❧
We have gray skies and chilly temperatures, but it ain't nothing compared to what's going on north of here. I dread it for the people who are having to deal with one large snow storm after another. What a drag, man. How we missed the brunt of it this time. It is business as usual for this section of the country, and why I've never been attracted to living in the northern climes.
It may be possible that if I moved north I might get used to it by learning how to dress warm and realizing there is more to living up there than dealing with cold weather. I've watched the football games televised from Green Bay, Wisconsin and seen the crazy fans up there cheering on the game bare chested. Maybe there are secrets I don't understand about coping with the cold temperatures.
The most interesting thing that's happened to me over the last day or so is that I may qualify for a free cell phone with 250 minutes a month because I'm so poor. I had to jump through a few hoops to figure out how to get an application in. I just now mailed it, so maybe in a couple of weeks I'll hear back. I did telephone their free number and talked to some guy who told me that there shouldn't be any problem with me getting one.
The second package I mailed my ex-daughter was rather a trial. There was stuff that her mother left behind when she took our children and went to California with them. Photographs and pictures the kids drew when they were small children. Now both of them have their own small children. Since I've been left alone to die however I will, I didn't want anybody to have to guess what belonged to whom.
There was one calendar book in which my ex-wife kept a diary of her feelings when she was pregnant with our first child that I kept out of sheer nostalgia. Sending it away was emotionally raw for me.
At the same time I organized the stuff left over from my first marriage. I don't know where to mail those pictures. All of these things happened a long time ago, but they were my life and the only emotional ventures I have allowed. I was not a good husband or lover, and a lousy father. I put off looking at these mementoes for over thirty years. Now they're gone to live in Washington state where they rightfully belong.
My daughter seem to fear I was preparing to murder myself and that's why I sent her the first package. I don't know why, she reads too much I reckon. I married her mother to keep her own mother from forcing her to get an abortion like she did her first pregnancy, from a former boyfriend before my time. I didn't expect to fall in love with her nor stick around to raise the kid. I guess I should have known better.
For the most part my life is over now. Except for going to the VA Hospital and going out to eat occasionally and going for walks with my brother for exercise, and writing, of course, there is nothing left much to even call a life. I'm fine with that. I might as well be. I've always known I would die in and for poverty.
❦
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Poetry As An Axe To Grind
❧
I have had my fill of all the news about Tunisia and Egypt for a while. The Sunday morning TV pundits didn't talk about much else. Besides, today they seemed more obvious than usual that the professional journalists were attempting to manipulate the politicians they interviewed. I don't trust the fourth estate too much anymore. They got a history of payola that seem suspicious.
That history of the press being paid off to represent certain partisan views from either side of the aisle might be the reason for the popularity of Twitter and Facebook. People wanna know what's going on according to the news participants instead of the professionals in such affairs. Some recognize the press has been paid off and want a more reliable version of the truth.
The mideast confrontations may actually be more about how the internet provides more reliable information. Wikileaks is an example of this trend. Tonight on Sixty Minutes Julius Assange said he got started when he was thirteen years old and learned to program computers. Whatever the rightness or wrongness of those secrets being exposed, it still forces those involved to be more concerned with security on all sorts of levels.
Security on the internet seems like a lost cause. Some newly flushed thirteen year old in some third-world country will attempt to establish his newly-found power to procreate as the modus operandi of what a real man can do to bring down the establishment to demonstrate his place in the world of man.
Like in Egypt, the government can shut down the internet, but some thirteen year old kid like Assange will make a name for himself by finding a workaround. Amateur reporters, especially on the internet, are beginning to have a history too.
The story of evolution and thus mankind rotates around the ability to procreate, and to the extremes it's neophytes are willing to use the associated power of it to apply to any obstacle they encounter. It's their way into the big time, but from the perspective of a child. No blame.
With six billion people on earth, presently, if not more, then there is a constant supply of young people coming into the event horizon of puberty seeking change as they simultaneously turn inward, and people getting older people wanting things to stay the sa-me.
Music students are constantly reminded that to make an omelet you gotta crack some eggs. The bright new composers always break the rules by which their predecessors created the new standards they attempt to surpass. The Chinese have a classical book about change called the I Ching. If change is inevitable, then it seems prudent to learn how to cope with it as best one can.
❦
I have had my fill of all the news about Tunisia and Egypt for a while. The Sunday morning TV pundits didn't talk about much else. Besides, today they seemed more obvious than usual that the professional journalists were attempting to manipulate the politicians they interviewed. I don't trust the fourth estate too much anymore. They got a history of payola that seem suspicious.
That history of the press being paid off to represent certain partisan views from either side of the aisle might be the reason for the popularity of Twitter and Facebook. People wanna know what's going on according to the news participants instead of the professionals in such affairs. Some recognize the press has been paid off and want a more reliable version of the truth.
The mideast confrontations may actually be more about how the internet provides more reliable information. Wikileaks is an example of this trend. Tonight on Sixty Minutes Julius Assange said he got started when he was thirteen years old and learned to program computers. Whatever the rightness or wrongness of those secrets being exposed, it still forces those involved to be more concerned with security on all sorts of levels.
Security on the internet seems like a lost cause. Some newly flushed thirteen year old in some third-world country will attempt to establish his newly-found power to procreate as the modus operandi of what a real man can do to bring down the establishment to demonstrate his place in the world of man.
Like in Egypt, the government can shut down the internet, but some thirteen year old kid like Assange will make a name for himself by finding a workaround. Amateur reporters, especially on the internet, are beginning to have a history too.
The story of evolution and thus mankind rotates around the ability to procreate, and to the extremes it's neophytes are willing to use the associated power of it to apply to any obstacle they encounter. It's their way into the big time, but from the perspective of a child. No blame.
With six billion people on earth, presently, if not more, then there is a constant supply of young people coming into the event horizon of puberty seeking change as they simultaneously turn inward, and people getting older people wanting things to stay the sa-me.
Music students are constantly reminded that to make an omelet you gotta crack some eggs. The bright new composers always break the rules by which their predecessors created the new standards they attempt to surpass. The Chinese have a classical book about change called the I Ching. If change is inevitable, then it seems prudent to learn how to cope with it as best one can.
❦
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Lazarus-God Incognito?
❧
Is man expected to create God and give it life in the reverse of the Genesis myth?
Two of the most antagonistic, opinionated people in the discussion group were arguing via e-mail about some woman who had written a book that attempted to sell the idea that Lazarus was not only Jesus's secret homosexual lover, but that he was one of the original disciples, and wrote one of the books of the Bible too.
The fundamentalist paper tigers roared, and Einstein's secret boy lover rushed to the defense of the rights of homosexuals, and that nobody had the right to judge men who love men. Lovely... eh?
Sam ignored the unpleasantries and wrote about the etymological roots of the careactor Lazarus's name:
El eazar [El izar] = God in disguise [God incognito].
Sam didn't clarify which language he derived this definition from. Usually ancient Greek or Arabic or some combination of both. The papyrus copy of the Gospel of Thomas this group discusses had been translated into Coptic language by the time it was found in Egypt in 1945. Some researchers claim it's older than the Catholic version.
If Sam is correct in his assessment of what the nayme "Lazarus" could possibly imply, then the biblical story of how Jesus raised Lazurus from the dead takes on a more enigmatic, mystical me-and-thee-ing (meaning).
The reason Sam's statement piques my interest comes from our mutual lengthy study of the 114 sayings in the Gospel of Thomas. Lazarus isn't mentioned in the sayings, but other "clues" are. Here are two of them:
***
22 Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom."
They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?"
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
29 Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.
Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
***
My introductory statement figuratively reveals my reaction to Sam's translation of the term "Lazarus". This metaphor seems to imply that each of us are responsible for creating God by raising it from the dead.
Whether such an idea has legs or not is too early for me to tell. I'm easy. I get excited about a lotta stuff that eventually proves out to be fool's gold. It's part of the deal. "You win some. You lose some. Some get rained out."
The part about creating God in our own image is an interesting direction. In my remembering vision the pearl was busily creating all sorts of physical beings and breathing life into them. Then, totally abandoning them when they didn't perform as expected.
After a couple of billion earth years of repetitiously doing that, the notion of attempting to create God might represent the ultimate challenge. The inherent problem for the pearls of great price is that their ability to create is limited to what they can imitate and/or mimick.
The only-est thing that matters, in that artistic regard, is what can a creative spirit that can only create by being a copycat use as it's model for God?
❦
Is man expected to create God and give it life in the reverse of the Genesis myth?
Two of the most antagonistic, opinionated people in the discussion group were arguing via e-mail about some woman who had written a book that attempted to sell the idea that Lazarus was not only Jesus's secret homosexual lover, but that he was one of the original disciples, and wrote one of the books of the Bible too.
The fundamentalist paper tigers roared, and Einstein's secret boy lover rushed to the defense of the rights of homosexuals, and that nobody had the right to judge men who love men. Lovely... eh?
Sam ignored the unpleasantries and wrote about the etymological roots of the careactor Lazarus's name:
El eazar [El izar] = God in disguise [God incognito].
Sam didn't clarify which language he derived this definition from. Usually ancient Greek or Arabic or some combination of both. The papyrus copy of the Gospel of Thomas this group discusses had been translated into Coptic language by the time it was found in Egypt in 1945. Some researchers claim it's older than the Catholic version.
If Sam is correct in his assessment of what the nayme "Lazarus" could possibly imply, then the biblical story of how Jesus raised Lazurus from the dead takes on a more enigmatic, mystical me-and-thee-ing (meaning).
The reason Sam's statement piques my interest comes from our mutual lengthy study of the 114 sayings in the Gospel of Thomas. Lazarus isn't mentioned in the sayings, but other "clues" are. Here are two of them:
***
22 Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom."
They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?"
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
29 Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.
Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
***
My introductory statement figuratively reveals my reaction to Sam's translation of the term "Lazarus". This metaphor seems to imply that each of us are responsible for creating God by raising it from the dead.
Whether such an idea has legs or not is too early for me to tell. I'm easy. I get excited about a lotta stuff that eventually proves out to be fool's gold. It's part of the deal. "You win some. You lose some. Some get rained out."
The part about creating God in our own image is an interesting direction. In my remembering vision the pearl was busily creating all sorts of physical beings and breathing life into them. Then, totally abandoning them when they didn't perform as expected.
After a couple of billion earth years of repetitiously doing that, the notion of attempting to create God might represent the ultimate challenge. The inherent problem for the pearls of great price is that their ability to create is limited to what they can imitate and/or mimick.
The only-est thing that matters, in that artistic regard, is what can a creative spirit that can only create by being a copycat use as it's model for God?
❦
Friday, January 28, 2011
Exploring Possibilities
❧
The weather reports say it's gonna get considerably warmer in the next few days. That's nice. For me. Here. But, there? Specifically UP there. Up north. More specifically the northeast... they got it bad. More snow. If they would get considerably warmer it might feel good temporarily, but it sure will be mucky.
It's interesting to be able to see the satellite reports and have experts interpreting the information to see if they get it right. The reason I find it interesting is that I literally remember old men who were respected for their ability to read the signs and omens to predict the weather. No more.
That's a hard blow for the elderly. The boomers will get no more satisfaction from their life experiences and be able to kick back with the young generation's respect for what they've accomplished. There is a TEDtalk given by a woman who designs computer games that is interesting:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
She claims that playing computer games rewards people for their accomplishments in the game, and that getting rewarded for digital gameplay is better than getting no rewards at all in a mundane work-a-day world.
Ms. McGonigal asserts that gamers learn to do something really, really well, but nobody seems real sure what that is yet. She implies, at least to me, that the skills gamers have honed and perfected might be required in order to survive in a world yet to come.
Watching her TEDtalk the second time was even odder than the first time I watched it. My first viewing happened just after it was posted for viewing. I play computer games. Age appropriate computer games. Single player card games like Hearts and the MineSweeper games.
My chief and earliest game playing was and is solving crossword puzzles. I've been at it for sixty years. I play at the expert level, but I'm not quick enough to compete in the various contests set up for these sort of games. I do everything in ink without any reference books, and it can take days for me to finish some puzzles via intuition.
I might have gotten into the internet-wide role-playing games if I'd had fast enough gear to compete at the beginning level after I bought my first computer. I suspect that's just an excuse. A cop-out to my pre-digital mind set. It would have had to happen from the time I was a kid.
There weren't even any TVs around when I was a kid. Much less video games. Mechanical pin-ball machines with flashing lights. All the pull handles on the slots at Vegas actually worked, and were required to work or it couldn't happen.
There is another reason I don't really fit in with the digital generation. I was in my late twenties and early thirties when the hippies blossomed into being. My generation of rebels had no cause like the boomers did.
They were called the Beat Generation and were exemplified by movies written by adults to attract the young crowd. The "rebels without a cause" celebrated being footloose and fancy free, but they had to wait for their inspiration for the next beach movie to be filmed and distributed out into the boondocks.
The only social movement I actually reached for was Tim Leary's "Tune in, turn on, and drop out." I didn't understand the Beatniks while they were getting their fifteen minutes of fame, and I wasn't a flower child or hippie because I was too old even then, but I did like the drugs and the free love.
"Tuning in" was an accident for me. I literally heard about LSD-25 over the radio, and almost immediately afterward I read an article about it in the local newspaper.
My intense curiosity and aggressive search methods yielded a local group of people who brought me under their wing for a while, but I was too much of a wild and crazy guy for that middle-aged group, and eventually I made arrangements on my own.
Making arrangements on my own required me to fulfill the second part of the mantrum. That of "turning on". That took a couple of years. When the group that was gonna help me get the acid and follow Leary's method of guiding newbies through a safe process dumped me for being too schizoid for their tastes, I got other psychedelic drugs on my own.
The first time I got off on acid the music I chose for background was my favorite LP recording of the 1812 Overture with real cannons shooting off at the appropriate times. I was extremely moved.
The second time I tripped it the music had changed to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, and that was about as close as I came to being a hippie by indoctrination to a cause that was after my time for that sort of thing. I reached for the third part of the dogma, "drop out."
Dropping out for me was probably different and maybe a little easier than for many folks. I had dropped out several times before for different reasons, but walking away from everything that made life stable was not anything new for me.
Tuning in, turning on, and dropping out for me was intended from the gitgo to be a spiritual quest. My inspiration for doing it came from what I heard about LSD over the radio that day. The announcer described how 17 religious seminary students had all taken LSD and the large majority of them claimed to have had a personal conversation with God.
I wanted that more than anything else in the world. What was becoming human for if not that? I knew in that moment that I would gladly surrender my physical body, if that's what it took, to have a fifteen minute conversation with God to satisfy my curiosity.
Abandoning my first wife and our child seemed frivolous beside that possibility, yet that was what I had to do in order to "drop out". Dropping out was one of the most difficult feats I've ever accomplished. Even to the day I'm not sure promises were kept. Knowing something means the end of gnosis.
❦
The weather reports say it's gonna get considerably warmer in the next few days. That's nice. For me. Here. But, there? Specifically UP there. Up north. More specifically the northeast... they got it bad. More snow. If they would get considerably warmer it might feel good temporarily, but it sure will be mucky.
It's interesting to be able to see the satellite reports and have experts interpreting the information to see if they get it right. The reason I find it interesting is that I literally remember old men who were respected for their ability to read the signs and omens to predict the weather. No more.
That's a hard blow for the elderly. The boomers will get no more satisfaction from their life experiences and be able to kick back with the young generation's respect for what they've accomplished. There is a TEDtalk given by a woman who designs computer games that is interesting:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
She claims that playing computer games rewards people for their accomplishments in the game, and that getting rewarded for digital gameplay is better than getting no rewards at all in a mundane work-a-day world.
Ms. McGonigal asserts that gamers learn to do something really, really well, but nobody seems real sure what that is yet. She implies, at least to me, that the skills gamers have honed and perfected might be required in order to survive in a world yet to come.
Watching her TEDtalk the second time was even odder than the first time I watched it. My first viewing happened just after it was posted for viewing. I play computer games. Age appropriate computer games. Single player card games like Hearts and the MineSweeper games.
My chief and earliest game playing was and is solving crossword puzzles. I've been at it for sixty years. I play at the expert level, but I'm not quick enough to compete in the various contests set up for these sort of games. I do everything in ink without any reference books, and it can take days for me to finish some puzzles via intuition.
I might have gotten into the internet-wide role-playing games if I'd had fast enough gear to compete at the beginning level after I bought my first computer. I suspect that's just an excuse. A cop-out to my pre-digital mind set. It would have had to happen from the time I was a kid.
There weren't even any TVs around when I was a kid. Much less video games. Mechanical pin-ball machines with flashing lights. All the pull handles on the slots at Vegas actually worked, and were required to work or it couldn't happen.
There is another reason I don't really fit in with the digital generation. I was in my late twenties and early thirties when the hippies blossomed into being. My generation of rebels had no cause like the boomers did.
They were called the Beat Generation and were exemplified by movies written by adults to attract the young crowd. The "rebels without a cause" celebrated being footloose and fancy free, but they had to wait for their inspiration for the next beach movie to be filmed and distributed out into the boondocks.
The only social movement I actually reached for was Tim Leary's "Tune in, turn on, and drop out." I didn't understand the Beatniks while they were getting their fifteen minutes of fame, and I wasn't a flower child or hippie because I was too old even then, but I did like the drugs and the free love.
"Tuning in" was an accident for me. I literally heard about LSD-25 over the radio, and almost immediately afterward I read an article about it in the local newspaper.
My intense curiosity and aggressive search methods yielded a local group of people who brought me under their wing for a while, but I was too much of a wild and crazy guy for that middle-aged group, and eventually I made arrangements on my own.
Making arrangements on my own required me to fulfill the second part of the mantrum. That of "turning on". That took a couple of years. When the group that was gonna help me get the acid and follow Leary's method of guiding newbies through a safe process dumped me for being too schizoid for their tastes, I got other psychedelic drugs on my own.
The first time I got off on acid the music I chose for background was my favorite LP recording of the 1812 Overture with real cannons shooting off at the appropriate times. I was extremely moved.
The second time I tripped it the music had changed to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, and that was about as close as I came to being a hippie by indoctrination to a cause that was after my time for that sort of thing. I reached for the third part of the dogma, "drop out."
Dropping out for me was probably different and maybe a little easier than for many folks. I had dropped out several times before for different reasons, but walking away from everything that made life stable was not anything new for me.
Tuning in, turning on, and dropping out for me was intended from the gitgo to be a spiritual quest. My inspiration for doing it came from what I heard about LSD over the radio that day. The announcer described how 17 religious seminary students had all taken LSD and the large majority of them claimed to have had a personal conversation with God.
I wanted that more than anything else in the world. What was becoming human for if not that? I knew in that moment that I would gladly surrender my physical body, if that's what it took, to have a fifteen minute conversation with God to satisfy my curiosity.
Abandoning my first wife and our child seemed frivolous beside that possibility, yet that was what I had to do in order to "drop out". Dropping out was one of the most difficult feats I've ever accomplished. Even to the day I'm not sure promises were kept. Knowing something means the end of gnosis.
❦
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Doing Without In Order To Have
❧
The fractal over-the-air TV antenna I finally got put together works okay just leaning against the wall. I made it from clothes hangers just to see if it had legs. It doesn't pick up all the stations I can reach with my old antenna setup, but that antenna is up high on a pole and outside where the signals might be more clear. I'm fairly impressed my jury-rigged antenna worked at all.
There are other shapes I can bend along the same pattern that might pick up some signals better than the simple form I copied from the internet. There are probably ways to hook several of these antennas together to find out if it can handle multiple signals. I don't have a clue. That's what I'm enjoying about this project. I discover new things as I go along.
There may be a way I can put together a fractal antenna that might be presented as an elaborate wire sculpture. I don't think anything matters to the signal except the shape of the metal wire used to build them. The antennae used in the new cell phones and smart phones are fractal antenna designed. Apparently it doesn't matter if they're teeny tiny.
I'm wondering if very powerful antennas could be designed as mobiles like the ones you see in museums. I'd like to design one that I could use as the base of a lamp. The Lowe's store near town has 25 feet of solid copper wire that would be excellent conductive material, and strong enough to hold the shapes I bend it into without sagging.
In the end game it's still a TV antenna that can only pick up over-the-air transmissions, and that limits what any antenna can do. The old network stations of CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and PBS is just about it. Some of them are multicasting several channels and the options are better for rural areas than previously, but the satellite dish antennas are a piece of cake if you can afford the service.
I refuse to pay for the content they put out for the most part. It's the same reason I don't go to the movie houses or listen to recorded music. They are all graven images that I didn't create. I find it impossible to conduct my affairs with other people's ideas of what my reality should be like to cope with theirs.
At this juncture I am is not preparing for some fabulous future I might have if I win the lottery for millions of dollars, much less prepare myself for an occupation that might provide me with the opportunity to earn millions of bucks to buy the pleasures in life I might desire. I've pretty much decided not to desire pleasure.
True, I do enjoy whatever pleasure come my way, I just don't seek them out anymore. I don't know and can't guess what to seek for, much less that if I find something I dreamed up that it would deliver the goods promised.
If I live in the moment I figure I might be able to recognize when pleasure can be harvested as it happens in the mundane turn of affairs. That is, if I'm not too preoccupied with wishing for what might not provide me with what I have labeled pleasure previously.
That's the point of getting rid of the baggage that keep this recognition of what pleasure can be gained from wot's sot before me in the here and now. It's a little like sleeping with one eye open. I can weed my garden at the same time I'm looking for some ripe fruit that will stop my world for a moment or two.
It's like being receptive to the term "nemesis" when it finally shows up after hardy efforts have been made to elicit it's desired present. At times it's so sneaky about making an appearance I can respond to that I miss the opportunity when it's here.
Centering one's integrity on the interpreted and translated words of dead prophets seems like a method of salvation I can do without, and as a miser, if I can do without something/anything without a sense of burdensome loss, I am is gonna do without it.
❦
The fractal over-the-air TV antenna I finally got put together works okay just leaning against the wall. I made it from clothes hangers just to see if it had legs. It doesn't pick up all the stations I can reach with my old antenna setup, but that antenna is up high on a pole and outside where the signals might be more clear. I'm fairly impressed my jury-rigged antenna worked at all.
There are other shapes I can bend along the same pattern that might pick up some signals better than the simple form I copied from the internet. There are probably ways to hook several of these antennas together to find out if it can handle multiple signals. I don't have a clue. That's what I'm enjoying about this project. I discover new things as I go along.
There may be a way I can put together a fractal antenna that might be presented as an elaborate wire sculpture. I don't think anything matters to the signal except the shape of the metal wire used to build them. The antennae used in the new cell phones and smart phones are fractal antenna designed. Apparently it doesn't matter if they're teeny tiny.
I'm wondering if very powerful antennas could be designed as mobiles like the ones you see in museums. I'd like to design one that I could use as the base of a lamp. The Lowe's store near town has 25 feet of solid copper wire that would be excellent conductive material, and strong enough to hold the shapes I bend it into without sagging.
In the end game it's still a TV antenna that can only pick up over-the-air transmissions, and that limits what any antenna can do. The old network stations of CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and PBS is just about it. Some of them are multicasting several channels and the options are better for rural areas than previously, but the satellite dish antennas are a piece of cake if you can afford the service.
I refuse to pay for the content they put out for the most part. It's the same reason I don't go to the movie houses or listen to recorded music. They are all graven images that I didn't create. I find it impossible to conduct my affairs with other people's ideas of what my reality should be like to cope with theirs.
At this juncture I am is not preparing for some fabulous future I might have if I win the lottery for millions of dollars, much less prepare myself for an occupation that might provide me with the opportunity to earn millions of bucks to buy the pleasures in life I might desire. I've pretty much decided not to desire pleasure.
True, I do enjoy whatever pleasure come my way, I just don't seek them out anymore. I don't know and can't guess what to seek for, much less that if I find something I dreamed up that it would deliver the goods promised.
If I live in the moment I figure I might be able to recognize when pleasure can be harvested as it happens in the mundane turn of affairs. That is, if I'm not too preoccupied with wishing for what might not provide me with what I have labeled pleasure previously.
That's the point of getting rid of the baggage that keep this recognition of what pleasure can be gained from wot's sot before me in the here and now. It's a little like sleeping with one eye open. I can weed my garden at the same time I'm looking for some ripe fruit that will stop my world for a moment or two.
It's like being receptive to the term "nemesis" when it finally shows up after hardy efforts have been made to elicit it's desired present. At times it's so sneaky about making an appearance I can respond to that I miss the opportunity when it's here.
Centering one's integrity on the interpreted and translated words of dead prophets seems like a method of salvation I can do without, and as a miser, if I can do without something/anything without a sense of burdensome loss, I am is gonna do without it.
❦
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Capturing Drifting Thoughts
❧
For me to claim that capturing drifting thoughts with words is not easy would be a deliberate lie. Choosing either hard or easy as a descriptor for what happens during my process occurs as an extraneous projection upon a situation that depends more on luck than practiced skills.
Yesterday I wrote about how the term "nemesis" came to mind after it didn't so readily appear when I conjured to use it to describe a facet of my relationship with people who act friendly toward me, but appear to have ulterior motives for becoming my friend. One of the interesting definitions of what a nemesis is points out that the named person is usually acting as an agent for an unseen third party. Moles.
The term nemesis 'came to me' after I stirred the pot a little more vigorously than I normally have to. Forgetting rarely used words is an old habit of mine that hardly has anything to do with the aging process. The aging process does appear to cause me to give up my pompous quest sooner, as of late.
Particularly for the so-called "fifty-cent" words I seem to reach for as a sport to tease the hapless purveyors of false hope with their own row to hoe. Hard-to-digest, arranged statements can cause enough snooze for the other to lose track of the ti-me it takes for me to get outta town. Elsewise, I have to convince Brer Wolf to toss me into the briar patch all over again.
I really have to want to find a very specific word, these days, for me to institute one of the more complex search patterns I've developed over the years. But, I had to get ponderous about nemesis? What other term could possibly describe the condition it does with such terse precision?
My use of it is, "Be warned, mofo, things are not as they seem with this person." If I find myself take to using that term to describe somebody I'm setting up a rule of conscience to help me remember to be cautious and to not let down my guard. A border skirmish can quickly elevate into all-out war.
With my real question being: Why would anybody let themselves be used as a nemesis toward another person for somebody else's benefit? I am is curious to figure out if the manipulated person who attempts to manipulate me even knew they were being used, and why? Why would I let myself be used as someone's nemesis?
One of the reasons I've let somebody use me for their own ends, back in the day, is that they paid me to represent them and their interests. They put an ad in the paper that said they were hiring salesmen. If I checked on the job I usually encountered an experienced salesman who was hired to sell me on selling their products to people who didn't need whatever it was.
Otherwise, why would the product need a nemesis to get over on the fool that don't know any better than to part with their money for something they don't need. I got a lousy attitude toward making a living this way, and not much respect for people who find it intriguing. Although I do seem repugnantly aware that such behavior is what makes the world go around.
Maybe many sinners have their own personal list of the ten most despicable sins for which they suffer the most. This strikes me as a somethingness I created for my own edification and not for the other. It's not at all clear to me why I chose (or had chosen for me) the abstract content of what some call their conscience.
This leads to an even deeper question of mine. Why would anybody in their right mind let their "conscience be their guide"? I never found that doing this was all that beneficial to me as an individual, and seemed like an attempt to get me to irrefutably accept being a herd animal with a fond fare-thee-well.
My doubt about their true motive for suggesting I unquestionably allow some personally irresponsible and unseen drumbeat to essentially control me in my subjective decision-making, led me to question what a "conscience" is, exactly, and it provoked a deep curiosity to my me to find out precisely what a "conscience" consist of?
It became the biggie version of my search for the term "nemesis". How I searched for what a "conscience" might be, that is. I'd like to pass it off as the way of nature and shine it on. And, it is one of the ways of nature, but in this case ignorance is not a blissful experience. In all good conscience, I find it impossible to shine it on (pun intended). '-)
Maybe that's why Thomas Grey wrote "... Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." This poem verse was one of the first instances where hyphenating words proved useful in discerning an interesting conversational insight into what Thomas Grey intended.
I hyphenated "ignorance" to make it ig-nor-ance. The state of ignoring something a human has to know is there in real time, in order to cop a dismissive attitude toward whatever it's labeled to be. Many people seem to be quite blissful about ignoring what they feel unthreatened by.
"Yeah, yeah... So, the sun also rises... I agree... it's a fact... big deal... eh?"
That's where Grey's other part of the line about wisdom (wise-dome)comes into play, in my opinion. It's also why just those two lines of his poem got elevated into universality and not the entire poem; "...where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."
The second line took a while for me to grok it's meaning. Eventually I realized that "folly" is an archaic form of "foolish", and the advice Grey offers is weighty. To me it states that if other people are ignoring some state of affairs about which I'm not indifferent, that I might be better off to leave them be. "Let sleeping dogs lie."
Who am I to attempt to decide for others what they should treat as important about their own lives? Why would I possibly insist that others obey my highly questionable personal rules of conscience, when they have their own cleverly designed, self-generated hell to cope with that is beyond any input I slyly offer up?
It's such a waste of ti-me. My subjective rules for behaving has nothing to do with the other's self interest. So, what's not to like about me continuing to be a passerby without binding their self-inflicted wounds? Why gather with the others at the trough, when there is no water in the well?
❦
For me to claim that capturing drifting thoughts with words is not easy would be a deliberate lie. Choosing either hard or easy as a descriptor for what happens during my process occurs as an extraneous projection upon a situation that depends more on luck than practiced skills.
Yesterday I wrote about how the term "nemesis" came to mind after it didn't so readily appear when I conjured to use it to describe a facet of my relationship with people who act friendly toward me, but appear to have ulterior motives for becoming my friend. One of the interesting definitions of what a nemesis is points out that the named person is usually acting as an agent for an unseen third party. Moles.
The term nemesis 'came to me' after I stirred the pot a little more vigorously than I normally have to. Forgetting rarely used words is an old habit of mine that hardly has anything to do with the aging process. The aging process does appear to cause me to give up my pompous quest sooner, as of late.
Particularly for the so-called "fifty-cent" words I seem to reach for as a sport to tease the hapless purveyors of false hope with their own row to hoe. Hard-to-digest, arranged statements can cause enough snooze for the other to lose track of the ti-me it takes for me to get outta town. Elsewise, I have to convince Brer Wolf to toss me into the briar patch all over again.
I really have to want to find a very specific word, these days, for me to institute one of the more complex search patterns I've developed over the years. But, I had to get ponderous about nemesis? What other term could possibly describe the condition it does with such terse precision?
My use of it is, "Be warned, mofo, things are not as they seem with this person." If I find myself take to using that term to describe somebody I'm setting up a rule of conscience to help me remember to be cautious and to not let down my guard. A border skirmish can quickly elevate into all-out war.
With my real question being: Why would anybody let themselves be used as a nemesis toward another person for somebody else's benefit? I am is curious to figure out if the manipulated person who attempts to manipulate me even knew they were being used, and why? Why would I let myself be used as someone's nemesis?
One of the reasons I've let somebody use me for their own ends, back in the day, is that they paid me to represent them and their interests. They put an ad in the paper that said they were hiring salesmen. If I checked on the job I usually encountered an experienced salesman who was hired to sell me on selling their products to people who didn't need whatever it was.
Otherwise, why would the product need a nemesis to get over on the fool that don't know any better than to part with their money for something they don't need. I got a lousy attitude toward making a living this way, and not much respect for people who find it intriguing. Although I do seem repugnantly aware that such behavior is what makes the world go around.
Maybe many sinners have their own personal list of the ten most despicable sins for which they suffer the most. This strikes me as a somethingness I created for my own edification and not for the other. It's not at all clear to me why I chose (or had chosen for me) the abstract content of what some call their conscience.
This leads to an even deeper question of mine. Why would anybody in their right mind let their "conscience be their guide"? I never found that doing this was all that beneficial to me as an individual, and seemed like an attempt to get me to irrefutably accept being a herd animal with a fond fare-thee-well.
My doubt about their true motive for suggesting I unquestionably allow some personally irresponsible and unseen drumbeat to essentially control me in my subjective decision-making, led me to question what a "conscience" is, exactly, and it provoked a deep curiosity to my me to find out precisely what a "conscience" consist of?
It became the biggie version of my search for the term "nemesis". How I searched for what a "conscience" might be, that is. I'd like to pass it off as the way of nature and shine it on. And, it is one of the ways of nature, but in this case ignorance is not a blissful experience. In all good conscience, I find it impossible to shine it on (pun intended). '-)
Maybe that's why Thomas Grey wrote "... Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." This poem verse was one of the first instances where hyphenating words proved useful in discerning an interesting conversational insight into what Thomas Grey intended.
I hyphenated "ignorance" to make it ig-nor-ance. The state of ignoring something a human has to know is there in real time, in order to cop a dismissive attitude toward whatever it's labeled to be. Many people seem to be quite blissful about ignoring what they feel unthreatened by.
"Yeah, yeah... So, the sun also rises... I agree... it's a fact... big deal... eh?"
That's where Grey's other part of the line about wisdom (wise-dome)comes into play, in my opinion. It's also why just those two lines of his poem got elevated into universality and not the entire poem; "...where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."
The second line took a while for me to grok it's meaning. Eventually I realized that "folly" is an archaic form of "foolish", and the advice Grey offers is weighty. To me it states that if other people are ignoring some state of affairs about which I'm not indifferent, that I might be better off to leave them be. "Let sleeping dogs lie."
Who am I to attempt to decide for others what they should treat as important about their own lives? Why would I possibly insist that others obey my highly questionable personal rules of conscience, when they have their own cleverly designed, self-generated hell to cope with that is beyond any input I slyly offer up?
It's such a waste of ti-me. My subjective rules for behaving has nothing to do with the other's self interest. So, what's not to like about me continuing to be a passerby without binding their self-inflicted wounds? Why gather with the others at the trough, when there is no water in the well?
❦
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Foregone Conclusions
❧
This morning I composed a comment on one of the Gospel of Thomas sayings. I've been doing that every morning for a few weeks now. Hardly anybody else in the discussion group is writing presently. I don't think it will come back to life again. The sole moderator seems to have lost interest.
There were several list members who wrote like they hated her. But, either she finally got the guts to throw them off the list or they withdrew on their personal awareness of having lost some sort of battle that was really with themselves.
The battle they apparently didn't know they were fighting has been going on forever within themselves. Interactively participating in e-mail discussion groups on any topic or subject that interests a person will eventually teach them more about what's wot with themselves than any other activity I'm aware of. YMMV
Describing the contents of one's conscious mind to a receptive audience (who might argue with you) is not easy for anybody it seems. A person has to be their own witness to events that clarify intent, but only the intent of the witness who reads into wot happened each their own way. In being your own witness the whole point is that there is nobody to turn to in some grand exuberance and say, "Damn! Did you see that?"
Being your own-li-est witness means that you gotta act or be still of your own volition without waiting for approval or taboo. To make decisions based on your own individually acquired foresight obviates the other's opinion or judgment as an external goto. Not from disrespect. There just ain't ti-me.
Besides, movement or rest by another's sayso is unproductive. It's acting as if you have somebody else to blame for shame, humiliation, and loss instead of yourself. I am is very forgiving of it's own mistakes of judgment, but it gets confused when it does as it does for the sake of another's approval.
Describing the attributes of myself that I seem required to project upon some innocent in order to serve as my own witness is a tricky business. It tremulously invokes the business of simultaneity in which polar opposites are equalized in value.
The tedious process of keeping still in the midst of movement begs for simultaneity. Not being sucked into the vacuum of the future nor dragged into the baggage of the past requires non-commitment of a heroic proportion. Yet, if I step outside my focus to pat myself on the back, my insight is thus "fare gone" (Goethe)
Being persistently under the influence of foregone conclusions can be maddening. Particularly if I seem obsessed with not blaming the mindset I employed on the wicked influence of my nemesis' and crazed tormentors.
I went a little nuts trying to retrieve the term "nemesis" just now. It's not a word I've used a lot in my life. Only since I've been writing on the internet and exchanging e-mails with people whose intent becomes more lucid when they themselves attempt to compose their own thoughts.
The only term I came up with that came close to nemesis was "tormentors". The Dictionary.app was unhelpful, so I right-clicked to have "tormentors" sent out to the internet for some clue. Just after I clicked to use the internet for a clue, however, "nemesis" popped into my imagination. I almost ignored it's appearance.
The above example serves the point of my first paragraphs. I needed the term "nemesis" to carry or define more exactly what I wanted to communicate. It wasn't there for me. Images of the people I've accused of being a nemesis of mine did show up, but not the term itself.
Retrieving that word is an act of responsibility to myself. I am is the only one who can perform the necessary rituals to re-discover the terms I need to compose my opinions. I evoked I am to bring the term "nemesis" to me like it might have happened in a old fairy tale by rubbing an lamp or shouting "Open Sesa-me!"
In a way I guess I'm claiming that, for me, composing verbal descriptions of the magic I evoke in order to have the I am serve my me is legerdemain at it's most humane use. It's an old, old story, yet I have to write it in my own way to seek the grail or weave a magic carpet for traveling to lands far away.
I came very close to missing the blatant appearance of the term "nemesis" when it made it's appearance in my mind's eye. Even the slightest distraction would have dislodged it and there is not telling when it would return. When it does it's often inappropriate for the situation in which it arrives, and my rejection of it out of hand only drives it away from further usage.
If I depended on other people to enlighten me I wouldn't have the time to serve two masters. If some psychic mentor had "seen" the term nemesis pop up in my mind's eye, and nudged me from my reverie to point that out, his untimely interjection would have prevented me from acting on what became real only to my own recognizance. Thus the old adage, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"
❦
This morning I composed a comment on one of the Gospel of Thomas sayings. I've been doing that every morning for a few weeks now. Hardly anybody else in the discussion group is writing presently. I don't think it will come back to life again. The sole moderator seems to have lost interest.
There were several list members who wrote like they hated her. But, either she finally got the guts to throw them off the list or they withdrew on their personal awareness of having lost some sort of battle that was really with themselves.
The battle they apparently didn't know they were fighting has been going on forever within themselves. Interactively participating in e-mail discussion groups on any topic or subject that interests a person will eventually teach them more about what's wot with themselves than any other activity I'm aware of. YMMV
Describing the contents of one's conscious mind to a receptive audience (who might argue with you) is not easy for anybody it seems. A person has to be their own witness to events that clarify intent, but only the intent of the witness who reads into wot happened each their own way. In being your own witness the whole point is that there is nobody to turn to in some grand exuberance and say, "Damn! Did you see that?"
Being your own-li-est witness means that you gotta act or be still of your own volition without waiting for approval or taboo. To make decisions based on your own individually acquired foresight obviates the other's opinion or judgment as an external goto. Not from disrespect. There just ain't ti-me.
Besides, movement or rest by another's sayso is unproductive. It's acting as if you have somebody else to blame for shame, humiliation, and loss instead of yourself. I am is very forgiving of it's own mistakes of judgment, but it gets confused when it does as it does for the sake of another's approval.
Describing the attributes of myself that I seem required to project upon some innocent in order to serve as my own witness is a tricky business. It tremulously invokes the business of simultaneity in which polar opposites are equalized in value.
The tedious process of keeping still in the midst of movement begs for simultaneity. Not being sucked into the vacuum of the future nor dragged into the baggage of the past requires non-commitment of a heroic proportion. Yet, if I step outside my focus to pat myself on the back, my insight is thus "fare gone" (Goethe)
Being persistently under the influence of foregone conclusions can be maddening. Particularly if I seem obsessed with not blaming the mindset I employed on the wicked influence of my nemesis' and crazed tormentors.
I went a little nuts trying to retrieve the term "nemesis" just now. It's not a word I've used a lot in my life. Only since I've been writing on the internet and exchanging e-mails with people whose intent becomes more lucid when they themselves attempt to compose their own thoughts.
The only term I came up with that came close to nemesis was "tormentors". The Dictionary.app was unhelpful, so I right-clicked to have "tormentors" sent out to the internet for some clue. Just after I clicked to use the internet for a clue, however, "nemesis" popped into my imagination. I almost ignored it's appearance.
The above example serves the point of my first paragraphs. I needed the term "nemesis" to carry or define more exactly what I wanted to communicate. It wasn't there for me. Images of the people I've accused of being a nemesis of mine did show up, but not the term itself.
Retrieving that word is an act of responsibility to myself. I am is the only one who can perform the necessary rituals to re-discover the terms I need to compose my opinions. I evoked I am to bring the term "nemesis" to me like it might have happened in a old fairy tale by rubbing an lamp or shouting "Open Sesa-me!"
In a way I guess I'm claiming that, for me, composing verbal descriptions of the magic I evoke in order to have the I am serve my me is legerdemain at it's most humane use. It's an old, old story, yet I have to write it in my own way to seek the grail or weave a magic carpet for traveling to lands far away.
I came very close to missing the blatant appearance of the term "nemesis" when it made it's appearance in my mind's eye. Even the slightest distraction would have dislodged it and there is not telling when it would return. When it does it's often inappropriate for the situation in which it arrives, and my rejection of it out of hand only drives it away from further usage.
If I depended on other people to enlighten me I wouldn't have the time to serve two masters. If some psychic mentor had "seen" the term nemesis pop up in my mind's eye, and nudged me from my reverie to point that out, his untimely interjection would have prevented me from acting on what became real only to my own recognizance. Thus the old adage, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"
❦
Monday, January 24, 2011
Pinocchio As Everyman
❧
There is justifiable doubt about whether there are a lot of people who view the Gospel of Thomas as a somethingness that can be used as an oracle. My reason for making this daring statement is based on my personal observation that there doesn't appear to be a lot of people in my neck of the woods who even know what an oracle of any kind is.
Moreover, it's my opinion that very few humans spend the amount of time that it takes to bring even famous oracles like the Oracle of Delphi into being, and using graven images that employ the statement, "Jesus said..." might appear sacrilegious to them. No blame.
*****
9 Jesus said, Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure.
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
*****
This saying is almost word for word how I've redundantly, repetitively, boringly, and tediously described how these very small (thus, anachronistically mystical?) mustard seeds/pearls/black holes/cornucopias were scattered upon the Earth like a cloud of neutrinos in my remembering vision.
These docetic entities were/are only spiritual in the sense that they're practically invisible to the naked eye. Like the no-see-ums out on the Outer Banks when the wind changes and blows them in contrarily from the ocean to the shore. Just because the sporting surf fishermen can't see them doesn't mean those pesky critters are not going to "go to town" on any exposed skin.
My favorite metaphor for the comportment of these unseen pesky creatures (pearls of great price) is the story of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, and how he suffered to become a real little boy instead of a wooden dummy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio
This fairy tale wasn't wasted on the likes of George Bernard Shaw who transformed it into the novel Pygmalion, which itself served as the basis for the highly successful musical stage play and the film movie, My Fair Lady.
These pearly no-see-ums (teeny tiny black holes) recreate ala imitation and mimicry intricate mechanisms that are a quantum leap beyond a wooden dummy, and yet they too still can't be-co-me a real human being any better than Pinocchio could.
To me this saying is stating that to truly avoid worshiping graven images of any sort, one must abandon the futile effort to keep one's body alive in order to become immortal.
Seeking professional caretakers as a pathway toward living forever in one's physical body can be seen as blasphemy of the spirit because it indicates an unwillingness to follow the imperceptible docetic spirit's will in order to preserve one's body as a relic to be prayed to and victory is being carved in stone as a graven image.
❦
There is justifiable doubt about whether there are a lot of people who view the Gospel of Thomas as a somethingness that can be used as an oracle. My reason for making this daring statement is based on my personal observation that there doesn't appear to be a lot of people in my neck of the woods who even know what an oracle of any kind is.
Moreover, it's my opinion that very few humans spend the amount of time that it takes to bring even famous oracles like the Oracle of Delphi into being, and using graven images that employ the statement, "Jesus said..." might appear sacrilegious to them. No blame.
*****
9 Jesus said, Look, the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure.
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
*****
This saying is almost word for word how I've redundantly, repetitively, boringly, and tediously described how these very small (thus, anachronistically mystical?) mustard seeds/pearls/black holes/cornucopias were scattered upon the Earth like a cloud of neutrinos in my remembering vision.
These docetic entities were/are only spiritual in the sense that they're practically invisible to the naked eye. Like the no-see-ums out on the Outer Banks when the wind changes and blows them in contrarily from the ocean to the shore. Just because the sporting surf fishermen can't see them doesn't mean those pesky critters are not going to "go to town" on any exposed skin.
My favorite metaphor for the comportment of these unseen pesky creatures (pearls of great price) is the story of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, and how he suffered to become a real little boy instead of a wooden dummy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio
This fairy tale wasn't wasted on the likes of George Bernard Shaw who transformed it into the novel Pygmalion, which itself served as the basis for the highly successful musical stage play and the film movie, My Fair Lady.
These pearly no-see-ums (teeny tiny black holes) recreate ala imitation and mimicry intricate mechanisms that are a quantum leap beyond a wooden dummy, and yet they too still can't be-co-me a real human being any better than Pinocchio could.
To me this saying is stating that to truly avoid worshiping graven images of any sort, one must abandon the futile effort to keep one's body alive in order to become immortal.
Seeking professional caretakers as a pathway toward living forever in one's physical body can be seen as blasphemy of the spirit because it indicates an unwillingness to follow the imperceptible docetic spirit's will in order to preserve one's body as a relic to be prayed to and victory is being carved in stone as a graven image.
❦
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Using A Speech Reader Program To Edit
❧
The habits I've established over years involving writing seems to have not only served me well in the past, but from reading the results of the research done in this Wired article, my habits may help me even more in the future. It's a brief article, take a look:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/learning-methods/
Poetry was my first attempt at writing creatively. It started with the "Roses are red..." dealio. It probably had something to do with wanting to make myself sexually attractive during my teen years. It didn't do much good, I was a virgin until I was nearly 19 years old. I didn't write any poetry I liked until I was nearing thirty.
I wrote stacks and stacks of spiral bound notebooks full of journal notes that were a little like a diary, but I made a lot of the content I wrote to make myself seem more adventuresome and manly than I really was. Every ten years I burned all the journal books I accumulated.
Over the years I've probably burned over a hundred of them. I felt like I had to get rid of what I had written in order to receive more inspiration. Most of the poems I wrote are gone. Nobody ever knew they existed then, and for all practical purposes, nobody knows now.
In the past I've written in the style I call "tossed word salad", and I didn't care whether what I wrote could be understood by competent readers. It's for sure I wasn't writing tossed word salad in order to get good grades in English literature classes. Now that I'm older I could go senile or experience dementia or get Alzheimer's disease, I might start trying to make more sense when I explain myself.
If you've been reading what I write here you should have noticed that my editing of my own writing has gotten slack. Usually through trying to correct the typos I make, I create even more typos and leave double words like and and where I literally don't see the second "and".
My brother who has authored several books suggested that I use the Speech feature in the Mac Operating System, and have it read what I've written back to me in the hope I'll recognize simple mistakes that might not sound just right during that process.
I did that on yesterdays blog entry, and it was helpful to hear it spoken as I read along. It surprised me when I discovered that I could edit parts that needed changing as the computer voice read, and my cut and paste interjections didn't interfere with the computer voice's reading in real time.
Singing the vowels frequently has messed with my voice in a good way. I keep a folder with song lyrics in it on the desktop of my computer monitor. There are the text lyrics of four popular songs from my youth I copied from the internet. I keep them handy to have some words to sing after I get warmed up from singing the vowels, as if the lyrics were some codified chant.
I don't need musical notation for these songs because I know the tunes from memory. I never had the knack of memorizing the words of pop songs. Occasionally I'll remember snatches of the words while I'm singing a cappella, but it gets tedious singing those few words I vaguely remember to the same songs over and over.
The reason I sing these familiar old songs is that I know the tune to them (but not always the words), is to sing the words as clearly as I can and as smoothly as I can manage. If I had the words memorized I could put all my effort into singing well.
I pretend I have an audience in my mind's eye, and in my imagination I don't want my pretend audience to have to guess what the lyrics are. My ideal is to sing to tell the story of the song in an interesting way. I only have one end game. Tell the stories, pass the plate.
There is no way I can know how much trouble this can be for other singers. Some, I'm sure, have a knack or a natural talent for being able to get the words to come out of their mouth in an easy way that seems practically conversational to any of the strangers in a strange land.
Fitting the individual words of the lyrics to the rhythm and meter of the tune they're meant to fit in can be a real problem for me and my pretend audience. Sometimes I pretend my pretend audience boos me if I go too far astray. This happens more often when I get slack with the timing in favor of pronouncing the words as clearly, but as casually as possible.
For some reason I remembered that my digital piano has a drum machine built in that has probably a hundred preset classical rhythms. I might do my imaginary audience a world of good if I practiced singing the lyrics of the four old songs to a fast beat orchestrated with computer-like precision. If the timing got off, then it would have to me that was out of step.
The drum beat I chose was a 16-beat jazz rhythm that required me to sing those previously garbled lyrics real fast instead of the lackadaisical way I'd been practicing them earlier. The timing of the words might have been difficult at a slower beat, but now I didn't have time to be all that picky about how they came out.
It's too soon after trying this technique for me to think about whether practicing this technique will help or hurt my chanting efforts. Singing faster and using words I hadn't memorized yet made my throat raspy. I usually steer away from strategies that cause physical pain.
My plan is to learn to do what it takes to fit the lyrics into a beat that's twice as fast as the song would normally be sung. Then, when I sing it at its designed pace maybe I'll feel like I got lots of time to get to the next word or phrase out with a little polish, and I can concentrate on telling the story with the lyrics.
❦
The habits I've established over years involving writing seems to have not only served me well in the past, but from reading the results of the research done in this Wired article, my habits may help me even more in the future. It's a brief article, take a look:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/learning-methods/
Poetry was my first attempt at writing creatively. It started with the "Roses are red..." dealio. It probably had something to do with wanting to make myself sexually attractive during my teen years. It didn't do much good, I was a virgin until I was nearly 19 years old. I didn't write any poetry I liked until I was nearing thirty.
I wrote stacks and stacks of spiral bound notebooks full of journal notes that were a little like a diary, but I made a lot of the content I wrote to make myself seem more adventuresome and manly than I really was. Every ten years I burned all the journal books I accumulated.
Over the years I've probably burned over a hundred of them. I felt like I had to get rid of what I had written in order to receive more inspiration. Most of the poems I wrote are gone. Nobody ever knew they existed then, and for all practical purposes, nobody knows now.
In the past I've written in the style I call "tossed word salad", and I didn't care whether what I wrote could be understood by competent readers. It's for sure I wasn't writing tossed word salad in order to get good grades in English literature classes. Now that I'm older I could go senile or experience dementia or get Alzheimer's disease, I might start trying to make more sense when I explain myself.
If you've been reading what I write here you should have noticed that my editing of my own writing has gotten slack. Usually through trying to correct the typos I make, I create even more typos and leave double words like and and where I literally don't see the second "and".
My brother who has authored several books suggested that I use the Speech feature in the Mac Operating System, and have it read what I've written back to me in the hope I'll recognize simple mistakes that might not sound just right during that process.
I did that on yesterdays blog entry, and it was helpful to hear it spoken as I read along. It surprised me when I discovered that I could edit parts that needed changing as the computer voice read, and my cut and paste interjections didn't interfere with the computer voice's reading in real time.
Singing the vowels frequently has messed with my voice in a good way. I keep a folder with song lyrics in it on the desktop of my computer monitor. There are the text lyrics of four popular songs from my youth I copied from the internet. I keep them handy to have some words to sing after I get warmed up from singing the vowels, as if the lyrics were some codified chant.
I don't need musical notation for these songs because I know the tunes from memory. I never had the knack of memorizing the words of pop songs. Occasionally I'll remember snatches of the words while I'm singing a cappella, but it gets tedious singing those few words I vaguely remember to the same songs over and over.
The reason I sing these familiar old songs is that I know the tune to them (but not always the words), is to sing the words as clearly as I can and as smoothly as I can manage. If I had the words memorized I could put all my effort into singing well.
I pretend I have an audience in my mind's eye, and in my imagination I don't want my pretend audience to have to guess what the lyrics are. My ideal is to sing to tell the story of the song in an interesting way. I only have one end game. Tell the stories, pass the plate.
There is no way I can know how much trouble this can be for other singers. Some, I'm sure, have a knack or a natural talent for being able to get the words to come out of their mouth in an easy way that seems practically conversational to any of the strangers in a strange land.
Fitting the individual words of the lyrics to the rhythm and meter of the tune they're meant to fit in can be a real problem for me and my pretend audience. Sometimes I pretend my pretend audience boos me if I go too far astray. This happens more often when I get slack with the timing in favor of pronouncing the words as clearly, but as casually as possible.
For some reason I remembered that my digital piano has a drum machine built in that has probably a hundred preset classical rhythms. I might do my imaginary audience a world of good if I practiced singing the lyrics of the four old songs to a fast beat orchestrated with computer-like precision. If the timing got off, then it would have to me that was out of step.
The drum beat I chose was a 16-beat jazz rhythm that required me to sing those previously garbled lyrics real fast instead of the lackadaisical way I'd been practicing them earlier. The timing of the words might have been difficult at a slower beat, but now I didn't have time to be all that picky about how they came out.
It's too soon after trying this technique for me to think about whether practicing this technique will help or hurt my chanting efforts. Singing faster and using words I hadn't memorized yet made my throat raspy. I usually steer away from strategies that cause physical pain.
My plan is to learn to do what it takes to fit the lyrics into a beat that's twice as fast as the song would normally be sung. Then, when I sing it at its designed pace maybe I'll feel like I got lots of time to get to the next word or phrase out with a little polish, and I can concentrate on telling the story with the lyrics.
❦
Friday, January 21, 2011
Oyster Roasts And Tradition
❧
Last night I went to the annual Rotary oyster roast here in this small town. Oyster roasts are fairly common around this area because we live so near to the Atlantic Ocean and it's shallow sounds off the coastal areas of North Carolina. Not last night though, they bought the oysters from the Gulf of Mexico.
The price for these turnouts has gotten very expensive. It doesn't seem all that long ago they were 5-10 dollars a person, now it's $45 for the same event. Granted, most of the money does end up in the Rotary Club general fund that benefits others. I got to go this year because my sister-in-law opted out at the last moment, and she gave me her ticket.
One of my brother's three best friends in high school came to visit him during this oyster roast. I was cautioned that he would be there to prepare me. He is a Leo, and we don't always get along. It took me a while to figure out why. But, as it turns out, he is a very conservative businessman who finds my liberal leaning ways truly dispicable.
Back in high school I had a crush on his older sister briefly. Lust might be a more descriptive term. She was blond and beautifully nubile with a great smile, but in the end game I just wasn't her type, and it was very humiliating for me to suffer rejection. Now in her early sixties, sadly, she has Alzheimer's disease, and has apparently had it a while.
I found an empty space at one of the tables where they dump the buckets full of steamed oysters in a haphazard rotation. The tables have holes cut in them for dumping the empty oyster shells, and everybody is expected to shuck their own. My place at the shucking table was next to a guy I grew up with. We didn't talk much. We were too busy eating nearly raw oysters.
My youngest brother's old friend came strolling up. I greeted him by name. He lives out of town in his retirement, so my brother had sent him to look for me to have someone he knew to be with. He said the same thing to me that he has said to me for the last three times we met each other, "Do you know me?"
I reacted differently this time to his question after hearing about his sister having Alzheimer's, and refused to feel shamed by what I considered an insulting attitude. I realized he wasn't questioning my ability to remember him, but his own ability to remember me. Instead, I inquired about his sister's condition. He said she was entering the last phases of the disease.
The original guy I joined at the oyster-shucking table (he kayaks regularly with our other brother, the River Master) got his fill of eating steamed oysters eventually, and so did I, but my youngest brother's friend had just gotten started. I made the excuse of needing to look for a restroom to disengage.
As I wandered through the room full of oyster-stuffed people, as if I had a meaningful purpose, I met my youngest brother and told him I was leaving. Because he is the Rotary president this year, he had been outside with the high school kids that had volunteered to do the oyster steaming and heavy lifting. Soon, I went out into the cold night, located my car in the parking area outside, and left the party.
My home is only a few miles from where this event took place, and it wasn't long before I got home. I kept thinking about this man and his sister and how they both got Alzheimer's fairly early in life. His condition doesn't appear to be dementia or senility, at least I don't think it is, but a genetically imbued dis-ease that is aggressive rather than incrementally discombobulating.
It's scary to encounter somebody that much younger than me having these kind of difficulties. I don't really wanna know if I am right or wrong about the cause being genetic. If their problems are the result of genetics instead of the aging process in general, I might have a little longer before it gets me too. Both my parents were in their mid-eighties before they no longer remembered who I am is.
Admittedly, there are already signs that I'm not as organized in my thoughts that can be seen in my writing, but that's fairly common for writers of any age. That's why there will always be a need for editors. I get so familiar with what I'm writing about I can't "see" it any more.
My brother suggested an approach he uses sometime that seems to help him. He told me that if I use the Speech program to read what I write back to me, that I might be able to pick out typos and mistakes more readily. I tried it and it does appear to bring my focus into an objective mode.
What? You didn't think I'd noticed. '-)
❦
Last night I went to the annual Rotary oyster roast here in this small town. Oyster roasts are fairly common around this area because we live so near to the Atlantic Ocean and it's shallow sounds off the coastal areas of North Carolina. Not last night though, they bought the oysters from the Gulf of Mexico.
The price for these turnouts has gotten very expensive. It doesn't seem all that long ago they were 5-10 dollars a person, now it's $45 for the same event. Granted, most of the money does end up in the Rotary Club general fund that benefits others. I got to go this year because my sister-in-law opted out at the last moment, and she gave me her ticket.
One of my brother's three best friends in high school came to visit him during this oyster roast. I was cautioned that he would be there to prepare me. He is a Leo, and we don't always get along. It took me a while to figure out why. But, as it turns out, he is a very conservative businessman who finds my liberal leaning ways truly dispicable.
Back in high school I had a crush on his older sister briefly. Lust might be a more descriptive term. She was blond and beautifully nubile with a great smile, but in the end game I just wasn't her type, and it was very humiliating for me to suffer rejection. Now in her early sixties, sadly, she has Alzheimer's disease, and has apparently had it a while.
I found an empty space at one of the tables where they dump the buckets full of steamed oysters in a haphazard rotation. The tables have holes cut in them for dumping the empty oyster shells, and everybody is expected to shuck their own. My place at the shucking table was next to a guy I grew up with. We didn't talk much. We were too busy eating nearly raw oysters.
My youngest brother's old friend came strolling up. I greeted him by name. He lives out of town in his retirement, so my brother had sent him to look for me to have someone he knew to be with. He said the same thing to me that he has said to me for the last three times we met each other, "Do you know me?"
I reacted differently this time to his question after hearing about his sister having Alzheimer's, and refused to feel shamed by what I considered an insulting attitude. I realized he wasn't questioning my ability to remember him, but his own ability to remember me. Instead, I inquired about his sister's condition. He said she was entering the last phases of the disease.
The original guy I joined at the oyster-shucking table (he kayaks regularly with our other brother, the River Master) got his fill of eating steamed oysters eventually, and so did I, but my youngest brother's friend had just gotten started. I made the excuse of needing to look for a restroom to disengage.
As I wandered through the room full of oyster-stuffed people, as if I had a meaningful purpose, I met my youngest brother and told him I was leaving. Because he is the Rotary president this year, he had been outside with the high school kids that had volunteered to do the oyster steaming and heavy lifting. Soon, I went out into the cold night, located my car in the parking area outside, and left the party.
My home is only a few miles from where this event took place, and it wasn't long before I got home. I kept thinking about this man and his sister and how they both got Alzheimer's fairly early in life. His condition doesn't appear to be dementia or senility, at least I don't think it is, but a genetically imbued dis-ease that is aggressive rather than incrementally discombobulating.
It's scary to encounter somebody that much younger than me having these kind of difficulties. I don't really wanna know if I am right or wrong about the cause being genetic. If their problems are the result of genetics instead of the aging process in general, I might have a little longer before it gets me too. Both my parents were in their mid-eighties before they no longer remembered who I am is.
Admittedly, there are already signs that I'm not as organized in my thoughts that can be seen in my writing, but that's fairly common for writers of any age. That's why there will always be a need for editors. I get so familiar with what I'm writing about I can't "see" it any more.
My brother suggested an approach he uses sometime that seems to help him. He told me that if I use the Speech program to read what I write back to me, that I might be able to pick out typos and mistakes more readily. I tried it and it does appear to bring my focus into an objective mode.
What? You didn't think I'd noticed. '-)
❦
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Spicing Up The Foods I Cook
❧
The diet I am is attempting to follow centers itself around the notion of not eating gluten or dairy. Pretty simple, right? Not really. If you don't believe me try to go to any local or chain grocery store and wander the aisles reading the ingredient lists.
I end up eating a lot of brown rice, not because I like it or think it's healthier than other foods, but because of what it don't have. It don't have gluten. The dairy products don't have to be included, but the ingredients I use to create a one-pot meal are not that easy to find.
That predicament puts me in the market for using spices to give my cooking some interesting tastes, but it's a haphazardous kind of cookery that ain't exactly charming. Like putting red curry powder in the oatmeal I fix for myself most mornings. It's an interesting taste to add to beef stew, but oatmeal?
All I can say is, "Now I know." If some idiosyncratic wannabe chef comes along and suggests that I can really improve my oatmeal by including curry powder in it for breakfast, I can feel easy about garnering the highly practiced, crude impertinence designed to tell that dumb ass to go to hell.
Oatmeal is the sort of neutral taste I'm looking for in order to develop some sensory feel for how the more common spices affect the taste of a meal. Normally, I used ground cinnamon and some raisins to give the oatmeal a distinct flavor. Any variation in that taste is immediately distinctive, but like including curry, not enticing.
I used to put some milk or half and half in the oatmeal along with a generous helping of granulated, refined sugar. Because I'm testing out what going non-dairy might do for me or against me I'm using soy milk instead, but kept part of the refined sugar and use Splenda for added sweetness. I'm cautious about how much sugar I use, but I don't see that as the problem.
Strengthening my immune system seems to be a mistake. My immune system has turned against me, and is incrementally killing me softly with time. I take very powerful prescription drugs to weaken my immune system's attack on my continuing life, and then I take vitamins and supplements to strengthen it? What's wrong with this picture?
I don't know if I'll ever be able to distinguish one curry flavor from another. Curry appears to be mixed from different herbs and spices in different neighborhoods, but there seems to be something they all hold in common that makes them recognizable as curry.
If I were to come into chunky windfall like winning the lottery I would probably spend some time going around to the various places that specialize in cooking with curry to explore just how far one can go with it. I certainly think curry was originally designed as medicine, and then made to taste good in order to get it down.
If I did chase ofter the origin of this taste it would be in addition to coffee and wine. Those three foods would make up any decision I made for travel. Of course, if I were filthy rich I might decide that instead of traveling to find these things I might have them brought to me instead.
Memory foam has become interesting to me. It never has been exactly clear to me what it's advantages are. I might be wrong but I think it is advertised as being the stuff NASA used for astronauts in some way. I think it's the same type of foam as that, but I could be wrong.
I think my brother and sister-in-law paid a hefty price for their bed/mattress that is like that. I just figured I'd never be able to afford something like that, but if it helped me sleep more comfortably in some manner I'd like it very much.
For less than a hundred bucks I bought a mattress cover made of memory foam. The egg crate type of foam mattress cover I was using was completely worn out and was taking away from my comfort rather than adding to it. I needed something. I decided to spring for a two and a half inch thick memory foam mattress topper.
Now I'm beginning to understand why this foam is called memory foam. It remembers it's original shape, and when I roll over to a different position on my bed the part of the mattress I've been occupying goes back to it's original shape pretty fast. I don't know how long it will do that. I've only had it on my bed for a few nights. So far, so good.
❦
The diet I am is attempting to follow centers itself around the notion of not eating gluten or dairy. Pretty simple, right? Not really. If you don't believe me try to go to any local or chain grocery store and wander the aisles reading the ingredient lists.
I end up eating a lot of brown rice, not because I like it or think it's healthier than other foods, but because of what it don't have. It don't have gluten. The dairy products don't have to be included, but the ingredients I use to create a one-pot meal are not that easy to find.
That predicament puts me in the market for using spices to give my cooking some interesting tastes, but it's a haphazardous kind of cookery that ain't exactly charming. Like putting red curry powder in the oatmeal I fix for myself most mornings. It's an interesting taste to add to beef stew, but oatmeal?
All I can say is, "Now I know." If some idiosyncratic wannabe chef comes along and suggests that I can really improve my oatmeal by including curry powder in it for breakfast, I can feel easy about garnering the highly practiced, crude impertinence designed to tell that dumb ass to go to hell.
Oatmeal is the sort of neutral taste I'm looking for in order to develop some sensory feel for how the more common spices affect the taste of a meal. Normally, I used ground cinnamon and some raisins to give the oatmeal a distinct flavor. Any variation in that taste is immediately distinctive, but like including curry, not enticing.
I used to put some milk or half and half in the oatmeal along with a generous helping of granulated, refined sugar. Because I'm testing out what going non-dairy might do for me or against me I'm using soy milk instead, but kept part of the refined sugar and use Splenda for added sweetness. I'm cautious about how much sugar I use, but I don't see that as the problem.
Strengthening my immune system seems to be a mistake. My immune system has turned against me, and is incrementally killing me softly with time. I take very powerful prescription drugs to weaken my immune system's attack on my continuing life, and then I take vitamins and supplements to strengthen it? What's wrong with this picture?
I don't know if I'll ever be able to distinguish one curry flavor from another. Curry appears to be mixed from different herbs and spices in different neighborhoods, but there seems to be something they all hold in common that makes them recognizable as curry.
If I were to come into chunky windfall like winning the lottery I would probably spend some time going around to the various places that specialize in cooking with curry to explore just how far one can go with it. I certainly think curry was originally designed as medicine, and then made to taste good in order to get it down.
If I did chase ofter the origin of this taste it would be in addition to coffee and wine. Those three foods would make up any decision I made for travel. Of course, if I were filthy rich I might decide that instead of traveling to find these things I might have them brought to me instead.
Memory foam has become interesting to me. It never has been exactly clear to me what it's advantages are. I might be wrong but I think it is advertised as being the stuff NASA used for astronauts in some way. I think it's the same type of foam as that, but I could be wrong.
I think my brother and sister-in-law paid a hefty price for their bed/mattress that is like that. I just figured I'd never be able to afford something like that, but if it helped me sleep more comfortably in some manner I'd like it very much.
For less than a hundred bucks I bought a mattress cover made of memory foam. The egg crate type of foam mattress cover I was using was completely worn out and was taking away from my comfort rather than adding to it. I needed something. I decided to spring for a two and a half inch thick memory foam mattress topper.
Now I'm beginning to understand why this foam is called memory foam. It remembers it's original shape, and when I roll over to a different position on my bed the part of the mattress I've been occupying goes back to it's original shape pretty fast. I don't know how long it will do that. I've only had it on my bed for a few nights. So far, so good.
❦
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
They Bear No Shame
❧
All my former, so-called "friends" have abandoned me now. No blame. They claim that I was unkind to them and they never want to be in my presence again for the rest of my life. Not the rest of their life, but the rest of my life, because they think my life won't last as long as their life.
They have good reason for abandoning me because I'm not a polite person, and they have good reason for thinking they will live much longer than me. I've had a number of friends who thought that way when they were alive. All I know is that death is always unexpected, and sometime I treat people like they have never really lived, and that pisses them off.
It's not what I say to them that pisses them off. They say it is, but I've lived too long to believe that is the truth. They want me to die first so their secrets will die with me.
Granted, I do know many of their "secrets", which, as far as secrets go, are surely not worth dying for. But, does it do any good for me to attempt to convince them they bear no shame? No. They adopt and promulgate other people's idea that somebody oughta die for their sins, and thus sanctimoniously claim, for the sake of appearances, that Jesus has already done that "for them".
It's that specific point that causes me problems with the people I grew up around in the small towns and villages that produced the ogre my "friends" see me as now.
In my brief dotage I've come to believe that Jesus, as docetic spirit, never lived as a human in order to die, period. I do believe the docetic kristos is a part of my life, but it doesn't know me as an individual. Apparently, I have to become what it can know and surprise it one day. That might take a few more lifetimes or never.
If I became what my acquaintances want me to become (for their sake, and not for Jesus) in order to measure up to what is expected of them, instead of me, from their copycat point of view, I would be the Everyman (world savior) they can't see in themselves, and then they would be so jealous of my accomplishment they'd kill me out of pure spite, so why bother considering them as my friend? The Comforter is my friend, but It doesn't no my me or recognize it as itself.
The big down coat I just got up to put on to keep from turning on the space heater is one that I've had for a long time, and it still does the job I bought it for just as good as day one. It's not all that cold here in my room, or outside either. It is gray, dank, and gloomy, but the temperature is in the mid-forties (+/- 7.2222 C).
It's not warm enough for a light jacket to stave off my discomfort, but cool enough to either turn on the stove or don this warm, warm coat. The space heater is noisy. I spent so much time in the boonies hiding out from the public eye and finding an out-of-the-way place to lay down and sleep, I depend on my hearing more than most who normally sleep inside a building of some sort in order to hear death sneaking up on me in the dark. Fat chance... eh?
There are times when I get real happy clumsily playing the Major and minor scales on my digital piano. There are no witnesses to my mistakes, and I have a tendency to forgive myself a lot. I seem sure I make mistakes I don't recognize besides the easy ones. The thing that makes me happy is that I have always heard music in my mind, but recently I have begun to imagine myself playing that music on my digital piano as I hear it in my mind as I usually do.
When I write that I hear the music in my head I mean that I'm making that music up extemporaneously. I guess I "borrowed" the scatting style from the jazz musicians I've heard in the past, and I literally hear the tune and sometimes I can sing what I "hear" only in my imagination. Now, I am is beginning to "see" me playing that same music I "hear" in living color. I can't actually do it live in front of witnesses nor even for myself, but the possibilities have gotta be there for that to happen if I keep on keeping on with the daily scales thing.
❦
All my former, so-called "friends" have abandoned me now. No blame. They claim that I was unkind to them and they never want to be in my presence again for the rest of my life. Not the rest of their life, but the rest of my life, because they think my life won't last as long as their life.
They have good reason for abandoning me because I'm not a polite person, and they have good reason for thinking they will live much longer than me. I've had a number of friends who thought that way when they were alive. All I know is that death is always unexpected, and sometime I treat people like they have never really lived, and that pisses them off.
It's not what I say to them that pisses them off. They say it is, but I've lived too long to believe that is the truth. They want me to die first so their secrets will die with me.
Granted, I do know many of their "secrets", which, as far as secrets go, are surely not worth dying for. But, does it do any good for me to attempt to convince them they bear no shame? No. They adopt and promulgate other people's idea that somebody oughta die for their sins, and thus sanctimoniously claim, for the sake of appearances, that Jesus has already done that "for them".
It's that specific point that causes me problems with the people I grew up around in the small towns and villages that produced the ogre my "friends" see me as now.
In my brief dotage I've come to believe that Jesus, as docetic spirit, never lived as a human in order to die, period. I do believe the docetic kristos is a part of my life, but it doesn't know me as an individual. Apparently, I have to become what it can know and surprise it one day. That might take a few more lifetimes or never.
If I became what my acquaintances want me to become (for their sake, and not for Jesus) in order to measure up to what is expected of them, instead of me, from their copycat point of view, I would be the Everyman (world savior) they can't see in themselves, and then they would be so jealous of my accomplishment they'd kill me out of pure spite, so why bother considering them as my friend? The Comforter is my friend, but It doesn't no my me or recognize it as itself.
The big down coat I just got up to put on to keep from turning on the space heater is one that I've had for a long time, and it still does the job I bought it for just as good as day one. It's not all that cold here in my room, or outside either. It is gray, dank, and gloomy, but the temperature is in the mid-forties (+/- 7.2222 C).
It's not warm enough for a light jacket to stave off my discomfort, but cool enough to either turn on the stove or don this warm, warm coat. The space heater is noisy. I spent so much time in the boonies hiding out from the public eye and finding an out-of-the-way place to lay down and sleep, I depend on my hearing more than most who normally sleep inside a building of some sort in order to hear death sneaking up on me in the dark. Fat chance... eh?
There are times when I get real happy clumsily playing the Major and minor scales on my digital piano. There are no witnesses to my mistakes, and I have a tendency to forgive myself a lot. I seem sure I make mistakes I don't recognize besides the easy ones. The thing that makes me happy is that I have always heard music in my mind, but recently I have begun to imagine myself playing that music on my digital piano as I hear it in my mind as I usually do.
When I write that I hear the music in my head I mean that I'm making that music up extemporaneously. I guess I "borrowed" the scatting style from the jazz musicians I've heard in the past, and I literally hear the tune and sometimes I can sing what I "hear" only in my imagination. Now, I am is beginning to "see" me playing that same music I "hear" in living color. I can't actually do it live in front of witnesses nor even for myself, but the possibilities have gotta be there for that to happen if I keep on keeping on with the daily scales thing.
❦
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Pittapatta
❧
In the past I've written that I don't listen to recorded music anymore, and in general that's true. I deliberately don't listen to recorded music, but I don't avoid going to places where it will be at in order to avoid exposing myself to it at any cost. I'm not against recorded music for anybody who likes listening.
Many people seem to listen to other people's music because they have none of their own music to record or play live or to amuse themselves when they're alone. I play, sing, and compose my own music. Mostly always alone. Often in real time. I make it up as I go along, but for a specific reason. I don't wanna spend my own life trying to be somebody else or practice singing other people songs using another person's voice.
Maybe that's why I spend so much time alone. I need time alone in order to imitate and mimic who I-think-I-am-is as a model, and I don't look in a mirror to do it. It's actually difficult for me to claim I do model myself for imitating and making myself into who I think I am is. When I reflect on what I've done it's always about a while back, and I'm not that any more.
Singing has always been my favorite was to express myself musically. I always know where I am with myself in the midst of singing. Not composed songs from the past, but directing what is emerging from my body in real time when I am is doing it. I'm doing it now as I write, and there is a reason for it.
When I sing the vowels it takes some time to place the sound from my vocal cords in the place in my head where I can observe the ongoing vibration as it happens. This morning I'm doing it in order to hear the beat of my heart as a sort of stethoscope.
Not long after I take the prescription drugs and over-the-counter supplements I shove joyously into my gaping maw I get a hollow feeling in my chest and a irregular vibration that makes me wonder if my heart beat is fibrillating. It kind of scares me a little, but the rest of my body keeps on keeping on as if nothing is irregular. So, I start humming at a low frequency, and then slow it down until my heartbeat interferes with the sound production. In that way, I can hear the regularity of my real heartbeat... thump, thump, thump,,.. and that calms me down.
Sometime I have two heartbeats. One slow and sonorous, and the other more pittapatta. Something about the pills I take cause some sort of arrhythmic swing that brings my attention to it, mostly by the way it interferes with my regular breathing. Then, I start to consciously regulate my breath and listen for the deep regular beat via the chanting method I described above, and eventually the regular order of things falls into place.
Last Saturday my brother came over in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to go walking. We usually do this at night, but since his wife was outta town to go listen to some Dali Lama oriented people lecture on Buddhism, he suggested we do our walk early. That was fine with me, and I took time to put on my hiking boots, and off we went.
There was still some snow on the path we usually take that hid out in the shadow the pine trees because it still had the ice on top of it. I slipped on the ice and fell flat of my back with my head taking a hard blow and a light concussion. I struggled to get up, but was totally disoriented, and my brother had to catch me under my arms to keep me from falling again.
He seemed quite worried about me because my language wasn't making any sense to him, but after he had helped me stay on my feet for another hundred yards or so I demanded he let go of me so I could wobble a little. I felt as though I could get my bearings with the hands-on help he offered. He let go, and I was able to straighten up and proceed, but not as if nothing had happened.
We walk a circle that passes both our houses at some point, and when we got near my house I decided to go inside. My brother described for me what happened, but I had no memory of what either of us said after I slipped and fell. When I got home I wanted to take a nap in the hope that might clarify my thoughts about, but I had heard that when you have a concussion you shouldn't sleep for a while, and so I just let myself go into a contemplative coma for a while without actually losing consciousness.
After a couple of hours I returned to the world of the living with a humongous desire for chocolate. I walked around a little to see if I was still dizzy, I wasn't, so I drove to the store and bought some chocolate-covered peanuts, and they made me feel much better, at least physically.
Late that night my brother came over and we walked nearly four miles and that was pleasing to me as an indicator that I was at least physically okay. Mentally, I seem to blurt things out in a hurried fashion, as if to get what I have to say out of my mouth before I forgot what I meant to say.
The weather outside requires only one word from my lexicon to express fully how it strikes me. Dank. Sure, it's cloudy, and not really cold temperature-wise, but the humidity penetrates the denim jeans I'm wearing and causes the chilly temperatures to cling to my body as if looking for a place to hide inside my right pant leg.
Slipping on the ice and falling flat on my back reminds me of falling out of a chinaberry tree when I was around ten years old. What was similar was the fact that both times I landed flat on my back, and my head took a severe blow. It was probably more damaging when that limb broke and I hit the ground from 8-10 feet up. Boom! Time seemed suspended for a while. I thought I was dead. Something probably did die, both falls.
My brother described what happened after I slipped and fell. Slipping and falling was apparently the last events that made sense to me for a good long while. Even right now I don't remember what he told me I did. Either that or I don't want to write about it. He said I acted nuttier than usual and thought to call for an ambulance, but I wouldn't let him.
Why would I wanna be saved? I'm an old person. I've watched a lotta people die that I was emotionally invested in. Either that or they might as well be dead. I'm dead to them. There are a number of people who might be tickled to death if I passed on. Hell, I'd be tickled to death if I passed on. Why would I wanna live in unpleasant circumstances for an interminable length of time when it just pissed people off to have to care for me?
In all good conscience, how could I allow that happen? Do you think I have no dignity or respect for the significant others in my life such that I would selfishly refuse to die in some timely fashion?
True, they abandoned me to my hateful self and traveled a long way to feel safe in order to perch like ghouls in the skeletal remains of the tree of life and wait for me to croak. The least I can do is accommodate them by not waiting until they're too old and to worn out by life to display a modicum of false mourning for the photo ops. '-)
I can see in my imagination the response my first wife might trot out upon finally hearing of my demise. Her big wide eyes might fly open in studied appreciation, then deliberately turn upward in total adoration to thank God for answering her prayer. "Gone at last! Gone at last! Great God Almighty! He is gone at last."
Imagination is all I have left of this woman, if she's still alive. When I do see her in my mind's eye she is always the lovely young woman I tricked into marrying me. If God was fair to women he would have made my unworthiness more apparent to innocent young girls.
I did see her once when she was in her late forties or early fifties, I think, and her peaches and cream, translucent white skin, had burst into a network of tiny star-like wrinkles. As they should have, not to be mourned. She looked great even as an older woman.
❦
In the past I've written that I don't listen to recorded music anymore, and in general that's true. I deliberately don't listen to recorded music, but I don't avoid going to places where it will be at in order to avoid exposing myself to it at any cost. I'm not against recorded music for anybody who likes listening.
Many people seem to listen to other people's music because they have none of their own music to record or play live or to amuse themselves when they're alone. I play, sing, and compose my own music. Mostly always alone. Often in real time. I make it up as I go along, but for a specific reason. I don't wanna spend my own life trying to be somebody else or practice singing other people songs using another person's voice.
Maybe that's why I spend so much time alone. I need time alone in order to imitate and mimic who I-think-I-am-is as a model, and I don't look in a mirror to do it. It's actually difficult for me to claim I do model myself for imitating and making myself into who I think I am is. When I reflect on what I've done it's always about a while back, and I'm not that any more.
Singing has always been my favorite was to express myself musically. I always know where I am with myself in the midst of singing. Not composed songs from the past, but directing what is emerging from my body in real time when I am is doing it. I'm doing it now as I write, and there is a reason for it.
When I sing the vowels it takes some time to place the sound from my vocal cords in the place in my head where I can observe the ongoing vibration as it happens. This morning I'm doing it in order to hear the beat of my heart as a sort of stethoscope.
Not long after I take the prescription drugs and over-the-counter supplements I shove joyously into my gaping maw I get a hollow feeling in my chest and a irregular vibration that makes me wonder if my heart beat is fibrillating. It kind of scares me a little, but the rest of my body keeps on keeping on as if nothing is irregular. So, I start humming at a low frequency, and then slow it down until my heartbeat interferes with the sound production. In that way, I can hear the regularity of my real heartbeat... thump, thump, thump,,.. and that calms me down.
Sometime I have two heartbeats. One slow and sonorous, and the other more pittapatta. Something about the pills I take cause some sort of arrhythmic swing that brings my attention to it, mostly by the way it interferes with my regular breathing. Then, I start to consciously regulate my breath and listen for the deep regular beat via the chanting method I described above, and eventually the regular order of things falls into place.
Last Saturday my brother came over in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to go walking. We usually do this at night, but since his wife was outta town to go listen to some Dali Lama oriented people lecture on Buddhism, he suggested we do our walk early. That was fine with me, and I took time to put on my hiking boots, and off we went.
There was still some snow on the path we usually take that hid out in the shadow the pine trees because it still had the ice on top of it. I slipped on the ice and fell flat of my back with my head taking a hard blow and a light concussion. I struggled to get up, but was totally disoriented, and my brother had to catch me under my arms to keep me from falling again.
He seemed quite worried about me because my language wasn't making any sense to him, but after he had helped me stay on my feet for another hundred yards or so I demanded he let go of me so I could wobble a little. I felt as though I could get my bearings with the hands-on help he offered. He let go, and I was able to straighten up and proceed, but not as if nothing had happened.
We walk a circle that passes both our houses at some point, and when we got near my house I decided to go inside. My brother described for me what happened, but I had no memory of what either of us said after I slipped and fell. When I got home I wanted to take a nap in the hope that might clarify my thoughts about, but I had heard that when you have a concussion you shouldn't sleep for a while, and so I just let myself go into a contemplative coma for a while without actually losing consciousness.
After a couple of hours I returned to the world of the living with a humongous desire for chocolate. I walked around a little to see if I was still dizzy, I wasn't, so I drove to the store and bought some chocolate-covered peanuts, and they made me feel much better, at least physically.
Late that night my brother came over and we walked nearly four miles and that was pleasing to me as an indicator that I was at least physically okay. Mentally, I seem to blurt things out in a hurried fashion, as if to get what I have to say out of my mouth before I forgot what I meant to say.
The weather outside requires only one word from my lexicon to express fully how it strikes me. Dank. Sure, it's cloudy, and not really cold temperature-wise, but the humidity penetrates the denim jeans I'm wearing and causes the chilly temperatures to cling to my body as if looking for a place to hide inside my right pant leg.
Slipping on the ice and falling flat on my back reminds me of falling out of a chinaberry tree when I was around ten years old. What was similar was the fact that both times I landed flat on my back, and my head took a severe blow. It was probably more damaging when that limb broke and I hit the ground from 8-10 feet up. Boom! Time seemed suspended for a while. I thought I was dead. Something probably did die, both falls.
My brother described what happened after I slipped and fell. Slipping and falling was apparently the last events that made sense to me for a good long while. Even right now I don't remember what he told me I did. Either that or I don't want to write about it. He said I acted nuttier than usual and thought to call for an ambulance, but I wouldn't let him.
Why would I wanna be saved? I'm an old person. I've watched a lotta people die that I was emotionally invested in. Either that or they might as well be dead. I'm dead to them. There are a number of people who might be tickled to death if I passed on. Hell, I'd be tickled to death if I passed on. Why would I wanna live in unpleasant circumstances for an interminable length of time when it just pissed people off to have to care for me?
In all good conscience, how could I allow that happen? Do you think I have no dignity or respect for the significant others in my life such that I would selfishly refuse to die in some timely fashion?
True, they abandoned me to my hateful self and traveled a long way to feel safe in order to perch like ghouls in the skeletal remains of the tree of life and wait for me to croak. The least I can do is accommodate them by not waiting until they're too old and to worn out by life to display a modicum of false mourning for the photo ops. '-)
I can see in my imagination the response my first wife might trot out upon finally hearing of my demise. Her big wide eyes might fly open in studied appreciation, then deliberately turn upward in total adoration to thank God for answering her prayer. "Gone at last! Gone at last! Great God Almighty! He is gone at last."
Imagination is all I have left of this woman, if she's still alive. When I do see her in my mind's eye she is always the lovely young woman I tricked into marrying me. If God was fair to women he would have made my unworthiness more apparent to innocent young girls.
I did see her once when she was in her late forties or early fifties, I think, and her peaches and cream, translucent white skin, had burst into a network of tiny star-like wrinkles. As they should have, not to be mourned. She looked great even as an older woman.
❦
Monday, January 17, 2011
Has The Pearl Of Great Price Lost It's Value?
❧
*In my remembering vision forty years ago I arrived upon Earth as spirit in order to create physical entities through imitation and mimicry. Obviously I didn't know I was here to do that. So when I found myself doing that without some sort of envisioned plan, it didn't appear to be so sinful to leave them to their own devices for greener pastures. How was I to know the Dragon's Tail would come and split my copycat creations into halves?
According to my vision I arrived upon Earth as a point of radiation that was dualistic in it's make-up from first awareness. It's "outer" aspect could be looked at as if it were a mythical cornucopia, since all possible forms are derived from it as their only source. From my inner perspective of this mythical source, the unending variety of products it presented to the seeker can't be separated one from the other from the inside out. There is no plural anything from the inside out. There is no "they". Everything is one thing and there is nothing more to what is than pure being. It is me. I am is it.
The fact that I label it dualistic is due to these two perspectives. Outside of the pearl all possible "things" can be deduced individually, but from the inner perspective looking out, all the possibilities outside it's event horizon are non-existent.
Within the auspices of the pearl, I am arrived here only to discover other pearls of it's own ilk. We were all stuck here together. I began doing what the pearls that proceeded me did, and they included my new-found behavior in what they did, and like an electron cloud the pearls populated the Earth with the creatures they generated by imitating wot was sot before them in real time.
When the entities we created through imitation and mimicry didn't help us get back out into space where we had been before, then we abandoned those entities and they hopped off without souls. But, another powerful event happened that was apparently beyond the control or intent of the pearls themselves. It was the momentary arrival and then departure of a lightning quick life-changing flash of some energy some seers call "The Dragon's Tail". It swept through the whole of the earth dividing the pearl's creations into two equal parts, but not the pearls.
That's the part of my story that seems to have changed for me in the last couple of weeks. Ere now, I've say-id that the pearls were split into halves also along with every other living entity on Earth. Now, I don't believe so that strongly. The pearls to me are forced to create their quaint entities as themselves by the existence of a vacuum that appears for some undefined reason to call them to it. God hates a vacuum, and the pearls are those entities that were sent to fill those vacuums up.
The part of this new insight that renews my flagging interest is how the soulless entities created through mimicry and imitation, and then abandoned as un-useful, started looking for their other half immediately once the Dragon's Tail swished through the sensory dimension. The energy each half used to find and integrate that which once made them whole wasn't apparent to me until after I had abandoned my copycat imitations of their own devices. As far as I was concerned, our intimate relationship was over.
What makes me wonder about how I got things figured, currently, concerns whether the two halves looking to rejoin each and be-co-me atoned denigrates the need for any further intervention from me, optional or no. I seem a little miffed by being found as useless now as I found them then. My children don't need me anymore, and I seem unable to intervene. It's probably a good thing.
Honestly, I don't actually know whether I can intervene with the entities I left to survive however they were able. I haven't had the interest or the initiative to do that even if I could. However, if these entities were divided by eternal forces beyond my control in order for them to gain control by their separation angst, thus creating a replacement soul in my stead, then I might change my mind and decide to act as a jealous god, but I suspect such behavior might be futile.
What I am really curious about is whether my subjective role, as I've interpreted it, is not so individual as I seem to think, but is rather a part of a larger process my understanding is too small to grok? It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. I too have sinned. I have been blinded by the light.
It wouldn't surprise me if my understanding was considered to be that small by the very people I wanna impress. I just had an old friend stomp out of my house claiming to be totally disgusted by my lack of respect for his ideas of reality. He got all pissed off and disenchanted because I accused him of being what he accused some other person of being. I guess all the pundits who have judged my character previous to right now were right when they claimed I don't know how to act. How can I possibly measure up to his expectations? Another one bites the dust.
❦
*In my remembering vision forty years ago I arrived upon Earth as spirit in order to create physical entities through imitation and mimicry. Obviously I didn't know I was here to do that. So when I found myself doing that without some sort of envisioned plan, it didn't appear to be so sinful to leave them to their own devices for greener pastures. How was I to know the Dragon's Tail would come and split my copycat creations into halves?
According to my vision I arrived upon Earth as a point of radiation that was dualistic in it's make-up from first awareness. It's "outer" aspect could be looked at as if it were a mythical cornucopia, since all possible forms are derived from it as their only source. From my inner perspective of this mythical source, the unending variety of products it presented to the seeker can't be separated one from the other from the inside out. There is no plural anything from the inside out. There is no "they". Everything is one thing and there is nothing more to what is than pure being. It is me. I am is it.
The fact that I label it dualistic is due to these two perspectives. Outside of the pearl all possible "things" can be deduced individually, but from the inner perspective looking out, all the possibilities outside it's event horizon are non-existent.
Within the auspices of the pearl, I am arrived here only to discover other pearls of it's own ilk. We were all stuck here together. I began doing what the pearls that proceeded me did, and they included my new-found behavior in what they did, and like an electron cloud the pearls populated the Earth with the creatures they generated by imitating wot was sot before them in real time.
When the entities we created through imitation and mimicry didn't help us get back out into space where we had been before, then we abandoned those entities and they hopped off without souls. But, another powerful event happened that was apparently beyond the control or intent of the pearls themselves. It was the momentary arrival and then departure of a lightning quick life-changing flash of some energy some seers call "The Dragon's Tail". It swept through the whole of the earth dividing the pearl's creations into two equal parts, but not the pearls.
That's the part of my story that seems to have changed for me in the last couple of weeks. Ere now, I've say-id that the pearls were split into halves also along with every other living entity on Earth. Now, I don't believe so that strongly. The pearls to me are forced to create their quaint entities as themselves by the existence of a vacuum that appears for some undefined reason to call them to it. God hates a vacuum, and the pearls are those entities that were sent to fill those vacuums up.
The part of this new insight that renews my flagging interest is how the soulless entities created through mimicry and imitation, and then abandoned as un-useful, started looking for their other half immediately once the Dragon's Tail swished through the sensory dimension. The energy each half used to find and integrate that which once made them whole wasn't apparent to me until after I had abandoned my copycat imitations of their own devices. As far as I was concerned, our intimate relationship was over.
What makes me wonder about how I got things figured, currently, concerns whether the two halves looking to rejoin each and be-co-me atoned denigrates the need for any further intervention from me, optional or no. I seem a little miffed by being found as useless now as I found them then. My children don't need me anymore, and I seem unable to intervene. It's probably a good thing.
Honestly, I don't actually know whether I can intervene with the entities I left to survive however they were able. I haven't had the interest or the initiative to do that even if I could. However, if these entities were divided by eternal forces beyond my control in order for them to gain control by their separation angst, thus creating a replacement soul in my stead, then I might change my mind and decide to act as a jealous god, but I suspect such behavior might be futile.
What I am really curious about is whether my subjective role, as I've interpreted it, is not so individual as I seem to think, but is rather a part of a larger process my understanding is too small to grok? It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. I too have sinned. I have been blinded by the light.
It wouldn't surprise me if my understanding was considered to be that small by the very people I wanna impress. I just had an old friend stomp out of my house claiming to be totally disgusted by my lack of respect for his ideas of reality. He got all pissed off and disenchanted because I accused him of being what he accused some other person of being. I guess all the pundits who have judged my character previous to right now were right when they claimed I don't know how to act. How can I possibly measure up to his expectations? Another one bites the dust.
❦
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Ice Storm Giveth And Taketh Away
❧
One of the oddest notions I got from reading all about the new Verizon iPhone is that the whole deal depends on whether or not a customer is satisfied with the service they currently receive from their current provider. If they're happy with the service they get, they faithfully swear allegiance to that provider. If not, then their lousy provider is a no-goodnik and just cause for abandonment. No blame.
It may seem silly to some people that I would spend so much time doing a personal research project on the iPhone or any other cell phone. I've never owned a portable phone of any kind, much less a cell phone. Until the smartphones started getting good marks, now I sort of agree that smartphones is the way of the future, and if I wanna participate I need one. The most ridiculous aspect of my research is that I don't like using a telephone at all. I used to have a job years ago where I was on the telephone my entire working day.
It was my job. I liked the job and the people I worked with, but hated having to talk to customers over the telephone. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that they called to complain their merchandise wasn't working. I was the guy who answered the complaint calls. It was about like being a tech rep for a computer networking system in a huge room full of small booths with each having a computer and a telephone, and technically inefficient people.
Most of the people operating the system I was responsible for were totally ignorant about how to use it, and I got yelled at a lot about stuff that wasn't my fault. That's the weird thing about technology. I never read the documentation unless I'm forced to myself. It's like thinking you can make a passing grade just by showing up for class on time, yet not doing the homework for the class. After that job I grew to dislike telephones in general.
My computer is located in my bedroom on the second floor in front of a large window. When I look out of the window at the trees it's at the same level as many of the tree limbs. This morning they're covered with ice. Since the window is on the south side of the house the winter sun is shining through the ice on the tree limbs from the storm a couple of nights ago.
The weather report is that it's gonna be warm enough today for most of the snow and probably all the ice will melt. Currently the temperature is at 34° (1.1111° C) with not a cloud in the sky. The precipitation on the roof of my house is already dripping. Maybe it will clear up the path my brother and I go walking at night on.
From the increased rate of the dripping in just the last few minutes, and the fact that it is supposed to get even a little warmer, the chances are pretty good that we'll be able to get out and about with little hinderance. It's gonna be real cold tonight. Down in the teens. Fifteen degrees below freezing.
The loss of the subcutaneous fat under my skin due to the aging process also included the inside of my nostrils. Breathing the cold air at a high rate of consumption has a tendency to cause my nose to bleed. I may refuse to walk for that reason alone, but I really feel better if I do walk. I guess I'll have to wait to find out when it gets dark.
I need to go outside for all kinds of reasons, including the inspiration to write stuff. I haven't been out of the house and off my property since Sunday past except to drive out to my mailbox on the paved road. After I'd gotten the one letter that was there I turned around and drove straight back.
Driving to the greasy spoon for breakfast provides me with enough visual and auditory change from my life in the slow lane at home to come up with something that interests me to write about. I just got back from having breakfast. I drove the long way home just to see something different.
My whole life has seemed to go that way. I've traveled so much in the continental United States that I can't think of a strange and different place to go to within three thousand miles. Even if I do go somewhere that's a little different from all those places before, I'll do the same thing there that I'm doing here. Nothing.
I do nothing very well, thank you very much. Sometime, the notion strikes me that I may be among the most talented doers of nothing currently in the world today, but how would I know?
❦
One of the oddest notions I got from reading all about the new Verizon iPhone is that the whole deal depends on whether or not a customer is satisfied with the service they currently receive from their current provider. If they're happy with the service they get, they faithfully swear allegiance to that provider. If not, then their lousy provider is a no-goodnik and just cause for abandonment. No blame.
It may seem silly to some people that I would spend so much time doing a personal research project on the iPhone or any other cell phone. I've never owned a portable phone of any kind, much less a cell phone. Until the smartphones started getting good marks, now I sort of agree that smartphones is the way of the future, and if I wanna participate I need one. The most ridiculous aspect of my research is that I don't like using a telephone at all. I used to have a job years ago where I was on the telephone my entire working day.
It was my job. I liked the job and the people I worked with, but hated having to talk to customers over the telephone. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that they called to complain their merchandise wasn't working. I was the guy who answered the complaint calls. It was about like being a tech rep for a computer networking system in a huge room full of small booths with each having a computer and a telephone, and technically inefficient people.
Most of the people operating the system I was responsible for were totally ignorant about how to use it, and I got yelled at a lot about stuff that wasn't my fault. That's the weird thing about technology. I never read the documentation unless I'm forced to myself. It's like thinking you can make a passing grade just by showing up for class on time, yet not doing the homework for the class. After that job I grew to dislike telephones in general.
My computer is located in my bedroom on the second floor in front of a large window. When I look out of the window at the trees it's at the same level as many of the tree limbs. This morning they're covered with ice. Since the window is on the south side of the house the winter sun is shining through the ice on the tree limbs from the storm a couple of nights ago.
The weather report is that it's gonna be warm enough today for most of the snow and probably all the ice will melt. Currently the temperature is at 34° (1.1111° C) with not a cloud in the sky. The precipitation on the roof of my house is already dripping. Maybe it will clear up the path my brother and I go walking at night on.
From the increased rate of the dripping in just the last few minutes, and the fact that it is supposed to get even a little warmer, the chances are pretty good that we'll be able to get out and about with little hinderance. It's gonna be real cold tonight. Down in the teens. Fifteen degrees below freezing.
The loss of the subcutaneous fat under my skin due to the aging process also included the inside of my nostrils. Breathing the cold air at a high rate of consumption has a tendency to cause my nose to bleed. I may refuse to walk for that reason alone, but I really feel better if I do walk. I guess I'll have to wait to find out when it gets dark.
I need to go outside for all kinds of reasons, including the inspiration to write stuff. I haven't been out of the house and off my property since Sunday past except to drive out to my mailbox on the paved road. After I'd gotten the one letter that was there I turned around and drove straight back.
Driving to the greasy spoon for breakfast provides me with enough visual and auditory change from my life in the slow lane at home to come up with something that interests me to write about. I just got back from having breakfast. I drove the long way home just to see something different.
My whole life has seemed to go that way. I've traveled so much in the continental United States that I can't think of a strange and different place to go to within three thousand miles. Even if I do go somewhere that's a little different from all those places before, I'll do the same thing there that I'm doing here. Nothing.
I do nothing very well, thank you very much. Sometime, the notion strikes me that I may be among the most talented doers of nothing currently in the world today, but how would I know?
❦
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Snowed In Again
❧
All day I've been reading about the Verizon iPhone to figure out what's going on. I deliberately set about to study which iPhone makes more sense, but it's a quandary. What really seems to matter is whether an iPhone owner can talk on the phone at the same time they're using the internet. That can't happen on any Verizon smartphone of any brand because of the standard they use works.
The argument seems to boil down to whether or not a smartphone user might change over to the Verizon iPhone from the AT&T iPhone depends on how good their connectivity is with AT&T. The Verizon iPhone is the same as the AT&T iPhone except it is CDMA instead of GSM and it can work as a hot spot because of iOD 4.2.5.
I do know my brother has been waiting to decide whether he wants to change to Verizon because he loses a lotta calls using his iPhone with AT&T. This area doesn't get 3G locally yet. He has to settle for EDGE technology which is much slower than 3G, unless he goes to a large city. That makes it hard for him to ignore he is getting substandard service as the city dwellers, and yet, he has to pay the same price.
Most of my reading was done at the forums at MacRumor. They have a very active group of comment writers there:
http://www.macrumors.com/
The other reading I have done comes from the e-mails I get over a Yahoo Groups discussion group on the iPhone. Between the two of them I seem to have got the big picture of the Verizon announcement. One of the main focus of the comments and discussions has to do with "mi-fi" or tethering. Verizon will offer it on it's version of the iPhone, and the writers are betting that will force AT&T to offer it too.
I just went to the MacRumor's site to copy the link, and they have a new article on the possibility. They also announced that Apple will include the firmware for a mi-fi hotspot in their next upgrade to iphone. I haven't read it yet.
This news may change the way both companies do business simply because if the competition having the new option will provide. Another technical point I became aware of that I wasn't sure could happen is that the iPad with 3G has a GPS radio in it so that the various GPS software programs work in iPad. I may get an iPad and not buy a smartphone. That was the one feature I was told you couldn't get on the iPad, and it turns out I was wrong.
My brother bought an iPad when they first came out. He did the same thing with the iPhone. He's not exactly a Mac fanboi, but pretty close. Of course, he can afford these toys, but it's not so easy for me to get impulsive about these things. I'm bad enough about buying gadgets as it is.
If the weather stays cold the way it's forecast to it's gonna be the coldest January in a long time, just like it was the coldest December here ever. It's not just here that it's cold. The storm that dumped six inches of snow and a half inch of solid ice here is headed up the Atlantic seaboard toward the big cities in the northeast as I write.
They're gonna get over a foot of snow. Considering the snow storm they had last week, they will probably be miserable for the next week or so. I finally left the house to go out and get my mail. My brother had driven around my house with his 4-wheel drive pickup to break through the ice coating.
It is too cold for the ice coating to melt much. I didn't have any problems driving out to the paved road and back because I followed in the tracks made by the heavy truck. The sun is supposed to shine all day tomorrow and the temperature is supposed to get warmer. But, just for tomorrow. Then it's gonna go back to being in the low teens. Brrrr...
Chipping a half inch of solid ice off my outside stairs was a lot easier, I figure, without the snow under it. I tell myself that after the fact. The snow wasn't under it because I had kept the fluffy snow brushed off my decks and outside stairs with a broom. When the precipitation changed from snow to ice and sleet it stuck to the deck so strongly my broom couldn't move them, and I had to stop and wait to see what it looked like this morning.
The work I did to keep the decks and stairs clear of snow and ice was fairly strenuous work for an old man. I didn't have to do it, but once I got started I kind of enjoyed doing it for the sake of work alone. I do sit around too much. I have to force myself to get up and move. In this case I told myself I needed to do it in case there was a fire I needed to escape from.
When I was first starting to build this house I put down the underpinning and then the floor before I did any more to it. In reflection I think I did that just to get something up for show. To prove to myself I could build a house by myself just because I decided to.
Everybody who visits me here gets around to telling me how good the place will look when I finish it. I get their drift. They're telling me I live in a rathole, and it's a reflection upon my careactor. None of them built their own house and lived alone in it. It's not easy being green.
❦
All day I've been reading about the Verizon iPhone to figure out what's going on. I deliberately set about to study which iPhone makes more sense, but it's a quandary. What really seems to matter is whether an iPhone owner can talk on the phone at the same time they're using the internet. That can't happen on any Verizon smartphone of any brand because of the standard they use works.
The argument seems to boil down to whether or not a smartphone user might change over to the Verizon iPhone from the AT&T iPhone depends on how good their connectivity is with AT&T. The Verizon iPhone is the same as the AT&T iPhone except it is CDMA instead of GSM and it can work as a hot spot because of iOD 4.2.5.
I do know my brother has been waiting to decide whether he wants to change to Verizon because he loses a lotta calls using his iPhone with AT&T. This area doesn't get 3G locally yet. He has to settle for EDGE technology which is much slower than 3G, unless he goes to a large city. That makes it hard for him to ignore he is getting substandard service as the city dwellers, and yet, he has to pay the same price.
Most of my reading was done at the forums at MacRumor. They have a very active group of comment writers there:
http://www.macrumors.com/
The other reading I have done comes from the e-mails I get over a Yahoo Groups discussion group on the iPhone. Between the two of them I seem to have got the big picture of the Verizon announcement. One of the main focus of the comments and discussions has to do with "mi-fi" or tethering. Verizon will offer it on it's version of the iPhone, and the writers are betting that will force AT&T to offer it too.
I just went to the MacRumor's site to copy the link, and they have a new article on the possibility. They also announced that Apple will include the firmware for a mi-fi hotspot in their next upgrade to iphone. I haven't read it yet.
This news may change the way both companies do business simply because if the competition having the new option will provide. Another technical point I became aware of that I wasn't sure could happen is that the iPad with 3G has a GPS radio in it so that the various GPS software programs work in iPad. I may get an iPad and not buy a smartphone. That was the one feature I was told you couldn't get on the iPad, and it turns out I was wrong.
My brother bought an iPad when they first came out. He did the same thing with the iPhone. He's not exactly a Mac fanboi, but pretty close. Of course, he can afford these toys, but it's not so easy for me to get impulsive about these things. I'm bad enough about buying gadgets as it is.
If the weather stays cold the way it's forecast to it's gonna be the coldest January in a long time, just like it was the coldest December here ever. It's not just here that it's cold. The storm that dumped six inches of snow and a half inch of solid ice here is headed up the Atlantic seaboard toward the big cities in the northeast as I write.
They're gonna get over a foot of snow. Considering the snow storm they had last week, they will probably be miserable for the next week or so. I finally left the house to go out and get my mail. My brother had driven around my house with his 4-wheel drive pickup to break through the ice coating.
It is too cold for the ice coating to melt much. I didn't have any problems driving out to the paved road and back because I followed in the tracks made by the heavy truck. The sun is supposed to shine all day tomorrow and the temperature is supposed to get warmer. But, just for tomorrow. Then it's gonna go back to being in the low teens. Brrrr...
Chipping a half inch of solid ice off my outside stairs was a lot easier, I figure, without the snow under it. I tell myself that after the fact. The snow wasn't under it because I had kept the fluffy snow brushed off my decks and outside stairs with a broom. When the precipitation changed from snow to ice and sleet it stuck to the deck so strongly my broom couldn't move them, and I had to stop and wait to see what it looked like this morning.
The work I did to keep the decks and stairs clear of snow and ice was fairly strenuous work for an old man. I didn't have to do it, but once I got started I kind of enjoyed doing it for the sake of work alone. I do sit around too much. I have to force myself to get up and move. In this case I told myself I needed to do it in case there was a fire I needed to escape from.
When I was first starting to build this house I put down the underpinning and then the floor before I did any more to it. In reflection I think I did that just to get something up for show. To prove to myself I could build a house by myself just because I decided to.
Everybody who visits me here gets around to telling me how good the place will look when I finish it. I get their drift. They're telling me I live in a rathole, and it's a reflection upon my careactor. None of them built their own house and lived alone in it. It's not easy being green.
❦
Monday, January 10, 2011
Did I Secretly Move My House To Alaska?
❧
The snow has returned. I woke up this morning with about two inches (5.08 cm) covering the ground. According to the weather reporters it is supposed to continue until there is 4-6 inches, then the iceman cometh. We'll probably lose power, and since electric heat is the only heat I have for keeping my water pipes from freezing, the snow and ice could get to be a problem. The temperatures are not supposed to get above freezing all day.
All I can say is, "Bring it." I have a roof over my head and a warm bed I can crawl into. If the power goes off I'll do what I can to keep my pipes warm until it comes back on, and if that takes too long I'll try to drain the pipes. Down the road, I need to refit my cutoff valve to fit inside my house and the outside spigot I use to do that above it.
I simply haven't thought about doing this before. It would prevent me having to crawl under my house to get to the cutoff valve. I've had trouble with the previous valves I've used. The problem I've been having is associated with putting the cutoff valve below the drain spigot so that when I close the shutoff valve I can open the drain spigot above it and let all the water in the pipes in my house empty to the outside.
I went to bed fairly early and slept late. I knew there was a chance the snow would come, but I didn't really believe it would accumulate much. The freaky thing about much of the snow we get here on the coastal plains is that the instigating factor comes from the tropics via the ocean. The warm air is drawn in by the high pressure descending from Canada and rises above the cold Arctic front and that causes the snow on the coastal plains. It's not snowing that much inland toward the foothills. Aaaiiiyeee!
The snow came with no rain in front of it. The wooden deck outside and on the outside stairs was dry. I didn't realize that until I dumped a couple of pails of hot water with Epsom salt mixed in with it on the deck. After that I picked up a broom and started sweeping as much of the snow off the decks and stairs, and because they never got wet the snow swept off easily. Well, except where I put the hot salty water. I only made things worse where I splashed the water. Nevertheless it's fairly safe to walk on.
❦
The snow has returned. I woke up this morning with about two inches (5.08 cm) covering the ground. According to the weather reporters it is supposed to continue until there is 4-6 inches, then the iceman cometh. We'll probably lose power, and since electric heat is the only heat I have for keeping my water pipes from freezing, the snow and ice could get to be a problem. The temperatures are not supposed to get above freezing all day.
All I can say is, "Bring it." I have a roof over my head and a warm bed I can crawl into. If the power goes off I'll do what I can to keep my pipes warm until it comes back on, and if that takes too long I'll try to drain the pipes. Down the road, I need to refit my cutoff valve to fit inside my house and the outside spigot I use to do that above it.
I simply haven't thought about doing this before. It would prevent me having to crawl under my house to get to the cutoff valve. I've had trouble with the previous valves I've used. The problem I've been having is associated with putting the cutoff valve below the drain spigot so that when I close the shutoff valve I can open the drain spigot above it and let all the water in the pipes in my house empty to the outside.
I went to bed fairly early and slept late. I knew there was a chance the snow would come, but I didn't really believe it would accumulate much. The freaky thing about much of the snow we get here on the coastal plains is that the instigating factor comes from the tropics via the ocean. The warm air is drawn in by the high pressure descending from Canada and rises above the cold Arctic front and that causes the snow on the coastal plains. It's not snowing that much inland toward the foothills. Aaaiiiyeee!
The snow came with no rain in front of it. The wooden deck outside and on the outside stairs was dry. I didn't realize that until I dumped a couple of pails of hot water with Epsom salt mixed in with it on the deck. After that I picked up a broom and started sweeping as much of the snow off the decks and stairs, and because they never got wet the snow swept off easily. Well, except where I put the hot salty water. I only made things worse where I splashed the water. Nevertheless it's fairly safe to walk on.
❦
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Living A Fairy Tale Life
❧
The fact that I forgot to write something today doesn't exactly catch me off guard. Things are going like that these days. My not writing seems consistent with other lapses. Its a matter of what I pay attention to and why. I have written quite a bit today, but it was "to" somebody rather than what i write here that is to anybody. It's a different gig.
Writing "to" somebody is getting harder for me. There ain't many people left that I wanna impress. There is nothing wrong about the people I write to, it's just that there ain't that much right about them to crow about. Rednecks. All my friends are rednecks. I am is their only excuse for claiming they're not hard case hill billy.
Maybe that's my only real function in life. People who associate themselves with me as if we're friends can use our relationship as proof that they're not what they seem to be. Not if they have the hutzpah to take the chance somebody might say something.
There is no telling how it came to this. Maybe it has something to do with my willingness to let some of their less reputable characteristics find a unique quality that others seem fearful of. It's not hard to put up with here in my hometown where I can't be a prophet or healer. At least that's what it says in the Biblical literature I was raised to worship. Graven images or no.
I seem to have one mode of judgment when it comes to the value of old sayings. Either they come to me when I need them or they don't mean squat to me. That's the first test of my ring-pass-me-not philosophy of living. The second ring of fire for sayings, in my world view, is do they possess the universality of being applicable to a variety of causations?
Hmmm... "causations'?
No matter how famous or well-regarded a saying or quote may be, they're only valuable to me if they have universal application. That's the part I don't have any control over, and not having control represents a powerful omen for me. It's like something is true beyond my subjective belief that such and such is so and so. It's beyond my me to do anything about.
The djembe drum I placed so much value upon just after I bought it don't get the action it once did. No matter. When I do get an aching to play it, it sits waiting. All I have to do is to go over and pick it up, and brought it over to where I am is seated, and it's ready to do business with the controlled noise thing.
I played on it persistently for at least a couple of years. In the past, my playing of it has initiated a healing process in dayglo colours. I get so excited that I can get past the aches and pains of the arthritis. Other times there is not enough sheer enthusiasm to prepare the sacrificial lamb nor instill false hope in the widow with only her one mite.
I bear shame. My friend and I ended up with two new friends in the Rio Grande valley just north of the border from Matamoros, Mexico. Our two new friends got a job on a steel hull shrimp boat right away. Later, my friend would also get a deck hand job on a steel hull shrimp boat too. Not me. I ended up taking the low road, but I'm the only one left alive of the four of us to tell this tale.
My shame is not about my traveling partners nor shrimp boats or any of those manly things. My shame is about the way I used my gift for poetry, and the woman who placed her faith in my talent with a cash donation to my freedom. She fronted the money that kept me out of jail, and I've never paid her back. I pretend she commanded me not to for her sake.
I just listened to a video of one of my most inspirational authors I have been influenced by. He and his writing partner wrote THE seminal book on the influence or not of metaphors. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Naturally, it is entitled Metaphors We Live By.
It's so embarrassing that I was in my forties before I became aware of the power of metaphors. For four decades I didn't even know what the term meant. I first found out via my interest in neurolinguistic programming (NLP). Creating metaphors that move people in the direction you want them to go is a powerful aspect of statecraft.
Actually, I've watched several hour-long videos featuring George Lakoff. I bought the book he and Mark Johnson co-authored and read it in total fascination. Everything they wrote about made me wonder again why I am is always the last to know.
Understanding the principles involved in creating metaphors on the run is the basis of living a life of no blame. The rules are quite simple. You make up a story that features many of the real aspects of a person's life, and then manipulate those aspects to render the results you desire in the moral of the story.
Who doesn't dream about living a fairy tale life?
❦
The fact that I forgot to write something today doesn't exactly catch me off guard. Things are going like that these days. My not writing seems consistent with other lapses. Its a matter of what I pay attention to and why. I have written quite a bit today, but it was "to" somebody rather than what i write here that is to anybody. It's a different gig.
Writing "to" somebody is getting harder for me. There ain't many people left that I wanna impress. There is nothing wrong about the people I write to, it's just that there ain't that much right about them to crow about. Rednecks. All my friends are rednecks. I am is their only excuse for claiming they're not hard case hill billy.
Maybe that's my only real function in life. People who associate themselves with me as if we're friends can use our relationship as proof that they're not what they seem to be. Not if they have the hutzpah to take the chance somebody might say something.
There is no telling how it came to this. Maybe it has something to do with my willingness to let some of their less reputable characteristics find a unique quality that others seem fearful of. It's not hard to put up with here in my hometown where I can't be a prophet or healer. At least that's what it says in the Biblical literature I was raised to worship. Graven images or no.
I seem to have one mode of judgment when it comes to the value of old sayings. Either they come to me when I need them or they don't mean squat to me. That's the first test of my ring-pass-me-not philosophy of living. The second ring of fire for sayings, in my world view, is do they possess the universality of being applicable to a variety of causations?
Hmmm... "causations'?
No matter how famous or well-regarded a saying or quote may be, they're only valuable to me if they have universal application. That's the part I don't have any control over, and not having control represents a powerful omen for me. It's like something is true beyond my subjective belief that such and such is so and so. It's beyond my me to do anything about.
The djembe drum I placed so much value upon just after I bought it don't get the action it once did. No matter. When I do get an aching to play it, it sits waiting. All I have to do is to go over and pick it up, and brought it over to where I am is seated, and it's ready to do business with the controlled noise thing.
I played on it persistently for at least a couple of years. In the past, my playing of it has initiated a healing process in dayglo colours. I get so excited that I can get past the aches and pains of the arthritis. Other times there is not enough sheer enthusiasm to prepare the sacrificial lamb nor instill false hope in the widow with only her one mite.
I bear shame. My friend and I ended up with two new friends in the Rio Grande valley just north of the border from Matamoros, Mexico. Our two new friends got a job on a steel hull shrimp boat right away. Later, my friend would also get a deck hand job on a steel hull shrimp boat too. Not me. I ended up taking the low road, but I'm the only one left alive of the four of us to tell this tale.
My shame is not about my traveling partners nor shrimp boats or any of those manly things. My shame is about the way I used my gift for poetry, and the woman who placed her faith in my talent with a cash donation to my freedom. She fronted the money that kept me out of jail, and I've never paid her back. I pretend she commanded me not to for her sake.
I just listened to a video of one of my most inspirational authors I have been influenced by. He and his writing partner wrote THE seminal book on the influence or not of metaphors. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Naturally, it is entitled Metaphors We Live By.
It's so embarrassing that I was in my forties before I became aware of the power of metaphors. For four decades I didn't even know what the term meant. I first found out via my interest in neurolinguistic programming (NLP). Creating metaphors that move people in the direction you want them to go is a powerful aspect of statecraft.
Actually, I've watched several hour-long videos featuring George Lakoff. I bought the book he and Mark Johnson co-authored and read it in total fascination. Everything they wrote about made me wonder again why I am is always the last to know.
Understanding the principles involved in creating metaphors on the run is the basis of living a life of no blame. The rules are quite simple. You make up a story that features many of the real aspects of a person's life, and then manipulate those aspects to render the results you desire in the moral of the story.
Who doesn't dream about living a fairy tale life?
❦
Saturday, January 8, 2011
I Didn't, And Sometime I Still Don't
❧
How I came across the story of Mother Shipton is unremembered by me. I think my first encounter with her as a real person was a Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Shipton
Her past is sketchy, but her existence in one way or the other appears to be recorded. Her prophecies are hard to verify as being her original stuff. She became a well-known mythical careactor after the Dark Ages. Even if she wasn't the author of a poem republished in the Wikipedia article, the fact that the poem was published in the 1600s makes it a remarkable document anyway. It predicts the eventuation of the modern technology with an accuracy that astounded me.
If you want to read up on Mother Shipton and discover as much as you can, it won't take long. Not much factual information seems available. To me this points once more to my theory about the inner workings of charisma. It's a simple theory whose entirety resolves to: Tell the stories, and pass the plate.
I went to the breakfast diner that serves a blue-plate special buffet starting at eleven o'clock in the morning. I deliberately went to eat the buffet offering because they have fried fish on Friday. Only about 2-3% of the population around here are Catholic, but the restaurants have taken up the custom of having fish on Friday anyway. This works for me.
Upon my arrival there, when I walked in, my brother was already there and waved me over the booth he occupied along with a man I didn't recognize. My brother introduced me to Danny and we exchanged greetings, and they continued the conversation that preceded me sitting down with them.
They were talking about a comedian named Jerry Clower who was popular for his folksy stories that made people laugh. Danny had a personal encounter with Clower once and was fascinated by the fact that Clower was not only a comedian, but a Baptist minister.
Jerry Clower's actual day job, according to Danny, was that of a successful fertilizer salesmen who got to know a lot of farmers and rural people. He first told his funny stories to his customers who owned the fertilizer stores, and their customers, who eventually convinced him to become a standup comedian. To my brother's horror I picked up on Clower being a Baptist preacher to include myself in their conversation.
My brother had no way of knowing whether I was gonna insult this guy and his obvious fundamentalist religious views. We both knew through personal experience that nothing would please me more than to argue religion. He couldn't possibly know I had chosen that topic to work a new, more pleasant mojo that was unlikely to embarrass him if I could pull it off.
I based my remarks on my theory on rhetoric and oral persuasion. I.E., the art of oratory. Talking is a uniquely human attribute. Using speech to induce a state of conversion is the oldest game in town. Some people are born with a gift for gab, but finding a viable path to use it to reach one's own end point is probably a matter of luck more than deliberate skill.
In my opinion, all a rhetorician can do is tell the stories, and pass the plate. Maybe the topic or subject chosen to get their story across will bring the intended results. Maybe they won't. At times, there appears to be many variables that can determine the eventual outcome of such an effort.
When I explained that rhetoric is not constrained to preaching, but also to politics and salesmanship of all kinds, so that nobody got angry or felt picked on. My brother was visibly relieved that I hadn't introduced discomfort as I might have in the past. I liked the result because I'm beginning to see the ease of broadening my appeal by non-specificity.
In the past I have become persistently angry if I suddenly suspect that someone/anyone is trying to get over on me via the use of charisma. I had to get angry over being used or I couldn't stop it from happening as an act of will. To say that I've been unrightfully used by charismatics as a chump might be putting it lightly.
To indicate how big a fool I can be for these people, and how I ignorantly telegraph my gullibility to even amateurs, avoiding them and their influence over me became one of my life-long goals. Unfortunately, at first, for me to avoid them, I had to see them coming, and for the longest, tawdriest time, I didn't. So-me-ti-me, I still don't.
If I don't see people coming these days I accept that as my fault as soon as I possibly can. My reasoning is based on my belief that for me to see them coming, I have to be constantly aware that what I'm seeing over there is me. It's my idea of myself as them that I'm subjectively mulling over.
They (any other), except as a figment of my imagination, are possessed by a reality over which I have absolutely no control. "Rats! Foiled again!" This requires me to persistently, boldly deny that what I see over there is me.
In effect, to be true to myself I have to say, "You are not me!" to my idea of what I might be like, and yet realize simultaneously that the other is still whatever they are above and beyond my projection of myself, whatever that is, and their own reality is beyond my ability to openly observe.
In regard to statecraft, however, the other doesn't need to know I have not-me-d them as an object I can control via labeling or nay-me-ing (naming). It's in this spectrum the Gospel of Thomas advises "Be passerby.", and the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching it states, "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped."
This rhetorical arena doesn't appear to be all that obvious to many other people, but how would I know? The fact that it is apparent to me may be sheer delusion on my part, but for me, I am is needs a framework as a guideline for generating a useful and practical world view that avoids shame and/or blame, hopefully both. '-)
❦
How I came across the story of Mother Shipton is unremembered by me. I think my first encounter with her as a real person was a Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Shipton
Her past is sketchy, but her existence in one way or the other appears to be recorded. Her prophecies are hard to verify as being her original stuff. She became a well-known mythical careactor after the Dark Ages. Even if she wasn't the author of a poem republished in the Wikipedia article, the fact that the poem was published in the 1600s makes it a remarkable document anyway. It predicts the eventuation of the modern technology with an accuracy that astounded me.
If you want to read up on Mother Shipton and discover as much as you can, it won't take long. Not much factual information seems available. To me this points once more to my theory about the inner workings of charisma. It's a simple theory whose entirety resolves to: Tell the stories, and pass the plate.
I went to the breakfast diner that serves a blue-plate special buffet starting at eleven o'clock in the morning. I deliberately went to eat the buffet offering because they have fried fish on Friday. Only about 2-3% of the population around here are Catholic, but the restaurants have taken up the custom of having fish on Friday anyway. This works for me.
Upon my arrival there, when I walked in, my brother was already there and waved me over the booth he occupied along with a man I didn't recognize. My brother introduced me to Danny and we exchanged greetings, and they continued the conversation that preceded me sitting down with them.
They were talking about a comedian named Jerry Clower who was popular for his folksy stories that made people laugh. Danny had a personal encounter with Clower once and was fascinated by the fact that Clower was not only a comedian, but a Baptist minister.
Jerry Clower's actual day job, according to Danny, was that of a successful fertilizer salesmen who got to know a lot of farmers and rural people. He first told his funny stories to his customers who owned the fertilizer stores, and their customers, who eventually convinced him to become a standup comedian. To my brother's horror I picked up on Clower being a Baptist preacher to include myself in their conversation.
My brother had no way of knowing whether I was gonna insult this guy and his obvious fundamentalist religious views. We both knew through personal experience that nothing would please me more than to argue religion. He couldn't possibly know I had chosen that topic to work a new, more pleasant mojo that was unlikely to embarrass him if I could pull it off.
I based my remarks on my theory on rhetoric and oral persuasion. I.E., the art of oratory. Talking is a uniquely human attribute. Using speech to induce a state of conversion is the oldest game in town. Some people are born with a gift for gab, but finding a viable path to use it to reach one's own end point is probably a matter of luck more than deliberate skill.
In my opinion, all a rhetorician can do is tell the stories, and pass the plate. Maybe the topic or subject chosen to get their story across will bring the intended results. Maybe they won't. At times, there appears to be many variables that can determine the eventual outcome of such an effort.
When I explained that rhetoric is not constrained to preaching, but also to politics and salesmanship of all kinds, so that nobody got angry or felt picked on. My brother was visibly relieved that I hadn't introduced discomfort as I might have in the past. I liked the result because I'm beginning to see the ease of broadening my appeal by non-specificity.
In the past I have become persistently angry if I suddenly suspect that someone/anyone is trying to get over on me via the use of charisma. I had to get angry over being used or I couldn't stop it from happening as an act of will. To say that I've been unrightfully used by charismatics as a chump might be putting it lightly.
To indicate how big a fool I can be for these people, and how I ignorantly telegraph my gullibility to even amateurs, avoiding them and their influence over me became one of my life-long goals. Unfortunately, at first, for me to avoid them, I had to see them coming, and for the longest, tawdriest time, I didn't. So-me-ti-me, I still don't.
If I don't see people coming these days I accept that as my fault as soon as I possibly can. My reasoning is based on my belief that for me to see them coming, I have to be constantly aware that what I'm seeing over there is me. It's my idea of myself as them that I'm subjectively mulling over.
They (any other), except as a figment of my imagination, are possessed by a reality over which I have absolutely no control. "Rats! Foiled again!" This requires me to persistently, boldly deny that what I see over there is me.
In effect, to be true to myself I have to say, "You are not me!" to my idea of what I might be like, and yet realize simultaneously that the other is still whatever they are above and beyond my projection of myself, whatever that is, and their own reality is beyond my ability to openly observe.
In regard to statecraft, however, the other doesn't need to know I have not-me-d them as an object I can control via labeling or nay-me-ing (naming). It's in this spectrum the Gospel of Thomas advises "Be passerby.", and the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching it states, "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped."
This rhetorical arena doesn't appear to be all that obvious to many other people, but how would I know? The fact that it is apparent to me may be sheer delusion on my part, but for me, I am is needs a framework as a guideline for generating a useful and practical world view that avoids shame and/or blame, hopefully both. '-)
❦
Friday, January 7, 2011
The Illusion Of Delusion
❧
Here is what the phony witch (who has no more originality than to call herself "Morticia") wrote to her list of bumpkins after she had predictably kicked me out of the group. It looks like I was able to penetrate her trailer park queen mentality after all.
*******
Oh man am I glad I removed this angry old man..!!Look what
he says about that I a woman who namby pamby to men in baby
talk never telling them the truth...wow man this guy don't me know
me does he..hehehehe you girls know I do not dance around fringes
of things that I tell it like it straight at your face..whether it
a personal face to face basis or via internet..perhaps at times I
am too damn honest...
How dare he make such aspersions at someone he doesn't even
know!!!! How so how we judge eh? What a
damn drip tray...
Just thought you would like see his correspondnce...we certainly
do not need such a judging self opinionated bigot on our groups..
Let's face it who needs such bad energies around..
********
She doesn't appear to have a clue that she's projecting her own idea of herself upon me, and from the tone of her intent, totally incapable of grasping what it means even if it was explained by a competent person to her face-to-face. It is probably a good thing she unsubbed me from this list called Spiritual Occultist. It might have taken me months to realize how dangerous she is to herself, much less to more innocent souls.
It worked out just right for me. She was/is the perfect foil to use to confront the place where I am with myself currently. I've had numerous encounters with Australians over my last twenty years participating with e-mail discussion groups. Some good. Some rather flaky.
One aspect of Australia's culture is they keep reminding me that they didn't fight a war of independence against the British to establish their own right to govern themselves. As a result, they apparently got no freedom of speech.
Communicating with some of them makes me happy to be an American. Granted, not as much as other cultures. I'm probably more happy not to live in a Muslim country where everybody who signs up gets a license to kill anybody for any reason. I like the notion of equality under the law even if it doesn't always work out that way. Such gives me a new lease on life to remember some people can't express themselves as individuals. Of course, it is getting more difficult to do that here in America as well.
The weather doesn't seem to be such an issue since the snow melted. The temperatures are more in keeping with the seasonal averages for around here. The month of December was a record-breaker for the area. It got as cold as it usually gets all winter long real early, and stayed that way for over a month long before the winter solstice arrived.
I got a little happy this morning, but as it turned out, my cheerfulness was futile. I checked the official internet site to find out if I'd won the lottery. The first thing I saw was that I did have the Power Ball number correct. Yippee. Then, in addition, as if a miracle, I got one of the other numbers right. Then, as if an afterthought, I looked at the dates on my ticket, and it expired in December. What a drag, man, I might have won a few dollars.
I'll fix that by going and getting another ticket to ride. It's not that delusional to dream about winning millions of dollars and impressing my limited number of friends and family if I have a valid ticket. Dreaming about impressing them without a good ticket is just batshit crazy. '-)
❦
Here is what the phony witch (who has no more originality than to call herself "Morticia") wrote to her list of bumpkins after she had predictably kicked me out of the group. It looks like I was able to penetrate her trailer park queen mentality after all.
*******
Oh man am I glad I removed this angry old man..!!Look what
he says about that I a woman who namby pamby to men in baby
talk never telling them the truth...wow man this guy don't me know
me does he..hehehehe you girls know I do not dance around fringes
of things that I tell it like it straight at your face..whether it
a personal face to face basis or via internet..perhaps at times I
am too damn honest...
How dare he make such aspersions at someone he doesn't even
know!!!! How so how we judge eh? What a
damn drip tray...
Just thought you would like see his correspondnce...we certainly
do not need such a judging self opinionated bigot on our groups..
Let's face it who needs such bad energies around..
********
She doesn't appear to have a clue that she's projecting her own idea of herself upon me, and from the tone of her intent, totally incapable of grasping what it means even if it was explained by a competent person to her face-to-face. It is probably a good thing she unsubbed me from this list called Spiritual Occultist. It might have taken me months to realize how dangerous she is to herself, much less to more innocent souls.
It worked out just right for me. She was/is the perfect foil to use to confront the place where I am with myself currently. I've had numerous encounters with Australians over my last twenty years participating with e-mail discussion groups. Some good. Some rather flaky.
One aspect of Australia's culture is they keep reminding me that they didn't fight a war of independence against the British to establish their own right to govern themselves. As a result, they apparently got no freedom of speech.
Communicating with some of them makes me happy to be an American. Granted, not as much as other cultures. I'm probably more happy not to live in a Muslim country where everybody who signs up gets a license to kill anybody for any reason. I like the notion of equality under the law even if it doesn't always work out that way. Such gives me a new lease on life to remember some people can't express themselves as individuals. Of course, it is getting more difficult to do that here in America as well.
The weather doesn't seem to be such an issue since the snow melted. The temperatures are more in keeping with the seasonal averages for around here. The month of December was a record-breaker for the area. It got as cold as it usually gets all winter long real early, and stayed that way for over a month long before the winter solstice arrived.
I got a little happy this morning, but as it turned out, my cheerfulness was futile. I checked the official internet site to find out if I'd won the lottery. The first thing I saw was that I did have the Power Ball number correct. Yippee. Then, in addition, as if a miracle, I got one of the other numbers right. Then, as if an afterthought, I looked at the dates on my ticket, and it expired in December. What a drag, man, I might have won a few dollars.
I'll fix that by going and getting another ticket to ride. It's not that delusional to dream about winning millions of dollars and impressing my limited number of friends and family if I have a valid ticket. Dreaming about impressing them without a good ticket is just batshit crazy. '-)
❦
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Dead Birds And Old People
❧
Recently, I subbed to an e-mail discussion group about magic and the occult. It's a fairly busy group, but they appear to exist for the sole purpose of exchanging web links of people who actually study and learn these types of things. One person who calls himself "The Old Man" is four years younger than me, and writes stories about his youth.
It's stories like his that is the reason younger people don't visit their parents in the rest homes, or read my blog, or the millions of other blogs that people from all over the world write. Old people in particular got no predictable future, and nothing they can say or write expiates the past, but what else is there to do?
Just now I received a e-mail post from one of the moderators of the witch group who informed me that my tactics are unacceptable to their board, and that I should find another group to write with. I'll probably force them to kick me out of the group to point out their censorship to them, as if they didn't know.
My tawdry past is catching up with me. It always has. Why would it stop now. In this case it's all about my bad credit rating. I probably won't be able to get an account on the new Apple Store Apps site because of it. Already I was refused an AT&T account to get an iPhone. There is no blame on them, I should have been more attentive.
It might help if I developed a little moral and ethical careactor and go along to get along with the dictates of society, but the very thought of doing that hurts my heart. At one point in my life I figured my attitude toward the society I live in might have been bad toilet training or the rebellion to establish my own identity that's associated with puberty.
My irresponsibility is much deeper than that. In fact, I'm probably not even irresponsible, but angry and maybe even a little bitter on some cosmic level. Like the angel Satan who got kicked out of God's presence for loving God too much. I don't think I'm bitter about people or society or any other earthly concern. We're all passengers on a "ship of fools."
The situation with my credit record may not have much to do with my lack of funds, but about my deliberate refusal to pay in a timely manner. It's not like I don't have the money. Most of the time the money for my payments is in the bank. It's a dilemma I could easily control.
A couple of years ago I got in hot water with not paying my car insurance on time. I did pay it, and only a couple of days late. I assumed the insurance company would notify the State and that would be the end of it, but they told me they weren't legally obligated to do that, so they didn't.
The State gave me ten days to straighten things out, but I didn't notice the ten day deadline. They did. I had to get real humble real fast, and it still costs me $200 more than just paying up on time would have. Like I wrote above, I got an attitude that's hard to put my finger on.
I have to be even more cautious now about getting slack about my bills. Paying out an extra $200 would put me in between a rock and a hard place currently, and it's only gonna get worse. The best way to lower the Social Security payments the government owes to retired people is to kill off as many Boomers as possible without having to take a hit at the poll booth.
Maybe they'll do it like what happened recently with all those birds over Arkansas falling out of the sky dead. I bet the government's current version of the Gestapo has some control over the intensity of these methods so that only old and sick people will keel over dead, and leave the young people alive as virtual slaves.
Candidly, getting zapped dead like those birds might not be that bad a way to die. Some scientists stated that the birds were probably dead before the hit the ground. A quick, unexpected death could be a blessing for elderly people who don't have any hope of getting well again.
❦
Recently, I subbed to an e-mail discussion group about magic and the occult. It's a fairly busy group, but they appear to exist for the sole purpose of exchanging web links of people who actually study and learn these types of things. One person who calls himself "The Old Man" is four years younger than me, and writes stories about his youth.
It's stories like his that is the reason younger people don't visit their parents in the rest homes, or read my blog, or the millions of other blogs that people from all over the world write. Old people in particular got no predictable future, and nothing they can say or write expiates the past, but what else is there to do?
Just now I received a e-mail post from one of the moderators of the witch group who informed me that my tactics are unacceptable to their board, and that I should find another group to write with. I'll probably force them to kick me out of the group to point out their censorship to them, as if they didn't know.
My tawdry past is catching up with me. It always has. Why would it stop now. In this case it's all about my bad credit rating. I probably won't be able to get an account on the new Apple Store Apps site because of it. Already I was refused an AT&T account to get an iPhone. There is no blame on them, I should have been more attentive.
It might help if I developed a little moral and ethical careactor and go along to get along with the dictates of society, but the very thought of doing that hurts my heart. At one point in my life I figured my attitude toward the society I live in might have been bad toilet training or the rebellion to establish my own identity that's associated with puberty.
My irresponsibility is much deeper than that. In fact, I'm probably not even irresponsible, but angry and maybe even a little bitter on some cosmic level. Like the angel Satan who got kicked out of God's presence for loving God too much. I don't think I'm bitter about people or society or any other earthly concern. We're all passengers on a "ship of fools."
The situation with my credit record may not have much to do with my lack of funds, but about my deliberate refusal to pay in a timely manner. It's not like I don't have the money. Most of the time the money for my payments is in the bank. It's a dilemma I could easily control.
A couple of years ago I got in hot water with not paying my car insurance on time. I did pay it, and only a couple of days late. I assumed the insurance company would notify the State and that would be the end of it, but they told me they weren't legally obligated to do that, so they didn't.
The State gave me ten days to straighten things out, but I didn't notice the ten day deadline. They did. I had to get real humble real fast, and it still costs me $200 more than just paying up on time would have. Like I wrote above, I got an attitude that's hard to put my finger on.
I have to be even more cautious now about getting slack about my bills. Paying out an extra $200 would put me in between a rock and a hard place currently, and it's only gonna get worse. The best way to lower the Social Security payments the government owes to retired people is to kill off as many Boomers as possible without having to take a hit at the poll booth.
Maybe they'll do it like what happened recently with all those birds over Arkansas falling out of the sky dead. I bet the government's current version of the Gestapo has some control over the intensity of these methods so that only old and sick people will keel over dead, and leave the young people alive as virtual slaves.
Candidly, getting zapped dead like those birds might not be that bad a way to die. Some scientists stated that the birds were probably dead before the hit the ground. A quick, unexpected death could be a blessing for elderly people who don't have any hope of getting well again.
❦
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Are Ceramic Heaters Cheaters?
❧
The ceramic space heater I bought today should get the job done in my kitchen. The heaters I've used in there previously have all died for one reason or the other. I guess space heaters have designed obsolescence. The reason I bought this one is that it's like the ceramic heater my brother loaned me when the old one crapped out. $18 bucks. It gets the job done. It keeps my water pipes from freezing. What else matters?
It really makes me happy to have come to realize that I am is a miser. I've been a miser and a cheapskate all my life. It's just that I only found out about ten years ago. I guess it took that long for me to accept it as the way it is for me. I really don't care how that is, as long as I know. The fact that it's my nature to be a miser is the reason my marriages failed. If I'd known I was such a chintzy asshole, I could have looked for a woman who appreciated these traits.
To be fair, maybe they did. I've just admitted that I was not aware being a miser was what the enneagrams naymed as my chief feature. With my luck, my ex-wives understood my tendency toward avarice and expected me to follow through as if I understood myself. Too bad. Fortunately, I do know about it now, and I can make sure nobody else gets hurt except for me.
My mother was a sucker for the con artists who prey on old people in her last days. The media teaches that suckers can only be taken if they're greedy. Greed, however, is not limited to money. With old women it's more likely a hunger to be adored as they once were when impregnable. Greed is just another word for avarice. Greed is about wanting more than you need. The words even rhyme. '-)
Need and greed. One seems legitimate, and the other skanky. For me, learning the difference was a bit like having to learn the difference between love and lust. Not knowing brought me a lot of shame and embarrassment.
What I needed was some time alone in order to contemplate my life. It was at the point that I got most needy that my efforts to keep and even keel took on the appearance that I did what I did because I was greedy. Make no mistake. I am is that. but I am is also this, which is me. Tossed-word-salad. Ya gotta love it.
At no time that I am is aware of did I ever plan to end up a hermit. I just didn't get it. My inadvertent ignoring of my need to get off by myself in order to reflect on what's wot cost me plenty. It embarrasses me and causes me to feel deep shame that I could be so dumb. Why am I always the last to know?
Shame seems to be a state of being I attract to myself out of pure ignorance and stupidity. If life is a school of hard knocks, the hard knocks classes assigned to me were not electives. I don't actually think other humans have less to deal with than me. I certainly don't know whether that's the case or not.
If I were to assign myself an archetypal figure to explain my odd behaviorisms I think I could legitimately call myself a shaman. Granted, other systems of judgment than my own might call me a fraud, and if so, then I would agree with them.
My qualifications for calling myself a shaman is that I know through experience an awful lot about shame. I have experienced the depths of utter despair through my shameful behavior. Most of it for which I never got caught. Worse, I'm still not sure I feel all that ashamed even though I know perfectly well that I should.
I do know how to forgive myself. Some forgivenesses take longer than others. I do what I can. The biggest problem for me in that regard is my lack of some willingness to live up to another's rules of conscience that I have no avenue upon which to tread lightly. The other does not like to be disobeyed. No blame.
In the Wal-Mart today I was twice confronted by two women on their cell phones talking about their shopping to somebody in another location. Both of them were taking up the whole aisle with their bodies and their carts.
I softly uttered, "Excuse me... ?" to get the first one to make some room to let me by. She became briefly incensed, as if I were in her house because she thought she was over her cell phone. What's up with that? Sad question... eh?
The same thing happens when people are driving and talking over the cell phone or texting. They literally conclude they're in the same room having this face-to-face conversation... and not in a car going sixty-five miles an hour on a busy road.
When stuff like this happens in my presence I am is able to reach for some holy saying that is gonna help me keep my senses acute and my feet on the ground. The saying I find most useful these days is "The superior man lets many things change without being duped." It's a quote from the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching.
There seem to have been long periods in my life in which I was not willing to let things change even though I wasn't duped. For some reason, in the past, I thought it was my job in life to keep people honest. In the endgame I eventually became aware that my job was to keep me honest. Everybody else was on their own.
It's not that I intend to cop a dismissive attitude toward other people's troubles, it's that I gotta interpret what they pass off to me as the God's own truth or they feel betrayed. As it turns out, my seeming dismissiveness is more to be blamed on my now outlawed cultural heritage.
The Civil Rights Acts of the early Sixties made criminals out of my people, and it made an unwilling outlaw out of me. It took decades for me to begin to get a grip on what made my parents and friends and neighbors a bunch of illiterate assholes just for being born and bred in an aristocracy. Apparently, some people just can't take a joke.
Like it or not, the joke is on me. I am is the butt of somebody else's joke, sight unseen. If it's taken into consideration that my parents moved around a lot when I was a small child, and having the Jim Crow way of seeing the world shoved up my ass at every turn, my entire existence became like a war of the Gods.
I didn't have any time to just be me. At some juncture that had to change. As far as I could determine I needed some stability in my life, and the only way I knew how to get it was to create it from wit and grit. So, that's what I did. There was and still is a price for such arrogance. Nobody knows.
❦
The ceramic space heater I bought today should get the job done in my kitchen. The heaters I've used in there previously have all died for one reason or the other. I guess space heaters have designed obsolescence. The reason I bought this one is that it's like the ceramic heater my brother loaned me when the old one crapped out. $18 bucks. It gets the job done. It keeps my water pipes from freezing. What else matters?
It really makes me happy to have come to realize that I am is a miser. I've been a miser and a cheapskate all my life. It's just that I only found out about ten years ago. I guess it took that long for me to accept it as the way it is for me. I really don't care how that is, as long as I know. The fact that it's my nature to be a miser is the reason my marriages failed. If I'd known I was such a chintzy asshole, I could have looked for a woman who appreciated these traits.
To be fair, maybe they did. I've just admitted that I was not aware being a miser was what the enneagrams naymed as my chief feature. With my luck, my ex-wives understood my tendency toward avarice and expected me to follow through as if I understood myself. Too bad. Fortunately, I do know about it now, and I can make sure nobody else gets hurt except for me.
My mother was a sucker for the con artists who prey on old people in her last days. The media teaches that suckers can only be taken if they're greedy. Greed, however, is not limited to money. With old women it's more likely a hunger to be adored as they once were when impregnable. Greed is just another word for avarice. Greed is about wanting more than you need. The words even rhyme. '-)
Need and greed. One seems legitimate, and the other skanky. For me, learning the difference was a bit like having to learn the difference between love and lust. Not knowing brought me a lot of shame and embarrassment.
What I needed was some time alone in order to contemplate my life. It was at the point that I got most needy that my efforts to keep and even keel took on the appearance that I did what I did because I was greedy. Make no mistake. I am is that. but I am is also this, which is me. Tossed-word-salad. Ya gotta love it.
At no time that I am is aware of did I ever plan to end up a hermit. I just didn't get it. My inadvertent ignoring of my need to get off by myself in order to reflect on what's wot cost me plenty. It embarrasses me and causes me to feel deep shame that I could be so dumb. Why am I always the last to know?
Shame seems to be a state of being I attract to myself out of pure ignorance and stupidity. If life is a school of hard knocks, the hard knocks classes assigned to me were not electives. I don't actually think other humans have less to deal with than me. I certainly don't know whether that's the case or not.
If I were to assign myself an archetypal figure to explain my odd behaviorisms I think I could legitimately call myself a shaman. Granted, other systems of judgment than my own might call me a fraud, and if so, then I would agree with them.
My qualifications for calling myself a shaman is that I know through experience an awful lot about shame. I have experienced the depths of utter despair through my shameful behavior. Most of it for which I never got caught. Worse, I'm still not sure I feel all that ashamed even though I know perfectly well that I should.
I do know how to forgive myself. Some forgivenesses take longer than others. I do what I can. The biggest problem for me in that regard is my lack of some willingness to live up to another's rules of conscience that I have no avenue upon which to tread lightly. The other does not like to be disobeyed. No blame.
In the Wal-Mart today I was twice confronted by two women on their cell phones talking about their shopping to somebody in another location. Both of them were taking up the whole aisle with their bodies and their carts.
I softly uttered, "Excuse me... ?" to get the first one to make some room to let me by. She became briefly incensed, as if I were in her house because she thought she was over her cell phone. What's up with that? Sad question... eh?
The same thing happens when people are driving and talking over the cell phone or texting. They literally conclude they're in the same room having this face-to-face conversation... and not in a car going sixty-five miles an hour on a busy road.
When stuff like this happens in my presence I am is able to reach for some holy saying that is gonna help me keep my senses acute and my feet on the ground. The saying I find most useful these days is "The superior man lets many things change without being duped." It's a quote from the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching.
There seem to have been long periods in my life in which I was not willing to let things change even though I wasn't duped. For some reason, in the past, I thought it was my job in life to keep people honest. In the endgame I eventually became aware that my job was to keep me honest. Everybody else was on their own.
It's not that I intend to cop a dismissive attitude toward other people's troubles, it's that I gotta interpret what they pass off to me as the God's own truth or they feel betrayed. As it turns out, my seeming dismissiveness is more to be blamed on my now outlawed cultural heritage.
The Civil Rights Acts of the early Sixties made criminals out of my people, and it made an unwilling outlaw out of me. It took decades for me to begin to get a grip on what made my parents and friends and neighbors a bunch of illiterate assholes just for being born and bred in an aristocracy. Apparently, some people just can't take a joke.
Like it or not, the joke is on me. I am is the butt of somebody else's joke, sight unseen. If it's taken into consideration that my parents moved around a lot when I was a small child, and having the Jim Crow way of seeing the world shoved up my ass at every turn, my entire existence became like a war of the Gods.
I didn't have any time to just be me. At some juncture that had to change. As far as I could determine I needed some stability in my life, and the only way I knew how to get it was to create it from wit and grit. So, that's what I did. There was and still is a price for such arrogance. Nobody knows.
❦
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