Tommy Angelo

“Medding” is a word I made up while working on my new book. I needed it to fill a vacancy in my vocabulary. I was missing a catch-all term that included every imaginable awareness-type activity. I’ve been using the term medding for a while now, and test-driving it on other medders, who then start using it right away as if they’d been using it all along. That tells me that this really is a useful word.

MEDDING the noun: Many things are medding. Meditation is medding. Yoga is medding. Medding includes every act of mindfulness, such as mindful standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. And mindful eating and drinking. And mindful hearing and listening. And mindful stopping. And of course it includes any attention you put on your breathing, such as following the ins and outs, or counting, or altering, or belly breathing, or just noticing. Watching your own thoughts and feelings come and go is medding. Basically, any type of intentional coming back to or remaining in the present by way of paying attention to what is observable in the herenow is medding.

MEDDING the verb: It means to do any of that stuff in the previous paragraph.

And now, in keeping with one of the great traditions of wordsmithing, I shall use the word medding in a sentence:

“I was doing some medding the other day, at the grocery store, in the cereal aisle, and I noticed that there were many brightly colored boxes.”

That was fun. How about some more…

“It’s good to start with medding in the morning.”

“Poker and medding do mix.”

Which will be in my book, now that I have a word for it.

The air pushed on the leaf, and the leaf pushed equally on the air, yet they both moved without resistance.

But none of that even occurred to me until afterward.

I was walking where I walk, and the strangest thing happened. A leaf fell from a tree. Nothing strange there. I saw it fall. That was a bit unusual. I heard it fall. Okay, now we’re talking weird.

I didn’t hear it while it was falling. It was when it hit the ground. We now enter the attempt-to-describe-the-indescribable zone…

It sounded just like what it should sound like when a leaf drops on the ground, except much louder. With more of a splashing quality than one might expect from the solid earth. Kuh-TOOSSSH, like how a boy mimics an explosion, except much shorter.

I saw the whole thing unfold, just a few feet in front of me, right before my very ears. I noticed the leaf at about eye level, and I watched it all the rest of the way down, so I knew exactly when the moment of splashdown was going to happen. This episode begs several questions: Did my brain copy and paste some sounds from my mind’s database on top of the actual sound? Did I actually hear what I heard, in the physiological sense, because I happened to be paying attention? If a leaf falls on my walk path and I’m not watching, does it really make a splash?

There’s a lot going on today out there in the world. Just now I was walking toward a one-square-block park that is mostly a grass field. From half a block away, I could see a guy out in the middle of the field doing Tai Chi, which is typically what people do when alone in the middle of a field around here.

I didn’t give him a second glance, until I got to the sidewalk next to the park and I heard sounds coming at me from the center of the field. I looked up, and I realized that from a distance, animated phone talking and Tai Chi have a lot in common.

In other local news…

The redwood trees look like this right now all over the place:

The dark green parts grew some time ago.

The light green parts grew some time this week.

You would not believe the sheer amount of shit that comes out of my suitcase. The TSA guy at the airport didn’t believe it either. (TSA = Transportation Security Administration)

I’m not talking about obvious travelware such as clothes, a meditation bench, a yoga mat, and a library. I’m talking about the bottom layer of small items in my suitcase that live there year round. I don’t always need all of it, but I always need some of it, and when I need it, I got to have it.

Kay and I were on our way home from a vacation in the far east (South Carolina) when my small rollerboard suitcase containing an astonishing volume and variety of materials – but without any unsightly bulges – went through the scanner. The scanner person called over a couple more scanner persons for a community screen gawk. I’d seen those looks of perplexity before. “He’s one of those,” they were thinking. Either that or they were just admiring my packing job.

The TSA man walked toward me carrying my suitcase. “Is this your bag?”

“Yes.”

“Gather your other belongings and meet me at that table over there. I’m going to need to have a look in this bag.”

“Okay.”

Over at the table, I sat in the chair next to the table and I was told quite plainly by the TSA man to keep my hands to myself. Behind him was a TSA gal, a little off to the side, watching everything intently. I thought she might be teaching or learning.

He unzipped the lid of my suitcase and opened it up. There on top sat a piece of lumber with two other pieces of lumber hinged to it. He moved my meditation bench onto the table. Then he dug his hand to the bottom of the suitcase and went fishing around under my clothes in my precious layer of assorted crap. He came out holding a shiny metal cylinder about the size of a finger. It was my guitar slide. It’s the kind of thing you either know what it is immediately, or you have no clue and never will. He had no clue. He looked at me with one of his eyebrows. I knew if I were to demonstrate my slide in action, using an air-guitar, it would look like I was giving him the finger, except with my pinky finger. I decided to keep my hands and my music to myself.

He went in again. This time he came out with a small metal flashlight. He sat it off to the side with the slide. In again, out again, this time with a smaller flashlight on a metal latch that works great for belt-loop transport.

In, out. A pack of guitar strings.

Then a teacup.

And a deck of cards.

And a dealer button of course.

Next up, a guitar capo. This is a small metal contraption that comes in several different designs, all of which bear no resemblance to each other, and none of which bear any resemblance to anything else on earth. The TSA man held the capo, looked at it, and shook his head. Kay and I secretly chortled at each other.

Next up, a candlestick.

By now the TSA man had moved through the unsurprisable phase, to amused. But of course he was obligated to at least act like he was trying not to show it.

The bench along with all the other extracted items were sitting on the table, next to my suitcase. The man zipped my suitcase shut and lifted it up, taking care to keep it flat which I appreciated given the traumatized condition of the contents. He said he was going to run my suitcase through the scanner again. Which he did.

When he returned to the table with my bag, he looked liked someone carrying bad news that he wished he didn’t. Kay and I noted later that despite our moment of happiness with the TSA man, he was not enjoying this. It must be a very hard job, to poke around in other people’s stuff, while they look on, anxious about being late for a flight, or about having their privacy impaled, in addition to whatever other stressors flyers pack in their mental luggage. In my chair next to the table I was definitely sitting in a place of frequent high anxiety. And this guy has to tell people to sit here.

He sat my suitcase on the table where it had been before. The watcher woman took her position. The TSA man unzipped the top. He opened it up. His hands approached the contents.

I said, “Is there something I could help you find?”

He said, “Yes. Do you have some kind of large cylinder in here?”

This question excited me, since I knew the answer.

“Yes! It’s under the yoga mat, over in the corner, behind the iPod speakers.”

The TSA man reached into my suitcase as instructed and triumphantly brought forth a white plastic Safeway bag that had a 6” x 4” cylindrical 8.8 oz. Illy coffee can in it.

Aha! The microfilm must surely be inside!

He shook the can and he heard something that wasn’t coffee. “That’s a scooper,” I said. “And the coffee can is in the plastic bag because the threads on the lid are somewhat stripped so please be careful. And it’s not really Illy coffee inside there. It’s Peets, Italian roast.”

Kay gave me the “Stop talking now” look. Then she gave the TSA guy the old “Let’s get this show on the road” look, which he didn’t see, but he obeyed. Miraculously, he was able to get all my stuff back in my suitcase while only adding two inches to the thickness. And off we went, from sea to shining sea, welcomed home by these:

I was listening to a client talk and here’s what he said…

“I’ve been running great lately. My bankroll is at an all-time high. It’s nice to have a little breathing room.”

And I thought to myself…

Yes it’s nice to have a little breathing room. Everybody should have one.

Gonnagowalkin
Look up and around
Gonnagowalkin
And notice the ground

Gonnagowalkin
Stepping and breathing
Gonnagowalkin
Bridle the seething

Gonnagowalkin
And sit by the creek
Gonnagowalkin
Seems the sky sprung a leak

Gonnagowalkin
Watch myself blinking
Gonnagowalkin
Gaze at my thinking

Gonnagowalkin
With trees in a puddle
Gonnagowalkin
With selfs in a huddle

Gonnagowalkin
And sit on a rail
Gonnagowalkin
Here comes a train, bail!

Gonnagowalkin
See only what’s there
Gonnagowalkin
See:

Gonnagowalkin
Hip hip hooray!
Gonnagowalkin
It’s how I pray

I remember decades ago hearing about Van Halen’s singer David Lee Roth and his outrageously persnickety demand that there be M&Ms waiting for him backstage at all of his concerts, with all the brown ones removed!

I recall thinking, what a dick. This is rockstardom gone too far. How terrible it must be to have to work with or for this creep. Or really to have anything to do with him at all. The thing is, I always liked Van Halen’s music. I was never a huge fan the way I am with some of the other rock bands. But I always listened to their songs when they came on the radio. Even though their lead singer was a prima donna asshole.

Up until yesterday, if you had brought up Van Halen to me, the first thoughts that would have popped into my head were: Great rock band. Spectacular and innovative guitar player. Great drum and bass grooves, and great drum and bass sound. Great singer too, as a singer, but personally, I can’t stand the guy. That final opinion, the one about the singer David Lee Roth, had grown in my mind over the years, without me even realizing it, because of the M&M thing.

Everything changed yesterday in the span of a few sentences. Kay showed me an article by Dan and Chip Heath that was in the March issue of Fast Company. The writers referenced David Lee Roth and the M&M story for their purpose, which was to make a point about businesses. I will reference the M&M story for my purpose, which is to make a point about assumptions. Here is the pertinent part of the Fast Company article:

Consider Van Halen. In its 1980s heyday, the band became notorious for a clause in its touring contract that demanded a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with all the brown ones removed. The story is true — confirmed by former lead singer David Lee Roth himself — and it became the perfect, appalling symbol of rock-star-diva behavior.

Get ready to reverse your perception. Van Halen did dozens of shows every year, and at each venue, the band would show up with nine 18-wheelers full of gear. Because of the technical complexity, the band’s standard contract with venues was thick and convoluted — Roth, in his inimitable way, said in his autobiography that it read “like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages.” A typical “article” in the contract might say, “There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes.”

Van Halen buried a special clause in the middle of the contract. It was called Article 126. It read, “There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” So when Roth would arrive at a new venue, he’d walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he’d demand a line check of the entire production. “Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error,” he wrote. “They didn’t read the contract…. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show.”

In other words, Roth was no diva. He was an operations expert. He couldn’t spend hours every night checking the amperage of each socket. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention — whether they had read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. In Roth’s world, a brown M&M was the canary in the coal mine.

Today, wanting to verify all of this, and also curious as to why Roth would let the M&M story live and thrive since it painted him ugly, I searched the web, and I found everything I was hoping to find in one paragraph at Wikipedia:

In 1997, Roth wrote a well-received memoir, entitled Crazy From the Heat. The 359-page book was whittled down from over 1,200 pages of monologues, which were recorded and transcribed by a Princeton University graduate who followed Roth around for almost a year. Among the book’s revelations, aside from stories about backyard parties, Van Halen, and catching malaria in Third world jungles, was the infamous “Brown M&Ms” clause written into Van Halen’s early contract riders. The clause was included in contracts not because of ego, but rather to make sure that structural stage specifications in the contract were read thoroughly and were adequately provided. Roth writes of a time when he found brown M&Ms in a bowl and subsequently had a fit. In the press, he was accused of causing US$85,000 worth of damage to the arena. Most of the monetary damages were due to Van Halen’s staging sinking through the floor. Roth writes, “they didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty-thousand dollars worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&Ms and did $85,000 worth of damage to the backstage area. Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?”

If I had a nickle for every time I have made a wrong assumption about someone that caused me or them suffering, I’d have an incalculable sum, because most of the wrong assumptions I make remain wrong forever because I never find out they are wrong. Or at least that’s what I assume.

Here’s what was particularly wrong about my wrong assumption about David Lee Roth and his M&Ms. One of the traits I most admire in a person, and especially in an artist, is someone who, in the words of the Heath brothers, is an “operations expert.” A detail freak. A geek in expressionist clothing. A minutia man. A preparer. Not surprisingly, I admire these qualities because that’s how I want to be. So for 25 years, I have been scolding Roth in my mind, when actually, I should have been praising him for his admirable priorities, and his clever tactic, but I couldn’t, because one wrong assumption has been in the way.

Bottom line: I heretofore commit to continually recommitting to trying to like hell to not make assumptions about people and their priorities and just take things as they are when they are without adding on my usual heaps of judgments and assumptions and other pain-causing crap.

My first year as an altar boy, the masses were in Latin. It took me a long time to learn all the words. I was very proud to have done it and thereby earned the right to be an altar boy. And I was definitely going to be a priest when I grew up.

My second year as an altar boy, they changed everything to English. I was really pissed off at God for making me learn the Latin mass and then changing his mind.

Soon after that, when I was 10, I had my first doubt about my religion. It sprang directly from one specific bit of logic. I already knew that Jesus was the Son of God. He was divine. At age 10 I learned that the Jews thought that Jesus was merely a prophet. He was special, yes, but he wasn’t divine, according to them. And they were absolutely sure they were right. But my side was sure we were right too. This meant that there was a large group of people – either us or them – that was absolutely sure they were right, but must be absolutely wrong, since both sides could not be right. How could I really know for sure which side was right? Wasn’t it at least possible that my side was wrong? I determined yes, it was possible. In that case, it was simply up to me to pick a side. Yet I really had nothing tangible to go on.

And thus was born on the earth another agnostic.

Over the next ten years I morphed gradually until one day I decided to call myself an atheist based on the grounds that I really, really, really didn’t think there was an interactive all-knowing omni-present universe-creating being.

20+ years after that, I started meditating, which is basically a type of concentration exercise. Because of my mental workouts every morning, I am now able to beam myself back in time and do things like feel the rack of bells in my hand that I used to ring during mass when the priest drank from the chalice and ring again when he ate the Eucharist. I can feel my knees on the hard wood of the first of three stairs that lead up to the altar. From side stage, I look up at the priest. I can see him move ever so slowly. I can hear little bits of throat-clearing and clothes rustling from the cavernous reverberating chamber where people are sitting in silence.

I can see the priest lift the chalice to drink. With two hands. Father always used two hands.

From my books on meditation and mindfulness, I have learned how to pay attention to what I am doing. When I first get up in the morning, I walk slowly to the kitchen sink, I turn the water on, I hear it, I see it, I put a glass under the water and I watch and listen as the glass fills. I turn the water off. I stand straight. I put my feet together and make sure again that I am standing straight. I raise the water to my mouth. With two hands. Always two hands. It is impossible to be unmindful with two hands on the chalice.

it was so quiet on my bench just now, it stunned me when it stopped, but not because there were any additional sounds at the end, see, i had unplugged the dvr this morning, something I only do sometimes since its hard to reach the cable to unplug it and even harder to plug it back in, and its across the room from where ive been sitting on my bench lately so in terms of decibels it adds approximately zero, but it’s the loudest thing around so i hear it, unless there has been fallen moisture outside, which there was last night, in which case i hear drops clacking around out there, but i can still easily hear the dvr over that, except for today because i unplugged it, and i can hear the refrigerator make occasional sounds two rooms away, and even though i do these long stretches of sitting on my meditation bench every morning, there are some mornings that are quieter than others, sometimes much quieter, like what happened before I decided to start typing, its a quiet that’s independent of whatever rarefaction and compression travels by way of air onto my eardrums, because the quiet i set out to write about here is aided by silence, but not dependent on it, because its all between my ears, where no actual sound is generated unless you count mental activity as sound, and if you do, you could think of what usually goes on between my ears as noise, kind of like the dvr machine, but way louder than that, and anytime you have a loud sound going, one you barely even notice, and then you notice it, you notice how loud it is, and then if all of a sudden someone turns it off, well, you definitely notice that, funny, it was there, and you dont notice it, then its gone, and you notice it, and its stunning, so much so that you might even want to write about it into cyberspace, but then you might think, hmmm, thats kind of weird, to write about something that isnt even there as if it was so important that it was worth writing about, and thinking that is okay too because really thats just the noise getting in the way of the quiet again as usual, so quiet, it was, this morning

“I started paying attention to my breathing and it made everything worse.”Close Encounters of the Third Kind dvdrip

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The Mission movie download