Other Worlds In Other Words

❧

Once in the recent past I got a hair up my ass and decided to watch this video by some college professor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rconzwB422s&feature=feedf

I don't know why the links I include here are not activated. You can't just click on the damned thing and have the web site the link points to show up on your monitor with one simple motion. Google owns blogger.com and it seems like they could surely make it happen. Instead of allowing clickable links the reader has to copy and paste the link in the browser header and hit Enter. It's all good though. I can't imagine that anybody would find the links I post very interesting. Even the one above.

This guy lectures about his research into the bejinning of the spoken language. Not the written language. It only arrived millions of years later than the oral tradition. But, this guy starts talking about song birds. He appears to think that song birds were the original employers of using sound to act as a me sage (message). There is only one in all the kingdoms: "Listen to me, Woman!I am is it, sugar britches! Your best, brightest hope to produce a viable brood that will have a chance in hell of surviving the Fall. Give it up... Bitch! Now!"

What amazed me about this dude's theory is that he claims that the song bird's songs have no other purpose than to attract the female song birds interest. It only sings it's learned songs to the female to get her interested in him as a potential mate. The professor claims the songs the song birds sing are not inherited as instinct, but learned by imitation and mimicry. Some male song birds have a repertoire of a thousand different songs. That's like having a thousand word oral language. All for no Earthly reason than to charm a comparatively dull looking female song bird for no logical reason.

He claims that his research proves there is no meaning (me-and-thee-ing) inherent in the song bird's songs other than for the purpose of display and procreational sex. I don't think he actually goes so far as to claim that the twittering of homo sapiens males has no more meaning other than me-and-thee-ing. Men talk or sing to attract females just like song birds for the selfsame purpose of procreative. Recreational purposes not withstanding.

I have this video marked as one of my Favorites in my YouTube account, and it's part of my Favorites PlayList. Unintentionally, it may appear, twice I have clicked to play this playlist simultaneous with using the Gnaural meditation software instead of another playlist that contains other binaural beat videos.

I have "unintentionally" made the same mistake twice now, and neither time did I actually take off the earphones and click my way through to the other initially intended playlist. I let it play just a little bit longer each time until it finished. I'm intrigued. This can't be coincidental. The video lasts almost an hour. I'm listening to two audio sources at the sa-me ti-me. Now, I'm gonna do it on purpose until I get disgusted with this dumb lecture.

The truth is, by contemplating the times I've got caught up in this sort of obsession ere now, I probably won't get disgusted at all, but to use repetition and redundancy to imitate and mimic this dude's rap in other words. I'll be-co-me my idea of what running this rap on the usual suspects until I've edited all the rhubarbs out until it's as smooth as liquid bread, and regurgitate it to the world in my own selfish terms.

It was claimed on the TV game show Jeopardy the other evening that Faulkner, the Mississippi writer I've never read, stated that Hemingway was a coward as a writer because he never used any words that his readers would have to look up in the dictionary.

I haven't read much Hemingway either. I know more about Hemingway's reputation from living in and around Key West, Florida than I know about what he wrote. I've seen a couple of movies inspired by his stories. I've heard more than once that not using uncommon words is a virtue for a writer.

Since I was at least born in Mississippi, even though I've never read any more Faulkner than a brief referential quote here and there, I sort of allow that Faulkner could be right about the nerve it takes to go beyond the personal lexicon of the lowest common denominator.

Judged by Faulkner's measuring device I think I might win some sort of medal of honor. My tossed-word-salad goes beyond even the highest uncommon denominator. Me. Hell, I don't have a clue what I am is writing about most of the time. To write that way to me is the epitome of going beyond the call of duty.

Creating tossed-word-salad to amuse myself as an audience of One just don't bring home the bacon. It's to write like a selfish pig. To do it just for me, and "damn the torpedoes". I do it in complete agreement with what the professor claims about song birds.

Since the only reason to write for contemporary homo sapiens of either gender is to attract perspective mates for the purposes of making babies, taking a vasectomy in the early 80s totally and unexpectedly changed my reason for communicating. Granted, when I chose to have the procedure done, I didn't know how it might turn out. Surprise! Surprise...

Unintentionally, and certainly not as a foregone conclusion, the desire for recreational sex left me soon after it was all over but the shouting. My reason for shouting for a female to carry a child for me to completion was litterly nipped in the bud (pun intended).

I do not writing for the purpose of me-and-thee-ing. In no way for any reason do I attempt to lure my readers into my unkempt bachelor's boudoir. It's a song of solitude I ungraciously utter to worlds beyond words. Nobody knows but me, even in other words.

❦

A Bright, Sun Shiny Day

❧

Kefir is some strange stuff. It tastes like what I used to drink when I was a kid that my mother simply called clabber. She made it from the raw milk I got from the Jersey cows we kept. I had read a little about kefir and how it's made, and I even briefly subscribed to an e-mail discussion group about it. Since raw milk is no longer available, unless you or some of your neighbors own a dairy cow, making it myself seemed a little beyond my interest.

When I saw it on the refrigerated shelf at the Harris-Teeter grocery store, however, I bought a quart container of it to give it a whirl. It came in various flavors, and I chose blueberry because I sort of know what to expect. I grow blueberries myself. I waited until I returned to my car to taste it. Mmmmm... it was mighty good. It reminded me of being a boy again.

We don't have a Harris-Teeter here in this small town, so the container I got of it would have to last me until I went back to the big city. I've been taking a small gulp of it once a day for the last week, and it grew on me even more fondly. This morning I actually read the label to make sure of what it was composed of. To my utter surprise, it's filled to the brim with the friendly gut bacteria I've been taking in capsules.

I'll probably go back to Fayette-nam sooner than I expected to, and I'll buy more than one container. Feeding my gut bacteria has real appeal to me. I stopped taking the methotrexate prescription drug to see if I could get a handle on these mouth problems I've been having, and I'm surprised to find out that the pain in my hands hasn't returned in full force due to my not taking the drug.

Some of the articles I've encountered in regard to the benefits of "balancing" one's gut bacteria is how it affects autoimmune diseases. Some claim achieving a balance of the friendly gut bacteria and the evil gut bacteria can eliminate them altogether. That seems to test my belief system a bit, but the proof of the pudding is that my hands don't hurt... yet.

The soreness of my tongue and the swelling of my lips seems to be abating. A lotta that has to do with the prednisone I've begun taking to alleviate it. I'm hoping to take prednisone for that purpose and hope that not eating any more cinnamon will come to the good end I prey for. I don't know how long the effect of a food allergy, in this case cinnamon, takes to wear off after the cessation of eating it.

I can't keep taking prednisone for an ailment I don't know the cause of. I can't keep taking prednisone for any reason unless I wanna croak. I don't know exactly what the consequences are on my body except that it removes my subcutaneous fat.

The people I know that do know the ill effects of taking prednisone for long periods do not encourage a constant use of it, including the doctor that prescribed it to me on her supervisor's recommendation. Personally, I think he'd get a big laugh outta watching it melt my bones. Weirdo.

The more I deal with them, the more I believe most medical doctors are in it just for the money, and that they'll hurt you in order make money off giving the appearance of helping you. I don't think all cops are my friend either. The childhood propaganda about who to turn to when you need help wore off a long time ago.

I don't know how much my new attitude toward food and health has to do with my third puberty that's about spiritual matters. I've written about this before and explained how that works in astrology. Twelve years after each Saturn Return a person goes through some sort of matriculation into the next level of be-co-me-ing.

The spiritual puberty that is reputed to bring about spiritual power, in the same sense that reaching the average age of twelve years old brings about physical puberty is a deep mystery for me. An enigma that seems to offer hope, but in a manner that's as weird to me as suddenly being possessed by sexual urges when I was an early teenager.

The mental puberty that I underwent at the age of 42 was less difficult for me to grok, because I've always lived in my mind anyway, even as a kid. I didn't have a real good way of grasping the insights that came my way until I acquired the lingo I needed to express it, but when it did arrive I made huge changes in my life to accommodate it, and it wasn't love at first sight. Not for me. Not for any of the significant others who were assaulted by it. Sorry, my dears.

Life is a tragedy,
but I am a dream,
and my home is
one heartbeat away.

This is my story,
and this is my song,
sung by the dreamer
until death comes along.

fmp ~ Early '70s
Edited today

❦

An Illusion Of Hope

❧

In a sense I've acted pretty stupid in the last few days, in addition to being an autistic idiot for practically all of my life. But, in a way, I've been smart too. To cut to the chase, I may have uncovered the reason I have had the trouble I have had with my lips swelling and a sore, irritated tongue that had caused me lots of misery. I may be allergic to cinnamon.

My brother and I had lunch together yesterday morning. As usual, I was whining about how hard it has been for me to just eat my food and enjoy it the best I could, in fey consideration of the food the greasy spoon we were eating at would allow.

It's what I call "lunch room food". It's the same type of come-from-a-gallon-can food dumped into a boiler and warmed up that they serve in the high school lunch rooms. The fact that it was the only food some students got to eat all day made my snotty complaints unworthy.

My brother pretended to be listening to me as usual. He's an Aquarius, and nothing if not skilled at pretending to be intrigued by everything anybody has to say if it's directed his way. Recently, in the last week even, he arranged to be tested for his hearing, and subsequently bought the latest technology in hearing aids. His dismissive "pretense" may have just been necessary because he is fairly deaf according to the audiologist, who obviously knows a sucker when he "sees" one.

Maybe my brother would have told me the story of his associate earlier if he had actually heard what I was whining about. The story was about his doctor's mother who complained of having the same problems I describe having, and it turned out that she only had these problems when she ate cinnamon. His story immediately perked up my persistently struggling attention span.

I have a history with eating cinnamon with the oatmeal I prepare for breakfast perhaps 4-5 times a week. I love the taste of cinnamon in my oatmeal that I make for myself. It's the easiest, simplest way to eat something in the morning to have something in my belly when I swallow all the pills I take twice a day or more. Only a few of them are prescribed. I'm a health nut of sorts and I eat lots of supplements just to make sure.

It's not just a sprinkling of cinnamon I've been putting in my oatmeal either. I have used, in the past, as much as a half a teaspoon full, if not more, to give the bland oatmeal some zing. I always buy the large container of cinnamon to make sure I have enough.

I also put maybe twenty or so raisins and some canola or olive oil in the mix, but it's the cinnamon that actually gives this concoction an exotic taste. Who doesn't need a little exotica for breaking one's fast?

When I got back home I immediately Googled up "cinnamon allergies". As usual, Google returned about ten zillion links of which may ten were actually about what I needed to know. One of the papers on this dentist's presentation was about a woman who experienced somewhat the same sort of distress I complain about.

His report was aimed at other medicos and written in their own technical jargon, but I understood enough to ken the gist of his problem in diagnosing what went on in his efforts to give his patient some relieve. Several times in his report he stated that she did not respond to the standard food allergy tests he arranged for her to undergo, and that mystified him in a way.

He prescribed prednisone to alleviate her symptoms, and that worked for a while, but the symptoms always came back, This went on over a few years. Her visits were infrequent. In between her telling him what she ate, and him patiently listening, it turned out that she had a habit of using cinnamon flavored chewing gum along with eating other cinnamon flavored foods. He told her to stop doing that, and it eventually solved her problems.

Reading this story along with others of a similar ilk immediately gave me hope. I got so excited I could hardly contain myself. I "knew" this was the solution to my problem, but I've "known" stuff like this a thousand times over that turned out to be a false alarm, so I'm apprehensive that I may be fooling myself again. Still, I do eat a lot of cinnamon.

I've meditated on how recently I've fixed oatmeal with cinnamon recently, and whether when I skipped a few days without doing it, if I experienced any relief from the symptoms that make eating a living hell. I "think" I've discerned a bit of difference. Only the complete abstinence of cinnamon from my diet will tell the tale.

I've been actively dealing with these symptoms for weeks now. I've tried everything that usually gives a modicum of relief without much ease. I had a bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon just two mornings ago, so I don't think I can trust in any signs and omens that I'm allergic to cinnamon just yet.

The dentist's report that prednisone helped his patient get some temporary relief offered me an option that I took immediately. I have an ongoing prescription for prednisone that's associated with the rheumatoid arthritis.

I've been instructed to ease off from the use of it because a continued use ain't healthy, and I've done that, but I've been hurting because I can't eat comfortably, and the symptoms are 24/7, so I popped a couple of 5 mg pills to seek some immediate relief, and to help me get through the period of time it might take for the last cinnamon I imbibed to wear off.

Taking the prednisone really helped. I can at least swallow now without as much pain as usual. I took some more this morning. There is a self-imposed limit to how many more times I'll do this. A couple of more days at best. Then, I'll back off to 5 mg for a couple of days and stop taking it.

By then, along with a total abstinence of putting cinnamon in my body, should give me a sign that cinnamon is the culprit that's made me dis-eased. If I'm right, then not eating cinnamon will be the easiest solution I've encountered to make life more bearable. I'm highly skilled at refusing to do things other people seem to find irresistible.

❦

Gods Are Not Enough

❧

The tornados are ravaging the South. Unfortunately including the coastal plains. Maybe the country's enemies have discovered a way to control the weather. True, tornados are not so powerful as nuclear weapons, but to the people whose houses and lives are destroyed they are. This area is historically recognized as one of the "hurricane alleys", as opposed to the "tornado alleys" of the midwest. Apparently that has changed so that we're getting both now.

The royal wedding is a real drag. America fought the Revolutionary War to rid ourselves of those inbred dunces. But, even during the Revolutionary War there were Tories who worshiped this class of people. They should take a lesson from botany where it's proved that hybrids make stronger and more viable plants. For the nobility worshipers, however, if it isn't the royals, then it's the movie stars and the wealthy. They gotta have somebody. Gods are not good enough anymore. That's a little like me writing that "knowing is not enough."

It's interesting to me that I wrote that knowing is not satisfying to me enow. Knowledge for me was the cat's meow for most of my life. I was under the impression that if I was possessed by enough knowledge I could cope with whatever the world sot before me. I was wrong. Neither knowledge nor understanding can make me immortal. Maybe that was my real goal. I wanted to be-co-me immortal. What a laugh... eh?

In my current opinion one does not "become" immortal. Not in the sense that one becomes a professional this or that. As if becoming an immortal is similar to becoming a doctor or a lawyer or an Indian chief. It might be more like, "is you is or is you ain't mah baby". I figure it's something a soul can't get out of, rather than a somethingness one holds as some sacrosanct ambition.

During most of the last decade I was subscribed to an e-mail discussion group whose topic was the Gnostic Gospel called the Gospel of Thomas. Practically every day for years I read and exchanged posts with a large variety of people on the me-and-thee-ing (meaning) of what those 114 saying attributed to Jesus intended to convey.

One of the more mysterious sayings to me came at the very bejinning:

1 And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm

The phrase, "... not taste death" is the real enigma for me. With "taste" as the term that really caused me pause. Why "taste"? There are four other nay-me-d (named) senses that might have been chosen instead of taste. So, why would the author choose "taste" rather than smell or sight or sound. It might make a hell of a lot more sense if the Coptic copyist had written will not "hear" death.


Actually, I think all life is immortal. Not just the forms life takes. Forms are temporary and come and go according to the latest fashion. Sometimes the forms life takes depends on the available materials like the various elements. On a planet, say, where there was less carbon than on Earth, the forms life create might be vastly different. That is what "life" does, you know, it creates objects in their own image.

Life doesn't seem to be all that particular about the forms it creates either. Any ol' form will do as long as it's more daring than the forms it's neighbors create. It's always one up on the Jones' isn't it. How else could the dinosaurs have evolved. Bigger is better. At least in Wyoming where they find all those dinosaur bones.

I seem to have worried some good Christians that I've been writing about committing suicide recently. I've been writing about suicide for decades. Literally for over fifty years. I think about it everyday. Sometimes all day long. I like to think about death. I got Scorpio rising. It's the grand finale. As Ed Sullivan, now dead himself, might say, "the big shew!"

Life is not that big a deal. It's all about personalities we create for the sake of appearances. Just for the hell of it, once I wrote to this guy who appears to take himself very seriously, that he had written a particular statement and proclaimed his personal beliefs "for the sake of appearances". He seemed flabbergasted that I would be so cruel. All personality traits are cultivated for "the sake of appearances". What else would anybody go to all that trouble for?

That's why death or the idea of death seems so traumatic for some people. It is not the dissolution of the physical entity these people appear to get upset over. It's the loss of their precious personality they've spent a lifetime assembling, that discombobulates their integrity. No personality? Oh, the sha-me of it. They'd rather be a half-witted retard than to lose it all. Hell, that's what "tasting death" is all about... isn't it?

❦

Gut Bacteria And Me

❧

The woman who wrote to me said flat out that I'm an idiot. No blame. That's not news to me. Lots of people not only think I'm an idiot, but a Mongoloid without the classical slant-eyed look of one. I should take her unsolicited advice, but I don't know how. I'm an idiot. She and I have only been communicating for a week or so. I don't know how she caught on to me so fast. Perhaps she's projecting.

I didn't get much sleep last night. Probably because I'm an idiot. I meditated using the Gnaural software again at the same time I listened to the binaural beat videos . The first sitting was the default theta program. The second was the delta program I designed. I only listened to around 40 minutes of the delta sequence, but that may be the reason i didn't get much sleep. I woke up after a brief time having a nightmare of being attacked by a couple of young hoodlums who came to my house uninvited. Aiiiyyyyeeeee!

The Nova program I watched about sleep yesterday was interesting. This science lady used fruit flies to show what happens if they don't get sleep. They eventually die. I've taken sleeplessness to the extreme and to the point of chronic fatigue. Not because I was experimenting, but because I was a homeless bum on the road and couldn't find a safe place to sleep. Nobody was agitating like the woman did the fruit flies. I did that because I'm an idiot. I wanted to know what I set out to know, but as I wrote recently, sometime knowing is not enough. I need more than knowledge.

On YouTube I searched for videos in which people discussed being a Type 5 enneagram person like me. Listening to them was very informative. Type Five's chief feature is avarice. Some of the people in the videos used the term "hoarding" instead of greediness or being a miser as I've written in the past. Hoarding is a very descriptive term for what we experience. I hoard the stuff I need to get off by myself to figure out why I don't experience emotion in real time. Only later when I can be alone. Then, I get it. That's a big disadvantage socially.

It's not that I don't let my emotions show in social exchanges. I'm not hiding them. I don't allow them to happen at all until I'm sure I can deal with them. Doing that just seems odd. Studying the Enneagrams has been one of the most useful systems for thinking about things and contemplating my life as any of the other systems I've mastered. The fact that I don't share those systems I've conquered is symbolic of the type of hoarding Fives refer to.

In the ancient Hebrew writings what is small is a mustard seed. A mustard seed may have been the smallest coherent object they had to describe the microcosm. Over time, descriptions for small has gone to the extreme. It's important to me personally to find a good descriptor for small due to my arrival here on Earth as an object that "looks like" an oyster pearl, but small. Very small. How small has been hard to say.

In the last couple of months or so I've been studying what the term "probiotics" describes. Probiotics are gut bacteria. The scientists who research gut bacteria state that each of us have trillions of them in our intestines. The pills and capsules I buy and consume has billions of live gut bacteria in them. The capsules are not that large. Just regular size capsules of the kind you might take medicine in. Yet, they have tens of billions of live bacteria.

That astounds me. That's mighty small for an living creature. I find it difficult to imagine something so small can be a living entity. I've spent a considerable amount of time reading and researching probiotics. More recently I've matriculated to studying "prebiotics". Prebiotics is about the food gut bacteria thrive on. The idea is to feed the friendly gut bacteria so they get stronger than the unfriendly gut bacteria, and murder them.

As odd as that may sound, it's looking more and more like all I'm doing or have ever actually done is feed my gut bacteria. It's not what healthy food for me that matters, but what makes my gut flora happy. I give them what they need to be happy, and they keep me healthy and physically fit. That's a different way of thinking about food than I'm used to.

Last night I forgot to add a teaspoon of inulin to my food to feed my friendly gut bacteria. Maybe that's why I didn't get a decent amount of sleep. Perhaps my gut bacteria are angry with me for not giving them their favorite treat. I'll make up for it this morning. I'm cooking my usual oatmeal, and to make sure I don't forget the inulin I've already put it in the bowl I use so I won't forget when the oatmeal is done.

Inulin doesn't get digested until it reaches the large intestine. That's where the gut bacteria do their best work. Over time I'm gonna learn the names of many of these gut bacteria so I can give the appearance I know exactly what I'm writing about. Isn't that what writing is for? If I don't learn their nay-me-s they might get insulted. Who wants that?

I wanna know if I'm communicating in some way with my gut bacteria. It might be useful to do that. I've been reading articles written by respected doctors and researchers at the famous research hospitals in recognized journals about how many, if not most autoimmune diseases are caused by an lack of balance between the friendly and unfriendly gut bacteria.

I don't have any medical training to be able to have a valid opinion one way or the other, but what I'm reading makes sense to me. They say it's the excrement of these gut bacteria that helps or hurts, and that is the real reason for the old adage, "You are what you eat." I'm thinking about learning this gut bacteria rap. Maybe not so much to use it to look smart, but to understand what the researchers are pronouncing as the God's own truth. What if they're right?

❦

Dreams From Delta

❧

Yesterday I spend a considerable amount of time using the Gnaural software to meditate. The first session happened in the early afternoon after I finished writing yesterday's lengthy blog entry. It was because I was engaged in writing that I forgot that I had a high school class reunion at 11 a.m. Too bad, I might have enjoyed myself, but writing in order to contemplate my life is more important than hanging out with old people. I spent 74 minutes listening to the default theta program.

The unusual part of that was that I did it while simultaneously listening to a series of binaural beat videos on YouTube that centered around the 528 hertz solfeggio range. Frankly, the result was a mixed bag.

The theta sequence was played at 110 hertz and I could distinguish it at all times from the solfeggio harmonies. It left me a little confused, but the solfeggios made the whole deal more interesting to sit there for that long.

Later, during the early evening I played a delta sequence I designed myself with another group of solfeggios that used various frequencies that ranged from some beta brainwave frequencies, but was mostly alpha and theta frequencies. Since I based my delta design from the default program it was 74 minutes long also. When it was finished I went to bed.

My first dream came upon me pretty quick and became lucid soon after I realized that I was dreaming. I watched this guy put down a synthetic coating on the deck of a ship. He only knew i was there in the immediacy of now. Later when i saw him and mentioned watching him laying down the coat of synthetic material, he seemed grateful I admired his work, and he gave me an extensive lesson in how to figure angles playing golf.

In my second dream I found myself in a public restroom. I stood before a urinal and hesitated to pee for a moment as I sometime do in public places, and a midget slipped in front of me and started peeing in the urinal before I did to show his confidence, and then the golfer from the former dream stepped in front of him to show him how confident in public he was too. I just didn't care.

For some reason the golfer told me I could show my appreciation for his lessons about how to figure angles by writing a short poem about him.

The dream I had just before I woke up for good was very weird. I went fishing with my oldest daughter of my first marriage and my second wife in a pond in a small boat with a radio that ran off an electric wire for which there was no receptacle. I should have realized I was dreaming, but I did not.

In the dream I baited a small hook with a worm and let it drop into the water while I attempted to get the fishing pole straightened out from it being tangled with my second wife. While I was doing that, something bit it and took off toward the center of the small pond. I tried to reel it in, and suddenly (in the dream) I was on the shore and whatever had bitten the hook swam up under the small boat where my ex-wife and daughter were.

To get it out from under the boat I tugged mightily and got it ashore. When I finally did, I was astounded. It was only partly a fish. the front part of it was like a fox with no hair. The tail, where the hook was caught on the very tip of it, looked like a shark's tail. The fox/fish looked back at me like it didn't want me to turn it loose, it seemed to wanna be friends, but I finally got the hook out of it's tail. It turned to look at me ruefully, and went into the water and swam off.

I yelled at my second wife to "get that damned radio out of the boat", which she did by putting it on a stump on the shore, while glaring at me as if she didn't know shit about electricity and water. I wasn't in the boat any more. I should have kept my mouth shut and prayed for a miracle.

At no point that I remember was I lucid during this entire, ridiculous episode. I have no idea why my second wife was in the same boat as my only child from my first marriage. Maybe it's because none of them have anything more to do with me. I don't think they hate me, but rather, are totally apathetic about whether I live or die. They're all waiting for me to commit suicide in order to be rid of me altogether.

I've certainly been thinking about suicide. I alway consider it as a viable option. Particular when I suspect I have some horrible, incurable disease. Presently, I'm fairly sure I have throat cancer. I have no desire to stick around and go through whatever futile efforts the medicos come up with to torture me for that. I watched my sister-in-law's brother (who also has RA) go through chemotherapy for it, and that's nothing to live for.

I've stopped taking the methotrexate because my mouth is a mess. I have little ulcers in various places, my tongue is sore and burns like crazy from any spices. My lips are constantly swollen. It hurts to swallow. My rheumatologist instructed me to double up on the folic acid they prescribed me, and I have done that, but it doesn't seem to have helped.

Since I think my mouth problems are the side-effect of all these prescription medicines I'm taking, I've decided to just stop taking them one at a time. If that kills me, I guess it is a form of suicide. If it gets too painful to live with I'll finish the job with something more definite. You know, like a half-fox/fish accidentally hooked by it tail would. '-)

❦

Redundancy And Repetition

❧

Looking for the truck stops where I spent the night in California proved fruitless. Google Maps even has the name of burger joints at the intersections of InterState 10, but not the truck stops. I searched all the way from where I-10 and I-5 intersect back to Arizona close up, and I never saw it.

The reason I looked was that it was a bad night I spent there. I was huddled up against a wall that separated an apartment complex from the two large truck stops to hide in the tumbleweed there. It was a dirty, mucky place that stunk liked the residents of the apartments had thrown trash over the wall. Besides that, the noise from the hundreds of truck diesels was deafening. It was a lousy night.

There were more lousy nights with dirty places to sleep on that entire trip. I don't remember having to sleep in places like that when I was younger. Maybe that's because I was younger and had more energy to look for better places to lay my head.

This particular sojourn happened when I was 61 years old. I had decided to take one more hitch-hiking trip for old time sake. I got a ride with my brother over to I-95 east of Fayetteville and travel down to Key West, Florida from there. I spent seven years more or less, off and on, in Key West. I have a lot of memories there both good and bad.

It took a couple of days to arrive in Key West. It was good fortune that I made it there at all. The deputy sheriffs are tough there, and they don't allow hitch-hiking in Monroe County anymore. They didn't catch me on the way down, but they did on the way back. I had to spend all the money I had left to get a bus back to Homestead and the mainland. The deputy sheriff told me it was either that or walk a 150 miles or go to jail. I should have gone to jail.

The one night I spent in Key West was as bad or worse than the night I described above in California. I crawled back into some mangrove swamps to get away from some bikers. I didn't sleep well that night. As soon as daylight came, I emerged from the mangroves to get up on the shoulder of the road to hitch-hike toward Miami. That's when the sheriff's deputy caught me.

I didn't do too well even after I got off the bus in Homestead. It took me a long time to get around Miami. I charted a course around Miami because it's a dangerous place to be footloose and fancy free. When I finally did get around Miami and on I-95 the ride I got let me off in a place where I had to walk about five miles to get to where I could stand on an entrance to I-95. It was just across from a house public housing area, and not a very safe place to be when it got dark.

Finding a hiding place to spend the night there was not too hard. It was a bum's place where the trash and the layout told me that many bums had stayed there in the past. I even found an abandoned credit card I left laying there. I was afraid to use it in case it brought me trouble.

The next day I spent nearly all day catching a ride. It was not a good spot for that. One guy did stop way down the road, got out of his car and opened the trunk to get something out. He put it beside the road, waved for me to come and get it, and drove off. I figured I wasn't getting anywhere fast, so I walked the couple of hundred yards up to where it was, and it was a small bible and some tracts. I cursed that fanatic.

On up the road I was picked up by a handyman who said he'd done a lotta hitch-hiking, and now he was making a living by doing work around people's houses. He wanted me to help him, but he seemed a little weird and so I begged off.

The next ride I got was with a truck driver who was driving a rental car in order to go pick up a new truck. The company he drove for gave the new trucks it bought to it's veteran drivers, and he had been with them long enough to warrant a new one. He suggested I think about driving trucks if I wanted to see the country. I probably listened to him, because later on I did just that. I found out by the doing of it that I wasn't hitch-hiking just to see the country.

This guy had to pick up his new truck in Atlanta. When he told me that I figured to ride with him to Atlanta and then hitch a ride from there back to North Carolina, and that would be the end of this trip. I was dirty and tired of being on the road, but as we neared I-10 I changed my mind, and asked him to let me off on I-10, so I could meander my way out to California and back before I quit. I was pretty sure this was going to be my last hitch-hiking adventure.

I got a ride pretty quick once I got on I-10, and it took me to Alabama. The intersection the driver put me off at was a rural intersection, but it had a McDonald's, and it was late in the afternoon. I had bummed enough money to buy a double-cheeseburger, and then looked for a spot to spend the night.

There wasn't a place around that intersection that I felt safe about laying down and going to sleep. Further west about a half mile I saw a bridge that crossed over a creek, and after it got dark so nobody could see me go there I wended my way there to crawl under the bridge to sack out.

The trouble was that under the bridge was rough concrete that hadn't been smoothed. It was only there to protect the bridge from being undercut if the creek flooded. this was another of the rough places I slept on this trip. It was like I got no sleep or any rest at all.

The next day I got rides to Louisiana, where I had more trouble finding a place to sleep. I ended up hiking back along the edge of a canal far enough away from the road and back into some thorny bushes to find a level place to lay down. I didn't have a sleeping bag or any extra clothes on this trip. This place was about two weeks into the trip without a bath or clean clothes, and sleeping in swamps had me smelling ripe.

After a couple of short rides I finally got a ride with a retired tug boat captain who had to quit working because he had been hurt by a cable that snapped on the barge his tug was pushing. He was going to West Texas, but told me he was going to stop in western Louisiana to visit his brother. His brother and extended family lived in a trailer house off on a side road, and it made me a little nervous to spend the night with them, but it turned out okay.

The place in West Texas he was going to was located just on the other side of Fort Worth. It's called Abilene, and it's apparently famous as a cattle drive town. He had a sister who lived there with her family, and I got a shower and she washed the clothes I had on my back. The next morning he took me to a crossing on the west side of Abilene to "help" me catch a ride, and that was a big mistake.

I didn't catch a ride from there for a day and a half, and as it turned out I spent the night under an overpass over I-20 soaked to the skin from a huge storm that I saw coming from probably a hundred miles away. A body can see a long way out on the great plains, and as soon as I saw the lightening over in the northwest I knew with absolute certainty that this storm was headed straight for me. I was right.

I thought I'd be alright and stay fairly dry under the overpass bridge, but I was wrong. The wind blew 40-50 miles per hour, the bridge leaked through the cracks, and the rain got blown up under the bridge and wet me from head to toe. I also lost my eye glasses there at that intersection, and it was just another sleeping place from hell that this trip seemed to specialize in.

The next morning I walked about three miles back to Abilene where there was a truck stop at the other intersection there. I had no money so I couldn't buy any food or even a cup of coffee. Enduring that storm had worn me out, but at least I was at an inside place to be.

I sat on a stool next to where the drivers came in from the parking lot, but a fellow told me that the hired help would run me off if I kept sitting there, and he directed me toward a movie room the truck stop provided for the drivers. He said I might be able to rest in there.

He was right about that, at least for a while, but after an hour or two I was told it was time for me to leave. The movie room was just for truck drivers, and I was obviously a vagrant. Beggars can't be choosers, so I headed on out to the onramp to I-20.

Oddly enow, I wasn't out there for more than a few minutes when a semi-truck stopped and picked me up. When I got inside, the driver told me that he had been watching me from inside the truck stop, and figured it would be safe to give me a ride.

It's always been safe for people to give me a ride. I've had to defend myself on occasion when it wasn't safe for me. I've had several drivers pull guns on me and threaten to hurt me. It didn't work out for them.

This guy was a Mormon and married with kids. He owned his own truck, but barely, according to him, and the Mormons were not too happy with him either. They hadn't exactly kicked him out, he said, but he would have to prove himself in some way before he would be a member in good standing again. I rode with him from Abilene to the truck stops I wrote about looking for in California.

I spent two nights sleeping on the floor of his truck. It wasn't exactly a pleasant place to sleep. I couldn't stretch out completely, and he had a little dog with him who had obviously pissed on the floor I slept on, but at least I felt safe there. Besides, the guy bought me a meal every time he ate, so putting up with the smell of dog piss was the price I had to pay.

Riding with the Mormon was my chance to ask questions about the Mormon Church. I was completely ignorant except for the historical facts I'd learned over the years in school. He was not all that forthcoming about it, and he explained that since he had never been all that devout, his reticence was due to his own ignorance, and not his unwillingness to share.

I don't think he had gone on the mandatory missionary trip, and that needs to be there for the Mormons to trust you with the intricacies of their trade. He said that being born into a Mormon family gave him no real insight. As it turned out, I probably knew more about what it's like to be a Mormon than him. That's the way it is with cults.

My intention was to at least go to the Pacific ocean and dip my toes in it as symbolic of my visit to the west coast, but even though I got to within a couple hundred yards of the ocean near Laguna Beach I didn't actually do that. It's not like I haven't sailed completely across it several times when I was in the Navy. What I didn't realize in real time on this trip was that my natal Sun had progressed into Cancer, the sign of the home, and that when and if I ever did get back to North Carolina I might not ever leave again for lack of inspiration.

There were moments when I thought I'd never get out of the city limits of Los Angeles after I headed back east. East L.A. has a reputation for violence, and I had to walk through a lot of it to get back on I-10. The night I spent there in the underbrush between the noisy lanes of the InterState was uneventful because I had walked to a fairly remote area.

The next morning I got a ride with an Indian who was in charge of the maintenance on the first Indian Casino east of Los Angeles. He lived off the reservation because he had married a non-Indian. When we got to the Casino he drove me around the reservation to show it to me, and then bought me breakfast at one of the franchise restaurants the tribe owned.

When he took me out to the intersection of I-10 he asked me to pray to Jesus with him, which I did (I got saved five times on this one trip), and then he tried to give me $18 to help me along the way. I left it tucked in the seat of his car. When he saw it he tried to get me to take it again, but since he had treated me kindly and bought me breakfast I figured that was enough.

The drunk who picked me up at the Casino intersection informed me that I was going to spend the night at his house just north of Wilcox, Arizona. I knew for certain that I wasn't. This wasn't my first rodeo, and all that jazz. He just wanted somebody to protect him from his wife when he got home drunk. That wasn't gonna be me.

When he stopped to the convenience store at Wilcox to buy another six pack, I got out of his car and hid behind the store. He drove around looking for me, but I was too quick getting around the corners. Finally when he took the road north, I got back on I-10 to continue east.

At that intersection I eventually got a ride with a Mexican who was taking a white woman to a place south of Benson, Texas to visit her brother in a prison down there. The driver was a rough looking dude who told me he had spent most of his life in prison himself, and understood why this woman wanted to visit her brother. I think his telling me that was a warning, but it was unneeded. I'm no threat to anybody.

When we got to where they were turning off to go south from Benson, I had another rough night sleeping on the hard ground under the sign that proclaimed the truck stop/convenience store there. It was a perfect place for rattlesnakes, and wetbacks from Mexico. The border was less than twenty miles away, and I saw lots of Border Patrol vehicles. I expected trouble, but didn't get any. The wind was blowing cold, and without any covers it was not a pleasant visit near Benson, Texas.

The next ride I got was with another semi truck. I reckon I rode about two or three hundred miles with him. He too was married with kids, but he lived on some lake in California in a recreational area, and had two pleasure boats he worked to maintain. He was not at all impressed with the way I smelled, and paid for me to take a shower at a truck stop, but my clothes still stunk even after that, and when he stopped, he had me sleep on the trailer between the four huge, really big tires he was hauling.

I don't remember much about the rides I got for most of the way back to North Carolina. I do remember that just before I got to the end of I-20 near Florence, South Carolina, where I-20 joins I-95 I had to walk nearly ten miles to get on I-95, and then another five miles to get to Florence walking on the InterState. I was curious that the cops never stopped me.

At Florence, I was around a hundred miles from where I started this journey. I was excited to be getting near my house, because I was very, very tired. Chronic fatigue makes me hallucinate, and I was certainly "seeing things", and had been for a thousand miles. That's why I probably don't remember the last part of the trip.

Getting home from Florence, the last hundred miles, took nearly two days. Two crazy days, but at least I felt safe back in my home territory. I also knew it was the end of my hitch-hiking adventures. Sure, I think about going out again often, but I also know I ain't gwine nowhere unless I win the lottery and go in a luxurious style. That pretty much means I'm here to stay except for astral traveling. Which is, by the way, a wonderful way to fly. '-)

❦

Christianity Is Just Another Nayme For War

❧

The industrial area I dreamed of last night was contaminated by acid. The chain link fences that kept me hemmed in were rusty. The galvanized coating had turned a dirty brown and when I thought about using the power of being lucid to propel myself outta there, suddenly it extended overhead and got narrow, and sometime there were filthy ditches to keep me away from other unimpeded passageways. I wasn't afraid. I knew I was dreaming. I was keenly aware that I was asleep in my own bed, but it was difficult to get away from such dingy surroundings.

Another dream involve a rangy martial expert who attempted to bully me. He was accompanied by a pudgy dupe who adored him. He tried to intimidate me to impress the dupe with his power, but I tricked him into mortally wounding this bottom, and then he had to face me alone with only his wit and grit to finish me off. That proved to be folly.

When he would come after me I leapt up higher in the air than he could reach. Sometime when he got frustrated and turned away from me I would swoop down and grab him by his shirt collar and yank him up into the air, and then drop him from a height high enough to hurt, but not kill him. One time I grabbed him and dragged him toward a brick wall I could go through, but his body couldn't. He began to run when he saw me. Even after I was fully awake and in beta consciousness I found myself looking for new ways to torment him.

The weather yesterday was pleasant. It rained a little now and then, and as I drove over to Fayetteville and back looking to buy some inulin there was a mist in the air. Along with the mist was the newly-minted green of Spring that suggested I might be in Ireland. At least from the pictures and videos I've seen of it. I've never been to Ireland or anywhere in Europe. I might not go even when I win the lottery. All the old world seems too filled and infatuated with their old traditions and god awful archaic architecture and Catholic relics.

When I returned from Fayetteville, and then did the research on the internet that revealed that the new Metamucil had the chicory inulin I sought, I went to the Wal-Mart and easily found it along with all the other types of Metamucil. Then, upon my return to my house I drove to my brother's house deeper in the woods next door, to share the findings of my research. He is just as interested in learning how to enable his friendly gut bacteria as I am.

He was working on extending the small deck/porch to the rear entrance to his house that everybody uses instead of the front door. His twin grandsons were visiting with their mother. I like all those people, so I offered to help him as an excuse to hang around the kids a little. I'm never around kids (or anyone else as far as that's concerned). He was excited to learn about being able to buy inulin locally.

I couldn't do much to help him because my arthritic hands don't work the way they used to, but I could hand him stuff and hold things like boards in place while he sawed or put nails in them to hold them. I guess I helped some by distracting the two four year old boys. The deck was done all except the top planking by the time I left, and that was the easy part.

My older sister drove up with her extremely shy grandson. She brought some toy swords made of stiff foam, and the boys all went crazy over that. They had to be toned down quite a bit to keep them from hurting each other. Granted, the toys were made of foam, and that's a good thing, because they were literally trying to kill each other with them.

Usually, well, in the past, on Sunday mornings, I watch the news pundits assess the headlines from the last week. I don't watch the news much during the week. The news is not news anymore, and probably never has been. With the United States involved in three wars currently, the news is dreadful and boring. It's like those little boys with the toy swords, they're all trying to kill each other, but not with toys.

It's depressing to become more and more aware that the country I'm a citizen of is filled to the brim with war mongers. They simply love killing people by the score. If it wasn't about oil and religion they'd find another excuse. That's not very good testimony for their claim to worship The Prince Of Peace. It's horrible to realize after all these years that I was correct about them when rebelling as a teenager, they're all liars and hypocrites. Selah

❦

Inulin From Chicory Roots

❧

There is no real good reason why I haven't written today. I've sort of been confused, maybe addled. Yesterday I spent researching an idea I gained by reading about gut bacteria. Even before my brother sent me a link to read about the latest finding I had seen the headlines.:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/gut-bacteria-types/

This article claims there are three basic types of humans when it comes to gut bacteria. The article is not that clear about how to tell what type you are. As usual they claim there is much more research to be done before any general conclusions can be reached. To me, it seems like what the people who research gut bacteria are saying is that when we eat, the main purpose of choosing what foods we eat are to feed the bacteria in out gut linings. Typing "gut bacteria" into Google will provide you with lots of reading if you're interested. I'm interested.

I've written a little about probiotics ere now. Probiotics is about those friendly bacteria that live in our intestines. I've been using probiotics for a month or better now on a regular, daily basis, and I've seen some good results and some results that weren't so good. The not so good results drove me to research probiotics even more.

The reading I have done on probiotics lead me around to the term "prebiotics". Prebiotics is about products that help friendly bacteria multiply and crowd out the unfriendly bacteria that can cause lots of problems, including autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes and lots of other unpleasant ailments.

One of those products that help the friendly bacteria prevail is a substance call inulin. Reading about the positive benefits of inulin made me wanna get hold of some. I definitely wanna support the growth and well being of the friendly bacteria. Naturally, I turned to Googling up the term, and then to find out where I could buy some inulin for my own use.

This desire to acquire some inulin had me driving over to the health food and vitamin shoppes in Fayetteville. I found one container of inulin with the brand name Now. I have used Now products for a while. I kind of trust the brand, but the health food store only had one bottle of it that costs me $10.26 with tax. A franchise called The Vitamin Shoppe had some inulin, but it was their own brand and I didn't trust it because it didn't say what it was made from, so I came back home.

Once I got home I got back on the internet and started researching again to see what I could come up with. When I did another search on "inulin" the name Metamucil came up a couple of times. I ignored it at first because I already knew that Metamucil was made from psillum husk or the inside white pulpy stuff inside of citrus fruit.

I got tired of trying to find what I wanted, that is, I wanted inulin made from either chicory root or from the roots of Jerusalem artichokes. I ran into the name Metamucil again, and since I couldn't find what I was looking for I decided to check the link out.

What I found out was that Metamucil made another type of diet aid that did not come from citrus pulp. They made another product called Clear and Clean. When I checked out the ingredients I was delighted to find out it was generated from pure chicory roots, and was considerably cheaper than the inulin I bought at the health food store that was made from artichoke roots and other plants.

I immediately got up and drove to Wal-Mart SuperCenter a couple of miles away not two miles from home. Damn, I wasted a lot of money and time by not connecting to that Metamucil link the first time before I drove a hundred mile round trip to Fayetteville. It was the pure stuff I wanted in the first place.

The thing about chicory root inulin is that it isn't digested in either the stomach or in the small intestine, but it is digested by the biofidobacteria in the large intestines and the colon where it does the most good.

The probiotics with the billions of the various friendly bacteria in them are enteric coated with stuff to get them past the stomach acids and being destroyed in the small intestines, but the chicory root inulin doesn't need any protection to get to the large intestines and colon to feed the friendly bacteria.

I'm very pleased to find a source of inulin that I can buy locally from a company like Metamucil that has high standards. I still have to go out of my way to buy probiotic capsules, but if that proves difficult I can at least feed the existent friendly bacteria that's found a home in my body.

❦

Knowing Is Never Enough

❧

The first dream I had was of being present at the complete devastation of a criminal gang at this huge old wooden mansion in what seemed like the roaring Twenties of the last century during the last sad millennia. The men on both sides all wore hats. Fedoras, if I know my hats, and I don't. The most spectacular scene was when the "boss" of the gang was trying to escape through a false chimney that led to the roof of the house, and he got stuck there with only his head sticking out, and the cops were beating him unmercifully.

The next dream I had just before I awoke this morning that writing just now about the first lousy dream made me forget what the second one was about. It was not an eventful night in the dreamtime, but that is in comparison to the night before which was absolutely spectacular. As I lay in my bed trying to get up the nerve to arise, and put on some clothes (as opposed to yesterday morning, it's a coolish 54 degrees), I thought about what a mean person I was to the father of my first wife, but without conscious intent.

Merle was his nayme, like in Merle Haggard. For all intents and purposes he was an "Okie From Muskogee", but where none of the children had a ball. My father-in-law, Merle was born, lived, and died in the foothills of the Appalachians, and he and his wife Kate both worked their entire lives in a textile mill where they operated the machinery that wove Gold Bond men's socks of all colors, but of one variety.

Merle worked his way up to being the supervisor of the shipping department, which was considered locally the position of a highly accomplished man. He had eight men who shipped socks all over the world, and not just anybody could do that. Kate worked on the assembly line in the plant. There was no other position to be gained above that, unless she got a job in the office, but she couldn't read or write well enough to do that, and the very thought of trying was more than the poor woman could bear.

The story of Merle and Kate is a very sad story from my perspective. I can't do it justice because I grew up to think that people like that were saps, and victims of the forced education system that taught them that they were little more than grateful indentured servants of the Jews in the garment district of New Yawk City.

It was only this morning as I lay in my warm, and wrinkle-sheeted bed luxuriating that I realized I had been used by my first wife to punish her father for being the kind of man that couldn't walk away from his destiny. Hell, Merle played the saxophone in a little dance band he formed in high school before he married his big-band groupie, Kate when she became preggers. He quit school, got a job at the sock factory, and proceeded to raise decent kids to do his duty to God and his mother. Merle could have been somebody. He "could have been ah contendah!" To his daughter, I was apparently everything Merle was not, and that was her chief use for me.

I'm eating yesterday's oatmeal as I write this. I cooked it up yesterday morning for my breakfast, but after the wonderful, phantasmagoric dreams I had, and got up and wrote what I did about them, and went back to bed to get some actual sleep, it was time to go to the greasy spoon and eat meatloaf. They only have meatloaf on Thursdays. Couldn't miss that! Hell, today, Friday, that is, they have fried fish. I'm going batshit crazy all over again.

My natal family moved to North Carolina from Mississippi to teach school. I didn't know what the textile industry meant to North Carolina after the Civil War. The carpet-bagging Jews from the garment district in New Yawk City was the best thing going for the local remnants of the Reconstruction Era. They provided the best jobs these people never had.

All the plantation owners and their male children of the Southern Aristocracy had been killed or shell-shocked during The War, and the tenant farmers and ex-slaves they left behind were desperate for a direction in life. Like the Old Woman In A Shoe, they had so many children they didn't know what to do. So many mouths, and no way to fill them. That's the reason my parents left Mississippi.

The only-est thang I ever prayed or preyed for was understanding. What an ignorant fool I've been. I didn't really wanna understand these dumb facts of birth and death and ungrateful children and family and all that crap. Fate is a mofo.

My first wife married me because her father was a wimp, and I may have married her because she was everything my mother was not (a real man-hating bitch). After many years of embarrassment, we had a child who couldn't have children because of the deficiencies of her parents, and that was the end of the marriage we both thought would solve all our problems. What a drag, man.

I don't know why it has taken me a lifetime to figure out what happened to my first marriage. We were truly victims of circumstances beyond our control, but the disgusting thing is that it merely points out that we're all probably victims of circumstances beyond our control, and so we have no legitimate reason for whining. I've wondered, but I didn't ask to understand Gautama's conclusion that, "All life is suffering."

Yesterday's oatmeal is not so bad as I thought it might be. The dollop of Grandma's Molasses I put in it helped a lot. Ummm... tasty! When I wash it down with the coffee that got cold while I was writing this mealy-mouthed shit, it goes down pretty good.

Merle was "a good man". He had a large garden each year that he used to feed his family. He had to have that garden to save the money to put both his daughters through the state university system. More importantly, he was the secretary/treasurer of The Church Of God, and his family has to toe the line to measure up or there would be hell to pay.

For his oldest daughter, I became the hell he had to pay for being that way. I didn't even have to know it to serve her needs. Of course, I didn't really mind, but mostly because I didn't know that's what I was there for. When I sorta did, I resorted to be-co-me-ing Prince Chi, dissembled from that role in life, and went back to the road to complete my education.

The threat of California falling into the ocean from earthquakes wuz what forced me to settle in Reno, Nevada for a lengthy six months or so. That's where I suffered the pangs of hell for blowing my first marriage and the impossible "ideals" of my whacked-out father:

Weep and moan, weep and moan,
and cry for one's own pity.
To live this life in such a way
is just a little shitty.

It clings like putty to the soul,
and pules for understanding.
But, no one hears with glued-up ears
the pleas of silent ranting...

Little did I know that what I was experiencing was of some universal order, and that I was playing my part to the nines without a clue what I was being duped for. Here I was supposed to be one of the most intelligent people in the world, and I was sitting on the banks of the Truckee River in some gambling town run by the Mafia, crying my heart out because I had not lived up to the standard and measures I was taught that I was intended to fulfill.

I was sure during this period in The Biggest Little Town In The World (Reno) that I would never love again, and I was right. It's no shame to say that I never had loved before, because I hadn't, and worse, I didn't know what love was nor that I wouldn't miss what I never had. How was I supposed to know that love cannot be possessed? I was a mere child in my late twenties. One can only don the coat of many colors. They can not dictate how it fits them.

My brief attempt to discern the me-and-thee-ing (meaning) of my first dream last night about the dissolution of a gang of criminals isn't entirely lost on me. If I'm using that analogy to address my own criminality, there is a lot to be said about it finally going away from hyah. I too have sinned. The cops were beating me over the haid to knock some sense into me like my father did. The very notion that I might not sin in the future is rather depressing.

❦

A Budding New Interest

❧

The dream was located in a college dormitory or a hotel. There were a couple of sets of twins. All the people there were tricksters or some such. They played for surprise and did things to others that were meant to frighten, but no real harm was done unless you did it to yourself from fear and the lack of insight. I was not afraid.

Normally, I might have been. Since I've been using the Gnaural software to meditate with this has been a recognizable feature. Last night, not only was I not afraid, but I could give as good as I got, and I was recognized by the others there for my cleverness and expertise. That was a good feeling.

My tongue is still sore this morning, but the soreness has not extended down into my throat as it threatened to do. I may live, but it still wouldn't surprise me if this ailment were not the death of me. It doesn't matter. I'm still not afraid.

I received e-mails about my birthday from a goodly number of people. The ones that mattered anyway. My sister-in-law brought me a quart of some tasty olive oil that I've been using to swish around in my mouth and swallow. It's helped a lot with my tongue and lips.

I ate the last of the Caesar Salad I made from scratch. It tasted very good. Maybe even better than immediately after I first made it. I Googled up romaine lettuce on the internet to find out how much folic acid it contained. One serving carried almost an entire day's supply. Not only folic acid, but even more vitamin K, A, B, and C.

In fact, with the other ingredients the Caesar Salad provided nearly all the daily recommended nutrition. I was very surprised at how complete it is for one meal. I included a cubed piece of fried chicken breast I bought at the delicatessen section of the grocery store. If I eat an equivalent meal once a day I can stop taking the multivitamin pill.

Making my own fresh salad dressings and sauces is a very appealing idea to me. It was a lot simpler than I had imagined. I got the recipe and instructions on how to prepare it from a YouTube video. There are thousands of videos to choose from. I literally picked the first one I ran across and it turned out fine.

I had most of the ingredients here except for the romaine lettuce, and it was readily available from both the nearby grocery stores. The dressing was the important part for me to make fresh. The amounts in the recipe was just enough for two bowls of salad. The idea is to make no more than I'll use for one day so that it will always be fresh.

The YouTube videos are great. I can replay them over and over to grasp the recipes and instructions if I need to. That's a big help for a neophyte cook like me.

I went back to bed after I wrote the above comments around four o'clock in the morning. I dreamed of talking to this woman who seemed very happy to finally get me on the phone (I have no phone now). She expected me to be equally delighted to talk to her, but I didn't recognize her voice. I asked her to tell me who she was, and she apparently became insulted and hung up. I felt terrible. Why am I always the last to know?

Soon however, a party in a beautifully adorned place evolved in which I was an honored guest. I received lots of congratulations for some deed I had supposedly achieved. I couldn't figure out what it was, but who cared? All the guests were ecstatically happy for me. Toasts of respect and admiration were offered again and again... Hurrah!

Just before I woke up I was confronted by a radiant young girl who looked about ten years old. Certainly prepubescent. Innocence personified. She was smiling at me with such a glow of true beauty I was overcome with joy to see her standing there.

Without further ado, I woke up in my own bed in my rathole of a house, but I still felt great. I drifted in and out of sleep for a couple of hours maybe. Each time I woke up I still lingered in the joy of my previous dream. Only when I got up to describe what happened did I finally let it go. Selah

❦

A Reason For Living

❧

The dream I woke up to was about such a familiar situation emotionally that again I woke up and was happy to find myself in my own bed. I certainly did not want to be in that situation. I was applying for another job on an industrial construction site where it's who you know that will more than likely determine whether you'll get the job or not.

I saw a lot of familiar faces. One of them was an old supervisor from the mountains called John. He remembered me and told me to get in the back seat of his car to ride to the job site. That was a good sign. The only problem with that was I was the third person in the back seat, and a big hefty guy crawled in on top of all three of us.

Once we got out to the job site I was given a big raw onion, and told to get up with this fellow named K. H.. When I went around looking for him it was like nobody knew him, although he was sitting there the whole time. Finally, he admitted who he was, accepted the onion I handed him, and I guess I was hired.

I became a little worried about what sort of job I was getting into when I saw the green safety helmet he was wearing. That color of hat usually means an iron worker of some sort, and my trade was that of a pipe fitter or a pipe welder. I could do the iron work, but I'd rather be hired for a trade I was familiar with. I got more uncomfortable as we went along, but it was about that time I woke up and realized I didn't have to do that for a living anymore.

Today is my seventy second birthday if I live until seven o'clock this evening. The way I feel I just might not. Health-wise, thangs ain't going that well, and I'm not really in the mood for celebrating. Although I assure my brother and his wife that the problem I'm having with a sore tongue and throat is getting better, it probably isn't.

For the first time in my life I fixed a Caesar salad and the dressing that goes with it from scratch. It tasted okay, but not as good as the ones I've eaten at restaurants. What pleases me was my attempt to make a salad dressing. The dressings I've bought at the grocery store tastes pretty good or not the first time I use them straight out of the bottle, but after they've sit in the refrigerator for even a few days, they seem to get bitter or acidic, and not tasty any more.

My brother sent me an e-mail to ask if I wanted to walk with him. I reckon because it was early in the evening and not dark yet. I allowed that I would do that, but we might have to walk a little slower. My feet have been hurting recently, and I didn't wanna push it. As we walked, we talked a little about what had gone on during our day.

My brother is the only person I talk much with anymore. For all intents and purposes there is nobody around to talk to, but there never has been. I'm not the friendliest person in the world, and I see through people too easily. After drawing all those natal astrology charts and reading all those palms there is not much that surprises me about human nature any more, if there ever has been.

In the past I've written many times to ask why I am is always the last to know, but it may be more true to admit that I am is the last to admit that he knows. Once I admit that I know, then the situation becomes unchangeable. Who wants that? Nobody likes a know-it-all.

Unless something drastic changes I guess the warm weather is here to stay. I woke up a little after four o'clock in the morning, and have not put any clothes on to stay warm. It's 69° (20.55° Celsius) right now at 5:20 a.m., and probably as cool as it's gonna get all day. Actually, that's fairly warm at this hour any time during the year.

Yesterday afternoon I started to write about my hands, but I didn't get very far with the doing of it. When I chose the pseudonym or pen name 'felix manos peregrino", I chose "manos" because I was reading palms at the time. It wasn't long after that, however, that I fell into learning how to weld, and I started making a living with my hands as a skilled laborer.

I felt pretty good about making my living with my hands. I became a very skilled welder and took up pipe welding, which requires about as much skill at welding as a job gets. I guess I was proud of my skills, because having that level of skills not only meant that I made as much money as any other trade on the job site, but that I could do almost anything I liked without worrying about getting fired.

This position supported my personality. The construction workers I was around didn't like me too much. I was more educated than many, if not most of them, and I was more intelligent than practically all of them. I was doing what a 'good ol' boy' does to stay afloat on a huge construction site, but they felt like I was taking a job that one of their friends might have if I weren't being an asshole.

Despite the fact that I tested out at a genius intelligence level I always felt I had to try harder to prove myself. This irritated the fuck out of a lot of people in general throughout my life. It irritated me even more. I couldn't fool all of the people all of the time. I tried to dumb down to get along with the people I found myself around, but usually I would give it up and go hitch-hiking so that I could be a different personality with every person who picked me up off the side of the road.

For some reason I thought that intelligence could be acquired by education. I think that's why I married two different women who had college degrees. That's not why they married me. They seemed to think that being more intelligent than the average bear gave me an advantage in life, but later they discovered that just wasn't true. We both became disillusioned for different reasons.

It's my argumentativeness that gets me in trouble. The more other people try to prove I am is wrong, the deeper I reach to prove I am is right. It's not so intentional. I just don't know when to stop and let them win. Even if I do they don't believe me, and the idea that I've let them win just to get along makes it even worse.

This ability to reach deeper for more profound answers got even more complicated after I received my remembering vision. Worse, I didn't realize the implications of having had that vision for another three decades, and yet, I used it as a source to reach even deeper than ever before. Nobody likes a smart ass.

There is a point of no return that people in general are afraid to go to retrieve what will satisfy them. While for most people the lyrics in Mick Jagger's popular song is correct, for some it doesn't hold. They know that satisfaction is available, but there is no reward for getting there. They have to leave everyone else behind for that to happen, and being alone with your satisfying answers is no satisfaction at all.

There was an experience I still don't have any insight into. That was the time I jumped off that cliff at Yosemite National Park to murder myself because I was as good as dead anyway from freezing during a freak snow storm.

The part of that experience that escapes me happened immediately after I jumped, and lasted until I because consciously aware that I wasn't dead on arrival at the bottom of the canyon. I got a running start for the situation I was in, and when I leapt out as far as I could in order to miss as many of the rocks as I could until I hit the bottom, that's the last bit of consciousness I had until I saw the light again.

I don't know what happened in the interim. My best guess is that my attention was so focused on the immediacy of what was occurring after I jumped that I wasn't attempting to save the events of my falling through space because I didn't expect to have a future to mull them over.

All I do know is that when I did regain consciousness I was looking at a white light I took to be the mythical "white light at the end of the dark tunnel", and instead the light I saw was a parking lot light at an empty camping site bathhouse. The fact that the bathhouse was open and heated and had hot water in the showers was probably the only thing that allowed me to live, because I really was close to death from the cold of the freak snow storm.

For some reason I figure that if I could remember what happened during that blank spell I would understand the reason for life. Most assuredly I do not know it now, and I probably never will. There is no good reason to understand the reason for life in this universe. Who could I share it with who would give me an Amen?

I guess that's the loneliest feeling I experience. I have probed deeply into the reasons for life and learned more than I ought to know, but there is nobody to share it with. Probably because it resorts to worlds without words. Not many people seem to know words like I do in order to have such a conversation, but even when they do, they don't seem to have gotten there to investigate the reason for life.

❦

The Trail Of The Eagle

☙

The dreams I had last night were of happier times with my ex-wives. We laughed and giggled and acted like the world was a bowl of cherries. I knew when I woke up my dreams did not speak the truth of what happened, but some of it came close.

One of the happiest times between my second wife and me happened when we drove from Reno, Nevada to California. We drove along the Trinity River where we climbed a small mountain, and then took our clothes off and ran down the hill screaming for joy. The oldest daughter of that marriage wrote an e-mail to tell me my former wife has now bought a home very near to where that happened.

The temperature outside is presently 68° (20° C), and its supposed to reach up into the low eighties. Not a cloud in the sky. Ah... Spring. Outside my upstairs door that leads out on to the second floor deck the male bumblebees are buzzing around protecting a territory to attract females to bore holes in the wooden sides of my house to lay their eggs.

In the distant I hear the low hum of the maintenance room noises over at the Wal-Mart SuperCenter. It's about two miles away. After the whole county not having electric power for three days it's kind of comforting to know the power is back on. The updates on when they would get it back up said that it would be three more days before they could get it working again, but suddenly, yesterday, it came back on.

It's true that when I was a little boy there wasn't much electricity around. There was none in the town in Mississippi where I was born. They only had kerosene lamps and candles to see by. When my family moved to North Carolina the house we rented did have electric light bulbs, but that was all. There were no electrical appliances.

We didn't even have an ice box for refrigerating things until we moved to the next small town where there was an ice-making plant close by enough to deliver it. We didn't get a refrigerator or a clothes washing machine until the next town we moved to. This town. I watch the women of the third-country worlds on TV still washing clothes by hand and have a deeper understanding of the physical toil involved.

I have a two-inch scar on my right foot from using a hatchet to cut kindling wood for my mother's wood cooking stove. The hatchet hit the hard pine lightard wood at the wrong angle and it glanced over and struck the top of my foot. I was around nine or ten years old. There was blood everywhere. I thought I was dying.

People all over the world still do without the advantages of electric power and the tools it provides. They probably don't know by experience what a difference it makes to be able to wash their clothes while they're doing something else. They know maybe from watching television where they have such a thing, but not from experience. Maybe the development of solar and wind power will make at least some of these things available where they can't afford power plants.

The welding school I went to in order to learn how to do that put me into a world I didn't understand before then. I didn't know through experience how power plants got there. When I learned to weld pipe many of the job sites I worked at were building power plants. That was an education. So was all the oil refineries and chemical and pharmaceutical plants I helped build.

If I had followed my father's ambitions for me I would have ended up teaching school in some building somewhere, and never known the way that world works. I probably wouldn't have known the kind of people who build the large industrial plants around the world, because most of them, except for the engineers and administrators didn't have much formal education. They didn't need it. Why bother?

I believer that if I had learned to weld in my teens and went to work as a welder as soon as possible I might have led a happier life. I learned most of the technical stuff I keen through working with my hands. As it happened, I graduated from high school and went to college off and on for years and years without getting a degree.

I didn't want a degree, and seemed to have deliberately avoided getting one. Getting a formal education seemed anticlimactic to me. It's like putting life off for as long as possible and merely becoming a consumer and a dupe for the military/industrial complex. That's probably not true for everybody, but it seemed like that's how it would have been for me.

It seemed impossible for me to acclimate to the notion of being some woman's husband for my entire life. I guess being raised around farm animals had a lot to do with my attitude. In that world the males are fairly expendable. All they're good for is breeding. To me that was a good thing. Breeding was the only reason I felt the need to be around women. Otherwise, I just wanted to wander and see the world.

What I craved for was to be a charismatic. I wanted to possess or be possessed by the talent for drawing people to me when I wanted them there, and the ability to walk away from them when the thrill was gone.

That is the way I actually did live, but as I got older I didn't even want that. There are still people who want me to revert to my old snake oil ways. They love a parade. They thought they hung around me just to watch the rubes fall into my power. They were the biggest rubes of all. My ambition is to leave the trail of an eagle as it flies through the air. Here today, gone tomorrow.

❦

Tornados On The Coastal Plains

☙

Me and my family didn't get hit by the tornados that came through recently, but a couple of miles north had a lotta damage. My brother and his wife and I gathered near the cellar at his house next door where I sit on a porch swing that faces west. I heard the tornado pass through the area just north of us and hoped they didn't get hit too hard, but they did.

My sister-in-laws friend who ran a unique antique shop heard that her parent's house blew down in Fayetteville. She headed over to help with their problems, and her shop imploded before she had gotten ten minutes away. Much of her stuff was antique china wares including some rare porcelain. The roof collapsed on it. She lost nearly all her stock except for bits and pieces, and everything including the rare furniture pieces got rain-soaked. Hard row to hoe.

The power has been out since the storms hit. It just came back on about an hour ago. The whole town had no power for three days. The power company had a system to call people on a list you can sign up for. All the updates said it would be at least three more days. I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself when all of a sudden the vacuum cleaner I left on started buzzing, and I realized the power was back. Yippee!

I missed having electrical power for my computer, and even for my TV set. We couldn't get any news about the damage done and where. Now what happened is old news and won't be broadcast much. Life moves on.

I didn't have a TV set available during 9/11. I didn't see the crisis when it unfolded. The pictures of the airplanes crashing into the World Trade towers wasn't part of that experience for me. I'm actually happy now that its become evident how much it made people crazy.

My dream life has been extraordinary in the last few days. Since I couldn't use my computer to write my dreams down for three days they've faded away. Besides that, the night after the storms, my dreams were so outrageous I don't think I could describe them anyway. They were a sort of re-run of my remembering vision in which I experienced being many of the forms of life I'd made myself into through imitation and mimicry.

Last night I dreams of two young boys. One of them was around 3-4 years old, and I was telling him a story about knights in armor riding horses and having adventures. He looked at me incredulously and started walking away. Then, he turned toward me and stated sadly, "You just don't understand."

The other scene involved a younger boy. probably near two years old. He approached me and looked at me sadly without saying anything. For some reason that made me even sadder than being told by the first kid that I didn't understand. I think both of them were telling me I didn't understand. Why am I always the last to know?

I guess I'm waiting for the noon time local news to come on in the hope that they will do a recap of some of the storm damage in the state. I have been able to find out that 11 people died in the storms. Storms like this system don't come through these parts very often. The last time we had tornados here was well over ten years ago.

We're more likely to get hurricanes than tornados here. With the weather satellites we know they're coming for weeks ahead of the time they strike, and the winds can last two or three days. Not the tornados. They come up in a couple of days, may hit you or not, and they're gone within minutes leaving devastation and ruin. What a drag, man.

❦

I Ought To Know Better

☙

Nobody likes being around people they can't trust. I'm writing about thoughtless people that even dummies like me can't trust to do the right thing by them. Who wants to be around people who can't even trust themselves. I'm a little like that myself. I too have sinned. I can't be trusted by people who can't be trusted. Who would blame anybody for that?

It's a wonder to me that I'm still alive after having been taught from childhood to be a trusting and trustworthy person. It might have been better for me if I'd been raised in the ghettoes of some big city where people learn at an early age to not trust anybody, but I don't think I would have learned much about life.

A couple of days ago I went into the restaurant I've eaten at for a good long time. There wasn't any open booths to sit at, but an old man I was familiar with by sight and sound was sitting alone, so I asked if it would be okay if I sat with him. He allowed as that would be alright, and I sat down across from him.

I didn't know much about him. I'd heard him say he was 81 years old and lived alone. I didn't know what he had done for a living, so I thought I'd ask him as a way to start a conversation. It didn't take long for me to gather that he was insulted that I didn't know about him. I reckon I ought to have, but I don't keep up with the local gossip the way I guess I need to in order to be a man of means with no means.

When he began to explain to me just how important he was, the only thing I could do was to keep my mouth shut and listen. It seemed like he knew quite a bit about me or at least he thought he did. He didn't know the things about me that should have warned him not to take the gossip he'd heard about me too literally.

I never have understood why people in general haven't made themselves aware of the concept of projection, but talking down to me and telling me about the faults he'd heard I have was not exactly a brilliant move. Now I know what he considers to be his own faults. He'll never hear the end of it.

I didn't dream much last night. I had a visitor in the late afternoon. We sat around and caught up on what had been going on in our lives since the last time we got together. Nothing much had changed. He finally got a decent car to drive after driving a junker that required a lotta attention on a frequent basis. I went to bed soon after he left, perchance to dream, and I did dream a little dream about this person, but it wasn't very flattering.

I did have a quick, shocking dream about my first wife as the beautiful young woman I fell in love with. It was a garden scenario with tomato plants with bright yellow flower buds, and a watermelon vine with one sagging small watermelon that was flat on the bottom suggesting that it was in a state of decay. She walked up to me and snatched some magazine I was holding out of my hands, and told me "we" didn't have time for that. It woke me up fast. Ah, the good ol' days. '-)

At breakfast at the same place yesterday morning I sat with some people I went to high school with. It doesn't surprise me that they all grew up to be conservatives. They automatically assumed I was of that political bent too, and I was sort of included by nod in their diatribes about how Obama will be the downfall of the country, and the latest opinions from Fox News.

I mentioned in an off-hand way that the same people who watched and catered to the party line via Fox News was the same sort of people who patronized the National Enquirer at the check-out lines down to the Wal-Mart. They like to live in a sensationalized world whether there is any truth to it or not. Many people around here find that an interesting way to look at life even though some of them attempt to disguise it to seem different. No blame.

I probably hurt my brother's feeling by being honest with him about how I felt about us taking our constitutional walks together. I've learned the hard way that honesty is not always the best policy, but being subtle about having to cater to his life style in order to do something I'd been doing on my own wasn't working. So, I felt as though I needed to be more plain-spoken to keep from saying what I had to say in anger.

For some silly reason I frequently conclude that people in general oughta be able to discern that I don't respond predictably to them copping to authoritative attitudes toward me, and presuming upon our already tenuous relationship to serve their personal needs as if a privilege. One acquaintance seems to make a habit out of tacitly proposing that our friendship depends on me manufacturing patented objects he can sell for a profit on the black market.

Maybe he's not as clever as I give him credit for being when he presumes I'm not quick enough to see through his translucent, child-like ruses. I do that myself when I talk to people like they are capable of understanding concepts that's taken me years, even decades to comprehend, and I casually utter those very complex ideas in a diffident manner to make it seem easy when it's not.

Trusting that people understand what I mean has never worked out for me that well. They like me doing it. Why would they not? Sometime, when I make that mistake, people will go along to get along, even though they don't have a clue of the possible implications when they repeat what I say without the depth. They predicate their wisdom on academic facts instead of their own experience. It backfires on them and I get blamed. I oughta know better.

It's not formal education itself that I have a bad attitude toward. It's the fact that it's forced on people who shouldn't have to endure it or end up with their parents going to jail if they run away from such repressive measures. These laws have only been in place since the industrial revolution took place when the capitalists needed more literate workers.

It only happens so the rich can get richer. The various governments made it a law that everybody has to have their creativity educated out of them and replaced by rude political polemics implemented by government agents who rationalize living off the State by calling themselves professional teachers and foolishly demanding respect for their crude, uninspired behavior.

Forcing all children to submit to this government indoctrination venue makes it difficult for the people who actually want to pursue a higher education. They are forced to compete at the lowest common denominator level in order to get jobs that bore them silly. This perverted education system makes perfectly sane people as crazy and violent as all get out. Who needs that?

❦

Inside One's Armor

☙

I woke up being irritated at my brother for being so dictatorial about the walks we've been taking together. So much so that I put aside the dreams I had last night until I wrote him an e-mail to tell him how I felt. I do remember dreaming of working with a large group of people, some of who I know or have known in the past, on some sort of building site that involved a lot of wooden framing.

I was taking a break with a couple of people who were commenting on some bossy woman they worked with. They didn't say her name, but the way they spoke of her reminded me of this woman who I only knew as a young girl in high school. I said to them, "You sound like you're talking about Imogene. She's the only Imogene I've ever known."

Suddenly, the young Imogene appeared before me, reached out her hand to me, I took her hand in mine, and she sat down beside me on the stack of lumber I was sitting on. We were sitting there holding hands when I woke up. Her sudden appearance in my dream made me very happy.

I talked to my sister-in-law just before she went to work in her flower bed. She has been using the binaural beats software as well. Not as much as me, but some, and I wanted to talk to somebody about the role personality plays in my dreamtime. She tolerated me for a little while, but it was easy to see that she preferred to work in her flowers, and my need to express myself was interrupting her intent.

What I think I'm dealing with in the dreamtime (it's not actually 'mine') is not personality so much, as the lack of it. For instance, if I met Imogene in beta reality instead of the theta state, I can't imagine that she would have been so transparently delighted to see me nor reached out to me to hold hands. Her normal bossy personality would have interfered in order to protect herself against the possibilities represented by our being human. I do, however, think she would feel that way inside her social armor.

To me, that's what the human personality is or amounts to. A coat of armor or perhaps a "coat of many colours". It is designed to protect it's wearers against the ill intents that abound in the world, and in the hearts of men. It's never always enough, there are all those hidden chinks we discover the hard way, but it has to do as it does, because that's all we have got to protect what we consider precious from inconsideration.

It's not only me having to deal with the dreamtime without my gaggle of personalities to protect me, but the other care-actors I am encounters there also. The Earth now has an estimated six billion living dreamers on it at any one time. Each with their own agenda. Every possibility known or knowable to dreamers is always available in the dreamtime, and it's not limited to this one planet.

Without my defense mechanisms available in the dreamtime, I am is as vulnerable as a new-born in the beta state of being, but so is every other entity to be found there. Such a state of being can be terrifying. Not so much in the midst of being there. It's when I wake up and reflect on what I am is encountered there that does the damage to it's projected self. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The final answer on the Jeopardy TV program last night involved the famous Mississippi writer Faulkner who claimed that another writer was a coward because he never used a word in his novels that the reader would have to look up in a dictionary. I thought that was an interesting claim, because some writing teachers say that's a good strategy. I didn't know the winning question, but all the contestants did: Who was Hemingway?

The winner for the second night in a row was my idea of a beautiful woman. I didn't expect her to win her first night. It would be too good to be true. She started slow last night, but damned if she didn't win again. I like it when people win who are easy on the eyes and interesting to look at to boot. Why would I hate people because they're beautiful.

❦