Thousands Of Perfectly Round Orange BBs

I feel so stupid... again... for not reading the instructions and documentation for my brand-new Red Ryder BB gun. I wrote earlier about buying a cheaper (The Buck model) air rifle, but I took it back to Wal-Mart when i couldn't get it to work right, and bought the more expensive Red Ryder model to replace it. When i got back home and loaded it up with the orange-colored plastic BBs, it didn't work either.

The plastic BBs I bragged about using to be merciful to the squirrels (who have intruded my territorial imperative) I've declared war on, was the wrong sized shot for these specific BB guns. The classical copper-coated BBs are the right size. I just didn't read the labels that indicated what size BBs were inside the package. I went back to the store and bought some of the correct size. I didn't take the plastic ones back because I felt a little foolish for making such an unmanly mistake. "Guns? Sure, I know all about them. I'm a man, am I not?"

To be honest, this whole scenario may be strictly about those neon-colored, bright orange plastic BBs. I've been noticing them as I passed by where they sit on the shelf across the aisle from where the real guns are more securely located. There are clear plastic containers filled with BBs. Hundreds, if not thousands of perfectly formed metal and plastic orbs all the same size. On sale, cheaper by the dozen.

Maybe my fascination with these plastic BBs is like that many boys have for glass marbles. The traditional copper-coated BBs look great, but they don't fascinate me like the plastic ones do. I just like to look at them. I know a couple of guys who still have their marble collection from when they were boys. My own father did. His favorite appeared to be nothing more that a rounded stone that he called his "shooter".

I haven't seen nor heard one single squirrel since I got that air rifle working with the right-sized BBs. I think they're psychic. I think they inherently know I'm gonna burn their ass if they come around here irritating the hell outta me when I trying write or sleep in late in the mornings.

I was chatting with the black check-out lady about declaring war on squirrels, when the black man behind me in line told me I was "wasting my time" if I wanted to get rid of them squirrels. He demonstrably allowed (while leering appreciably at the young check-out lady) that I had to "pizen" them. Use rat poison, he said. "That'll get 'em." The check-out lady looked past me at him in agreement, and told about how her husband had been trying to get rid of some squirrels out of their eaves and attic for years.

It kind of put me on the defensive seeing as how they both agreed I was a damned fool for wanting to "not hurt the little critters". She said, "You don't wanna be messing around with them squirrels, Mister, they ain't nothing but rats with long fluffy tails. You go git you some of that green rat poison, and put this toy gun back on the shelf!"

It was a good thing I'd already paid for the BB gun. She might not have taken my money after such strong advice. I gathered up my parcels, backed off warning them off with my eyes, and bolted for the door while waving my receipt wildly to get past the greeter.

Mo' Bettah

I believe that's why the spirit some call Jesus is reputed to hang around with the less fortunate. The fortunate are too busy being janitors to their possessions, because if they don't, then the Crows will steal they stuff and give it away to somebody who wants it more. People who live simpler lifestyles aren't any closer to God than more complicated people, it's just that they don't seem so occupied with abstract theory that if God does come around they are ready to notice.

Maybe that's what the priest class are for. The redistribution of wealth. Bernie Madoff was/is such a Crow in my opinion. I suspect that may be why the Arabs hate the Jews. I've never figured that out to my satisfaction. Why would I? Maybe it's not worth having more than you need when others are starving. We'll find out soon enow.

I've just declared war on the squirrels that have decided they own my house. I bought an air rifle that shoots plastic BBs. I don't wanna kill 'em. I just want them to feel unwelcome to my house. I built my house outta wood. The outside is cypress board and batten. They appear to think it's a dead tree, and technically they're right, but it's not alright with me for them to gnaw holes in it. Usually my yard is full of squirrels, but I haven't seen a single one since I unwrapped and loaded the air rifle.

I have an exercise machine I use that I'm pleased with. I did considerable research on these types of machines before I bought it. The reviews seemed to stress how complete the motion of it's glider movement worked, and how the design of it and the solid construction of it made it a good buy. I bought it from Sears because it was the same machine re-branded, and Sears was merely handy. It's lasted me a long time and seems to still work as advertised.

I don't use this machine nearly as much as I oughta, but who does, right? When I do use it I work the thing as long as it pleases me and then I stop. This medicine I'm taking makes me not wanna move around very much. I have to act with deliberation to get my heart rate up for a while. I like having this machine around for when the weather is rough outside.

I do another sort of exercise by using the outside stairs up to the second floor of my house. That really works my major leg and torso muscles, but it don't do much for my arms and shoulders. That's where my heart glider comes in well. It does exercise that part of me, but it's not really strenuous.

I'm a little freaked out now by my response to Elizabeth Gibson's wonderful metaphors. I keep finding new ones that in some way make the same conclusion. "LOOK, look there. Watch what's going on. That's how God is. That's how God is."

Alla, Alla, That's What God Is Like!

I guess I'm going through some predictable stage of grieving that I have an incurable disease I won't recover from and be my sa-me old unloved and unloving self. Now, I'm just mad at the world today that I'm sick night and day now, and the future ain't bright.

I read something in Sartre the other day that has me thinking too much about it. He stated that being-for-itself is Desire pure and simple, and if Desire leaves you, then so does being-for-itself. That's troubling to me. I don't know why. I'm not sure I care that one more facet of living troubles me. I feel like "only a troubled guest on the dark earth."


The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent
because the massman will mock it right way.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten.
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with the darkness
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are fare gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this, to die and so to grow.
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

Goethe

I don't know anything else about Goethe than this poem. I possess the general idea that he was a recognized writer and philosopher, but the opportunity to read this poem he purportedly wrote is all I need.

I've been disturbed by listening to this woman's talk. I'm watching it again now:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

"Artistry always leads to anguish and death." This statement appeared to be the thrust of her attack. She wanted to change that perception of what pursuing one's craft actually means. It means a lot to me because of what I've "suffered" for my art that personally, wasn't all that negative.

The most significant part of watching this particular video and this specific woman was her comments on the dancer that God used to show itself to the world, and what he had to deal with the next morning when he no longer represented God. It doesn't work that way for me. My invisible friend has used me for expression off and on all my life. Like the dancer, I too have to get up the next morning.

This morning I started drinking vodka before nine o'clock. I gotta get some relief. The nausea produced by this prescription drug methotrexate is killing me. I'm beginning to believe I can put up with the pain of having my old body warped by the rheumatoid arthritis than being sick 24/7.

For some odd reason I thought of Elvis Presley in this context this morning. Mothers literally told their children, "Look, look at him. That's what God is like." All these years after he committed suicide in order to stop being what God's like for these people, they still buy mementos and relics and tell their children, "Look, look at Him, that's what God's like."

Elizabeth Gilbert is a young woman at forty years old. She still has to wear baggy clothes to hid her spreading figure despite the fact that she's now rich and famous. She does seem concerned about what it means to be used this way. I don't even know the title name of the book she became famous for. Those were the days. She seems worried she won't be pointed out as the person who portrays God anymore.

Mothers have pointed at me and told their children, "That's what God is like." Getting up the next morning to chop wood and tote water is a real change from when I had it going on. I've watched a lotta people go through this process. I ask. "Have you ever had people point out the excellence of yo' posturing?" Nobody has never said, "No."

I've acted like it's a mistake to continue to devote one's life to be-co-me-ing God. I've pushed people away from me that seem to insist it's my duty in so-me way. I have to get up and chop wood and tote water whether I have personified the way God is the night before or no. Why ruffle the waters?

Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk

I've been feeling lousy for days now. The only way I seem able to stop the nausea I get from taking this prescription drug methotrexate is to not eat at all or at least minimally. I haven't replied to much e-mail, and when I have it mostly negative comments. I don't feel good, why should you?

In the midst of my supreme disgruntlement I sought refuge in the trivia of social site links. Now, I'm happy I did because I stumbled across this TED video by Elizabeth Gilbert I hadn't watched before. The talk is given by this woman who found herself the author of a "freakishly" successful book. I've never heard of it, of course, because I stopped reading books from the NYT best-seller list a long time ago to follow my own dreams.

Like I mentioned, I've been in a lousy mood all week-end, and I needed some stimulus to get excited about... anything. I clicked on the link and Elizabeth popped up on stage by herself and began talking. One of the first things she spoke about got me interested right away in the subject of her sermon. She clarified for me for the first ti-me, the difference between what the Greeks called a daimon, and what the Romans called a genius. The difference is literally just the words themselves. They both described the sa-me phenomenon. A docetic spirit that interacts with humans when they are unknowingly in a receptive mood for such things to happen.

As this woman talked I began to feel like she was trying to explain something I've tried to "say" for a lifetime, and she was doing a better job of it than anything I'd done previously. In the end ga-me, it's always the metaphors people choose to get the me-ssage across. Exactly who chooses the metaphors is another question all together.

She spoke of a group of tribal people gathering together to watch a group of native dancers strut their stuff, but how after dancing all night, one of the dancers becomes imbued with the spirit and takes on the attributes of a god doing it's own thang. The tribal members respond in awe and point enthusiastically at the dancer. This is what they've been waiting for. They wake their children, point to the dancer, and tell them, "There! That's what God is like!" Tens of millions of people say the sa-me thing about rock and roll stars and Pavarotti. Not always, but at times certain people reliably heed the call that temporarily makes mutes of us all. With the question being: How do you live with having already performed your best, most impossible me-me-cry, after the fat lady sings?

She talks about what the particular dancer who came to prominence might have felt like the next morning when he realized he was still only human. She talked about how each of us has had our own moments when we suddenly exemplified the power of a docetic spirit. There is famous advice offered from former occupied entities who lived through the experience. They all seem to say, as this woman did, that you still have to "chop wood and tote water".

Basically this means to me that one has to remain a wannabe. Many people have watched me be-co-me that gandy dancer, and they seem to expect me to live up to their expectations and keep them amused for all ti-me. They don't appear to understand that daimon; that genius; that song and dance man ain't always there for me nor is it desirable for such to be so.

I kept looking at the outfit she wore to make the talk. To shoot the video. It was dark brown, with an over-skirt to muddy the water of her forty-ish figure, and emphasize her face. No blame. She has a good face. She makes an impressive speech. I hope you'll watch it. She's talking about us.

A Tropical February Day

It's fairly warm outside. I have the front door open and the ambient sounds of birds, trucks, airplanes, and the occasional dog bark waft in through the sun-lighted doorway. A single crow seems to be cawing for company. I can't hear the crows it's calling to.

I checked my lottery numbers to see if I won the PowerBall last night. The apathetic mental dullness I impose to fend off the disappointment of continuously losing kept things on an even keel when I saw I didn't have any of the five numbers. Much less the Powerball number. Another day in Muddville. Mighty Casey has struck out.

I feel like an obligation to play the lottery for my mother's sake. It's not that that I wouldn't play the lottery except for her. She didn't live long enough to play legitimate state-sponsored lotteries that actual pay off. She played the ones that only led you on and didn't pay off. She was on the infamous "sucker's list". She would have enjoyed playing the State lotteries, so I do it for her.

I hear a hawk screeching away out above the pine trees. I can't tell one type of hawk cry from the others. Like owls at night. I do know an owl is hooting when I hear it, but I don't know what kind of owl the hooting belongs to. There is a big barn owl I've seen catch and eat one of the rabbits that live in the brushy undergrowth in the woods around my house. I walked toward where it was ripping the rabbit's flesh using it's talons and beak, and it wasn't so eager to abandon it's kill to me. I retreated. I didn't want it's food. That's why they have grocery stores.

I interact with the wild animals around my house much more than with humans. It's a little unusual for me to have guests more than once or twice a week. In the last year I've left my house to eat out or just cruise the area for a while less. I don't feel like a misanthropist, but it could be something like that.

Watching people has become somewhat like watching TV these days. In the past, I've seen snatches of the Jerry Springer Show and the Maury Povich Show. The problem for me is that what I see when I'm out and about is that a larger majority of the people around me live in that mode than don't.

In the sa-me way I find it difficult to watch the guests on those shows interact in the way that they do, I find it difficult to watch the same sort of behavior in real time at the Wal-Mart SuperCenter two miles away. I do it. There are only three grocery stores in town, and Wal-Mart is the closest one to my house by half. I can drive to their parking lot without running into a stop sign or a stop light.

I go there deliberately on Saturdays to see the people who work for a living. There are a lot of people in the US who don't work for a living during the regular work week, or any other time. I understand the old people or the handicapped people who can't work, but there are a lotta healthy people who get money from somewhere who never seem to work at all. I have to go to the Wal-Mart on the weekends to find out which is which.

I began to get less snooty about shopping at Wal-Mart when I decided to learn to drive the big semi trucks in my early sixties. One of the biggest problems I encountered was learning where I could park those big rigs just to go to some store to get personal stuff while I was on the road. Most business places ain't designed to handle big trucks. Wal-Mart was a very reliable place to do that.

Driving those big trucks was one of my most emotional losses I've experienced in regard to working for a living. Not only was I not a good truck driver, I miscalculated what the job was really like by a long shot. It was an error of personal judgment I regret. I lasted about six months at it, and had to walk away in defeat.

There was a connection between driving semis and working on shrimp boats I learned about the hard way, by doing it. The people who do it mostly because they have to do have that Marlboro man look of rugged independence, but truth of it was much gloomier to me. It was the knowledge of my experience that indicated to me that "look" was of haggard despair rather than individualism.

Working Cajun shrimp boats outta Louisiana and Texas was one of the first times I knowingly worked FOR people who couldn't read or write, but they were bi-lingual and clever beyond my expectations.

For a while I guess I had romanticized the cleverness that being illiterate requires, but in the end I realized that the biggest disadvantage in being illiterate is the inflexibility it imposes on the people who go to great lengths to defend their way of being, and are thus confined to living within those self-imposed defense parameters for fear of not being able to adapt to a new environment.

I've not met that many people that I knew for sure they couldn't read or write. If the percentages I've read about are anywhere near correct, then I should have met more. Particularly when I moved about in a nomadic, homeless fashion.

One way to tell is to ask for directions to go to some place they're aware of. They don't talk street signs, but describe artifacts of nature and the way certain buildings and groups of buildings LOOK like. They tell you what to listen for when you're in the right spot looking in the correct direction. It works. Sometimes mo' bettah.

I still reflect on the excursion my brother and his wife and I took to see "America's Alps" up above Seattle toward the Canadian border when we were out there to attend my daughter's wedding. We left InterState 5 and headed east to see this phenomena with the intention of going east far enough to take most of it in from the main highway, and then turning around and coming back to InterState 5 the same way.

These rugged mountains have a name I don't remember. A lot of this territory was part of a National Park, and more of it was a Washington State Park system. I really enjoyed looking at it, but I don't necessarily wanna see it again. Once is enough. I go back there all the ti-me in my mind anyway, along with all the other places I've been here on Earth. There is another me that does that. One the other can't gnow.

The Moon As Mary Magdalene

This crazy woman, whose attitude I like very much, wrote about some medieval paintings in which Mary Magdalene was posed sitting with a human skull in the painting. A retired auto engineer (desperately waiting for Godot) responded to her suggestions or implications with wounded amazement, crying that he (the self-appointed Catholic scholar on the discussion list) was not aware of such heresy, or something close, and seemed to accuse her of blasphemy!

Another member of the Thomas group (apparently composed of mostly people claiming to be ex-Catholics [and obviously deluded due to the irrefutable fact that no such animal as an "ex"-Catholic actually exists on the planet Earth]), a goat farmer, took the Dilbert's remarks as a scholarly challenge (a self-confessed history buff and rural Texas-bon vivant), then performed his own web search, and found images of several old European paintings of Mary Magdalene w/skull (Golgotha) and provided the pertinent links to these images to the members of the discussion list.

The foxily crazy woman, whose masculine writing style is interesting to me as her comment on her life itself, then provided some links to other images of Mary Magdalene dressed in red silk and brocade holding a skull in her lap. Last week, after a lackluster period of forced reflection, she finally realized that Thomas (of The Gospel of Thomas fame, AKA Tomas, the twin) was deliberately and ulteriorly postured as Jesus's twin brother/doppelganger, ergo... Gemini, the Twins. A duly nay-me-d constellation in the ancient Greek zodiac, and eventually, symbolic of the twin boys who were raised by wolves and founded Rome.

I think she will finally realize that Mary Magdalene represents the Moon in astrology, just as Jesus represents the Sun, and the twelve apostles represent the constellations of the zodiac. The paintings of Mary Magdalene represent Taurus and Scorpio of the zodiac. That is, they symbolize procreation vs recreation. Mary is never represented as an old woman no long capable of having more babies. She represents the very concept of impregnability, Taurus, as opposed to woman as a dried up (non-menustrating), clever old hag/crone bearing poisoned apples and mirrors. Scorpio. Death, and re-creative sex.

AAAAAaaaaaiiiiiyyeeeeeee!!!

The hastily drawn metaphor above is the first ti-me I've ever used an old woman who has gone through menopause as a symbol of Scorpio or of Death, but it won't be the last. Why am I always the last to know?

People like me who have studied astrology just enough to be dangerous understand what can happen once your knowledge of the rudiments surpasses that of your critics, and you can easily prove that such is so. Who's gonna tell you "NO! No. You've broke the rules. It doesn't work that way. You can't ethically or morally do that and survive without having to murder your own self to stop the madness!" Nobody knows.

I can't imagine it's any different in nuclear physics except for acquiring the necessary hardware. If you had control of the hardware, nobody could stop you because you're a prophet with an audience of One. Nobody would have the experience or insight to understand your nefarious goals or even that your goals were nefarious unless you sat down with a few bottles of wine between me-and-thee, and throughly explained yourself to a competent listener.

If practically any nuclear physicist was hell-bent of destroying the world with a self-conceived nuclear holocaust, nobody would know. That's why after they got their mojo working toward that end, and if they suddenly regretted it, the only way the world could be saved would be for they themselves to murder they own self to save the world from their unobservable intent. Who else would gnow self-murder needed doing but the hypothetical perpetrator? Would this be some exotic form of vain-glorious, self-induced regicide?

If this is some peripheral form of regicide that happens when some brave soul ventures beyond the pale of commonality and tries to reap the whirlwind (Dragon) to prove his mettle to the ladies-in-waiting? Dragons are mythical and only ex-is-t by abstraction, but the sword that dubs the knight is sometime double-edged and created to cut through flesh and bone both ways. That's what you gotta do to kill the Medusa. Cut off one of her heads on the first slice and another on the backhand. Zippity-doo-dah! Bouncing heads and mixed-metaphors galore!

For some people like this who have educated themselves on some obscure or solemn topic beyond the reach of a competent critic, they tend to take their spawn with them when they go. It's really not unusual anymore to find out via the media that some husband and father has murdered his wife AND children, and then himself. I've seen stories of the wife killing all the children, then herself, and leaving the proposed monster father and husband to live with the shame of their tragic obliteration. To me, it's as if they're trying to not only stop the madness they have discovered in themselves, but by killing their own children they are trying to keep it from spreading like a disease.

I must have had an extreme reaction to seeing some photographs of some of the beggars of Bombay. The pictures were accompanied by sworn testimony that some or most of the beggars had maimed themselves to attract more pity towards themselves, and thus earn more alms. My immediate intuition was that they could have as easily (or not) have generated within themselves a tumorous cancer. I began to "believe" that's where diseases of all kinds come from originally. Despair. It's almost like a required course on the hero's journey. Not the breath-stopping seven-come-eleven roll of the dice, but snake-eyes. POOF!

The Pascagoula Basin On Steroids

It was not only my parent's work as teachers they brought home with them in the late afternoons of the school year, but mostly their attitudes of student discipline in the classroom, to the ramshackle rental houses we lived in all over the coastal plains of southeastern North Carolina. It usually took a while after we got home in the afternoons for me to become their blood-kin child again, instead of just another student disputing their word.

About the only time I could be a little boy free of the academic evil eye (as school teachers my parents were agents of The State) was to take my library books and my trusty hatchet/tomahawk out into the edge of the woods where I hid away from prying eyes, and lived in my own fantasy world as regular children seem prone to do. The coastal plains are full of woods and there were always some patch of woods very close to wherever we lived. Like our neighbors, we lived on the sandy ridges between the swamps that drained the Appalachians and hinterlands further west into the Atlantic Ocean.

I not only had to compete with my siblings for my parent's attention (and they with me), but with my parent's students who absolutely adored them. Well, for the most part. It was easier to compete with their students who thought they were assholes then with their favorites.

I hated that my father spent more time with his students AFTER school, even, than with me and/or my siblings. And when he and my mother were at odds, he easily found some activity away from home with his student's projects than to come home to Momma. Momma be bad when she mad at her man.

There weren't many days they won't screaming and yelling and acting like they were gonna kill each other, sometime in easy perceptual range of our neighbors, and then turn around and scream at us kids if we did anything that might embarrass them as public figures. As an adult, that seems just crazy, but as a kid I didn't make the connection that they were actually performing the very acts they warned us against in the process of "teaching" us how to act. I doubt if they did either.

One of my default bugs that came with my software is that I give people credit for being a lot smarter than they themselves think they are. I get accused persistently of being a flatterer and bullshitter, but the problem is that I actually do think they're at least as smart as me, and maybe they could be, to be fair, but, on the other hand, they sort of have to cooperate and believe it themselves or it makes me look naive. Who isn't naive?

I've cruelly wondered just how intelligent my parents were. They were not the intellectual type, but smart enough to get four-year college degrees, even though it took them longer because they tried to go to college during the Great Depression, and they did. They had three children already with me as the baby when I father graduated from Mississippi State at the age of thirty-three.

If someone asked him why it took him so long, he would tell them he'd been too busy coon-hunting up and down the Pascagoula River basin. He was a great kidder. A real card. He was the only one of his nine siblings who even finished the seventh grade.

They had five children when my mother finally got her four year degree at the age of 48 years old. She taught on what was called a "B" certificate for lesser money and considerably less prestige among her co-workers for years. They both took a tremendous amount of pride in her/their accomplishments.

I don't know how to define "intelligence" when their raw personal accomplishments were seemingly met by tremendous determination. They wanted us to be proud of them, but we were children and didn't know what they had done. The other professional they socialized with were as accomplished or even more so than themselves.

We didn't/couldn't know the price they'd paid because their first three children were only born during the last of the depression, and the other two after World War Two. My oldest sister, a half-sister whose father was my mother's first husband, was old enough to remember the really hard times down in Mississippi before the family moved to North Carolina when I was two.

I distinctly remember the feeling I had after I had joined the Navy and was sent to California to go to Recruit training in San Diego. It was a completely different geographical environment, and wildly astonishing to me in that way, but the chief reason for my elation was that I was three thousand miles away from anybody who even knew who my parents were to tell on me. I was free. I could do what I liked, and pay for my own sins.

That first taste of real freedom I had from my parents attempts to institutionalize me makes me wonder this morning what moving from Mississippi to North Carolina a thousand miles away from home and hearth, where nobody even knew their name. They moved here to a ready-made job. My father's first actual job as an agriculture teacher, which was his college major, whereas he had taught high school math just outta college, and had to pay a politician 10% of his check each month to get that job.

Moving to North Carolina was a big career move for him, but he had to leave his aging, but beloved parents to fend for themselves at the home place. I wonder what new personal freedoms they discovered in North Carolina they hadn't had the opportunity to indulge in Mississippi. East central Mississippi around the Meridian area is still a very stifling place for free spirits to be fledglings.

I bet I start remembering how they opened up as individuals when they got away by themselves. I was there. Like any other child, I watched my parents like a hawk. I noticed everything as if my life depended on it. All my other kin folk were at least a thousand miles away, and I was a little boy. I was scared they were going to desert me somewhere or even give me away to some gypsies or something. I never had no place I could call home until I built this place, and nobody wants to share it with me because I'm a rude asshole who won't go along to get along. Damn!

I was in the Wal-Mart SuperCenter grocery a couple of days ago, and suddenly some child, some toddler, started screaming bloody murder at the top of it's lungs. My heart shriveled in my fear of death and I had to move all the way across the store to get away from the realization that's what I'll sound like again in my second childhood. The end is the bejinning and the bejinning is the end.