Today's my dad's birthday. He died last year on July 26th, the victim of a freak accident in the hot desert on the shoulder of I-5. He would have been 79.

He was a Gemini, and definitely there were two sides to Merle. One side jovial and teasing, a hard worker, earnest and patient, full of wisdom gained from the school of hard knocks. The other side wavered between sneering and critical, and apathetic and uninterested.

Everyone has their good and bad qualities. Everyone learns lessons as they journey through life. Nearly everyone tries their best every day. I know my dad did, even if things didn't work out all that well every time.

I didn't always give my dad credit for trying his best. I spent years and years baffled by my father's abandonment of me and my family. Early in my life he abandoned our family for work and drink, and later he simply refused to be a part of our lives and hung up the phone when I called.

Today I understand that my father fought the same demons I've run into in my life. Lacking self-esteem, making up for it with intimidation and superiority, feeling fear of opening up with people about feelings and doubts, avoiding people instead. Trying to be perfect. Failing. Hiding. Working hard to become convinced I didn't care anyway.

When I put myself into my father's shoes, I can understand his mistakes, and I can forgive him. For some reason I couldn't do that as well when he was alive. Happy birthday, dad. I miss you.

What Goes Around

What a wonderful weekend. Here it is Saturday night, and I'm a little sunburned from lying in the grass in Dolores Park with Michael this afternoon. We are really enjoying spending time together.

On Monday this week we had the event I've been working for three months to deliver. Thank GOD it's over and thank god it went well. Scored a 4.65 out of 5 overall, and that's really good for the career, my friends. After too much champagne on Monday night I took Tuesday off, went to the Metreon cineplex and wandered from movie to movie just enjoying the dark and the entertainment. The best one I saw was Fracture. Anthony Hopkins is despicable and Ryan Gosling is cu-uute in a very young, very moral man way.

The deal on the house will close next week, thanks entirely to Bank of America. I went Wednesday to sign the papers for the loan drawn by unethical lying cheaters from American Home Mortgage, and those unethical cheaters tried to cheat me by sticking some private mortgage insurance in the deal to the tune of more than 7% of the monthly payment. I pointed out the fact that the truth-in-lending disclosure they were asking me to sign didn't match the truth-in-lending disclosure that I was mailed two weeks ago, and do you know what the cheating, unethical mortgage broker told me? That I should just go ahead and sign the papers and we'll work it out tomorrow.

Which I seriously considered.

Seriously. Considered. Because it's really scary buying a house and the unethical mortgage broker told me that if I didn't sign today we wouldn't have time to record the transaction and I would fall out of contract and possibly lose the house.

(Which is not true.)

I finally came to the conclusion that I would take the chance of losing the house, that there wasn't a chance in hell that I was going to sign for some loan that I didn't agree with. I walked out of the title company and went straight to Bank of America, where I have several accounts and I know one of their "personal bankers." Do you know that they have moved heaven and earth in order to get a deal together for me in a few days? It looks like the house is going to close on time. And it's a fair deal.

All of this pressure on the mortgage industry is proving some people to be unethical, lying cheaters. If you know anyone buying a house right now, I suggest you warn them to be ready to walk out on a deal before signing something you didn't agree to. Take it from Ponygirl, who has become quite the businesswoman lately.

Meditation on Faith and Religion

Simple statement. I believe the four noble truths are true:

1. Life is suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is craving.
3. It is possible to end suffering.
4. The way to end suffering is through the eight-fold path, which is about living within the right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

I believe these truths and yet I am suffering this week as work sucks every bit of energy from me and I find myself lonely despite having friends and family not only calling to support me, but spending time with me in the evenings and on the weekends.

My sense that I am suffering points me to going back to the Zen Center, and soon! I haven't been to the Zen discussion group since I met Patrick and started extending my weekends in Tahoe into Monday. Now that I'm home again on Monday nights I just haven't resumed the habit of walking to Haight and Laguna for a reminder of what is important to me. I think Saturday morning will find me sitting zazen at the Zen Center.

Faith is elusive to many and yet I'm pretty sure I have always had it in one form or another. I think it's faith that has sustained me through every setback in life, and there have been many. It's religion that I have found and lost and found again.

I used to think of my faith in Catholic terms, but the stories of the bible did not offer the insight that I craved, the self-righteousness of Christian leaders turned me off, the exclusivity of heaven and hell seemed like something greedy people devised, and the misogyny inherent in bible stories all led to my rejection of Christian faith.

I stopped supporting Christian ideals in my 20's and eventually questioned whether there is a god at all. It was a slow emergency, a crisis of faith that played out over ten years.

My usual habit of saying prayers at night became troublesome. The guilt I felt at rejecting Christianity threatened my personal relationship with a higher power. I couldn't separate God from Jesus, Mary, and Judas. Though I had been taught to pray as a child, in my 20's I stopped. It meant I no longer reflected with intent on what was in my mind and heart. I did not take time out to consciously practice compassion for myself and others through prayer.

I spent years in a state of confusion about spirituality. I was taught that there is a black-and-white choice between Christianity and -- well, hell. Given that absolute choice, at the time I was choosing hell because I rejected Christianity. I was trying to rationalize that choice in my mind and I began to entirely reject God.

Meanwhile, I believed I invented my own religion and I called it the Church of Kindness. Or the Church of Nature. I found energy in a daily appreciation of the beauty of acts of kindness, those I performed or observed. I was always conscious of the beauty of nature: the shape or the fragrance of a tree, the song or quick movements of a bird, the color of a flower, the sense of a breeze or cool water.

These observations touched that spirituality inside me and brought me joy over the beauty, the intricacy, the rightness of life. But I can't say that faith sustained me.

I love the saying from AA that I had a god-sized hole in my heart, because for me it's true. I think losing my religion was a damn shame. It could have gone another way, one where I studied and found the insight that I know exists in the bible, where I found a community of Christians who acknowledged hypocrisy and self-righteousness, where I transcended the words of the parables that slander women. Nah, probably not. For me, Catholicism and Christianity was too tied up in the shame of my youth, and I believe I wanted to find my own way.

My interest in Eastern religions began when I was 23 or 24 but it was only ten years later that I began to learn the tolerance, the tenets of Buddhism. All beings are connected by energy...this I knew because it was also one of my tenets of the Church of Kindness and the Church of Nature. When I learned about the four noble truths and the eight-fold path I rejoiced in a way of living and a way of believing that brought me insight, compassion, and understanding. Hypocrisy and self-righteousness are still dangers but I understand them more from a place of compassion and imperfect-ness so they lose their power.

While my spiritual practice is all but unrecognizable to Buddhists, it is a practice that sustains me. For that I am very grateful. I have no ill feelings toward Christianity. I just chose another path, one that works for me. Sort of like the choice between a Chevy and a Ford. Hard to say whether one's better than the other but whatever works.

I just took forty-five minutes to write this despite so many unfinished tasks for work and PEOPLE! I feel so much better about starting my day. It is good to stop and remember that the way out of suffering is meditation. I love the way life works. I absolutely love it.

I'm back and I'm here to talk about my hair. After sticking with the same stylist for more than five (yawn) years, I got sick of limp locks, having had half of my hair razored off in one session or another. I decided I needed to break up with David the stylist. We didn't even have anything to talk about any more when I came to visit him.

So I started slutting around with different stylists, always preferring a male stylist since that one time in Little Five Points, Atlanta, when I let a butch lesbian cut my hair and I ended up with a shlong (a short-long, simply another word for a mullet). Since then, no women have won my heart enough for me to want them to cut my hair on a regular basis.

Until I met Susan.

From the first session, I loved my hair. I told her I needed something a little more edgy but I have to factor in the whole multinational corporation breeding expectations of conservatism. Not an easy task. Corporate on the outside, funky on the inside.

She nailed it.

I've been going to see her for over a year and my hair has grown about ten inches. She keeps asking me if we are still growing it and I keep saying Yes, if it will keep growing and not look bad. Last time I went she said we can keep growing it another six inches until it's even with my nipples. She calls it titty hair.

The only titty hair I have ever had is that embarrassing long outgrowth around the nipples which I pluck when I realize it has grown to about three-quarters of an inch. I'm beyond excited at the idea of growing such long hair that it dusts my nipples. Oh the glee. It should only take another year.