Last night, a dream: Went looking for the coloured pencils that a teacher had given me and couldn't find them. Turned out that all pencils, all mechanical means of writing/drawing, had been thrown away. The government, in an attempt to secure its place in history, confiscated all non-electronic means of recording one's activities, forcing all citizens to use electronic writing/drawing pads, mobile phones, gaming systems, etc., so that the government could automatically track and control the citizens instead of letting corporations use electronic data for free trend analysis and future product trendsetting. Independent thinkers started burning logs and sticks to make charcoal writing tools, scratching out ideas and stories on the insides of hollowed-out doors and chewing gum wrappers. Eventually the government banned firemaking devices such as matches, propane lighters, and flint, as well as stopped the production of body makeup equipment - eyeliner, powdered facial colouring, etc. - anything that dissidents could use to write or draw in the analog world. The last freedom fighter was caught in a desperate attempt to spread a message by plowing words in a field. All non-robotic farm equipment was then melted and turned into computerised implements. Just as I was waking up, corporations were banding together to simultaneously stop making corporate tax payments in order to form private armed security forces of their own to compete against government armed forces and put a stop to runaway government growth, giving the people back their hard-earned money and let them pay for services on a pay-as-you-go basis - toll roads, "pure" research laboratory reports, prepaid medical services credit cards, daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly educator leasing programs and a few other items that seemed interesting in my dreams but quickly disappeared as I woke up to the sound of a lightning strike near my house.
I should not look at coloured pencil artwork for too long or drink a large cup of coffee and eat a strawberry ice cream sundae just before I go to bed. Obviously the combination creates vivid dreams, too close to reality for comfort sometimes it seems on this wonderful rainy day which brightens up the lichen and moss in our yard.
In secondary school concert band class years ago, I intercepted a note being passed from Tammy R to David C. David said something to the effect of "I think Rick's in love with you." Tammy responded, "Rick would fall in love with a piece of shit." Have I told you about this? I feel like I have. For years, I kept the collection of notes passed in classes, mainly from about the 3rd year to the 12th year in school but including a few in my post-secondary education classes. I would reread them to invoke fond memories, especially the one about my falling in love. What people say about you when you aren't supposed to know are usually the most honest and straight-to-the-point comments.
Of course, Tammy was/is right. I was born with the affliction of being in love with the world around me. For years, I fought this tendency to fall in love, trying to hide it because too many people interpreted my looks and actions in sexual terms when either I wasn't interested or I was already bodily committed to some woman at the time.
This is my world. You are my people. I love every one of you unconditionally and dislike seeing you find ways to hate and fight one another over misunderstood illusions and symbolism.
I get drawn into some people's illusions because they seem so promising and then I find out later on there is exclusivity built into the illusions, where people declare their illusions, their visions, are only good for a certain kind of person in a certain frame of mind. I love them despite their illusions but I don't love their illusions in equal measure.
I am not perfect. After all, I am this body that I'm not. I do not meet the definition of social acceptability across all cultures or social conditions. I am not trying to be anyone, not even myself. There is no being to be done. There is only me existing in this moment.
Thus, it is time for my next phase of existence. I do not know what it is even though I know what it will be. I understand that to fill the pages of the Book of the Future I have already seen about myself, I will withdraw from active participation in the cyclical descriptions of what's taking place in the exchange of goods and services between our people. I will spend the next few days and weeks meditating alone, away from electronic means of communications, away from television screens, without active use of mobile phones, and mostly away from people. I will simply be myself in the moment, tending our garden, repairing our dilapidated house, feeding our cats, talking with my wife and stepping out of the FHMS flow. In other words, real freedom, being alone with my thoughts while others carry on the business of the day. I know I will be tempted to see what's going on, to feel like I need to nudge people along the path to get us up and off this planet but I will not. If others do not want to carry on this extraplanetary exploration task without me then the task is not important. It is the burden of being a person who will not exist in history - before I get drawn into feeding my vanity further, it is best that I remove myself from where our societies are headed and let those who know and understand where the Book of the Future is taking us to take us there without me thinking anything I say or do is important. Our destinies are intertwined but they are not the same.
I have fulfilled the terms of the contract I casually made with folks like Fred, Bud, Urmi and Julia by keeping the flow of information going, letting you know about all that's happening around us, including tracking ship locations and satellite paths. There is no more I need to do for you. My job here is done. Time to let our world go on without me typing here. I want to pull up the stakes on my travel trailer, attach the hitch and drive on my wandering wonderer path, perhaps alone in body, perhaps not. The rest of our history is up to you - you know what to do. Perhaps you will run out of words, too, like coming to the end of the charted map and see that unknown territory before you. Do you see it already? Wonderful, isn't it? Get lost. It's fun!
= = =
This ends the short book on skepticism, doubt and criticism. I don't know if I'll write another book. I feel my next adventure is less about writing about us in this heavily-subsidized space and more about simple, frugal living in the moment. Like my previous experiments in online writing - AOL Hometown and geocities, to name two - I know this blog will disappear behind me like sand castles built on low tide shorelines. A mantra is made of many particles, including electronic text. I need a new mantra to hold my attention because putting down these words has become too easy. Can I meditate on changing weather patterns? I think I can. I've already started. It is my goal, the vision or illusion I see in the Book of the Future or the fuzzy image in the crystal ball covered with new dust, to more clearly see the interaction between air, water, land and tectonic plates. To understand our planet's movement through the solar wind inside this solar system cloud that spins in the Milky Way galaxy, subject to gamma ray bursts and other universal influences. Can we "beam" a copy of our planetary system to another part of the galaxy or universe? First, how do we capture the whole state of existence, all the interdependent parts of this cooling rock we're on? Do we have to if this planetary system is constantly changing? See you in the future when I and others get this figured out. However, I may just skip it if I discover all over again that no matter what I do, I'm repeating cycles I can't get out of. However, I may just skip it if I discover all over again that no matter what I do, I'm repeating cycles I can't get out of. However, I may just skip it if I discover all over again that no matter what I do, I'm repeating cycles I can't get out of.
= = = = => THIS BLOG IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED DOWN. <= = = = =
24 January 2010
23 January 2010
The Diamond Seas of Sutra
Do you thank someone for altering the course of your personal history? Do you tell the person next to you, who's recounting her lifelong goal of looking up at the Sistine Chapel while her daughter is upset about the hotel swimming pool, that you appreciate her getting you your midlife retirement started when, in fact, you had other plans even though the retirement took you down a more comfortable path? See what I'm saying about destiny. Your moments are not yours - they belong to everyone and everything around you. Make believe all you want about why but the fact remains they do.
More gifts from the temporary library ownership of my parents who received these treasures from Bill:
But an hour or so watchin' a spirited redhead, whether it be Amy Adams or Julie Y., is a moment one never forgets. Always a soft spot in me heart for the scandalous Scandinavian orange flames in the follicles of one's hair. A long list, including Robyn, Annette, and many others best not mentioned on this worldwide broadcast. Kissin' on the steps of castles, especially one between Shannon and Ennis...dear, sweet memories. No O'Grady or Callaghan or odd leap days occurring on Mondays.
I've lost me place in me thoughts. Where was I? Why the sudden thought of Quigley Down Under or losses on NCAA basketball courts?
This is my Internet. This is my history of our people. This is what I know about what has happened and what will happen. I know that Obama has suddenly become unpopular. I know I didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation (I didn't vote for his predecessor, either). I know that political parties are old news. Politicians are going the way of dinosaurs in this and many other countries. Corporations run the real show. A show of hands on who agrees with me? Ah, yes, see the CEOs, the CTOs, the CFOs, the movers and shakers shaking hands and wining and dining each other to keep the deals moving along smoothly. This, my friends, is real life - no illusions necessary. We will find a way to make Obama popular again when it becomes necessary to get certain deals done in the not-so-distant future. Right now, we need to follow the age-old pattern of pleasing the people in the portion of the population who did not vote for the current U.S. president so that they do not resort to means that further slow down the economy. After that is taken care of, we'll wheel precedental public opinion back around just in time to approve plans that make public education more educating and improve test scores to show the presidential administration likes improving the future lives of its country's children. All the other fuss about universal health care coverage, "green" goods/services and more jobs will get jumbled together and poured into a mold that will come out in watered-down bills on Capitol Hill to satisfy some of the people some of the time.
So relax. Sit back. Have a beer with me and set your feet up on the coffee table. Be a man or woman or whoever you want to say you are. It's all right. We're family. There are no secrets between us. We can watch television or tune our Internet tablets to the same website and synchronise our thoughts and feel the buzz and excitement of mass hypnosis. Everyone repeat after me: "Ommmmm, my kneepad's me bum, ommmm."
It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, all those people who've volunteered so hard in Haiti get a free ride on the Disney cruise ship back to Disney World for their free day at the amusement park.
Do you have a fix on the Irish sense of humour? Can you enjoy a moment with Jennifer Rudley at Beauregard's and know what I'm talking about? Or bite into a bagel at Bruegger's and feel the love? Or play chauffeur to your wife as she takes you from Tuesday Morning to Bed, Bath and Beyond to Marshall's to Pier One to TJ Maxx to Wal-Mart to not find a set of matching twin bed covers and curtains?
And all the while you're tracking some satellites you aren't sure about, using your friend's quasi-magical rocket ship to get closer and point your X-ray vision at the circuit boards on board those geonongeosynchronous orbital solarionpowered orbs, making sure your sevenbillionperson-strong simulation program takes into account more junk in Earth's trunk so you can tell your friendsinouterspace what to expect next just so they can pad your untraceable retirement account that has no meaning to those who count currency exchange and real estate as spare change in one's portable percevalian tale. Have you ever seen a castle with intricate interlocking stones and wondered how they were able to build a fortress that has withstood time and motion?
You see, I consider myself fortunate. Those few days when I was on my own...well, there have been many moments when I had days that no one could account for but anyway...anyway, those first few days when I was traveling the monorail tour of America, I missed telling you about a chance meeting I had with a young Italian named "Fred." Fred was a previous acquaintance of mine from my days in the old student slums of Knoxville, a place many of you call Fort Sanders. Back before all the condo developers took away the personality of the place and turned it into schizo-highville. Fred had a few connections that...well, let's just say he was connected. Or is.
So here I was, thinking I was doing my own thing, charting my own course when I discovered Fred had put someone on my trail. How he did it, I don't know. I'm not a paranoid person. I don't suspect someone's following me around all the time so I don't have this keen sense of people tracking me. I just assume that I'm famous in my own thoughts, paparazzi taking me pictures and recording my conversations for the day I get my Tiger stripes and have some 15 minutes of infamy worth pawning for gold at whatever sensational news outlet that holds people's attention during that time in peopled history.
I stopped at a random freeway exit and pulled into a petrol station. I walked into the bathroom to relieve myself of the water I'd downed at the last rest stop. Fred stood beside me at the next urinal and quietly told me he had some business to take care of with me.
You don't know Fred, do you? He's what I can only guess is a real Sicilian straight out of the old stories - olive skin, short in stature, slicked-back black hair and a friendly manner without being over-friendly.
Fred and I retired to the back of the petrol station where Fred had a beatup Toyota Corolla and a driver waiting for us. We rode around the little desert town while Fred explained to me what he had in mind for me to take care of for him the rest of our lives in business together.
Those of you who do business with me know I ain't a squealer. Occasionally, I slip some of our business dealings into my stories but never enough to pin down exactly what we've been actually doing.
Don't get me wrong. My business in on the up-and-up. I have no qualms about waking up in the morning with a clean conscience (having a clean consciousness is a different subject entirely). However, because of who I am and what I know and the connections I can make between the past, present and future, certain associates of mine get information they can use to...how do I put this? My friends know what I'm talking about so let's keep it open and honest here. My friends know what I'm capable of. How they deal with what they get from me is their own business.
After all is said and done (and it never is, is it?), I'm just a storyteller. I spread it on so thick that there's no longer any truth that those who don't know what I'm talking about can know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? If you only knew!
There've been other sets of days when no one knew where I was or what I was doing when I ran into other associates like Fred who wanted information that benefited us both. You see, it's all about casual conversations and dropping hints and three-dimensional messages written in time and groups of the same people standing at bus stops everyday in different arrangements that my life's all about. It's junkyards that are rearranged for amateur pilots to fly over and take pictures of. It's small stores in outoftheway places where no one buys anything but produce moves off shelves allthesame. It's speaking Spanish and Hindi and Russian allatonce. It's nonsense phrases and character sketches. It's not speaking at all and getting the story told clearly to those who speak no languages that you know. Do you speak organic circuitry? Do you see without seeing time-based movement?
I wish I didn't know what I know I don't know I know. I'd like to say what I think I know I think. But I can't. It's not a secret. I'm not hiding anything. It's just that these symbols, these words, are useless to tell you what I know. I'm not the only one who knows what I can't tell you I know I think I know. All I can do is communicate with those who know and get accomplished what we know we know how to do with those who know others who know. No kidding.
It's not about the money. It's not about power. At least for me. I've got more of those than I'll ever need. No, for me it's just about access to words and phrases like these.
Some call it bargaining with the devil. Some call it singing with the angels. Some call it being the one past the lives of all the previous lives one had to get here. It's more than that. It's all of that and none of that.
Some days I can run into some of you who know what I'm talking about and put up my "I don't know what you're talking about" mask of living shallowly in the moment. Some days I can't. Some days I want to do one but do the other, instead. In other words, I want to pretend the old illusions still exist. Ignorance is bliss they say but they're wrong.
Many of you are old beyond your years, older than anyone can imagine, old in knowledge and the ways of the ways things really work. For you, I bow my head in acknowledgment of what you know, what we know, what we still have to learn. Oglala, Amazonian, Celtic or Zambian, it doesn't matter. Old World or New World. East or West. We accept that people can just be people and let it be done like that. Everyday worries are just as important as anything else one can do. The solid facts of life. Birth, love, death.
When one has seen one's life written on the sands of history and erased by the rapid winds of change, one knows enough to know all - the people can have what they want - one needs nothing anymore.
Peace, power, war, weakness, fleeting, forever, ignorance, doubt, knowledge, assuredness... Orwell said it best: it's all the same. The rest is history.
More gifts from the temporary library ownership of my parents who received these treasures from Bill:
- Deutsche Bildkarte (Panoramic Map and Index of Germany's Outstanding Sights), with Index and Interpretation, Edited by Karl-Otto Gassdorf, Darmstadt, 12,60 DM ($3), (c) 1954
- 44 Irish Short Stories: An Anthology of Irish Short Fiction from Yeats to Frank O'Connor, Edited by Devin A. Garrity, (c) 1955
- Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, by Jill and Leon Uris, (c) 1975
- The Great Cities: Dublin, by Brendan Lehane and the Editors of Time-Life Books, (c) 1978
- The land of Ireland, by Brian de Breffny, (c) 1979
But an hour or so watchin' a spirited redhead, whether it be Amy Adams or Julie Y., is a moment one never forgets. Always a soft spot in me heart for the scandalous Scandinavian orange flames in the follicles of one's hair. A long list, including Robyn, Annette, and many others best not mentioned on this worldwide broadcast. Kissin' on the steps of castles, especially one between Shannon and Ennis...dear, sweet memories. No O'Grady or Callaghan or odd leap days occurring on Mondays.
I've lost me place in me thoughts. Where was I? Why the sudden thought of Quigley Down Under or losses on NCAA basketball courts?
This is my Internet. This is my history of our people. This is what I know about what has happened and what will happen. I know that Obama has suddenly become unpopular. I know I didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation (I didn't vote for his predecessor, either). I know that political parties are old news. Politicians are going the way of dinosaurs in this and many other countries. Corporations run the real show. A show of hands on who agrees with me? Ah, yes, see the CEOs, the CTOs, the CFOs, the movers and shakers shaking hands and wining and dining each other to keep the deals moving along smoothly. This, my friends, is real life - no illusions necessary. We will find a way to make Obama popular again when it becomes necessary to get certain deals done in the not-so-distant future. Right now, we need to follow the age-old pattern of pleasing the people in the portion of the population who did not vote for the current U.S. president so that they do not resort to means that further slow down the economy. After that is taken care of, we'll wheel precedental public opinion back around just in time to approve plans that make public education more educating and improve test scores to show the presidential administration likes improving the future lives of its country's children. All the other fuss about universal health care coverage, "green" goods/services and more jobs will get jumbled together and poured into a mold that will come out in watered-down bills on Capitol Hill to satisfy some of the people some of the time.
So relax. Sit back. Have a beer with me and set your feet up on the coffee table. Be a man or woman or whoever you want to say you are. It's all right. We're family. There are no secrets between us. We can watch television or tune our Internet tablets to the same website and synchronise our thoughts and feel the buzz and excitement of mass hypnosis. Everyone repeat after me: "Ommmmm, my kneepad's me bum, ommmm."
It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, all those people who've volunteered so hard in Haiti get a free ride on the Disney cruise ship back to Disney World for their free day at the amusement park.
Do you have a fix on the Irish sense of humour? Can you enjoy a moment with Jennifer Rudley at Beauregard's and know what I'm talking about? Or bite into a bagel at Bruegger's and feel the love? Or play chauffeur to your wife as she takes you from Tuesday Morning to Bed, Bath and Beyond to Marshall's to Pier One to TJ Maxx to Wal-Mart to not find a set of matching twin bed covers and curtains?
And all the while you're tracking some satellites you aren't sure about, using your friend's quasi-magical rocket ship to get closer and point your X-ray vision at the circuit boards on board those geonongeosynchronous orbital solarionpowered orbs, making sure your sevenbillionperson-strong simulation program takes into account more junk in Earth's trunk so you can tell your friendsinouterspace what to expect next just so they can pad your untraceable retirement account that has no meaning to those who count currency exchange and real estate as spare change in one's portable percevalian tale. Have you ever seen a castle with intricate interlocking stones and wondered how they were able to build a fortress that has withstood time and motion?
You see, I consider myself fortunate. Those few days when I was on my own...well, there have been many moments when I had days that no one could account for but anyway...anyway, those first few days when I was traveling the monorail tour of America, I missed telling you about a chance meeting I had with a young Italian named "Fred." Fred was a previous acquaintance of mine from my days in the old student slums of Knoxville, a place many of you call Fort Sanders. Back before all the condo developers took away the personality of the place and turned it into schizo-highville. Fred had a few connections that...well, let's just say he was connected. Or is.
So here I was, thinking I was doing my own thing, charting my own course when I discovered Fred had put someone on my trail. How he did it, I don't know. I'm not a paranoid person. I don't suspect someone's following me around all the time so I don't have this keen sense of people tracking me. I just assume that I'm famous in my own thoughts, paparazzi taking me pictures and recording my conversations for the day I get my Tiger stripes and have some 15 minutes of infamy worth pawning for gold at whatever sensational news outlet that holds people's attention during that time in peopled history.
I stopped at a random freeway exit and pulled into a petrol station. I walked into the bathroom to relieve myself of the water I'd downed at the last rest stop. Fred stood beside me at the next urinal and quietly told me he had some business to take care of with me.
You don't know Fred, do you? He's what I can only guess is a real Sicilian straight out of the old stories - olive skin, short in stature, slicked-back black hair and a friendly manner without being over-friendly.
Fred and I retired to the back of the petrol station where Fred had a beatup Toyota Corolla and a driver waiting for us. We rode around the little desert town while Fred explained to me what he had in mind for me to take care of for him the rest of our lives in business together.
Those of you who do business with me know I ain't a squealer. Occasionally, I slip some of our business dealings into my stories but never enough to pin down exactly what we've been actually doing.
Don't get me wrong. My business in on the up-and-up. I have no qualms about waking up in the morning with a clean conscience (having a clean consciousness is a different subject entirely). However, because of who I am and what I know and the connections I can make between the past, present and future, certain associates of mine get information they can use to...how do I put this? My friends know what I'm talking about so let's keep it open and honest here. My friends know what I'm capable of. How they deal with what they get from me is their own business.
After all is said and done (and it never is, is it?), I'm just a storyteller. I spread it on so thick that there's no longer any truth that those who don't know what I'm talking about can know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? If you only knew!
There've been other sets of days when no one knew where I was or what I was doing when I ran into other associates like Fred who wanted information that benefited us both. You see, it's all about casual conversations and dropping hints and three-dimensional messages written in time and groups of the same people standing at bus stops everyday in different arrangements that my life's all about. It's junkyards that are rearranged for amateur pilots to fly over and take pictures of. It's small stores in outoftheway places where no one buys anything but produce moves off shelves allthesame. It's speaking Spanish and Hindi and Russian allatonce. It's nonsense phrases and character sketches. It's not speaking at all and getting the story told clearly to those who speak no languages that you know. Do you speak organic circuitry? Do you see without seeing time-based movement?
I wish I didn't know what I know I don't know I know. I'd like to say what I think I know I think. But I can't. It's not a secret. I'm not hiding anything. It's just that these symbols, these words, are useless to tell you what I know. I'm not the only one who knows what I can't tell you I know I think I know. All I can do is communicate with those who know and get accomplished what we know we know how to do with those who know others who know. No kidding.
It's not about the money. It's not about power. At least for me. I've got more of those than I'll ever need. No, for me it's just about access to words and phrases like these.
Some call it bargaining with the devil. Some call it singing with the angels. Some call it being the one past the lives of all the previous lives one had to get here. It's more than that. It's all of that and none of that.
Some days I can run into some of you who know what I'm talking about and put up my "I don't know what you're talking about" mask of living shallowly in the moment. Some days I can't. Some days I want to do one but do the other, instead. In other words, I want to pretend the old illusions still exist. Ignorance is bliss they say but they're wrong.
Many of you are old beyond your years, older than anyone can imagine, old in knowledge and the ways of the ways things really work. For you, I bow my head in acknowledgment of what you know, what we know, what we still have to learn. Oglala, Amazonian, Celtic or Zambian, it doesn't matter. Old World or New World. East or West. We accept that people can just be people and let it be done like that. Everyday worries are just as important as anything else one can do. The solid facts of life. Birth, love, death.
When one has seen one's life written on the sands of history and erased by the rapid winds of change, one knows enough to know all - the people can have what they want - one needs nothing anymore.
Peace, power, war, weakness, fleeting, forever, ignorance, doubt, knowledge, assuredness... Orwell said it best: it's all the same. The rest is history.
22 January 2010
Who's having fun now?
Where are the people who want to change society for the better? We have the bitter woman who sat next to Paul McCartney at the Golden Globes after preventing worshippers from getting to their place of worship to eat, pray and love properly. We have the NRA supporting the Obama administration's decision to continue the Reagan/Bush era Interpol policies. We have Australians supporting Putin as the next best thing to Peter the Great. Such is the way of this world - you can't please everyone so use what/who you got to get things done. The future is here. Get used to it.
Maybe we should all take a moment to listen to Aeolian harps and see if subharmonics work the way people say they do.
Perhaps better news will come out of Tokyo, Tehran and Tel Aviv Yafo soon.
I look forward to a quiet weekend stocking up on pencils and seeing what's drawing my attention while I watch some good old-fashioned American-style football on our tellie. Living in the moment has its moments!
Maybe we should all take a moment to listen to Aeolian harps and see if subharmonics work the way people say they do.
Perhaps better news will come out of Tokyo, Tehran and Tel Aviv Yafo soon.
I look forward to a quiet weekend stocking up on pencils and seeing what's drawing my attention while I watch some good old-fashioned American-style football on our tellie. Living in the moment has its moments!
zhōng guó
Can you feel the energy around you? Do you react to that energy, living solely in the moment? Do you understand the influences outside the moment, the hundreds and thousands of years of 3D chess moves others believe they are making in the moment for moments thousands of years from now?
Do you play Wii games or make Ouija board moves? Do you say that ghosts exist? Do you think you're a puppet and someone is always pulling the strings? Do you believe that extraterrestrial visitors are always picking on you and playing games with your life?
Can you believe you are only a temporary collection of objects haphazardly thrown together, like little factories, seeking input and making output for as long as they can, no intention intended, subject to the interaction of other input/output factories around you and nothing else?
Do you know you have more than a body and will discard this shell when the time comes, going somewhere else that's more than just memories of you being carried by the living?
Life. It's yours. Do with your life as you will. Death of your body is assured and before then it's whatever you want to do to fulfill what you think you have to think you have to fulfill to be fulfilled and feel refreshed, full and fulfilling.
While you're still alive and kicking, let's talk. Which do you think is more important, receiving training in your culture about socially acceptable behaviours and sticking to them your whole life, or finding out what your body can do and optimising the output of your body's functions regardless of cultures or societies or any predefined behaviours?
Can you run 64 kilometers (40 miles) in an hour? Do you have an enlarged heart, enhanced blood circulation system, strengthened muscle cells and ability to drive yourself beyond extreme physical pain?
Can you stop your heart muscle or slow it down to one or two beats per minute?
Do you have no physical emotions whatsoever? Can you carry incongruous thoughts in your thoughts all the time?
What if you were told you can achieve goals for yourself that exclude physical limits? Would you be willing to give up all your dreams, all your family and friends, everything tied to what you've come to understand has to do with being a person in our species, including your thoughts, and become part of something completely radical that has nothing to do with your species, this planet or anything you think you understand you know?
Or are you concentrating on supporting freedom on the Internet, paying it forward for those who've already sacrificed their bodies in the name of freedom of expression in a civil society of a marketplace of free enterprise?
Are you focused on things and ideas like family, countries, material goods and the like? Have you become so comfortable with the idea of a certain standard of living that you're unwilling to scrape the soil, plant seeds and barter plants/animals you've grown for necessary goods and services you cannot create yourself? Are you willing to move into a multifamily farm / commune / community and live like the Amish, free of electricity and other modern conveniences?
Who are you? Who do you want to be? Are you a TV watcher, an Internet addict, a gamer, a technology buff, an IMer, a texter, a mobile phone talker? Is that who you want to be, having already found ways to substitute ideas, yours or someone else's, for reality?
I am asking myself these questions since I write this blog for myself first and you by commonality of species type.
Labels are images, memes, layers on top of layers. Which is more important, the product or the product packaging? I know I am not I. I know I do not exist. I know I am part of the ebb and flow of the states of energy in this area of the universe at this point in time. I know that fame and fortune create a change in inertia, picking up speed and carrying all sorts of people, places and things along with them. Isn't that why we have these blogs, to create the illusion of fame and fortune, even if it's only in the thought that our blogs are here for the rest of the Internet-connected world of people to read, no matter whether anyone besides one of us reads them? To feel we are socially well-connected?
Our destinies are already decided. We can accept that we are who we are in every moment or we cannot accept that fact, believing there's more happening to us from the past, present and future than we know, confusing us and driving us into a frenzied storm of infinite swirling numbers of layers we place upon the only moment in which we live.
Pick one illusion and live with that illusion in the moment. Believe in that illusion strongly enough and others will adopt that illusion as their own.
I know that illusions are illusions and thus illusory. I know that what I perpetuate here in these words does not exist. The person I think I am who is writing this blog does not exist. I maintain the illusion anyway because it's how I manipulate the images that represent reality as I know I don't know it.
There are no secrets. There is no magic. There is only this:::::=> [.....]; that is, modern hieroglyphics. I found it's difficult to slow a moving train by hand; in other words, you can't retrain a society overnight. The vast majority of members of a society want to keep a set of illusions moving from the previous moment into this one. They don't like to start over, just to find out that they were starting over anyway, no matter whether they were creating new illusions or maintaining the old ones.
Use statistics to measure the state of illusions, if you must. Create charts and reports to show you feel smart and know what's going on just because you can take facts of the past and connect the dots. Many people will believe you're insightful and you can help them keep their illusion set intact. Point out trends. Make predictions. It doesn't matter because a smaller group of people won't believe you no matter what you say or how accurate your predictions turn out.
I have my illusions and I like them. For instance, I believe there is nothing to worry about. I believe the only goal any member of our species should have is to reproduce itself. Otherwise, all else is just stuff. I am just stuff, myself. I am not reproducing my species - I am reproducing my current set of illusions while looking for new illusions to create in some other moment.
The gray squirrel on the shagbark tree where the redheaded woodpecker sat the other day has no idea what I'm talking about but it can understand the difference between a life full of predators and life with no predators at all. Those are two separate sets of illusions. The squirrel's body and my body adapt to the environment according to what we think we understand we see and act accordingly.
I'm ready for the next set of illusions. Aren't you?
Do you play Wii games or make Ouija board moves? Do you say that ghosts exist? Do you think you're a puppet and someone is always pulling the strings? Do you believe that extraterrestrial visitors are always picking on you and playing games with your life?
Can you believe you are only a temporary collection of objects haphazardly thrown together, like little factories, seeking input and making output for as long as they can, no intention intended, subject to the interaction of other input/output factories around you and nothing else?
Do you know you have more than a body and will discard this shell when the time comes, going somewhere else that's more than just memories of you being carried by the living?
Life. It's yours. Do with your life as you will. Death of your body is assured and before then it's whatever you want to do to fulfill what you think you have to think you have to fulfill to be fulfilled and feel refreshed, full and fulfilling.
While you're still alive and kicking, let's talk. Which do you think is more important, receiving training in your culture about socially acceptable behaviours and sticking to them your whole life, or finding out what your body can do and optimising the output of your body's functions regardless of cultures or societies or any predefined behaviours?
Can you run 64 kilometers (40 miles) in an hour? Do you have an enlarged heart, enhanced blood circulation system, strengthened muscle cells and ability to drive yourself beyond extreme physical pain?
Can you stop your heart muscle or slow it down to one or two beats per minute?
Do you have no physical emotions whatsoever? Can you carry incongruous thoughts in your thoughts all the time?
What if you were told you can achieve goals for yourself that exclude physical limits? Would you be willing to give up all your dreams, all your family and friends, everything tied to what you've come to understand has to do with being a person in our species, including your thoughts, and become part of something completely radical that has nothing to do with your species, this planet or anything you think you understand you know?
Or are you concentrating on supporting freedom on the Internet, paying it forward for those who've already sacrificed their bodies in the name of freedom of expression in a civil society of a marketplace of free enterprise?
Are you focused on things and ideas like family, countries, material goods and the like? Have you become so comfortable with the idea of a certain standard of living that you're unwilling to scrape the soil, plant seeds and barter plants/animals you've grown for necessary goods and services you cannot create yourself? Are you willing to move into a multifamily farm / commune / community and live like the Amish, free of electricity and other modern conveniences?
Who are you? Who do you want to be? Are you a TV watcher, an Internet addict, a gamer, a technology buff, an IMer, a texter, a mobile phone talker? Is that who you want to be, having already found ways to substitute ideas, yours or someone else's, for reality?
I am asking myself these questions since I write this blog for myself first and you by commonality of species type.
Labels are images, memes, layers on top of layers. Which is more important, the product or the product packaging? I know I am not I. I know I do not exist. I know I am part of the ebb and flow of the states of energy in this area of the universe at this point in time. I know that fame and fortune create a change in inertia, picking up speed and carrying all sorts of people, places and things along with them. Isn't that why we have these blogs, to create the illusion of fame and fortune, even if it's only in the thought that our blogs are here for the rest of the Internet-connected world of people to read, no matter whether anyone besides one of us reads them? To feel we are socially well-connected?
Our destinies are already decided. We can accept that we are who we are in every moment or we cannot accept that fact, believing there's more happening to us from the past, present and future than we know, confusing us and driving us into a frenzied storm of infinite swirling numbers of layers we place upon the only moment in which we live.
Pick one illusion and live with that illusion in the moment. Believe in that illusion strongly enough and others will adopt that illusion as their own.
I know that illusions are illusions and thus illusory. I know that what I perpetuate here in these words does not exist. The person I think I am who is writing this blog does not exist. I maintain the illusion anyway because it's how I manipulate the images that represent reality as I know I don't know it.
There are no secrets. There is no magic. There is only this:::::=> [.....]; that is, modern hieroglyphics. I found it's difficult to slow a moving train by hand; in other words, you can't retrain a society overnight. The vast majority of members of a society want to keep a set of illusions moving from the previous moment into this one. They don't like to start over, just to find out that they were starting over anyway, no matter whether they were creating new illusions or maintaining the old ones.
Use statistics to measure the state of illusions, if you must. Create charts and reports to show you feel smart and know what's going on just because you can take facts of the past and connect the dots. Many people will believe you're insightful and you can help them keep their illusion set intact. Point out trends. Make predictions. It doesn't matter because a smaller group of people won't believe you no matter what you say or how accurate your predictions turn out.
I have my illusions and I like them. For instance, I believe there is nothing to worry about. I believe the only goal any member of our species should have is to reproduce itself. Otherwise, all else is just stuff. I am just stuff, myself. I am not reproducing my species - I am reproducing my current set of illusions while looking for new illusions to create in some other moment.
The gray squirrel on the shagbark tree where the redheaded woodpecker sat the other day has no idea what I'm talking about but it can understand the difference between a life full of predators and life with no predators at all. Those are two separate sets of illusions. The squirrel's body and my body adapt to the environment according to what we think we understand we see and act accordingly.
I'm ready for the next set of illusions. Aren't you?
On Account of Ledgers
"Everyone in my family is divorced. Even all cousins are divorced."
"Excuse me, y'all. It's been a slow day. I'm going to mop up the whole floor, if you don't mind."
"Not at all."
"You were saying..."
"Oh yeah, so you can imagine that marriage ain't that special to me."
"Uh-huh. And your point being..."
"My point?"
"Yeah. This is our first date. Do you think we're going to get married tonight or something?"
"He-he. No, of course not, silly. I'm just saying that that look in your eyes is pointing to something my momma said is supposed to wait until after you first get married."
"I see. Well, what do you want to eat? The Waffle House menu looks mighty good this evening."
"Sorry to bother you again, folks. Do you mind if I sweep under your feet? I don't want any dirt to get on the freshly mopped floor."
"What? Oh no, go ahead."
"So, what do you do again?"
"I'm in engineering."
"You're an engineer!"
"Uh...sorta."
"That's awesome. I ain't never dated an engineer before. What kinda stuff do you do?"
"Well, I'm a sales engineer. I make sure our customers are aware of the products we offer, in case their next design project requires the parts our company makes."
"That is amazing. I bet you're really smart."
"Well, I know almost all of our sales brochures by heart. I can usually figure out from what a customer is describing to me the kind of parts they're looking for."
"I bet you make a lot of money."
"Some months, I do."
"You ever go on any fancy vacations?"
"Fancy?"
"Yeah, like Gatlinburg or Myrtle Beach or the Grand Ol' Opry and the Opryland Hotel. I hear tell they decorate that hotel mighty purty at Christmas."
"Yeah, I've been to all of them."
"You must be rich!"
"If you say so. Let's see, according to your profile on iwannagethitchedtoya.com, you're 22 years old. Are you out of..."
"Umm...that ain't rightly the truth. Actually, I'm 27."
"Oh, well, that's interesting. So you're still in school?"
"School? Don't be silly. I got my high school diploma when I was 18. I've been out of school a long time now."
"That makes sense."
"You ever been married?"
"Me?"
"Yes, darling. You. Who else you think I'm talking to?"
"No, I haven't."
"And you're 30 years old! That makes you an old maid or something."
"Well, I'm not 30."
"You're not?"
"No, I'm 37."
"And you still ain't been married?"
"Uh-huh."
"You ain't a momma's boy, are you? My pa hates that. He thinks if you really love your momma that you'll bring a purty girl home to raise babies with."
"Excuse me again. I'm almost finished mopping. I just overheard you say something about a momma's boy."
"That's right."
"What exactly is a momma's boy? I mean, what do you call a momma's boy? You don't think I'm a momma's boy, do you?"
"No, honey, I can tell you're just a regular homosexual. Don't matter whether you swing one way or t'other. Only matters if you's still living with your momma. You working here and still living with your momma?"
"No, I'm not. I have my own place, thank you very much."
"Then you ain't a momma's boy."
"Well, thanks for settling the matter. You all about ready to order?"
"Sure thing, honey. I'll take the manager's special."
"Same for me."
"Got it. Martha, they'll have the manager's special!"
"COMING RIGHT UP!"
"We'll have your food ready in a jiffy. See you in a few minutes."
"So, where were we?"
"You were letting the restaurant know what a momma's boy is."
"Oh yeah. You still living at home?"
"No, I have a condo."
"Darling, you're embarrassing me. You don't have to tell me you're wearing a condo, unlessin' you're ready to get hitched."
"No, not a condom. A condominium. Like an apartment, only I own it."
"You own your own apartment place? You ARE rich!"
"I'm glad you think so. So, tell me, according to your profile, you're also in sales."
"That's right."
"How long have you been in sales? Since high school?"
"No, long before that. I started helping my momma and all my stepdaddies in sales since I was little."
"Is that so?"
"Oh yeah. They say I'm real good at it, too."
"Interesting. So what do you do?"
"Well, it's changed from time to time. When I first started, I made floral arrangements with silk flowers that we sold at the flea market. Everybody's always liked them arrangements I've made, using gnarled wood knots and old tin cans and other stuff I mixed in with them flowers. Some folks'd have me make their funereal coffin arrangements out of their loved ones' stuff - shotguns, collectible race cars, teddy bears, baby clothes, military buttons and ribbons...I reckon I've seen it all."
"I guess I've never seen it."
"Well, you probably haven't. A few years ago, my last stepdaddy set me up a computer. He got me one of them ebay stores of my own, too. I've been selling my arrangements through the mail ever since then. Ain't much local work anymore."
"I see. So you make a few thousand a year doing that, I bet."
"A month?"
"No, I said a year."
"Honey, what are you saying?"
"I'm not saying anything. I'm just guessing what your yearly sales would be."
"Two thousand a year?"
"I don't know. Maybe three or four. You make more than that?"
"I make about five thousand a week."
"What?!"
"Well, that's about average. I make more around the holidays, of course. I'm so busy all year 'round that I ain't got time to do any regular dating. That's why I posted my profile on the computer."
"You're telling me you make over $250,000 a year?"
"Well, that's what my business takes in. Of course, I've got to pay all the folks who make the arrangements for me. And then there's the ebay store I've gotta pay for, government taxes and all those details my accountants handle."
"Accountants?"
"Yeah, I worked out a deal to buy the silk flower manufacturing plant, to cut my costs down...you know how it is, being in the sales engineer business...so I had to create my own accounting firm to handle all the details. The partners at the accounting firm drum up their own business and I get a cut of their accounting profits. It's complicated but it keeps me busy."
"And you did all this in two years?"
"Oh, no! I've had the businesses going for a while. Mail order catalogs. Door-to-door sales. Business cards at funereal homes, flea markets, beauty shops, drug stores, hospitals, clinics. Places like that. I'm sorry that $250,000 doesn't impress you. I bet you make a ton more than me, don't you?"
"I wouldn't put it that way."
"Well, you're modest. I like that in a man."
"Okay, folks, here's your specials. You want I should freshen up your drinks?"
"Sweetie, that'd be wonderful. I bet you have a boyfriend, don't you?"
"Uh, yes."
"You ever buy him flowers?"
"No, he usually buys flowers for me."
"Well, I tell you what. I'll make you up a special bouquet just for your loved one. Something that'd appeal just to him, know what I mean? Here's my business card. You give me a call sometime and we'll talk, just you and me."
"Thanks."
"Call me any time of the day or night. I want your boyfriend to have a little extra special gift that'll make him feel you think about him all the time."
"Well, I..."
"Don't be bashful. Give me a call."
"Sure thing. I'll check back with you all in a few."
"I'm sorry, honey. Where were we?"
"I don't know. I guess your business empire."
"Oh, that's nothing. You're the one I'm interested in. I mean, here we are, two people in sales, you an engineer and me this little ol' girl selling flowers by the roadside. I think that dating service is the bee's knees, don't you?"
"I guess so. You want my butter?"
"Thank you, darling. No. You want my mixed fruit jelly?"
"Sure."
"Are you really wearing a condo just for me?"
"Huh?"
"Oh, I'm just joking with you. I knew what you meant. You ever thought about going into flower arrangement sales? You could make a little extra money on the side while you're doing your sales engineer thing. Maybe you could engineer something special into my arrangements. I was thinking about one of them Bose music players and an iPod mini video projector. Or maybe one of them new 3D systems. Wouldn't you want to sit at a funereal service and see your loved one in 3D right there in front of you like they ain't died yet? I know folks sure like to feel comforted at a time like that, hearing their family members again."
"I suppose I could check with the design engineers back at the office and..."
"Oh, don't worry about that right now, darling. You just eat. We've got plenty of time to get to know each other. 'Ceptin odds are against us being married for too long. The women in our family are too strong to be tied down to the same man for very long. Suppose it's a blessing and a curse. You ever hear tell of prenuptials? My lawyers says that I've got to have those afore I get hitched. Is it like a shot or something? I ain't got no diseases that I know of."
"You sure are set on getting married, aren't you?"
"Honey, I get what I want and I want you. Always have, always will. You're my type - older, smart, rich. You'll get along just fine with me, I can already tell. We can set the wedding date after we eat and then get down to business. You think we should live in your place, my place or get a new place of our own? I hear tell there's a lot of cheap real estate available right now."
"Excuse me, y'all. It's been a slow day. I'm going to mop up the whole floor, if you don't mind."
"Not at all."
"You were saying..."
"Oh yeah, so you can imagine that marriage ain't that special to me."
"Uh-huh. And your point being..."
"My point?"
"Yeah. This is our first date. Do you think we're going to get married tonight or something?"
"He-he. No, of course not, silly. I'm just saying that that look in your eyes is pointing to something my momma said is supposed to wait until after you first get married."
"I see. Well, what do you want to eat? The Waffle House menu looks mighty good this evening."
"Sorry to bother you again, folks. Do you mind if I sweep under your feet? I don't want any dirt to get on the freshly mopped floor."
"What? Oh no, go ahead."
"So, what do you do again?"
"I'm in engineering."
"You're an engineer!"
"Uh...sorta."
"That's awesome. I ain't never dated an engineer before. What kinda stuff do you do?"
"Well, I'm a sales engineer. I make sure our customers are aware of the products we offer, in case their next design project requires the parts our company makes."
"That is amazing. I bet you're really smart."
"Well, I know almost all of our sales brochures by heart. I can usually figure out from what a customer is describing to me the kind of parts they're looking for."
"I bet you make a lot of money."
"Some months, I do."
"You ever go on any fancy vacations?"
"Fancy?"
"Yeah, like Gatlinburg or Myrtle Beach or the Grand Ol' Opry and the Opryland Hotel. I hear tell they decorate that hotel mighty purty at Christmas."
"Yeah, I've been to all of them."
"You must be rich!"
"If you say so. Let's see, according to your profile on iwannagethitchedtoya.com, you're 22 years old. Are you out of..."
"Umm...that ain't rightly the truth. Actually, I'm 27."
"Oh, well, that's interesting. So you're still in school?"
"School? Don't be silly. I got my high school diploma when I was 18. I've been out of school a long time now."
"That makes sense."
"You ever been married?"
"Me?"
"Yes, darling. You. Who else you think I'm talking to?"
"No, I haven't."
"And you're 30 years old! That makes you an old maid or something."
"Well, I'm not 30."
"You're not?"
"No, I'm 37."
"And you still ain't been married?"
"Uh-huh."
"You ain't a momma's boy, are you? My pa hates that. He thinks if you really love your momma that you'll bring a purty girl home to raise babies with."
"Excuse me again. I'm almost finished mopping. I just overheard you say something about a momma's boy."
"That's right."
"What exactly is a momma's boy? I mean, what do you call a momma's boy? You don't think I'm a momma's boy, do you?"
"No, honey, I can tell you're just a regular homosexual. Don't matter whether you swing one way or t'other. Only matters if you's still living with your momma. You working here and still living with your momma?"
"No, I'm not. I have my own place, thank you very much."
"Then you ain't a momma's boy."
"Well, thanks for settling the matter. You all about ready to order?"
"Sure thing, honey. I'll take the manager's special."
"Same for me."
"Got it. Martha, they'll have the manager's special!"
"COMING RIGHT UP!"
"We'll have your food ready in a jiffy. See you in a few minutes."
"So, where were we?"
"You were letting the restaurant know what a momma's boy is."
"Oh yeah. You still living at home?"
"No, I have a condo."
"Darling, you're embarrassing me. You don't have to tell me you're wearing a condo, unlessin' you're ready to get hitched."
"No, not a condom. A condominium. Like an apartment, only I own it."
"You own your own apartment place? You ARE rich!"
"I'm glad you think so. So, tell me, according to your profile, you're also in sales."
"That's right."
"How long have you been in sales? Since high school?"
"No, long before that. I started helping my momma and all my stepdaddies in sales since I was little."
"Is that so?"
"Oh yeah. They say I'm real good at it, too."
"Interesting. So what do you do?"
"Well, it's changed from time to time. When I first started, I made floral arrangements with silk flowers that we sold at the flea market. Everybody's always liked them arrangements I've made, using gnarled wood knots and old tin cans and other stuff I mixed in with them flowers. Some folks'd have me make their funereal coffin arrangements out of their loved ones' stuff - shotguns, collectible race cars, teddy bears, baby clothes, military buttons and ribbons...I reckon I've seen it all."
"I guess I've never seen it."
"Well, you probably haven't. A few years ago, my last stepdaddy set me up a computer. He got me one of them ebay stores of my own, too. I've been selling my arrangements through the mail ever since then. Ain't much local work anymore."
"I see. So you make a few thousand a year doing that, I bet."
"A month?"
"No, I said a year."
"Honey, what are you saying?"
"I'm not saying anything. I'm just guessing what your yearly sales would be."
"Two thousand a year?"
"I don't know. Maybe three or four. You make more than that?"
"I make about five thousand a week."
"What?!"
"Well, that's about average. I make more around the holidays, of course. I'm so busy all year 'round that I ain't got time to do any regular dating. That's why I posted my profile on the computer."
"You're telling me you make over $250,000 a year?"
"Well, that's what my business takes in. Of course, I've got to pay all the folks who make the arrangements for me. And then there's the ebay store I've gotta pay for, government taxes and all those details my accountants handle."
"Accountants?"
"Yeah, I worked out a deal to buy the silk flower manufacturing plant, to cut my costs down...you know how it is, being in the sales engineer business...so I had to create my own accounting firm to handle all the details. The partners at the accounting firm drum up their own business and I get a cut of their accounting profits. It's complicated but it keeps me busy."
"And you did all this in two years?"
"Oh, no! I've had the businesses going for a while. Mail order catalogs. Door-to-door sales. Business cards at funereal homes, flea markets, beauty shops, drug stores, hospitals, clinics. Places like that. I'm sorry that $250,000 doesn't impress you. I bet you make a ton more than me, don't you?"
"I wouldn't put it that way."
"Well, you're modest. I like that in a man."
"Okay, folks, here's your specials. You want I should freshen up your drinks?"
"Sweetie, that'd be wonderful. I bet you have a boyfriend, don't you?"
"Uh, yes."
"You ever buy him flowers?"
"No, he usually buys flowers for me."
"Well, I tell you what. I'll make you up a special bouquet just for your loved one. Something that'd appeal just to him, know what I mean? Here's my business card. You give me a call sometime and we'll talk, just you and me."
"Thanks."
"Call me any time of the day or night. I want your boyfriend to have a little extra special gift that'll make him feel you think about him all the time."
"Well, I..."
"Don't be bashful. Give me a call."
"Sure thing. I'll check back with you all in a few."
"I'm sorry, honey. Where were we?"
"I don't know. I guess your business empire."
"Oh, that's nothing. You're the one I'm interested in. I mean, here we are, two people in sales, you an engineer and me this little ol' girl selling flowers by the roadside. I think that dating service is the bee's knees, don't you?"
"I guess so. You want my butter?"
"Thank you, darling. No. You want my mixed fruit jelly?"
"Sure."
"Are you really wearing a condo just for me?"
"Huh?"
"Oh, I'm just joking with you. I knew what you meant. You ever thought about going into flower arrangement sales? You could make a little extra money on the side while you're doing your sales engineer thing. Maybe you could engineer something special into my arrangements. I was thinking about one of them Bose music players and an iPod mini video projector. Or maybe one of them new 3D systems. Wouldn't you want to sit at a funereal service and see your loved one in 3D right there in front of you like they ain't died yet? I know folks sure like to feel comforted at a time like that, hearing their family members again."
"I suppose I could check with the design engineers back at the office and..."
"Oh, don't worry about that right now, darling. You just eat. We've got plenty of time to get to know each other. 'Ceptin odds are against us being married for too long. The women in our family are too strong to be tied down to the same man for very long. Suppose it's a blessing and a curse. You ever hear tell of prenuptials? My lawyers says that I've got to have those afore I get hitched. Is it like a shot or something? I ain't got no diseases that I know of."
"You sure are set on getting married, aren't you?"
"Honey, I get what I want and I want you. Always have, always will. You're my type - older, smart, rich. You'll get along just fine with me, I can already tell. We can set the wedding date after we eat and then get down to business. You think we should live in your place, my place or get a new place of our own? I hear tell there's a lot of cheap real estate available right now."
21 January 2010
Königliches Arbeitszimmer
A redheaded woodpecker dances up a shagbark hickory tree. Can a bird feel smug? Can an on-air personality on a "live catalog shopping" channel know the subtleties of presenting candle sales to men? High technology! Dual timers! Set the mood for that Valentine's Day dinner for two at home! Am I stuck in a hall of mirrors, the movie "Bridget Jones' Diary" reflecting to and through me?
In these parts we've had some good hunting and fishing days and some really cold ones ("cold one" = beer). For those of you who choose to eat meat, have you ever gutted your own food? Makes you appreciate what you're going to eat, doesn't it? For others, it puts biology dissection class into perspective, kinda like in secondary school when I had a lab partner, Rallie [Louise Horton] McAllister, M.D., who wouldn't touch the fetal pig we dissected, leaving me all the fun while we identified body parts for our biology teacher, Mrs. Fern Hilton. I think we called our pig Frankenswine. All this at a public institute for mandatory education called high school.
A well-rounded education, including chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and advanced math (pre-calculus, matrices, etc.). A school built out of round pods like circular spacecraft, upwind/downwind from Oak Ridge National Laboratories and Eastman Chemical Company.
Many of us in the college preparatory path at school were encouraged to seek engineering or science careers. The career aptitude test I took pointed me to either a career in chemical engineering or life as a priest. I chose the path of chemical engineering and that has made all the difference, to paraphrase Mister Frost. Turned into a deadend. I doubled back and started down my own path, one that has taken me through my world nearly anonymously, enjoying the peace and quiet that a meditative wandering wonderer seeks. A path to riches, a path to treasures, a path through deserts, over mountains and into oceans.
What path do you tread? I see the local politicians like the fellow who won the senatorial race in Taxachusetts and wonder if he's really a voice of the people and thus will he donate all his senate paycheck to the people or turn into just another jolly well good ol' chap member of Congress lining his pockets while waving the proletariat flag? Time will tell.
Same as the fellow who occupies the office of the governor of Virginia. Did the parade of Filipino-Americans, Chinese, local tribes and others represent a circus show of camaraderie or will the governor embrace these cultures as his own, spreading a little spice on his white bread?
A beautiful day today, sweeping the sidewalk, replacing old power outlets, enjoying the weather while catching up with what my computer programmers have built for me this time. We get a good laugh at the naïveté of people who fall for words like hack or cybersecurity. When one knows how to gather states of energy, one can convert them into any mass or energy one wants, nothing getting in the way. Look at a simple example like see-through-wall radar and imagine something much more interesting designed for commercial applications. I look up at the thin blue background called the sky and know what our atmosphere can and cannot do about shielding/filtering states of energy. Same for a planet. Or this laptop computer and the phone line that sends this text I'm typing to a computer server somewhere for you to access at your convenience on many types of Internet access devices.
A nice, warm day, or so I've let myself be led to believe because of this body that is me. There are no absolutes - well, absolute zero is certainly close - everything is relative. Get used to it. You'll want to keep that in mind when the next phase of our existence arrives (for some of you, at least).
The power of the people is in your hands and everyone else's. When you see the power, you see that your body doesn't matter. When you see your body doesn't matter, you see you don't really exist and then you know what power really is. You don't have to sacrifice or worship or any people-related activity to have the power. You simply go from one moment where everything seemed like it always has been and then the next moment you have all the power in the universe at your disposal. It happens in the infinitely small space between two moments, almost invisible, certainly indivisible. There is no transition, no training, no anything associated with whatever you've thought. Like flipping a light switch - click. Then you're nobody. You're gone. You no longer exist. You are the power or some piece of it that you can't tell from the rest of the power.
Power is the wrong word but the only one I have to describe what so many others have described in different ways before, during and after what you think of as me. Remember, I am not here. I am only what you think of as me. I am unimportant. I have no relative worth other than what you want to measure and compare to other people or other living things.
Anyway, power is the word I'm using. This power is outside time or place. It has no limits that are measurable. This power allows you to travel wherever you want to go as long as you understand that you no longer exist as you. You don't get rich or famous or anything you want. You become part of the ebb and flow of this power that, as best I can tell, takes into account your states of energy and adjusts accordingly. Thus, you can travel but not in any timeframe you think of as traveling at your will.
I wish I could explain to you what I'm trying to explain to you about what little I know concerning what I don't understand but I can't. As many have discovered, it is unexplainable. It is not even "it" but words and images are all this body has to describe to you what has no discernible body.
Just so you don't get too carried away by these words, I remind you that I am a storyteller. Not a very good one but a teller of stories, tall tales and fibs all the same. I use words to draw pictures and when I run out of words, I run out of words. If you try to take what I say seriously, then you've missed the point of what I'm trying to say with these words because what I'm trying to say is impossible to say with words. I'm not the first to get flabbergasted by the limits of one's body. I won't be the last. Just accept this as mumbo-jumbo and go about your business.
Meanwhile, I'll bounce around this universe that we think is centered on our planet and see what's going on. Maybe I'll find another good story to tell. Maybe I'll get bored seeing the same ol' stories being told over and over and go quiet for a spell. Jackie Gleason once observed that he'd seen all the comic devices that are possible to make people laugh and when that happened he was ready to quit show business. Or something like that. I'm not ready to quit but many days I like to disappear and reappear somewhere else for a change of scenery and a different view of the same ol' shtick. Maybe I'll visit you sometime so we can have an adventure worth writing about. Then again, maybe I won't. This power thing is hard to figure out and impossible to steer where I want to go. Maybe my inventor friend can get my computer programmers to design a control system for this rocket ship of his that uses the unseen power to go places. Anything is possible. You don't know until you try, right?
In these parts we've had some good hunting and fishing days and some really cold ones ("cold one" = beer). For those of you who choose to eat meat, have you ever gutted your own food? Makes you appreciate what you're going to eat, doesn't it? For others, it puts biology dissection class into perspective, kinda like in secondary school when I had a lab partner, Rallie [Louise Horton] McAllister, M.D., who wouldn't touch the fetal pig we dissected, leaving me all the fun while we identified body parts for our biology teacher, Mrs. Fern Hilton. I think we called our pig Frankenswine. All this at a public institute for mandatory education called high school.
A well-rounded education, including chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and advanced math (pre-calculus, matrices, etc.). A school built out of round pods like circular spacecraft, upwind/downwind from Oak Ridge National Laboratories and Eastman Chemical Company.
Many of us in the college preparatory path at school were encouraged to seek engineering or science careers. The career aptitude test I took pointed me to either a career in chemical engineering or life as a priest. I chose the path of chemical engineering and that has made all the difference, to paraphrase Mister Frost. Turned into a deadend. I doubled back and started down my own path, one that has taken me through my world nearly anonymously, enjoying the peace and quiet that a meditative wandering wonderer seeks. A path to riches, a path to treasures, a path through deserts, over mountains and into oceans.
What path do you tread? I see the local politicians like the fellow who won the senatorial race in Taxachusetts and wonder if he's really a voice of the people and thus will he donate all his senate paycheck to the people or turn into just another jolly well good ol' chap member of Congress lining his pockets while waving the proletariat flag? Time will tell.
Same as the fellow who occupies the office of the governor of Virginia. Did the parade of Filipino-Americans, Chinese, local tribes and others represent a circus show of camaraderie or will the governor embrace these cultures as his own, spreading a little spice on his white bread?
A beautiful day today, sweeping the sidewalk, replacing old power outlets, enjoying the weather while catching up with what my computer programmers have built for me this time. We get a good laugh at the naïveté of people who fall for words like hack or cybersecurity. When one knows how to gather states of energy, one can convert them into any mass or energy one wants, nothing getting in the way. Look at a simple example like see-through-wall radar and imagine something much more interesting designed for commercial applications. I look up at the thin blue background called the sky and know what our atmosphere can and cannot do about shielding/filtering states of energy. Same for a planet. Or this laptop computer and the phone line that sends this text I'm typing to a computer server somewhere for you to access at your convenience on many types of Internet access devices.
A nice, warm day, or so I've let myself be led to believe because of this body that is me. There are no absolutes - well, absolute zero is certainly close - everything is relative. Get used to it. You'll want to keep that in mind when the next phase of our existence arrives (for some of you, at least).
The power of the people is in your hands and everyone else's. When you see the power, you see that your body doesn't matter. When you see your body doesn't matter, you see you don't really exist and then you know what power really is. You don't have to sacrifice or worship or any people-related activity to have the power. You simply go from one moment where everything seemed like it always has been and then the next moment you have all the power in the universe at your disposal. It happens in the infinitely small space between two moments, almost invisible, certainly indivisible. There is no transition, no training, no anything associated with whatever you've thought. Like flipping a light switch - click. Then you're nobody. You're gone. You no longer exist. You are the power or some piece of it that you can't tell from the rest of the power.
Power is the wrong word but the only one I have to describe what so many others have described in different ways before, during and after what you think of as me. Remember, I am not here. I am only what you think of as me. I am unimportant. I have no relative worth other than what you want to measure and compare to other people or other living things.
Anyway, power is the word I'm using. This power is outside time or place. It has no limits that are measurable. This power allows you to travel wherever you want to go as long as you understand that you no longer exist as you. You don't get rich or famous or anything you want. You become part of the ebb and flow of this power that, as best I can tell, takes into account your states of energy and adjusts accordingly. Thus, you can travel but not in any timeframe you think of as traveling at your will.
I wish I could explain to you what I'm trying to explain to you about what little I know concerning what I don't understand but I can't. As many have discovered, it is unexplainable. It is not even "it" but words and images are all this body has to describe to you what has no discernible body.
Just so you don't get too carried away by these words, I remind you that I am a storyteller. Not a very good one but a teller of stories, tall tales and fibs all the same. I use words to draw pictures and when I run out of words, I run out of words. If you try to take what I say seriously, then you've missed the point of what I'm trying to say with these words because what I'm trying to say is impossible to say with words. I'm not the first to get flabbergasted by the limits of one's body. I won't be the last. Just accept this as mumbo-jumbo and go about your business.
Meanwhile, I'll bounce around this universe that we think is centered on our planet and see what's going on. Maybe I'll find another good story to tell. Maybe I'll get bored seeing the same ol' stories being told over and over and go quiet for a spell. Jackie Gleason once observed that he'd seen all the comic devices that are possible to make people laugh and when that happened he was ready to quit show business. Or something like that. I'm not ready to quit but many days I like to disappear and reappear somewhere else for a change of scenery and a different view of the same ol' shtick. Maybe I'll visit you sometime so we can have an adventure worth writing about. Then again, maybe I won't. This power thing is hard to figure out and impossible to steer where I want to go. Maybe my inventor friend can get my computer programmers to design a control system for this rocket ship of his that uses the unseen power to go places. Anything is possible. You don't know until you try, right?
20 January 2010
A Promise Fulfilled
One thing I can say, when Wal-Mart makes promises, it keeps them.
Some people or companies I've worked with will not always back up what they say, making up reasons for falling short.
Wal-Mart, from my experience both as a customer and as a former equipment provider, holds itself responsible for negotiated deals and expects nothing less than perfection from its suppliers.
In the promise they made that's prompted this blog entry, Wal-Mart stated it would clean up its image, wanting to make its stores more attractive and shopping easier.
Thus, when I visited the new "yellow" Wal-Mart in Chesterfield, Virginia, a few days ago, I felt like I was in shopping heaven. I had the low prices and variety I expect to find at Wal-Mart and more importantly I had the shopping experience of a place like Target, Tesco, Dunnes, Sears/K-Mart or other similar department stores.
In other words, Wal-Mart has found a way to go upscale without scaling up its prices.
I'll be honest. I'm one of those people who watches what he wears when he goes out. I'm no clothes horse but I like to look good. Vanity and chivalry go hand-in-hand - a man wants to impress a woman by his talents as much as his looks. I don't dress up but I wear clothes that comfortably fit and make me feel good. Some days, it might be a camo shirt and work pants while I'm working in the yard and need to run to Wal-Mart for a bag of potting soil. Some days, it might be dress pants, dress shirt and sports coat when I'm shopping with my wife after a dinner and a movie.
I thank you, Wal-Mart, for keeping your promise. If what the smiling young woman said at the Chesterfield store is correct, soon all the Wal-Marts will be changing styles, offering basic goods and sensible designer stuff at prices we can all afford.
Pride is not a primary motivating factor for me. I'm not sure what that word means. But I can say I'm proud to call myself a Wal-Mart shopper because I'm a global thinker and know how world trade works. I wish our government understood the concept of economies of scale the way Wal-Mart does - we'd make money instead of sticking the people with a trillion-dollar tax bill every time Congress gets the whim to overcome inertia and pass a bill worth signing by the president.
Exclusivity is not my style - I don't shop Neiman Marcus or drive down Rodeo Drive in my Lamborghini. Sure, I've owned Italian sports cars but it was a pair of used Alfa Romeo Spiders (one of which I bought from Phil Williams and the other from a guy going blind who owned a Jowett Jupiter), not his-and-her Ferraris. Now I own a 1962 Dodge Lancer and a 1991 Chevy S10. I've owned a couple of rice burners (i.e., Japanese motorbikes). I have both a Murray sit-behind lawnmower and a reel mower, both a rake and an electric leaf blower, both a sledge hammer and a hammer drill. I'm the guy next-door who likes his Yuengling, Sam Adams or home brew.
The real people of Wal-Mart are the managers, associates and regular customers who work and shop at Wal-Mart because we like being people. Being people means being able to take humour and criticism in stride, shedding negativity like water off a duck's back. When you do that you see what it's like to be real, not stuck up or stuck on yourself. Some days and some situations will test your realness. Do you think you can pass the test? Can you find a way to see through a bad day or an overly-critical customer and still see the real people around you, even that customer who's in your face or making a snide comment, separating that person's bad day from the real person inside? Treat everyone the same and find out. You'll make a world of difference. You get tested in many ways - some pass, some fail. I prefer the people who pass the test of seeing everyone in a positive light no matter what or who a person acts like. Sam Walton would expect no less.
That's why you see me at Wal-Mart every few days - there's always some reason I want to go back to see those smiling faces who help me keep change in my pocket that I can drop in the Children's Miracle Network box as I walk out.
No, I'm not getting paid to write this blog entry or am receiving kickbacks in any manner. I just finished shopping at Wal-Mart and felt the desire to write this down, hoping it will encourage Wal-Mart to convert the Big Cove/Hampton Cove store to its new yellow style ASAP. Times are tough in this economy and I know the change costs money but it sure would make shopping locally more enjoyable - it might even boost sales on this side of town where the image-conscious seem to be so sensitive about where they're seen shopping. Help them rediscover what Wal-Mart is really all about: setting trends that make sense, not trends for the sake of being trendy.
Some people or companies I've worked with will not always back up what they say, making up reasons for falling short.
Wal-Mart, from my experience both as a customer and as a former equipment provider, holds itself responsible for negotiated deals and expects nothing less than perfection from its suppliers.
In the promise they made that's prompted this blog entry, Wal-Mart stated it would clean up its image, wanting to make its stores more attractive and shopping easier.
Thus, when I visited the new "yellow" Wal-Mart in Chesterfield, Virginia, a few days ago, I felt like I was in shopping heaven. I had the low prices and variety I expect to find at Wal-Mart and more importantly I had the shopping experience of a place like Target, Tesco, Dunnes, Sears/K-Mart or other similar department stores.
In other words, Wal-Mart has found a way to go upscale without scaling up its prices.
I'll be honest. I'm one of those people who watches what he wears when he goes out. I'm no clothes horse but I like to look good. Vanity and chivalry go hand-in-hand - a man wants to impress a woman by his talents as much as his looks. I don't dress up but I wear clothes that comfortably fit and make me feel good. Some days, it might be a camo shirt and work pants while I'm working in the yard and need to run to Wal-Mart for a bag of potting soil. Some days, it might be dress pants, dress shirt and sports coat when I'm shopping with my wife after a dinner and a movie.
I thank you, Wal-Mart, for keeping your promise. If what the smiling young woman said at the Chesterfield store is correct, soon all the Wal-Marts will be changing styles, offering basic goods and sensible designer stuff at prices we can all afford.
Pride is not a primary motivating factor for me. I'm not sure what that word means. But I can say I'm proud to call myself a Wal-Mart shopper because I'm a global thinker and know how world trade works. I wish our government understood the concept of economies of scale the way Wal-Mart does - we'd make money instead of sticking the people with a trillion-dollar tax bill every time Congress gets the whim to overcome inertia and pass a bill worth signing by the president.
Exclusivity is not my style - I don't shop Neiman Marcus or drive down Rodeo Drive in my Lamborghini. Sure, I've owned Italian sports cars but it was a pair of used Alfa Romeo Spiders (one of which I bought from Phil Williams and the other from a guy going blind who owned a Jowett Jupiter), not his-and-her Ferraris. Now I own a 1962 Dodge Lancer and a 1991 Chevy S10. I've owned a couple of rice burners (i.e., Japanese motorbikes). I have both a Murray sit-behind lawnmower and a reel mower, both a rake and an electric leaf blower, both a sledge hammer and a hammer drill. I'm the guy next-door who likes his Yuengling, Sam Adams or home brew.
The real people of Wal-Mart are the managers, associates and regular customers who work and shop at Wal-Mart because we like being people. Being people means being able to take humour and criticism in stride, shedding negativity like water off a duck's back. When you do that you see what it's like to be real, not stuck up or stuck on yourself. Some days and some situations will test your realness. Do you think you can pass the test? Can you find a way to see through a bad day or an overly-critical customer and still see the real people around you, even that customer who's in your face or making a snide comment, separating that person's bad day from the real person inside? Treat everyone the same and find out. You'll make a world of difference. You get tested in many ways - some pass, some fail. I prefer the people who pass the test of seeing everyone in a positive light no matter what or who a person acts like. Sam Walton would expect no less.
That's why you see me at Wal-Mart every few days - there's always some reason I want to go back to see those smiling faces who help me keep change in my pocket that I can drop in the Children's Miracle Network box as I walk out.
No, I'm not getting paid to write this blog entry or am receiving kickbacks in any manner. I just finished shopping at Wal-Mart and felt the desire to write this down, hoping it will encourage Wal-Mart to convert the Big Cove/Hampton Cove store to its new yellow style ASAP. Times are tough in this economy and I know the change costs money but it sure would make shopping locally more enjoyable - it might even boost sales on this side of town where the image-conscious seem to be so sensitive about where they're seen shopping. Help them rediscover what Wal-Mart is really all about: setting trends that make sense, not trends for the sake of being trendy.
Questions Abound
While watching "Buffalo Bill and the Indians," directed by Robert Altman, the perplexing dialogue-mixer of storyboard wonders, I looked at the background stories of some of the film's characters, including Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley and Grover Cleveland.
From that, I discovered more about history as a "disrespect for the dead," such as the Panic of 1893. All is repetition - prepare your longterm business plans accordingly. Some say China's real estate boom is next to go bust. Who am I to disagree? I'm ready to move my assets to South America once again. Anyone hear/speak Portuguese? Maybe chocolate and coffee are Columbian gold again?
Daffodils are pushing up. Marsh marigolds flourish. Spring is all but here. Another seasonal sneeze and then the heat of summer drowns Arctic hearts. Will someone please make that Bigelow spacecraft ready before 2015?
People are people. Our species has many mixed goals, including the widespread spread of depopulating other populations - avian or polar bear, take your pick. Unpopular? Perhaps, but popularity is an ocean wave or a rain drop dripping down a mountain face. Eroding. Rebuilding. Yin and yang have their uses, depending where on the curve you want to sit and bemuse yourself. Don't worry, see the happy honeybee searching for a resilient hive to call home. How quickly can flowers adjust to a life of pollinating themselves? How long can a restless population wait to be rested? Don't wait too long to solve unrest or a worldwide strike could be called and then labor has its day to say just who's working for whom. Unions may be passé but they haven't passed - an organised global workforce including Brasil, United States, European Union, Russia, China, India, Australia, the African continent, Philippines, Japan, and other parts of southeast Asia - imagine the possibilities and the cost of clothing, electronics, software services, etc.
From that, I discovered more about history as a "disrespect for the dead," such as the Panic of 1893. All is repetition - prepare your longterm business plans accordingly. Some say China's real estate boom is next to go bust. Who am I to disagree? I'm ready to move my assets to South America once again. Anyone hear/speak Portuguese? Maybe chocolate and coffee are Columbian gold again?
Daffodils are pushing up. Marsh marigolds flourish. Spring is all but here. Another seasonal sneeze and then the heat of summer drowns Arctic hearts. Will someone please make that Bigelow spacecraft ready before 2015?
People are people. Our species has many mixed goals, including the widespread spread of depopulating other populations - avian or polar bear, take your pick. Unpopular? Perhaps, but popularity is an ocean wave or a rain drop dripping down a mountain face. Eroding. Rebuilding. Yin and yang have their uses, depending where on the curve you want to sit and bemuse yourself. Don't worry, see the happy honeybee searching for a resilient hive to call home. How quickly can flowers adjust to a life of pollinating themselves? How long can a restless population wait to be rested? Don't wait too long to solve unrest or a worldwide strike could be called and then labor has its day to say just who's working for whom. Unions may be passé but they haven't passed - an organised global workforce including Brasil, United States, European Union, Russia, China, India, Australia, the African continent, Philippines, Japan, and other parts of southeast Asia - imagine the possibilities and the cost of clothing, electronics, software services, etc.
The Collection Grows
A few more books to add to my library (courtesy of my parents), two of them beside me:
15th January 2010, 19:46
Shoulda What?
What should a person do with a futon?
What should a futon do with a baton?
What should a poem do with a peony?
What should a peony do with a poem?
Should a person, futon, baton, poem and peony be in the same space?
Should a space be provided?
Shoulda woulda coulda.
These are the questions one considers when looking at the garden,
Questions one considers when tending the garden,
Questions one garden tends to consider,
Considers the questions,
The question,
The tender shoots,
The roots,
The growth,
The winter rest,
The groundcover,
The, the, the...with nothing more than tea to drink,
A cup,
A ground leaf,
A tray,
A pot,
A drop to quench one's thirst.
- The Story of the Irish Race: A Popular History of Ireland, by Seumas MacManus
- The Schweitzer Album: A Portrait in Words and Pictures, by Erica Anderson
15th January 2010, 19:46
Shoulda What?
What should a person do with a futon?
What should a futon do with a baton?
What should a poem do with a peony?
What should a peony do with a poem?
Should a person, futon, baton, poem and peony be in the same space?
Should a space be provided?
Shoulda woulda coulda.
These are the questions one considers when looking at the garden,
Questions one considers when tending the garden,
Questions one garden tends to consider,
Considers the questions,
The question,
The tender shoots,
The roots,
The growth,
The winter rest,
The groundcover,
The, the, the...with nothing more than tea to drink,
A cup,
A ground leaf,
A tray,
A pot,
A drop to quench one's thirst.
A tale of one city split in two
Some speak of the center of our planet as if one could dig a hole into the core and find a magnetic/gravitational point of neutrality.
The fact remains that the center lies elsewhere.
Bristol.
A small town, if one considers one half on one side of one state of one country of one continent in one hemisphere on one planet. A little bigger when one considers both halves.
However, strength is not is size. Strength comes from power - the power to be and to see.
Thus, Bristol is the center of the known universe.
The residents and historians of Bristol can extol its virtues, hideaways, treasures and other kinder, gentler points of light.
I have other concerns in regards to a municipal entity. I want to know why it rules this planet. I want to know why a Richmond writer wants to abolish the corporate tax in order to save jobs (or at least increase workers' salaries) by comparing wages and jobs to the city of Bristol, an area peopled by 17,000.
Why was the sound combination known as country music started in the Bristol area?
Why do many famous people find ties to Bristol, important enough to mention in a positive light and visit more than once?
Why do some people in Bristol say they love the Tri- life?
Why? Strategy. Power. Protection.
Let others pretend to rule from their palaces or capitols of groveling courtiers. We give them their right to entertain us in their pompous circumstances, knowing how much they crave the limelight and how much the people want to worship and adore others of their kind.
Real power lies elsewhere.
Where? Places like Bristol, of course.
Most of you don't know what I'm talking about. You have no concept of real power. You think that guns and ammo, martial arts, bulk, towers, walls, castles, vast electronic sums or access to a large network of friends means power.
I understand the role of magicians. I know that illusion is more important than reality. We want to supplant the rich, 3D imagery of avatars with the staid, boring history of Confucius to maintain the sense of historic manifest destiny. I don't want to take away what one Han thinks one Hun, Huron, Huguenot or Hessian doesn't have. But I want to know how the magic trick works and share it with you, even if I can't completely communicate with you on this so-called universal communicative magic trick called the worldwideweb, restricted and cut off as it is (apparently, we the people don't want seven billion people talking to each other at once or the magic disappears and we suddenly face reality in all its stark starkness, making the pyramid scheme of leadership (in business, government, sports, etc.) collapse onto its shaky, temporary, hastily-constructed scaffolding).
And thus I look for real power. Power that excludes illusion. Power that includes everything, both the timid and the intimidating, the weak and the strong, the doves and the hawks, the preservers and the destroyers, the overpopulating and the extinct. ALL the people ALL the time. ALL seven billion of us in all our various states of illusory belief.
That's why Bristol is the center of this planet. It contains all the power I want and need. From Bristol, one does not rule the universe. From Bristol, the universe rules itself.
You still don't understand, do you? You expect to find a person, some people, an organisation or other object on which you can focus your attention and say, "A-ha! That's what he's talking about." But you'd be wrong. The very opposite is true. In fact, I only mention the name Bristol because it happens to line up with our geographical people-oriented mapping systems that point to the place where real power exists. Otherwise, even the name Bristol and organisations associated with it are unimportant.
While others focus on the Fertile Crescent and try to justify the reason why some people found a place to eat grain and cultivate meat which required scratching symbols on clay to account for crops and livestock, those in the know understand the reason why others - visionaries - left that area and explored the rest of the planet, sensing that power was concentrated in another spot.
That's why my friend decided to land the rocket ship in Bristol. Access to unlimited power, portending a bright future for those who have no sense of purpose or direction. Not Beijing. Not Berlin. Not Barcelona. Not Boston. Not Bhatpara.
A place. A point. A fruit full of seeds spreading roots and branches. Invisible but open for all to see.
Power is such a useless word, giving meaning to that which means nothing. Power is not used or gathered or abused. Power is not having anything. Free from collecting, free of owning, absent, transparent, incalculable. You cannot try power - power tries you.
Bristol. You'll see. Or maybe you won't. Matters not. The power's there with or without you/me/us.
The fact remains that the center lies elsewhere.
Bristol.
A small town, if one considers one half on one side of one state of one country of one continent in one hemisphere on one planet. A little bigger when one considers both halves.
However, strength is not is size. Strength comes from power - the power to be and to see.
Thus, Bristol is the center of the known universe.
The residents and historians of Bristol can extol its virtues, hideaways, treasures and other kinder, gentler points of light.
I have other concerns in regards to a municipal entity. I want to know why it rules this planet. I want to know why a Richmond writer wants to abolish the corporate tax in order to save jobs (or at least increase workers' salaries) by comparing wages and jobs to the city of Bristol, an area peopled by 17,000.
Why was the sound combination known as country music started in the Bristol area?
Why do many famous people find ties to Bristol, important enough to mention in a positive light and visit more than once?
Why do some people in Bristol say they love the Tri- life?
Why? Strategy. Power. Protection.
Let others pretend to rule from their palaces or capitols of groveling courtiers. We give them their right to entertain us in their pompous circumstances, knowing how much they crave the limelight and how much the people want to worship and adore others of their kind.
Real power lies elsewhere.
Where? Places like Bristol, of course.
Most of you don't know what I'm talking about. You have no concept of real power. You think that guns and ammo, martial arts, bulk, towers, walls, castles, vast electronic sums or access to a large network of friends means power.
I understand the role of magicians. I know that illusion is more important than reality. We want to supplant the rich, 3D imagery of avatars with the staid, boring history of Confucius to maintain the sense of historic manifest destiny. I don't want to take away what one Han thinks one Hun, Huron, Huguenot or Hessian doesn't have. But I want to know how the magic trick works and share it with you, even if I can't completely communicate with you on this so-called universal communicative magic trick called the worldwideweb, restricted and cut off as it is (apparently, we the people don't want seven billion people talking to each other at once or the magic disappears and we suddenly face reality in all its stark starkness, making the pyramid scheme of leadership (in business, government, sports, etc.) collapse onto its shaky, temporary, hastily-constructed scaffolding).
And thus I look for real power. Power that excludes illusion. Power that includes everything, both the timid and the intimidating, the weak and the strong, the doves and the hawks, the preservers and the destroyers, the overpopulating and the extinct. ALL the people ALL the time. ALL seven billion of us in all our various states of illusory belief.
That's why Bristol is the center of this planet. It contains all the power I want and need. From Bristol, one does not rule the universe. From Bristol, the universe rules itself.
You still don't understand, do you? You expect to find a person, some people, an organisation or other object on which you can focus your attention and say, "A-ha! That's what he's talking about." But you'd be wrong. The very opposite is true. In fact, I only mention the name Bristol because it happens to line up with our geographical people-oriented mapping systems that point to the place where real power exists. Otherwise, even the name Bristol and organisations associated with it are unimportant.
While others focus on the Fertile Crescent and try to justify the reason why some people found a place to eat grain and cultivate meat which required scratching symbols on clay to account for crops and livestock, those in the know understand the reason why others - visionaries - left that area and explored the rest of the planet, sensing that power was concentrated in another spot.
That's why my friend decided to land the rocket ship in Bristol. Access to unlimited power, portending a bright future for those who have no sense of purpose or direction. Not Beijing. Not Berlin. Not Barcelona. Not Boston. Not Bhatpara.
A place. A point. A fruit full of seeds spreading roots and branches. Invisible but open for all to see.
Power is such a useless word, giving meaning to that which means nothing. Power is not used or gathered or abused. Power is not having anything. Free from collecting, free of owning, absent, transparent, incalculable. You cannot try power - power tries you.
Bristol. You'll see. Or maybe you won't. Matters not. The power's there with or without you/me/us.
19 January 2010
An Attitude of Altoids At Altitude
Another character sketch filed into the morgue. This current book under wraps, under revision, in consideration, not a book that wants to tell a story easily. Deadends. Dead characters. Ghosts. Apparitions. Appellations.
While traveling the heavily conservative backroads of the not-so-common wealth of Virginia, passing through the burg of Lynch, host to the university-level learning dedicated to liberty, I found myself remembering my youth.
4-H Club trips. Popeyes/pdiddles - one-eyed cars (a missing or burned-out headlight) that add to kisses. Counting cows and losing your total when you pass a cemetery/graveyard. Hiking Mt. Rogers and Whitetop Mountain with my future wife, other fellow summer campers, Boy Scouts and Explorer Scouts.
Soon, all will feel different. A new smell in the air. Methane. Cow gas. Chicken droppings. Farm land as far as the eye can see from the road. Corn. Soybeans. Sorghum. Cotton.
The land of make-believe. Bales of hay rolling down the hill. Old barns propped on arthritic elbows, their time timed out.
Drinking beer in a German restaurant near Abingdon, where my father worked in a room in the Martha Washington Inn, now a luxury hotel suite, once home to the Virginia Tech Extension Office.
We remember well those we well remember. Mr. Douglas. A cute girl who went to Emory & Henry. 'Tis sweet to be remembered, isn't it?
How do we define living? With these words? Not at all. With the argument about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Hardly.
We cannot define living. Living defines us. We do not think. We react. We shake, rattle and roll into the next second.
These. Thebes. Thesis.
If you want to live forever, then don't pay attention to time. Pay attention to change. Phases. Shifts. Movement. You have a limited number of heart muscle movements before you die - count on it. To live forever, you must lose heart.
While traveling, I lost contact with my friend the inventor. This afternoon, snugly secure in my portable cocoon, I checked in on my friend's progress. On my friend's website was the sign, "Out To Launch." Huh? So I checked email where my friend detailed the reason for being unavailable. Turns out my friend's invention is a miniaturised rocket ship. Or rather, a rocket ship that miniaturises you and takes you where you want to go. Even using the phrase rocket ship is incorrect but best to describe the vehicle or transportation device.
I haven't seen this thing yet myself so the simplified version is all I can offer you. You, or what you think of as you, enter a chamber. Inside the chamber, a set of instruments record your vital signs, determining your physical health. Upon meeting the health status criteria my friend has set forth, you and all the states of energy passing through you at the moment are temporarily slowed down and measured for how they react to one another. After measurement, the chamber transforms the interacting states of energy into a compressed version of themselves ("zipped up" in computer parlance), creating a smaller, boxed-up version of yourself. That version is then scanned and saved and stored in the "rocket ship." Every version stored on the rocket ship merges with all the other versions, which become part of the rocket ship, too.
The rocket ship has a propulsion system but I'm not smart enough to describe it to you. When (or if) my friend returns from a test trip, I'll get my friend to tell you more about how the rocket ship travels. My friend has claimed in the past that we need not worry about escaping Earth's gravitational pull if we construct a device that simply disappears, whatever that means.
Meanwhile, I sit here and watch us child-like bipeds think we're grownups just because we can accumulate facts, trinkets and wealth. Soon we'll find out just how young we truly are. Like infants. And after that, seven billion people will have a single goal in mind after all. Amazing, isn't it, looking back at our brief foray into the ebb and flow of civilisation creation and seeing how many mistakes we let become central facts of our existence?
I hope I can find my friend and let you know what I'm talking about. If not...well, in that case, carry on. Most of you won't know the difference, anyway. I almost didn't and it would have let me pursue a "normal" life in our intertwined societies, always worrying about the price of eggs in China or a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia. Now, I don't worry. I laugh. I explore. I feed my curiosity, knowing how much more there is to discover than what one mere planet can offer. Some of you already know what I'm talking about. Some of you, like me, celebrate. Some of you try to stifle the truth. Some try to take advantage of their fellow species. The truth won't set you free - the truth simply makes you more like yourself, good, bad, or diffident.
While traveling the heavily conservative backroads of the not-so-common wealth of Virginia, passing through the burg of Lynch, host to the university-level learning dedicated to liberty, I found myself remembering my youth.
4-H Club trips. Popeyes/pdiddles - one-eyed cars (a missing or burned-out headlight) that add to kisses. Counting cows and losing your total when you pass a cemetery/graveyard. Hiking Mt. Rogers and Whitetop Mountain with my future wife, other fellow summer campers, Boy Scouts and Explorer Scouts.
Soon, all will feel different. A new smell in the air. Methane. Cow gas. Chicken droppings. Farm land as far as the eye can see from the road. Corn. Soybeans. Sorghum. Cotton.
The land of make-believe. Bales of hay rolling down the hill. Old barns propped on arthritic elbows, their time timed out.
Drinking beer in a German restaurant near Abingdon, where my father worked in a room in the Martha Washington Inn, now a luxury hotel suite, once home to the Virginia Tech Extension Office.
We remember well those we well remember. Mr. Douglas. A cute girl who went to Emory & Henry. 'Tis sweet to be remembered, isn't it?
How do we define living? With these words? Not at all. With the argument about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Hardly.
We cannot define living. Living defines us. We do not think. We react. We shake, rattle and roll into the next second.
These. Thebes. Thesis.
If you want to live forever, then don't pay attention to time. Pay attention to change. Phases. Shifts. Movement. You have a limited number of heart muscle movements before you die - count on it. To live forever, you must lose heart.
While traveling, I lost contact with my friend the inventor. This afternoon, snugly secure in my portable cocoon, I checked in on my friend's progress. On my friend's website was the sign, "Out To Launch." Huh? So I checked email where my friend detailed the reason for being unavailable. Turns out my friend's invention is a miniaturised rocket ship. Or rather, a rocket ship that miniaturises you and takes you where you want to go. Even using the phrase rocket ship is incorrect but best to describe the vehicle or transportation device.
I haven't seen this thing yet myself so the simplified version is all I can offer you. You, or what you think of as you, enter a chamber. Inside the chamber, a set of instruments record your vital signs, determining your physical health. Upon meeting the health status criteria my friend has set forth, you and all the states of energy passing through you at the moment are temporarily slowed down and measured for how they react to one another. After measurement, the chamber transforms the interacting states of energy into a compressed version of themselves ("zipped up" in computer parlance), creating a smaller, boxed-up version of yourself. That version is then scanned and saved and stored in the "rocket ship." Every version stored on the rocket ship merges with all the other versions, which become part of the rocket ship, too.
The rocket ship has a propulsion system but I'm not smart enough to describe it to you. When (or if) my friend returns from a test trip, I'll get my friend to tell you more about how the rocket ship travels. My friend has claimed in the past that we need not worry about escaping Earth's gravitational pull if we construct a device that simply disappears, whatever that means.
Meanwhile, I sit here and watch us child-like bipeds think we're grownups just because we can accumulate facts, trinkets and wealth. Soon we'll find out just how young we truly are. Like infants. And after that, seven billion people will have a single goal in mind after all. Amazing, isn't it, looking back at our brief foray into the ebb and flow of civilisation creation and seeing how many mistakes we let become central facts of our existence?
I hope I can find my friend and let you know what I'm talking about. If not...well, in that case, carry on. Most of you won't know the difference, anyway. I almost didn't and it would have let me pursue a "normal" life in our intertwined societies, always worrying about the price of eggs in China or a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia. Now, I don't worry. I laugh. I explore. I feed my curiosity, knowing how much more there is to discover than what one mere planet can offer. Some of you already know what I'm talking about. Some of you, like me, celebrate. Some of you try to stifle the truth. Some try to take advantage of their fellow species. The truth won't set you free - the truth simply makes you more like yourself, good, bad, or diffident.
17 January 2010
Yet Another Reforgotten Moment of Silence
[Personal diatribe - not meant for public consumption]
Where does one go when one has no place to go? We find friends, we find hobbies/interests, we find many activities/thoughts. And when/if/where/how/who no longer exists, then what?
Personal reflection time. No material to write about. No thoughts to put down. Depression sets in - the other side of life, the shaded windows around one's thoughts, the shutting in, the shutting down. One person out of seven billion, more or less.
Where is the pick-me-up? Where is the "it'll be better tomorrow...no, wait, it'll be better in the next moment...just hang on"?
Feel all the neurochemelectric states of energy flowing through this temporary state of existence called a body in the form of a male member of one species. Feel them and weep. Feel them and laugh. Feel them and feel numb.
I am one person, dependent on my wife, making me codependent and crazy without her. I miss my wife when she travels - I lose my mind because I am only half a person, half as attentive, unable to complete common phrases in many languages I normally know how to speak with Chestney and her friend, Hillary. I am like the walking dead without my wife. I find no words to share with Maggie or Abby or Aspen or Nicholas or Keri or Rachel, Bruce or Anne or Kevin. I exist only because I know my wife is somewhere out there in the world and will be with me soon. Thus, my year of dedication to women is a year of dedication to one woman. She is my all, the only reason I exist. All else is billboards and Hollywood stage sets, bright lights, false store fronts and empty movie sets when she's gone.
There is no script in life, even when we have fun, like my nephew as assistant director in the local production of the Threepenny Opera, Brechtian in all its Brecht-like social commentaries poking fun at the very idea (if such exists) of the idea of the three-act play/musical/opera/name your favorite three-part performance. Poverty is perennial. We are all beggars of one sort or another. Even when a governor has a "VISION FOR VIRGNIA" [sic] per the spelling geniuses at the Richmond Times-Dispatch (don't get me started about journalism as a professional career; remember, I worked in the industry - incompetence is infectious, don't passssss it onn).
Today, I feel clouded over, but if I could see the sky at night, the moon would reflect my thoughts like a wornout old penny. I wish I could stay in character but I have no character to stay today other than who I am, a wornout middle-aged man, lost in La Mancha, no windmills to knock over, no Tiger Brown or Macheath with whom I can chew the bull.
I have seen the past. I have seen the future. I know all there is to know. I have become who I wanted to become but never thought about what or who I'd be once I reached this position.
Now what? Now who? There are no mounted messengers to wing their way through the raucous crowd. There is only me, a meek mouse wandering through the field of wheat, eagles, hawks and owls on the prowl.
Childless. Futureless. Gone before I arrived. When the end has appeared, the applause died down, the fans and followers dispersed and on their paths to life, then what's left?
Silence.
The absence of light.
Nothing.
Supposed to be the perfect time to meditate, right? Meditate on what? Meditate on waiting until the next moment to write about, I suppose. The rest is forgotten details. Thankfully so. Let silence reign for a while. I have nothing new to write about. I am nothing but random states of energy. Let youth rule. Let them figure out if there's anything truly original. I never had kids to begin with. What do I know? I'm a deadend branch on the tree of life. Flowers are on other twigs, not me. Fruits are found on the living. Seek the blooms. I'm ready to be fertilizer, feeding the worms and roots. Blended into the background. You can't see me. I've disappeared.
Where does one go when one has no place to go? We find friends, we find hobbies/interests, we find many activities/thoughts. And when/if/where/how/who no longer exists, then what?
Personal reflection time. No material to write about. No thoughts to put down. Depression sets in - the other side of life, the shaded windows around one's thoughts, the shutting in, the shutting down. One person out of seven billion, more or less.
Where is the pick-me-up? Where is the "it'll be better tomorrow...no, wait, it'll be better in the next moment...just hang on"?
Feel all the neurochemelectric states of energy flowing through this temporary state of existence called a body in the form of a male member of one species. Feel them and weep. Feel them and laugh. Feel them and feel numb.
I am one person, dependent on my wife, making me codependent and crazy without her. I miss my wife when she travels - I lose my mind because I am only half a person, half as attentive, unable to complete common phrases in many languages I normally know how to speak with Chestney and her friend, Hillary. I am like the walking dead without my wife. I find no words to share with Maggie or Abby or Aspen or Nicholas or Keri or Rachel, Bruce or Anne or Kevin. I exist only because I know my wife is somewhere out there in the world and will be with me soon. Thus, my year of dedication to women is a year of dedication to one woman. She is my all, the only reason I exist. All else is billboards and Hollywood stage sets, bright lights, false store fronts and empty movie sets when she's gone.
There is no script in life, even when we have fun, like my nephew as assistant director in the local production of the Threepenny Opera, Brechtian in all its Brecht-like social commentaries poking fun at the very idea (if such exists) of the idea of the three-act play/musical/opera/name your favorite three-part performance. Poverty is perennial. We are all beggars of one sort or another. Even when a governor has a "VISION FOR VIRGNIA" [sic] per the spelling geniuses at the Richmond Times-Dispatch (don't get me started about journalism as a professional career; remember, I worked in the industry - incompetence is infectious, don't passssss it onn).
Today, I feel clouded over, but if I could see the sky at night, the moon would reflect my thoughts like a wornout old penny. I wish I could stay in character but I have no character to stay today other than who I am, a wornout middle-aged man, lost in La Mancha, no windmills to knock over, no Tiger Brown or Macheath with whom I can chew the bull.
I have seen the past. I have seen the future. I know all there is to know. I have become who I wanted to become but never thought about what or who I'd be once I reached this position.
Now what? Now who? There are no mounted messengers to wing their way through the raucous crowd. There is only me, a meek mouse wandering through the field of wheat, eagles, hawks and owls on the prowl.
Childless. Futureless. Gone before I arrived. When the end has appeared, the applause died down, the fans and followers dispersed and on their paths to life, then what's left?
Silence.
The absence of light.
Nothing.
Supposed to be the perfect time to meditate, right? Meditate on what? Meditate on waiting until the next moment to write about, I suppose. The rest is forgotten details. Thankfully so. Let silence reign for a while. I have nothing new to write about. I am nothing but random states of energy. Let youth rule. Let them figure out if there's anything truly original. I never had kids to begin with. What do I know? I'm a deadend branch on the tree of life. Flowers are on other twigs, not me. Fruits are found on the living. Seek the blooms. I'm ready to be fertilizer, feeding the worms and roots. Blended into the background. You can't see me. I've disappeared.
16 January 2010
Reading Faces
Question of the pre-game moment: exactly what's going on in the minds of Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw? Inquiring minds want to know...
Post-game thoughts: if Pearl's the hidden pearl we knew he would be, then there's no reason to hang our heads with the hire of Dooley because this new boy's gonna make some new recruits, fans and coaching staff wanna cry with joy.
Glad McDonnell had a good inauguration. I need to find out the story behind the lady with the whistle - her enthusiasm is intoxicating! At least my niece had a good performance in her marching band and other friends' friends did well in the VSU band, too. The words of George Washington and Patrick Henry are always inspiring, showing past Virginia governors know how to govern when they know who they represent, ALL the people, ALL the time - what a responsibility! I'm envious.
Post-game thoughts: if Pearl's the hidden pearl we knew he would be, then there's no reason to hang our heads with the hire of Dooley because this new boy's gonna make some new recruits, fans and coaching staff wanna cry with joy.
Glad McDonnell had a good inauguration. I need to find out the story behind the lady with the whistle - her enthusiasm is intoxicating! At least my niece had a good performance in her marching band and other friends' friends did well in the VSU band, too. The words of George Washington and Patrick Henry are always inspiring, showing past Virginia governors know how to govern when they know who they represent, ALL the people, ALL the time - what a responsibility! I'm envious.
15 January 2010
Shoulda What?
Thought for the day: Ask for questions and see if any answers appear. If not, then move on to the next character to develop in this story because the current character is uninteresting, tending toward questions that are not worth answering, asking about websites such as freedomfchs.com found while searching pictures at peopleofwalmart.com when one has more important stories to tell about our species than what we choose to imagine about those around us on this planet.
Let the next character go into space cruise ship development or funny storylines about Earth being an experimental zoo for other planetary inhabitants; in other words, humour, not humourlessness.
My friends invent new space exploration devices every day - let me use their creativity and happy outlook to drive my stories, not use stories about those prone to stay on this planet or perpetuate ideas about why they're in life situations they think are out of their control. There's too much out there to get excited about than to spend time coming up with subplots about what's here.
And such great inventions, too! My friend's new invention, for instance, a curiosity that's more than a curio cabinet, more than a music box, maybe larger than a bread box and definitely quieter than a church mouse. My friend says my Book of the Future, crystal ball and bag of other goodies are cryptic anachronisms. Time to put old toys away and move into the future. I'd already gotten rid of the basement computer in favor of the pocket calculator connected to my computer programmers' world-size superabacus. Guess even it isn't worth the cost of a subway token. My organic circuitry is old-fashioned, too, my friend claims.
Can't wait to show you more. I think it'll make for good storyline material during this story you and I find ourselves in the writing and reading of the blog, a tribute to many, include those Escher fans who want 3D to take us beyond cool "gotcha" graphics and into a Picasso-like behind-the-scenes cubist world.
We can make the world a better place when we focus on positive, life-affirming lifestyles, technologies, business practices, artistic insights, and other ways to see that this world will be here for all of us and our kin long after we're gone. See the big picture and all the small stuff becomes really, really small.
I hold every one of you in high esteem, knowing no one life is more important than any other because we contribute to the whole in ways unimaginable, beyond my comprehension even when I know what you're doing when you aren't sure. No matter whether you're putting the grease in the gearbox that runs the machine that sews the garments together that makes the clothes that get shipped to another place on the other side of the world for people to buy reasonably-priced merchandise, or you're the person on a limited budget, balancing alimony payments, food stamps and a minimum-wage job to feed yourself and your children, you're the most important person in the world. Remember that humour is what keeps us all together. We all face tragedy, chaos and disorder sometime in our lives, some more than others. The point is to keep your head up, see the far horizon and know how the world is only here in all its wonder because of you, no matter who you are or what you're doing.
Let the next character go into space cruise ship development or funny storylines about Earth being an experimental zoo for other planetary inhabitants; in other words, humour, not humourlessness.
My friends invent new space exploration devices every day - let me use their creativity and happy outlook to drive my stories, not use stories about those prone to stay on this planet or perpetuate ideas about why they're in life situations they think are out of their control. There's too much out there to get excited about than to spend time coming up with subplots about what's here.
And such great inventions, too! My friend's new invention, for instance, a curiosity that's more than a curio cabinet, more than a music box, maybe larger than a bread box and definitely quieter than a church mouse. My friend says my Book of the Future, crystal ball and bag of other goodies are cryptic anachronisms. Time to put old toys away and move into the future. I'd already gotten rid of the basement computer in favor of the pocket calculator connected to my computer programmers' world-size superabacus. Guess even it isn't worth the cost of a subway token. My organic circuitry is old-fashioned, too, my friend claims.
Can't wait to show you more. I think it'll make for good storyline material during this story you and I find ourselves in the writing and reading of the blog, a tribute to many, include those Escher fans who want 3D to take us beyond cool "gotcha" graphics and into a Picasso-like behind-the-scenes cubist world.
We can make the world a better place when we focus on positive, life-affirming lifestyles, technologies, business practices, artistic insights, and other ways to see that this world will be here for all of us and our kin long after we're gone. See the big picture and all the small stuff becomes really, really small.
I hold every one of you in high esteem, knowing no one life is more important than any other because we contribute to the whole in ways unimaginable, beyond my comprehension even when I know what you're doing when you aren't sure. No matter whether you're putting the grease in the gearbox that runs the machine that sews the garments together that makes the clothes that get shipped to another place on the other side of the world for people to buy reasonably-priced merchandise, or you're the person on a limited budget, balancing alimony payments, food stamps and a minimum-wage job to feed yourself and your children, you're the most important person in the world. Remember that humour is what keeps us all together. We all face tragedy, chaos and disorder sometime in our lives, some more than others. The point is to keep your head up, see the far horizon and know how the world is only here in all its wonder because of you, no matter who you are or what you're doing.
If At First You Don't Secede
For some reason, I never can remember if I've discussed with you/me the definition of friend/friendship. Have I? I have? Well, then, I'll skip repeating myself once again.
According to my friends, no matter whether one uses a popular search site versus any other, freedom of expression is universal and not subject to the quaint notion of Internet barriers like firewalls. Therefore, be not concerned with words like google or baidu - they are but commercial enterprises subject to the vagaries of business success and failure. The message is not in the medium. The media are not the message. The message is clear and right in front of you. Don't waste your time looking for it in quarterly reports, apple orchards, or the new (le novo?) wave of nibbles and bits.
Until next time, when I might have enough information to reveal what my friend has invented. Oh, but my friend's a sly dog, never submitted paperwork to patent the work my friend invents, better prepared to take the market quickly, pull out the profits, and let the dogs have the scraps to fight over in court.
According to my friends, no matter whether one uses a popular search site versus any other, freedom of expression is universal and not subject to the quaint notion of Internet barriers like firewalls. Therefore, be not concerned with words like google or baidu - they are but commercial enterprises subject to the vagaries of business success and failure. The message is not in the medium. The media are not the message. The message is clear and right in front of you. Don't waste your time looking for it in quarterly reports, apple orchards, or the new (le novo?) wave of nibbles and bits.
Until next time, when I might have enough information to reveal what my friend has invented. Oh, but my friend's a sly dog, never submitted paperwork to patent the work my friend invents, better prepared to take the market quickly, pull out the profits, and let the dogs have the scraps to fight over in court.
14 January 2010
A View With Room To Go
In our lives we encounter those who have skills or talents/gifts we will never obtain or levels we will rarely attain. Today, those who have care and concern beyond measure reach out to the injured, hungry, lost and dying citizens on the Haitian island. To them, I bow and give honour, hoping tomorrow I can match with my whole blood or blood platelet donation a small part of your gift for compassion.
Tsunamis, floods and earthquakes teach us there is no country, religious practice or lifestyle that divides our species - we are united in the fragility of our bodies compared to the natural "powers" of this planet, unexpected or haphazard as they may seem to be (with no cause or reason).
May we all find a way to reach out to one another in good times so that in bad times our barriers are gone and assistance is much easier and quicker to give. The life you save is truly your own.
Tsunamis, floods and earthquakes teach us there is no country, religious practice or lifestyle that divides our species - we are united in the fragility of our bodies compared to the natural "powers" of this planet, unexpected or haphazard as they may seem to be (with no cause or reason).
May we all find a way to reach out to one another in good times so that in bad times our barriers are gone and assistance is much easier and quicker to give. The life you save is truly your own.
13 January 2010
Exstimulating Circumstances
The winds of change, the winds of chance, what we know what we cannot say has passed. I have only one goal and from that goal I derive milestones which spin off subprojects and subsubprojects and subbasement library book research into submarine bases. What I miss I'le find, or so those who want to go dragon on me and test their wares seemingly unawares will find out.
My life is short but life is long and will go on long after I'm gone. Of that I'm sure. I know the messages and notes and rituals and closed doors that pass from generation to generation but so what?
File folder #420 - transcript from Livescribe audio recording # 13,495 (paraphrased):
"We must not move too fast because we want to make sure we're moving slow enough to get the message across."
"You mean, you haven't yet gotten the sign to tell us to move forward with the plan?"
"That's what I'm saying without saying. Get with the program!"
"I am. I have the one timestamped an hour ago."
"You need the one timestamped two hours ago, amended 10 minutes ago to account for changes in the last five minutes."
"But of course. What am I doing?"
= = =
Do or do nothing. That's what we pay you for, isn't it? Well, we pay you for something. I'm not exactly sure what, but we'll figure it, or you'll figure it out as you go along.
The point is to make everyone wealthy enough to afford to make their own choices, including the choice to hire more people to make their own fortune and make their own choices, who in turn can decide to hire more people, etc.
Life is a pyramid scheme. Haven't you noticed? Haven't all the signs been there all these thousands of years?
Oh, but this time you've decided to take into account why all the pyramids sit empty. How to take care of more than one condition, right? You want to take this three-dimensional puzzle and put it all together for the very first time, knowing that you'll never be rewarded by all the people all of the time, no matter how ingenious your solution will be.
Ask Bertrand Russell for advice on this one. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Hey Bertie, what do you say we stop factory production to solve global warming, putting more people on unemployment, and then while we're at it, let's figure out how to give all the people, including the ones with no jobs, "free"...no, strike that last word, universal medical care while we use war to end war and pay off our debts with our debts, claiming a record profit while we ask foreign governments for more money/time, all in the name of freedom, green as we can make it, and still have time to attend fundraisers to pay for our next reelection campaign? And that's just Monday's agenda.
Life's a busy beaver and then the dam bursts.
And I wonder why you get no respect. Who exactly is in charge anymore? Is it the people, who have no real clue what it takes to coordinate multilevel governmental negotiations within one country, let alone a few hundred? Is it you, who are caught between your honorable kin, the people, the press and the wall?
At the same time, you have to pretend to be patriotic while you give and take with other patriots on their native soil, loyal while giving away the farm, tough while conceding, weak while bombing someone's backyard and family-friendly while approving dirty work.
Would your job be any easier if you weren't trying to keep your job long enough to make your life comfortable after your job is over? After all, who's altruistic? Is anyone really working just for the people?
I've met computer programmers who could carry more variables in their heads than the average person could remember names. And that's all while they figure out new algorithms to control the variables in arrays across multiple subroutines. Are they any better or worse than the average politician's year worth of calendar entries sorted into a matrix of "who knows who" and "who can do what to make this deal go through for the next deal to fall into place"?
See why we've put all seven billion of you into a giant version of the Sims crossed with Command and Conquer with a few characters from WoW thrown in for humour? Simplifies the predictions. A little randomness mixed in with semper fi for what we need to get done to meet my one and only goal ==> getting us (or some of us) permanently off this planet and into other systems.
So, back to the situation at hand. How do we re-employ the despondently long-term unemployed to help pick up the slack so the so-called universal health care coverage is actually profitable without turning up the heat in this sauna called Planet Earth? "Green" jobs that can't be relocated overseas? That one made me laugh. I'd love to support Gore's plan, he and I (well, at least I) having been born and raised in Tennessee, but carbon cap trading is yesterday's news, pre-2008 global growth fairy dust. Call it "cut and run," if you will. You could always declare a world war, employing a lot of idle folks and sending a bunch of folks off to die, but who are you going to call the enemy and who's going to pay to have their hides saved this time?
Difficult choices, difficult choices...hmm...[strumming fingers on desktop]
I don't care about bipartisan solutions to this problem. I don't care about single party countries rattling their sabers or plurality countries crying foul.
It's really as difficult as it looks, isn't it? Too bad the people can't see what you're trying to do. It'll make interesting reading for political historians. Maybe not a bestseller but at least full of drama, twists and unexpected turns to the left and right. Makes me want to get every one of you to declare yourself a member of the same political party and get down to real negotiations. Throw aside doctrine, planks and platforms. As much as I dislike saying this, can you imagine a legislative body uniting under one flag, truly indivisible, reasonable and rational enough to put political ideology on the impossible-to-reach pedestal where it belongs?
But we like to gamble. We like to place bets on the future, never worrying about whether the bets will pay off because we won't be around to win or lose. Outflanking an enemy 20, 50 or 100 years from now doesn't make sense.
Are you committed to the short sale, making sure lobbyists get their investments back while the constituents get the short shrift like Lane Kiffin stuck it to the University of Tennessee, making Al Davis look like the Swami more than two swamis, Johnny Carson and Chris Berman, put together?
The long-term payoff is another option. Jumping party boundaries. Campfires are burning. The wagons are circling right. Question is, who's going to join? Who's going to get up on the stage of the campground meetings and declare there are no more sides anymore as long as people have "good, conservative values"?
While the right's evangelizing, what's the center, where most people reside, going to do? Form yet another group with more people and more power? Who's going to lead their charge down the middle and put a halt to the tiny but vocal flanks? How do you outflank the flanks?
Who's going to say, "Enough! I'm dropping my party affiliation so I can sit down with my fellow electeds and solve this problem correctly the first time?" Will someone negotiate a trade? For every Democrat who drops out, a Republican will follow?
What am I saying? Sometimes I let my dreams override what I see of the future. The future is more along the lines of this: a dramatic vote in Massachusetts, a last-minute change of mind when the House and Senate merge their versions, and a victory the majority can be proud of. Many countries will keep close tabs on the proceedings and proceed accordingly. It's the same thing all over again. If you don't believe me, you can look it up in old newspapers. The story hasn't changed but the names have been changed to protect the storyline.
If only someone had the courage to change the storyline...
Meanwhile, back in the laboratory, there's a new invention. A few days tinkering and my friend should have it ready. I can't wait to see the contraption he's contrived this time. He says that Kamen's sidewalk scooter is just a hoop and a stick by comparison. More as soon as I find out!
My life is short but life is long and will go on long after I'm gone. Of that I'm sure. I know the messages and notes and rituals and closed doors that pass from generation to generation but so what?
File folder #420 - transcript from Livescribe audio recording # 13,495 (paraphrased):
"We must not move too fast because we want to make sure we're moving slow enough to get the message across."
"You mean, you haven't yet gotten the sign to tell us to move forward with the plan?"
"That's what I'm saying without saying. Get with the program!"
"I am. I have the one timestamped an hour ago."
"You need the one timestamped two hours ago, amended 10 minutes ago to account for changes in the last five minutes."
"But of course. What am I doing?"
= = =
Do or do nothing. That's what we pay you for, isn't it? Well, we pay you for something. I'm not exactly sure what, but we'll figure it, or you'll figure it out as you go along.
The point is to make everyone wealthy enough to afford to make their own choices, including the choice to hire more people to make their own fortune and make their own choices, who in turn can decide to hire more people, etc.
Life is a pyramid scheme. Haven't you noticed? Haven't all the signs been there all these thousands of years?
Oh, but this time you've decided to take into account why all the pyramids sit empty. How to take care of more than one condition, right? You want to take this three-dimensional puzzle and put it all together for the very first time, knowing that you'll never be rewarded by all the people all of the time, no matter how ingenious your solution will be.
Ask Bertrand Russell for advice on this one. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Hey Bertie, what do you say we stop factory production to solve global warming, putting more people on unemployment, and then while we're at it, let's figure out how to give all the people, including the ones with no jobs, "free"...no, strike that last word, universal medical care while we use war to end war and pay off our debts with our debts, claiming a record profit while we ask foreign governments for more money/time, all in the name of freedom, green as we can make it, and still have time to attend fundraisers to pay for our next reelection campaign? And that's just Monday's agenda.
Life's a busy beaver and then the dam bursts.
And I wonder why you get no respect. Who exactly is in charge anymore? Is it the people, who have no real clue what it takes to coordinate multilevel governmental negotiations within one country, let alone a few hundred? Is it you, who are caught between your honorable kin, the people, the press and the wall?
At the same time, you have to pretend to be patriotic while you give and take with other patriots on their native soil, loyal while giving away the farm, tough while conceding, weak while bombing someone's backyard and family-friendly while approving dirty work.
Would your job be any easier if you weren't trying to keep your job long enough to make your life comfortable after your job is over? After all, who's altruistic? Is anyone really working just for the people?
I've met computer programmers who could carry more variables in their heads than the average person could remember names. And that's all while they figure out new algorithms to control the variables in arrays across multiple subroutines. Are they any better or worse than the average politician's year worth of calendar entries sorted into a matrix of "who knows who" and "who can do what to make this deal go through for the next deal to fall into place"?
See why we've put all seven billion of you into a giant version of the Sims crossed with Command and Conquer with a few characters from WoW thrown in for humour? Simplifies the predictions. A little randomness mixed in with semper fi for what we need to get done to meet my one and only goal ==> getting us (or some of us) permanently off this planet and into other systems.
So, back to the situation at hand. How do we re-employ the despondently long-term unemployed to help pick up the slack so the so-called universal health care coverage is actually profitable without turning up the heat in this sauna called Planet Earth? "Green" jobs that can't be relocated overseas? That one made me laugh. I'd love to support Gore's plan, he and I (well, at least I) having been born and raised in Tennessee, but carbon cap trading is yesterday's news, pre-2008 global growth fairy dust. Call it "cut and run," if you will. You could always declare a world war, employing a lot of idle folks and sending a bunch of folks off to die, but who are you going to call the enemy and who's going to pay to have their hides saved this time?
Difficult choices, difficult choices...hmm...[strumming fingers on desktop]
I don't care about bipartisan solutions to this problem. I don't care about single party countries rattling their sabers or plurality countries crying foul.
It's really as difficult as it looks, isn't it? Too bad the people can't see what you're trying to do. It'll make interesting reading for political historians. Maybe not a bestseller but at least full of drama, twists and unexpected turns to the left and right. Makes me want to get every one of you to declare yourself a member of the same political party and get down to real negotiations. Throw aside doctrine, planks and platforms. As much as I dislike saying this, can you imagine a legislative body uniting under one flag, truly indivisible, reasonable and rational enough to put political ideology on the impossible-to-reach pedestal where it belongs?
But we like to gamble. We like to place bets on the future, never worrying about whether the bets will pay off because we won't be around to win or lose. Outflanking an enemy 20, 50 or 100 years from now doesn't make sense.
Are you committed to the short sale, making sure lobbyists get their investments back while the constituents get the short shrift like Lane Kiffin stuck it to the University of Tennessee, making Al Davis look like the Swami more than two swamis, Johnny Carson and Chris Berman, put together?
The long-term payoff is another option. Jumping party boundaries. Campfires are burning. The wagons are circling right. Question is, who's going to join? Who's going to get up on the stage of the campground meetings and declare there are no more sides anymore as long as people have "good, conservative values"?
While the right's evangelizing, what's the center, where most people reside, going to do? Form yet another group with more people and more power? Who's going to lead their charge down the middle and put a halt to the tiny but vocal flanks? How do you outflank the flanks?
Who's going to say, "Enough! I'm dropping my party affiliation so I can sit down with my fellow electeds and solve this problem correctly the first time?" Will someone negotiate a trade? For every Democrat who drops out, a Republican will follow?
What am I saying? Sometimes I let my dreams override what I see of the future. The future is more along the lines of this: a dramatic vote in Massachusetts, a last-minute change of mind when the House and Senate merge their versions, and a victory the majority can be proud of. Many countries will keep close tabs on the proceedings and proceed accordingly. It's the same thing all over again. If you don't believe me, you can look it up in old newspapers. The story hasn't changed but the names have been changed to protect the storyline.
If only someone had the courage to change the storyline...
Meanwhile, back in the laboratory, there's a new invention. A few days tinkering and my friend should have it ready. I can't wait to see the contraption he's contrived this time. He says that Kamen's sidewalk scooter is just a hoop and a stick by comparison. More as soon as I find out!
Fiskars / Whiskers
Watching an object pass near our planet today and thinking...no, rephrase: watching a thinking object near our planet and passing today.
If two cultures participate in the exchange of goods and services, do they not also allow themselves to exchange their cultural practices as well?
What if all you knew boiled down to one moment in time thousands of years before you lived and all else was the happenchancehappenstancehappiness effect?
What if you could sum up your life with four or five websites? For instance:
Thank goodness for humour. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to take the joke that I get or see there is no butt of the jokester's punchline. Ashes and dust. Hallbergmoos and Port-au-Prince. Star-shaped buildings (not pentagons), built for modernity, withstanding earth-shattering moments, linked to Hu Jintao, Ted Turner and Doc Chevalier.
There is no argument here, no cause to cause causes to fight for, no words worth spouting from broken rooftops.
There is this planet, and other planets and motorised planet cruisers. There are practical jokes a-plenty, tricksters stealing hodrods and hopping planets to pull pranks on unsuspecting planetudinal planetoids.
Laughter is not restricted to Earth. Knowledge is local but also universal.
Being a new character in this new book, my sarcasm and wit are restricted. I am the cantankerous, cranky next-door neighbour. I am the bedeviled, toothless wunderkind from a bygone ear, wax and ear hair clouding my aural vision.
I am the yellowed tissue on old balsa wood flying models. I am the dust on the windowsill. I am the voice no one hears in the market square.
Such is my present. If you only knew my past! The future...well, it's not so long in the making, less time for the taking, fewer gold claims for the staking.
And what I know? Well, you don't have time to listen to all my tales. I am an old person, an elder, wise in years, full of wisecracks and cracked skin, able to tell stories of leaping tall buildings and saving lords, ladies and damsels in dis dress I'm wearing. Why am I wearing this dress? Ah! See, senility has its advantages. A wardrobe is just a closet to me, the clothes I put on no longer distinguishable, their cultural heritage unimportant to my poor eyesight and fading memory. This is not a dress, you say? It is a desert herder's clothing? So be it. Is my backside covered? Good. Then let's sit down and talk.
When I was young, an old Guatemalan woman found me wandering the streets alone. She knew where my family lived and made sure my parents were distracted for a while. Then she took me into her travel trailer. There, she showed me the wonders of her past, her beauty in youth, her grandmother's wisdom, and the path her male heirs were taking. She laid a burden on my chest, a bag of trinkets some would say, the collection of her life as she had lived, full of love and compassion and knowledge of the world outside of books - the whole universe, as a matter of fact. I was two, maybe three years old. I had a small vocabulary of my local language but a vast understanding of people's thoughts and feelings.
Time has wiped out many of my memories. I no longer remember her name but I remember the precious items she gave me. A can of salt-preserved soup. A carved wooden bird, like a chickadee. A lock of black hair tied with a ribbon, handmade, of many colours of thread. A small pocketknife, sharp but its blade tip broken. A dried flower, perhaps a petunia. A small book, written in Spanish, about mischievous creatures who live in the woods. A photo of the old woman as a teenager (what beauty, still preserved in the old woman's smile!). An adobe brick. A small stick with notches along one side.
She spoke to me in a mixture of Spanish and English, holding my hands in hers, making sure I knew that this world is but one world and there are many other worlds yet to be discovered or understood. I felt like I had been with her for days but when I returned to my house my parents acted like only 30 or 45 minutes had passed since I disappeared. In their hustle and bustle and worry and smothering me with love they did not see me put the small bag in the corner of the storage room.
I was a normal boy, doing what little boys and girls do. I thought the bag of those items so important to the old woman were like treasure chest relics. I showed them to my preschool mates, making up stories about the trinkets, giving them names and histories going back many generations. With time and age, my friends made offers to me to trade their precious toys for my trinkets. At first I didn't relent, thinking that I should keep the items in memory of the old woman, who never showed back up in my life. Then, as my friends accumulated high-value gifts from their parents, such as watches and rings and windup race cars, I traded most of my bag's contents away.
Today, here is what I have left for you - the broken pocketknife, the hair (I traded the ribbon), and the dust that's left of the dried flower that has fallen apart over the years, and of course the bag.
See, this knife has never rusted, the hair is still as shiny and smooth as the day it was cut off the woman's head but the flower is gone. Or rather, the flower is now crushed petals and pollen. I looked at the pieces in a microscope once, able to see the veins in the flower petals.
I still believe what she told me, that this world is one of many, that we are but one set of mischievous creatures wandering this planet and that all we have is what we give others. I know what she knows, through more scientific and deductive methods, but arriving at the same conclusions. She carried the wisdom of the lineage of generations and I discovered the wisdom spread out among the members of generations living at one time.
Which puts us here together in this moment. I am old. The days ahead of me are few. I have accumulated much monetary wealth, which has no meaning to me. Instead, this bag and these trinkets are all I really own, all I can truly give away. You will find in my home many more treasures I've collected, some personal, some simply souvenirs of a life of travel and adventure. Look at each one carefully. They, like this old woman's bag, are clues. Some you will need. Some you will not understand. All of them were important to me at one time but may not be important to you now or ever.
Like the old woman's male heirs, you may not be the one to use these clues for a better life. Feel free to give them away, trade them or sell them. Clues have a way of finding their owners so don't spend much time deciding who gets what. Just let them go if you think they have no meaning to you because you'll probably be right.
Life, you'll see, young lady, is like that. You may be three or four years old today and think everyday is like forever and you'll be right. You'll also find that forever gets shorter and shorter as you get older. Don't worry about the relationship between your life and time. They are one. Spend time getting to know those around you and you'll discover what forever really means. It is inside and outside of these trinkets. It's in the words I say and the warmth you feel of your hands in mine.
When you discover the secrets that others want to hide from you, do not brag about what you know. Let them keep their thoughts that they hold something precious and dear to themselves. Instead, put the secrets to use in the world around you so that others may find the clues for themselves, too.
I know you're getting antsy and want to go. You're not going to remember everything I tell you, especially since you don't speak English, so take this bag and enjoy your life. I am leaving this household to you when I die, childless that I am. Your parents will not know why. Only you will know when you get older, look at yourself in the mirror of your thoughts and wake up for the very first time. Just as I did and the old woman before me. I wish I could be there and hear your thoughts when you see that time does not exist, this place does not exist and all is not what you've been led to believe. But that moment is not for me. It is yours alone, to interpret as you will, every one of us seeing in our own individual ways. Have a great life, dear child. Know that I will always miss you and you are not alone. Be free...
If two cultures participate in the exchange of goods and services, do they not also allow themselves to exchange their cultural practices as well?
What if all you knew boiled down to one moment in time thousands of years before you lived and all else was the happenchancehappenstancehappiness effect?
What if you could sum up your life with four or five websites? For instance:
- http://www.makezine.com
- http://www.carolina.com
- http://www.appalachiantrail.org
- http://www.organicgardening.com
- http://www.siggraph.org
Thank goodness for humour. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to take the joke that I get or see there is no butt of the jokester's punchline. Ashes and dust. Hallbergmoos and Port-au-Prince. Star-shaped buildings (not pentagons), built for modernity, withstanding earth-shattering moments, linked to Hu Jintao, Ted Turner and Doc Chevalier.
There is no argument here, no cause to cause causes to fight for, no words worth spouting from broken rooftops.
There is this planet, and other planets and motorised planet cruisers. There are practical jokes a-plenty, tricksters stealing hodrods and hopping planets to pull pranks on unsuspecting planetudinal planetoids.
Laughter is not restricted to Earth. Knowledge is local but also universal.
Being a new character in this new book, my sarcasm and wit are restricted. I am the cantankerous, cranky next-door neighbour. I am the bedeviled, toothless wunderkind from a bygone ear, wax and ear hair clouding my aural vision.
I am the yellowed tissue on old balsa wood flying models. I am the dust on the windowsill. I am the voice no one hears in the market square.
Such is my present. If you only knew my past! The future...well, it's not so long in the making, less time for the taking, fewer gold claims for the staking.
And what I know? Well, you don't have time to listen to all my tales. I am an old person, an elder, wise in years, full of wisecracks and cracked skin, able to tell stories of leaping tall buildings and saving lords, ladies and damsels in dis dress I'm wearing. Why am I wearing this dress? Ah! See, senility has its advantages. A wardrobe is just a closet to me, the clothes I put on no longer distinguishable, their cultural heritage unimportant to my poor eyesight and fading memory. This is not a dress, you say? It is a desert herder's clothing? So be it. Is my backside covered? Good. Then let's sit down and talk.
When I was young, an old Guatemalan woman found me wandering the streets alone. She knew where my family lived and made sure my parents were distracted for a while. Then she took me into her travel trailer. There, she showed me the wonders of her past, her beauty in youth, her grandmother's wisdom, and the path her male heirs were taking. She laid a burden on my chest, a bag of trinkets some would say, the collection of her life as she had lived, full of love and compassion and knowledge of the world outside of books - the whole universe, as a matter of fact. I was two, maybe three years old. I had a small vocabulary of my local language but a vast understanding of people's thoughts and feelings.
Time has wiped out many of my memories. I no longer remember her name but I remember the precious items she gave me. A can of salt-preserved soup. A carved wooden bird, like a chickadee. A lock of black hair tied with a ribbon, handmade, of many colours of thread. A small pocketknife, sharp but its blade tip broken. A dried flower, perhaps a petunia. A small book, written in Spanish, about mischievous creatures who live in the woods. A photo of the old woman as a teenager (what beauty, still preserved in the old woman's smile!). An adobe brick. A small stick with notches along one side.
She spoke to me in a mixture of Spanish and English, holding my hands in hers, making sure I knew that this world is but one world and there are many other worlds yet to be discovered or understood. I felt like I had been with her for days but when I returned to my house my parents acted like only 30 or 45 minutes had passed since I disappeared. In their hustle and bustle and worry and smothering me with love they did not see me put the small bag in the corner of the storage room.
I was a normal boy, doing what little boys and girls do. I thought the bag of those items so important to the old woman were like treasure chest relics. I showed them to my preschool mates, making up stories about the trinkets, giving them names and histories going back many generations. With time and age, my friends made offers to me to trade their precious toys for my trinkets. At first I didn't relent, thinking that I should keep the items in memory of the old woman, who never showed back up in my life. Then, as my friends accumulated high-value gifts from their parents, such as watches and rings and windup race cars, I traded most of my bag's contents away.
Today, here is what I have left for you - the broken pocketknife, the hair (I traded the ribbon), and the dust that's left of the dried flower that has fallen apart over the years, and of course the bag.
See, this knife has never rusted, the hair is still as shiny and smooth as the day it was cut off the woman's head but the flower is gone. Or rather, the flower is now crushed petals and pollen. I looked at the pieces in a microscope once, able to see the veins in the flower petals.
I still believe what she told me, that this world is one of many, that we are but one set of mischievous creatures wandering this planet and that all we have is what we give others. I know what she knows, through more scientific and deductive methods, but arriving at the same conclusions. She carried the wisdom of the lineage of generations and I discovered the wisdom spread out among the members of generations living at one time.
Which puts us here together in this moment. I am old. The days ahead of me are few. I have accumulated much monetary wealth, which has no meaning to me. Instead, this bag and these trinkets are all I really own, all I can truly give away. You will find in my home many more treasures I've collected, some personal, some simply souvenirs of a life of travel and adventure. Look at each one carefully. They, like this old woman's bag, are clues. Some you will need. Some you will not understand. All of them were important to me at one time but may not be important to you now or ever.
Like the old woman's male heirs, you may not be the one to use these clues for a better life. Feel free to give them away, trade them or sell them. Clues have a way of finding their owners so don't spend much time deciding who gets what. Just let them go if you think they have no meaning to you because you'll probably be right.
Life, you'll see, young lady, is like that. You may be three or four years old today and think everyday is like forever and you'll be right. You'll also find that forever gets shorter and shorter as you get older. Don't worry about the relationship between your life and time. They are one. Spend time getting to know those around you and you'll discover what forever really means. It is inside and outside of these trinkets. It's in the words I say and the warmth you feel of your hands in mine.
When you discover the secrets that others want to hide from you, do not brag about what you know. Let them keep their thoughts that they hold something precious and dear to themselves. Instead, put the secrets to use in the world around you so that others may find the clues for themselves, too.
I know you're getting antsy and want to go. You're not going to remember everything I tell you, especially since you don't speak English, so take this bag and enjoy your life. I am leaving this household to you when I die, childless that I am. Your parents will not know why. Only you will know when you get older, look at yourself in the mirror of your thoughts and wake up for the very first time. Just as I did and the old woman before me. I wish I could be there and hear your thoughts when you see that time does not exist, this place does not exist and all is not what you've been led to believe. But that moment is not for me. It is yours alone, to interpret as you will, every one of us seeing in our own individual ways. Have a great life, dear child. Know that I will always miss you and you are not alone. Be free...
12 January 2010
Torch / Flashlight / Lanthorn
As a writer who lives the life of the middle-aged country/suburban/housing estate frugal millionaire next door, I have the luxury to know I do not have to spend any money on the latest thing. I do not have to impress my neighbours. I do not have to own the technical gizmo to end all gizmos that will be replaced by the next gizmo tomorrow. I can survey the world around me, including members of my species and objects made by my species, and create the next story/blog entry. I follow the "storyline" created by my species in the telling of its daily existence in activities tied to news headlines and see into the future by looking back into the past stories that we tend to repeat over and over. I can consult ancient texts for fabricated storylines. I can see that the major themes are always about the upper classes of society, with the middle and lower classes getting their moment in the sun but rarely permanent places in the history books.
As a business person, I encourage my friends to get their inventions ready for production and their startup businesses ready for the next leap in product volume sales.
I watch the flow of the stream of social progress, occasionally sticking my foot out to see how the flow reacts, gauging the temperature and other aspects of the current state of state affairs. I drop a pebble in the pond, as they say, and watch how waves add together or cancel each other out. I flip on my portable pocket light and watch the roaches flee into the darkness.
I arbitrarily pick times to repeat these actions because, like the weather, I don't want to be completely predictable. I only want information to use for my next story, my next record of myself as a member of my species, the interplay of states of energy at the local level.
A creative writer uses all the tools available, including one's imagination, to craft a story, employing colloquial language, detailed descriptive scenes, raw emotions, and personal anecdotes to make the story writing interesting enough to keep writing. Some use formulaic writing to guarantee readers the same style story with different plot twists to make every story unique. Some use whatever comes along to throw into the pile of words, disregarding the potential for a potential audience.
Because I am generally happy and live in a sanitized, sheltered world, I do not include the deepest, darkest characters in my stories. In fact, I don't believe they exist. I see that all of us have reasons to live and what is an insane, incoherent life to one is a well-planned, rational life to another. People kill for a reason. People die for a reason. A nuclear scientist can be either a bomb maker or a curer of cancer, depending on how you want to write the story (or skew the headlines).
Some days, I don't like who I am. I honestly don't like being a writer. It's not the writing (or my "hack job" as I love to call my textual output, pretentious in my nonpretentiousness as I am). It's the thoughts that go into the writing. I am not a writer at all, in fact. I am a person of random thoughts, a person who sees the joy of making juxtapositions, who knows all there's ever going to be and knows all that ever was, not in exact details but in the way we say that elements react to one another, mixing and matching, flipping and spinning, theories abounding about boundless energy states. Once you see life as that "Matrix"-like social/visual mask over existence, you know all there is to know. The rest is details.
Do you believe the universe exists? Can you imagine more than you can imagine anyone else has imagined?
I believe in a positive future for our species because I know that our past has always been positive, negative headlines aside. We will accomplish more than we can possibly imagine at this moment. We will discover ways to manipulate energy states that will make our species both necessary and obsolete. We will go beyond what we think is the limit of the understanding of the universe as we know it.
In the meantime, we will struggle with the definition of what it means to be a member of our species. We will always struggle with the definition. We will always find ways to say that the past was better than today because the dead can't talk about the details about why the past wasn't always so great all the time (or at least not as great as the people in the present want to make the past out to be).
This moment is all I've got. In this moment, I have good neighbours who have no negative intentions on my life, a blue sky with a few thin clouds and a lot of sunshine, and my good health. I have a wife who loves me, a family who cares for me and who I care for them, a global economy that's seen as somewhat gloomy (but actually giving many of us more time to spend on what we love to do) and you.
I am a thinker, not a deep thinker, not a creative inventor or a mad scientist. Just this guy who was born of two members of my species in the hospital of a small town, growing up under regular, unexceptional conditions, reaching maturity slowly, finding happiness in his thoughts and glad to be alive. The majority of us are glad to be alive, with current conditions rarely optimal but sufficient for us to believe this moment and the next one will give us the opportunity to find other ways to be glad we're alive. We don't have to be happy all the time. In fact, we can be just the opposite, finding gladness in our misery.
I write because I am. I am because I write. We are the same set of interconnected energy states so I write about you when I write about me and vice versa.
I am sad because we haven't frozen the bank accounts of Iranian governmental leaders while they let legitimate opposition leaders in their country get killed. There is more here than meets my eye, of course, but solutions are available to take care of business, protecting the intelligent assets of a piece of Persia for future prosperity. Freedom and the responsibility to protect freedom is not chaos although others will lead you to believe so. What little we have learned, we primates, in these thousands of years we have called history-recording civilisation. How much we have forgotten!
Silence is my friend today, the cool, bright day my companion. Talk to you tomorrow.
As a business person, I encourage my friends to get their inventions ready for production and their startup businesses ready for the next leap in product volume sales.
I watch the flow of the stream of social progress, occasionally sticking my foot out to see how the flow reacts, gauging the temperature and other aspects of the current state of state affairs. I drop a pebble in the pond, as they say, and watch how waves add together or cancel each other out. I flip on my portable pocket light and watch the roaches flee into the darkness.
I arbitrarily pick times to repeat these actions because, like the weather, I don't want to be completely predictable. I only want information to use for my next story, my next record of myself as a member of my species, the interplay of states of energy at the local level.
A creative writer uses all the tools available, including one's imagination, to craft a story, employing colloquial language, detailed descriptive scenes, raw emotions, and personal anecdotes to make the story writing interesting enough to keep writing. Some use formulaic writing to guarantee readers the same style story with different plot twists to make every story unique. Some use whatever comes along to throw into the pile of words, disregarding the potential for a potential audience.
Because I am generally happy and live in a sanitized, sheltered world, I do not include the deepest, darkest characters in my stories. In fact, I don't believe they exist. I see that all of us have reasons to live and what is an insane, incoherent life to one is a well-planned, rational life to another. People kill for a reason. People die for a reason. A nuclear scientist can be either a bomb maker or a curer of cancer, depending on how you want to write the story (or skew the headlines).
Some days, I don't like who I am. I honestly don't like being a writer. It's not the writing (or my "hack job" as I love to call my textual output, pretentious in my nonpretentiousness as I am). It's the thoughts that go into the writing. I am not a writer at all, in fact. I am a person of random thoughts, a person who sees the joy of making juxtapositions, who knows all there's ever going to be and knows all that ever was, not in exact details but in the way we say that elements react to one another, mixing and matching, flipping and spinning, theories abounding about boundless energy states. Once you see life as that "Matrix"-like social/visual mask over existence, you know all there is to know. The rest is details.
Do you believe the universe exists? Can you imagine more than you can imagine anyone else has imagined?
I believe in a positive future for our species because I know that our past has always been positive, negative headlines aside. We will accomplish more than we can possibly imagine at this moment. We will discover ways to manipulate energy states that will make our species both necessary and obsolete. We will go beyond what we think is the limit of the understanding of the universe as we know it.
In the meantime, we will struggle with the definition of what it means to be a member of our species. We will always struggle with the definition. We will always find ways to say that the past was better than today because the dead can't talk about the details about why the past wasn't always so great all the time (or at least not as great as the people in the present want to make the past out to be).
This moment is all I've got. In this moment, I have good neighbours who have no negative intentions on my life, a blue sky with a few thin clouds and a lot of sunshine, and my good health. I have a wife who loves me, a family who cares for me and who I care for them, a global economy that's seen as somewhat gloomy (but actually giving many of us more time to spend on what we love to do) and you.
I am a thinker, not a deep thinker, not a creative inventor or a mad scientist. Just this guy who was born of two members of my species in the hospital of a small town, growing up under regular, unexceptional conditions, reaching maturity slowly, finding happiness in his thoughts and glad to be alive. The majority of us are glad to be alive, with current conditions rarely optimal but sufficient for us to believe this moment and the next one will give us the opportunity to find other ways to be glad we're alive. We don't have to be happy all the time. In fact, we can be just the opposite, finding gladness in our misery.
I write because I am. I am because I write. We are the same set of interconnected energy states so I write about you when I write about me and vice versa.
I am sad because we haven't frozen the bank accounts of Iranian governmental leaders while they let legitimate opposition leaders in their country get killed. There is more here than meets my eye, of course, but solutions are available to take care of business, protecting the intelligent assets of a piece of Persia for future prosperity. Freedom and the responsibility to protect freedom is not chaos although others will lead you to believe so. What little we have learned, we primates, in these thousands of years we have called history-recording civilisation. How much we have forgotten!
Silence is my friend today, the cool, bright day my companion. Talk to you tomorrow.
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