Tuesday, February 24, 2009

As the ever entertaining Mr. Shife pointed out in his blog… Confessions of a Dumb, White Guy… keywords are funny things. Granted, his are way funnier than anything I have come up with. I don’t think I will even try and out do that. ( If you have not visited him, do so.)

I’m not sure why I did it, but today I googled Ananda. Because of my own moniker. You get a zillion references to Buddhism and Yoga… two things totally lacking in my life and not at all connected with my handle. The only thing the two Anandas agree on are the meaning… Ananda means “bliss, joy, free from form”. While you will see that there are many schools with Ananda in their name, most have some sort of spiritual aspect to them.

My Ananda also comes from the name of a school. There was not a darned thing spiritual about our school. But it was a blast. One that I attended many thousands of years ago when fish still had legs. And Patrick Sean O’Neil was still producing Sailor Tom comics for Kids Magazine. Patrick was my friend. It happened that dmarks mentioned Patrick’s comic in his blog… where I was lurking. I didn’t actually have a blog yet. I’m a real new-bee. So when I went to make a comment, I ended up starting an account and it me asked for a name… well, since I was making contact about my old pal at school, why not use the school name and put girl after it? I am not instantly clever. I thought if Patrick ever happened on dmark’s page that he would see the school name and it would light him up… shake the dust and cobwebs out of his brain and he would recall the wonderfulness that is me!

Yes, I know, a long, long shot. “It ain’t matter none…” as a guy on Craig’s List once typed. Patrick was only a friend. I’m not looking for love or anything like that. But it would be great to touch base and see how many kids he has and who he ended up with in life. What the heck he became, if not a cartoonist. Or a writer. He was always funny and often inappropriate… two of my very favorite things. (By day I am a simple school librarian, stifled in the utterly appropriate life of a public school employee. I must break out and be what I truly am!) I would enjoy knowing info. I’m curious about people and I love to hear their stories. Especially crazy ones or funny ones. Absurd is fabulous too.

So you will not find me by googling Ananda, at least not in the first 35 pages of choices. There is a beautiful black woman in there with the name of just Ananda and she seems interesting. I am not her. She would not appreciate being confused with me, I’m sure.

The fascinating Mr. Shife also told me that he has had trouble posting to my blog. AAAAAGGGGHHHH. Anyone else having trouble? That really upsets me. I want to hear people’s stories… as odd or sad, wild, troubled… whatever… as many as I can. Feel free to drop them on me as you like. But if you have trouble getting through… can you tell Mr. Shife… if I may impose on you good sir! Because something will need to be done. I will check with Mr. Shife.

8 comments:

  1. I tried once before and couldn't get a cmment to work.

    I'd just said I'd thought ANanda was a Buddhist reference, too.

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  2. I am another that thought Ananda was a Buddhist reference.

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  3. Well, no, no Buddhist thing.
    I'm sorry that the comment thing is not working right. I'm not clear what I should do about it. This is very strange. Does it matter if I log out or not? Maybe I am personally doing something out of ignorance. Hummm..

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  4. Hey, no Buddhist connection to my name, but I do have a Buddhist story. On my 18 birthday... birthdays are days when things always happen that are interesting... three of my friends made me a wonderful Chinese diner. Then, after they altered my state of mind with saki, they took me on a surprise adventure. We drove to this house in the middle of suburbia like every other cracker box around it and were escorted inside to a normal looking living room. We sat together on a long sofa and said hellos to a group of what could easily have been a Youth For Christ group of college aged folk.

    Imagine my delight when a guitar playing guy strummed into the room and began to sing... "There's a meeting here tonight, there's a meeting here tonight, Ramma Shaka Buku, there's a meeting here tonight!" (excuse spelling)
    If this did not thrill me enough... and I was tickled pink at the activity... he suddenly stopped, pointed his guitar neck at a person and said "What did Buddha do for you today?"

    She answered that she had chanted all day for tickets to a concert and one of her patrons at work had tipped her $50! Everyone cheers and the singing begins again. This happened several times. Each time Buddha had rewarded people for their chanting.

    There was brief talk about how it's okay to chant for material things. (I was personally suspicious of this.)

    Then they taught us how to chant and we all practiced. "Nom-me-yo-ho-rang-gay-key-oh" over and over.

    The end of the meeting involved a speaker. What I recall of his speech was that he pointed at us on our sofa and asked how we knew that the sofa was actually there. We all four looked down to see if it really was, which of course made everyone laugh, including us. So the speech was about taking things on faith.

    It was a fun evening full of unexpected delights. I did try chanting for a time but really didn't have any true knowledge of Buddhism. It seemed wrong to me to chant for something that was not earned.

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  5. It looks like it is finally working because I finally got to leave a comment on your previous post. So all is right on your blog now. And I wish you luck in making contact with your friend. You should try Facebook because you can search for schools and people on there.

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  6. Thanks Mr. Shife. It's not that big a deal that I would search for Patrick. I just thought it would blow him away and be fun. I'm so glad that all is well with my blog. I appreciate the comments and activity.

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  7. deepak chopra has me chanting sat-chit- ananda on a regular basis.

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