Holy Moly

♛

Have you noticed? There is never a sign above the entrance of a black hole that warns the curious, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." One has to assume that I've never seen a black hole or it's entrance. All I know about black holes are opinions I've read or seen in the media that other people have of black holes because none of them, by their own admission, have ever seen a black hole either. that's like asking my reader to render an interpretation of my opinion of somebody else's opinion who might have stolen it under the cover of darkness from another thief.

As you might have figured out by now, no such imaginary entrance sign is needed at the entrance of my imaginary black hole to warn off the unafraid as they step off into space after thinking about it for a long time. It's a description of a fantastic dream I once had. The dream was so real to me that I might swear it was a vision instead. The ringer for that is, however, I also remember waking up from it sleeping in my bed.

While this was a dream and not a vision it was still so spectacular I remember it like I do the visions I have. My mode of travel was familiar to me. I astral-traveled really close to the ground in the same position I would be if I were driving a car, but there was no car. Other times I step up upon some platform and scoot along to wherever I'm going at about the same height about the paved roads. Sitting or standing in the dream I use regular paved roads to travel on.

I mentioned stepping off into space above. I was astral traveling in a lucid dream in the sitting position (the asana without a car). along this exciting curvy hilly road that was carved into lush primeval woodlands. Traffic was not a problem. I'd just will myself to fly over any congestion and keep skimming along above the surface of the road.

Suddenly, on my left I saw an astounding sight. It was a silver-color space ship that looked like a needle backing its way into it's silo on an island across open space on another world. It looked just like the land I was on, but it was just floating over there as if everything was cool.

Meanwhile I was still skooting along this hilly highway, and when it went downhill and sharply to the right I saw a Greek-like outdoor marble theater with a bunch of seats carved in tiers in a semi-circle just like the ones in the movies. There weren't many people sitting in the seats that graduated up the grottoed hill.

When I looked to my left where the stage should be there was nothing there. Right beside the road I was on the world dropped off into open space. The island I saw the space ship land on was just across the way. Sitting there in midheaven without any of the rational accoutrements.

I stopped the non-car I wasn't driving to take wot wuz sot before me. There was nothing to it. I just stood up and walked around. The bleacher-like marble seats were on the right hand side of the road I'd been on, and the drop-off into space was on the other side of the road. I knew I was dreaming and I was lucid and so I decided to sit down for a while and see what happened. Why were these people here?

Soon enow, a young woman in maybe her thirties stood up a few seats away from me, walked across the road, and leapt into space as it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Before I could recover from my shock, several other people did the same thing. It's like they were sitting there thinking about it, and when they made up their mind, they just got up and did it. No fuss. No muss.

There is nothing to cling to as Neptune's crushing tsunami drags your now indistinguishable remains back into the plenitude as finger food for the ambrosian Gods. Back to where no distinguishable watermark or abstract construct can be recalled as what once may have been, in the past. Back then. Once upon a time. Now, home again, home again, jiggedy gig.


The images I carelessly peruse to find drifting thoughts in order to conquer them with words once had more value in their original states of being than what my awareness changed them into. You gnow, back before my evolutionary tour de force shape-shifted them into value-added products more suitable for some unseeable foreign market.

Many of the holy books I've studied all had some metaphor or story or parable that would told by word of mouth, father to son, and mother to daughter about wise ways to look at how nature happens and it's signs that tell you when it's time to move out of it's way. To live and fight another day. Some theme the whole of the species universally values? A definitive glossary of terms that the great unwashed agree upon for the good of the great unwashed? Something they'd settle for? A bottle line. A common denominator. Panacea? A utopian panacea for all the unnecessary misunderstandings that don't need to be there if we could only i-magi-nate (give birth to by magic) a benign ending. To dissemble the madness into mediocrity.

♚

The Middle of Winter In More Ways Than One

♅

It got chilly again last night and will be even chillier in the days to come. Why would it not? 'Tis the season. At least one month of winter is over. I expect it to be cold, and if it warms up a little I'm grateful. The dreary part of of winter for me comes in the last of February and March when I inevitably begin dreaming about it getting warmer because spring is approaching, and it doesn't warm up for good until the last of April. Life is strange. I feel sorry for the people who live up north where it gets cold and stays cold for four months, but if they're that dumb, it's useless to gainsay their bizarre opinion.

Just like a lotta Apple computer owners, I anticipated the announcement of the tablet computer labeled the "iPad" yesterday. I'm not so impressed as I thought I might be with the demonstration of the final product. They didn't make the iPad for poor people like me. They make too much money on the come for me to be interested. I don't participate in their media stores. I have about a dozen songs from an old CD I digitized. I hardly ever play the songs.

Apple never lets you forget it's their stuff even when you pay for it the hard way. Late in the game. Not including USB3 was the deal-breaker for me. In my opinion they didn't include it for their sake rather than their customers. Apple does a lotta things for itself instead of it's customers. They seem to be aiming for the enterprise class and leaving individuals behind. Why would they not? Apple is a huge, global corporation.

All this means to me is that I'll keep what I have for another year or so. Steve Jobs mentioned that the iPad will do everything better than the netbooks except for what it won't do. My iMac will do all it does and more without any further investment from me. The problem Apple has in satisfying my personal digital needs is I don't have many digital needs. Other than selling hardware and software they make big money on songs and movies. I don't do songs and movies anymore. I write and play my digital piano for amusement.

That's what happens when ya get old. In a couple of months I'll be 71 years old. That's not even "young for an old man" like the Sixties are. I'm just old. Not "really old" yet, but with all the indications that things ain't gwine get better without a whole body stem cell replacement miracle, it's not likely that I'm gonna get better. Aging is not a temporary disease from which my health problems will be cured one day if I eat right and get plenty of sleep.

I've never insisted on being happy all the time, and I haven't been. Happiness has an opposite state of being I call sadness. Other people call the opposite of happiness many naymes, but calling it sadness is okay with me. My life is getting simpler, not more complicated. It has to get simpler because building up defenses against the infinity of an unpredictable future gets tossed out with the bath water.

Not being moved by the entertainment media is probably the one attribute of aging that has really made it difficult to explain to younger people. Not so much to middle-aged people because they're likely to have already experienced the thrill of commercialized empathy loses it's appeal over time. It get harder to understand why I keep pretending I give a shit about what makes young people happy. That's for them to figure out for their own reasons. I'm not even sad that they will. In fact, they'd be dumb if they didn't.

The fact that older people don't go to the movies much was apparent even to me when I was a kid. It was also fairly noticeable that older people didn't show up at dances and festivals based on contemporary music either. These activities are basically about the sexual rituals associated with procreation like what shows up in the nature shows on TV. Homo sapiens don't have to be literate to feel and act upon the emotional urge that instinctively makes them wanna make babies.

The fact that females go through menopause probably has a lot to do with the lack of interest for them in regard to going out of their houses to media events like movies and concerts. Watching TV at home without having to dress up to flirt when they're married with children is not easy. That may be a strong reason for the current popularity for the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and other shows about aging women.

While for all practical purposes it's mostly old men and middle-aged women that get fired up about bluegrass and old-time music festivals. Country pop is still the sexual scene for young people it's always been. Once people get a little age on them, they become excited about classical music, antiques, and events that evoke nostalgia for when they were young. No blame. For some reason they don't view their interests in this regard as the begetting of the end time. They eventually will, in my opinion, but I'm still wrong occasionally.

I've just forwarded an off-list post to the Thomas group for all to see what had been written to me personally. I'm certainly not above being mean just for the hell of it, but normally I wouldn't have forwarded the post if the content of it weren't intended to control my opinions of her and the fact that it's possibly illegal to write what he wrote. She thinks this guy is stalking her, and his IP address was the same city as hers. I felt obligated in a way.

If what he wrote was merely his opinion of her I would have kept it to myself. People argue fiercely on this list. But, it went further and attempted to harm her reputation, and he could be dangerous. I hope that by forwarding his words just as they were written it would take me out of the loop. Fat chance... eh?

I constantly argue with this woman about the list/group topic, but it's not personal. We just look at the me-and-thee-ing of the Gnostic writings from different perspectives. Otherwise, I like her just fine. She's an excellent writer, but obviously wrong about her intellectual outlook. '-)

☂

Where The Future Be-co-me-s The Past

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The term "hamartia" became interesting to me today. I'm not consciously familiar with it as a word. When I began a search for it on Google to find out what it means the first link on the Results Page pointed me toward Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia

You can read the wikipedia article if you're interested or you can Google it up yourself and follow the links that delineate the term to it's range, depth, and scope if you like. To me it's related to what I call the homo sapiens species flaw. I write about it often. Maybe I'm obsessed. Fine. I get a lot of stuff done I wouldn't ordinarily just by employing a state of obsession for as long as it takes. Ti-me flies when I'm having fun. '-)

The documentary of the Monarch butterfly was shown again on PBS. I've see it several times and parts of it several more times. It's always remarkable to realize these butterflies I've been seeing since childhood make this incredible journey. They gotta be aliens. Right?

My own experience tells me that each of them has the sa-me pearl as the center of their existence as I do. It's almost understandable that they would stop the process of evolution at that stage. They got that phase of evolution figured out. Why would they wanna be homo sapiens?

I wrote a paragraph or so in a post to the Gospel of Thomas group regarding a subject I've written about quite a lot over the years. I keep writing about this topic to see if I can say what I gotta say about it mo' bettah. This time I got reminded of it by serendipitously running across an article in Wikipedia about shape shifting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_shifting

What I originally wrote has quotation marks around it.

"Yes, the Gospel of Thomas is a spiritual ploy. In my opinion it's a cheat sheet for story-tellers. The Protestant Christian preachers still do this the sa-me way today. They choose stories by chapter and verse from the KJV and tell the stories charismatically to induce religious fervor and conversion, and then pass the plate or their hat to ask for donations."

They are the same stories that have been utilized for thousands of years, and told by the same sort of story-tellers in different times for the same reason. Money. Why would it not be? It's the way they made a living. Other people were professional memorizers who sold their wares to scribes who wrote out what they memorized and they both made a living that way. Maybe an early version of the National Enquirer.

In the ancient days the wandering story-tellers were the only entertainment the rural villages had. The story-tellers had regular circuits they followed where they exercised territorial imperative, and had murderous fights with other wandering story-tellers who invaded their stomping grounds. It worked about the same way as the fights over hunting grounds.

"As far as shape-shifting is concerned, my entire philosophy is based on my remembering vision, and all of it was about shape shifting that depended on imitation, mimicry, and modeling the other. Nowadays, it's called evolution. No blame. Reaching back for earlier incarnations to reproduce them in the specious present requires one to abandon their current ideas of themselves."

I seem to have written the last line dozens of times in the last year or so. Previously, I used a lot more words to say the same thing less clearly. There is probably no useful end for me practicing how I want to utter things to people. Some of my poems from the time of my first Saturn Return are so polished they really cause some people consternation of a sort they can't disguise. That never bodes well.

The first poem I deliberately composed toward a desired end got practiced out loud for years. I set a goal for myself in reciting it. I wanted to be able to recite the entire poem in a conversational mode before my audience realized I was reciting a polished, constructed thought.

By "polished" I mean rehearsed over and over until there was no chink for an interloper to interject ridicule before the poem was completed. The male gender does not like poetry being tossed at them with their being forewarned. They gonna do something to stop you from reciting anything if they can. No blame.

Whatever it is about men that causes them to feel threatened by recitation makes it even more of a challenge to get it done before they can gather their forces. The same dynamic challenges me. I react pretty much the same way other men do when somebody tries to get over.

I'm definitely trying to get over with the way I use language. Particularly while attentive to the specious present. The eternal now. To cope with the onslaught of the future upon the status quo has required me to view the incoming as plausible, but without being convinced it's a path with heart. To stay in the flow I have to let the possibilities of the future slipstream their way around the stability of my focus.

This has a lot to do with the species flaw I write about in which the flaw is that no individual can realize it's own possibilities in real ti-me. Only as an afterthought, and thus, outside of the flow of the specious present where the future be-co-me-s the past.

児

Fat Cats

♈

The more I read about Twitter the more pleased I am with myself for deleting my account. I liked the idea of composing within a confined space of only so many spaces to say what I had to say. After all, I wrote mostly poetry for the first fifty years of writing, and only switched to mostly prose when I went online in order to participate in e-mail discussion groups. I seem to be near the end of my rope with that activity. That's very sad. I like doing it a lot. It's just that I can't find any subject or topic to write about with other people about something that engages my curiosity.

Yesterday my brother felt like he had to formally ask me to feed his dogs while he and his wife are gone to India. He knew he didn't have to ask, but he felt obligated to say it out loud even if he knew I wouldn't mind. I know the dogs all and every one. Not feeding them would be like abusing my human friends, but not as much fun. ;-)

My brother told me a little about their agenda for doing the trip. It's sponsored by the Rotary International group and the participants will come from various Rotary Club groups from around the United States. He doesn't know any of them personally, so that oughta be an interesting way to meet people.

I told him that I was a little envious of his mode of travel to a place like India. I've never been there. I don't have much interest in going unless I win the lottery and can do it first class, top shelf fashion. That's when he told me he had been assured that they would only be hosted by the "haves" and not the "have-nots". That's practically like winning the lottery, and I'm glad he explained.

It's not that he'll be staying with Indians in their homes and they have servants and slaves that caused me some consternation. When he said they'd be staying with the "haves" I felt good about his safety, but my heart dropped into my stomach when it came to avoiding the "have-nots". For some reason or the other I've always chosen to remain on the side of the lowly.

In the past, I've written about how I must have made some unconscious vow of poverty. It's not a joke to me as my heart re-informed me after hearing my brother's descriptions of the hospitality they were told to expect when they agreed to take the trip.

When I write about my unconscious vow (if such is actually so) I don't really believe I feel that way. It's like I'm writing it to give the impression I'm more compassionate than I really am. I don't really believe I made such a vow because I don't really know if I cop to being on the side of the lowly.

I allow myself to think I'm fair in my attitude toward wealthy people too by saying or writing that, but being on the side of the common man is something that's very real to me when push comes to shove. Personally, I'd like very much to be less prejudiced, and I am, unless somebody pushes my buttons, and then I'm off to the races with ridicule and scorn.

I have a conscious goal or resolve to try to adapt the counsel of two holy writings (sorta holy to me) from the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching and from the Gospel of Thomas. In the I Ching it is written this way: The superior man lets a lot of things pass without being duped." In the Gospel of Thomas Occam's razor seems to have been used, and it stated briefly and succinctly: Be passerby. When I read the Thomas admonition I always add the proviso from the I Ching "without being duped".

That's what I don't do occasionally or perhaps more often than that. As I've aged I let things pass more and more often than when I was more youthful, but still have to concern myself with the "without being duped" part. I don't know if "letting thing pass" and "without being duped" are exclusive from each other or not. I still don't know if I can let things pass if I feel like I am being duped. That would mean that I had gained some control over losing my temper with fat cats. Fat chance of that... eh? '-)

♉

Live And Let Die

☼

It's not complicated. I have everything I need to do it except a couple of porous quart jar lids and I don't actually need them. they would be convenient, but no local store in it's right mind business-wise would stock such an item for fear that it might be considered un-Christian or even a bit pink and the community would stop shopping with them. Shunned.

Sprouts. Drinking wheatgrass juice is not enough. Physically it is. At least, it is according to the nutcases that make that claim. I agree with them so I guess I am is a nutcase too. It's not that I'm against all things wheatgrass, but going raw food across the board is my present aim.

It's not enough to negate eating meat. I never understood that anyway. Just stopping meat is not that difficult to do. It's a matter of will-power. If I can stop smoking tobacco I can do anything. Sorta. The nicotine habit is the mother of all habits to break.

I've heard it's tougher to stop than heroin, but I've never formed a habit of using hero-wine, so I can't say how hard it is to stop. It gets a lotta press. I'm literate. I read stuff, but if I ain't tried it, then I find it hard to knock it. Making claims based on lies is not good statecraft.

Making claims about anything can lead to problems. For me, it is another habit to break. Breaking the habit of making claims I can do or be something I can't may be a tougher habit to break than cigarette smoking. It involves self-importance in a way cigarettes don't.

I got the self-importance rap from Castenada's writings, and the need to not make claims from the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching. The reason I write "the Wilhelm/Baynes translation" rather than just "the I Ching" is that there are several translations of the I Ching around, but I didn't study them for thirty years plus. The other translations might not agree, so I specify where I'm coming from with the I Ching references.

Youtube.com has a lotta videos on how-to projects. The videos are not limited to individual's testimony, but also the manufacturers of the objects how-to projects address. I first used youtube to investigate juicing machines. There are hundreds of testimonials, but there are a lot of videos by the distributors and suppliers of juicing machines. All constrained to the time limit youtube imposes.

The time constraints of youtube and tweeter is a good thing in my opinion. As far as youtube is concerned the time limits allow me to watch dozens of videos on the topics I'm interested in. There's not a lot to know about juicers mechanically because there are basically two types.

Centrifugal juicers chap up the vegetation you put in them and then spin the juice out. Masticating juicers grind the products up pretty much like chewing them in your mouth does. Watching the videos helped me to understand I needed the masticating type because it doesn't introduce as much air into the juice. That's bad for the same reason apples turn brown when you take a bite outta them. Oxidation.

I watched a bunch of videos on how to sprout seeds yesterday, and I'll probably watch some more today. None of the video lasted that long. Ten minutes at the extreme. Many were less than two minutes long. There's not a lot to know about sprouting seeds.

Germinating them by soaking them in water is common for about all sorts of seeds. Washing them each day while waiting for them to sprout is also recommended by practically all the video producers. There is even a technical video on thoroughly cleaning your hands and the equipment used with bleach to kill any bacteria.

A friend of mine who used to grow mushrooms went to extremes with this sterilizing technique, so I'm familiar with the need for this at times, but for the regular beans and vegetable seeds, washing them several times during the process seems to work pretty good. I probably need to wash the wheatgrass I harvest for juicing, but I haven't yet.

I've been taking the magnesium pills I bought recently for nearly a week. I'm already experiencing the results, and they're very positive. Rainey asked me how I knew when enough was enow, and my response was to simply say "Milk of Magnesia" and that did the trick.

He understood immediately that if I got diarrhea I had plenty (if not too much) magnesium in my system, and if I got constipated I didn't have enough. It's as simple as that.

I got another clue about how much magnesium to take from an e-mail post sent out by a new discussion group I subscribed to about alternative life styles. They connect the way magnesium is needed to process calcium along with vitamin D, and suggest that one take about as much by milligram as the calcium.

My family doctor over at the Fayetteville VA Hospital prescribes 600 mg of calcium with 400 IUs of vitamin D, so I started out taking two of the magnesium pills a day. These OTC magnesium pills have a tricky label. They say they're 420 mg tablets, but they also point out that in that tablet there is only 250 mg of magnesium. The rest is sterile filler.

This indicates that I need to take four of the tablets a day to balance out the calcium/vitamin D capsules prescribed by my doctor. I have a better test for how much though. I also have prescribed Tylenol3 tablets for pain, but they cause constipation.

I have avoided taking the pain-killers due to the fact that they induce constipation. Sometimes very painful constipation. Not any more though. I took two of them last night because I was really hurting, but this morning I had no problems with being constipated.

That makes me happy I found a solution to this problem. The swelling associated with the rheumatoid arthritis can produce severe pain and gout, and I haven't yet learned to turn that pain into pleasure like a true masochist does. Unfortunately, I don't appear to be a masochist.

I'm working on it. The problem is that I don't know exactly how to do that. It's not like I need a domineering pervert to induce the pain. I already have plenty of that. It's turning it into pleasure that's the poser.

My ex-wife and two grown children serve as the sadistic motivation that should provide the psychological impetus for me to resort to masochism as a solution to my problems. I'll never see any of them including my grandchildren again for the rest of my life, so I've just stopped trying to communicate with them. Why torment myself over something I don't have any say so about? Live and let die. They left me, not the other way around.

☯

Water, Water, Everywhere

⚐

This new arthritis medicine called Humira doesn't work for me. All the pain I first had is coming back. The people at the VA Hospital in Durham ignore my efforts to remedy my situation. I'm very disgusted with these people now.

It's been cold and rainy all day. That may have something to do with my mood. I did a larger amount of wheatgrass juice today, and it's not sitting well with me either. Looks like I'm gonna take another pain-killer and try to survive until it's late enough to sleep all night. Good night, Irene.

⚑

Silver Bullets And OTC Drugs

丏

The only difference in my diet presently are these magnesium pills I'm taking, but the swelling in my hands has gone down considerably, and I'm feeling better in general physically this morning. I hope the magnesium is the magic pill, the silver bullet.

One of the symptoms of a lack of magnesium in one's diet is that the calcium intake isn't distributed quite right and you get calcium deposits around the bone joints instead of the calcium being employed in strengthening the bone joint itself. I think I've read that this is the cause of gout. The description fits with what the diagnosis that included the rheumatoid arthritis. The article stated that if you imbibe the needed magnesium it will desolve those calcium deposits.

If the magnesium works to desolve those deposits that will be just great, but it will, at least I read, stop the leg cramps I get at night. I get plenty of those. I figure it's just part of the aging process, but I've also heard that magnesium can help with cramps.

It would be very convenient if I could learn to control some of the symptoms of this rheumatoid arthritis with the diet I follow. Its been over a month since I've eaten any meat except for four rather large curried shrimp at my older sister's house at Christmas. I don't think not eating meat has helped that much except in how the food I have eaten was digested easier.

Following the raw food diet has helped with the constipation I was experiencing by eliminating it completely. From what I've read there is a considerable amount of magnesium in the fresh wheatgrass juice I've been consuming, along with other trace elements that get wiped out by cooking. The wheatgrass pundits suggests that merely adding the wheatgrass juice to one's diet without changing it any other way helps a lot.

The one thing about this diet that has really stuck in my mind since I first read about it, is how much of what's good for a person in the food they eat is destroyed upon cooking it. Just reading about this has made me think about how much of what I have eaten, in the past, has been cooked and pasteurized long before it got to the grocery store, much less before I bought it, brought it home, cooked it some more, and futilely stuff it this inert crap into my really sad stomach.

It's doing all that work to digest stuff that doesn't help the rest of my body thrive. I just made up those words to have something to write about this. I don't technically know what goes on. I really hate the idea of my body separating my stomach out to blame for it not getting the nutrients it really needs to take care of the business of living without having to go out of it's way to make it happen.

I spent more time in the greenhouse yesterday. I hadn't seen evidence of my sister-in-law having been there for the last couple of days. I decided to walk over to her house and see what was going on. Sure enough, she wasn't feeling well.

I called out when I approached her house to see if she was home. The car she usually drives wasn't there, but the pickup my brother drives was, so I thought I'd visit with him a bit if he was home, but it was her that came to the door and warned me to stay back because she had the flu.

We talked with her inside the house and me out on the stoop. Poor baby, she sounded terrible. We discussed what I needed to do at the green house to keep our wheatgrass project going. She had some seed germinating I needed to spread out in trays and water everything good.

It's not a problem growing wheatgrass if you already have a green house. She's got enough started in trays to keep us both supplied with all the wheatgrass juice we both need. I started four more trays, and fetched her a couple of trays of new grass for her to her house to doctor herself with. They're planning to leave the country at the end of the month to visit India. I hope she gets mo' bettah before then.

丞

Making Souvenirs For Gawkers

♘

I just watched a TV show on PBS about a group of glass-blowers who it looked like were masters of their craft that had come together to work for a week and each day of the week had a different theme. The work they did required a lot of cooperation and coordination to make it happen. There was an audience who seemed to be part of the deal and everybody had a good time clapping and enjoying themselves when they finished a piece.

Watching the documentaries on PBS is the only time I've seen anything like this happen. The only glass work I've seen anybody do in person has been the souvenir makers at carnivals and state fairs and such, but even the simple stuff they did fascinated me. The pieces these masters were creating were beyond my comprehension. The learning curve must take decades.

I've seen another documentary about the work of another glass artist that has a shop up near Charlotte. He had an exhibition at the Mint Museum and the documentary covered that and how he created his art pieces in his shop. Some of his pieces were huge, and it took a whole crew of workers sometime a couple of years to put them together. I'd love to see his work in person.

How could I never have been exposed to that world? I've made it my business to be around artists of all kinds as often as possible, but I never saw anybody do any glass-blowing. By that I mean that by never having seen anything like that happen, I couldn't work up a desire to do it.

The fact that I learned how to weld amazes me. A lot of people have never been around where somebody was actually welding enough to find out if they might be interested in learning how to do it. Pipe welding is a very serious skilled craft that takes years to learn to do it right so that you can pass the tests to get a job.

One of the reasons the glass-blowing TV show interested me was that as I watched I realized I could do the same thing with molten metal that the glass-blowers can do with molten glass. Not using the breath to blow up molten metal with an air tube, but it might be done with compressed air. I never thought about trying it.

A craft that involves glass and metal happens when copper objects are sprinkled with glass beads and put into an over that heats the copper hot enough to melt the glass beads. When that happens and the metal cools down and the glass re-hardens and the end product is buffed out the results can be fascinating.

There was a souvenir shop in Key West where a couple ran a shop that anybody could come in off the streets and design their own pieces with the provided copper and glass beads. The couple would sell them the supplies and provide the oven and help them figure out what they wanted, and they made a good living.

Right around the corner from that shop on Duval Street was this guy who was a candle maker. He melted different colors of wax into a rectangular form and then carve various shapes into the layered candle wax. I was very impressed with how he set up his work table just inside the large glass display windows on the sidewalk of Duval Street where there is lots of foot traffic.

The candle-maker was a big-bellied friendly guy with a long beard. He may or may not have been all that talented an artist, but that wasn't his schtick. That part of it was about being able to see him work while walking by the window of his shop.

He carved the shapes into the rectangular blocks of candle wax and chatted with the people who seemed fascinated by watching him do it. Then they bought a candle to remind them of getting to watch him work. I reckon most everybody has seen artists set up shop in a shopping mall and work the same mojo.

In Jackson Square down on the waterfront in the French Quarter of New Orleans there are always portrait artists who will do a pastel drawing for $10-20. It was always interesting to me to watch them work. Some of the artists didn't like voyeurs that wasn't gonna spring for the money, so I'd watch one for a while and then move to another.

I thought that would be a neat way to pick up some cash on the bum. The supplies wouldn't cost too much and four or five portraits a day would pay for a good sit-down meal and a bed for the night. I've never worked at drawing as much as it might take for me to develop the small talent I seem to have.

Being able to get hold some money to make things mo' comfortable was always a hassle when I went out on the bum. I always left on some impulsive whim and was hardly ever prepared to travel with even the minimum of comforts like a sleeping bag and a change of clothing.

I did do what it took to learn to read tarot cards to pick up a dime occasionally. From there I went on to learn how to read palms and then the more tedious task of learning astrology. I did do it for money infrequently, but most of the time I got what I wanted or needed from people by doing it for free. I don't need much. If I have enough to get off by myself to contemplate the specious present, I'm fairly satisfied with just enough.

I couldn't have my new electric juicer if I was still a bum on the road. Even a manual juicer would probably be more trouble to take on the bum than it was worth. Growing and juicing wheatgrass as the mainstay of my current diet is a real change of pace.

There is something very satisfying, however, about preparing a nice glass of fresh apple and carrot juice along with my coffee for breakfast. My brother stated that I might turn orange. Preparing carrot juice is a breeze with my Omega juicer. and cleaning the machine up after I'm done has become an easy routine. I usually take the juicer apart and wash all the parts in soapy water and put it back together before I drink the juice. That way it's a bit of a reward for cleaning up right away.

♙

My Day To Start Taking Magnesium

♉

I've written hardly anything today. I expected to do it this afternoon, but I had guests. Musicians all. Guitars, mandolins, drums, and more guitars, plus singing. It's been a while since my house shivered with musical delight. Oh, the joy of it!

Rainey fixed the muffler on his pickup and I don't hear him drive up as easily as before. The outside door was open today when he drove up, so I met him at the door. I saw him get his mandolin out from behind the seat, and I automagically assumed that Ben was on his way over with his new best friend Anthony.

I sorta asked Rainey if that was indeed the case and he affirmed that it was. He had just gotten off the phone with Ben and he was on his way. Sure enough, within five minutes or so, they drove up and started unloading instruments. I decided to fix a pot of coffee just to stay out of the way. They already knew what they wanted.

Anthony is avery talented musician. I can see why Ben wants to be his agent. I don't see why Anthony wants Ben to act as his agent, but Ben and I go way back and I don't see him as a stranger would. Maybe he's just Anthony's ticket to fame and fortune.

If for no other reason I'd like to see one of Ben's "projects" work out and bring him the rewards he deserves. He deserves to have one of his projects be successful because he's been at it so long and has kept trying despite so many failures that its time for the odds to fall in his favor.

I'm glad I fixed that old guitar up and got it to working again. I used it to try to fit in with their playing as if I were playing bass. They weren't depending on me to carry the songs they were playing in any way at all, so I just strummed along when and if I could find the chords they selected.

In the past when I used to go to odd places and play and sing for pocket money I always did it alone. I moved around a lot. I was always broke and never had no place to stay and keep my stuff. I always had everything I owned with me all the time. I never knew enough technically about playing with other people because I didn't need to in order to catch as catch can.

In all these years I never did get much of a chance to just fit in with a group of players and play what I could without messing everybody else that actually could play up. I think that if I sat down with a regular group and practiced playing together I might be able to do myself proud.

It's the first time I've heard Rainey play the mandolin since he's been playing a lot with various groups. I don't know whether he's actually improved or not because the last time I heard him play he was playing alone. With the backup he had and also provided today he sounded great. It's no wonder he's getting so much attention and finding himself in demand from all around the area.

I still haven't played my piano scales today, so I guess I'd better git cracking.

♍

♨

Ben came over with his latest "project". A young singer from Kentucky he's using to impress himself that he's still in the groove albeit through the other as his agent/nemesis. It's Ben's second Saturn Return blowing away his mid-life crisis without permission. Life's like that. A bitch, and then you get old and die. No blame.

That's not just another way of saying it as opposed to walking it off, but a manner of discarding the dead past with disdain as utterly useless. The ballast/baggage of self-worth that's outstayed it's welcome has to be tossed overboard in order for the remaining hot air to lift our balloon to climb higher until we can find a flat, unrocky place to have a soft landing.

Astrology is one of many systems for saying proven things extemporaneously as if in their own time, and by using the trusted, time-tested expressions and words that capture the specific moment, the entire bundle can pass unquestioned like getting for you wholesale.

Who-you-think-you-are-to-yourself means something pretty valuable to most people. It's kind of like in some impressionable moment in the past somebody they admired told them that if they don't think they're important their own self, who will? Sadly, one's need to feel important can become addictive with a need for more flattery as the proviso for their inflated, highly self-esteemed company. The down side can be a mofo.

Perhaps it's not so much self-worth that's the villain as much as one's need to think well of one's current persona. Creating a believable persona that can be like money in the bank takes time and energy beyond the day job. Its said to take dedication as well. Something extra to go the distance. It's an investment, and either it pays off or it don't.

In my youth I saw this cycle of investing one's time and energy into making oneself into an enviable person as a death trap. I thought people who lived this way were hypocrites, and that if I gave their ideals value and arranged to emulate and mimick them successfully I would BE a hypocrite too. I couldn't be-ar the thought of it.

Oh... yes... I was writing about Ben playfully subsuming his mid-life crisis in preparation for his second Saturn Return and his Sexy Sixties. That's what I was using my astrological lingo to describe, but in the full awareness that some, if not all of my unknown and unknowable readers don't know squat about astrology, even at the simplistic level I employ it.

The duration of the orbit of Saturn around the Sun in relation to the Earth as represented by the Moon is twenty-nine odd years (trust no one over thirty). Ideally, the first Saturn Return represents the possibility of becoming a mature, self-actuated adult. The second time Saturn orbits the Sun since a native's birth is the entry point to old age.

Turning sixty years old doesn't necessarily mean you are old in astrological symbolism, but it definitely means you're no longer middle-aged and that everything you learned about being a mature adult will soon start being treated as the meaningless, senile blather of a has-been.

Biblically speaking, where there are two or more of us together the spirit of me-and-ing co-me-s to gather. Me-and-thee-ing is what can happen when you're not allone. On the contrary, when we're no longer together face-to-face, what we mutually for-me-d in at-one-ment is no longer our consummated shared truth, but the alienated past of history.

雲

Another Day Without A Dollar

❝

The temperature got up to 60° (15.55° C) today. I've had the outside door open since about 10 'clock this morning. I feel lazy just like I got spring fever, but true spring fever is another three months away. I've hardly moved all day long. I did do some vacuuming downstairs in my kitchen. The coffee grounds from using the GE percolator I bought a few months back somehow gets all over the floor when I'm dumping the dregs.

The reason I bought this expensive (for me) percolator was that the glass pots that come with the Mister Coffee drip systems break too easy, and the replacement glass canister is almost as expensive as a completely new coffee pot.

I haven't used a percolator for a couple of decades now. I didn't remember what the coffee tasted like when it's percolated as opposed to when it's made by the drip method. I like the taste of the drip method. It really was the glass pots that finally got on my nerves. The percolated coffee tastes just as good. Cleaning up to fix a new pot takes longer and I have to get my hands wet. Not good when the temperature is cold. Dumping the old grounds and washing the metal filter is more tedious than just dumping the grounds filter and all in one fell swoop.

The e-mail discussion group I subscribe to about the Gospel of Thomas seems to be going through another series of evangelical christians showing up on the list pretending to be interested in the Gnostic Gospels. It happens two or three times a year. The Thomas group's scholar's list is said to shut these people out by moderators, but the non-scholars group I participate in lets them stay as long as they can stand it. Usually, not too long. A couple of months, then they can't take it anymore.

My attitude on the list has changed a lot since I first subscribed nearly ten years ago. Since I don't believe in a historical Jesus, but rather a docetic spirit that can't become human, that fact alone creates hassles with the conventional religion outlook. The people who think there really was a physical Jesus look at these old writings completely different than me and some others do. They write about the history of the period and I could care less except for the Jesus stories as metaphors.

The metaphors are or seem to be the same metaphors I've studied in other holy books. Relating and associating them one with the other is kind of the fun I have discussion the Gospel of Thomas with the other members. Sometime that actually happens. It's not important for the other to agree with my interpretations or from my perspective, that they agree with me. The pseudo scholars usually don't. They're basing their interpretation on other people's experiences. Usually dead people who haven't been around for thousands of years.

❞

Neti, Neti

♔

Again I've waited until dark before I sit down to write something. I've taken two naps today. I think my lethargic feelings are associated with this new medicine. I shot myself up with it again this morning. It doesn't help with the pain symptoms as much as the methotrexate. It doesn't matter. It's an incurable progressive disease. I'm still in as much denial as I can get by with, but it's different to live without any hope things will be better in the future.

I frequently resort to my favorite description of the eternal now, and call it "the specious present". To give this descriptor legs to walk on I have to cop a specious attitude about what God is to me, in order to not be enraptured with it or believe in it or cling to the possibilities what's sot before my attention from the future, then perceive it from every perspective possible, and let it smoothly transition to the past without a hitch. To make that happen I have to view the incoming as plausible without being convinced it's claims are worth following it into it's mortal past.

Some people want for their ideal existence what they figure the world oughta be like, and figure this ideal world is the end all and be all of ex-is-tense. Not me. It's natural that I would disagree with this outlook, in consideration of my mimicking and imitating of anything I see as a real advantage toward my survival as an individuated individual. The real problem I have is what to prey or pray for. This point of view has a "fight or flight" touch to it. A yin/yang quality of; if this, then that, about it. My favorite saying about duality remains, however, "neti/neti", not this, not that. Negation from start to finish.

If I stopped denying that you're not me I'd lose consciousness. Maybe it's this new medicine's affect on me, but I am is about to go to bed and do just that. Nothing personal, of course.

♕

Reading About Arthritis

✔

I've begun reading all sorts of information about diet and natural foods. So much hype to wade through its not really enjoyable. Once in a while I run into some interesting article. I started reading on the site linked below and it turned out to be a web site hosted by a Scientology freak:

http://www.arthritistrust.org/menu_list/How_to_get_well.html

The information seemed useful in some ways, but I don't care for cults and groups that try to take over your life. I do believe that for some people it's a fine and proper way to live. People born in the winter months. They like to huddle together as if to stay warm. No blame.

I subscribed to a discussion group on alternative medicine, but they apparently don't have individual e-mails that discussion individual cases so much as they provide all sort of information and all sorts of links to even more information.

I've run across some posts about arthritis that had links that have led me to some dot.org sites that provide articles on arthritis and it's causes. If I've been in a state of denial about the seriousness of this disease it's ebbing away.

The drugs the rheumatologists have prescribed have helped with the symptoms, but the cause and source of it ain't gwine away. It's digging deeper. That's the reason I'm looking into my diet with such intensity. The stuff I'm reading now confirms some of my longest held ideas and guesses about how this situation developed.

Maybe I'm filtering for the results I wanna get, but everything I'm reading leads to diet and allergies. I thought as much. It took me a while, and even then I wasn't sure. I'm still not any closer to what's wot, but I think I'm looking in the right arena now where the bullfight is going on.

I ran across two articles about treatment for some of the stuff I'm concerned with, specifically arthritis and osteoporosis. It's about baking soda. This one doctor thinks many of these problems come from having too much acid in the body, and baking soda kills cancer cells by engulfing them with oxygen.

I supposed everybody has used soda for heartburn. My mother told me not to do it too much because it could cause problems. This doctor don't think so, and points to evidence that says he's right. The actually use it intraveneously to apply it straight to the tumors. Not too much is said about using it orally with water, but what I did read about that said nothing about the affect of overdosing. I might do a couple of glasses a day to see what happens. I need to drink more water anyway, and putting a teaspoon of sodium carbonate in the water can't hurt anything much.

𐐏

The Lout

♅

I reminded this guy of how stupid his argument was, but he didn't take heed, so I elucidated my logic for calling him "stupid" in the follow-up post below:

"In the same way I don't understand enough math to criticize Einstein's theory of general relativity, you don't understand enough about astrology to criticize anybody you stupid lout."

It seems a waste of time to wait for a defensive answer. When a person claims to state their views with authority, and they have none, then they gotta problem with statecraft (the craft of making statements, and surviving having done that). If you are ready to lay siege to my own claim to authority in this arena, there is no blame in that, but my guns are cocked and loaded with aforesight.

Sometime I love baiting fools. I have the experience of having been fooled and baited by scores of charismatics. I see the sa-me fool these charismatics saw in me when they taught me another lesson on just how gullible I am can be.

I don't know if I am was necessarily more gullible after puberty when it first became consciously aware that my me was a somebody in-any-way-at-all that the charismatics could fool. I kept looking around to see if they were trying to fool somebody else, when in truth, "they won't nobody hyah but us chickens."

Currently, I try to be a passerby in the Thomasinean sense more often than not. The effort is to let life's temptations pass me by without being duped about what's at the bottom of the barrel. The lengthy learning curve for deliberately being more cautious seemed to take forever. It seems to help that I was born with a natural gift for feigning insanity and other socially abhorrent attributes.

It was so difficult to realize and accept that dissembling was a legitimate strategy of retreat, and not necessarily an all out fight-or-flight for life at any cost. I've engaged in these struggles for my life with no holds barred with more glee than I should have felt if I were a wise person. How else would I know what temporarily conquering my own all-consuming fear is like?

I've read and heard time after time the statement that God hates a vacuum. If such is so, then I don't think God would let me go through any one lifetime missing the state of cowardice without facilitating an experience that consumed me with a deathly fear of the most debilitating kind.

I am is not persuaded that what it acts like what God is would hesitate or resist the impulse to set my me up for the fall if that was part of it's plan for I am. Although, the facticity of me taking a tumble for God's sake appears to be a constant in our one-sided "relationship". I am is always the last to gnow wot it already always knew. It only ex-IS-ts for-itself as me, and dictates that I should have no other god. I am is doesn't "do" Gods no more than some maids do windows. It leaves that up to me.

If it is true that I am is creates it's own gods, then I have to admit it composes some doozies. There is a world of hurt to be had from assuming that it's just my imagination. Okay, maybe it is I am's imaginator working overtime, but it has dire consequences for me. I am hardly ever thinks of me when it get on a juggernaut to be a psychonaut. It's gonna be the death of me. Regicide? "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill 'im!"?

Nearly everyday now I am reminded of the lesson taught in the oracles about the futility and danger of making claims that you are something you're not or that you can do something you can't. When I was a kid I needed no lesson more than bragging and over-exaggerating my talents and abilities. What made it seem worse was that what I had that was good to go was enough for just about anybody. I had to stop lying. For me, that's even harder to do than to stop smoking tobacco. The problems I have with lying is exacerbated by profoundly realizing there is no irrefutable truth to serve as a model of polarity.

♆

"Show Me Your Gnosis, Felix!"

♎

A pen pal writes:

"Show me your gnosis Felix."

felix answers:

Why bother? My gnosis is not for-you. It's not to demonstrate some superior path to anybody. My gnosis is the one wholeness that can't be preserved on papyrus or paper by papists. That's why the papacy ousted it as the way. It shows what can be done without writing it down. Without going on a paper chase.

♏

Writing this paragraph has been a long ti-me co-me-ing. My father was a papist not because he was Catholic (God Forbid!), but because he advocated the paper chase. He was an advocate of the scientific method, but scared of ghosts, yet not of the dark. He was a possum and coon hunter. Being out in the woods at night with the hounds of Baskerville was his most natural environment. Yet, after he married at the age of thirty-three, he pretty much retired to the classroom, and from there to being a "gentleman farmer".

There are a lot of people around the world even today that despise the paper chase and their sophist pursuit. The paper chasers are always the first to go in the killing fields. No blame. It's just yin and yang taking their turns chasing paper and then dragons. What a drag-on, man. '-)

In my opinion that's the basis of gnosis. It's the opposite of the paper chase. It means that you've decided to take your own life into your own hands, and by doing so, you thus run the risk of enraging the passengers of a ship of fools that you're merely a crew member on, and where even the Captain has to pay heed to the paying customers.

What can't be written down and thus imprisoned by the paper chasers is a hard row to hoe. You got no physical proof of your belief in nothingness, and the literate papists have millions of file cabinets and warehouses full. The numbers are staggering. All the power players are paper chasers, and all you got to defend your right to believe what you wanna is the living word of what the paper chasers like to point out is a spook. The word can be rather competitive though, and rather than learning to use it, it appears that you have to learn to let it use you.

I'm trying to write about two systematic approaches or world views. Both seem to be holistic constructions about how to conduct one's affairs as a homo sapiens. The difficulty for me has to do with choosing the right metaphors to get my points across to different types of people. The way of gnosis seems impossible to describe to someone who has not subjectively experienced visions.

For a lot of the people I've conversed with about having visions, they claim having visions are something the ancient people had because they didn't have a written language. This one guy I'm in a discussion group with totally believes that only the old prophets had visions, and contemporary peoples can no longer have them unless they're insane. Yet, this same guy claims to have been the copyist who transcribed the Coptic versions of the Gnostic Libraries found in Egypt in 1945.

My claim is that there is a body of knowledge that exists as a database of all the experiences an individual has had ever, and that the original entity concerned is immortal. I think what's called The Akashic Records is an metaphor for this individual experiential database that the pearl carries with it wherever it is. There are three elements that accompany this pearl-like entity. Curiosity, volition, and memory. The memory is the rest of the story. the flip side of the coin. It's the more-of-me-than-you-can-see.

The memory or universal record of the immortal core of all life is usually as unconscious to the individual as it is invisible to other individuals. It's a record of everything the pearl has made itself into as it progresses and evolves from nothingness to becoming a human being. Billions of years on Earth alone. A gazillion lifetimes as whatever the pearl makes itself into via be-co-me-ing. This database is not stored in a language either written or oral, and it's because it's not that it's difficult to access through reason or logic.

That's what my remembering vision was about. I re-experienced the contents of that universal memory system in a vision that lasted 15-20 minutes at best. An awareness of coming to Earth and making myself into all sorts of life forms by imitating the other pearls around me. I'm guessing those three elements of curiosity, volition, and memory are all that is needed to imitate and to create oneself by mimicry into any form of life provided by the local environment.

Having this experience provided me with an extended experiential database that acts as the source of my imaginings rather than merely the experiential database of my present ex-is-tense. Instead of reaching for solutions for the problems I encounter in my environment in the database of my limited experience in my present lifetime, I'm reaching for the experience of all the forms of life for my entire stay on Earth. If I'm "true to myself" I have no choice. I have to listen to my inner voice even if every other soul in the universe tells me it's the wrong way to go. Not listening to my inner voice is probably equivalent to blasphemy of the spirit. Lots of holy books say it is, but I can't be sure. I'd be crazy to feel like I had to be sure.

I have the muted television set on and there's a nature program on humming birds that I'm glancing at off to the side occasionally. I just now looked over there and they were showing slow-motion pictures of these magnificent flyers. The thing about seeing them control their bodies in slo-mo is that I feel like I'm in there with them. By the advent of my remembering vision I have lived thousands if not millions of lives as a hummingbird. In my opinion, if you're a homo sapiens, you have too.

This is why I'm not all that convinced that the results of life as a paper chase is all it could be. Yet, I don't think it harms anything as long as I realize it's not the main chance. My natal family appears to think that I've never made a commitment to the paper chase, and that's why my life is a failure. Maybe it's me that thinks that. I haven't always. I expect, however, as I progress in my dotage, that what's left of a paper chase mentality at seventy years of age will not fare well under the ravages of ti-me, and the me-mores of the more universal aspects of Being will co-me to the fore of my rotund groundedness.

An old acquaintance stopped by today to tell me that a couple of days ago he had died and left his body to hover beside it in order to bid it adieu. I immediately opened a door of sin he had gladly accepted in the past, and he told me "No." as if he didn't care whether I was impressed or not. That bodes well. This ol' boy has been preying for a healing conversion for most of his adult life. Maybe it's time, but it's not like it matters. Promises are made to be broken.

It's easy to tell that the really cold weather we've had for the last two weeks has eased up a little. It's been dark for at least an hour now, and I haven't turned the space heater on since around ten o'clock this morning. I'll be doing it anon.

♃

Fishhead Hats

☯

Have you taken a good look at what other people see in you as what they'll become if they waste their time reading your opinion of what dead people might have thought?

I know better than to ask complex questions if I expect to get a insightful response, but sometimes I just do it anyway. I don't really ask other people questions as much as I use other people to ask myself what I may appear to be asking another. I don't think anybody oughta feel flattered I'd use them this way, but I don't intent to add insult to injury by my passive action.

It was below 20° Fahrenheit inside my house when I got up this morning except in my bedroom and kitchen, and it was just above freezing in those two rooms due to the small space heaters I run there. I don't feel any ambition much to change things so that i'll be more comfortable. It's because I'm a miser I suppose, but what it's really about to me is what I'd have to do to get the money I need in order to stay warmer. The days are already getting longer, can it be that long before Spring returns. I'll just cater to the status of my quo up until then.

As its turning out I'm not contributing much to the growing of the wheatgrass. I don't know what my sister-in-law intended when she asked me if I wanted to help her grow it in her greenhouse. What I'm saying is that she's doing all the work and I seem to be reaping the benefits. She doesn't encourage me to contribute much to the planning, and she does all the soaking of the seed and planting them when they've germinated. There's not much more to it than that as far as the work is concerned.

She has taken one of my suggestions about how much wheatgrass we need to have growing at any one time. We both reached a decision on our own that we will need one tray of wheatgrass a day each. I figured that at that rate we'd having to have a bunch of containers going at different stages for that to happen.

She's a bit of a miser too, because when I first started talking about how much we'd need she started talking money. I took that to mean I ought keep my trap shut and accept her generosity. I'd feel better if I helped pay for the wheatberries. I read something about why the people on this diet call the wheat seed "wheatberries". I didn't understand it nor why they used "wheat" and "berry" without a space. Maybe that's what they're called after they have been soaked and germinated. They plump up and look a bit like berries after they've absorbed the water.

I've been trying to remember to stop by the farm supply store between here and town to check and see what sort of wheat seed they sell there. Farmers use wheat and rye as cover crops around here. I'm a little worried about how the seed they sell have been treated with chemicals to keep the bugs outta them,

I remember a news story about some people in Africa who were starving and they were sent some wheat to relieve their suffering. The wheat was treated with chemicals to protect them until they'd been planted, and not supposed to be eaten as food. A lotta people died that were already suffering. That incident really stuck in my mind.

Now that I've thought about it though, I'm not going to eat the seed stock, I'm gonna plant it. I don't think the bug poison gets into the plant the treated wheat seed produce. It's absorbed into the soil it's planted in. Of course, if I can get untreated wheat seed at the feed and seed store I'll do that, but I don't think it'll hurt anything if I use the treated seed.

Rainey stopped by last night for one of his infrequent visits. He's getting more and more involved in what's called Old Time music. This is different from Bluegrass music. He's tried to explain it to me, but I think it's something only the experienced musicians themselves understand and kowtow to. Maybe some dedicated, hard-core fans, and there is plenty of them to hear him tell it.

He reads this blog occasionally and asked me how the diet was going. He was curious to find out if I'd stuck with it and not eaten any meat yet. I haven't, but as I was telling him, I'm not totally committed to the wheatgrass as much as I am to following what's called a "raw food" diet. All I know to follow it is to not eat any meat or cooked foods. Even heating up food kills the enzymes.

He asked me what the wheatgrass juice tastes like, and I hesitated to answer him. I remember telling him previously that it tastes like fresh-mown grass in the summer smells like, and it does, but there's more to it than that. What's more is about what happens after I drink it. It still tastes like fresh-mown grass, but it's kinda acidic and burns in a strange way as it goes down my throat and enters my belly.

The oddness of this taste doesn't just stop when it goes through my stomach either. I can just about feel for it and find out where in my GI tract it's located in the digestion process it goes through. I'm doing it at night before I go to bed in order for it to do what it does uninterrupted by my conscious engagement with the sensory dimension. This may not make any difference at all.

I've stopped reading what other people have to say about being on the diet and what to look out for. That's the way I'm trying to deal with the world as a whole presently. I have to reach for my own resources and trust my inner voice to tell me what to do. Not just about my diet, but over the entire spectrum of my conscious life. That's why I was granted the revelations of my remembering vision, and I have to act like it's real for it to show me what's wot.

☀

Red Bug Stew

𠀗

That "little birdy in the sky" poem keeps popping into my mind recently. We've had a serious cold snap in the area lately. Usually these events only happen every couple of winters, but they don't last long. Three days before, three days after. Presently, however, another cold front that's even colder than the one that's here now is dropping down from the north, and the temperature will not be above freezing even at midday for the next few days. This does not bode well for my arthritis.

The only way to solve this problem that I know about is to migrate south to where it's warm. Anywhere at sea level in Mexico might do the trick. That takes dinero, and I ain't got enough to pull that off. It's living off the dole that puts me in this situation. Getting old and wanting comfort for my old bones will itself be the death of me.

I turned on the TV in order to see the weather reports. It's worse, not better. It's gonna freeze all the winter crops in Florida. What a drag, man. People hurting already from the bank failures, and now the money they managed to get to buy seed and fertilizer will be gone for many people who actually know what they're doing.

Somebody will always be willing to take a shot at farming if the money is right, but they won't have much experience to rely on. There is a lot of intuition in knowing when to plant and when to hold back a week or so. If the produce farmers wait too late to plant the market can come and go before their product is ready for harvesting. The window for profit or loss is often unpredictable.

I won't be going to the greasy spoon to eat today. The mood there will be gloomy amongst the farmers. It's not that the local farmers will have stuff at risk at this time of year, but they sympathize with the farmers further south who are gonna lose everything.

One winter I saw the weather reports about a huge cold front dropping down out of Canada that would reach most of Florida. I had a little expendable cash at at the time, and I wasn't working, so I decided to drive down to Key West to escape the cold. My plan didn't work like I'd hoped. Key West had a record low from that system, and the temperature never got above 50 degrees the whole time I was there.

On the way back from that unsuccessful jaunt there was 13" of snow in Jacksonville, Florida, and when I finally got back home all the water pipes in my house had frozen and busted. I had to repipe my whole house. That took a lotta time and money, and put a lotta stress on me in my role as a miser.

I oughta feel sorry for myself, I suppose, for putting myself in the position of having to do everything connected with my well being for myself. I do have some friends and relatives that help me. Some mightily. But, for the most part, everything that happens around here happens only because I get off my ass to do it. Otherwise... not.

I could give it up to depression. I've done it before and even committed myself to the insane asylum to find out how that goes. Not a solution for me, but I know from personal experience that it's not a path with heart. Yet, the older I get the more intimately I understand that that day will come when I won't be able to do for myself, not even pull the trigger if need be, to protect or defend.

I know exactly how to manipulate the world I've created for myself. I also know how not to. It's just a matter of how close I can come to the bitter end without conceding to the inevitable.

I know something about bitterness. Whether what I claim as my own will be enough to deal with wot's sot before me unexpectedly in some unknown future has to be questionable, but bitterness can hide the opportunity to take the A-train when it stops at my station. So, how can I come to my end without succumbing to bitterness?

𠀫

Immortality Don't Need My Permission

Փ

Funny word.. re-cog-nize-d. "accessed or recognized". Re-cog-nate-d_ re-cog-natal? Twice-born ideations worth a second look?An iterative tracking device for being cognitive. Cognitivism as a masquerade gown arrived at by shape-shifting pumpkins that prevents evil step-mothers from spawning competitive, discogent non-princesses that no self-respecting glass slipper would fit their huge, malformed tootsies in? 

It's a lot like "remembered" in a bizarre way. Re-me-more-d. As in, "I remembered the halo-ed more of me and decided to cotch it up to date by re-cogitating who I am was to make sure who I am is not frozen in ti-me. 

Amazing stuff happens (is penned) when and if I am can re-focus "the more of me than the other can see" to an ongoing specious present inside my fingers. I re-vi-sit the more of me than you can see to give them more life. I re-vi-ta-lies them thar lies by being-for-them in their darkest ours.

I'm settling a bit more into the wheatgrass diet. I don't know what to call it other than that. The wheatgrass part of it seems to be the "meat and potatoes" of what I'm doing. It's having a strong affect on my body. Some of it good. Some of it unpleasant. I'm having some headaches I was warned about.

They are the same type of headaches I get sometime when I'm constipated. It's not a nervous tension type of headache at all. I'm certainly not constipated, and that's one of the good things I mentioned above. Yet, my reaction to this diet is as if I'm constipated. My sister-in-law tells me this is not unusual and that it clears up as the impurities in my body are removed.

This is the same rhetoric I've ridiculed in the past as just so much poop, but the fact that I have several incurable diseases to contend with almost makes it look like I should have been more attentive. I may have been in denial about the seriousness of this arthritis. It's not getting better. There are signs of that most every day. I'm just not suffering as much pain because of the medicine I'm taking, but it's there, ripe and ready.

Maybe I am deluded more than I thought I was. It's because I don't think I'm deluded that worries me. The reason I write that now is the video I watched about the neurologist speaking about imitation and mimicry that he became famous for, but I've been writing about it for decades.

This interpretation of the world is the direct result of my having my remembering vision. It's the content of that vision that's coming into the light currently, and not just in the field of neurology. A lot of what seems new to many people, especially science types, is not new at all, but instead is the same ol' thing, but in other words. All I wanted was to understand, my wish was granted in spades.

Understanding thangs ain't the big whoop I dreamed it would be. Most of the dreams I had about it was about being a powerful human being, but none of that appears to make any difference in the face of mortality, and the immortal part of it doesn't need my understanding or cooperation to be what it is without my help.

Թ

My New Invention That's Nothing New

☏

In the past I have been irritated by the weight of my bed covers on my feet. Especially when I was a kid and my parents used the old style quilts made of cotton-filled baffles. They weren't all that warm and it took several of them to get the job done. Yesterday afternoon I figured out how to get the covers off my feet.

This wouldn't have been possible if I were still married with family or had a live-in girlfriend, but I don't, and so I did what came naturally. I redesigned my bed. All it took was one 18" wide piece of chipboard panel that was cut to the width of my bed inserted at the foot of my bed, one two by four, and two wood clamps I bought on sell at Lowe's.

The width of the chipboard panel was cut at 18" so the bottom edge sits on the bed frame and sticks up past the inner springs and the mattress for about a foot. A couple of inches higher than my toes sticking up when I'm laying in bed on my back.

I had thought of using a board in this manner before. I just couldn't figure out how to fasten the covers over it. It was the wood clamps I bought that solved that problem. I bought them to hold the guitar bak panel to the main body of the guitar when I glued it back together.

I cut the chipboard and stuck in edge-wise at the foot of my bed. Then I draped the covers over the top edge of the chipboard and let them hang down over the end of the bed about six inches. Then I took the two by four and clamped the covers to the chipboard to hold them in place.

When I crawled in bed last night to test my idea out it worked just great. The covers were held higher than my feet by an inch or so, but the chipboard itself was cold to my feet. I took the foam mattress cover I found the other day and doubled it to cover the chipboard, and clamped the covers back on. That worked real good.

It took a while to adjust to not having the weight of the covers on my toes. It's been there all my life. Literally from birth. I like being naked in bed, so even in the summer I usually have at least a sheet over me, and if I'm in an air-conditioned room I like a sheet and a blanket as cover.

I must be a lucky person. I've read in the news lately that quitting smoking can be the cause of some people developing diabetes. Both my doctors and their nurses asked me recently if I have diabetes when they saw that I'd quit smoking a couple of years ago. If I've got it, it doesn't show up in the blood work. I think getting old increases the chances too.

For the most part, I stopped using sugar regularly a few years ago. I use a sugar substitute called Splenda, but lately I've been adding a teaspoon of sugar with it. The diet I put myself on now should help with that some. I don't know how much. It's weird. I'm sitting here chomping on raw kale cud from the fresh leaves I picked moments ago.

Back when I was welding pipe a lot of the welders used snuff and chewing tobacco. Since I had been smoking since I was seventeen I didn't think dipping snuff would do any more harm than had already been done. I was in my forties when I tried it.

The dipping snuff used was a rough cut snuff that was put between the lower lip and teeth. I didn't do it for long. Like smoking cigars it made me sick on my stomach. I did like having the cud to chew on. I guess it was similar to using chewing gum. I never took that habit up. But, having a cud of kale pulp in between my lip and teeth is good to me and good for me.

Not eating meat seems to be something I can deal with. The most challenging part of it is finding something I can eat instead. Eating this wheatgrass and the rye out in the field that was planted as a winter cover crop has inspired me to think about food that grows wild that I can eat raw.

This raw food diet is just what the doctor ordered as far as me being a miser is concerned. I loosely figured that it might have cost me as much as fifty cents to eat all day yesterday. That was for the apples and carrots I bought for about $4 a week ago. My part for the organic wheat berries will be $40 by the time we get to the bottom of the container, but I don't know how long a full container will last for both me and my sister-in-law. Cheap though, real cheap. I'm very pleased.

♧

What I Didn't Learn

並

I'm writing earlier today to see if that helps me to get inspired again, but I may be inspired in another direction that doesn't involve writing. Maybe not talking too. There was a young 21 year old on Letterman last night that talked about going to a retreat where the participants had agreed not to talk for ten days.

I started wondering if I had ever gone for ten days without talking. I don't know or can't actually know because I haven't recorded such a thing. I do know I go five or six days a week sometime without talking because I'm the only one here. I write a lot via this blog and the e-mail discussions I have with people, but I don't actually use my voice to say something.

At times I realize I haven't talked for a while because it's like I forget how to do it for a moment occasionally. Every behavior or activity I involve myself in that I had to learn how to do is gone go away from me before I die, and if not before I die, when I die the entire body of abstract knowledge I acquired in this specific lifetime will be gone forever.

It's what I didn't learn since I got this body that might get me through my dotage and the events brought on directly by the aging process. I've watched it happen in my own family with my own parents. They lived a long time. My father was 88 and my mother was 93 when they died. Forgetting the abstract, idealized life they had imagined for themselves in their youth was expected. Shit happens. Thangs change. What caught me off-guard was that in the end game, they didn't care anymore.

I think caring about stuff that you're supposed to instead of what actually troubles you is all blown outta proportion. To ignore what one actually cares about in favor of the perceptions of the other is just crazy. Other people only see themselves in other people just like you and I do. As the book title describes, we're all passengers on a ship of fools. Trying to "stay real" amounts to remembering that you're a fool.

Sometime I think I'm writing about a tragedy that hasn't happened yet in order to make sure it doesn't. Now, that's a little wacko I suppose. I'm not so sure it is wacko though, I see people being interviewed on TV on a regular basis who have written a book or novel to straighten out what happened to them after that tragedy struck.

One of the strangest stories I encountered on the internet was back when I was subscribed to an e-mail discussion group whose topic was about being pronounced dead, but not really dying. I don't know how much of what she wrote was true, but I sorta believed much of it.

The way she got dead without dying was due to a car wreck on her honeymoon in Hawaii. Her new husband didn't make it, and she barely survived. She was in coma for a long time and on life support. She wrote on the discussion group as a way of reclaiming her sanity. She claimed trees talked to her.

That was about the only aspect of her recovery that she worried about. She didn't think people believed her. I don't think she believed herself or she didn't appear to think it was sane for that to happen. Maybe that was some sort of indicator because nobody seemed to treat her like that at all. She wrote like a woman who had survived a serious life-threatening auto accident. It's a little like combat veterans, I don't expect them to go through something like that and act like it didn't affect them.

Car wrecks seem to influence people to write books as much as anything I can remember. Oddly, not that many people appear to write about being in combat to get over it. Maybe that's due to the kind of people who join the military in the first place. I think more people wrote about being in war previous to the services became an all-volunteer enlistment. Maybe a lot of the draftees back in the old days were frustrated English majors.

I got a few plants to protect during this cold snap. The weather service seems to be convinced it's not a "cold snap", but a system that could be around for a long time without relief. Yesterday I watched the weather program hoping for them to announce they'd made a mistake or the winds had changed or the jet stream moved north, but they didn't say anything encouraging at all. In fact, it's gonna be a couple of degrees colder still. What a drag, man.

My aggravation with this cold weather is my own fault. I oughta have been more practical and bought the machinery I needed to keep my house warm while I was still working and making some expendable cash, but it's not like my life is being threatened. The space heaters I use work okay. I just have to keep them turned off as much as possible, and I wear outdoor clothing inside my house to stay warm. It's embarrassing for people to realize how slackly I run my life. Always on the edge of disaster. I love it.

两

Imitation And Mimicry

亀

It's getting more difficult to come with a topic to write about that interests me. I'm not blocked so much as there is nothing to say. How many times can I write about it being cold. Unusually cold. Cold even for here.

The cold does move me. It moved me to go buy some insulation to seal this room finally. Except for a period of time last year I have slept in this room for twenty years or so without any insulation or inner walls. I don't have any excuses for not doing this work.

The period of time I was raised as a child was always cold in the winter. We had wood stoves, then kerosene stoves. The first time I lived in a dwelling that had central heat was not a house at all, but a Navy ship when I was nineteen years old.

The only insulation available for the ships was asbestos which was soon to be banned. It might have been banned because better insulation became available. That's how the big corporations get the competition out of the way. They just get the government to outlaw it.

I've seen other videos and read articles by the guy in the TEDtalk I link below. He's apparently one of the world's leading experts on the brain and how it works. If you watch it you'll easily understand he's imitating my rap on imitation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html

Imitation and mimicry are the principles of evolution. I've written a lot about it, and I'll probably write some more, but having done that is why I don't have much to write about any more.

齟

We Three Kings

▨

We are engulfed by really frigid weather. It's not as frigid as it gets, even here, but it's very cold. The sun is shining. The air is clean. Except for the sound of the stiff breeze that brought the cold here, it's very quiet. No clouds to hold the sound near to the Earth.

It does that, you know, the same sort of pressure that holds the smoke close to the ground also reflects sound downward, and sometime I can hear conversations two miles away. Fog pushes sound directly into the ground. It's the only place it can go.

The one good thing that's always been recognized by most as a good thing is that at least the days are now getting longer again. This matters if you're trying to get wheatgrass to grow inside a greenhouse. The more light there is and the higher it is in the sky the better the grass will grow. Ultra-violet light and all that jazz.

I hate it for them, but I'll be glad when the holidays are over and the working people go back to work. It's not like they're not going to have to do it eventually. That's one of the few things I got a lot of experience at. Auditioning for jobs. That was a long time ago. As long as the government holds together and I get that SS check I won't ever do it again. I never did like it much in the first place. I've never been naturally ambitious.

My reasons for not liking to have a public job has nothing to do with an inability or lack of knowing how to work. I was taught to work by a real pro. I know how to work, it just takes up too much time, and requires me to make promises I might not keep.

Many of the generations that practiced the Christian work ethic are dead or soon will be. A person following that practice as if it were their ticket to heaven is getting harder to locate. A couple of generations have rebelled against it now, and it doesn't attract the followers it once did. The way of life I detested has now outlived itself.

It doesn't matter. Other attitudes toward work will take the place of the old ways. Some even more terse and stressful from what I can see of it. The rewards gained for being that way only pay off for a select few, and some people are mad about it, but they seem helpless to change things back to the way they were. They didn't have computers and the internet back in the "good ol' days", and they're not going to disappear, the people who believe in the good ol' days will disappear instead. They always have. They always will. No blame.

▓

A Damned Lie

𠬕

It seems strange for the new year to start at the beginning of the weekend. The holiday gets extended two weekends in a row. Lots of days off for the working people. Maybe that will allow the general populace in the countries affected to calm down and see things for what they are a little better.

For the peoples of the Earth that don't worship the Christian gods and worship their own gods and act like their own calendars are more correct than the Christian ones, then the roar of the greasepaint smells like a rat. It's a crazy, mad, mad, world, and no one part of it is gonna get it's way over all the other parts, and so we continue to live in a world full of wars and rumors of wars for better or worse.

More and more I'm discovering that not only do I not have much relevant stuff to say, I'm not even trying to say something that makes sense in a irrelevant way. In my better moments I arrange words in such a way as to belabor reason without calling it a damned lie. I got no good reason for it other than that doing such amuses me to no end.

Senility is a topic that sots itself in the specious present more frequently as the years pass. At my age every "senior moment" threatens the extinction of being able to make sense of my environment, and being found incompetent to handle my own affairs.

The fact that these moments have happened occasionally throughout my life seems less relevant than those stultifying moments do at the age of seventy. It's crazy, I guess, but I'll be glad to get to be seventy-one. The term "seventy years old" is a curse responsible people hurl around like epithets of the beginning of the end. The ring-pass-me-not. The event horizon of Doomsday.

When I turn seventy-one years old the most frequent epithet I expect to be abused with is "dirty". As in having my odd behavior passed off indifferently as "just another dirty ol' man. Ignore him! He got the-can't-help-its." My dream and life long goal is coming true. I'm becoming invisible.

I write about my remembering vision as if it were The Akashic Records because that's what I think that's what people called such experiences in the past. I feel compelled to reach for these experiences as my reference material for making decisions about what's happening in the here and now.

Back when I was working as a pipefitter/welder there were lots of formulas and rules of the road for erecting mechanical systems for huge industrial complexes that I used every day, and my ability to perform those crafts competently decided whether I could keep a job and make a living by doing that.

Those formulas and rules of the road for making a living in industrial construction haven't been a regular part of my vocabulary for a long time. I can't recall out-of-hand the tricks of the trade so readily anymore. If I went back to work practicing those skills daily for a while I wouldn't have much trouble picking them up again, but for now, any hesitancy I might display at remembering what I used to know can easily be taken for senility.

This has happened at the Wal-Mart a couple of times recently at the check-out counter. Both of the clerks were young white people, but it happened at different times. I punched in some numbers and was about to hit Enter when the clerks snatched the input device around as if I didn't have enough sense to operate it, and when they went to tell me my business the transaction went through, and they got mad at me because they had made an ass of themselves.

Old men do get cranky and hard to deal with. Me too. I'm no different just because like everybody else I kind of think I'm special, but in my dotage I'm discovering a new dynamic that requires caution, and for the most part, that's about all it does take to prevent most misunderstandings.

In this regard I feel like I need to take heed of one of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas. The shortest one. Two words. "Be passerby." It appears to carry the same advise as one of the strong metaphors in the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching. "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped."

That's the attitude that might serve me best with impatient young people I encounter for whatever reason here and there. To let their impatience and bad manners pass without being duped into getting cranky about their behavior and trying to correct them according to the dictates of my rules of conscience and morality. Fat chance... eh? "You young whippersnapper! I'll give you what for if you don't do right. Who are yo' people?"

The wind is blowing and nearly all the clouds are gone now. We're completely engulfed by the predicted huge cold front that so large the weathermen won't prophesy the end of the coldest weather of the year. It's supposed to get down to the teens every night for at least the next week, and more. That's about as cold as it gets in these parts, and it's gonna stay that way for a long, long time? What a drag, man.

All I got to stay warm with is a couple of space heaters, and my brother and his wife bought both of them for me outta pity for my stupidity. I know it's just because I'm a miser. The more I have reflected on this attribute the Enneagrams define as my "chief feature", the more I realize this is the God's own truth about me, and has been for as long as I can remember, but without me realizing how powerful avarice is with me.

All this cold weather means to me is that I have to concern myself with my water pipes freezing over. I always cut all the heat in the house off when I go to bed, but if the temperatures get down into the teens or single digits I just leave the space heater on all night.

I made a small discovery last night when I turned the lights back on and got outta bed to straighten up the covers and blankets on my bed. My tossing and turning at night for the past while had thrown them out of the best way for them to be to keep me toasty.

While I got busy doing this before I got a solid chill again, I remembered I had another blanket stashed away that had come from my parents house when my mother died. It was brand new and the packaging had never been opened.

I retrieved it, and found out when I removed the plastic packaging that it wasn't a blanket, but a piece of foam that was designed to be placed under the sheets on top of the mattress. I decided to put it on top of me between a comforter and a down coverlet. It was a soft, flexible foam. It has air bubbles that insulate. I was a little cool under my existing covers. What's not to like if it keeps me warm. It kept me warm. Much warmer. Huzza!

叁

Black-eyed Peas And Chitlins

兠

I composed this poem this morning for lack of anything else to do in response to a goat farmer's initial good will and new year's greetings. I looked up the difference between the terms "restraint" and "constraint" and the Dictionary and Wikipedia revealed the expression "prisoner's complaint", and by employing poetic license I used it without actually knowing what it meant as determined by the aforementioned references.

2010

I've never cared much for black-eyed peas.
They make me uneasy to do as I please. 
But, when I react with a prisoner's constraint,
and claim to do things that I know that I can't,
no food or no condiment or no likker or beer
can stop kismet from filling my po' heart with fear, 
though I silently scream with unruly trepidation,
and wear a false smile and pretend to elation, 
I think about winter and how it's barely drawn near,
then yield to it's madness and say, "Happy New Year!"

fmp, Friday, 01/01/10

Granted, I've never liked the taste of black-eyed peas. They're about the only peas I don't like except the large green peas that I associated with English cooking. I can and do eat anything if I'm hongry, but I don't go buying none of them that don't taste good to me. I've never been all that particular about the taste of kale by itself. That's changing now. I eat the bottom leaves from the ornamental kale plant I bought at Lowe's as a regular fare. It's three times as big as it was, and has many more leaves on it since I brought it home.

An interesting facet of doing this raw food diet is the chlorophyll and the way it cleans up my taste buds and makes my breath smell fresher. I never have taken good care of my teeth. I've used every excuse I have run across to apologize when my crude ways offend somebody, but not having to because of my diet is a easier solution.

I injected the second dose of this new medicine prescribed to me for my arthritis this morning. I'm glad the time to do it came around because I've experienced some discomfort recently. My left shoulder and neck in particular. It hurts at night when I try to roll over. Not as bad as it used to, but enough to wake me up in order to deal with it. It buzzes during the daytime. I have to self-inject every two weeks, and other than taking calcium/vitamin D capsules that's all the medicine I'm taking now. I could get used to this. I must have been taking 5-6 pills both morning and night.

The way I'm going about this diet is intentionally haphazardous. My whole life, my subjective personal life that I conduct in the way that I do just for me, has been about how to respond to the various urges and yearnings I infrequently encounter while intending to be doing something different than that. Now, it seems, I'm dealing with a lack of urges, comparatively, and what to do in the interim to amuse myself.

My not eating meat hasn't produced no strange urges. Neither pro nor con. I'm keeping an eye out. One of my most important signs of how things are going with me health-wise is whether the medicine I take constipates me. It's not just a physical discomfort I have to concern myself with. When I'm literally full of shit, then I'm figuratively full of shit too. I have to be careful about that when I'm in the public eye.

There have been occasions when I've been out and about town shopping or eating at a cafe, that I've gotten angry for some reason or the other, and acted out in public like I do at home. I forget people are watching me openly display my inner feelings, but with a less-than-compassionate disposition. Basically, I'm just being another cranky old man, but for me that's worrisome.

Such awkward behavior is not politically expedient. Being old doesn't give me any right to behave indignantly than some pubescent kid showing off and fledging his wings. Not so oddly, his sins are more forgivable. I've seen how things go. I oughta know better because I've seen the outcome of being cranky too many times.

I guess I got it coming. I don't know if there's any truth to it, but I came up with a phrase I like that sounds like it could be true, but probably isn't. It's not so much of a specific wording that matters, but the idea that, how a young person treats old people when they're young, is how young people will treat them when they get old.

I've been saying something like that to the various people I encounter from day to day, just to watch how they respond when they get the idea I'm expressing. Most of them like the sound of it. It only makes sense fate would make such an arrangement. I figure most people think they're fairly kind and helpful to old people. If they're smart they will see the advantage of doing so immediately, quaint saying or no.

When I was out bumming around it didn't take long to figure out that being polite and helpful to older people was the only real option I could reliably reach for. Older people were more vulnerable and subject to mistreatment by neer-do-wells. Strong young people have a tendency to be on the alert to prove they respect their elders. For a bum with no place to run or hide to even give the appearance of taking advantage was an invitation to disaster. I might as well have been messing with their children or kicking they dog.

Over the years there have been many moments of reflection in which I remembered some occasion when I was lucky to have come out of dire straits alive and/or not being put in prison for something I didn't do. A homeless bum standing beside the road with nowhere in particular to go is an invitation for some people to shift the onus of some evil deed on a drifter to get outta jail free.

㒽