In a nutshell (About)

I’m not really a hippie, but I think they were onto something with that whole “peace, love, and understanding” idea.

Cahier is a French word for notebook.  I’m not French, either. My life, however, is littered with notebooks. Here a notebook, there a notebook, everywhere a notebook.

This is a virtual notebook where I scribble whatever feels like coming out, and it usually has something to do with peace or love or some silly story wherein I employ a rhetorical device known as hyperbole.

A true hippie’s critique of my very first “About” page pointed out that I had not addressed the core hippie values of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. I updated my page to explain that I turned four years old in the Summer of Love .

Sex.

My first experience with l’amour came a few years later and involved the rather terrifying and disappointing playground trauma of being chased by a boy named Jeff waving a caterpillar. It was not a happily-ever-after tale: he ruined my favorite maxi-dress and forever changed my views of romance and of caterpillars.  If you missed that story, I apologize, but I simply cannot re-tell it. I’m trying to move on and focus on the joyful things in life.

Drugs.

I went on, in that update, to explain that my experience with drugs was limited to an equally terrifying trauma involving waking from a Nyquil-induced nap to see Abraham Lincoln’s head spinning on the television screen.

Rock-and-roll.

I can’t recall what I said about rock-and-roll. This memory issue may or may not have something to do with my experimentation with Nyquil. At this moment I have Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” in my head, along with a scene about cloud-bursting and remote viewing from one of my favorite movies, Men Who Stare At Goats. We’ll go with that.

(I can’t believe you’re still reading this.)

The most interesting things that happen in my life are my imagination’s interpretation of the reality around me. I count Ally McBeal and Walter Mitty among my personal heroes. My personal villains shall remain nameless for now. But they know who they are.*

I often quote Abraham Lincoln but mostly as satirical commentary on the ridiculously erroneous attributions of quotes on the Internet. I have to laugh at that to keep my keyboard safe from the waterfall of tears that would freely flow if I were to  let such nonsense get me down.

Accordingly, you are strongly cautioned against using any “facts” you find here for homework answers, unless they are hyperlinked to a reliable source (or Wikipedia) or prefaced with my usual true-story indicator, which, as with so many other things, is inspired by Dave Barry: “I swear I am not making this up.”

Especially if it’s a pinky swear. There is nothing more sacred than my pinky swear.

I’m a classic INFJ, which means as soon as I publish this, I’ll feel uncomfortably exposed and will most likely edit this line out.

I’m not really writing — in the recreational sense — right now. I pop in to read when I have a few spare moments, but they are exactly that: few and spare, unpredictable and sporadic. I hope you’ll understand if I don’t visit or respond to comments regularly.

That’s me in a nutshell.

Also, I’m not really in a nutshell.

* Lookin’ at you, Jeff. 

This page was updated (let’s all take a moment to shake our heads in dismay at that use of passive voice) in December 2014. All comments that pre-date that are in response to earlier versions, which really weren’t all that interesting, either. But I have always appreciated the kindness of strangers.

Peace.

I think it would be groovy to have Earl Weaver as my life coach.