I wrote this brief bio of my life earlier this morning in an e-mail response.
>>I worked for RCA, wore a suit, was a star salesman
at 25, and then tuned in, turned on, and dropped out.
Really. For the rest of my life. It might be difficult to say
why. Maybe when I realized that hope is all anybody's
got for sell, I didn't see the point in settling down to do
that redundantly, and then die anyway. Immortality is
the only interesting, yet futile ga-me in town.<<
The bio is only partly true. I served six years in the Navy before I went to work for RCA. I was a good salesman. I coulda been a contendah. I wasn't fully aware of it at the time. I never thought about making a career of it.
Despite all the moving around I've done in my life it's not natural. It shouldn't be. I guess I'd done so much of it, hitting the road was one of the most convenient ways of dealing with depression and frustration.
After I taught myself astrology I wondered how a double Taurus like me could possibly end up traveling so much. Taurus is the sign of inertia. Inertia is one of the keywords when you're talking about bovine-ness. In the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes it is written in several Hexagrams and in several ways, "Care of the cow brings good fortune."
There has always been a small group of people who have for some reason acted like caring for me brought them good fortune. Others... not so much. A dynamic appears to come into play that I'm not consciously aware of as it happens. I've lived or rather stopped in at a lotta places around the country. Many times I've been flat broke when I got there. Pretty much lived close to the bone while I stayed there, but when I left, people always owed me money. If not money, then something.
People seem to make up their own mind about what I do that makes them feel grateful. Sometime unconsciously. They don't know why they're being nice to me. Many times I don't either. If I'm needy, I don't particularly care. "Fate catches up with me on the road I took to avoid it."
I don't know if that statement popped into Isabella's head originally or whether she was quoting some famous dead guy, but I really like it. I think I've already changed it a little. I'd probably feel guilty for stealing it from Isabella if I didn't know in advance that I'd find a way to make it my own. When I feel like I've done that I'll probably stop crediting Isabella. I can't even imagine she'd mind. Libra's have to give things away to stay balanced.
Recently, somewhere, I wrote about how performing words can be stoked by the depth of my understanding of them. It seems silly to say that what I do about words gives them power. Silly for an old man who doesn't even amount to a has been, but a never was. I coulda been, maybe, but I opted out. If I didn't actually have that option, then I'm gonna pretend I did anyway. Why would that matter at this phase of my ga-me?
In some ways I am is a momma's boy. I imitated her ga-me playing. I started doing cross-word puzzles to impress her and get some attention. I began to finish the puzzles that came in the newspaper when she couldn't. She'd get mad because she meant to come back and finish them herself. I thought she'd be proud of me for beating her at her own ga-me. Not really.
I learned to play solitaire by watching her play. She didn't brook no interference when she played solitaire. It was one of the ways she could get off by herself without leaving the house. It wasn't until later, after I'd become an adult, that I understood why she played solitaire. Solitaire and crossword puzzles are an acceptable way to disconnect from the maddening crowd.
I have to do that to stay sane. I have to get off by myself or I'll go nuts. I guess I've always sort of known that, but I didn't realize it in full consciousness until I studied the Enneagrams by listening to audio tapes while I was driving that semi-truck a few years ago. I don't experience what could be going on in real time. Only later, when I'm all by myself. Then, I experience it.
If I am is not able to get off by itself to perform this chore, then it abandons ship until it can. My life would have been much different if this had been beat into me as a child. Why am I always the last to know? I keep running into my fate by trying to get away from it. '-)
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
