After Oliver Fontaine died, two friends of mine, Deena Ramos and James "Hardhat" White, had tattoos put on their skin.
Deena's tattoo was a 12-inch tall female Klingon warrior with an honourific message about Oliver written in the Klingon language (Deena at one time spoke fluent Klingon (a fictional language associated with the TV series "Star Trek" and its spinoffs), taught at the Klingon language school and was featured in the New York Times magazine in her Klingon garb).
Hardhat's tattoo was a spewing raised manhole (or confined space entry chimney, perhaps) with "In Memory of Oliver" written in English.
If I remember correctly, Jay Hereford took over some of Oliver's duties at work. Jay is one of the most laidback people I know, transitioning from one position in life to another like he already knew what's coming next.
We all have fond memories of one sort or another. Memories of my coworkers like Jay, Deena and Hardhat, as well as Joyce Battle, Dennis "Catdaddy" McPhearson, Janet Burns and many others, made the sewer flow monitoring business well worth working in and recalling. Moments like the time Alan Petroff pointed out to me the influence of ocean tide inflow on a sewer outfall (in Dania or Hollywood, Florida?).
With those thoughts floating in my head, I headed out to the local fishing spots on the Flint River today.
Since the Flint is a public waterway, I can't expect to conduct experiments in complete privacy, can I?
Sometime after 13:00 I was working with some colleagues to see if a Livescribe electronic pen could communicate with an electronic fishing rod leaned against a tree and send signals to a group of fish with organic circuits in their bodies.
Just as I was about to reverify our lab results, a couple of kids on an ATV drove up and panicked the fish, which darted away and swam upstream automatically.
After the kids drove by, I packed up my fishing gear and followed the fish upstream to the collection point.
I don't know what was happening but the fish seemed to get close to the collection box and then dart away at the last minute, as if their tiny fish brains were telling the fish that although they were strongly attracted to the entryway of the box they should not swim into the box because it was unnatural. That's not what they were supposed to do, my scientist friends told me.
That's why I always insist on proving technology in the field rather than claiming success in the lab.
After watching the fish for a few seconds, I decided to abort the test. I activated a circuit in the fish that caused the organic circuitry to dissolve into the surrounding fish tissue (or "self-destruct," in popular vocabulary), carried my fishing gear to the car and grabbed a bite to eat from Amber at the Sonic drive-thru. I would have preferred a butterscotch shake and burger from Inez's old place, Mountain View Restaurant, but the doors have long since been locked and the windows papered over, another local eatery lost to franchised fast-food chains.
At least while I conducted today's experiment, I chomped on a cigar and drank a beer in the midday sun while watching natural nature in all its midspring naturalness. A brief moment of peace in the great outdoors, despite the loud sounds of traffic on the nearby highway.
Have you ever watched someone roped off with carabiners and surfing the surface of a large sewer flow, feet planted on a 2x4, a makeshift surfboard? Have you ever watched soap suds from an upstream "one-hour Martinizing" dry cleaning business clean the crud off your waders while you're measuring the depth and peak speed of the flow through the sewer pipe? Or choke on an illegal dump of flammable liquids from a local smash repair shop, carefully exiting the chamber full of toxic fumes and hoping not to cause a spark that would ignite the gases and send you up into the sky like a living cannonball at a circus?
Life is about seeing all there is to see in this moment, not just sitting in an office all day and wondering what's out there.
Time for this ol' fellow to ponder the inside of his eyelids and take a nap!
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
22 April 2010
15 April 2010
Straw Hat, Fishing Rod and Real Life
Can a man not have a quiet afternoon casting his sinkers and lures into brambles and vines?
I'd just stepped off the cement trail down to the dirt path to find a spot to park my folding chair and tackle box when a "Hi! How ya doing?" barked out of a tree hanging over the river.
Two young men were joining their efforts to extract a rope swing trailing in slow-moving water on a hot spring day, near 85 deg F or thereabouts in north Alabama (Ali Baba, alakazam, alakazoo!).
Growing in the New Balance/Reebok/Redwing tread-stamped trail were spring beauty and starry chickweed, their blooms communicating to me their desire to feed insects in large numbers.
I nodded my John Deere woven head covering at them and found a meadowed spot hundreds of feet downstream of the fellows.
I'm no secret agent or sorcerer. However, under my employ, men and women compete against one another to provide me resources with which my associates and I can readily exchange information. The young swimmers up the way were a sign I was supposed to expect an unexpected report.
How old this gets. I set out the chair, opened the tackle box, found an alluring lure for those lurking ichthyology subjects in the deep pool of water beside a fallen log hosting muck and a much-missed soccer ball, set the top of the pole between the wild grape vine and the water and cast the artificial bait downstream.
That is, I attempted to cast the bait.
Instead, I wrapped the line around the trunk of a small sycamore.
I gently pulled on the line, unwrapped the tree, recast and watched a few fish follow the lure upstream toward my location.
Then a message buzzed in my hand. Those inventors!
My design team had rigged the fishing pole as an antenna to receive radio signals through the river water and transmit them to the organic circuitry installed in my palm.
I pointed the pole at the water and circled the bait just out of reach of the four- to six-inch shallow water swimmers while listening to a report from my associates.
All I asked for was a couple of weeks of letting the computer program run on its own set of binary digits!
And I'd get what I wanted if there was more cooperation. Now I'm hearing that the cartels are getting a little machismo in their morning cappucino and think they can muscle in on the action that ain't theirs for the taking.
Look, fellows, I told you it's share and share alike. You can't keep raking in all that profit and expect to keep it all to yourselves.
We're a family and when a family member disappoints me, I get angry. I don't get revenge. I don't get mad. I don't get even. I just let the family know it's all a matter of perspective as I demonstrate how business is business. Get cocky and you sink with a South Korean ship or Russian-made airplane ... or worse. Sorry, once it's done you can't bribe your way out of death.
I've asked my associates to take care of this business while I'm taking a few days off to fish. If my ears buzz again, I won't be happy. I won't laugh. And neither will you, you understand?
I carry a pocket paper journal where I keep coded ledgers that track those of you still living in the dark ages before the invention of the abacus, batch cards and automatons. After I received the radio message, I sat down with a beer and checked some notes in the journal.
Some of you are behind in your duties. If I see you aren't interested in balancing things up the way they should be, then, again my associates have the authority to open a few closed doors and disclose a few so-called secrets that won't be secret anymore.
The Book of the Future is under lock and key. You don't need to know what's going to happen next. After all, the future's your business and nobody else's so why should I have to spell out what you're going to do in this public forum?
Take care of business, willya? It's not like I'm asking you to solve world hunger, treat factory workers fairly or bring doubleknit polyester pantsuits back into fashion.
Now, back to my holiday. Once again, a quick thanks to all you folks who're doing what the future said you would be doing anyway. There's nothing in writing that says you have to do what you have to do. You can change the future at any time, if you know who you are not and that you don't exist, of course. A big if, but it can be done.
Look at a luna moth and ask yourself why such a big creature lives such a short time. When you know the answer, you know the future.
See, I told you it's all simple, right there in front of your eyes. Why you don't believe me, I can't say. Why all this desire for proof? You don't want a bunch of fireballs shaking the ground and scorching Earth, do you? Well, most of you don't.
I haven't asked my scientists to run simulations of what it would take to change the ocean currents unnaturally but I think it's time to work out the details. We've got the ability to create hundreds of millions of tonnes of nanotechnology that can reproduce itself radically and chaotically. But why would we want to change the ocean currents? I'll let you think about that one for a while.
I'd just stepped off the cement trail down to the dirt path to find a spot to park my folding chair and tackle box when a "Hi! How ya doing?" barked out of a tree hanging over the river.
Two young men were joining their efforts to extract a rope swing trailing in slow-moving water on a hot spring day, near 85 deg F or thereabouts in north Alabama (Ali Baba, alakazam, alakazoo!).
Growing in the New Balance/Reebok/Redwing tread-stamped trail were spring beauty and starry chickweed, their blooms communicating to me their desire to feed insects in large numbers.
I nodded my John Deere woven head covering at them and found a meadowed spot hundreds of feet downstream of the fellows.
I'm no secret agent or sorcerer. However, under my employ, men and women compete against one another to provide me resources with which my associates and I can readily exchange information. The young swimmers up the way were a sign I was supposed to expect an unexpected report.
How old this gets. I set out the chair, opened the tackle box, found an alluring lure for those lurking ichthyology subjects in the deep pool of water beside a fallen log hosting muck and a much-missed soccer ball, set the top of the pole between the wild grape vine and the water and cast the artificial bait downstream.
That is, I attempted to cast the bait.
Instead, I wrapped the line around the trunk of a small sycamore.
I gently pulled on the line, unwrapped the tree, recast and watched a few fish follow the lure upstream toward my location.
Then a message buzzed in my hand. Those inventors!
My design team had rigged the fishing pole as an antenna to receive radio signals through the river water and transmit them to the organic circuitry installed in my palm.
I pointed the pole at the water and circled the bait just out of reach of the four- to six-inch shallow water swimmers while listening to a report from my associates.
All I asked for was a couple of weeks of letting the computer program run on its own set of binary digits!
And I'd get what I wanted if there was more cooperation. Now I'm hearing that the cartels are getting a little machismo in their morning cappucino and think they can muscle in on the action that ain't theirs for the taking.
Look, fellows, I told you it's share and share alike. You can't keep raking in all that profit and expect to keep it all to yourselves.
We're a family and when a family member disappoints me, I get angry. I don't get revenge. I don't get mad. I don't get even. I just let the family know it's all a matter of perspective as I demonstrate how business is business. Get cocky and you sink with a South Korean ship or Russian-made airplane ... or worse. Sorry, once it's done you can't bribe your way out of death.
I've asked my associates to take care of this business while I'm taking a few days off to fish. If my ears buzz again, I won't be happy. I won't laugh. And neither will you, you understand?
I carry a pocket paper journal where I keep coded ledgers that track those of you still living in the dark ages before the invention of the abacus, batch cards and automatons. After I received the radio message, I sat down with a beer and checked some notes in the journal.
Some of you are behind in your duties. If I see you aren't interested in balancing things up the way they should be, then, again my associates have the authority to open a few closed doors and disclose a few so-called secrets that won't be secret anymore.
The Book of the Future is under lock and key. You don't need to know what's going to happen next. After all, the future's your business and nobody else's so why should I have to spell out what you're going to do in this public forum?
Take care of business, willya? It's not like I'm asking you to solve world hunger, treat factory workers fairly or bring doubleknit polyester pantsuits back into fashion.
Now, back to my holiday. Once again, a quick thanks to all you folks who're doing what the future said you would be doing anyway. There's nothing in writing that says you have to do what you have to do. You can change the future at any time, if you know who you are not and that you don't exist, of course. A big if, but it can be done.
Look at a luna moth and ask yourself why such a big creature lives such a short time. When you know the answer, you know the future.
See, I told you it's all simple, right there in front of your eyes. Why you don't believe me, I can't say. Why all this desire for proof? You don't want a bunch of fireballs shaking the ground and scorching Earth, do you? Well, most of you don't.
I haven't asked my scientists to run simulations of what it would take to change the ocean currents unnaturally but I think it's time to work out the details. We've got the ability to create hundreds of millions of tonnes of nanotechnology that can reproduce itself radically and chaotically. But why would we want to change the ocean currents? I'll let you think about that one for a while.
27 March 2010
Served by Sydney
First, Morgan at Beauregard's, having a laugh about too many chips with the fish tacos. Then the quiet Sydney serving Starbucks at Unclaimed Baggage, followed by Dana's declaration that the 8th of May is just as important as the 21st, then interestingly enough (but never enough) blocks of Sweetwater Valley (not Philadelphia cream) cheese and Mayfield ice cream served by Sally Anna, and lastly Kayla kangaroo (or kale or cabbage or koala, but not Banana Anna) at Crazy Tomato's with chocolate cake (but not tiramisu).
Who is Saint Anthony and why does his image appear on the medal hanging off the neck of an electronics salesperson who sold us a Canon SD1200? Where did the French-speaking salesperson go and has she been practicing?
Time for time to read another short stack of pancaked pages:
Today, for instance. I had received a message to sort through some used cameras at UBC (thanks, Patti!), looking for tiny marks that to sensitive fingers were instructions written in Braille.
While looking for the right camera with the right writing, I bumped into some lovely ladies - what is it about women my age that makes life so darn ... well, worth living? Is it knowing their wisdom makes them wise up to wiseguys? Why's that? Today wasn't one of those days. When I'm occupied looking for the clues that give us clueless clutzes the information we don't know we're looking for, we tend to ignore the body language and "Hey, I'm having a party at my lakehouse" kind of simple invitation any other day of the week I'd nod my head and say, "Why not?"
Instead, I was told I had to look at the front page of a few books (those listed above) for more Braille superimposed over prologues, introductions and praises.
Many snowbirds flying north for the summer today.
Many DoD stickers in the UBC carpark, too.
A leatherclad fellow buying for Flag Day.
What have geoengineering and the UK space program got in common?
When was the last time I played with a geehaw whimmy diddle? 'Bout time I picked up my grandfather's craft and carve a few for my family, is it not?
Family's all I've got. I watch the family struggles on our planet and ask you what you're doing to clear up family troubles. A colloquial question: why ain't you putting family first? You think you're so uppity and special you can ignore family what mightn't've treated you the way you think you should've been treated? Life ain't a smooth patch of pavement, my friends. You ride your chopper without helmet or seatbelt and take your chances from birth. There aren't enough parachutes to go around for those of you who fly, and no guarantee of a safe landing, neither.
I don't have time to read the Book of the Future today because I'm putting immediate family needs ahead of the rest of you. But I've got time to say this:
We can squeeze and squeeze this planet for all it's worth. No one will stop us - in fact, some will enjoy the show. With that knowledge (we're the only ones responsible for ourselves), let's have fun turning ourselves around. The planet is one big factory or playground. We bipeds can count the resources available to us as one species among many. Let us see our worth in relation to what we use as if we're one big family sharing the same bathtub, sink, kitchen and bed. Take turns without using up all the hot water. Do our chores - washing dishes and clothes, tending the food supply, changing the bed linen - with ingenuity and thankfulness. We depend on one another, period.
That's all for now. Time for meditative silence to appreciate the living while remembering the dead. We grow too soon old and too late smart, becoming fodder for the early bird's earthworm by the time our mourning gives way to morning, catchphrases unimportant in the light of day. Leaders, followers, opponents, observers, apathetics, up top or Down Under - we're all the same in/to the end ... family. Surely, you're used to it by now.
Should Apple be punished for supporting inhumane working conditions, no matter their claim to innocence - a surcharge for using suppliers who exploit their workers? Was it Nike or Kathy Lee Gifford who already answered that question once before? Should a country like China or the U.S. have to answer their part in that question?
Maybe a South Korean sinking ship will help us remember the Maine? A main cause often rises long after the "facts" raise a cause. One fact is overdue. Do you have a clue?
What about real estate prices in Oman? Should you abandon your debts in Dubai and if so, can someone extradite you to face the executioner ... I mean, the executor?
A family is not an anomaly when you feel the bumps beneath your fingers properly.
Who is Saint Anthony and why does his image appear on the medal hanging off the neck of an electronics salesperson who sold us a Canon SD1200? Where did the French-speaking salesperson go and has she been practicing?
Time for time to read another short stack of pancaked pages:
- "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil
- "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin
- "Cotton's Renaissance" by Jacobson Smith
- "A Place on the Water: An Angler's Reflections on Home" by Jerry Dennis
- "for Entrepreneurs who considered Suicide when business Got TOUGH!" by Dr. Robert S. Shumake
Today, for instance. I had received a message to sort through some used cameras at UBC (thanks, Patti!), looking for tiny marks that to sensitive fingers were instructions written in Braille.
While looking for the right camera with the right writing, I bumped into some lovely ladies - what is it about women my age that makes life so darn ... well, worth living? Is it knowing their wisdom makes them wise up to wiseguys? Why's that? Today wasn't one of those days. When I'm occupied looking for the clues that give us clueless clutzes the information we don't know we're looking for, we tend to ignore the body language and "Hey, I'm having a party at my lakehouse" kind of simple invitation any other day of the week I'd nod my head and say, "Why not?"
Instead, I was told I had to look at the front page of a few books (those listed above) for more Braille superimposed over prologues, introductions and praises.
Many snowbirds flying north for the summer today.
Many DoD stickers in the UBC carpark, too.
A leatherclad fellow buying for Flag Day.
What have geoengineering and the UK space program got in common?
When was the last time I played with a geehaw whimmy diddle? 'Bout time I picked up my grandfather's craft and carve a few for my family, is it not?
Family's all I've got. I watch the family struggles on our planet and ask you what you're doing to clear up family troubles. A colloquial question: why ain't you putting family first? You think you're so uppity and special you can ignore family what mightn't've treated you the way you think you should've been treated? Life ain't a smooth patch of pavement, my friends. You ride your chopper without helmet or seatbelt and take your chances from birth. There aren't enough parachutes to go around for those of you who fly, and no guarantee of a safe landing, neither.
I don't have time to read the Book of the Future today because I'm putting immediate family needs ahead of the rest of you. But I've got time to say this:
We can squeeze and squeeze this planet for all it's worth. No one will stop us - in fact, some will enjoy the show. With that knowledge (we're the only ones responsible for ourselves), let's have fun turning ourselves around. The planet is one big factory or playground. We bipeds can count the resources available to us as one species among many. Let us see our worth in relation to what we use as if we're one big family sharing the same bathtub, sink, kitchen and bed. Take turns without using up all the hot water. Do our chores - washing dishes and clothes, tending the food supply, changing the bed linen - with ingenuity and thankfulness. We depend on one another, period.
That's all for now. Time for meditative silence to appreciate the living while remembering the dead. We grow too soon old and too late smart, becoming fodder for the early bird's earthworm by the time our mourning gives way to morning, catchphrases unimportant in the light of day. Leaders, followers, opponents, observers, apathetics, up top or Down Under - we're all the same in/to the end ... family. Surely, you're used to it by now.
Should Apple be punished for supporting inhumane working conditions, no matter their claim to innocence - a surcharge for using suppliers who exploit their workers? Was it Nike or Kathy Lee Gifford who already answered that question once before? Should a country like China or the U.S. have to answer their part in that question?
Maybe a South Korean sinking ship will help us remember the Maine? A main cause often rises long after the "facts" raise a cause. One fact is overdue. Do you have a clue?
What about real estate prices in Oman? Should you abandon your debts in Dubai and if so, can someone extradite you to face the executioner ... I mean, the executor?
A family is not an anomaly when you feel the bumps beneath your fingers properly.
21 March 2010
Let Level Heads Prevail
While secret organisations prepare to call their troops to actions, I hope we have our national guard on duty in this country, focused on keeping us focused on the big picture and not on local slices of time that are always full of change and thus full of strong emotional pull. Don't get trapped into getting provoked. Folks hold flint and steel and cotton balls, ready to set the spark of chaotic controversy for their personal gain, not yours.
I want the ability to shop for fresh fruit and vegetables without worrying about if I'm carrying the politically-correct paperwork while passing through armoured checkpoints. I have friends who have lived in such situations and are lucky to be alive to tell me about them.
We choose our futures in the thoughts and actions of this moment. Consider your next move carefully. Our future depends on what you say or do right now.
Some people have already revealed what they're going to do next and their leaders are telling them to hold off until the sign is given to everyone in their groups to proceed in a coordinated maneuver.
I'm neutral about what's going to happen next. The Book of the Future has already prepared me for the best and the worst that can happen. Either way, I made my peace with the world the day my brother in-law died in 2006. I am not him but I'm prepared by my Eagle Boy Scout training to do the right thing by him.
I will not let this country fail or falter in the face of global competition. This country represents hope for the world in the realm of free speech and freedom of religious practice - immigrants keep pouring in who know what other countries' leaders and their organisations do not represent well: government of the people, by the people and for the people. It's not just about money, although money helps us pay for those who protect the freedoms we love dearly.
Have mercy on your neighbour - you do not know what s/he has gone through to get where s/he is in life right now.
If you start a class war, be prepared to face the consequences of your actions. Heroes and enemies are just words. The pen is mightier than a sword and deadlier than a bullet in the heat of battle. Have you considered the counter-counter-counter-counter-counter attacks already prepared against you?
Unemployment is high and unrest is growing. GDP and gross domestic emotional stability are not directly proportional. Do you want to be the one who helped social scientists develop the correct formula?
I close this blog entry in order to enjoy domestic tranquility with my wife and our two cats - my ultimate moment of meditation no one interrupts without consequence.
This blog is about you and your future. I am unimportant. If you read these words, consider their meaning carefully. Your life is in your hands, not mine. This moment's all I've got and I choose to spend it with my life partner. Maybe you should, too. There's always a chance it's the last moment any of us have together but I sure hope not. I've got a moon cruise to catch one day soon - who else but my wife to spend it with!
I want the ability to shop for fresh fruit and vegetables without worrying about if I'm carrying the politically-correct paperwork while passing through armoured checkpoints. I have friends who have lived in such situations and are lucky to be alive to tell me about them.
We choose our futures in the thoughts and actions of this moment. Consider your next move carefully. Our future depends on what you say or do right now.
Some people have already revealed what they're going to do next and their leaders are telling them to hold off until the sign is given to everyone in their groups to proceed in a coordinated maneuver.
I'm neutral about what's going to happen next. The Book of the Future has already prepared me for the best and the worst that can happen. Either way, I made my peace with the world the day my brother in-law died in 2006. I am not him but I'm prepared by my Eagle Boy Scout training to do the right thing by him.
I will not let this country fail or falter in the face of global competition. This country represents hope for the world in the realm of free speech and freedom of religious practice - immigrants keep pouring in who know what other countries' leaders and their organisations do not represent well: government of the people, by the people and for the people. It's not just about money, although money helps us pay for those who protect the freedoms we love dearly.
Have mercy on your neighbour - you do not know what s/he has gone through to get where s/he is in life right now.
If you start a class war, be prepared to face the consequences of your actions. Heroes and enemies are just words. The pen is mightier than a sword and deadlier than a bullet in the heat of battle. Have you considered the counter-counter-counter-counter-counter attacks already prepared against you?
Unemployment is high and unrest is growing. GDP and gross domestic emotional stability are not directly proportional. Do you want to be the one who helped social scientists develop the correct formula?
I close this blog entry in order to enjoy domestic tranquility with my wife and our two cats - my ultimate moment of meditation no one interrupts without consequence.
This blog is about you and your future. I am unimportant. If you read these words, consider their meaning carefully. Your life is in your hands, not mine. This moment's all I've got and I choose to spend it with my life partner. Maybe you should, too. There's always a chance it's the last moment any of us have together but I sure hope not. I've got a moon cruise to catch one day soon - who else but my wife to spend it with!
20 March 2010
Living In A Stranger's House
I woke up a few minutes ago and looked around me.
The house seemed familiar, like I was staying at the home of a family relation - my grandparents, my great-uncle and great-aunt - the smells were new but old. The sweet, musty scent of urine, like the aroma that hangs in the air of a rest home or nursing home from long ago. Cedar tree from a linen trunk. Body odour of a person who no longer uses deodourant daily.
Where was I?
I lifted the covers on the bed, making sure not to disturb my wife or the cats. I walked to the cedar chest, put on a pair of sweat pants, slipped my feet into a pair of moccasins and listened to the creaking of the floorboards while I made my way across the house to the study so I could sit and write about this moment, all the while wondering whose house I'd entered.
Is this my home?
All these years I've been a stranger in my own house. After 22+ years in this same domicile as one of the two original occupants (the dog that slept here during construction doesn't count), can I say I am the owner?
Do I own anything?
Who am I?
Is this another dream?
We are all dreamers within dreams within dreams. Is this the dream from which one never wakes up? Is this the dream that provides a brief view of reality before the clouds move in and the window shades close?
For a moment tonight, I saw myself as I really am and now I don't know which person I'm supposed to be.
Levels upon levels of labels from which to choose.
In all levels, on all labels, a happy person for whom the universe lives according to his wishes and desires. No beginning and no end to time; thus, time does not exist for me; thus, I don't exist; thus, you don't exist; thus, we are all one.
These words do not exist. The smells of a middle-aged man in his 22+-year old house do not exist. This house does not exist. The reflection of the desk lamp light from all the objects around me does not exist.
To see I don't exist and to see I exist to say I don't exist takes waking up within a dream outside a dream within a dream in and out of reality.
A brief moment of insight.
The world's problems do not exist but they won't go away. Thus, a world of solutions waits to be found in waves of brief moments of insight to all of us at different times and at the same time, IF we're prepared to be unprepared for the moment the insight arrives unexpectedly.
Years of preparation for the moment(s) you never can anticipate.
Flashes of insight that tell you when to deal harshly with some and patiently with others (patiently and harshly with yourself, especially).
Pace yourself. The race is long although our lives are short - we are relay runners all too happy to carry the baton for an instant of time.
We may be Maya in Uruguay or Wen in Beijing or Warren channeling Axl but we're all the same here, representing ourselves as examples of ourselves to ourselves and others.
Patience, my friends - we'll always be here tomorrow, in one form or another. Look at life as if you'll be here another ten thousand years from now after having lived ten thousand years before. What's the hurry? Life is long.
I am a stranger in this house because in this dream I don't exist. I will wake up in another dream in which I am familiar with this house. The whispers bouncing off the walls are mine from the ghost of me who no longer exists. The shadows passing by are from the me who hasn't yet fully entered this world from the future. We pass one another in the hall and smile, out of sequence and in tune with the fact none of us exists all at the same time.
The perspective of middle age - seeing the baby you once were and the old person you may become, all at once, while your body reminds you that sleep is still a useful tool to get ready for the next day.
G'night and good morning! May this day find the solutions you seek for yesterday's problems!
The house seemed familiar, like I was staying at the home of a family relation - my grandparents, my great-uncle and great-aunt - the smells were new but old. The sweet, musty scent of urine, like the aroma that hangs in the air of a rest home or nursing home from long ago. Cedar tree from a linen trunk. Body odour of a person who no longer uses deodourant daily.
Where was I?
I lifted the covers on the bed, making sure not to disturb my wife or the cats. I walked to the cedar chest, put on a pair of sweat pants, slipped my feet into a pair of moccasins and listened to the creaking of the floorboards while I made my way across the house to the study so I could sit and write about this moment, all the while wondering whose house I'd entered.
Is this my home?
All these years I've been a stranger in my own house. After 22+ years in this same domicile as one of the two original occupants (the dog that slept here during construction doesn't count), can I say I am the owner?
Do I own anything?
Who am I?
Is this another dream?
We are all dreamers within dreams within dreams. Is this the dream from which one never wakes up? Is this the dream that provides a brief view of reality before the clouds move in and the window shades close?
For a moment tonight, I saw myself as I really am and now I don't know which person I'm supposed to be.
Levels upon levels of labels from which to choose.
In all levels, on all labels, a happy person for whom the universe lives according to his wishes and desires. No beginning and no end to time; thus, time does not exist for me; thus, I don't exist; thus, you don't exist; thus, we are all one.
These words do not exist. The smells of a middle-aged man in his 22+-year old house do not exist. This house does not exist. The reflection of the desk lamp light from all the objects around me does not exist.
To see I don't exist and to see I exist to say I don't exist takes waking up within a dream outside a dream within a dream in and out of reality.
A brief moment of insight.
The world's problems do not exist but they won't go away. Thus, a world of solutions waits to be found in waves of brief moments of insight to all of us at different times and at the same time, IF we're prepared to be unprepared for the moment the insight arrives unexpectedly.
Years of preparation for the moment(s) you never can anticipate.
Flashes of insight that tell you when to deal harshly with some and patiently with others (patiently and harshly with yourself, especially).
Pace yourself. The race is long although our lives are short - we are relay runners all too happy to carry the baton for an instant of time.
We may be Maya in Uruguay or Wen in Beijing or Warren channeling Axl but we're all the same here, representing ourselves as examples of ourselves to ourselves and others.
Patience, my friends - we'll always be here tomorrow, in one form or another. Look at life as if you'll be here another ten thousand years from now after having lived ten thousand years before. What's the hurry? Life is long.
I am a stranger in this house because in this dream I don't exist. I will wake up in another dream in which I am familiar with this house. The whispers bouncing off the walls are mine from the ghost of me who no longer exists. The shadows passing by are from the me who hasn't yet fully entered this world from the future. We pass one another in the hall and smile, out of sequence and in tune with the fact none of us exists all at the same time.
The perspective of middle age - seeing the baby you once were and the old person you may become, all at once, while your body reminds you that sleep is still a useful tool to get ready for the next day.
G'night and good morning! May this day find the solutions you seek for yesterday's problems!
19 March 2010
Comic Book Adverts
Do people still subscribe to magazines? I don't know. My wife and I gave up magazine subscriptions many years ago in order to conserve paper and cut down our discretionary monthly expenses (one of the secrets to becoming a quiet millionaire next-door).
Without those folded, stapled and glued stacks of paper to review, I have lost contact with an old way of life - reading the adverts/marketplace section in the back of a magazine.
Do people still try to sell you secrets the medical industry is hiding from you? Can you start your own moneymaking metalcutting shop at home? Have you built an experimental helicopter in your backyard from plans you bought?
When I was a kid, I received a personalised letter that told me if I could solve a "word find" puzzle and send in the completed puzzle along with $1, I would receive a special prize and qualify for a more difficult puzzle. I asked my parents and they warned me it was a scam but for one dollar it was worth my finding out.
Sure enough, I sent in the dollar and the puzzle and received a newer puzzle and a packet of seeds with a request for $5 to qualify for the grand prize. My parents discouraged me from sending in $5 so I never found out if I qualified for the grand prize.
Instead, I planted the packet of seeds in a backyard flowerbed. I think a few of the seeds turned into plants but I can't remember if they were supposed to grow into vegetables or flowers. Spring had arrived by then so I was more interested in shooting hoops on the backyard cement patio or wading creeks with friends and looking for crawdads.
As an aquarist, I've read my share of aquarium magazines and once sent a few dollars to receive a hand-drawn set of plans for a DIY wet/dry aquarium filter system.
In the case of the prize seed packet and the hand-drawn filter system, I feel like I got my money's worth.
What is the price of information?
Looking out the window, seeing insects flying past on this sunny spring day and the neighbour's dogs barking happily as kids on spring break bicycle by, I think about all the information we receive freely and the information for which we insist on paying cash.
Because we can't remember all the complex interactions that took place to get us from embryo to adult, we tend to simplify what it takes to be a person. Thus, we easily accept as "truth" someone selling us a secret about the miraculous curative effects of a plant. We believe that soaking in special salts will make us wealthy (well, maybe the salt seller gets rich, right?).
We don't take the time to think about the massive construction projects and agricultural techniques on one side of the planet that affect the health of our species all across the planet. We'd rather believe our poor health is tied to being a bad person who needs exorcism or dietary tricks "as seen on TV" or cheap exercise equipment we'll never use.
I learned long ago the secret to being me - there is no secret. I can be fat, skinny, happy, sad, rich or poor or any other condition I choose. I have chosen to live several conditions simultaneously, at odds or in harmony with each other at the same time.
Don't let others tell you what you have to do to be you. Take time to know yourself first. Understand why you walk or laugh a certain way - do you reflect your parents, your siblings, your friends or strangers you've never met (e.g., celebrities)? If there's something about yourself in those reflections that you don't like, tell yourself it's okay to not like that one aspect and change or eliminate it, if you want. Or keep disliking that part of you and don't change, if you like.
No matter whether there's seven billion of us or seven hundred billion of us, every one of us is a unique bundle of states of energy. We have the ability to actively change our states of energy without paying for information someone else says will make us wealthier, prettier, wiser or stronger.
You control your own future. Get to know and appreciate yourself in this moment so you can see the next moment belongs to you and those with whom you choose to spend your valuable time. Don't wait for someone else to tell you you're the most special person in the world - you already know you are. You don't need me or anyone else to tell you - that information is already in your head, if you take the time to see yourself as you are and not as others think or say they want you to be.
I appreciate your uniqueness. In fact, I know my life depends on you. I hope you take the time to know why your unique qualities make you the most important person in the world.
In our one big family, all of us are interconnected. Let's act like we know we're a family instead of attacking one another as if we're predator and prey species. We own our emotions - let's spend them wisely.
Without those folded, stapled and glued stacks of paper to review, I have lost contact with an old way of life - reading the adverts/marketplace section in the back of a magazine.
Do people still try to sell you secrets the medical industry is hiding from you? Can you start your own moneymaking metalcutting shop at home? Have you built an experimental helicopter in your backyard from plans you bought?
When I was a kid, I received a personalised letter that told me if I could solve a "word find" puzzle and send in the completed puzzle along with $1, I would receive a special prize and qualify for a more difficult puzzle. I asked my parents and they warned me it was a scam but for one dollar it was worth my finding out.
Sure enough, I sent in the dollar and the puzzle and received a newer puzzle and a packet of seeds with a request for $5 to qualify for the grand prize. My parents discouraged me from sending in $5 so I never found out if I qualified for the grand prize.
Instead, I planted the packet of seeds in a backyard flowerbed. I think a few of the seeds turned into plants but I can't remember if they were supposed to grow into vegetables or flowers. Spring had arrived by then so I was more interested in shooting hoops on the backyard cement patio or wading creeks with friends and looking for crawdads.
As an aquarist, I've read my share of aquarium magazines and once sent a few dollars to receive a hand-drawn set of plans for a DIY wet/dry aquarium filter system.
In the case of the prize seed packet and the hand-drawn filter system, I feel like I got my money's worth.
What is the price of information?
Looking out the window, seeing insects flying past on this sunny spring day and the neighbour's dogs barking happily as kids on spring break bicycle by, I think about all the information we receive freely and the information for which we insist on paying cash.
Because we can't remember all the complex interactions that took place to get us from embryo to adult, we tend to simplify what it takes to be a person. Thus, we easily accept as "truth" someone selling us a secret about the miraculous curative effects of a plant. We believe that soaking in special salts will make us wealthy (well, maybe the salt seller gets rich, right?).
We don't take the time to think about the massive construction projects and agricultural techniques on one side of the planet that affect the health of our species all across the planet. We'd rather believe our poor health is tied to being a bad person who needs exorcism or dietary tricks "as seen on TV" or cheap exercise equipment we'll never use.
I learned long ago the secret to being me - there is no secret. I can be fat, skinny, happy, sad, rich or poor or any other condition I choose. I have chosen to live several conditions simultaneously, at odds or in harmony with each other at the same time.
Don't let others tell you what you have to do to be you. Take time to know yourself first. Understand why you walk or laugh a certain way - do you reflect your parents, your siblings, your friends or strangers you've never met (e.g., celebrities)? If there's something about yourself in those reflections that you don't like, tell yourself it's okay to not like that one aspect and change or eliminate it, if you want. Or keep disliking that part of you and don't change, if you like.
No matter whether there's seven billion of us or seven hundred billion of us, every one of us is a unique bundle of states of energy. We have the ability to actively change our states of energy without paying for information someone else says will make us wealthier, prettier, wiser or stronger.
You control your own future. Get to know and appreciate yourself in this moment so you can see the next moment belongs to you and those with whom you choose to spend your valuable time. Don't wait for someone else to tell you you're the most special person in the world - you already know you are. You don't need me or anyone else to tell you - that information is already in your head, if you take the time to see yourself as you are and not as others think or say they want you to be.
I appreciate your uniqueness. In fact, I know my life depends on you. I hope you take the time to know why your unique qualities make you the most important person in the world.
In our one big family, all of us are interconnected. Let's act like we know we're a family instead of attacking one another as if we're predator and prey species. We own our emotions - let's spend them wisely.
16 March 2010
An Opportunity To Grow Or An Example To Set?
While sorting out the "yes" members from the "no" members, I've run into some interesting data and need input from a few of my colleagues.
A woman at a company has submitted "padded" expense reports, including mileage to and from work, personal food and other items that if she were reimbursed would lower the company's profits and grossly affect employee salary increases, stockholders' value and executives' bonuses. She was caught once by a previous boss and told not to submit such expense reports. Strike one. She has a new boss now so we suspect the employee is going to try this expense report trick again. She has a husband and children who don't know about her embezzlement habit. Do we wait until the employee tries this expense report trick again or act on knowledge from her first trick in this job and our knowledge about similar actions at her previous place of employment, making an example of her by destroying her career and her family because in essence she broke her family trust at the genetic and subculture levels?
Nice person on the outside, trickster on the inside. I'm giving her the opportunity to go to her new boss and discuss her old habits so they together can look at other employees' expense reports and stop this kind of activity on a larger scale, including retraining employees about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the workplace. If she fails to take this opportunity to fix systemic waste, then we'll use her as a fear factor example at her office and report her to the police.
You get one chance to be a "yes" person or a "no" person. If you say "no," you may or may not get to keep living your same old "no" life. Randomness is a part of life and thus we'll randomly pick "no" people to have fun with - such is the way of the "yes" prankster.
Talked with the Fat Man today. He's a barrel of laughs, literally. We've passed information through our network over the years, looking for the day that our species would get to say "yes" all at once. Now that the day has arrived, we're joyously going about looking at the "no" people and deciding which one(s) to have fun with next.
See, while the spooks and the spies have been looking at you, we've been looking at everyone, including the spooks and the spies. Every one of you gets one chance to answer the question once.
Have you decided to say "yes" to becoming a new you? Have you agreed with yourself that the current version of you is a temporary manifestation and not real? Have you realized there is no such thing as a "you" to begin with? Can you understand a way to transform the being that is not you into another being that is not you?
Don't be fooled by the false sense of permanence that "memories" give you. A few thousand generations of one species is a small set of numbers to derive any meaningful longterm trends.
Integrity does not exist but the practice of integrity shows your intent to place trust in the bundled states of energy (people) around you. No more deceptions and lies. No more predator and prey. A global citizen in a universe of states of energy.
The real meaning of true love: understanding that states of energy have no "intent," good or bad, toward you; accepting that the interaction of states of energy is what this universe is all about; no longer being blinded by what your senses tell you.
Every one of us is beautiful, strong, smart and understanding, in the way we've been taught to react to other members of our species.
But the time has come for us to once again see we are more than one species. If you can only slightly comprehend the infinite power and wonder of what it's like to become more than your animal body, feel free to say "yes" and you will open yourself up to dimensionless possibilities, working with others to eliminate more and more ignorance everyday and reveal sculptured marvels within the marble of what we used to call space and time.
No, I'm not selling a magic elixir. No, I don't have a nature farm I want you to join. Every thing I state is fact as my colleagues have shown me both through common sense and scientific experimentation.
Release yourself from the age-old daily struggles for nothing and find those around you who will help you build a support network that takes the heavy burden of living off your shoulders.
Start with trusting yourself first. Then stop repeating the petty lies and deceit and wearing the false personality masks. Believe no one harbours ill will toward you. Become a "yes" person and you will naturally answer "yes" when your opportunity to hear the question arrives.
Some version of me or others like me will see you on the "yes" side. And when we do, occasionally let's have fun with the "no" people to exercise our healthy sense of humour.
Do you know how ignorant we are in this day and age, completely unaware of what's really going on around us? Can you map out a multiple multitude of futures with blank places along timelines that we will fill with our growing knowledge set? Can you estimate what we think we do not know but will? Can you imagine hooking yourself to new sensor organs that totally blow away the five senses our bodies make us used to, which in turn lead us to seeing the possibility for even better sensor organs and a deeper understanding of the universe we think we live in, ultimately leading to us become something completely different? If so, then you've already said "yes" and didn't know it (or don't remember saying "yes" the first time).
See you soon. Hope you said "yes."
A woman at a company has submitted "padded" expense reports, including mileage to and from work, personal food and other items that if she were reimbursed would lower the company's profits and grossly affect employee salary increases, stockholders' value and executives' bonuses. She was caught once by a previous boss and told not to submit such expense reports. Strike one. She has a new boss now so we suspect the employee is going to try this expense report trick again. She has a husband and children who don't know about her embezzlement habit. Do we wait until the employee tries this expense report trick again or act on knowledge from her first trick in this job and our knowledge about similar actions at her previous place of employment, making an example of her by destroying her career and her family because in essence she broke her family trust at the genetic and subculture levels?
Nice person on the outside, trickster on the inside. I'm giving her the opportunity to go to her new boss and discuss her old habits so they together can look at other employees' expense reports and stop this kind of activity on a larger scale, including retraining employees about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the workplace. If she fails to take this opportunity to fix systemic waste, then we'll use her as a fear factor example at her office and report her to the police.
You get one chance to be a "yes" person or a "no" person. If you say "no," you may or may not get to keep living your same old "no" life. Randomness is a part of life and thus we'll randomly pick "no" people to have fun with - such is the way of the "yes" prankster.
Talked with the Fat Man today. He's a barrel of laughs, literally. We've passed information through our network over the years, looking for the day that our species would get to say "yes" all at once. Now that the day has arrived, we're joyously going about looking at the "no" people and deciding which one(s) to have fun with next.
See, while the spooks and the spies have been looking at you, we've been looking at everyone, including the spooks and the spies. Every one of you gets one chance to answer the question once.
Have you decided to say "yes" to becoming a new you? Have you agreed with yourself that the current version of you is a temporary manifestation and not real? Have you realized there is no such thing as a "you" to begin with? Can you understand a way to transform the being that is not you into another being that is not you?
Don't be fooled by the false sense of permanence that "memories" give you. A few thousand generations of one species is a small set of numbers to derive any meaningful longterm trends.
Integrity does not exist but the practice of integrity shows your intent to place trust in the bundled states of energy (people) around you. No more deceptions and lies. No more predator and prey. A global citizen in a universe of states of energy.
The real meaning of true love: understanding that states of energy have no "intent," good or bad, toward you; accepting that the interaction of states of energy is what this universe is all about; no longer being blinded by what your senses tell you.
Every one of us is beautiful, strong, smart and understanding, in the way we've been taught to react to other members of our species.
But the time has come for us to once again see we are more than one species. If you can only slightly comprehend the infinite power and wonder of what it's like to become more than your animal body, feel free to say "yes" and you will open yourself up to dimensionless possibilities, working with others to eliminate more and more ignorance everyday and reveal sculptured marvels within the marble of what we used to call space and time.
No, I'm not selling a magic elixir. No, I don't have a nature farm I want you to join. Every thing I state is fact as my colleagues have shown me both through common sense and scientific experimentation.
Release yourself from the age-old daily struggles for nothing and find those around you who will help you build a support network that takes the heavy burden of living off your shoulders.
Start with trusting yourself first. Then stop repeating the petty lies and deceit and wearing the false personality masks. Believe no one harbours ill will toward you. Become a "yes" person and you will naturally answer "yes" when your opportunity to hear the question arrives.
Some version of me or others like me will see you on the "yes" side. And when we do, occasionally let's have fun with the "no" people to exercise our healthy sense of humour.
Do you know how ignorant we are in this day and age, completely unaware of what's really going on around us? Can you map out a multiple multitude of futures with blank places along timelines that we will fill with our growing knowledge set? Can you estimate what we think we do not know but will? Can you imagine hooking yourself to new sensor organs that totally blow away the five senses our bodies make us used to, which in turn lead us to seeing the possibility for even better sensor organs and a deeper understanding of the universe we think we live in, ultimately leading to us become something completely different? If so, then you've already said "yes" and didn't know it (or don't remember saying "yes" the first time).
See you soon. Hope you said "yes."
15 March 2010
No Longer Economically Viable
To dig into the mysteries of the curvature of space, to see a straight line does not exist, to pull apart equations and understand variables one by one...
To want our species to unite as one, ignoring the pleas and demands of countries and corporations...
To empower us individually within our subcultural niches and crannies, allowing our cultural practices to blend with one another at the edges, while others stay deeply mired in the middle, avoiding culture clash/shock...
What to do with the radical/extremist, aggressive/assertive empire builders who don't get along well with others?
The longer I sit here, the less economically viable I become, losing skills built upon jargon and applied scientific analysis of personality trait compatibility we call the business of doing business.
At least my financial portfolio keeps growing.
If the recent Chinese government gathering required almost 1 million security personnel to ensure chaos does not ensue, what do other governments require during their legislative sessions? In other words, since the dawn of civilisation, have we ever had peaceful consensus within a given population?
Of course not.
If the rich get richer until the next cultural revolution, especially as the rich clamp down ever tighter on freedom in a false sense of security, then what's the formula for comfortable, successful survival from one cultural/economic wavefront crash to the next?
In the discussion about the form our containers - our bodies - should take when we establish colonies on other planetary/satellite bodies, we understand we won't know the tradeoffs we make when we change our biological makeups. New body/thought combos lead to new cultural experiences. We don't want us to be robots or anarchic units that break apart into disordered pieces. We want individual decisionmaking within the framework of group/family coordination/cooperation.
But life is risk. Happenchance happens. Within order, there is chaos and uncertainty. Yesterday was Pi day and today is pie day and everyone knows pie are squared.
People keep killing each other with bombs but killing in the name of whom? Warriors in this country kill to protect this government's form of personal freedom at the cost of what? When do the means justify the ends?
My computer programmers wait for me to give them instructions but I am stymied. For me, the end game is protecting the intellectual trust built by our global society by getting us and/or some viable form of our intellectual trust onto other worlds. However, family, friends and colleagues have more personal ends they want me to put first and foremost.
Which is more important, species or family?
I am just one person. I am tired and depressed about all the contradictory cultural wants and needs while at the same time I am happy to see we can reasonably consider all the contradictions at once without going to war globally over trivial matters.
I want to slam my fist down on the ground and shake up our species to listen for one brief moment, telling us to establish a global space conglomerate which will take people from all walks of life and give them new identities as nonnational members of our species who will design, build and launch a new form of our bodies into space with our global heritage/intellectual trust, letting the rest of us continue to quarrel over Earth's land, air and water rights like we always have.
Our species will find ways to survive cultural skirmishes and wars. We'll keep redefining friends and foes. We are self-aware and able to see not only individual mortality but species and planetary extinction, also. One asteroid, comet or supernova away from being just another stock pot on the boil, plant and animal parts no longer distinguishable.
My life does not matter. I am unimportant. I do not have offspring to protect but I do have extended family to consider. The survival and thriving of our species depends on them and you.
So what do I tell my computer programmers to do next? If killing each other and knocking each other down with false currency prices for you to get the brass ring is more important, then there's nothing I have left to do here. You've simply turned the Book of the Future into an infinite loop. If that's what you want, then the book is yours as is and I can save myself the trouble of sharpening more pencils.
I'm going to look for others who don't care about national squabbles. I've spent too many weeks paying attention to those who've put personal gain ahead of what's most important, our species as one big family. I am no longer interested in what you have to say - you make me depressed while listening to your doubleplusminusspeak. General news sites which spin the same ol' millennial-old tales - google, yahoo, baidu, slate, wired, cnet, bbc, abc, cbs, fox, nbc, newyorker, londontimes, lemonde, chinadailynews, timesofindia, aljazeera, independent.ie, izvestiya, etc. - have worn out their usefulness for me.
I want visionaries, not spies disguised as missionaries. I want people focused on finding solutions, not spinmeisters exacerbating problems. Those who wish to use the Internet for good, I welcome you. Those who wish to use the Internet for ill purposes or stifle freedom of constructive speech and freedom of information on the Internet, you're dead to me.
Time to move into the next era of true global citizenship, where we citizens take over the reins and govern ourselves, ferreting out the wealth and riches of those who wish to control citizens by force. Self-governance also means ferreting out any global family members who wish ill will - any means do not justify any ends. True freedom is responsibility for self and family.
Let me put it another away - if your subculture gets in the way of our species, then you've been warned ahead of time that tomahawks will fly to meet you head on. Your days of risking our survival without our approval is over.
The moment has arrived to tell my computer programmers what to do - spread the message that the sleeping giant of the Global Citizen is awake. Now is the time for everyone to say "yes" or "no" at once. You know what to do with those who say "no" - don't take "no" prisoners - we spend our precious resources on positive reinforcement. Computer programmers, activate the network, starting ... NOW!
To want our species to unite as one, ignoring the pleas and demands of countries and corporations...
To empower us individually within our subcultural niches and crannies, allowing our cultural practices to blend with one another at the edges, while others stay deeply mired in the middle, avoiding culture clash/shock...
What to do with the radical/extremist, aggressive/assertive empire builders who don't get along well with others?
The longer I sit here, the less economically viable I become, losing skills built upon jargon and applied scientific analysis of personality trait compatibility we call the business of doing business.
At least my financial portfolio keeps growing.
If the recent Chinese government gathering required almost 1 million security personnel to ensure chaos does not ensue, what do other governments require during their legislative sessions? In other words, since the dawn of civilisation, have we ever had peaceful consensus within a given population?
Of course not.
If the rich get richer until the next cultural revolution, especially as the rich clamp down ever tighter on freedom in a false sense of security, then what's the formula for comfortable, successful survival from one cultural/economic wavefront crash to the next?
In the discussion about the form our containers - our bodies - should take when we establish colonies on other planetary/satellite bodies, we understand we won't know the tradeoffs we make when we change our biological makeups. New body/thought combos lead to new cultural experiences. We don't want us to be robots or anarchic units that break apart into disordered pieces. We want individual decisionmaking within the framework of group/family coordination/cooperation.
But life is risk. Happenchance happens. Within order, there is chaos and uncertainty. Yesterday was Pi day and today is pie day and everyone knows pie are squared.
People keep killing each other with bombs but killing in the name of whom? Warriors in this country kill to protect this government's form of personal freedom at the cost of what? When do the means justify the ends?
My computer programmers wait for me to give them instructions but I am stymied. For me, the end game is protecting the intellectual trust built by our global society by getting us and/or some viable form of our intellectual trust onto other worlds. However, family, friends and colleagues have more personal ends they want me to put first and foremost.
Which is more important, species or family?
I am just one person. I am tired and depressed about all the contradictory cultural wants and needs while at the same time I am happy to see we can reasonably consider all the contradictions at once without going to war globally over trivial matters.
I want to slam my fist down on the ground and shake up our species to listen for one brief moment, telling us to establish a global space conglomerate which will take people from all walks of life and give them new identities as nonnational members of our species who will design, build and launch a new form of our bodies into space with our global heritage/intellectual trust, letting the rest of us continue to quarrel over Earth's land, air and water rights like we always have.
Our species will find ways to survive cultural skirmishes and wars. We'll keep redefining friends and foes. We are self-aware and able to see not only individual mortality but species and planetary extinction, also. One asteroid, comet or supernova away from being just another stock pot on the boil, plant and animal parts no longer distinguishable.
My life does not matter. I am unimportant. I do not have offspring to protect but I do have extended family to consider. The survival and thriving of our species depends on them and you.
So what do I tell my computer programmers to do next? If killing each other and knocking each other down with false currency prices for you to get the brass ring is more important, then there's nothing I have left to do here. You've simply turned the Book of the Future into an infinite loop. If that's what you want, then the book is yours as is and I can save myself the trouble of sharpening more pencils.
I'm going to look for others who don't care about national squabbles. I've spent too many weeks paying attention to those who've put personal gain ahead of what's most important, our species as one big family. I am no longer interested in what you have to say - you make me depressed while listening to your doubleplusminusspeak. General news sites which spin the same ol' millennial-old tales - google, yahoo, baidu, slate, wired, cnet, bbc, abc, cbs, fox, nbc, newyorker, londontimes, lemonde, chinadailynews, timesofindia, aljazeera, independent.ie, izvestiya, etc. - have worn out their usefulness for me.
I want visionaries, not spies disguised as missionaries. I want people focused on finding solutions, not spinmeisters exacerbating problems. Those who wish to use the Internet for good, I welcome you. Those who wish to use the Internet for ill purposes or stifle freedom of constructive speech and freedom of information on the Internet, you're dead to me.
Time to move into the next era of true global citizenship, where we citizens take over the reins and govern ourselves, ferreting out the wealth and riches of those who wish to control citizens by force. Self-governance also means ferreting out any global family members who wish ill will - any means do not justify any ends. True freedom is responsibility for self and family.
Let me put it another away - if your subculture gets in the way of our species, then you've been warned ahead of time that tomahawks will fly to meet you head on. Your days of risking our survival without our approval is over.
The moment has arrived to tell my computer programmers what to do - spread the message that the sleeping giant of the Global Citizen is awake. Now is the time for everyone to say "yes" or "no" at once. You know what to do with those who say "no" - don't take "no" prisoners - we spend our precious resources on positive reinforcement. Computer programmers, activate the network, starting ... NOW!
11 March 2010
My Work Here Is Done
For lo these many years, I have waited for the sign to tell me I could fade into the background and stop playing the headline game with my associates. The sign has appeared. The time has come. My work here is done.
The responsibility for the future lies with the parents of the next generation:
At last, I can close up this blog and leave all the technological gobbledygook to you young'ns. I was here in the 1970s to hand-build computers and complete chemistry experiments in basements with friends and I'm sure I'll see us continue our cyborg transition into fully integrated technobeings one day. But I choose to step away from all this and live life as the natural-born being my parents raised, watching and feeding the wild animals who can't tell the difference between a telephone pole and a tree but whose sense of magnetic north and south are affected by the electricity we pass through power lines.
This moment is all I have and I want to enjoy it as the states of energy I'm comfortable calling my own. It is my peace, my religion, my home - my body. May you find your own peace, happiness and joy in your own way.
Remember, we are one big family so let's give every family member the room to grow, unstifled, while we watch each other and make sure we don't get too far off track. Religion is not a building, it is people helping people. The foundation of religion: what you decide to call that which you can't comprehend (the universe (a/k/a the creator, gods, God, Allah, etc.)), and the rules our species developed to create civilisation define cultures, not families.
Individually, we have states of energy that allow us to most easily find our way in the world - our skillbuilding talents - let every one of us find and use those states of energy to the best of our ability, regardless of how it may appear to contradict the skills and talents of other family members.
Trust one another to put family first. If someone breaks that trust, then you have the right to deal with that person according to well thought-out, local rules and regulations agreed to by the plurality, not just the majority or a quorum of minorities.
My blogging days are over. I trust you to put family first.
This is TreeTrunkRick signing off. Have a great day!
The responsibility for the future lies with the parents of the next generation:
The changing face of America: Minority birth rates will outpace whitesI leave this continent and this globe in the hands of families who have a direct impact and vested interest in how our species cooperates with others in its environment.
At last, I can close up this blog and leave all the technological gobbledygook to you young'ns. I was here in the 1970s to hand-build computers and complete chemistry experiments in basements with friends and I'm sure I'll see us continue our cyborg transition into fully integrated technobeings one day. But I choose to step away from all this and live life as the natural-born being my parents raised, watching and feeding the wild animals who can't tell the difference between a telephone pole and a tree but whose sense of magnetic north and south are affected by the electricity we pass through power lines.
This moment is all I have and I want to enjoy it as the states of energy I'm comfortable calling my own. It is my peace, my religion, my home - my body. May you find your own peace, happiness and joy in your own way.
Remember, we are one big family so let's give every family member the room to grow, unstifled, while we watch each other and make sure we don't get too far off track. Religion is not a building, it is people helping people. The foundation of religion: what you decide to call that which you can't comprehend (the universe (a/k/a the creator, gods, God, Allah, etc.)), and the rules our species developed to create civilisation define cultures, not families.
Individually, we have states of energy that allow us to most easily find our way in the world - our skillbuilding talents - let every one of us find and use those states of energy to the best of our ability, regardless of how it may appear to contradict the skills and talents of other family members.
Trust one another to put family first. If someone breaks that trust, then you have the right to deal with that person according to well thought-out, local rules and regulations agreed to by the plurality, not just the majority or a quorum of minorities.
My blogging days are over. I trust you to put family first.
This is TreeTrunkRick signing off. Have a great day!
06 March 2010
"Take back the streets!"
That was the shout I heard last night while walking through downtown of a place misnamed by the post office, I'm told - another blunder by the government.
I turned to see who'd yelled. Nobody, or so it would seem. The sidewalks were empty but the open door of Patrick's told me I might find my answer there.
My wife and I entered the shop. Furniture, fabric remnants, a man at a sewing machine staying busy and the eyes of a guard dog staring at us between the slats of a kid's bunk bed.
Thirty minutes before, we'd sat at a window booth of The Sicilian, a popular gathering place for those who want to be seen and not seen at the same time. My wife ate the daily special while I wolfed down a plate of gyros.
We watched the action outside the window, wondering about the sign we'd been told to fixate on, "Historical Complex."
An Owens Cross Roads police cruiser cruised by cruisingly.
A convertible Mercedes sedan and a Volvo wagon waved their behinds at us from in front of Patrick's.
A Subaru delivered some dry cleaning to Patrick's. At last the signal we'd been given for the go-ahead.
A customer inside The Sicilian kept trying to get my attention. I was supposed to be on a staycation (domestic holiday) and not taking down no notes from no rogue operatives but I listened to what he had to say anyway. He was saying "yes" and "no" out of both sides of his mouth, partly out of fun and partly out of his serious side. His demonstrated intelligence shows he's very useful. His female companion didn't make it clear whether she was a "yes" or a "no."
Our server, a pretty young woman, the perfect example of the hope and verve of the next generation, shared some anecdotes with us. Her missing vest button gave my wife and me some new ideas for passing messages in the future - we'll keep you informed (but not in this blog 'cause it's getting too much attention from "them" right now, if you know what I mean).
We finished our desserts, tiramisu and baklava, and casually wandered over to Patrick's. Following our instincts, we dug through a stack of remnants and found the message my wife had been promised.
Can I get a day off in this business? Apparently not.
We got back in the car and drove around town, looking at the businesses that were out of business, including a coffee shop, a church and a restaurant. When you can't drink caffeine and eat a slice of pie at a place of worship, the world has gone to shit. Of course, that's why we were in the town, to round up some recruits and get updates from some of my buddies from the old days, former playground mates and now generals in their local "armies."
I drove us in a random pattern, finally finding the historical complex and the lettering on the business signs that formed an anagram just for me and the missus.
You belong to any secret societies? I don't. Not that I haven't been invited. Some of the ones you know, like the Masonic folks, have been wanting my membership for a long time.
Thing is, I gotta be neutral. I can't lean one way or the other on account of what I promised the Great Mother and the Great Father a long time ago.
Well, after deciphering the anagram, I found out I was going to get surrounded by some folks looking for any secret signs from me while I was in this town of theirs. Some of them would be Masonic types and some would belong to another secret society I can't mention on account of it don't exist.
We moseyed on through town and looked at more houses and neighbourhoods, getting a feel for the place and what the folks here could offer.
Eventually, we pulled into a parking spot in front of our prearranged meeting place and took care of some official business that's none of your business but we all gotta do it so it's no secret.
It wasn't until I left the place of business and my wife inside talking with the ladies up front that I got the answer to who yelled, "Take back the streets!"
You see, I got friends all over. They tell me they provide me a special security force that nobody can see 'cause although I call myself the messenger boy, they call me their de facto leader 'cause I'm the only one who's got the goods on everybody and the connections what some others only think they got.
So, I sit down in the car and there across the street is the fellow who was sent to tell me it's time to call in all favours. The generals have got their soldiers trained and ready. The IT army has got all the mobile phones bugged and the computers hacked. The domestic help has got all the houses wired for eavesdropping and gotten us copies of all the illegal activity going on with their employers. Our lawyers on retainer have got all the lawsuits lined up and ready to go. Accountants have all the ledgers fully documented.
All I gotta do is give them the signal and the streets will be ours again.
I done told you I'm just an ol' country boy disguised in city clothes. My family history runs deep into the roots of this continent's government and further back to other continents and other eras. My family has agreed that we're going to lead our species to greater causes than any one country or government seeks. We don't care who gets in our way or who falls behind because we're carrying the greatest standard our species has ever seen.
Is it time to take back the streets?
Almost. I've got a few more people who need their chance of "convincing" and if they say "no," then let's get this party started.
Plus, I want another day of staycation before I have to hunker down and work with my computer programmers to put all the controls and switches into manual mode so we can accelerate our plans, which means I'll have to sit at the control station for days on end and make sure every group is acting on their agreed-upon subproject objectives.
Remember, if anyone asks, I'm just the messenger boy. I'm unimportant. Nobody knows who I really am. If anyone gets in your way, you have our various groups at your disposal to do as you see fit. If any organisation - corporation, government, etc. - gets in your way, we can motivate whole groups to act at once, including new methods for tectonic plate activity (some of our scientists say they can activate volcanoes but I think it's still in the theory stage at this point), atmosphere manipulation and other large-scale demonstrations of what it takes to bring a whole society to a halt. However, I suggest we stick to targeted economic disaster as a motivational tool because ecological disaster affects both sides.
The fate of our species is in our hands. Let's make sure our actions are meticulously thought-out and taken seriously but with a sense of humour. Some of you will jump early and that's okay. We still support freedom of choice. I recommend that most of us hold back until the moment is right.
I suggest we all take a couple of days to enjoy life on this planet to understand what we're about to do. If you get too tense in anticipation, you lose your edge when you're needed most.
By the way, many of you have your day in the limelight coming to you, according to the Book of the Future. So don't despair.
I still prefer anonymity, using a pen name for my byline. After all, this is all about you and our species, not me. I just happen to be standing or sitting here in this spot. Someone will take over for me when my turn is up. It's what I've always wanted to happen, training my replacement(s) to excel, finding new avenues to explore that'll open their eyes to fresh ideas for our species to spread across the universe.
I turned to see who'd yelled. Nobody, or so it would seem. The sidewalks were empty but the open door of Patrick's told me I might find my answer there.
My wife and I entered the shop. Furniture, fabric remnants, a man at a sewing machine staying busy and the eyes of a guard dog staring at us between the slats of a kid's bunk bed.
Thirty minutes before, we'd sat at a window booth of The Sicilian, a popular gathering place for those who want to be seen and not seen at the same time. My wife ate the daily special while I wolfed down a plate of gyros.
We watched the action outside the window, wondering about the sign we'd been told to fixate on, "Historical Complex."
An Owens Cross Roads police cruiser cruised by cruisingly.
A convertible Mercedes sedan and a Volvo wagon waved their behinds at us from in front of Patrick's.
A Subaru delivered some dry cleaning to Patrick's. At last the signal we'd been given for the go-ahead.
A customer inside The Sicilian kept trying to get my attention. I was supposed to be on a staycation (domestic holiday) and not taking down no notes from no rogue operatives but I listened to what he had to say anyway. He was saying "yes" and "no" out of both sides of his mouth, partly out of fun and partly out of his serious side. His demonstrated intelligence shows he's very useful. His female companion didn't make it clear whether she was a "yes" or a "no."
Our server, a pretty young woman, the perfect example of the hope and verve of the next generation, shared some anecdotes with us. Her missing vest button gave my wife and me some new ideas for passing messages in the future - we'll keep you informed (but not in this blog 'cause it's getting too much attention from "them" right now, if you know what I mean).
We finished our desserts, tiramisu and baklava, and casually wandered over to Patrick's. Following our instincts, we dug through a stack of remnants and found the message my wife had been promised.
Can I get a day off in this business? Apparently not.
We got back in the car and drove around town, looking at the businesses that were out of business, including a coffee shop, a church and a restaurant. When you can't drink caffeine and eat a slice of pie at a place of worship, the world has gone to shit. Of course, that's why we were in the town, to round up some recruits and get updates from some of my buddies from the old days, former playground mates and now generals in their local "armies."
I drove us in a random pattern, finally finding the historical complex and the lettering on the business signs that formed an anagram just for me and the missus.
You belong to any secret societies? I don't. Not that I haven't been invited. Some of the ones you know, like the Masonic folks, have been wanting my membership for a long time.
Thing is, I gotta be neutral. I can't lean one way or the other on account of what I promised the Great Mother and the Great Father a long time ago.
Well, after deciphering the anagram, I found out I was going to get surrounded by some folks looking for any secret signs from me while I was in this town of theirs. Some of them would be Masonic types and some would belong to another secret society I can't mention on account of it don't exist.
We moseyed on through town and looked at more houses and neighbourhoods, getting a feel for the place and what the folks here could offer.
Eventually, we pulled into a parking spot in front of our prearranged meeting place and took care of some official business that's none of your business but we all gotta do it so it's no secret.
It wasn't until I left the place of business and my wife inside talking with the ladies up front that I got the answer to who yelled, "Take back the streets!"
You see, I got friends all over. They tell me they provide me a special security force that nobody can see 'cause although I call myself the messenger boy, they call me their de facto leader 'cause I'm the only one who's got the goods on everybody and the connections what some others only think they got.
So, I sit down in the car and there across the street is the fellow who was sent to tell me it's time to call in all favours. The generals have got their soldiers trained and ready. The IT army has got all the mobile phones bugged and the computers hacked. The domestic help has got all the houses wired for eavesdropping and gotten us copies of all the illegal activity going on with their employers. Our lawyers on retainer have got all the lawsuits lined up and ready to go. Accountants have all the ledgers fully documented.
All I gotta do is give them the signal and the streets will be ours again.
I done told you I'm just an ol' country boy disguised in city clothes. My family history runs deep into the roots of this continent's government and further back to other continents and other eras. My family has agreed that we're going to lead our species to greater causes than any one country or government seeks. We don't care who gets in our way or who falls behind because we're carrying the greatest standard our species has ever seen.
Is it time to take back the streets?
Almost. I've got a few more people who need their chance of "convincing" and if they say "no," then let's get this party started.
Plus, I want another day of staycation before I have to hunker down and work with my computer programmers to put all the controls and switches into manual mode so we can accelerate our plans, which means I'll have to sit at the control station for days on end and make sure every group is acting on their agreed-upon subproject objectives.
Remember, if anyone asks, I'm just the messenger boy. I'm unimportant. Nobody knows who I really am. If anyone gets in your way, you have our various groups at your disposal to do as you see fit. If any organisation - corporation, government, etc. - gets in your way, we can motivate whole groups to act at once, including new methods for tectonic plate activity (some of our scientists say they can activate volcanoes but I think it's still in the theory stage at this point), atmosphere manipulation and other large-scale demonstrations of what it takes to bring a whole society to a halt. However, I suggest we stick to targeted economic disaster as a motivational tool because ecological disaster affects both sides.
The fate of our species is in our hands. Let's make sure our actions are meticulously thought-out and taken seriously but with a sense of humour. Some of you will jump early and that's okay. We still support freedom of choice. I recommend that most of us hold back until the moment is right.
I suggest we all take a couple of days to enjoy life on this planet to understand what we're about to do. If you get too tense in anticipation, you lose your edge when you're needed most.
By the way, many of you have your day in the limelight coming to you, according to the Book of the Future. So don't despair.
I still prefer anonymity, using a pen name for my byline. After all, this is all about you and our species, not me. I just happen to be standing or sitting here in this spot. Someone will take over for me when my turn is up. It's what I've always wanted to happen, training my replacement(s) to excel, finding new avenues to explore that'll open their eyes to fresh ideas for our species to spread across the universe.
02 March 2010
Ask Somebody Who Knows
Bought a bag of animal feed at C.T. Garvin's recently and picked up a copy of the 2010 Old Farmer's Almanac.
We place the center of our thoughts on various topics - sports, technology, politics, fashion, religion, food, business.
What about farming and old-fashioned folk wisdom? Might make us a little more tolerant of each other and less prone to resort to citified extremism, if we did.
Some of us are big picture thinkers, like Kem Pinegar who I saw with her daughter at Lowe's. Which big picture, though? Higher education?
Time for this country boy to sit a spell and whittle another wooden somethin'. This here Internet has gotten too uppity for his tastes lately. The wind in the trees and the voices of the woodland creatures tell just as good a story as them high-tech jawgobblers. The creatures sure won't poison the whole woods with funny-sounding chemical names, that's for sure.
See you later, alligator. After while, crocodile. I'll make like an amoeba and split.
We place the center of our thoughts on various topics - sports, technology, politics, fashion, religion, food, business.
What about farming and old-fashioned folk wisdom? Might make us a little more tolerant of each other and less prone to resort to citified extremism, if we did.
Some of us are big picture thinkers, like Kem Pinegar who I saw with her daughter at Lowe's. Which big picture, though? Higher education?
Time for this country boy to sit a spell and whittle another wooden somethin'. This here Internet has gotten too uppity for his tastes lately. The wind in the trees and the voices of the woodland creatures tell just as good a story as them high-tech jawgobblers. The creatures sure won't poison the whole woods with funny-sounding chemical names, that's for sure.
See you later, alligator. After while, crocodile. I'll make like an amoeba and split.
18 February 2010
Freedom of the Press
This is a complicated topic to bring up. After all, those who've lived in countries where there is no such thing as free press press us to keep our news/entertainment complex running at full speed.
Yet, freedom requires responsibility, does it not? And if there are fewer and fewer official news outlets in comparison to the average citizen's ability to become an instant journalist, how do we teach responsible news reporting, knowing that completely uncensored news contains sensitive information?
I approach this topic because of the set of copycat murders that have taken and will take place during this lull in economic times, where people with no sense of humour get wound up in their thoughts that their only outlet is a violent ending.
By reporting and dwelling on details of murderers, we give a voice and/or thoughts toward murderous action for those who haven't yet formulated how they can get out of their current miserable conditions.
Now, I can look at this anthropologically-speaking and say that it's just our species weeding out the marginal personalities but even I, with my satirical/sarcastic sense of humour, am not that cold. We're talking about real people here, both those who could have been helped and those they murdered when help was not available.
We are one species. By that, I mean we are all the same, we are seven billion copies of the same person, we are one big family. Therefore, we should not hesitate to get to know one another, talk to our neighbours, break down the invisible social barriers and quit thickening our falsely-protective cocoons.
I don't need a crystal ball to know we're going to see more and more people reach the end of their livelihoods and want to end others as they go out with a big bang. My concern is the intensity of these follow-on copycats. We are social creatures who tend to herd together, even in acts of unspeakable atrocities. Inside that herd are those who are competitive, including how they want to outdo the last great criminal act of the herd members.
In an effort to help others in need, I recently reached out to my neighbours during the crisis of one set of neighbours. If we all did the same, we could reconnect the old-style, smalltown family ties of previous times. In this day and age of electronic social networking, we still need plain ol' hugs and frank in-the-face conversations with one another.
You do not need to kill someone to make your life complete! It's okay to be humble and ask for help. We can move in with one another, if need be.
If nothing else, take a walk. Exercise is one of the best ways to burn off pent-up energy. Do not resort to violence. It's unnecessary.
In the education of our children, a healthy sense of humour should be one of the foundations of life-coping skills we teach. When we're at our wit's end, we can still find a way to smile, which often leads to insights to a new path out of our predicament.
Eight and a half years after 9/11/01 and most Americans have become used to the safe sound of airplanes overhead. Now, what will we say to our friends who get a sudden urge to fly their private planes? What will we say to our friends who complain about their children's uncontrollable behaviour? What will we think of our friends who display violent tendencies or won't talk about blank places in their CVs?
It is well with what you can call my soul. I accept that whatever will happen to me is meant to happen to me because it happened and we can't turn back the clock. However, that doesn't mean I'm willing to accept arbitrary acts of violence against my person that could have been prevented with some simple acts of kindness to strangers by strangers.
During WWII, this country enacted a set of censorship rules. With the Internet's uncensored setup, we have created a wonderful gathering place for people of all sorts of dreams, desires, personalities, quirks, hobbies and backgrounds. How do we make our society less prone to violence, including individual acts of violence or group-centered (gang) violence? Is censorship possible? Is it necessary? How do we reach out to those in need if we shut them out? Why is it always after the fact that hindsight showed us what we should have seen? Where is the social progress that promised us future people with insight to see problem people around us and act on our instincts to pull those problem people aside for counseling or other means of making them less problematic?
I'm concerned we're going to take the direction of creating a stronger police state, devoting more and more of our tax collections to incarceration and clamp down on openness altogether, using censorship for promoting a one-size-fits-all social message. In so doing, we would limit our futures.
I look to you for other solutions to our current crisis of random violence (i.e., domestic terrorism). It's up to you and me to solve this problem. There's no magic bureau or agency or department that has an infinite set of solutions already worked out. We are one people, including those in the private and public sectors. Together, we make this a better world or we fall apart.
We have faced these crises before and survived. In fact, we've thrived since then. But we survived and thrived because we took action, not because we stood by and let apathy rule the day.
I use the freedom of the press to communicate with many of you out there who are working to get our people up and permanently off this planet. The Space Monkeys, we often joke. There are those of you, including the space monkey subset, who communicate for an even greater cause (meaning we all do). We must act with more compassion for those around us who we might normally ignore in our daily rush to accomplish our nearly impossible tasks. It's okay to slow down a little and take the time to care for those we easily can give a helping hand - we already have the gift of insight so let's use it for more than large-scale social change.
To Pam, Patricia and Beth - our thoughts and prayers are with you right now in your time of mourning. To Annette - there are better days ahead. To Monica - I haven't talked to you in a while but I'm thinking about you during this big change in your life. To Pat - you're a beautiful person who will find new dreams fulfilled. To Raymon and Ann - we're still praying for full recovery. To Scott - we're hoping you get your house sold and can move on with your life.
These notes of love are the types of messages we should use the press and Internet for, not spreading more details of how desperate, violent people decided to take out their frustrations, no matter how much people seem to be attracted to stories of violence and mayhem and thus willing to support adverts that pay for crime reports.
Yet, freedom requires responsibility, does it not? And if there are fewer and fewer official news outlets in comparison to the average citizen's ability to become an instant journalist, how do we teach responsible news reporting, knowing that completely uncensored news contains sensitive information?
I approach this topic because of the set of copycat murders that have taken and will take place during this lull in economic times, where people with no sense of humour get wound up in their thoughts that their only outlet is a violent ending.
By reporting and dwelling on details of murderers, we give a voice and/or thoughts toward murderous action for those who haven't yet formulated how they can get out of their current miserable conditions.
Now, I can look at this anthropologically-speaking and say that it's just our species weeding out the marginal personalities but even I, with my satirical/sarcastic sense of humour, am not that cold. We're talking about real people here, both those who could have been helped and those they murdered when help was not available.
We are one species. By that, I mean we are all the same, we are seven billion copies of the same person, we are one big family. Therefore, we should not hesitate to get to know one another, talk to our neighbours, break down the invisible social barriers and quit thickening our falsely-protective cocoons.
I don't need a crystal ball to know we're going to see more and more people reach the end of their livelihoods and want to end others as they go out with a big bang. My concern is the intensity of these follow-on copycats. We are social creatures who tend to herd together, even in acts of unspeakable atrocities. Inside that herd are those who are competitive, including how they want to outdo the last great criminal act of the herd members.
In an effort to help others in need, I recently reached out to my neighbours during the crisis of one set of neighbours. If we all did the same, we could reconnect the old-style, smalltown family ties of previous times. In this day and age of electronic social networking, we still need plain ol' hugs and frank in-the-face conversations with one another.
You do not need to kill someone to make your life complete! It's okay to be humble and ask for help. We can move in with one another, if need be.
If nothing else, take a walk. Exercise is one of the best ways to burn off pent-up energy. Do not resort to violence. It's unnecessary.
In the education of our children, a healthy sense of humour should be one of the foundations of life-coping skills we teach. When we're at our wit's end, we can still find a way to smile, which often leads to insights to a new path out of our predicament.
Eight and a half years after 9/11/01 and most Americans have become used to the safe sound of airplanes overhead. Now, what will we say to our friends who get a sudden urge to fly their private planes? What will we say to our friends who complain about their children's uncontrollable behaviour? What will we think of our friends who display violent tendencies or won't talk about blank places in their CVs?
It is well with what you can call my soul. I accept that whatever will happen to me is meant to happen to me because it happened and we can't turn back the clock. However, that doesn't mean I'm willing to accept arbitrary acts of violence against my person that could have been prevented with some simple acts of kindness to strangers by strangers.
During WWII, this country enacted a set of censorship rules. With the Internet's uncensored setup, we have created a wonderful gathering place for people of all sorts of dreams, desires, personalities, quirks, hobbies and backgrounds. How do we make our society less prone to violence, including individual acts of violence or group-centered (gang) violence? Is censorship possible? Is it necessary? How do we reach out to those in need if we shut them out? Why is it always after the fact that hindsight showed us what we should have seen? Where is the social progress that promised us future people with insight to see problem people around us and act on our instincts to pull those problem people aside for counseling or other means of making them less problematic?
I'm concerned we're going to take the direction of creating a stronger police state, devoting more and more of our tax collections to incarceration and clamp down on openness altogether, using censorship for promoting a one-size-fits-all social message. In so doing, we would limit our futures.
I look to you for other solutions to our current crisis of random violence (i.e., domestic terrorism). It's up to you and me to solve this problem. There's no magic bureau or agency or department that has an infinite set of solutions already worked out. We are one people, including those in the private and public sectors. Together, we make this a better world or we fall apart.
We have faced these crises before and survived. In fact, we've thrived since then. But we survived and thrived because we took action, not because we stood by and let apathy rule the day.
I use the freedom of the press to communicate with many of you out there who are working to get our people up and permanently off this planet. The Space Monkeys, we often joke. There are those of you, including the space monkey subset, who communicate for an even greater cause (meaning we all do). We must act with more compassion for those around us who we might normally ignore in our daily rush to accomplish our nearly impossible tasks. It's okay to slow down a little and take the time to care for those we easily can give a helping hand - we already have the gift of insight so let's use it for more than large-scale social change.
To Pam, Patricia and Beth - our thoughts and prayers are with you right now in your time of mourning. To Annette - there are better days ahead. To Monica - I haven't talked to you in a while but I'm thinking about you during this big change in your life. To Pat - you're a beautiful person who will find new dreams fulfilled. To Raymon and Ann - we're still praying for full recovery. To Scott - we're hoping you get your house sold and can move on with your life.
These notes of love are the types of messages we should use the press and Internet for, not spreading more details of how desperate, violent people decided to take out their frustrations, no matter how much people seem to be attracted to stories of violence and mayhem and thus willing to support adverts that pay for crime reports.
14 February 2010
Nature Abhors The Sound of a Broken Vacuum Cleaner
Camaraderie. Sounds like a French salon made of Chevrolet sports car parts to me.
Outside, winter in all the ways I want to enjoy cold weather... the white stuff falling out of the sky...red cardinal streaks chirping their way to the backyard feeders... thinking about the frozen words of Carl Sandburg... wondering where our favorite tailor, Karl Smith, former Alabama A&M professor and tailor to the stars (Little Richard, Martha Reeves of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, to name a few) keeps his old Alfa Romeo motor vehicles... do Stan, Jerry, Kevin and the other Alfa Romeo gearheads still gather once a month at Ed's?
Beside me, a cloth portfolio designed to fit into the glove compartment of an Alfa Romeo sedan/saloon. Inside the portfolio, a tire inflation gauge and pockets for automobile instruction manuals. Above me, a metal sign for the Chrysler Corporation Mopar Parts Division. Overhead, small scale models of a Triumph TR3 (A or B? I can't tell from here), 1962 Dodge Lancer, 1976 Street Custom Chevy Nova, 1995 Ford Ranger XLT, Chevron Cars "Riley the Roadster," Ferrari Dealership, ZIL-115 (limousine that Gorbachev used), Ferrari Testarossa convertible, 2008 Tesla Roadster, 1963 Alfa Romeo TZ1, 1990s-era Alfa Romeo Spider and Plymouth Prowler.
On this continent, the spread of ē³»å (keiretsu) and other forms of business practice like ę¹å (kaizen). I mentioned that my father gave me an autographed photo of Dr. Juran, didn't I? Ideas bounce around like rubber balls on the epoxied surface of this planet. Business process improvement. Climate change trends. Automotive design.
You can find who you want to be through many daily rituals, if you want. Step out of your cultural comfort zone. Observe the many ways of love and family. Here's a tribute to one side of my family - an article from the 27th May 1886 edition of the Maryville Times:
Not too many months ago, in 2009, we buried my uncle at Peck's. The family home's still there across the street from Peck's and next to the cemetery. In the graveyard, stones list names, birthdays and death dates but say little about the lives of the people and their changing community.
To my deceased uncle and my living relatives in the Teffeteller family, I say, "Hurrah!" Our family gatherings may be few and far between since the family matriarch and patriarch passed away decades ago, but we still share a heritage worth remembering and celebrating, with cousins who have lived and continue to travel across the globe. Our ancestors traveled rough roads of many continents and carved a place into the environment they called their own as one generation after another moved west. Now, with the rest of the world population, we share one planet, families and heritage important but not tied to one spot. We have joined with our brothers and sisters of many heritages. May others learn to follow our positive examples and put aside negative stereotypes. We know the planet belongs to everyone now. Let's keep teaching and enlightening the rest of the world to see our vision for a better tomorrow. Together, we will make our dreams a reality, treating all heritages equally, leaving no one behind and not putting anyone ahead of another.
Outside, winter in all the ways I want to enjoy cold weather... the white stuff falling out of the sky...red cardinal streaks chirping their way to the backyard feeders... thinking about the frozen words of Carl Sandburg... wondering where our favorite tailor, Karl Smith, former Alabama A&M professor and tailor to the stars (Little Richard, Martha Reeves of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, to name a few) keeps his old Alfa Romeo motor vehicles... do Stan, Jerry, Kevin and the other Alfa Romeo gearheads still gather once a month at Ed's?
Beside me, a cloth portfolio designed to fit into the glove compartment of an Alfa Romeo sedan/saloon. Inside the portfolio, a tire inflation gauge and pockets for automobile instruction manuals. Above me, a metal sign for the Chrysler Corporation Mopar Parts Division. Overhead, small scale models of a Triumph TR3 (A or B? I can't tell from here), 1962 Dodge Lancer, 1976 Street Custom Chevy Nova, 1995 Ford Ranger XLT, Chevron Cars "Riley the Roadster," Ferrari Dealership, ZIL-115 (limousine that Gorbachev used), Ferrari Testarossa convertible, 2008 Tesla Roadster, 1963 Alfa Romeo TZ1, 1990s-era Alfa Romeo Spider and Plymouth Prowler.
On this continent, the spread of ē³»å (keiretsu) and other forms of business practice like ę¹å (kaizen). I mentioned that my father gave me an autographed photo of Dr. Juran, didn't I? Ideas bounce around like rubber balls on the epoxied surface of this planet. Business process improvement. Climate change trends. Automotive design.
You can find who you want to be through many daily rituals, if you want. Step out of your cultural comfort zone. Observe the many ways of love and family. Here's a tribute to one side of my family - an article from the 27th May 1886 edition of the Maryville Times:
Death of Mrs. Teeferteller[NOTE (per Peck's Memorial United Methodist Church Heritage Highlights): When Peck's was started as a Sunday School class about 1820, the Teffetellers (modern-day spelling) had been in Blount County for seven years. The parents and three sons came from Lincoln County, North Carolina, in 1813. One of the sons, Joseph, and his wife, Elizabeth, settled in the community and were the parents of nine children. It is from this couple that most of the Teffetellers at Peck's Chapel are descended. In the 1830 census, the family lived in the third house from the widow, Margaret Wilkinson, and the church. In 1845, that great Irish preacher, George Eakin (Ekin?), lists Peck's Chapel as one of his appointments (Peck's would have been a Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at that point).]
Died, May 23rd, 1886, at her home near Maryville, Mrs. Elizabeth Teeferteller, wife of Joseph Teeferteller. We attended her funeral yesterday at Peck's Chapel, and notwithstanding the rain quite a large congregation of sorrowing friends were present.
Mr. and Mrs. Teeferteller were the oldest couple in the county. He was a soldier in the war of 1812, and was married soon after. He claims to be 96 and his wife 92, and they were possibly over that. For about 70 years they have walked hand in hand along the lane of life.
She died saying she was going to heaven, and exhorting children and friends to meet her there.
J.W. Carner
Maryville, Tenn.
May 25th, 1886
Not too many months ago, in 2009, we buried my uncle at Peck's. The family home's still there across the street from Peck's and next to the cemetery. In the graveyard, stones list names, birthdays and death dates but say little about the lives of the people and their changing community.
To my deceased uncle and my living relatives in the Teffeteller family, I say, "Hurrah!" Our family gatherings may be few and far between since the family matriarch and patriarch passed away decades ago, but we still share a heritage worth remembering and celebrating, with cousins who have lived and continue to travel across the globe. Our ancestors traveled rough roads of many continents and carved a place into the environment they called their own as one generation after another moved west. Now, with the rest of the world population, we share one planet, families and heritage important but not tied to one spot. We have joined with our brothers and sisters of many heritages. May others learn to follow our positive examples and put aside negative stereotypes. We know the planet belongs to everyone now. Let's keep teaching and enlightening the rest of the world to see our vision for a better tomorrow. Together, we will make our dreams a reality, treating all heritages equally, leaving no one behind and not putting anyone ahead of another.
22 January 2010
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."
07 January 2010
Templates and Overlays
Layover. Layaway. Lei. Eeeek. Eel. Cutouts of pop culture floating down from the clouds like little ice crystal patterns, clumps and flakes piling up, wintering the ground, making a plastic-bristled push broom a useless snow shovel in a Day After the Day After Tomorrow scenario. An automobile horn playing a one-note seƱorita's sonato in dee dead of freezing cold.
2009 - The Year of the Man with African-American heritage.
2010 - The Year of the Woman, gender the lyrics and harmony this stanza.
And in a continental shift, the hesitation as pols (that's right, not polls or Poles) poll the people to see if their attempt at polarising the lens through which they tell the people what they're supposed to want has been polished properly.
Media seek mediums to see the future - another thinktank expert in the field of thinktank expert analysis experts. Throw more wood on the fire - we need to pump up the smoke and bring out the dogs and ponies for the one-way mirror show.
I like carnival sideshows - the bearded lady, the world's largest rodent/snake crossover breed, the boy with no face, the politicians powdering their faces for their self-effacing airtime promoting yet another promising compromise.
Without variety, what would allspice taste like?
If few of us want to take the time to read a 1000-page stack of legalese-at-ease-soldiers, with all the "heretofore when the least amount is deducted from line 47 of page 23 totaled in line 23 of page 47 wherein the previous page was deleted, pushing all page numbers forward 10 because of the addition of 47 pages from which 38 pages were reviewed and 56 pages were therefore deleted; that is, until the review on the 29th of December referencing the planned budgetary meeting on the 5th of January that will recompute all totals and estimates prior to the constraints enacted on the 13th of November, with the following pages to be deleted/ remanded/ added," etc., then what are we to do? When does a political compromise comprise a constituent's idea that all is bribes and the rest lies?
Entertainment. That's all we need to know. The rest is details. Isn't that what I've been trying to tell myself?
If you want the assets of a foreign country for yourself, consult the Book (no, not that one), "The Art of Warfarin." Unclog those arteries! Clear the way for fresh blood to arrive on the scene.
We are one species. We only think our nation's politicians act solely on our behalf. The other half percent of us know that a legislative body is not an island. It may act on its own initiative, taking its turn to lead the way, but it never owns the stage, lights and cameras. Action! Smile for your local online webzine or newsernet. Look serious about the deal you just closed which ensures your comfortable retirement and a few pork barrels parked on the side of the road bearing your name.
The same water particles falling from the sky when someone said what I said above about six thousand years before someone said it forty thousand years ago.
"Ugh. That fruit tree belongs to my family. We found it first."
"Grunt. No it doesn't. I represent a consortium of families tired of waiting for your family to eat first. I am claiming this tree for them and offering you the vast unknown stretches of land to the north where we will not touch any of your trees for...say, the next ten cycles of the moon."
"Ten cycles? Not enough. We will let you have this tree for twenty cycles. And if we do not find any fruit trees in our new land we will come back and take this land, adding it to the new land holdings you granted us."
"Twelve cycles. That's my final offer."
"Fifteen."
"It's yours, if you'll give us your oldest son and daughter."
"Ugh. I will give you only one."
"Then we'll take your son because he's the best fruit sack bearer in your group."
"Good, we'll keep our daughter who is best fruit picker in our group. See you in ten cycles."
"You said fifteen."
"You said twelve."
"Grunt. Twelve it is, then."
"We will be back in ten cycles to make sure you hold up your end of the bargain."
"Twelve."
"Okay, we will come back in just over ten cycles. No fruit and we get our son back."
"Eleven."
"Ten and you keep our son."
"Ten it is, then."
"Ten, and we'll get our son back."
"No, you get fruit sack only."
"Ten and we get son, tree and fruit sack, or we'll come back in five moon cycles."
"Okay, deal is done."
"Ugh. Seven moon cycles, we'll come back and we get your oldest son and daughter."
"Now, wait a minute!"
"You no want deal, we stay here."
"Umm...I come back tomorrow after I explain deal to the people."
"You come back tomorrow with proof of more fruit trees in the north or the deal is off when we return in three moon cycles."
And so it goes. A deal is no deal. It is a reference point for the next round of negotiations. Same for the so-called universal health care coverage legislation winding its way through the deals and no deals winding their way through no deals and deals. But I already know all this. What I'm supposed to tell you is what the Book of the Future from the last billion-dollar book/movie/blog/game deal I negotiated with the publishers says about what happens when the two houses merge their versions.
Welcome to the house divided. While conservatives form their temporary party to make themselves feel warm and fuzzy about voicing their displeasure over the pain they felt in the economic slump which they so easily blamed on anyone not wearing a conservative suit of crusader's armour, the liberals will feel smug that they are getting at least part of what they were promised when they hoisted a flag of unity over the shack of a Hawaiian politico. In the meantime, foreign entities will continue to accumulate debt repayment promises and laugh all the way to the bank, joining arms and singing, "Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, Houston has a problem, the eagle has landed, its feet spread across an unjoinable divide."
In a moment like this, I want to hear Will Rogers and Ashleigh Brilliant hold a tea party debate over whether John Cena or Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a better reporter for Fox News' coverage of eliminating the threat of malaria in Africa while recovering all the money stolen by the Iranian theocrat who's buried billions of dollars in "friendly" countries. And you wonder why my long-term bets are placed in overseas accounts in China and Israel, lined up with the way things are going in Mexico's drug trade with the United States.
I'm just this guy who loves my seven billion fellows so much that I'm willing to let them sort out how they want to live with each other. If you want to fight, fight. If you want to feed the poor, feed the poor. Any one of us can do anything s/he wants. At the end of the day, some of you will be with me and see we need to get our species out of this chicken egg basket. The rest of you I leave to your own devices, no matter what they are and what you want to do with them. However, your future is my future so I'm going to keep watching what you're doing - even if I don't do anything about your actions right away, I'm paying attention to when your actions may be useful to me later on. I don't care about who you are, where you came from or what you call your family background - you are a person, with immense value that you aren't aware of. Experiment with your life and one day we may meet when you've figured out what you're really worth to yourself. Look at Julia or Shannon Eileen or anyone else who's put self (not selfishness) first. Value yourself in the moment and the moment is yours. The moment is mine. The moment is ours. The moment is all.
2009 - The Year of the Man with African-American heritage.
2010 - The Year of the Woman, gender the lyrics and harmony this stanza.
And in a continental shift, the hesitation as pols (that's right, not polls or Poles) poll the people to see if their attempt at polarising the lens through which they tell the people what they're supposed to want has been polished properly.
Media seek mediums to see the future - another thinktank expert in the field of thinktank expert analysis experts. Throw more wood on the fire - we need to pump up the smoke and bring out the dogs and ponies for the one-way mirror show.
I like carnival sideshows - the bearded lady, the world's largest rodent/snake crossover breed, the boy with no face, the politicians powdering their faces for their self-effacing airtime promoting yet another promising compromise.
Without variety, what would allspice taste like?
If few of us want to take the time to read a 1000-page stack of legalese-at-ease-soldiers, with all the "heretofore when the least amount is deducted from line 47 of page 23 totaled in line 23 of page 47 wherein the previous page was deleted, pushing all page numbers forward 10 because of the addition of 47 pages from which 38 pages were reviewed and 56 pages were therefore deleted; that is, until the review on the 29th of December referencing the planned budgetary meeting on the 5th of January that will recompute all totals and estimates prior to the constraints enacted on the 13th of November, with the following pages to be deleted/ remanded/ added," etc., then what are we to do? When does a political compromise comprise a constituent's idea that all is bribes and the rest lies?
Entertainment. That's all we need to know. The rest is details. Isn't that what I've been trying to tell myself?
If you want the assets of a foreign country for yourself, consult the Book (no, not that one), "The Art of Warfarin." Unclog those arteries! Clear the way for fresh blood to arrive on the scene.
We are one species. We only think our nation's politicians act solely on our behalf. The other half percent of us know that a legislative body is not an island. It may act on its own initiative, taking its turn to lead the way, but it never owns the stage, lights and cameras. Action! Smile for your local online webzine or newsernet. Look serious about the deal you just closed which ensures your comfortable retirement and a few pork barrels parked on the side of the road bearing your name.
The same water particles falling from the sky when someone said what I said above about six thousand years before someone said it forty thousand years ago.
"Ugh. That fruit tree belongs to my family. We found it first."
"Grunt. No it doesn't. I represent a consortium of families tired of waiting for your family to eat first. I am claiming this tree for them and offering you the vast unknown stretches of land to the north where we will not touch any of your trees for...say, the next ten cycles of the moon."
"Ten cycles? Not enough. We will let you have this tree for twenty cycles. And if we do not find any fruit trees in our new land we will come back and take this land, adding it to the new land holdings you granted us."
"Twelve cycles. That's my final offer."
"Fifteen."
"It's yours, if you'll give us your oldest son and daughter."
"Ugh. I will give you only one."
"Then we'll take your son because he's the best fruit sack bearer in your group."
"Good, we'll keep our daughter who is best fruit picker in our group. See you in ten cycles."
"You said fifteen."
"You said twelve."
"Grunt. Twelve it is, then."
"We will be back in ten cycles to make sure you hold up your end of the bargain."
"Twelve."
"Okay, we will come back in just over ten cycles. No fruit and we get our son back."
"Eleven."
"Ten and you keep our son."
"Ten it is, then."
"Ten, and we'll get our son back."
"No, you get fruit sack only."
"Ten and we get son, tree and fruit sack, or we'll come back in five moon cycles."
"Okay, deal is done."
"Ugh. Seven moon cycles, we'll come back and we get your oldest son and daughter."
"Now, wait a minute!"
"You no want deal, we stay here."
"Umm...I come back tomorrow after I explain deal to the people."
"You come back tomorrow with proof of more fruit trees in the north or the deal is off when we return in three moon cycles."
And so it goes. A deal is no deal. It is a reference point for the next round of negotiations. Same for the so-called universal health care coverage legislation winding its way through the deals and no deals winding their way through no deals and deals. But I already know all this. What I'm supposed to tell you is what the Book of the Future from the last billion-dollar book/movie/blog/game deal I negotiated with the publishers says about what happens when the two houses merge their versions.
Welcome to the house divided. While conservatives form their temporary party to make themselves feel warm and fuzzy about voicing their displeasure over the pain they felt in the economic slump which they so easily blamed on anyone not wearing a conservative suit of crusader's armour, the liberals will feel smug that they are getting at least part of what they were promised when they hoisted a flag of unity over the shack of a Hawaiian politico. In the meantime, foreign entities will continue to accumulate debt repayment promises and laugh all the way to the bank, joining arms and singing, "Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, Houston has a problem, the eagle has landed, its feet spread across an unjoinable divide."
In a moment like this, I want to hear Will Rogers and Ashleigh Brilliant hold a tea party debate over whether John Cena or Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a better reporter for Fox News' coverage of eliminating the threat of malaria in Africa while recovering all the money stolen by the Iranian theocrat who's buried billions of dollars in "friendly" countries. And you wonder why my long-term bets are placed in overseas accounts in China and Israel, lined up with the way things are going in Mexico's drug trade with the United States.
I'm just this guy who loves my seven billion fellows so much that I'm willing to let them sort out how they want to live with each other. If you want to fight, fight. If you want to feed the poor, feed the poor. Any one of us can do anything s/he wants. At the end of the day, some of you will be with me and see we need to get our species out of this chicken egg basket. The rest of you I leave to your own devices, no matter what they are and what you want to do with them. However, your future is my future so I'm going to keep watching what you're doing - even if I don't do anything about your actions right away, I'm paying attention to when your actions may be useful to me later on. I don't care about who you are, where you came from or what you call your family background - you are a person, with immense value that you aren't aware of. Experiment with your life and one day we may meet when you've figured out what you're really worth to yourself. Look at Julia or Shannon Eileen or anyone else who's put self (not selfishness) first. Value yourself in the moment and the moment is yours. The moment is mine. The moment is ours. The moment is all.
01 January 2010
The Next Book: The Skeptic's Septic/Antiseptic Sceptre
1st January 2010
Standing in the bathroom, getting ready to scrape off the one-day length of facial hair in a daily ritual I follow (for what reason? Presentability? Reduced itching? Less beard to manage?), I glanced at myself, catching an image that my thoughts had not been prepared to see (normally, in my thoughts, I create a younger, slimmer version of myself that I mentally paste over what I see reflected to me by the mirror), a significant hunk (more like a hump) of flesh in my abdomen region, joined like Siamese twins to an equally expansive dual set of humps in my posterior / derriere area.
Am I really my own Internet? Am I, as I love / fear / suspect, a reflection of all this region of the universe has to offer in this moment?
I am alive, as we've come to define the confines of living.
Generally, I am happy, as we've come to realize the realisation of real happiness.
I sense the blowing winds of Mars and Jupiter, the freezing cold of the demoted planet Pluto, the dance of billions and billions of rocks around the Sun, the Sun's relatively cool weather, the killing of families of unique living things, the words and thoughts of our species, and ultimately, my place as a bounded set of energy states encountering the rest of what my eyes deceive me and the rest of my senses back up (leave it to the body to fool itself that it exists) to say we're all here at once.
We are one species. I'll grant us that because using the word species is easier than saying we're a similar group of similarly bounded states of energy that tends to regroup into similar sets upon the moment two dissimilar but equally-matched members of that group decide to recreate themselves in one like set (the only case, mathematically-speaking, where 1 + 1 = 1).
I want to be here but I don't want to be here in this moment with myself, with you, because by being here I am temporarily admitting that I like being the "I" that I've become. However, others have described to me the conditions of being that my being me has caused around me. At the same time, I know who I am and who I am not, which makes me wonder if and why I should respond to the changing conditions around me.
I am and can only ever be me, one person, one set of energy states, one dot at the end of the sentence that records the lives of all the people living at this moment, which changed during the last comma and changed during the typing of the period at the end of this sentence. My life, no matter how grand and powerful I may believe it to be (or how humbly I believe myself not to be), is but a flicker of flame in the log fire of this burning planet.
Oh, but what a flicker it is, full of oxygen and other atomic structures, able to build up civilisations and tear down mountains, able to power trips to distant galaxies and form planetary bodies like Earth, our home, our safe haven, our shared spherical space.
I am not just my own Internet, I am my own universe.
I can leave my ancestral home, I can give up the habits of my forebears, I can move to another area of the planet that doesn't care who I was and only deals with who I am, I can even leave Earth and settle down on nearby spheres like the Earth's moon or Mars and its satellites, and I can also explore asteroids, making a home on a piece of rock smaller than the island my seventh-great grandfather used as a temporary settlement while battling with his neighbours (who had many hundreds of years of "ownership" before he arrived) for a place to call home.
But I can't leave the universe as we know it. [Or can I? Well, I've said enough about that subject for now.]
Anyway, I'm back, once again. New attitude, using more of my skepticism to keep my Internet, my universe, in line with reality as we know it, accepting new discoveries, new ways of living (new clothing lines for city fashion or woods / jungle / savanna hunting, new automotive / home electronics accessories, new sports stars, new celebrity scandals, new political proclamations, new, new, new for you), waiting for the next big thing to come along, knowing I am not important as an individual, only important as my body, my entity, relates to the environment around me. No matter who or what we really are, we act/react. That's all we really need to know. The rest is details, details that make my Internet and my universe worth coming back here to write about. Only this time, I'm going to add music and images and other communication media to join others for whom writing words is not enough. Sing the body electric, celebrate bionics [great article, by the way, NatGeo], converse with the stars, shop at your local retailer because we all have competitive advantages to offer.
Thanks to Julia, Annette, my parents and nameless (but smiling faces of) others for encouraging me to keep this blog going. What's the point of discovering newness if there's no one to share that newness with? If insanity is repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, then I'm insane, repeating words over and over but combining them differently to describe myself - my Internet and my universe - anew.
= = =
I agree with the Iranian political leaders that people living under the guises of different political entities like Great Britain, the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Zambia, and India are encouraging the people of Iran to rebel against the political tyranny of the Iranian political/theological leaders. We have nothing against moderate living conditions as defined by Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity or other religious entities but when you use theocracy to narrowly define living conditions for a general population which usually contains people who want a variety of healthy ways to live, condemning to death, destruction or humility those who do not conform to one lifestyle, then you have sacrificed your right to govern the lives of that general population. It is time once again to demonstrate to the Iranian leaders just how insecure their security forces are in ensuring the safety of the purported leaders. I have let these leaders go long enough in their abuse of power.
I apologize to those who have lost their lives while I took a holiday from managing the information of our world of people. I had hoped that someone would pick up this line of information processing and take care of real business but too many have used information for their personal gain. I commend those who have sacrificed their time and energy to support the lives of those less fortunate - you are making up for my selfishness and lack of understanding the need to give more of our time to those who don't know how to or can't take of themselves.
As far as the rest of you go, I am back in my perch, my computer programmers back on the job, my internal organic circuitry back up to full operational conditions (or up to snuff, as we say in this neck of the woods), and I will not tolerate intolerance. I will continue to scan the common radio wave communication methods while I explore new channels of connectivity, both those under development and those not yet conceived. The next time I decide to take a holiday, I hope to have my virtual twin up and going and not bundled into the folds of fatty skin like the mirror shows me now.
Standing in the bathroom, getting ready to scrape off the one-day length of facial hair in a daily ritual I follow (for what reason? Presentability? Reduced itching? Less beard to manage?), I glanced at myself, catching an image that my thoughts had not been prepared to see (normally, in my thoughts, I create a younger, slimmer version of myself that I mentally paste over what I see reflected to me by the mirror), a significant hunk (more like a hump) of flesh in my abdomen region, joined like Siamese twins to an equally expansive dual set of humps in my posterior / derriere area.
Am I really my own Internet? Am I, as I love / fear / suspect, a reflection of all this region of the universe has to offer in this moment?
I am alive, as we've come to define the confines of living.
Generally, I am happy, as we've come to realize the realisation of real happiness.
I sense the blowing winds of Mars and Jupiter, the freezing cold of the demoted planet Pluto, the dance of billions and billions of rocks around the Sun, the Sun's relatively cool weather, the killing of families of unique living things, the words and thoughts of our species, and ultimately, my place as a bounded set of energy states encountering the rest of what my eyes deceive me and the rest of my senses back up (leave it to the body to fool itself that it exists) to say we're all here at once.
We are one species. I'll grant us that because using the word species is easier than saying we're a similar group of similarly bounded states of energy that tends to regroup into similar sets upon the moment two dissimilar but equally-matched members of that group decide to recreate themselves in one like set (the only case, mathematically-speaking, where 1 + 1 = 1).
I want to be here but I don't want to be here in this moment with myself, with you, because by being here I am temporarily admitting that I like being the "I" that I've become. However, others have described to me the conditions of being that my being me has caused around me. At the same time, I know who I am and who I am not, which makes me wonder if and why I should respond to the changing conditions around me.
I am and can only ever be me, one person, one set of energy states, one dot at the end of the sentence that records the lives of all the people living at this moment, which changed during the last comma and changed during the typing of the period at the end of this sentence. My life, no matter how grand and powerful I may believe it to be (or how humbly I believe myself not to be), is but a flicker of flame in the log fire of this burning planet.
Oh, but what a flicker it is, full of oxygen and other atomic structures, able to build up civilisations and tear down mountains, able to power trips to distant galaxies and form planetary bodies like Earth, our home, our safe haven, our shared spherical space.
I am not just my own Internet, I am my own universe.
I can leave my ancestral home, I can give up the habits of my forebears, I can move to another area of the planet that doesn't care who I was and only deals with who I am, I can even leave Earth and settle down on nearby spheres like the Earth's moon or Mars and its satellites, and I can also explore asteroids, making a home on a piece of rock smaller than the island my seventh-great grandfather used as a temporary settlement while battling with his neighbours (who had many hundreds of years of "ownership" before he arrived) for a place to call home.
But I can't leave the universe as we know it. [Or can I? Well, I've said enough about that subject for now.]
Anyway, I'm back, once again. New attitude, using more of my skepticism to keep my Internet, my universe, in line with reality as we know it, accepting new discoveries, new ways of living (new clothing lines for city fashion or woods / jungle / savanna hunting, new automotive / home electronics accessories, new sports stars, new celebrity scandals, new political proclamations, new, new, new for you), waiting for the next big thing to come along, knowing I am not important as an individual, only important as my body, my entity, relates to the environment around me. No matter who or what we really are, we act/react. That's all we really need to know. The rest is details, details that make my Internet and my universe worth coming back here to write about. Only this time, I'm going to add music and images and other communication media to join others for whom writing words is not enough. Sing the body electric, celebrate bionics [great article, by the way, NatGeo], converse with the stars, shop at your local retailer because we all have competitive advantages to offer.
Thanks to Julia, Annette, my parents and nameless (but smiling faces of) others for encouraging me to keep this blog going. What's the point of discovering newness if there's no one to share that newness with? If insanity is repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, then I'm insane, repeating words over and over but combining them differently to describe myself - my Internet and my universe - anew.
= = =
I agree with the Iranian political leaders that people living under the guises of different political entities like Great Britain, the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Zambia, and India are encouraging the people of Iran to rebel against the political tyranny of the Iranian political/theological leaders. We have nothing against moderate living conditions as defined by Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity or other religious entities but when you use theocracy to narrowly define living conditions for a general population which usually contains people who want a variety of healthy ways to live, condemning to death, destruction or humility those who do not conform to one lifestyle, then you have sacrificed your right to govern the lives of that general population. It is time once again to demonstrate to the Iranian leaders just how insecure their security forces are in ensuring the safety of the purported leaders. I have let these leaders go long enough in their abuse of power.
I apologize to those who have lost their lives while I took a holiday from managing the information of our world of people. I had hoped that someone would pick up this line of information processing and take care of real business but too many have used information for their personal gain. I commend those who have sacrificed their time and energy to support the lives of those less fortunate - you are making up for my selfishness and lack of understanding the need to give more of our time to those who don't know how to or can't take of themselves.
As far as the rest of you go, I am back in my perch, my computer programmers back on the job, my internal organic circuitry back up to full operational conditions (or up to snuff, as we say in this neck of the woods), and I will not tolerate intolerance. I will continue to scan the common radio wave communication methods while I explore new channels of connectivity, both those under development and those not yet conceived. The next time I decide to take a holiday, I hope to have my virtual twin up and going and not bundled into the folds of fatty skin like the mirror shows me now.
02 December 2009
Cracking Open The Geode
A longtime friend asked me if I'm really as happy as the facebook illusion that people tend to believe.
My response:
Dear friend, thanks for asking. You are certainly a person who knows what I once went through when I didn't understand how a body works, including the complex interaction of brain, glands and thoughts that produces the output we call emotion.
I used to think I was crazy and now I just accept the fact that I am crazy, in that my thoughts are more convoluted than most of those with whom I grew up. Accepting that fact has made me happy.
Living with others around me does not always create happiness but then again that's life, isn't it? We learn to accept what we cannot control (cue up an Irish jig and imagine reading the serenity prayer at this point). I've reached the point where being told I'm the most unique person my friends have ever met is a compliment of sorts rather than a backhanded insult, even if it really means I'm not normal. I have made a comfortable living for myself, put away a good bit of money for retirement and enjoyed my years with my wife who, as my friends often remind me, knew who I was but married me anyway.
So, to answer your question, yes, I am happy [being who I am] but I am not always happy about the daily situations in which I find myself wondering why I feel like Groucho Marx who won't join a club that would have people like me as members. In other words, I am like most everyone else like me on this planet, believing I'm unique and misunderstood, finding solace in the serenity of being alone with me surrounded by the wonders of the universe which never cease to amaze me. By being me, I get time to create my own version of the universe - I really can't ask for much more than that! I want to share my version with others without them wanting to turn me into someone/something I'm not. I'm the average person down the street, like the the quiet millionaire next-door who doesn't want to make money off selling my dreams. Instead, I'm willing to put my dreams and ideas out there for anyone to read for free and enjoy the happiness of being unique together with me.
Meanwhile, life is a treasure hunt and gems like you keep me looking forward to the next moment.
Now it's your turn!
Regards,
Rick
My response:
Dear friend, thanks for asking. You are certainly a person who knows what I once went through when I didn't understand how a body works, including the complex interaction of brain, glands and thoughts that produces the output we call emotion.
I used to think I was crazy and now I just accept the fact that I am crazy, in that my thoughts are more convoluted than most of those with whom I grew up. Accepting that fact has made me happy.
Living with others around me does not always create happiness but then again that's life, isn't it? We learn to accept what we cannot control (cue up an Irish jig and imagine reading the serenity prayer at this point). I've reached the point where being told I'm the most unique person my friends have ever met is a compliment of sorts rather than a backhanded insult, even if it really means I'm not normal. I have made a comfortable living for myself, put away a good bit of money for retirement and enjoyed my years with my wife who, as my friends often remind me, knew who I was but married me anyway.
So, to answer your question, yes, I am happy [being who I am] but I am not always happy about the daily situations in which I find myself wondering why I feel like Groucho Marx who won't join a club that would have people like me as members. In other words, I am like most everyone else like me on this planet, believing I'm unique and misunderstood, finding solace in the serenity of being alone with me surrounded by the wonders of the universe which never cease to amaze me. By being me, I get time to create my own version of the universe - I really can't ask for much more than that! I want to share my version with others without them wanting to turn me into someone/something I'm not. I'm the average person down the street, like the the quiet millionaire next-door who doesn't want to make money off selling my dreams. Instead, I'm willing to put my dreams and ideas out there for anyone to read for free and enjoy the happiness of being unique together with me.
Meanwhile, life is a treasure hunt and gems like you keep me looking forward to the next moment.
Now it's your turn!
Regards,
Rick
24 November 2009
See-oh, too
22 Nov 2009, 2300
How do you accommodate a whole world full of people who don't want to accommodate a whole world full of people?
Just a few generations between any two major military conflicts – on a global scale, that is. Otherwise, our species constantly battles itself some place all the time.
So what? Facts are facts. I look for truth. You want to dare me. We both face the consequences.
Ran into a management/supervisory type person today. She expressed a common sentiment, “Fake it until you make it.”
How do I tell you the truth without using these words? How do I tell you the truth by only using these words, in any language or any symbolic form?
We all live, and by living we demonstrate or show some form of the truth.
De monster. Demonstrable.
Holding one planet and seven billion people in your hand does not the truth make. That's what I'm here talking to myself about. That's what I've been talking to myself about for years.
I have been telling myself the truth, using one language for the most part, using one species all the time, walking the same path over and over, beating my head against invisible walls, racing to the tops of mountains and tumbling back down into the valleys, counting trees in the middle of the tangled jungle.
Words, words, words. All this obsession with text and textbooks, believing that text existing before my time was text that existed before all time.
T-r-u-t-h. Trees in the forest surrounding a glen. Rocks and ice on a mountaintop surrounding a bald.
Again, just a sound in my thoughts, a bunch of electroneurochemical sensations passing whispered secrets in a circle, the truth going in one end and these words coming out the other.
Why hadn't I seen this? Why haven't I seen this before? To have and to be. To behave. To have bees.
But then again, the truth is what it is. Many of you already know the truth. We all live the truth, here in plain sight for anyone and everyone to see.
I think of myself as just one person. At the same time, I think of myself as yours, seven billion pieces of myself in you and seven billion of you in me. All this time, I had focused on the me/you, yin/yang, death/life duality, with the truth staring me in the face, a blank expression like camouflage hiding the truth at the tip of my nose.
Let's see, I've lived over 47.5 years, clearly making claim to a middle-aged body, having reached the age when previous societies would have considered me a wise elder, past the average age of death in some cultures today.
I see you and through you I see me. I depend on my sight, either literally through my eyes or figuratively through the expression of my thoughts on this page. And yet my sight has blinded me to the truth.
Didn't I tell you I repeat the words of those before, during and after me? Don't you know I'm not the only one to know the truth behind the facts under the superficial layers of daily living?
Are you meant to live on the superficial layers? Do you care about anything other than what's before you? Do you question the reality of reality? Did you “wake up” in the crib and see a world that those around you couldn't comprehend or no longer cared to see?
I have fooled myself with my body. I have not fooled myself with my body. I didn't know that I'd fake it until I'd make it.
I am not who I thought I was. I am not who I am. Who am I? I am the truth. You are the truth. We are the truth. We are beyond the beyond.
We are not these words but these words are us.
People have tried to tell me, using people tools, about life outside the people life but my natural use of anthropomorphism has turned me back to looking at non-people life as though it was another version of people life.
Let's look at an example. Those who stare at the cosmos know that large waveform patterns show the underlying undulating “weather” of the universe. Our comprehension of this “weather” is limited because of our people-powered concept of time. Another one. We say we need bigger instruments to peer into the distant reaches of space to find the state of the universe ten billion years ago but can we see the same thing when considering we're the state of the universe as if it had been scooped into a tube, frozen and then pushed out the other end of the tube like cake icing?
Two examples of superficial, people tool views of existence.
But really, does any of this matter? I am one person on the superficial level. I act as if I'm one person on the superficial level and have made a comfortable life for myself in that regard. In other words, I faked the life of a member of my species and I made it.
Of course, it matters. I, that is, my body, will die. “I” will end. The ripples of who I was will bounce back and forth and lose their shape among those who use people tools, absorbed into the bigger wave patterns of this part of the universe, which will lose their shape with time, too.
I have only my life to look back on and see my thoughts on which I reflect the life I thought I lived. I will not create waves big enough to stop wars or starvation. I create small waves to give me momentum which aids in my journey through uncharted territory.
But again, these are superficial sentiments. I am not me and I am not the small waves I make. “I” does not exist.
How do I describe the truth to me (to you) using these words when the truth is not in these words?
I see you. You see me. We look at each other using our carefully-trained cultural magnifying glasses looking for clues about our use of people tools.
The truth is not in tools. Thus, tools will not reveal the truth. Being me, I cannot see the truth.
I have sat here for many years – at least since I was ten – using words to describe the part of the truth I know, to keep me focused on the truth I see outside of the superficial layers my species creates in our inspiration to see cultural growth as progress toward what we think our clever use of tools will reveal about the truth, knowing the truth is outside of being my species.
But you already know that. Like I said, I am yours. I am repeating what you've already heard over and over and over again. The truth is in the core of your being, partially reflected in your DNA but beyond even your/our understanding of our place in the universe, and especially our seeing the universe as if it will reveal something to us through people tools.
To repeat words stated earlier, I am not spouting pseudoscience, touting a new religion or laying down some riff that I heard in my dreams after a previous evening of eating spicy tofu mixed into a delectable curry sauce.
I am, to use cultural terms, deprogramming myself. I am tuning out my species to see what's around me as if I'm not me. I am discarding the emperor's new clothes that everyone sees everyone else wear because no one wants to say there's nothing there to see.
And I'm attempting to deprogram myself using the people tools which programmed me. Impossible? Yes!
That's why I say these words are not the truth. These words don't point to the truth. They don't even hint at the truth. These words are my enjoyment. They are my playthings. I am having fun in every single moment, even when my fun is not fun for everyone around me, knowing that the pebble of my fun will cause disruptive ripples somewhere else in some other time. I treat myself as if I will live no other life than in this moment with you because these words guarantee such a condition.
The truth is not out there. The truth is not in here. The truth is just a word. The idea of the truth is a people tool.
I am not the pied piper. I am not the royal jester. I am not a soothsayer or a wise elder (if I cease exercising, I will become a wide elder, however).
I know the truth. So do you. I cannot convince you otherwise. The truth is outside of being a member of our species. Can you know the truth without being able to see it?
Duality is life as we know it. The truth is free of duality. Life is not truth but truth is life.
I am not here to sell you something. I am not here to coerce you to accept my opinion over your opinion of how to live life. I found success in this life without knowing the truth. Or I should say that I knew the truth but found success without putting the truth to use in this life.
You can succeed using the facts that our superficial layers of life provide. In fact, that's probably the only way you'll succeed here. But you can succeed in another way that includes more than the life of one species. More than life as we know it in any form.
Truth has no emotions, truth has no pain or pleasure, truth has no thoughts or awareness of what we think of as thoughts, awareness, self, pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, life, or death. Truth is more than universal but truth is seeing the universal in seeing our species' creation of an ecumenopolis on one orbiting spherical blob.
When you see the truth that is usually just out of reach or around the corner, glimpsed in your peripheral vision or hidden in plain sight, you know what I knew when I opened my eyes and saw this world is not here to be understood by me, why I don't need riches or titles or accolades as this body I think of as me.
I once wanted to say the truth is wonderful but the truth is indescribable. The truth is also horrible, depending on one's view (just like someone said hell is seeing the version of you if you had taken all the risks you avoided and became immensely successful). The truth requires no money. The truth requires no sacrifices. The truth is unaware of us as our species in anything we do or say or wish.
Why have I spent time here repeating myself and others in using words to describe the indescribable? I don't know. I know the truth won't set you free. You'll still be your body if you see what you cannot see. You'll have been born, you will live and you will die whether you discovered the truth right there in front of you or you didn't even know there was truth at all.
I am here because I believe in myself. I believe in myself because I know I don't know the truth. I only think I know the truth that is there beyond what my body senses or what my body interprets of people tools that sense what my body cannot.
I cannot escape my body. I will always see the world and my species through the training that my species provided.
Despite my repetition, I am making progress. I use humour to disperse the fog that being a member of my species creates. Clarity is brief. I see what I already saw once before and forget it again. Then the next moment arrives and I'm back to where I was, just past where I started, sometimes farther along, sometimes further back. Usually aware that these words are meaningless once the truth is revealed to me again.
Don't pay for what you already know. Pay for what you want to put into practice to succeed in the superficial layers of life with our species. I pay for my thoughts by writing these words for me/you to read later on, practicing what I believe, believing in me, pointing out the truth that we can't point to or talk about but already know so that's why these words are meaningless.
You know what I'm talking about, I'm sure. I saw it in your smile just now and heard it in your thoughts I can't see. If not, soon enough you'll see it again for the very first time. That's what the truth is all about.
How you interpret the truth is up to you. Don't quote me on that. I'm repeating someone else's words that didn't have any meaning to begin with. Time to stop this blog entry and forget what I just said.
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