E-mail has slowed down to nothing. I got no e-mail of any kind this morning. Not even any spam. I went to the Thomas website to see if I was still a member. Yep, in fact, me and the moderator are the only people who have posted for the last three days. Scrolling down the home page to where there is a chart that shows the history of monthly numbers of e-mails back to it's beginning in 1999, February has typically been a slow month. The slowdown probably has a lot to do with it being winter.
I watched a couple more of the TED talks this morning. Why would I not? No e-mail to read and respond to. Might as well listen to some experts carry on about their field of expertise. I seemed to be attracted to listening to people talk about DNA this morning. The link below was particularly fascinating to me because the guy talks about evolution, and in fact calls the next iteration of homo sapiens, "homo evoluti".
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html
Enriquez is not only interesting, but has a great sense of humor. It's difficult to tell some of these speakers from professional stand-up comedians. They're that good.
At least the sun is shining today. Not a cloud in the sky since the cold front passed through last night. I've been clearing out one area of my house lot between here and the paved road. I've planted several asparagus plants and a fig tree in the general area. It's on the south side of the woods around my house, so clearing that area up will give more room to plant things that need a lotta sun.
I'm trying to burn off a brush pile out in the edge of the wood that's been there rotting since last spring. The problem is that the rain that preceded the cold front got it all wet. It doesn't burn like it would if it was dry, so I have to help it along with scrap paper and some Coleman fuel I keep just for burning stuff. There is not much open flame to consume the wood swiftly, but it does smolder and burn a little at a time, and then I have to repile it to get it burning again. I'm getting some cardio vascular exercise. I just got up to check the fire and it had gotten out into the woods with a stiff wind. Miraculously, I was able to contain it before it got away from me bringing humiliation in it's train.
“ Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. ”
— Soren Kierkegaard
I am was familiar with this philosopher's name for a while without knowing too much about his philosophy. I liked the quote above, so I Googled up his name and started reading. Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia article stated that some people consider Kierkegaard as the "Father of Existentialism". I didn't read that much before I got the connection with existentialism from my recent reading of Sartre.
I still couldn't explain existentialism even after having read Sartre and acted in some of the Theater of the Absurd dramas. I do know I'm interested in the same things that the purported Existentialist philosopher's write about. I enjoy reading their opinions without feeling emotionally met for the doing of it. It's just a rap. It's merely something to say when performing speech seems required at the moment.
I seem to have moved to some spot in my thinking where I take everything I'm gonna say from my audience's projections about themselves. I don't actually have "to know" very much specific data to carry on as if I do. I really do. It's just not about me. It's about and for the other.
I get them to tell me what they like and/or dislike about practically anything, and thereby gnow what they like and/or dislike about themselves. How could I not? If the other seems like a politically oriented person I ask them to tell me what they like about their party's major figure. Then, I ask them to tell me what they don't like about the other party's figurehead. Asking them to tell me what they like or dislike about Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan have worked well for the last decade or so.
The way this works is one of the most paradoxical abstractions I'm aware of. It is what it's not, and it's not what it is. With the question being: Do you really want somebody like me to gnow what you like and dislike about your own person better than you do?
If I were to ask you what you liked and didn't like about anything, much less your views on politicians, whatever you described, either yea or nay, would be about who-you-think-you-would-be.... if and only if... you were them instead of you. You're not them instead of you. They're not you instead of being themselves. They don't do what they do for your reasons nor you for their reasons.
So, what's the big deal you might ask. The big deal is that 99.44% of homo sapiens don't realize in real ti-me that they're projecting their own idea of themselves on to and upon the behavior of other people. They don't "bring it on home to Jesus", as it were.
Al Pacino asks in one of his movie roles, "Are you talking to me? Are YOU talking to ME?" Confronting a real-life criminal (like the one in the role Pacino was playing in that movie) is not a good time to realize that you have betrayed your own cause by projecting your own unseemly careactoristics upon a "wiseguy".
To prevent that from happening is not an easy task. First of all, you gotta realize what you're doing in real-time. Most people never get beyond this initial step in the process. They identify with their own idea of themselves too tightly to be able to stand back from their personality and see it for what it is. It's something they created themselves that they have to take responsibility for or the jig is up. Taking responsibility for the persona you created yo'self by haphazardly adopting a nebulous group of previously existing rules of conscience is a somethingness most people rather not go toe-to-toe with for either love nor money.
The recognition of the self that's also you as others "see" you, requires that you find something in yourself that you didn't create or originate like you did your persona. There is not much of it to be found in any case. When you see just how much baggage you have to wade through to find it, you'll realize just how prolific an artist you've been. The needle in the haystack you're looking for is what the other sees you as, that you don't see yourself as. It's a bit tricky to figure out. Besides, what the other sees as the real you to them, that you don't see as you at all, is surely a "self" of your's just as much as the Self that you think the real you is.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
It Don't Ask My Permission When It Moves
“ Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. ”
— Soren Kierkegaard
I like listening to the various TED talks. I get surprised about which talks I'll like and which ones don't have the appeal I first thought they would. This link is a list of all the talks available for the last few years:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks
This morning I listened/watched a couple of designers talk about what they do. I'm not so attracted to designing stuff, but some of my friends are, and it was for their sake that I listened to a couple of designer talks. I didn't like them very much. The first one I sat through, but the second one got a little too cutesy, and the video audience twittered as if on cue, so I moved on before it got halfway through.
I watched this one video where a guy from MIT demonstrated a new technology that incorporated the idea of smart blocks he called Siftables. He had a group of these blocks that were programmed to work together with other blocks, so that when they were put together they interacted in predictable ways. He claims, and I believe him, that technology of this sort is going to change the way education happens.
He took these Siftables to an elementary school and merely put them on a table surface in front of a bunch of kids around 6-7 years old. The only instructions he gave them was to ask them to see if they couldn't figure out what they did or could be used for, and started filming the results. Sure enough, the kids figured it out, and then some.
A surprising number of people that are chosen to give these talks figured out what it was that got them there without any formal training about the topic they became intrigued by. If they had a bunch of formal education it was usually in some other subject than the one they became obsessed by.
I read the letter I got that invited me to another class reunion again this morning. I had forgotten when it was supposed to happen in case I decide to go. One of the reasons I might not go is based on my lack of ability to account for how I've spent my life in a way my former classmates might understand.
I've talked to a few of them and the ones I've talked to react with contempt. No blame. They're not the only ones who respond to how I've conducted my affair in a negative manner. Most people do. All my blood relatives and ex-wives.
I could lie. Many, if not most of the people I attempt to communicate with would prefer that I lie or at least be less colorful in my description of the blatant, unvarnished truth. They don't seem to think I ought to enjoy being plain-spoken.
Some say the nomad is mad,
but they don't understand...
People in general don't seem to think about the not-mad aspect of nomadism. So-me nomadic types keep moving to avoid madmen. Since madmen are merely the flip side of nomads, it does appear to be futile to keep trucking.
I've been studying the Gospel of Thomas with an e-mail discussion group now for over five years on a near daily basis. Some scholars seek the Gnostics beginning in Greece, and others seem convinced it came from Egypt. I choose the latter. Since there's no proof either way, I figure my opinion is as good as anybody's, and so I think the Jews were the literati of the Pharaohs culture of Egypt, and when it got so crowded there they felt like they were living in their own shit, they moved on.
I get part of that idea from what has been supposed to have happened in the slash and burn cultures of Middle America. The Mayans that built all those pyramids around Mexico City had to move on for the same reason the Egyptian Jews made an exit they called and Exodus. The warrior culture like the Aztecs took over a ready-made cultural situation, but they couldn't manage it after the Mayans moved south and east of there. The Aztecs didn't have no Rosetta Stone to make sense of all the hieroglyphics of the creators who had left the premises.
Gnosis moves. As Dylan wrote, "The first ones now will later be last." Sometime the docetic spirit ain't there when you decide you need it. Why would it bother with you when it doesn't know you have a personality. There is no "you" for it. It comes and goes as it pleases, and what you "think" about it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
— Soren Kierkegaard
I like listening to the various TED talks. I get surprised about which talks I'll like and which ones don't have the appeal I first thought they would. This link is a list of all the talks available for the last few years:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks
This morning I listened/watched a couple of designers talk about what they do. I'm not so attracted to designing stuff, but some of my friends are, and it was for their sake that I listened to a couple of designer talks. I didn't like them very much. The first one I sat through, but the second one got a little too cutesy, and the video audience twittered as if on cue, so I moved on before it got halfway through.
I watched this one video where a guy from MIT demonstrated a new technology that incorporated the idea of smart blocks he called Siftables. He had a group of these blocks that were programmed to work together with other blocks, so that when they were put together they interacted in predictable ways. He claims, and I believe him, that technology of this sort is going to change the way education happens.
He took these Siftables to an elementary school and merely put them on a table surface in front of a bunch of kids around 6-7 years old. The only instructions he gave them was to ask them to see if they couldn't figure out what they did or could be used for, and started filming the results. Sure enough, the kids figured it out, and then some.
A surprising number of people that are chosen to give these talks figured out what it was that got them there without any formal training about the topic they became intrigued by. If they had a bunch of formal education it was usually in some other subject than the one they became obsessed by.
I read the letter I got that invited me to another class reunion again this morning. I had forgotten when it was supposed to happen in case I decide to go. One of the reasons I might not go is based on my lack of ability to account for how I've spent my life in a way my former classmates might understand.
I've talked to a few of them and the ones I've talked to react with contempt. No blame. They're not the only ones who respond to how I've conducted my affair in a negative manner. Most people do. All my blood relatives and ex-wives.
I could lie. Many, if not most of the people I attempt to communicate with would prefer that I lie or at least be less colorful in my description of the blatant, unvarnished truth. They don't seem to think I ought to enjoy being plain-spoken.
Some say the nomad is mad,
but they don't understand...
People in general don't seem to think about the not-mad aspect of nomadism. So-me nomadic types keep moving to avoid madmen. Since madmen are merely the flip side of nomads, it does appear to be futile to keep trucking.
I've been studying the Gospel of Thomas with an e-mail discussion group now for over five years on a near daily basis. Some scholars seek the Gnostics beginning in Greece, and others seem convinced it came from Egypt. I choose the latter. Since there's no proof either way, I figure my opinion is as good as anybody's, and so I think the Jews were the literati of the Pharaohs culture of Egypt, and when it got so crowded there they felt like they were living in their own shit, they moved on.
I get part of that idea from what has been supposed to have happened in the slash and burn cultures of Middle America. The Mayans that built all those pyramids around Mexico City had to move on for the same reason the Egyptian Jews made an exit they called and Exodus. The warrior culture like the Aztecs took over a ready-made cultural situation, but they couldn't manage it after the Mayans moved south and east of there. The Aztecs didn't have no Rosetta Stone to make sense of all the hieroglyphics of the creators who had left the premises.
Gnosis moves. As Dylan wrote, "The first ones now will later be last." Sometime the docetic spirit ain't there when you decide you need it. Why would it bother with you when it doesn't know you have a personality. There is no "you" for it. It comes and goes as it pleases, and what you "think" about it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Friendship With A Fist
It's dank and cold outside. It has rained a couple of times this morning, and by afternoon it's supposed to set in and rain all day and maybe tomorrow too. The TV weathermen seem very pleased about this because the yearly average for rainfall is down three inches, and this rain should bring the water table up to normal for the Spring surge of plants thrusting up through the Earth with the coming of the green.
I sit here with the space heaters noisily running to knock the edge off the cold inside my house, but never really heating it. I wear the same clothes inside that I wear outside. Just to think that in a couple of months I'll get up in the morning and never bother to put my shoes and socks on, is a pleasant thought right now. That's the only thing about winter besides it getting cold that I don't care much for. I don't like wearing clothes any more than i have to. That's the biggest attraction I used to have for spending the winter in Key West.
It seems silly to not like to wear clothes. I haven't had a place where I could run around nakid until I built my house. It's back off the paved road just so I could have some privacy. I don't run around nakid in front of visitors. I don't care if they see me nakid when they drive up, but I put on enough clothes to cover my old body to keep from making my guests uncomfortable. It's not a pretty sight to see me nakid these days, but since I don't keep any mirrors handy, I don't have to look at me.
One of the more shocking things about getting old is to see the old women I knew when we were both young. For some odd reason I didn't expect them to get old like me. They certainly have though. Two of them I knew fairly well died of breast cancer. That must have struck them as odd to have the very part of themselves that defined them as females going south on them.
I don't remember seeing either one of those women as adults beyond high school. As far as the female gender goes I don't understand what I feel like I need to know about them until they have babies. That changes everything about the way a woman thinks about herself. Up until they experience childbirth, I don't think most women have any idea of what they're really like, and if they don't, how can anybody else?
I got an invitation to gather with my graduating high school class at one of the local restaurants soon. They don't wanna wait another five years because of how many of us will probably die of old age before then. I deliberately did not go to the Fiftieth reunion, but I'm thinking of going to this affair just to update my visual impression of what the women look like. I've been told that some of them eat at the same cafe I do, but I don't recognize them. They no longer look like the 17 year old girls I see in my mind's eye when I associate with their maiden names.
There always seems to be somebody who gets drunk and makes a fool out of themselves at these high school reunions. I never thought it would be me, but it was. I was living in Mississippi when the Twentieth Reunion came up. I got very excited about driving up here to attend. An ear infection I had ignored decided to take a turn for the worse on the drive up, and when we got here we went straight to the Emergency Room. They shot me up with antibiotics and gave me some pain pills to make it through the reunion.
Either I forgot that pain pills and booze don't mix well or I just ignored that after just one strong slug of whiskey I was getting loopy. It only took one more drink to allow me to get stupid drunk and become the drunk from hell. A lotta people didn't respond well to my craziness, and refused to come to any more reunions if I was gonna be there. The very people who were my closest friends in high school. I was very ashamed of what I did, but my apologies later didn't seem to make any difference with them. No blame.
Maybe it's because I think I've paid for my mistakes that I'm thinking about attending this year. For thirty years I couldn't remember what I did and said while I was drunk that pissed these former friends off so bad they never wanted to be in my presence again for any reason. Nobody that knew would tell me anything, but eventually I was able to piece it together. It was just my normal sarcasm, but I was really drunk, and my sarcasm didn't come across as an attempt to humor in that condition.
I have regretted embarrassing my ex-wife and hurting my former friend's feelings for a long time. Now, my wife of the time and my friends of the time are no longer my wife and no longer my friends, and worse, I could have done all I did on purpose. I think I intended to end up living alone here in the woods by myself.
My former wives and my former friends seemed like obstacles to what I intended for myself all along. The problem is that I didn't know what I intended, even when I did what I did to make things happen the way they did for reasons unknown. They all said they loved me, with the problem being, that unbeknownst to them... they really did. Sometime i think I'm the only-est person in my world who knows what love IS. They know this, and reach out, but with a closed fist instead of empty-handed. They've gotten what they wanted from me and have nothing to give in return.
I sit here with the space heaters noisily running to knock the edge off the cold inside my house, but never really heating it. I wear the same clothes inside that I wear outside. Just to think that in a couple of months I'll get up in the morning and never bother to put my shoes and socks on, is a pleasant thought right now. That's the only thing about winter besides it getting cold that I don't care much for. I don't like wearing clothes any more than i have to. That's the biggest attraction I used to have for spending the winter in Key West.
It seems silly to not like to wear clothes. I haven't had a place where I could run around nakid until I built my house. It's back off the paved road just so I could have some privacy. I don't run around nakid in front of visitors. I don't care if they see me nakid when they drive up, but I put on enough clothes to cover my old body to keep from making my guests uncomfortable. It's not a pretty sight to see me nakid these days, but since I don't keep any mirrors handy, I don't have to look at me.
One of the more shocking things about getting old is to see the old women I knew when we were both young. For some odd reason I didn't expect them to get old like me. They certainly have though. Two of them I knew fairly well died of breast cancer. That must have struck them as odd to have the very part of themselves that defined them as females going south on them.
I don't remember seeing either one of those women as adults beyond high school. As far as the female gender goes I don't understand what I feel like I need to know about them until they have babies. That changes everything about the way a woman thinks about herself. Up until they experience childbirth, I don't think most women have any idea of what they're really like, and if they don't, how can anybody else?
I got an invitation to gather with my graduating high school class at one of the local restaurants soon. They don't wanna wait another five years because of how many of us will probably die of old age before then. I deliberately did not go to the Fiftieth reunion, but I'm thinking of going to this affair just to update my visual impression of what the women look like. I've been told that some of them eat at the same cafe I do, but I don't recognize them. They no longer look like the 17 year old girls I see in my mind's eye when I associate with their maiden names.
There always seems to be somebody who gets drunk and makes a fool out of themselves at these high school reunions. I never thought it would be me, but it was. I was living in Mississippi when the Twentieth Reunion came up. I got very excited about driving up here to attend. An ear infection I had ignored decided to take a turn for the worse on the drive up, and when we got here we went straight to the Emergency Room. They shot me up with antibiotics and gave me some pain pills to make it through the reunion.
Either I forgot that pain pills and booze don't mix well or I just ignored that after just one strong slug of whiskey I was getting loopy. It only took one more drink to allow me to get stupid drunk and become the drunk from hell. A lotta people didn't respond well to my craziness, and refused to come to any more reunions if I was gonna be there. The very people who were my closest friends in high school. I was very ashamed of what I did, but my apologies later didn't seem to make any difference with them. No blame.
Maybe it's because I think I've paid for my mistakes that I'm thinking about attending this year. For thirty years I couldn't remember what I did and said while I was drunk that pissed these former friends off so bad they never wanted to be in my presence again for any reason. Nobody that knew would tell me anything, but eventually I was able to piece it together. It was just my normal sarcasm, but I was really drunk, and my sarcasm didn't come across as an attempt to humor in that condition.
I have regretted embarrassing my ex-wife and hurting my former friend's feelings for a long time. Now, my wife of the time and my friends of the time are no longer my wife and no longer my friends, and worse, I could have done all I did on purpose. I think I intended to end up living alone here in the woods by myself.
My former wives and my former friends seemed like obstacles to what I intended for myself all along. The problem is that I didn't know what I intended, even when I did what I did to make things happen the way they did for reasons unknown. They all said they loved me, with the problem being, that unbeknownst to them... they really did. Sometime i think I'm the only-est person in my world who knows what love IS. They know this, and reach out, but with a closed fist instead of empty-handed. They've gotten what they wanted from me and have nothing to give in return.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Plausible, Yet Not Convincing
40. Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted apart from the Father.
Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and
will perish."
41 Jesus said, "Whoever has something in hand will be given more, and whoever has nothing will be deprived of even the little they have."
42 Jesus said, "Be passersby."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
-
I decided to combine The Gospel of Thomas sayings #40, #41, and #42 together to reflect on and try to find a possible relationship between these sequential saying. I think they may relate to a KJV story supposed told by Jesus when his disciples ask him what to do to be-co-me with him.
According to my memores they were told to "Go ye therefore unto all the world and preach the gospel. In my youthfulness I assumed that one's "gospel" was their own life story. The disciples had their own gospel/life stories, and as a disciple of me, I had my own life story.
So, when I did take to the highway and spent years hitch-hiking and bumming around the country, the stories I told of my life (my gospel) was all about me. When I first started out I didn't have much in hand to tell, and what there was, wasn't even mine for the most part. The little I had was taken away.
The stories I told to strangers about myself were lies. Not intentional lies. I didn't know each of them were a lie at first. I had been in the Navy for four years and had visited many cultures around the Pacific Rim. I deliberately put a lotta notches on my gun through negligence and total ignorance of the law of the streets. I'm still ignorant of the streets. When I came to some town, either large or small, my entire focus was to get to the other side of it as quickly and expeditiously as possible.
The only stories that seemed to be somewhat believable to the drivers who picked me up from the side of the road and the waitresses I talked to when I could afford a cup of coffee were my "sea stories" from when I was in the Navy. They told me that to accomplish what I set out to do by be-co-me-ing a friend of the world was to either learn to lie more convincingly or to stop lying.
Basically, I learned from "going ye therefore" that I had to get my sea stories straight. I had to tell my stories as if they were the gospel truth. Unfortunately that appeared to require that I "know" what the truth was to be able to tell the gospel truth. To do that, I had to confront my worship of "graven images".
The only familiarity I had with the expression "graven images" came from the Ten Commandments. Namely, one of the Commandments stated that one should not worship them. I figured the meant along the lines of The Golden Calf, and maybe some of them Greek Orthodox icons or statues of Jesus and his disciples.
It wasn't until I got a minimum wage job as a contract printing shop that I got a more complex idea of what more a graven image might be than religious relics. The main job this shop contracted for was imbuing big copper rolls with the images they would pick up ink and print text and graphic designs on various surfaces, usually some kind of paper. The name of this type of printing is called a rotogravure process. The big copper rolls rotated and printed the same pattern with every revolution they turned.
My job was to dip these big cylinders of copper into an acid vat to eat away the exposed copper to form the cavities that would hold the ink that would print the paper that passed by it. A lot of this company's business was with the tobacco companies, and the rolls I etched usually printed cigarette packaging. Slowly, I came to realize that the text on the packaging got there the same way the graphic images did. Words are engraved images the same as engraved pictures are. They're both graven images.
The best selling book in the entire world is a collection of graven images that instruct the reader not to worship graven images. What a dilemma for the Bible-based religions... eh?
As for how this relates to sayings #40, #41, and #42, and how they might possibly fit together in some unknowable linear fashion, I think #40 is about taking away the lies that have no subjective basis in experience, but are only the graven images one learns to quote as if they are derived from one's own experiential database. They are to be pulled up like a grapevine planted in the shade away from Father Sun.
Then, the process progresses to #41 where what little is left of the graven images one invests in is made bereft of all but the dubious contents of my own experiences (suspect because initially defined by graven images), and what is left is damned by faint praise.
The meaning of to "Be a passerby", is about how one allows "many things to pass without being duped." The way to do that is to abandon the assigned worth of passing thoughts by allowing them to be plausible, but without being convincing.
Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and
will perish."
41 Jesus said, "Whoever has something in hand will be given more, and whoever has nothing will be deprived of even the little they have."
42 Jesus said, "Be passersby."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
-
I decided to combine The Gospel of Thomas sayings #40, #41, and #42 together to reflect on and try to find a possible relationship between these sequential saying. I think they may relate to a KJV story supposed told by Jesus when his disciples ask him what to do to be-co-me with him.
According to my memores they were told to "Go ye therefore unto all the world and preach the gospel. In my youthfulness I assumed that one's "gospel" was their own life story. The disciples had their own gospel/life stories, and as a disciple of me, I had my own life story.
So, when I did take to the highway and spent years hitch-hiking and bumming around the country, the stories I told of my life (my gospel) was all about me. When I first started out I didn't have much in hand to tell, and what there was, wasn't even mine for the most part. The little I had was taken away.
The stories I told to strangers about myself were lies. Not intentional lies. I didn't know each of them were a lie at first. I had been in the Navy for four years and had visited many cultures around the Pacific Rim. I deliberately put a lotta notches on my gun through negligence and total ignorance of the law of the streets. I'm still ignorant of the streets. When I came to some town, either large or small, my entire focus was to get to the other side of it as quickly and expeditiously as possible.
The only stories that seemed to be somewhat believable to the drivers who picked me up from the side of the road and the waitresses I talked to when I could afford a cup of coffee were my "sea stories" from when I was in the Navy. They told me that to accomplish what I set out to do by be-co-me-ing a friend of the world was to either learn to lie more convincingly or to stop lying.
Basically, I learned from "going ye therefore" that I had to get my sea stories straight. I had to tell my stories as if they were the gospel truth. Unfortunately that appeared to require that I "know" what the truth was to be able to tell the gospel truth. To do that, I had to confront my worship of "graven images".
The only familiarity I had with the expression "graven images" came from the Ten Commandments. Namely, one of the Commandments stated that one should not worship them. I figured the meant along the lines of The Golden Calf, and maybe some of them Greek Orthodox icons or statues of Jesus and his disciples.
It wasn't until I got a minimum wage job as a contract printing shop that I got a more complex idea of what more a graven image might be than religious relics. The main job this shop contracted for was imbuing big copper rolls with the images they would pick up ink and print text and graphic designs on various surfaces, usually some kind of paper. The name of this type of printing is called a rotogravure process. The big copper rolls rotated and printed the same pattern with every revolution they turned.
My job was to dip these big cylinders of copper into an acid vat to eat away the exposed copper to form the cavities that would hold the ink that would print the paper that passed by it. A lot of this company's business was with the tobacco companies, and the rolls I etched usually printed cigarette packaging. Slowly, I came to realize that the text on the packaging got there the same way the graphic images did. Words are engraved images the same as engraved pictures are. They're both graven images.
The best selling book in the entire world is a collection of graven images that instruct the reader not to worship graven images. What a dilemma for the Bible-based religions... eh?
As for how this relates to sayings #40, #41, and #42, and how they might possibly fit together in some unknowable linear fashion, I think #40 is about taking away the lies that have no subjective basis in experience, but are only the graven images one learns to quote as if they are derived from one's own experiential database. They are to be pulled up like a grapevine planted in the shade away from Father Sun.
Then, the process progresses to #41 where what little is left of the graven images one invests in is made bereft of all but the dubious contents of my own experiences (suspect because initially defined by graven images), and what is left is damned by faint praise.
The meaning of to "Be a passerby", is about how one allows "many things to pass without being duped." The way to do that is to abandon the assigned worth of passing thoughts by allowing them to be plausible, but without being convincing.
Monday, February 16, 2009
How Can Great Wealth Settle For Poverty?
_
29 Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.
Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
-
I live in poverty. I have always lived in poverty. I don't know any other sort of life. I've never even reached the dazzling heights of lower-middle-class. It seems like to me that even though I am poor, and have always been poor, and most likely, I will die even poorer than I am is now. When a body gets old and helpless, as far as the medical profession is concerned, it's the old highway robbery yell-out "Your money or your life". Doctors don't become doctors to help their patients as much as to help themselves. No blame. I experience happiness and sadness within the limits of my poverty in equal measure to those who are as rich as Midas.
I might concede that other people appear to "see" my poverty as if it is all that I am or ever can be. They see me as if I am poverty itself. An untouchable. As poverty, I am is indeed that. I am is what they "see" they would be like if they walked the streets in my shoes, but for their own reasons. When the higher classes of people see me coming toward them on the sidewalk, they usually cross the street in order not to pass near me. As though poverty is contagious just by breathing the same air as they breathe. Whatta I know? Maybe they're right. They appear to be convinced they'll come down with some horrible disease that might lead them eventually to their deathbed, and if they can just manage to avoid being near me, they will remain immortal for another decade or so.
I don't know why people think they're immortal right up until they get sick like everybody else and die. How can anyone consider themselves to be immortal if their own parents have died before them? Died anyway, despite how they loved and adored them? Isn't love what gives people life and the very air they breathe? Isn't God love?
Why won't God's love keep you from getting sick of some deadly disease and killed with the ensuing and inevitable pain. I propose that God, whatever you've decided that is, never has caused sickness and death, and it never will. Of course, the "never" part can seem fairly trivial and unprogressive if one's experiential acknowledgment of how long "never will" lasts, and how it ends when they croak. There have been times when I've considered life itself to be a deadly disease. Is life like a childhood disease people think they will eventually grow out of?
Even though I live in poverty and I am the poverty I live in, I don't think I'm the poverty in which great wealth has come to reside as the saying above implies. If I were I think I'd be a more impulsive buyer than I am. It's difficult for me to make final decisions about buying things because I never seem satisfied that I have sufficiently "future-proofed" my purchase. Particularly in regard to high tech gadgets.
I just spent an hour or so looking at the TV sets for sale at newegg.com. I've shopped with them for years when I go to buy something over the internet because they've never argued with me about returning a product if I'm not happy with it. Once they even upgraded the gadget to the latest model when they sent me the wrong version of something and I complained.
This is not the first time I've spent an hour or so at an online site looking and reviewing TV sets. I'm not any closer to buying one than I've ever been. Budget-wise I can only afford a new TV or a new computer. The economic crisis seems to favor the reduced prices on LCD TVs, but the tech advances I've been lusting for a decade or more is just now arriving on the consumer market.
I started lusting for a 64-bit computer more than ten years ago. There were a few 64-bit chips around then, but no 64-bit operating system. Then AMD came out with 64-bit chips, and Windows and Linux came out with 64-bit OSes, but there were no drivers written for the individual consumer, just enterprise services for huge conglomerates that had money up the ying-yang.
This summer Apple is supposed to upgrade their Leopard Operating System to Snow Leopard, and all of it will be 64-bit, drivers and all. I don't need this computer to be happy with myself. I need it to satisfy a frivolous whim. The most important of all true impulse buyer's motivations available for prime time. The big deal is that it won't cost me an arm and a leg like it would have when I first started lusting for this 64-bit system.
The other technical advance I've been waiting to drop in price has been a solid stated drive that replaces the standard platter-spinning hard drive devices. They are bigger and cheaper than they have ever been in their short history. The fetch and deliver rates are approaching the speeds of regular DRAM memory. Whatever I buy it's gonna be faster than anything I've ever bought before, and relatively inexpensive at that.
The biggest improvement will be the video part of it. Apple has changed over to the Nvidia chipset that's lots faster than the Intel motherboard graphics chipset. Now they're using a video card AND the motherboard graphics unit in tandem AND the CPU together due some new technology coming in the Snow Leopard 64-bit Operating System.
"Similarly, a feature called Open Computing Language (or OpenCL), will let any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. Snow Leopard will also raise the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM and introduce a new version of QuickTime optimized for modern audio and video formats."
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/09/30/apple_to_unleash_first_builds_of_snow_leopard_since_wwdc.html
If this Open Computer Language works as advertised it will probably speed the graphics systems of most laptops up to the point that they can be used to play most video games right out of the box. Desktop systems appear to be going the way of all good things. If I understand this right, this new system level firmware will find and use any idle processor of any kind on the entire computer and it's peripherals to speed the graphics rendering up more than an order of magnitude or more. In my imagination I can envision the display manufacturers putting extra GPUs in the circuitry of the computer monitors and TV sets themselves just to advertise that you can speed things up just by buying their product instead. Why would they not? That plays directly into some people's "need for speed". I have a little bit of this speed need. I just can't afford it.
29 Jesus said, "If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.
Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
-
I live in poverty. I have always lived in poverty. I don't know any other sort of life. I've never even reached the dazzling heights of lower-middle-class. It seems like to me that even though I am poor, and have always been poor, and most likely, I will die even poorer than I am is now. When a body gets old and helpless, as far as the medical profession is concerned, it's the old highway robbery yell-out "Your money or your life". Doctors don't become doctors to help their patients as much as to help themselves. No blame. I experience happiness and sadness within the limits of my poverty in equal measure to those who are as rich as Midas.
I might concede that other people appear to "see" my poverty as if it is all that I am or ever can be. They see me as if I am poverty itself. An untouchable. As poverty, I am is indeed that. I am is what they "see" they would be like if they walked the streets in my shoes, but for their own reasons. When the higher classes of people see me coming toward them on the sidewalk, they usually cross the street in order not to pass near me. As though poverty is contagious just by breathing the same air as they breathe. Whatta I know? Maybe they're right. They appear to be convinced they'll come down with some horrible disease that might lead them eventually to their deathbed, and if they can just manage to avoid being near me, they will remain immortal for another decade or so.
I don't know why people think they're immortal right up until they get sick like everybody else and die. How can anyone consider themselves to be immortal if their own parents have died before them? Died anyway, despite how they loved and adored them? Isn't love what gives people life and the very air they breathe? Isn't God love?
Why won't God's love keep you from getting sick of some deadly disease and killed with the ensuing and inevitable pain. I propose that God, whatever you've decided that is, never has caused sickness and death, and it never will. Of course, the "never" part can seem fairly trivial and unprogressive if one's experiential acknowledgment of how long "never will" lasts, and how it ends when they croak. There have been times when I've considered life itself to be a deadly disease. Is life like a childhood disease people think they will eventually grow out of?
Even though I live in poverty and I am the poverty I live in, I don't think I'm the poverty in which great wealth has come to reside as the saying above implies. If I were I think I'd be a more impulsive buyer than I am. It's difficult for me to make final decisions about buying things because I never seem satisfied that I have sufficiently "future-proofed" my purchase. Particularly in regard to high tech gadgets.
I just spent an hour or so looking at the TV sets for sale at newegg.com. I've shopped with them for years when I go to buy something over the internet because they've never argued with me about returning a product if I'm not happy with it. Once they even upgraded the gadget to the latest model when they sent me the wrong version of something and I complained.
This is not the first time I've spent an hour or so at an online site looking and reviewing TV sets. I'm not any closer to buying one than I've ever been. Budget-wise I can only afford a new TV or a new computer. The economic crisis seems to favor the reduced prices on LCD TVs, but the tech advances I've been lusting for a decade or more is just now arriving on the consumer market.
I started lusting for a 64-bit computer more than ten years ago. There were a few 64-bit chips around then, but no 64-bit operating system. Then AMD came out with 64-bit chips, and Windows and Linux came out with 64-bit OSes, but there were no drivers written for the individual consumer, just enterprise services for huge conglomerates that had money up the ying-yang.
This summer Apple is supposed to upgrade their Leopard Operating System to Snow Leopard, and all of it will be 64-bit, drivers and all. I don't need this computer to be happy with myself. I need it to satisfy a frivolous whim. The most important of all true impulse buyer's motivations available for prime time. The big deal is that it won't cost me an arm and a leg like it would have when I first started lusting for this 64-bit system.
The other technical advance I've been waiting to drop in price has been a solid stated drive that replaces the standard platter-spinning hard drive devices. They are bigger and cheaper than they have ever been in their short history. The fetch and deliver rates are approaching the speeds of regular DRAM memory. Whatever I buy it's gonna be faster than anything I've ever bought before, and relatively inexpensive at that.
The biggest improvement will be the video part of it. Apple has changed over to the Nvidia chipset that's lots faster than the Intel motherboard graphics chipset. Now they're using a video card AND the motherboard graphics unit in tandem AND the CPU together due some new technology coming in the Snow Leopard 64-bit Operating System.
"Similarly, a feature called Open Computing Language (or OpenCL), will let any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. Snow Leopard will also raise the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM and introduce a new version of QuickTime optimized for modern audio and video formats."
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/09/30/apple_to_unleash_first_builds_of_snow_leopard_since_wwdc.html
If this Open Computer Language works as advertised it will probably speed the graphics systems of most laptops up to the point that they can be used to play most video games right out of the box. Desktop systems appear to be going the way of all good things. If I understand this right, this new system level firmware will find and use any idle processor of any kind on the entire computer and it's peripherals to speed the graphics rendering up more than an order of magnitude or more. In my imagination I can envision the display manufacturers putting extra GPUs in the circuitry of the computer monitors and TV sets themselves just to advertise that you can speed things up just by buying their product instead. Why would they not? That plays directly into some people's "need for speed". I have a little bit of this speed need. I just can't afford it.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
New Grapes Only Grow On New Wood
Sometime I have to look at "both sides now" to distinguish one side from the other. Otherwise they look like the same thing. I was born just after sunset. Like anybody else born at sunset, the Ascendent sign will be the opposite sign of the Sun sign. I was born just after sunset in zero degree, two minutes Taurus, then my Rising sign has gotta be early Scorpio. It's the same dynamic that comes into play at any of the cardinal points of the zodiac. Ascendent; Midheaven; Descendent; and Nadir. In my case, that spectrum of opposites resolves to the angular aspect of opposition.
My lifetime goals and my mundane daily goals are indicated by a polarized spectrum located 180 degrees apart by sign in Taurus and Scorpio. Money is the keyword to the spectrum between these fixed power signs. Taurus represents a person's own money, and Scorpio represents a person's relationship with other people's money. The real opposition in my natal chart is the opposition between my dual goals. My life goal is what is represented by the Sun being just inside the first degree of Taurus, and located in the Sixth house just below the horizon.
The Ascendent sign in all natal charts is the sign found at the Eastern point of the horizon at the exact moment a person is born. In my natal chart it's the 6th degree of Scorpio. That's why it's said that my "rising sign" is Scorpio. The Ascendent sign and the Rising sign describe the same facticity in the zodiac. The characteristics indicated by the degree of the corresponding Ascendent sign is said to represent how the native of the natal chart will see the world, and how the world sees them. The Rising sign represents a person's personality. It's their mask they show themselves to the world through, and through which the world is filtered as it enters the plenitude to find what's possible for it there.
I was actually born about ten minutes after sunset all those years ago. The sun had disappeared below the horizon, but it's light still brightened the western sky and could possibly reflect off the ambient cloud formations to provide a mirage of goldenness in the approaching darkness that can give the sense of something extraordinary when the conditions are right. I was born in that twilight zone when that phenomenon is possible.
Whether a blessing or a curse, there was no "golden" ambience in the warm Spring air down in east Mississippi in mid-April, and nothing extraordinary was observed by competent witnesses and printed in the closest local newspaper (The Meridian Star) on that day of my birth. The quickly darkening sky was overcast with low clouds and it was sprinkling rain according to the research I did for 1939. I couldn't actually be sure it was raining the moment I drew my first breathe, but off and on rain was what the weather report in the newspaper said for the day before. Meteorology was such a primitive science at the time, that the media only reported on what happened the day before. Weather forecasting was still based on things like the length of the hair on a woolyworm and whether granny's arthritis was acting up.
_
The statements below were written as a comment upon the current saying in the Gospel of Thomas e-mail discussion list. I like the way the comment concludes. What does that mean?
40. Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted apart from the Father.
Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and will perish."
This saying, in my opinion, simply means that a domesticated plant such as a commercial grapevine that's planted where it's in the shade too much will not produce the desired characteristics in a wine grape, whether it's final product is put in new wineskins or old. No amount of tender, loving care nor the aid of exotic plant foods or thoughtful pruning will replace what sunlight does to grapes in bringing them to fruition.
Is this the polar opposite of the saying that warns about putting your light under a bushel?
Maybe this is a comment on how to deal with the various abstract ideals we fall in love with from time to time, that we eventually wanna let fade into the woodwork when they lose their initial usefulness. Cold turkey is one way of doing it. Yank it outta it's ground-for-being and expose it's root ideas to the open air of nothingness. Making THAT happen, however, is a horse of a different colour. All your invested hope and good intentions have to be abandoned just as surely as for a grapevine carelessly planted in the valley of the shadow of death.
My lifetime goals and my mundane daily goals are indicated by a polarized spectrum located 180 degrees apart by sign in Taurus and Scorpio. Money is the keyword to the spectrum between these fixed power signs. Taurus represents a person's own money, and Scorpio represents a person's relationship with other people's money. The real opposition in my natal chart is the opposition between my dual goals. My life goal is what is represented by the Sun being just inside the first degree of Taurus, and located in the Sixth house just below the horizon.
The Ascendent sign in all natal charts is the sign found at the Eastern point of the horizon at the exact moment a person is born. In my natal chart it's the 6th degree of Scorpio. That's why it's said that my "rising sign" is Scorpio. The Ascendent sign and the Rising sign describe the same facticity in the zodiac. The characteristics indicated by the degree of the corresponding Ascendent sign is said to represent how the native of the natal chart will see the world, and how the world sees them. The Rising sign represents a person's personality. It's their mask they show themselves to the world through, and through which the world is filtered as it enters the plenitude to find what's possible for it there.
I was actually born about ten minutes after sunset all those years ago. The sun had disappeared below the horizon, but it's light still brightened the western sky and could possibly reflect off the ambient cloud formations to provide a mirage of goldenness in the approaching darkness that can give the sense of something extraordinary when the conditions are right. I was born in that twilight zone when that phenomenon is possible.
Whether a blessing or a curse, there was no "golden" ambience in the warm Spring air down in east Mississippi in mid-April, and nothing extraordinary was observed by competent witnesses and printed in the closest local newspaper (The Meridian Star) on that day of my birth. The quickly darkening sky was overcast with low clouds and it was sprinkling rain according to the research I did for 1939. I couldn't actually be sure it was raining the moment I drew my first breathe, but off and on rain was what the weather report in the newspaper said for the day before. Meteorology was such a primitive science at the time, that the media only reported on what happened the day before. Weather forecasting was still based on things like the length of the hair on a woolyworm and whether granny's arthritis was acting up.
_
The statements below were written as a comment upon the current saying in the Gospel of Thomas e-mail discussion list. I like the way the comment concludes. What does that mean?
40. Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted apart from the Father.
Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and will perish."
This saying, in my opinion, simply means that a domesticated plant such as a commercial grapevine that's planted where it's in the shade too much will not produce the desired characteristics in a wine grape, whether it's final product is put in new wineskins or old. No amount of tender, loving care nor the aid of exotic plant foods or thoughtful pruning will replace what sunlight does to grapes in bringing them to fruition.
Is this the polar opposite of the saying that warns about putting your light under a bushel?
Maybe this is a comment on how to deal with the various abstract ideals we fall in love with from time to time, that we eventually wanna let fade into the woodwork when they lose their initial usefulness. Cold turkey is one way of doing it. Yank it outta it's ground-for-being and expose it's root ideas to the open air of nothingness. Making THAT happen, however, is a horse of a different colour. All your invested hope and good intentions have to be abandoned just as surely as for a grapevine carelessly planted in the valley of the shadow of death.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Reframing My Personal History After The Horse Got Away
I can't imagine how dull my life would be now if I had worked all my life. I hardly remember anything that happened during my working life. I never particularly wanted to be at any of the places working caused me to attend to. I don't remember stuff that happened due to someone else's decisions. I remember faces. Faces that responded to what I told them that they somehow told me with their faces what they wanted to hear. I did it as a favor I'd want done for me, and was.
I struggled with whether what I was looking for during my spirit quests was something the other calls "the truth". Maybe it's an ideal situation some people seek for when they don't know why they're doing what they're pretending to do what they're not actually doing.
I do know that "the truth", as a goal for my seeking has been replaced with apathy. It's difficult as an old man to actually give a shit what the truth is when the seeking of it was only a cover up for entertaining my vivid curiosity and imagination. Most of the time I bummed around North America without a dime to my nayme was to get away from being judged by familiarity.
I guess I remember other things than faces. I remember a sign some people would put on the license tag spot on the front of their cars. Instead of it being a license tag with numbers and letters used to identify the occupants of the automobile to the authorities, it identified the occupants by their religious beliefs, "God is my co-pilot."
There were literally years a couple of times when I might spend 300 days hitch-hiking by the side of the road, and I began to try to remember what the people who put this sign on the front of their car acted like. I guess I filtered for it. There was nothing else to do on the side of the road with all those people watching me... watching me... never directly, but peripherally... never quite "Out of sight, out of mind." I learned to look too dangerous to be ignored.
I was and never have actually been too dangerous to be ignored. Machiavelli claimed that it was more better to be feared than loved. When someone loves you they learn to ignore you as not even being an animal behind their self-generated mask they look back at you from behind. It's like you become a trusted pet. A self-aware trusted pet who might get peevish at being taken for granted, and wanna stir the still waters as a matter of principle. Why come they never know that's not what I see as an animal merely trying to survive the moment, much less the hour or God-forbid a full, sunlit day in peaceful resignation.
They usually locked their doors and rolled up their windows when they breezed by me scowling as if they were pissed off at whatever their God was for tempting them with my brutally naked, needy presence. If they really had trusted God to be their co-pilot they might have acted like "the good Samaritan" and stopped to help me in my extreme poverty. I tried to smile at them as they passed by with God-as-their-co-pilot to conjure a vision of their hypocrisy for them to stare at in their mind's eye... as they moved on down the road... outta sight... outta mind.
The people who did play out the good Samaritan never had no signs like that plastered all over their bumpers and fenders and windshields. They just pulled over to the side of the road, reached over and opened the passenger's side door to let me in, and smiled warmly as they asked, "Where ya' headed there, Bub, I ain't going fur, but you're welcome to ride as far as I'm going. Have you eat anything lately? There's a little cafe coming up down here that's famous for their cheese and nachos. I was thinking about getting a bite to eat. You hongry?"
You can't be a bum on the side of the road begging for a ride to nowhere if you're an atheist. It's when some idiot suddenly swerves off the road, slams on brakes, puts the car in reverse and backs toward you at a high rate of speed, that all the lies of disbelief fall away in a frenetic, frantic prayer for divine intervention. The crazy mofo always, always slams on brakes, screeches to a halt at the exact same moment the passenger's side door flies open, and the Elvis-impersonating drunk behind the steering wheel screams at you to "Git in the damn car! If you're waiting on me.. you're backing up!" in drugstore cowboy sing-song, you know you got yo'self a date with the sho 'nuff Devil's disciple. You might as well get in the damned car. You're going straight to Hell in an oily, black-cloud-spewing Buick made up of yo' deepest fears.
The scariest sight I used to see when I ran up to the car that stopped to pick me up would be somebody who had forced themselves to stop to obey some principle they didn't really believe in, and were scared to death about what they had done. Over and over again over all the years I bummed around and daily interacted with nothing but strangers, the saying "A scared man will hurt you." proved to be the God's own truth. Scared... and drinking hard likker to deny their own fear... is a undying patent for meanness.
I suspect all old men in their dotage daydream about what happened when they were younger and more daring. I don't know what I would think about if I hadn't have been a bum. I don't remember much about what happened when i went to work on some job site around the country.
Of course, there weren't many times I would work year 'round, but if I had worked 11 out of 12 months a year, like many men do, or more, I might not have much to remember now. I'm almost sure that's why many hard-working men don't live long after they retire. Working was their only reason for living. No blame.
Mostly, I remember being a fool. That's why I remember a lotta stuff. I'm pretty much of a perpetual fool. Nothing part-time about it. If I'm not being somebody else's fool, then I'm being a fool over being a fool. I remember the humiliation mostly. It was the humiliation that made me humble. The whole process only took forty-two years, and was completed when I hit my second wife with my fist in order to give her the permission she needed to take our children and leave me to die by myself. I could no longer be her fool, and I'm sad to death over it.
I can't stand to be around anybody who knew me before we parted. I can't not be around my brothers. They both knew her and loved her too. Probably more than me. Literally. It was them that made the arrangements to go to Seattle. They would have paid for my part of it if I had let them. I can't be their fool anymore either. It's just too late for idealism to raise the dead past to it's former levels of delusory dispensation.
I didn't really have to live up to my father's expectations. I've ranted about that forever, but it's not true. There was a moment in my history when I knew surcease from that burden, and I did not seek it out. I was surpassed by my younger brothers in my father's esteem and expectation during one specific moment in our mutual lives, though he would have never admitted it, because he didn't know what he had done. I was the only-est one who knew. I knew it by the look on his face.
When I was fourteen I got kneed in the groin during football practice. I'm fairly sure it was deliberately done by a shamed man. A boy a couple of years younger than me who had been horribly scarred by a gasoline fire. He hated me being so beautiful. No. I really was beautiful, and everybody knew it but me. Why am I always the last to know.
After practice my testicle were swelling, and I went to the coach to tell him what happened and ask him what to do. The coach was my father's co-worker. They ate lunch together nearly every day during the school year. They weren't particularly friendly. My father was a very opinionated person who liked to argue, and he was good at it, because he taught the subjects of argument and debate.
The coach told me to pull down my breeches and show him my problem. He looked, saw that I was indeed wounded, and it was arranged for me to be seen by our family doctor. There was nothing to be done but wait until the swelling went down, and when it did it didn't stop when my testicles got back to their original size, but atrophied still more until the left one was a mere shadow of itself.
The look on my father's face when our family doctor told him this incident might affect my ability to father children in some way, but he couldn't say how. We'd just have to wait to see if time healed all wounds. It didn't. My getting a vasectomy was my way of putting a lifelong habit of worrying about being a real man behind me. I had already done all the suffering over it before the vas diferens was snipped and sutured. I had my tubes tied.
My father's greatest pride was his talent and understanding about animal breeding. He literally bred his own breed of cows over his life time. At the same time I got hurt I was a part of his cattle judging team in the FFA. That was a big deal for him that I would come to know his lifetime knowledge about breeding cows. To continue his herd after he passed on. I was his oldest son, and the deal was set in his mind.
He saw my football injury in the same way he would have viewed the same thing happening to his prize bull. If I had been a bovine animal instead of a young boy, he would have either traded me off or sold me to the meat packing plant. I knew that. What to do about an unproductive animal had been part of our lifelong father/son discussions. As a breeder, my football injury made me expendable to his purpose. I literally saw all this happening in my father's face when the doctor told him I'd be lucky to ever have my own children. Not a bull, but an ox. A steer that just ate food off his table without providing him with heirs.
I might have spent the rest of my life attempting to reclaim my place in my father's eyes. It was in that very moment that I saw him shift his plans to my younger brothers that I knew I had been dismissed. Rightfully so. I should have understood that it wasn't personal, but it was. Very, very personal.
The problem might have been due to the fact that the injury did not affect my testosterone production. Neither did the vasectomy. I've been tested for testosterone levels several times. Most recently by the VA Hospital at my request. Why would I not. They take blood tests ever time I go over there. The test for testosterone levels is just one more check mark on a computer form. I wanted to know why I still suffer from desire even though I only exist as a shamed-man.
I didn't ask to get hurt. Particularly in that way. It might have been easier if I would have lost a leg or maybe even both legs, as far as my father was concerned. It wasn't even the guy who deliberately kneed me in the groin's fault. He didn't ask to be horribly scarred for life from spilling gasoline on a hot lawn mower. His brother either. I've wondered what their father thought about his own son's fates after their accident.
I write here literally to write things off that I've reacted to badly in the past. I don't know if I can write my father's rejection of me as a fully empowered progenitor of the continuation of his lineage. Thank God I don't have any male children. I've tried to wonder if my female children are mine, but the resemblance makes that seem foolish. I'm most comfortable being a fool.
I struggled with whether what I was looking for during my spirit quests was something the other calls "the truth". Maybe it's an ideal situation some people seek for when they don't know why they're doing what they're pretending to do what they're not actually doing.
I do know that "the truth", as a goal for my seeking has been replaced with apathy. It's difficult as an old man to actually give a shit what the truth is when the seeking of it was only a cover up for entertaining my vivid curiosity and imagination. Most of the time I bummed around North America without a dime to my nayme was to get away from being judged by familiarity.
I guess I remember other things than faces. I remember a sign some people would put on the license tag spot on the front of their cars. Instead of it being a license tag with numbers and letters used to identify the occupants of the automobile to the authorities, it identified the occupants by their religious beliefs, "God is my co-pilot."
There were literally years a couple of times when I might spend 300 days hitch-hiking by the side of the road, and I began to try to remember what the people who put this sign on the front of their car acted like. I guess I filtered for it. There was nothing else to do on the side of the road with all those people watching me... watching me... never directly, but peripherally... never quite "Out of sight, out of mind." I learned to look too dangerous to be ignored.
I was and never have actually been too dangerous to be ignored. Machiavelli claimed that it was more better to be feared than loved. When someone loves you they learn to ignore you as not even being an animal behind their self-generated mask they look back at you from behind. It's like you become a trusted pet. A self-aware trusted pet who might get peevish at being taken for granted, and wanna stir the still waters as a matter of principle. Why come they never know that's not what I see as an animal merely trying to survive the moment, much less the hour or God-forbid a full, sunlit day in peaceful resignation.
They usually locked their doors and rolled up their windows when they breezed by me scowling as if they were pissed off at whatever their God was for tempting them with my brutally naked, needy presence. If they really had trusted God to be their co-pilot they might have acted like "the good Samaritan" and stopped to help me in my extreme poverty. I tried to smile at them as they passed by with God-as-their-co-pilot to conjure a vision of their hypocrisy for them to stare at in their mind's eye... as they moved on down the road... outta sight... outta mind.
The people who did play out the good Samaritan never had no signs like that plastered all over their bumpers and fenders and windshields. They just pulled over to the side of the road, reached over and opened the passenger's side door to let me in, and smiled warmly as they asked, "Where ya' headed there, Bub, I ain't going fur, but you're welcome to ride as far as I'm going. Have you eat anything lately? There's a little cafe coming up down here that's famous for their cheese and nachos. I was thinking about getting a bite to eat. You hongry?"
You can't be a bum on the side of the road begging for a ride to nowhere if you're an atheist. It's when some idiot suddenly swerves off the road, slams on brakes, puts the car in reverse and backs toward you at a high rate of speed, that all the lies of disbelief fall away in a frenetic, frantic prayer for divine intervention. The crazy mofo always, always slams on brakes, screeches to a halt at the exact same moment the passenger's side door flies open, and the Elvis-impersonating drunk behind the steering wheel screams at you to "Git in the damn car! If you're waiting on me.. you're backing up!" in drugstore cowboy sing-song, you know you got yo'self a date with the sho 'nuff Devil's disciple. You might as well get in the damned car. You're going straight to Hell in an oily, black-cloud-spewing Buick made up of yo' deepest fears.
The scariest sight I used to see when I ran up to the car that stopped to pick me up would be somebody who had forced themselves to stop to obey some principle they didn't really believe in, and were scared to death about what they had done. Over and over again over all the years I bummed around and daily interacted with nothing but strangers, the saying "A scared man will hurt you." proved to be the God's own truth. Scared... and drinking hard likker to deny their own fear... is a undying patent for meanness.
I suspect all old men in their dotage daydream about what happened when they were younger and more daring. I don't know what I would think about if I hadn't have been a bum. I don't remember much about what happened when i went to work on some job site around the country.
Of course, there weren't many times I would work year 'round, but if I had worked 11 out of 12 months a year, like many men do, or more, I might not have much to remember now. I'm almost sure that's why many hard-working men don't live long after they retire. Working was their only reason for living. No blame.
Mostly, I remember being a fool. That's why I remember a lotta stuff. I'm pretty much of a perpetual fool. Nothing part-time about it. If I'm not being somebody else's fool, then I'm being a fool over being a fool. I remember the humiliation mostly. It was the humiliation that made me humble. The whole process only took forty-two years, and was completed when I hit my second wife with my fist in order to give her the permission she needed to take our children and leave me to die by myself. I could no longer be her fool, and I'm sad to death over it.
I can't stand to be around anybody who knew me before we parted. I can't not be around my brothers. They both knew her and loved her too. Probably more than me. Literally. It was them that made the arrangements to go to Seattle. They would have paid for my part of it if I had let them. I can't be their fool anymore either. It's just too late for idealism to raise the dead past to it's former levels of delusory dispensation.
I didn't really have to live up to my father's expectations. I've ranted about that forever, but it's not true. There was a moment in my history when I knew surcease from that burden, and I did not seek it out. I was surpassed by my younger brothers in my father's esteem and expectation during one specific moment in our mutual lives, though he would have never admitted it, because he didn't know what he had done. I was the only-est one who knew. I knew it by the look on his face.
When I was fourteen I got kneed in the groin during football practice. I'm fairly sure it was deliberately done by a shamed man. A boy a couple of years younger than me who had been horribly scarred by a gasoline fire. He hated me being so beautiful. No. I really was beautiful, and everybody knew it but me. Why am I always the last to know.
After practice my testicle were swelling, and I went to the coach to tell him what happened and ask him what to do. The coach was my father's co-worker. They ate lunch together nearly every day during the school year. They weren't particularly friendly. My father was a very opinionated person who liked to argue, and he was good at it, because he taught the subjects of argument and debate.
The coach told me to pull down my breeches and show him my problem. He looked, saw that I was indeed wounded, and it was arranged for me to be seen by our family doctor. There was nothing to be done but wait until the swelling went down, and when it did it didn't stop when my testicles got back to their original size, but atrophied still more until the left one was a mere shadow of itself.
The look on my father's face when our family doctor told him this incident might affect my ability to father children in some way, but he couldn't say how. We'd just have to wait to see if time healed all wounds. It didn't. My getting a vasectomy was my way of putting a lifelong habit of worrying about being a real man behind me. I had already done all the suffering over it before the vas diferens was snipped and sutured. I had my tubes tied.
My father's greatest pride was his talent and understanding about animal breeding. He literally bred his own breed of cows over his life time. At the same time I got hurt I was a part of his cattle judging team in the FFA. That was a big deal for him that I would come to know his lifetime knowledge about breeding cows. To continue his herd after he passed on. I was his oldest son, and the deal was set in his mind.
He saw my football injury in the same way he would have viewed the same thing happening to his prize bull. If I had been a bovine animal instead of a young boy, he would have either traded me off or sold me to the meat packing plant. I knew that. What to do about an unproductive animal had been part of our lifelong father/son discussions. As a breeder, my football injury made me expendable to his purpose. I literally saw all this happening in my father's face when the doctor told him I'd be lucky to ever have my own children. Not a bull, but an ox. A steer that just ate food off his table without providing him with heirs.
I might have spent the rest of my life attempting to reclaim my place in my father's eyes. It was in that very moment that I saw him shift his plans to my younger brothers that I knew I had been dismissed. Rightfully so. I should have understood that it wasn't personal, but it was. Very, very personal.
The problem might have been due to the fact that the injury did not affect my testosterone production. Neither did the vasectomy. I've been tested for testosterone levels several times. Most recently by the VA Hospital at my request. Why would I not. They take blood tests ever time I go over there. The test for testosterone levels is just one more check mark on a computer form. I wanted to know why I still suffer from desire even though I only exist as a shamed-man.
I didn't ask to get hurt. Particularly in that way. It might have been easier if I would have lost a leg or maybe even both legs, as far as my father was concerned. It wasn't even the guy who deliberately kneed me in the groin's fault. He didn't ask to be horribly scarred for life from spilling gasoline on a hot lawn mower. His brother either. I've wondered what their father thought about his own son's fates after their accident.
I write here literally to write things off that I've reacted to badly in the past. I don't know if I can write my father's rejection of me as a fully empowered progenitor of the continuation of his lineage. Thank God I don't have any male children. I've tried to wonder if my female children are mine, but the resemblance makes that seem foolish. I'm most comfortable being a fool.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)