While I was grabbing Molly I dropped the leash of the other dog. As I wrangled Molly’s collar back on, Lupé the chihuahua casually walked through the gate to the reception area, looked around for a minute and took a dump on the floor under the secretaries. The guy behind the counter who dropped to his hands and knees to try to extract her from underneath their desk are mumbled, “At least it wasn’t on the carpet.” He basically shrugged and just started to take care of it.

Nobody looked happy about it, and three people dove on it with alcohol wipes and paper towels and disinfecting spray. But they were nice about it and said stuff like, “Oh, don’t worry about it,” and, “This is a veterinary hospital! That happens all the time.” I was still really embarrassed but I felt a little better.

As I waited with the dogs in one of the seating areas, I sat in a corner that was kind of sheltered from everything by racks of dog and cat food so the girls might be a little calmer. I couldn’t see the front desk and they couldn’t see me and evidently they forgot I was there because I heard someone whose voice I didn’t recognize say, “Oh. My. God. It smells like SHIT in here!” (mumble mumble words explaining dog incident mumble) “Jeez, what kind of dog was it?” (mumble mumble explanation mumble) “A CHIHUAHUA?! That’s from a CHIHUAHUA?! Wowwwww…” (mumble something mumble mumble) “Yeah, I know. But still!”

Then I heard a drawer slam followed by the sound of a spray can. The air immediately smelled fresher. Berry something. It kept on spraying for like 45 seconds. “Fsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss” without any break. I was still embarrassed, but I couldn’t help laughing a little. 

First, let me just assure you that there’s nothing ominous about my silence. Life is good; I’m taking tons of pictures and learning about the craft of photography and even doing some photo work. My family is good. The spring is beautiful in Santa Fe. My old dogs are getting older, which I worry about, but it’s very good to remember to love them as much as I can as often as I can. I’m still writing, but just not posting a lot of stuff to this dumb quasi-diary. No crazy car accidents. It remains incredibly good to not be playing music, it’s still one of the kindest things I’ve ever done for myself, and I’ve even started selling instruments. I’m cooking all the time, and I’m trying to figure out how to best combine my interest in Southeast Asian food with my interest in outdoor cooking now that the weather’s nicer. Whatever. I’m having fun and most of my online silence is me living away from the computer. A good thing.

The other component of my online silence is that I’ve basically lost interest in the “unfocused blog” idea, and I’m exploring ideas about doing something that’s a little more pointed. Now that I have some very nice and “realer” outlets for the parts of me that used to cling to music, an “unfocused blog” is just not enough to scratch any real creative itch. Part of me craves a different or at least more specific challenge. When I’m “between outlets,” then this rambling, unedited and unfocused writing outlet is better than nothing, but “better than nothing” isn’t a gap I need to fill right now. Photography provides me with a lot of the challenges that attracted me to music. And, even more importantly, I haven’t learned enough about it that I’ve stopped enjoying it. 

So, on the very unlikely chance that someone’s actually reading this – if I shut this down, I’ll be back. Some ideas I’m juggling:

• I’m more likely to craft a “real” photography website before I get back into any blogging. It’ll be a nice challenge, and Buddha knows that nobody’s going to do it for me.
• I’m already offering my help to some people with projects that I believe in, including a little charity in New York that provides birthday cakes for kids when their families can’t afford it and a permaculture landscape design startup in Santa Fe. So while it may seem outwardly unimpressive for me to just do the work my 2-3 full time jobs and family life require, I’ve got other stuff going on. Always.
• I’m thinking about starting up another little company of my own, or at least blogging about something that might generate some kind of audience. If I can craft an idea that represents an attractive-sounding challenge for me, I’ll give it a try. I’ve got the energy for a startup but haven’t convinced myself of the right idea yet.
• I’m going to put together at least one, probably two, photo books in a small run for friends and family now that they’re so easy to create and so affordable. (And on-demand is cool! I don’t have to print 500 of them and wonder what to do with 499, I can create 5 and if someone else wants one, turn that into 6 without breaking the bank.) It’s not because I think I’ve arrived at some epic level of achievement, but rather because I’m excited about what I’m doing and want to share my excitement with people I care about.
• I’m getting into printing photos a little more; this is weird for me, a departure from how I treated music. When I wrote my own music, I almost never recorded any of it. I liked the noncommittal aloofness of it, kind of like “there’s no way of capturing the brilliance of this concept in a recording, so I’m not even going to bother trying.” (Yeah, right!) So anyway, me actually printing photos out represents a type of commitment that I rarely exposed my music to, and it’s nice. Nice to get it out of the way, to work past it. In some weird way, it may even come full circle and help me feel differently about music one day. But for now, I don’t actually care; it’s enough for it to be what it is. And again, it’s not because I feel like I’ve “arrived,” it’s because I’m excited about what I’m doing and want to do more of it, and the best way to do more of something is by doing more of something. Sounds simple, hard to put into practice.
• I’m dabbling with a lot of learning for work and updating my skillset. Partly so I can do good work for my clients, partly to keep myself challenged, and partly because “you never know.” 
• I’m slowly – SLOWLY – scribbling out some backbone ideas for a novel. I may never put enough effort into it to finish, but it’s an enjoyable challenge and even when it leaves me frustrated, I find that it opens up creative channels I didn’t know about or had forgotten about. So even if it remains nothing but a creative exercise, I learn from it and grow.
• There are lots of even un-sexier things I need to handle, like projects around the house and taking advantage of several contiguous broken-toe-free months to get out and run again.
• Geocaching; good, dumb fun that I want to do more of in the spring. It gets us out of the house and takes us places we’d never find on our own and exposes me to odd places and things to photograph. It’s a great way of getting out of your own head and coming up with something to do that isn’t laden with expectations or burdened with familiarity. Even just hiking more has been great. I really like New Mexico. No, I love it. On one hand, it feels familiar, like home, but on the other hand, it’s still 99.9% undiscovered to me. So without any financial or spiritual or personal goal attached to it, it’s just great to get out and see and hear and smell and live the experiences that are here right in front of me.  

That’s the short list; if I sat and brainstormed for 20 minutes, I’m sure I’ve left large blocks of things out. Things that I’m planning and may never finish, things that I haven’t even planned. But I’m in an exploring mode, and trying out Stuff is what keeps me entertained these days. It’s not that I abandon everything I start, far from it. But I don’t pressure myself about it; I have so many ideas and so many areas to explore that there are bound to be some false starts. 

I’ve had people ask me what I’ve been doing since I quit playing music, and my answer comes across as sarcastic. (Imagine!) “I’m pretty busy not-playing music.” And for most people, that’s an underwhelming response; I’ve heard, “I’m not impressed,” several times recently, and in almost exactly the same way, so I noticed. But here’s the thing about it: 1) it’s true, and it’s great. Not-playing has been very good for me. 2) I don’t actually care if my life sounds impressive or not; what I was doing when I was playing wasn’t impressive either, and I’ve spent my “artistic” career choosing unimpressive paths. If I’d wanted to be impressive, I wouldn’t have stuck with piano and I wouldn’t have played jazz. (Well, that’s not strictly true, I’m stubborn. But the point is valid; it’s easier to be a rock star by playing rock music, so to speak.) If I wanted to take impressive photos, I’d forget about cliche sunsets and common birds and find some naked chicks or something. Whatever.

“I’m walking around outside” is probably not any more impressive, yet hiking and being in nature is fundamentally nourishing to me. “I grill food behind my house a lot” isn’t impressive, but I love it, I learn from it and improve, and I’m getting pretty effin’ good at it for some things. “I’m taking pictures of common birds and treacly sunsets” is probably not that impressive, but taking dumb, cliche pictures of this barren landscape has become important to me and so has my work on getting better at it. It’s probably not impressive that I live with all these big, dumb, ugly mutts that I love being around. (Who, by the way, aren’t dumb or ugly or even necessarily that big.) It’s probably not impressive that I have a charming kid or that I’ve been married for a decade and a half or that I’m learning the difference between Western and Mountain bluebirds, or that I know the difference between an ocotillo cactus and a cholla and a prickly pear. Or that I spend more time reading about comparative religion issues than most people spend watching TV. I could go on about all the unimpressive stuff that I do, but that defeats the purpose – it makes it sound like I’m trying to make it sound impressive. And I’m actually not. My point is that – impressive or not – I’m quite busy just being alive, and from where I’m sitting, that’s more than good enough. 

I know I’m getting wordy and rant-y. (Imagine!) I guess I’ve just heard, “Hmm. That’s not very impressive,” too many times recently to consider it just a joke. It’s actually kind of funny to me because I’m more content with more things in my life than perhaps ever before, but I have to admit that it still gets me thinking. I guess I’m not even sure if I wanted to set out to do something impressive what it would be and if it would be Suitably Impressive to others. And impressive compared to what? Or who? What is it that I’m being compared to? Me, 10 years ago? (I can’t imagine why.) Strangers? Which ones? Imagine my shock at realizing that I’ve never even taken the time to learn what or whose Level of Impressiveness I’ve been competing against lo these many years!

I’m actually smiling as I write all this; partly because I’m enjoying my own rambling more than I should, partly because I really, really like my life and find it very funny to get glimpses of how other people might see it, and partly because I’m catching myself in my old Suffering Artist role – like if the world was never impressed by my music, it was surely because it was so brilliant. So if I’ve now reached beyond Too-brilliant Music and actually achieved an entire life that “the world” (or 2 or 3 people in it, to be more accurate) doesn’t “get,” then Suffering Artist thinks we are most assuredly on the right path. And partly because the me that’s making fun of all this secretly still thinks this way.

It’s all pretty funny, just as it should be. But maybe I won’t stop pointless blogging after all. I’d hate to not-impress someone by giving up another pointless activity. (Heh…)

Monday was hard; 50 things to start the week with, all due at once, Anette home vacuuming and blasting television while I’m on conference calls, my daughter and her friend running around. It felt a little overwhelming early on, and I was having a hard time just getting anywhere. I think a little of my practice kicked in, and I stopped screwing around and just started and finished one thing. And then moved on to the next thing to start and finish. It sounds stupid, I’m sure, and it probably is. But it’s so easy to get mired when we’re multitasking that doing the first thing first just doesn’t occur to us.

What’s mindfulness got to do with it? Well, that’s kind of what the practice is, ignoring the pointless distractions and getting back to the matter at hand. If I’m practicing being mindful about, say, breathing, my mind will absolutely, definitely wander, and the practice is to gently bring my attention back to the breathing as often as I need to, over and over. Having been practicing this lately, I found myself using the same kind of quiet discipline and turning my focus to my work, over and over, as often as necessary. When my mind wandered, something kicked in and gently brought my focus back to the task in front of me. Suddenly, I was cranking out the work. Temporarily liberated from “not knowing where to start” by the simple act of starting. 

About an hour ago, I had another “moment.” My daughter’s got a cough and was laying between us; Anette had been up with her an hour or so earlier getting her some Children’s Cough Placebo or whatever the ineffective kid’s medication was called, and she’d still roll over every 3 or 4 minutes and cough freely in my face. (And then back the other way to cough in Anette’s face. We’re all going to be sick.) This kept me awake, as might be expected. I mean, almost everything keeps me awake, so it may as well be my kid coughing in my face. I was laying facing away from her when I heard The Sound – a dog pissing, very close to my head. I yelled something like, “Arrrrghg!” and I squinted around to see what I could. My wife and kid jolted out of whatever half-asleep state they were in. Loki, the puppy was bolting away, I could tell his shape and gait even with my advanced myopia thanks to the fairly bright backlit clouds that cast a glow into our room. I was instantly out of bed and had one foot in a dog pee puddle. My rage flared.

Anette asked what was going on, and I told her Loki had peed on the floor. I used a different vocabulary to describe the situation, of course. I grabbed the pillow he’d peed on – I think he was marking it because the guest dog, Gracie, had been laying on it and he’s young enough to still be kind of possessive. He really never does stuff like that, it’s pretty out of character. That didn’t make it piss me off less. I started to walk toward the other side of the house with the pee-pillow and Anette turned on her nightstand lamp. Loki was slinking ahead of me in the dark hallway, and I was going to shoo him outside when we got to the living room. But mid-hallway, he slunk back around and headed back toward the bedroom even when I tried to stop him. I was furious, and I howled with anger and turned back around, half crouching in the totally dark hallway and trying to grab his collar with my right hand. He’s very quick, but he was only going just fast enough to stay out of my reach, mocking me.

Back in the bedroom, Anette and Sydney were fully awake. They were both propped up on pillows, and Loki smashed over them to avoid my grasp. He was carefully avoiding the spaces between and around them and instead stomped squarely on their bodies, which spiraled my anger even further. (Kind of a “How dare he!” type of outrage.) I notice myself still holding the pee pillow in my other hand, which infuriated me even more (“How dare he?” Part II, or something), and I was cursing like a cabbie and trying to grab him as he stomped over my human family, back and forth.

Anette and Sydney didn’t budge as he evasively smashed them, and some part of my Hulk-mind noticed them just calmly watching the back and forth, only moving their eyes as though following a tennis match. Anette shifted out of the bed and quietly said, “Why don’t I take him outside? Everyone in the house is shaking.” I sort of froze to take assessment. I took a look around me and saw my other dogs nervously circling around, noticed the pee pillow still in my left hand and extended away from my body, felt my Popeye grimace of a half-asleep-glasses-wearing-angry-guy trying to grab a puppy in a mostly dark room while holding a pee soaked pillow in one hand. Denied the chance to implement my “put the dog outside for a little while” plan for justice, I stomped out of the room, still cursing and grumbling, threw the pillow in the laundry room and slammed the door.

The insanity of it all hit me as I walked back to the room with Dog Pee Smell Remover and a roll of some kind of paper product so I could sit and mop dog pee out of the carpet next to where I put my head when I “sleep.” My daughter watched me and made some small talk. (It’s weird to catch your 4 year old making small talk.) The anger totally faded, and it only took a couple minutes once some part of me allowed me to let go of it. This is a new thing for me; I used to pride myself for being able to maintain a grudge for years at a time – and I don’t mean some weak, part time conceptual grudge, I’m talking about all consuming constant sleep-depriving single-minded anger for months and years. I took my freshly lucid non-angry state and used the pleasant clarity to dig up a humidifier and some kid’s Vick’s Rub to try to help with her cough. It was then that I became pretty aware of how my mindfulness practice had facilitated my quick shift.

What’s meditation got to do with it? Everything. My imperfect and human initial reaction of anger, not so much, but the ability to let go of it, 100%. In the practice of mindfulness, emotions and distractions are permitted and even expected, but you’re not expected to follow them – that’s the discipline, that’s what you practice. So after having practiced watching emotions like anger pop into my mind and then working to not let my attention be carried away by them, I found myself doing the same thing in real life. I had pee to sop up and a daughter to talk to, and my attention quietly and automatically went there and the anger dissappated since it was no longer needed or relevant. 

Again, it probably sounds dumb or  even imaginary, but for me, just letting go of my anger over a minute or two is a big deal. It wasn’t like some automatic saintly response, nothing like that. The effects of mindfulness practice are not dramatic for me, they’re subtle. It was like driving very quickly toward a tree, and rather than hitting the tree as I normally might, I made a tiny course adjustment early enough that I easily cleared the tree. Not a last minute swerve, either, just a tiny correction. Little differences that result in a greatly different outcome. Nothing more complex than me catching myself doing stuff that I’ve always done but haven’t always caught myself doing. 

Wide awake, I sat and did zazen for 15 minutes. I was pleased with my focus, normally it knocks me out at the end of a day, and while it should have bugged me, I found it pleasing to be distracted by laughter instead of stress or anger or frustration. I caught myself chuckling and snickering at the ridiculousness of it all during and after my meditation. I’d caught a little glimpse of how funny life really is and how silly my own actions are even when I’m not being silly. My half-asleep wife wanted to know why I was snickering, and I couldn’t quite get the words out to explain how funny it struck me to see how seriously I take myself in such matters as dog night-peeing, or the weird fun I was experiencing at having caught myself in it.

So it’s been a full night. Face-coughing, dog pee, rage, laughter, meditation, humidification, Children’s Placebos, a mini-satori, and now blog-rambling. Maybe I can get some sleep now.

I was a little scared of it, but my house is big enough and we’ve got decent, walled-off space outside for them to play, and the neighbors on both sides have dogs that bark at least as much as ours, so as long as things were reasonably under control – which they were – it wasn’t going to generate any controversy. The 4 extra dogs were in pairs, 2 little mini-dogs (Bijou and Marley), sort of Wiener-dog mixes, and 2 maxi-dogs (Shush and Tiger) that were bigger than any that live with us, hovering around 100 pounds.

 My 3 old dogs are from the New York City area, and they carry with them a certain kind of attitude that seems worrisome but works out really well. (Some New Yorkers are like this; a tough or daunting exterior when you cross them on the street, but incredibly helpful, kind people if they see that you need something. It’s not a facade, there’s real toughness, but there’s a lot more under the surface.)  

Watson is a pimpish character from Brooklyn. A cool, distant-to-strangers Rottie/Shepherd mix, he’s actually very sweet with people, but won’t take any shit from other dogs. (He was actually great with other dogs, too, until we got a second one and he had to “protect” her one time. After that moment, he wouldn’t take any shit from other dogs.) He was remarkably patient and kind to all our visitors. Ruby’s a neurotic beauty from Staten Island, and she walks around and grumbles to herself. If she were a person, she’d smoke, drink coffee, and be on her cell phone while she was getting her nails done; she’d probably take diet pills and and be a hypochondriac. She ended up chewing on the head of Tiger to scold him for getting too close while she was eating. It was a warning, there was no real malice behind her head-chewing, and the big, young hundred pound puppy just stood there while this lanky, 40 pound dog in her later years made terrifying noises and bit his head. He was very patient about the whole thing, no hard feelings. (Dogs are so cool.) He comes across as a little slow sometimes so we kept an eye on them, and it was just fine.

Sheba is from New Jersey, and she’s got a big mouth. She looks and sounds like a junkyard dog because, well, she’s a junkyard dog. If you were to poll strangers, 10 out of 10 would say she’s the scariest when they first enter our house. But she’s really all bark, and is the sweetest, most affectionate soul in the house. Even knowing that, we are surprised at how gentle and cool she was with the visitors, and on more than one occasion, she would quietly get in the middle of our dogs and the visitors if they started barking. The noisy, terrifying Jersey Girl is actually a natural peacemaker. Loki’s our puppy, he’s quickly becoming our biggest dog, but he’s a big goof. He makes scary noises at strangers sometimes, which is mostly OK with me, and there’s not a mean bone in his body.

Burt the Burd was really cool, a pleasant surprise. He’s not hand trained, but he likes being in the middle of things so he’d chatter as loud as the noise floor in the house encouraged him to. We’d drive up to the house, and all the dogs would be lined up in the window barking at us, but over the top of them all, we’d hear Burt tweeting away right along with them in the piccolo range. It was nice to have a happy little bird in the house just doing his thing. I thought our house might be too cold for him, but a trip to the zoo in Albuquerque right after Christmas alleviated my fears – their budgie exhibit is a walk-in cage totally exposed to the elements, and those plucky little characters were flying around and chattering in 28 degree weather. 

Bijou was a little sweetheart. She’d sit with me while I worked. She’s needy, in that she CONSTANTLY wants up, but she’s so small it hardly matters. My daughter loved being near the little dogs. Marley’s actually a sweet little guy, but he barks at tall people. I’m not short. There were little issues with him, I guess, but he gets along with my puppy, Loki, really well even though they’re 90% different in size. They’ve known each other since Loki was tiny, so it’s only natural. It’s very different having small dogs around, I’m not totally used to it, but I’m not complaining, they’re sweet little monsters.

There’s no pretty way to say that 8 dogs makes for a lot of dog shit. It snowed and froze and melted and froze and snow, and we had to really make an effort to keep things halfway under control. Also, hundred pound dogs leave much bigger evidence behind compared to, say, 50 pound dogs. Or 7 pound dogs. These are things you sort of understand but don’t fully grasp when you agree to take on 4 extra dogs for a little while.

The only real hassle was the smallest dog of all, Marley. He pissed all over our house. He’s probably 2 years old, and he’s tiny, and he’s unfixed. He’s the kind of dog that will jump up under a bigger dog and bite his wang and hang there, and the bigger dog will stand there, unsure what to do. If you were at a bar, and a guy who was a foot tall jumped up and bit your groin, you’d have to be careful how you handled it. On one hand, you could probably stomp him out without much fuss, but then you’d really seem like a jerk for kicking some 1-foot-tall guy’s ass, or you could let him continue to hang from your wang by his teeth, and that’s not sustainable. You’ve got options, but none of them will make you look cool in front of chicks.

So this little dog was marking all over my house, and the big dogs that live here were all a little confused. The day after Christmas, I caught him pissing on one of my daughter’s gifts, and before I could get some paper towels and the anti-dog-piss stuff, I caught Watson marking over the little guy’s mark. I scolded him, and he obviously felt bad and didn’t do it again; it’s probably been 10 years since he’s had an “accident” of any sort, but he was also like, “Oh, come ON! This little dude is jacking up my whole scene! He’s making me look bad!” Watson’s the alpha dog here, and he was as powerless to stop this little dude from muscling in on his territory as we were. His looks of informed frustration are always heartbreaking, and this was worse than usual.

One afternoon, we came home from town, and I was carrying my daughter into bed. She’d fallen asleep in the car. While I was trying to cover her up and take off her shoes, that little dog ran in and started barking at me. It annoyed me a little, because a) it’s my house, b) my daughter is asleep, and c) this little dude is getting territorial on me. (Me!) So after Sydney was secure and snug, I turned around and raised my arms and ran after him. I do it to my dogs all the time, and we bark and growl and wrestle and it’s all good dog fun, and everyone gets riled up for a couple minutes and then we all calm down again. I do it just to goof with them sometimes, and sometimes to break the ice if they seem like they’re getting too serious about something, and usually a little chasing and playing burns off their extra energy and they have fun and we bond and everything’s pleasantly calm afterwards.

Evidently, this little 7 pound dog hadn’t played with a person in quite this way before because he bolted off with his tail between his legs followed by a 30-foot trail of pee, ending in a pee-circle by the front door where he finally stopped. Anette picked him up and he looked pretty shaken up, he was shivering a little. As she held him, he lifted one paw up and looked at me as though to say, “NO MORE!!! PLEASE STOP!!!! I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE!!!!!!!” I felt horrible, I was just trying to play a little and get him to burn off a little energy because he’s such a spunky little dude, and it sort of wrecked his day. It seemed like a pretty big reaction to 2 seconds of half-hearted chasing, but I still feel guilty.

He wasn’t at all mad at me, he let me hold him and calm him down, and he wasn’t extra-edgy with me later (little dogs seem to be good at holding grudges when they want to, and he was perfectly sweet). I’m not convinced that it wasn’t just an act – he instantly stopped shivering when we put him down and went off to attack my big puppy, Loki – and he was back to normal just that quickly. But he pretended to think twice about barking at me next time I left and returned. It didn’t actually stop him, mind you, but he pretended to have thought twice at least. And he may not have peed in the house any more after that. It’s hard to tell with a little guy like that. 

I don’t think he’ll actually learn anything from it since it’s probably the first and only time he’ll ever get chased by an arm-raised 6 foot guy in cowboy boots. His reaction was way out of proportion to what I had in mind, and I really felt bad for shaking him up, even if it was only for 30 seconds and then he instantly got over it. Me, I got a pretty valuable lesson in “a little bit goes a long way.” Poor little guy.

Without knowing if it’s intentional or not, I can’t tell if it’s funny or if I should burn it up to allay the bad juju. I mean, even if it was meant as a genuine well-wish from a well-wisher, hasn’t she read any of those “deal with the devil” stories to know that you have to be more specific when you say stuff like that? Or King Midas type myths and parables? 

And how would you state it more safely to make it more evil-deity-proof? “May the coming year bring you the changes you’re looking for.” I’m not sure I like that, actually; that’s like another Chinese curse that says “May you find what you’re looking for.” How about: “May the coming year bring you as much change as you want or can handle.” Doesn’t really sound like well-wishing, I guess, still reads like a thinly-veiled Chinese curse. “May your future bring you change, if that’s what you’re hoping for, and no change if you’re trying to remain the same, but good luck with that because stuff changes all the time, and what a weird thing to put on a Christmas card in the middle of winter anyway because the winter is marked by the solstice, which is an important milepost for seasonal change in most cultures. But hey, loosen up, it’s just a wish.” Nah.

In a perfect world, there’d be a Simpsons quote to clarify the situation, but nothing jumps to mind. So, in mining another important repository of knowledge, kung fu movies, I think Chow Yun Fat’s character in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon said (in subtitles), “May your future be fortunate,” and I like the sound of that. Then again, everyone dies in the end of movies like that, so it’s probably a curse, too.

What was wrong with “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Holidays,” anyway?

I don’t know the mechanics of it, but I sleep fairly well out there when I’m actually asleep, and I’m actually asleep a larger percentage of the time I’m laying in the tent, compared to in the house. Sure, I still wake up, and sure, it can take a while to settle in, but it’s better. I get back to sleep quicker when I do wake up, and the process of drifting off is pretty quiet and relaxing, not the tense “anything-might-happen” affair that can go on in my real bed 10 feet north. Sure, when the wind picks up, or when a little rain hits the area, I wake up, but it’s not a big deal. It might be the crickets that ease my entry into sleep, or the fresh air blowing through all night, more or less gently even when it’s gusty because it’s set up right next to 2 walls in a corner. It’s been good. But…

It’s not perfect. In the house, tons of things wake me up. 1, 2, or 3 dogs sharing space with me on the bed, the snoring of the Danish, nightly visits from the little person I live with, cat madness, fan squeeking, “you’ve got mail” bells on my computer, refrigerator noises. But outside, some of the stuff that happens can feel a little more dramatic because I’m more exposed. It doesn’t happen as often, though.

For example, night one outside, I heard coyotes. They weren’t anywhere close, and at least I was safe from the new black cat that’s in our house. I had set up the tent outside my wall under some fruit trees, and with nothing but nylon tent material between me and a pack of coyotes out there somewhere, I lost the innocent wonder of sleeping under the stars and switched into “what was that sound?” mode and went from deep, restful sleep into a tortured half-awake state where every tree groan and grass rustling got a little attention, and probably warranted. My wife and kid had actually joined the adventure earlier on day 1, but after about 20 minutes of sleep, my dogs started barking and howling because we were 18 inches out of their reach on the other side of the wall. Damned dogs. Wife and kid went back in. But until the coyotes, it had been more or less restful, and just like everything else that happens in the middle of the night, it didn’t bother me quite enough to actually get up and do anything about it, like go in the house and stop worrying about it. And I’d had as much as 80 or 90 minutes of peace, even though it was non-contiguous. This was promising.

So I moved the tent inside the walls. My next attempt was more or less good, and I left off the rain cover so I could see the stars. For some reason, I forgot about 30+ years of myopia, and as pleasant as the breeze was, I didn’t get much out of the stars themselves. It was tricky and drawn out to actually get to sleep, though. One of the cats was running around, curious, and the little bell on the collar was keeping me awake. Sheba, one of my dogs, was pacing back in forth in front of the unfamiliar structure for a while, but it wasn’t bad. Still promising.

I was in there on Saturday morning. At a pretty early hour, I heard shoveling. I knew it was my neighbor, she’d had a load of gravel dumped in her driveway. It woke me up, but I didn’t have any of the rage that would have come with a shovel-awakening if I’d been inside, and I started to drift off again, my safety unquestioned. Sheba showed up outside the tent where she could see the shoveling and started growling and barking. From inside the tent, I hissed at her to shut up. She didn’t hear me. I used my dad-voice and said, “Sheba!” A deep male voice responded from maybe 6 or 8 feet away. “Sheba! Sweets! Sweets! It’s OK Sheba!” I went from half awake to fight-or-flight in milliseconds. I’ve yelled at the dogs lots of times when they’re out barking, and a male voice has never answered. I knew I didn’t have my glasses inside the tent, and my head was throbbing with the pain of sudden awakening and all the unanswered questions. How were my dogs talking to me? Why does Sheba have the voice of a middle aged man? (My neighbor is a woman who lives alone.) Why did she call me Sweets? What the hell was going on? I fumbled with the zipper and stumbled out of the tent, and there was noone and nothing there as far as my feeble peepers could see. Sheba had stopped. So my day began a couple hours early with a crack-withdrawal headache and a bunch of mumbled, unanswered questions. It turned out that the neighbor’s friend had brought his new dog, Sweets, over while he was helping shovel, and she had run up to the fence when she’d seen Sheba and he had come over to get her. By the time I was up to check things out, he was in the back yard. Mystery solved, headache eventually over.

Monday, I figured I’d leave the door flap to the tent open; maybe one of my dogs would join me, the breeze would be nice, and the cat sure had been curious. As far as I knew, none of the dogs checked on me more than once, but the cat kept coming in and rubbing against my face and purring and pushing me around. It kept me awake several times, but it was fine, a little bonding with the new animals shouldn’t hurt. But then she kicked fully into night mode and started jumping on me from outside the tent and clawing the back of my neck to attack my necklace and stuff. I heard her stretch forward and start to claw my inflatable mattress, and I had this half-awake vision of it popping like a ballon and me squirting around the inside of my tiny tent on top of a deflating air mattress while it let out a giant Bronx cheer and figured enough was enough. You can take my sleep, you can claw my neck, but if you mess with my air mattress, it’s all over. So, out. Zzzzzzzzip. I slept fitfully the second half of the night, but the first half of the night was so choppy that it wasn’t totally fulfilling. 

Last night I stayed up late. I was up late the night before, too, because I realized there was an eclipse happening and I couldn’t fully go back to sleep when I knew I could be witnessing the unusual. So I figured I’d sleep in the tent where I could at least zip out dogs and cats and kids for a couple hours, it’s still better than sleeping on the sofa or floor inside once I’m inevitably squeezed out of the bed. I knew if I was lucky that I could get 7 or even (don’t jinx it don’t jinx it don’t jinx it) 8 hours of sleep even settling in late. I had just started “100 Years of Solitude” and couldn’t put it down anyway. I slept pretty well. I still woke up periodically, but drifted easily back to sleep. I really woke up for the first time at the first signs of daylight, probably 6:00am or so, and it didn’t bother me – I knew I still had as much as 2 hours of sleep available, no pressure. Seconds later, I hear a strange, electronic beeping, irregular and percussive. I figure it’s my neighbor putting her car keys in and getting ready for work, you know the beeping and stuff cars do when you first put the keys in the ignition? But I realized that that definitely wasn’t her car’s sound, this wasn’t regular, it was like a cross between some kind of beeping and the clicking and borping of an old video game. Puzzled enough to really start waking up, I wondered where that kind of noise would come from so early. 

Then the throb of a UFO engine (as my addled, half-asleep brain provided as a possible option) jolted me fully awake. Not panic, but the heart rate picked up and I got the pre-headache head throbbing. Then I remembered – I’d left on my computer and keyboard, and the cat had probably hopped on it. All the windows are open, so the sound would have been crystal clear in the tent as well as in my bedroom. I wrestled with the zipper in the early morning light, not too bad, and on the way through, I dumped my blanket and pillow on my bed where my wife, daughter and at least one big dog were sleeping. Not a creature was stirring, though, which was pretty weird. The dogs can hear the Fedex truck and bark at it from two miles away, but throbbing UFO sounds INSIDE THE HOUSE at fairly high volume don’t even warrant a growl? Was I the only one who could hear it? I’m clumsily assembling the facts in my head as I stumble toward my office. I’ve even recognized the sound now – it’s a Roland TR808 drum machine patch, the sounds had all been the beeping and clicking of a vintage analog drum machine. The initial beeping had been a TR808 cowbell, it was starting to add up. The throbbing sound came from several bass notes, roughly one small cats’ worth, being mashed at the same time.

What I couldn’t figure out was what was keeping them sustained? It wasn’t the first time she’d hopped on one of my instruments, but surely, loud pulsing bass notes would chase the cat off. So the notes were somehow stuck, or maybe she had also stood on the computer keyboard as she was escaping and accidentally recorded the throbbing? I walked into the office without glasses on and squinted at the keyboard. The creamy blob of Mocha’s shape was frozen in the middle of the keyboard. She saw me (didn’t hear me first because of the flying saucer rumble) and bolted, and the sound instantly stopped. She’d been doing it ON PURPOSE. When she saw me, she snapped into “I’m an insane, young cat and will now run as fast as I can around the house and vacinity” mode. We all have a job to do, i guess. My wife got up to see what it had been, and the day has officially begun. 

I looked at the clock. 6:18am. If I didn’t count the time I was awake last night, I got 5 hours sleep. But since I wasn’t asleep while I was awake, I won’t count it, and I know the real number is probably closer to 4. I’ve had nights like this for almost 14 years in a row, and I keep wondering when and how it will catch up with me.