LD Ex Machina

I hate tips.  I don’t give them and I don’t take them.  I think tips of any kind are simply greed, begging and extortion.  They are subsidized ghetto ethics; "I deserve extras for free."  Examples are everywhere, from the waiter/waitress who varies his/her service based on your previous visit’s tip to the teenager who asks for a water cup at McDonald’s and fills it with soda at the self-serve fountain.

I study massage therapy and traditional chinese medicine.  I noticed that tipping has become so out-of-control that even a massage therapist who earns $85 per hour can feel just as justified in demanding a tip as a minimum-wage waiter or waitress can.  In fact, so many massage therapists and spas obsess over tips that even one of my lecturers calculates tips into his private client prices.  In a recent course he hammered into us daily to "do your best because you’re working for tips!"  He even recommended that we to set our prices at certain rates, so the client will psychologically round up to a more manageable number; $45 becomes $50, $70 becomes $75, $85 becomes $100, and so on.  The Pavlovian students are drooling over it.

It seems that the quality of service anywhere is directly proportional to the tip amount.  Three of my classmates are food servers.  One spat curse words at me when we had the tips discussion and they learned my philosophy.  Another swore he’d rub his balls on my sandwich if I returned to his restaurant again without having tipped him on a previous visit.  All of this anger simply because he chooses to earn the minimum wage allowed by law.  It may be it’s true that this man cannot find a better paying job because of his toxic emotional instability.  If that is the case, then should he be serving the public and, better yet, held responsible for the delivery of balls-rubbed food?

All I know is if I give a waitress a 48% tip in lieu of paying the check, she’d pop a capillary and go into brainlock (yes, that’s my technical term for it).  That angry waitress who spat curses at me whined that she gets taxed on all of the tips that she does and does not receive.  I asked her if that was the responsibility of the customer and she said it was.  She also said that if the customers don’t tip her, then the customers are helping only the restaurant owners and not the food servers.  I asked her why she could not get a $10-$15 per hour job driving a bus, entering data at an accounting firm or somesuch job.  I asked her if being a waitress was, literally, all she was qualified to do.  She simply stared at me through a blank face with anger-glossed eyes.

Finally, she told me that if food servers were paid a decent wage, then restaurant prices would be three times higher than they were now and no one would dine out.  I suggested that, if she truly wanted to keep this job and improve her wage there, she could start a union and coordinate a nationwide walkout.  Here eyes glazed and she told me, "Don’t be ridiculous.  That won’t happen."  She then continued to blame "the [food service] industry" for her situation, saying that tips were built into the structure of the industry.

I then asked the obvious questions.  Who deserves a tip?  Why should I select an industry, an individual, a percentage rate over others?  Their answers were simple:  those who qualify for tips were minimum wage earners and the like.  I asked if they would accept tips after graduation, at which point each of them would earn $35, $85, $200 or higher per hour, depending on their employment situation or private client rates.  The waitress in my class who had been silent and listening during all of this spoke up and said she would give better service and calendaring preference to the higher-tipping clients and the clients who did not tip would be rotated out of her calendar.

I told my classmates that I was helping them in the most direct way possible:  I was a catalyst for them to better their lives.  I asked that waitress in my class who burned me with curses what she would do if she went to work tomorrow and not one customer left her a tip.  "I’d find another job," she said.  Of course, she refused to admit she agreed with me (she was improving her life and getting a better job), though she was attending this school and looking forward to earning $100 per hour within a year.  Including tip, of course.

I believe satisfied clients are more important than tips.  My clients appreciate the fact that they don’t have to sweat how much or how little to pay.  They also like the fact that I tell them to save their tip money for their next session.

I think the bottom line is if you want more money, then raise your price.  This is true for a waitress, a massage therapist, a car valet and a taxi driver.  If you’re worth it, then you’ll get a higher wage.  The clients and customers will stay if you are good.  If not, then Darwinism clicks up and shoots you with the impetus to find a new career. . . or not.

I went to Catalina Island last weekend for my National Geographic diver certification.  Thanks to Jeanne, Jacobus and Kenny, my survival training kept me cool and alive.

My first dive, I ran out of air.  At our safety stop at 15ft below the surface at the end of our dive, my air was gone.  I had used all of my air during the dive because my Halcyon BCD was new to me and I was rolling a lot in the currents because my trim weights were a bit heavy (I fixed this in my second dive, which was perfect).  At the safety stop, I signalled to Kenny, my divemaster, that I was out of air, so I used his alternate air supply regulator and we surfaced and went ashore on schedule.  However, on my way out, I had to break from Kenny to exit the water, so I put my snorkel in my mouth.  No one believed that I had an empty cylinder and they were yelling at me to put my regulator back in my mouth instead of my snorkel while exiting the water.  Then, a big swell pushed me between two boulders at the breakwater and I was trapped, but on dry rocks, until the next swell came to pick me up.  It came and I fought against it and made my way to the steps on Casino Point and climbed from the water.  All of the dive instructors and divemaster candidates were scolding me and telling me that I had 200psi of air left in my tank.  I said I had no air and Kenny told all of them that my air was completely out.  Then, they all were quiet.

All of my other dives were flawless and sublime.  We saw the sunken glass-bottom boat, an eel and an octopus fighting, and oscar, many garibaldis, many striped bass and a lobster.  We also saw thick forests of bull kelp and china kelp.  Doing drills and swimming in the forests was magical, like a combination of the submarine ride at Disneyland and hiking through Big Sur.  Time seems to stop and you don’t even realize that you have been down for thirty-five minutes until you check your air periodically.

On my final dive, my weight belt buckle failed at depth.  Kenny was my dive buddy and he helped me to get horizontal, so I could recover the beltfrom around my thighs.  Rather than ditch the belt and shoot to the surface with nitrogen saturation, I recovered and reattached it around my waist.  After I began to kick normally, the belt slid down again.  I signalled to Kenny again and we recovered the belt again, but the currents were spinning us as we worked, so my left leg was tangled in the china kelp.  I wasn’t worried about air because I had 750psi remaining, enough to make it to the surface and to shore.  So, holding the belt in my right hand, we cut the mass of kelp with our dive knives, then made our way to the surface and to shore.

I was exhausted and unable to complete my final certification dive.  I joked with my divemasters and dive instructor that I should get a certification simply for surviving the perils of diving there, but they told me I need to go back next month to complete the dives.

Nevermind.  I loved every minute of the weekend!  It was an amazing experience and I wanna do it again, now that I know you can live through it!

Talking with you yesterday made my heart shine.

I was happy and smiling for the rest of the day, even when I was tired from work and going to the theater play.  I sat and watched the costumes and the colors and the dancing and the actors as they all blurred into one woman dancing on the stage in silence.

Your dress was red and floated fluidly, like the blood that flowed through my body.  Your hair, straight and black, became a fan and waved the air as you spun into your steps.  The pulse of my heart pushed your motions.

The theater was empty, the audience disappeared and everything was quiet.  The sliding scrapes of your feet against the wood, the alternating sweeps of flickering fast and solemnly slow motion in my eyes, burned my heart and froze my mind.  Your breath pumped the air to and from your lungs and the rhythm lulled me into hypnosis.  The shifting of your dress sparked shimmers of sound that I felt more than heard.

Your passion and movements stirred me into life; I felt God’s finger start a whirlpool in my soul.  Dragged from my seat into your dancing wake, I felt myself ripped under the great tide that was the expression of your bliss.  I smiled in this permanent moment.

You danced.  You danced and you smiled and you giggled and you danced.

I was happy.

Click the link to see my house.

My car is in the driveway.  This was in July 2005 because only one of my cars is in the pic.  I had donated my red car to charity in July.  I donated the blue car in the pic to charity in August, so I had no cars in August.

Based on the shadows, this pic was taken in the morning at 11:00 am (you are looking toward the west) and it must be on a Sunday because everyone put their trash containers on the street for the Monday 6:00 am collection and the containers are still neatly placed.  The trucks always toss them around after they collect the trash  ;) 

My house from space. My car is in the driveway

I counted the days since we last spoke and they blurred into infinity.  My heartbeats fell into silence and my soul dried in the cold desert and hot sun of the emptiness of my life without you.

I died, then you arrived.

So long without you and there you were in brilliance and wit.  I knew not how thirsty was my soul until that one sip of you.  Instantly, my heart sprang to life, my lungs filled with your air and my brain sparked with your conversation.

So far away, you spoke to me.  Inches from my face and pressed to my skin, I heard, saw, smelled, felt and tasted you.  Outside of me on another piece of the planet, inside of me and within the tissues of my mind, against me and pressing the cells and fibers of my body, you shocked my entire being to life like a freefall from Heaven:  I missed you.

I registered Dues Ex Machina .com this week.

http://www.duesexmachina.com

I walked to the bus this morning.  Walked.  One year ago today, I lost my leg for nine months.

But, today I walked.

I walked from my house.  I went up and over the hill, turned right, went through the alley of the medical building on the corner, waited for the traffic light and crossed the street.  There it was on the corner, so close to the curb, I had to change my approach to avoid it.  I had seen it every time before, but never noticed it.  As tall as a tree and as immobile as I was when I ruptured my Achilles, the telephone pole loomed and fell against my eyes and I saw.

The brads; the nails; the staples; the tacks:  a million metals meshed into a rusting screen surrounding and poking the pole.  The plate reflectors for headlights; the strap identification tag for the field rep; the knots of metal holding flyers, notices and bulletins:  I saw my Achilles in that pole.

I wondered if the cast of rust and the splints of paper and reflectors made the pole stronger or if they weakened the wood.  I explored closer and saw the depths of the prickly pole pins.  They were sunk at the same depth as the Fiberwire that held my Achilles together, 4.54 centimeters into the flesh.

The pole, buried in the sidewalk as deep as a coffin, stayed.

I walked.

I saw you on the bus yesterday, but I couldn’t tell if you were memory or real.  I showed my pass to the driver and walked the length of the bus to sit behind you.

I saw the blackness of your hair, then looked closer.  The sunlight exposed a brown strand here, a blonde strand there, an amber streak here and a white shadow there.  There was depth in the bamboo forest of your head.  Young bamboo has sharp hairs that will stick into your skin and fester, so I dared not touch you.  Instead, I simply watched as the jostling of the ride made your hair bounce and fall, the light and the dark bleeding into each other like the inks of an ancient Chinese scroll damaged by age and water.

I felt the scent of your shampoo enter my nose and I relaxed.  The almond lotion on your skin floated in the sterile, conditioned air and cancelled all of the aromatic flavors of machinery and bodies that were the bus and its passengers.  I closed my eyes and sank into my world, hearing nothing but the scraping of your shirt as your body buffeted your plastic seat.

My eyes opened and the blur that was you was gone.  Still, I smiled.  The sights and scents of you carried me to my destination.  I stood and exited the bus into the real world and the distance between you and me crashed soldily against my heart.  Each step took me closer to and farther from you.

ok, here is my first blog.

:|  :D