaged do not appear more at peace, healthy or serene; often, the opposite is true. Their belief and prayers and mediations and rituals indicate a dissatisfaction with life. They complain a lot.

“If only I prayed harder and more often, dedicated more of my time to the pursuit of the intangible, to faith and grace, then my life, the world, the universe would be a better place. If I bear down and tense up, focus, I may be able to influence the future and change reality.”

It would be better if they flossed more often.

In the dark hallway of my early adolescence I quit thinking about religion, faith and worship. With limited success, I spent my leisure time trying to stay out of trouble; I struggled to keep my drug dosages manageable, to hide my true nature and thoughts from lovers, to show up on time for work and to give the impression that I was laboring for the good of the organization.

Drugs and alcohol were part of my ritual; I was unhappy and distracted. It is a truth, embarrassing to admit, that I wished for someone or something to rescue me. Not God, but a woman, a book, an experience.  My life, of course, was of my own making; I stayed in bad relationships and difficult, underpaid jobs. As a result of daily drugs and alcohol, I felt paralyzed and lacked the energy to change my situation or to move on.

Then, when I was in my early thirties, I attempted to meditate. I hoped that an answer, a blueprint, a plan for extraction would come to me if only I was sincere and rigorous in my commitment.

Each afternoon I would drink from a pint of brandy, sniff a couple lines of cocaine and take a hit of low-grade marijuana. A yoga and meditation show came on TV around 2 p.m. and the man who hosted had a calming demeanor. I wanted to learn to be more like him; unshakeable, cool, and kind. He was short, soft and unthreatening, with a benign face of indeterminate ethnicity. He wore comfortable, loose clothing

I tried two of the recommended exercises.

“Place a flower in a bowl. Take long, slow breaths and exhale through your mouth. Look at the flower, the petals, the color, the leaves and the stem. See it in its totality. Do not waver in your concentration, stare at the perfect flower and feel the beauty of nature as it flows into you, entering through your eyes and with your breath, feel it as it streams through your body, your bloodstream, your organs. Inhale the beauty of the flower and breathe out any tension.”

It was a difficult proposal, this calm breathing and deep appreciation of one of nature’s marvels while grinding my teeth and trying to inhale through clogged nasal passages that burned with cocaine residue. I crushed the flower, tossed it into the garbage and finished the brandy.

A day or two later I tuned in once again. I’d give the master another chance to liberate me from my frustrating, dismal existence. That day, I suspected that the path to enlightenment would again require controlled breathing and a steady pulse rate so I eliminated the cocaine from my breakfast. I drank off the brandy and smoked a bit more of the joint than usual; I was committed to achieving serenity and guidance from within.

The Candle Meditation. Light a candle; sit in front of it in a comfortable posture. The practice is similar to The Flower Mediation, but the candle is a flickering brightness that represents the light of the universe.

Or something.

“Sit close and stare into the heart of the flame. See the aura, the vibrating purple and yellow bands of color as you become more and more relaxed. The fire from the wick may flicker from time to time; don’t let that disturb you. It is a natural action of flame in the air. A breeze, undetectable, may blow through the room. Consider this the breath of God as he shows you the light of all creation. You are calm, you are relaxed, you are whole.”

I entered a trance state, nodding towards enlightenment, tipping into illumination.

I smelled something burning.

I opened my eyes; I was an inch away from the flame and it was singeing my hair, which had fallen forward as I tilted into the candle. I barked an obscenity and brushed at the front of my head. A lock of hair was smoldering. I slapped at my forehead and sparks and ash fell onto the carpet; I lost two inches of hair and half an eyebrow that afternoon.

Mediation was not for me. It didn’t work and it was dangerous.

Christ, I almost set myself on fire.