Zen and the Art of Forgetting

Books will jump off the shelves in your local library if you would go there. Try it, not book jumping but libraries and say out loud "Zen", The Do it yourself folks will say this is the way? Way where I am not sure. Myself starting fucking around with the keyboard again. Today I looked back via my personal history channel to look at some of my old blogs and as my unclear smoke filled nerve endings are not firing somehow I was remembering the days when we sailed on a Coal Ship to New Castle. Captain Cook was from Yorkshire just like my Midshipmen named "Lucky". And the air at sea was sooty somewhat similar to the air here when a fruit ship from South America docks near by smoking 24/7.

 With the current state of data storage and the ability to take and capture pixels in the dark, on a cliff or under the sea I myself have a hell of a time keeping track of all my pictures.

Most of these kids today that have those funny on-line names probably don't remember sticking film in the camera. So I forget things and getting good at that, like a Gold Star next to your name. The brain that sits on some heads the experts always claim to have these Billion and Billion of connections. Could this neuron complex connections handle all my sensory input ?

So am I forgetting things, which is normal or am I over  overwhelmed. 

                                        I just did a search on my laptop and came up with zero in the search for old dog pictures. Then I realized that those files were on my other laptop. So here is another experience where something is there but it isn't. That is the way my bank account works.

Zen is a trick word just like a price that says Free"

I am sure there is a book "Guide to Zen through Bird Watching" Some where I must have tread about the mind cleansing of Zen but I seem to have lost it. Where? Then one morning I woke up before the dogs and decided that I would become a Bird Geek.

have much better pics

Happy my GSD learned to chase and bark at prey as a puppy so when I go looking about to take bird pictures with my camera I take me two furries with me.

This makes it hard to photograph birds and control the two shit heads.

 What is beyond normal is that since I have become a bird geek I often find other folks that have big lenses on their Canons or Nikon. Yesterday I found a fellow named "Monty" armed with a penis envy camera lens. Monty knew his birds, hawks and shorebirds. 

I have learned the names of several birds I have seen but sometimes it is hard with small Wrens or Sparrows what is what.

Trying to capture a swallow in flight was is not easy and the one above is not very clear

The dog so called Happy now is a champion charger and loves to chase the darting ground swallows.

Well, my neighbor from South Carolina (he has a boat here) was saying "Well" and I replied, That is a deep subject". He thought for a minute about my remark, then we continue to talk about birds in South Carolina and Hawks. The General is older than myself and his memory about the past is remarkable. He was telling me about his classmate that came from Aiken in South Carolina when they both attended West Point. 

TO BE CONTINUED....

Nails in the Streets and Bike Lanes

Daily nail pickup

Lets start this blog with an explanation. Three maybe four years ago while walking my dog DeDe I noticed several nails in the street.

These nails were at a turn around on Miner Street South of 22nd Street next to the new marina, Cabrillo Way. Miner Street runs north and south while 22nd Street runs West to East.

Flat tire in Marina Parking Lot
Most of the nails I pickup are around that intersection of Miner and 22nd. I may have failed to mention that I live on a sailboat in San Pedro with my two dogs. San Pedro is about as far south you can get in Los Angeles.

Daily nails on top of jar lid

 At first I threw the nails in the trash but I kept finding them in the same spots. With DeDe we would walk to the beach one day and the next toward the Main Channel so our path were in opposite direction every other day.

Street Corner here

After collecting about a thousand nails in a Von's paper bag I took them to the District 15 Supervisor office in San Pedro's old city hall. Two young staff members listed to short story of the nails and then told me unless they could prove intent on the part of the person tossing the nails nothing could be done. I left them with the nails with the feeling that nothing would be done which is now the case.

I have shown the nails to the Los Angeles Fire Department, The LA County Sheriffs, several LA Port Police officers, Harbor Department Security, various Harbor Department employees, several business owners where the nails show up on a regular basis, two local news papers, Channel 5 and then 11 while a reporter was filming after a fire .



In the calendar year 2016 I posted several nail pictures on Instagram then decided to count the number of nails picked up that year, it was just a little over 2,000 nails.After that I stopped counting but didn't stop saving. When my dog got to old for longer walks we stopped. Then one day she stopped completely. So I started running in the mornings and discovered nails around Ports of Call and various other streets like Crescent Street.

Then nails started to appear at our Marina parking entrance which is Watchorn Walk. Usually they appear next to the mail box beside the office building past the Double Tree Inn on Via  Cabrillo  Marina and contine north along the street. The count can be five or six and as high as twenty.

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another sample below of a daily find

For a while this year there was a drought of nails where I would find four or five but recently the tosser changed his pattern from Miner to mostly 22nd Street. There were 52 this morning between the drive way entrance to Cabrillo Way Marina and Miner mostly on the North side of 22nd. That is where the filming production companies park their trucks and crews here. I have spoken to their security, their vans drivers (after I saw one run over several nails) and the LAPD motorcycle officers that moonlight for the studios.

We (my neighbors) have several theories about the nails and recently we have been trying to establish a time frame to see when the nails get tossed. 

My lovely daughter got me a German Shepherd puppy two days before Christmas and the pup was too young to chase nails which gave me a break. Well Happy is just a year old now and we walk between 7 to ten miles each day. Then Happy ate some people food three weeks ago and had to make a midnight visit to the bushes. Happy loves to chase feral cats and in the middle of the street he spotted one but it was not a cat but a scared little pocket dog. Happy followed it to the bushes below the Fort (we are docked east of Ft. MacArthur)

We now have a Yorkshire mix we have named Lucky. With the GSD I was able to pickup nails in the street without many problems but with Baby Dog and two leads and morning traffic you might hear a lot of cussing.

A work in Progress (To be continued)