Frames For Figuring Form

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The term "framework" has been plaguing me lately. In a positive way. In the way I'm approaching this conundrum, my own rules of conscience act as a framework for finding a path with heart for myself. Ere now, I am has usually associated the term "conscience" with the adage, "Let your conscience be your guide."

In the last decade or so conscience has begun to represent more to me than a systematic way to con myself into acting out the careactoristics (sic) of a specified, given role in life. Thus, in a personal, unseen way, my con-science IS a science or at least I appear to go about working it in a methodical manner. It is not like I really have any choice but to con myself the best I can.

Life seems to force the issue of conning myself toward what I am chooses as the good end or being conned by others toward other options of their own choosing. That can be fun, but it took me forever, and still does, to accept the other's goals as what's best for me.

It became apparent to me that I needed a framework for perceiving the world that was different than what was provided for me by kith and kin. My plaint was not so much what was wrong with my heritage, I just didn't like the idea of being a copy cat person with nothing to call my own.

Finding a framework for viewing the world didn't come easy for me. I didn't know finding a framework was such a big deal. I couldn't let my conscience be my guide. I didn't know what my conscience was. I certainly didn't know creating a conscience to guide me was my own responsibility. I was as convinced then, as I am is now, that I am is always the last to know.

What I didn't know was that to be the last to know is actually a very good thing, at least for me, it is. That means that I hold off until the last second to make up my mind that such and such is so and so. That power of denial sometimes carries the day when sheer logic and the power of reason is too little too late.

It's not that I condemn logic and reason as much as I consider it the aftermath of a done deal. At the same time I'm writing this the TV is own telling the story of Billy Graham the evangelist. My mother and older sisters were in love with him, but that didn't make my father happy the least little bit.

On the other hand, there was not much my father could do to condemn Billy Graham as a speaker and/or an effective orator. That's how my father made his living, but in other words. I had a belligerent way of holding my own counsel about oratory, but I was exposed to the inner working of it by association.

The results Billy Graham (and the other evangelists who were popular in the era I grew up in) got that impressed me as a kid was how they made the young girls act all dopey and everything. How the young girls acted toward the evangelists of the time was not much different than the way they acted toward Elvis Presley and later, the Beatles. All of what made the young girls feel sexy was about oratory and how bejinnings begin with words.

Being the last to know probably hurt me more than anything when it came to realizing what the young girls were looking for in a boy. I figured it had to be about talking. I didn't know what to practice saying. It was after I received my remembering vision that I started studying the occult. I had not paid my attention to the occult before then. I discovered it was all about talking, and learning to say what people wanted to hear.

I was a homeless bum when I noticed several people in some of the hip communities like Boulder, Colorado had spread a blanket out on or beside a sidewalk and offered to read people's fortunes. Usually with Tarot cards. I wasn't familiar with the Tarot at the time. I saw that it was an opportunity to talk to people face to face. I wanted to provide myself with that opportunity at any price.

The opportunity I recognized when I watched the card readers run their card layouts and interpret what they purportedly "saw" to their customers. As a street person I was constantly on the look-out for opportunities to engage other people in conversation if I had some sense. I was already doing that at every opportunity, but the way I did it left a lot to be desired. I needed a gateway, a portal to a potential friendship with somebody I had something in common with.

At first, learning to read Tarot cards was a very undignified proposition for me. It was far too hokey and had a reputation for being a form of black magic. Black magic is fine for dilettantes with deep pockets, but for a street tramp it's much too dark. For better or worse the way I did it was the only way I knew how at the time. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the way I learned to read the Tarot cards, but for many people there would have to be a lot more learned before the true meaning of me-and-thee-ing can occur.

The easiest way for me to learn anything is to have a first-hand opportunity to watch and observe. Its a lot mo' better to have a mentor who will check up on me and criticize my technique, but if need be I am is a fair self-starter and it can make things happen from will-power alone. It's just a little rough around the edges, thats all. Grandma Moses instead of Rembrandt.

The Waite Tarot deck was a kind of blessing to me because it brought me to the attention of some people who could help me to get started learning astrology. In fact, I bartered my first lesson in astrology from a woman I read Tarot for.

This woman who helped me get the insight I needed to study astrology was a lesson unto me. She used me like a dog to her own advantage, but she didn't leave me out in the cold. She explained her way of the world to me by introducing me to her friends and customers and they would pay me to read their Tarot cards.

As time went by I began to understand that this woman's friends and customers were perfectly willing to give me money for lots more than reading their Tarot cards. Not only that, but this woman had competition in town for the same friends and customers that were perfectly willing to be very generous with me.

Previous to this sequence of events that opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing the world I had always thought that if the opportunity to be a sex toy for an older wealthy women I'd do it in a heart beat. I didn't do it. Instead I made the same mistake I'd made before and married a heart-breaker who was as poor as me, and still is.

So, I blew another chance to be a gigolo and bon vivant on a rich girl's dime in order to follow my own star to the hell of divorce and the hatred of more children. I kept faith with studying the occult. Although I stopped reading Tarot cards I took up reading palms instead, and mastered the I Ching after daily use for thirty years.

Now, I don't do any readings or make any charts or consult any oracles. I haven't read any palms, even for charity for years. I practice saying what I see in the immediacy of now via writing and playing the scales redundantly on my digital piano. I cook terrible food to eat, and it's not to torture myself either. I medicate myself to stop God from torturing me.

Being around people irritates me more than ever. They don't seem able to distinguish how they manage to torture themselves over events they have no control over or ever have the mental acuity to espy themselves as the root of their own evils.

Even if I have figured it out for myself I can't set myself up as a model for them to emulate my behavior. To suggest to anyone that they should follow my example is laughable. It's easy enough to perceive there is no reward for following my ideals for living the good life. Besides, I change my mind about what they are or ought to be faster than I can formulate a rule for how to go about it.

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