Navigable Waters

While looking in the house a couple of nights ago for a book called "What is Form Criticism?" by Edgar V. McKnight (c) 1967 from a university class on early Christianity, I pulled aside a plastic bag full of books from another era - my late childhood.  A few titles stand out:

• "Programmer's Guide To The 1802 (With An Assembler For Your Machine)" by Tom Swan
• intel Component Data Catalog (c) 1978 ["Four Dollars and Ninety-Five Cents"], Radio Shack part no. 62-1379
• "Profiles In Courage" by President John F. Kennedy
• as well as several books dedicated to the ZX-81/Timex-Sinclair 1000 and hypertext programming

All while biding time until my next fishing expedition.  Today, a little more research on the fishes of Alabama, a discovery that our current view of an expanding universe may be wrong, and then off to another fishing spot.

Swallows nesting.  Hundreds of thousands of maple helicopter seed pods racing, paced, on the river's surface.

Had partially blocked a farm field path when I parked off the road this morning.  The farmer appeared out of the field with his large CASE tractor and disc plow, ready to close the gate and plow another field, so I moved the car for him.  He thanked me and drove on.

Minnows in the shallows.  Water striders jumping around.

The stripped carcass of an 18-inch sucker catfish feeding flies and filling the air with a pungent punch.

The tweet of baby birds begging from a nest in a scrub tree overlooking the water.

The river crossing of a paved country road, the bridge and its concrete piers pockmarked (shooting practice?), with dried mud floodlines up to the top of the piers and the yellow-and-black striped painted water depth markers faded and chipped.

Find a few places to cast out into the middle channel and slowly reel the plastic worm toward shore into a deep eddy.  Around noon here under the bridge's cool shadows and no fish going after the artificial lure.  Can see them darting around the river bottom uninterested.  Time for live bait next time.

Reflections of sunlight, like European discotheque after hours, dancing on the bridge's underbelly.

Midday peace.  Dragonflies.  Green bottle flies feeding on old fish bait.  The chirp of cardinals feeding along the river's edge.  A butterfly bound for nowhere in a hurry.

Swamp bamboo.  Open channel flow.  A few river rapids within view.

The "spray" of sand and gravel, into the river and onto me, from a heavy construction truck riding across the bridge, the bridge I-beam girders bending and bouncing, tiny pieces of rust released in the breeze.

Swallows come back all at once, their chitter-chattering matching their swift movements as they sweep under the bridge, stop momentarily at their nests (to feed babies?) and swoop back up into the warm blue sky for food and play.

Some sticks stuck on the shoreline - leftover handmade catfish fishing poles?  Wads of fishing line and beer containers thrown up into the underbrush.

Drink the rest of my one bottle of beer.  Contemplate lighting a cigar just as a truck pulls up.  Looks like a guy and a gal want some privacy.  Time to pack up and move on.

Back on the road, the ol' Doc McKinney Grocery, reminding me of a friend whose father's farm here in north Alabama used to have a small Cherokee village at the back.  The old Cherokees slowly died off and the village disappeared with their local way of life largely forgotten.  I am an Eagle Scout of a long-since defunct Boy Scout troop, our Scouting ways well documented but our personal trials and trails through Scouting fading with middle age.  Best to remember few will remember us long after we're gone so live for the moment and not some future we don't know we'll see.

Sends me back in time when a couple of guys used to pick up the trash in the evening at my office 12 years ago.  Neither one knew the other but they both fished the local waterways and kept trying to convince me to drop what I was doing (a lot of unpaid after-hours data analysis, at the time), pick up a pole and enjoy life as our forefathers lived, depending on the land for food and happiness.  A coworker got the clue and used to take off to fish the Elk River every chance he got.  I missed the opportunity then.

However, never too late to live the old ways, peel off the layers of civilisation and feel yourself solidly in place with the rest of the natural living things around you.  Your personality fades, conversation loses significance and the problems of the people world barely show up ... for at least one sunny day in mid-spring in the Northern Hemisphere of a small planet circling a yellow star.

Ever watched life spring up on an asteroid passing near the Sun and then fade away for a few hundred years of a cold elliptical path?  Ever watched life on a riverbank, time a measure of shadows and sunlight, every moment an irreplaceable snapshot of life on Earth?

Living waters is a phrase with many meanings - to me, the simple pleasure of sitting silently with algae, minnows, turtles, trees, snakes, grass, spiders, flowers, flies and birds.  Wondering if I'll catch a fish but not caring.  No memories.  No ledger accounts.  Life and death.  Eat, breed and be eaten.

Venus and Mercury Don't Know Their Names

While the Great Mother and the Great Father put forward the continuous conversation of the ancient ones, I turned my head to hear a noise.

A sound.

"My name is Sherry," she said.

I closed my eyes to see the sound without visual stimuli.

We run our editing machines without noticing what we cut out.

The rumble in my bones of a train passing by.

Tinnitus.

We are one planet of people ... still ... listen.

The flow of centripetal/centrifugal/Coriolis forces.

Wind.

Magma.

States of energy.

Intersecting undulating wave patterns disguised as particles.

We eat.  We drink.

We consume.

Local.  Global.  Universal. -al.

Contumely.

The reflection of the sun - albedo.

Many neighbours visible right now - Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury - the eye unaided by magnifying lenses.

The continuous conversation continues ...

Assume everything reduces to sand and dust.

Assume this life is the only life in which you get to be you.

Assume you assume nothing.

You live because others want you to live.  Others live because you want them to live.

Life is life - think and act simply.

Breathe deeply - the air is free.

Who puts food in the mouth of the person who puts food in the mouth of the person who puts food in your mouth?

What is the food you put in your mouth?  Where did the food come from?

Civilisation is one simple source of food depending on another.

What do I give the next generation to put civilisation in perspective?  The latest sports/fashion/music/technology trend will find its way here with or without me.  The hardest working man in show biz and the Japanese anime superstar rise on their own merits.

Do I put aside retirement and dive into the trendsetter world again, where Shanghai and Sao Paolo become realistic dots in my rods and cones that expand into street players and factory designers who appear on tomorrow's headline news?  In retirement, I watch how people train their dragons in animated cinema and how BBQ is prepared at Charlie's.

How many languages and dialects do you speak?  What jargonese dominates your vocabulary?  Are you fabless or are you fabulous?  Can you tell agar from a jar?  Can you smoothly transition from chemistry to physics to biology to psychology to public speaking to sports to family matters to nuclear medicine to forensic pathology to politics to astronomy to business to fashion to speechwriting to fishing in the same sentence?

Do you have a universal theory of everything just waiting to be heard and verified by the experts?

The more outlandish, the more crazy your idea sounds, the more it needs to be heard.  That's why seven billion voices count.  Every person has a vision, a dream, that differs from the next person's ever so slightly.  That slight difference makes all the difference between a species that survives and a species that excels.

Make your difference visible.

There are no right answers.  There are questions that no longer mattered after the next set of questions were asked.

So far, the only ones listening to us as we are are people - only we fully understand our emotions, our languages, our cultures. 

However, on this planet we are surrounded by organisms with many nonpeople ways to live and understand one another.

Listen to the wind.

Feel the rumble through your feet.

Wisdom is all around you in the simplicity of daily living.  Remove complications to see what is really before you.

Look at the person standing near you hunched over a rectangular-shaped object and ask yourself if you're looking at a mirror image of yourself reading something like this blog or responding to IM/SMS/facebook posts.  Who is that person and what else could that person do?

Levels of civilisation - eating, talking, texting, thinking - all reduce down to how you live your life in the moment.  Value the moment and you will see how you can help others make their moments more valuable.

After all, Venus and Mercury are labels which have nothing to do with the reflective spheres baking in solar radiation and Earth is no longer the center of the universe.  What new insight will you provide us with your crazy idea like heliocentrism or adding no holds barred cage fighting and motorbike roller derby as Olympic events?

In Defence of Jane

Are you keeping track of the ASBM?  Are you a regular reader of Jane's news?

I'm sad about the actions in Moscow but more worried about bigger dirty problems not as easy to clean up, coming up through radioactive rocky hotels of the Kajik metal-toothed poor and Phillipines' pine-forested potbellied birds.  How many of ADM's foodgrade rolling barrels are tasty addictive HFCS button poppers and how many are filling station containers?  Are Cancer and Capricorn tropical or topical?  Why all these words from the wordless one?  Latitudes and longitudes and chocolate orange slices make winter freezes turn out refreshingly tasty tomatoes.  One tasty tomato you won't find in Grainger County this year - she says she's this century's Tokyo Rose.  Another bitter pill to swallow?  No she won't!

The bliss of ignorance, where are you?

Are you signing petitions at petrol stations asking for the reduction of debit/credit card fees?

I love my brewskis, micro and macro, but if there's any one thing to put in prayer, thank God for Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme!  Don't go well with Bushmills or Redbreast but there's a time and a place for every taste.  Some like Jack and Coke.  Some don't know Jack.  Can you play Dark Castle on an iPad?  How does Duke Nukem like his doughnuts - Old Style, White Castle or Sears Tower?

What to do with aviation blue news?  Have the Russians learned not to fly over Scottish territory again or do I have to tell another tale worth splashing some single malt whiskey that tastes like pure charcoal?  Push buttons and buttons pop.  Pop goes the weasel!

This afternoon's worth sipping some expensive, rare whiskey in your honour, your Honour.  Then another readin' o' the Book o' the Future about ya.  Are you ready for another round?  Wink-wink, nod-nod, nudge-nudge - how about a Blackmail sketch replay?  Pop culture references are past-present-future participative.  Can you take a joke over a cup of java, Joe?

Who's driving the digital motor home?  Who's selling access to the secret network that's darpafree and internetlike and exafast?  Who doesn't have to pay?  What do Indian medical mall entrepreneurs have to say?

Who was in that white van going past?  Did that get the info that was sent to them on radio wave signal pathways?

The Experiment Called Your Life

How often do you convince yourself that an external force keeps you from being you?

Well, this blog entry has nothing to do with the previous sentence.

Well, this blog entry has nothing to do with the previous sentence.

Well, this blog entry has sentences to do with the previous nothing.

Is there anything logical about the observed universe?

Is there anything universal about the observed logic?

Is anything there?

Can you observe anything?

How do you push yourself along when you're squatting like a stubborn donkey?

Are you a mule?

Are you a stool pigeon?

If the pursuit of wealth makes you happy, will you be happy when you stop pursuing and spend time simply enjoying your wealth?

Financial wizards keep upping the size of the retirement carrot in front of the donkey.  Isn't it time you figured out that standards of living are imaginary and you can live any life you choose (or don't choose), given the amount of money available to you?

Happiness is a number of atoms.  Happiness is being alive.  We never know the happiness of being alive until we get that temporary reprieve some have received in momentary deathlike states.

Find the happiness in being alive and nothing else will matter.  No need for second homes, second automobiles, secondhand automobiles, the latest disposable gadget, or even the necessities of life you thought were so essential to you yesterday.

Happiness is the image you want to look at everyday - the image of you reflected back to you.  I found that image when I was in the crib, lost it again, found it again, lost it again, found it again, and wonder why I spend time here when my happiness makes me want to sit still and listen to the sounds of the forest today.

Excellent observation, Rick.  I'm going to stop blogging for a few days and enjoy life at its simplest happiness.  I don't need complex interactions to justify my existence to you just because I actually enjoy being me in the moment.  You enjoyed your life before I came along - why don't you and I enjoy life away from this blog and other electronic devices for a while?

See what life was like before we developed language!  The happiness of a newborn baby, satisfactorily warm and full of food.

Foggy, Foggy Night

What is the fun in having fun if you can't remember all the details?  The answer lies in the forgetfulness.

So here it is at 21:43, with me trying to sort out what I did between 16:15 and 21:30, a mere short time of the night on St. Patty's Day, don't you think?

A few names stand out: John, Ryan from ???, Elizabeth from Huntsville, Kristan from Anniston, the Spoetzl Brewery, an Irish car bomb or two or three or four or ???, A.D. J. Security and a shirt that read, "I'm not lucky, I'm good."  Rosalyn stopping by our table at Mason's Pub.  Many a lad and lass wearin' or not wearin' green while waltzin' past our table.

A bunch of flat panel TVs playing ESPN games.  Receiving some Jameson's hats, T-shirts and drinking glasses.  Eating shepherd's pie and corned beef & cabbage and warm cookies and cold ice cream.  Drinking Guinness, Murphy's, Smithwick's and Left Hand Porter.  Seeing servers who remind us of Nair adverts of the 1970s and "who wears short shorts."  Who was the marketing assistant from Avocent who we once saw at Finnegan's and tonight saw at Mason's?  Why did we stay there and not go to Lowe's Mill to hear an Irish jig band?

Watching people watching us to see if we were about to leave our two-person two-topper table.  Watching people watching people.  Swapping ciggies/fags for bracelets.  Swapping bracelets and hats for smiles.  Sharing drinks.  Drinking Olde Towne and drinking in old town. HYP (Huntsville Young Professionals) and us, HMAR (Huntsville Middle-Aged Retirees) recently intermixed in the town where Moody's elevates Huntsville to No. 1 city for job growth prospects.

A city known as a great place to raise children but also a quiet place to have a good time, from Cafe Michael with Russ D. and wife to downtown with the single scene and in-between.

Central to the South, where Chinese and Russian spies listen carefully.  Not far from Bristol Motor Speedway and Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, where cost of living doesn't knock you out, just keeps you on your toes.


Sober up and you'll hear the blues, the news and a few patrons at Blue Plate Cafe.  Neal, Tricia and Ginger.  The ever-present Will and Kasey.


If you're paying close attention.

Have you ever eaten colcannon after sending a text via mobile phone.  Do you know a smart, good-lookin' gal when you see one?  Or, like me, would you rather be proudly married to one for 24+ years and everyone else, good-lookin' and smart, pale by comparison?


Drink Saranac or be Irish, you take your pick.  I made my choice when I was 12 and haven't looked back.  Can you say the same?


Breakfast, blog and read - that's all it takes to know one.  Can you be one?

Benefits and Fringes

After making reservations for this year's An Irish Evening benefiting United Cerebral Palsy, what to do with a recent $100 gift from Amazon?  Buy some stuff to support the economy, of course:

Nothing: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions), by Frank Close
Green Roof Plants: A Resource and Planting Guide, by Edmund C. Snodgrass, Lucie L. Snodgrass
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, by Sean Carroll
Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls, by Nigel Dunnett, Noël Kingsbury
Wasabi Peas 5 lbs. (80 oz.), Sold by: JR Mushrooms & Specialties

I'll put off purchases of Rejcha, Vranický and Dolly Freed's Possum Living until another day.

For some reason, all of this got me thinking about Karl Haas, a former host of a classical music program, "Adventures in Good Music."  I always wondered what happened to him and just discovered today that he died in 2005.  A great loss.  He often remarked that the variety of lifestyles of his listeners kept him going.  We should all be so lucky, to impact people across the spectrum of living.

Insolvency

Sometimes I have to remind myself that this blog is about you.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  All I'm saying is that there are moments when I've been passed information that seems like common, everyday conversation which needs not be repeated.  However, the network of associates requires the information to circulate in order to confirm the feedback testing that goes on within the multiple loops, layers, cycles and spirals of what we need to know to accomplish the tasks we don't know we've assigned ourselves.

For instance, I know that a pretty young woman who handed me my food at Chili's tonight thought she just happened to put on a blouse with the logo "A87" from Aéropostale to wear to work but I know that the logo has more significant meaning to someone I don't know.  Let me explain.

You see, some people think that my associates use codewords or passcodes or a breakfast cereal decoder ring to encode and decode encrypted messages.  Well, as a matter of fact, some of them do.  But they're making you into a fool for believing the codes have some deep, dark meaning.  They're just playing an April Fools' Day joke on you.

Instead, by receiving information about a female restaurant worker wearing a specific article of clothing on a specific day, our network of computer programmers can plot trends about the future, showing that if enough people buy the same article of clothing, it changes stock prices, it determines the amount of available disposable income and eventually it leads us to understand what type of tree will be growing at any given location in the next 200 years because of the influence of the amount of paper money in circulation on the growth of the economy and the number of living carbon sinks (i.e., trees).

So, two facts: one, that Brandi served my wife and me at Chili's, and two, later on another young woman, this time at the Target checkout line, told us that dissolving a cup of sugar in a pitcher of warm Kool-Aid makes the Kool-Aid taste sweeter (a trick she learned from her mother) while she purchased a pastel spaghetti-string camisole. Combining the two facts, according to a quick run-through of the latest update of the software my computer programmers sent me a moment ago, indicates to me that sometime in the next year a young Hmong-American mother will decide to become an important leader of her community after being inspired by Obama's determination to turn around the economy despite being hampered by politicians who are acting on the behalf of the people/corporations/foreign entities filling their reelection coffers who want the politicians to do nothing to show that when the economy improves it was their lack of action (no major government expenditures/taxes) that made the economy better.  (BTW, while verifying the meaning of the word "coffers," thanks to a video by Kory Stamper at Merriam-Webster for reminding me that slang is slang for words, and both formal and informal usage in our daily vocabulary are equally strong factors for determining the set of words to put in a dictionary).

What would happen to us bondholders if all municipalities declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy?  You know, I'm not a gold hoarder but... no, I'm not an alarmist, either.  Even so, I'll follow this thought a little longer.  If all I had left was what is on this plot of land, could my wife and I survive?  If the governments of the Western world go bankrupt on purpose, how do they defend themselves from countries that are solvent?  What was Stephen King thinking when he wrote "The Stand"?  Who picks the articles for the Tehran Times?

I remind myself this is my world, my people, my solar system, my galaxy, my universe.  Therefore, what happens happens because I wanted it to happen.  Therefore, I need to stop dicking around with old-fashioned apocalyptic rubber-necking storylines and return to the way I really want the world of our people to follow.  With that said...

Here is what the Book of the Future will show us next.  There is no force or coercion that will make you give up your privacy, freedom or independence.  You can still do the things you want to do with the limited means you have available.  However, should you want to join the members of our species who understand we can make real progress toward a better future, together we will learn to wisely share ourselves and our resources, which is not the same as socialism, communism or fascism.  Under the auspices of the democratic republic form of government that determines the acceptable common behaviour of the people of this land on which I live with you, we have leeway in how we can choose subsets of behaviour we think best suit our personalities, families and local communities.  Let us have civil disagreements without resorting to petty namecalling or acting huffy and taking the ball home because we don't like how the rules of the game make us lose sometimes.

Let us look at the issue of taxation - would you rather have a VAT or enforce local/county/state taxation rules which already exist that should govern tax collections of Internet transactions?  If you believe in small government then what shall you small businessowners do about your customers who are good citizens who retired as public servants (court clerks, police officers, firefighters, teachers, etc.) and face the possibility of losing their pensions?  In other words, do you know how much of your business comes indirectly from public funds?  Remember, we are all one people.  Whatever affects one of us affects all of us.  You can't simply wish away someone else or someone else's problems.

An acquaintance asked me if I knew how much money that immigrants, legal or illegal, take out of our economy and send back home, which he thought drained the economic power of our country.  I don't know.  It's a question I haven't thought about or analysed so I've thrown it to my computer programmers to figure out.  If we buy foreign goods that are subsidised by foreign governments and don't collect taxes on the goods we manufacture domestically, on top of a large trade imbalance, when do the scales completely tip over?  Have they already reached a state that can't return to equilibrium again?  What does history teach us about countries that spent too much on public funding of military pursuits and other noninfrastructure expenditures without nonaggressive support from other countries and with minimum military aggressiveness by other countries (the same or different)?

I now know all the answers to the questions above and am acting on behalf of our species to accomplish some long-term goals.  There are short-term causes and effects I have already seen coming.  You can't please all of the people all of the time.  Actually, pleasing people is not one of the goals.  To know the future and take responsibility for that knowledge requires an absence of emotional response.  I am not trying to make the people happy or sad.  I am working with others to make sure our people have the time, room, and means to individually make themselves happy or pleased, if they want.

These are my words.  We are my people.  We will not disappear overnight.  We cannot make sudden major shifts in the general direction our species takes.  Words are only a small part of what it takes to make us see who we are and who we are not.

I know who we will be 1,000 years from now and I know it takes one thousand cycles of the planet around the Sun to get there - no shortcuts - 365+ days a year.  I have about 14,684 days left to help us get to where we'll be 1,000 years from now.  Not a very long time.  Thank goodness I'm only one of seven billion working together toward the same goal.

You know deep down it is our species you belong to, not a club, a clique, a country or an ideology.  Act upon what you know, not what others have taught you or are forcing you to act upon.

I like to laugh and have a good time but when it comes to our species, I will rise up in rage and anger if you stand in my way to get us to see us as one species.  I resort to obscene language, not giving a damn care if my fucking words offend you when you engage in genocidal behaviour.  I am a complete member of my species, with all my emotions available to me all the time.  I carefully use my states of energy, including those we call emotions, to nudge us along.

We are going wonderful places with ourselves as one species that you cannot comprehend in your current state.  But you have an inkling, don't you?  That's why you're here.  It's in you to see the future ahead of us 500 generations from now if you let the noise of your thoughts evenly disperse and slowly gel into one thought.  But that's a thought for a future blog entry, isn't it?  You know it is!

Pasty White Ennui

Brown rice and tofu versus Alberta wheat and hot chocolate.  You make the call:

http://www.slate.com/id/2244503/pagenum/all/

Some news items are worth greater consideration:

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/2/2010021520100215031320455d737f39b/Pune-bakery-Blast-claimed-the-lives-of-a-brilliant-student-his-sister-fianc%C3%A9e-.html

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."

While I'm At It...

Having spent the past year pondering the stereoscopic view of the world from the tip of my nose, I suddenly find I am with you in the western calendrical world of 2010. But I am also in 4707 in the Chinese calendar system, 5770 in the Jewish calendar system and in the Aztec calendar system, today is 11 - Tochtli (rabbit) 1 - Tecpatl (flint knife) 3 - Xochitl (flower).

Numerical day-counting systems aside, today, the moment somewhere between waking up after sunrise and going to sleep after sunset, I note the local scalar system which indicates my gravitational pull onto this planetary body. A metal contraption containing a spring and a dial told me today's lucky number is 235, five digits less than the number 240 which appeared three days ago.

I don't know the magic number I'm trying to hit but I do know the effect I want to cause as the days disappear behind me. Having jogged/walked and completed a marathon in 2004, a little over five years ago, when my specific gravitational equilibrium read 195 (seven pounds heavier than what my general practitioner (i.e., family doctor) called my "ideal" weight to body type ratio (medium build, 6'1" height, good health in my early 40s)), I believe it's time to put exercise practices back into practice.

Walking 30 minutes a day, using the in-home rowing machine, and memorising Tai Chi movements will occupy parts of my days this year. A balanced diet of protein, fiber and other tasty treats will accompany my eating routines.

I'll post updates on what I've accomplished by adding general fitness routines to my daily habits.

I have no goals other than to vary my habits from one set of seasonal changes to another. Of course, I have a long-term goal - to float around the dark side of the moon on an outer space cruise/spa ship - where every pound/stone has a high price in fuel. Now's as good a time as any to reduce my future fuel use while I see what the rest of the seven billion members of my species is up to.

Until later...

Happiness is a warm gulp of humble pie

The day has arrived - the final entry in the blog "Life In The Cove." When I decided to start blogging many, many years ago, I found nothing of interest to write about; that is, I wondered why anyone, including me, would want to read what I had written electronically.

I grew up with No. 2 pencils and dotted lines on which we were to practice our language writing skills. I and my classmates "graduated" up to solid blue lines packed more closely together, using pencils, mechanical and wood-wrapped, along with pens to practice our skills at reciting more than alphabet soup icons. Some of us used typewriters at home and by our 9th year in formal schooling we were able to attend classes dedicated to the click and clack of mechanistic writing, pressing our fingers down in unison to learn how to express our primate intelligence without looking at what we pushed our fingers upon. In-school and home computing skills were limited to those of us with access to our parents' (primarily our fathers at that time) workplace electronic gizmos, including TTY machines and mainframe computer dummy terminals.

A few of us handbuilt computers in our parents' basements or garages while our contemporaries handbuilt jacked-up street racers or offroad trailblazers, all of us applying our burgeoning project management skills, multitasking before we knew what that meant.

As our experiments in the give-and-take of social intercourse progressed, we learned who we were and who we could become. We did not weave running commentaries into the fabric of life - we expressed our concerns in the moment, with both the concerns and the moment vanishing into the ether with nary a trace.

Therefore, when I first started a blog, it felt foreign to me, like swapping out my shoes for someone else's, mixing pairs and then putting a left-footed sandal on my right foot and a right-footed boot on my left foot. Why would I or someone else want to read about putting my stinky, old feet into those shoes of those who'd walked paths I knew not where?

Why? Good question. I am past the age of reason, the age of understanding, wandering through the age of wisdom trying to remember where I put the note that told me which ribbon I tied around my finger to remind me where I put the jacket that contains the digital notetaker on which I recorded where I last put the key to the door to get out of here.

Words and images painted with words. Pictures without pigment. Thoughts without electropopneurochemical traces connecting the lines of ink.

Asking a two-dimensional circle, triangle or square to imagine a three-dimensional world. Asking a cube to imagine a Mandelbrot set growing and shrinking with time.

We social creatures keep experimenting with our social circles, circling around each other like whirling dervishes. We mix and match our established food sources, we reinvent our exoskeletal coverings, we recombine molecule chains - we socialise in the moment momentarily momentous.

In other other words, we will blog for a while until the next new thing comes along. I'm moving on to that next new thing, blogging an interesting experiment in our experimentation but losing interest to me. I know we will socialise in another multidimensional manner soon.

Be the lead sled dog or the view doesn't change. I think that's the phrase someone posted long ago.

Data, information, knowledge, wisdom. You work with all of these in your life. Most of us find ways to generate labor credits or barter exchange chits with data, information, knowledge, and/or wisdom. Some of you will use and have used blog or bloglike states of being (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) to generate data, information, knowledge, and/or wisdom. Thus, you depend on others to generate your income source.

Others find their expanded understanding of the universe through electronic socialising via blogs - humourous tales, DIY instructions, relationship advice, home decorating tips, celebrity status updates, sporting event observations, scientific discoveries, political gossiping, etc.

Being here, I wandered in your shoes for a while. I saw the universe through your eyes. I felt the exclamations of wonderment, the thrill of victory, the announcements of new chemical substances, the insights into what life is really all about. The truth is not out there. The truth is in here and everywhere else at the same time.

"The truth." What a phrase. I've known the truth most of my life, starting (as I've said here more than once) around age five. Some of you knew the truth at a younger age. Our bodies tell us that we're bodies if we're tuned to the right body frequency and are listening. We live with this truth every moment, putting our knowledge of the truth into action in whatever way we want. Our atomic composition gears us for some sets of actions more easily than others.

My body is tuned for a set of actions that include this writing, easily exercised but not perfectly so. I am also tuned for other activities, activities that I am now ready to take, taking me away from this blog.

Writing (and in this instance, blogging) is a simple representation of what our bodies are doing in the moment. When you can break down the complex interaction of energy states that constitute writing and see the simple components that make up this moment, then you are ready for the next stage of living, weaving patterns that make writing look like drawing a simple straight line. At that point, writing (and/or blogging) becomes too simple a means of communicating with the rest of the universe around what you think of as you.

I am stopping this blog because I had let it feed my vanity, building up a sense of self that is not what (or who) I discovered I am when I discovered I am not. I am slipping out of this people space to enjoy merging with the much vaster superset of the universe that contains no dense energy states we call people. I will continue to walk this planet, eating other living beings - plant and animal, as we call them. I will converse with people and barter with them. At the same time, I will seek spaces where this "I", this "Rick," is unimportant in the moment, so that the bright, magnetic, moth-to-the-flame world of people becomes less attractive to me, allowing me to step out of the light pollution and see the dots of light of other suns in our galaxy and locally other living things or densely grouped states of energy on this planet.

Sure, I'm a social creature, designed to socialise with what I've been trained to think of as my fellow species. But we can also socialise with any part of the universe we want. Thanks for spending time with me here. I appreciate your interaction with me.

However, I'm ready to interact with as much of the rest of the universe as my time on this planet will allow, 14000+ days we'd say. I ensure I will move on by closing this blog and erasing my purposeful presence on the Internet, devoting my time and energy to other places. We'll communicate with each other using newer methods, I'm sure - just don't look for someone named TreeTrunkRick. Although he exists in person and will answer to someone calling out his common name, he's thinking about and acting on the next big thing in molecule-interaction techniques, years ahead to a time when blogging will be looked at like we look at our species in prehistoric times.

Meanwhile, I've got to fix the underground geothermal piping that keeps the automobile hydrogen battery charging systems running at full efficiency and see if our subway maglev travel channel network is completely operational so I can get from here to there more quickly - regular over-the-road travel is too antiquated for what I need to get accomplished and rocket motor-based air travel not yet ready.

This addendum to the book of life called "Life In The Cove" is officially wrapped up. Have a great day!

Glossary

A - Attention. A word meant to focus others on you. [See "Cry Wolf"]

B - Bear. A large, furry creature meant to test the "Darwin theory" about survival of the fittest, especially when two or more drunk people encounter a grizzly bear in the woods (remember, you don't have to be the fastest runner, just faster than your buddy).

C - Cry Wolf. A situation where one has overused a phrase overused a phrase overused a phrase and lost the attention of one's intended audience [See "Typical skit endings of SNL"]

D - Darwin Theory. The proposition that an isolated pocket of humanoid bipeds will, given enough time and space, evolve into social class structures similar to but distinct from other isolated social class structures; when any two isolated social class structures meet, the one that guarantees the best return for the investments of the newly-combined social class leaders will be the one that survives. [See "Bear" for alternative explanation]

E - Ending. Where one appears to know when one should put a period at the end of a sentence at the end of the paragraph at the end of the chapter at the end of the book. Assuming one has found the end.

F - Final Try. This blog entry wraps up this blog by proposing to crossbreed the privet bush with a nutritious berry bush and overpopulate the banks of local creeks and rivers with delicious bird food bushes so that local volunteers can spend their time not worrying about nonnative nonnutritious foliage. A set of nods to Flo (who is seeing Robert, beer aficionado), Esther (and her son's reference to Buckhorn Beer), Tom (a barkeep at 801 Franklin), Rick the chef and the servers at Around Your Table restaurant (a nice secret inexpensive eatery in Big Cove/Hampton Cove), the cashier at Mike's Merchandise (hope the Goody's powder did the trick), the security guard in the garden department at Wal-Mart (thanks for the stories about sneaky customers - just when you thought you'd heard them all!), the folks at Art Etc. (who created two wonderful framed wall art pieces for us) and last (but by no means least!), Margo at Publix (did you get to enjoy the new garden pasta?).

G - Great walk in the woods yesterday:

17th Dec 2009, 13:45. Sitting on a lichen-covered rock, a natural bench. Strands of barbed-wire fencing snaking across the ground of leaves and twigs, growing out of the middle of tree trunks as if by magic. Walking the property behind my house. The fence line probably denotes property purchases through the years. People marks of long ago.

Thin layer of clouds overhead. White, tinged with stainless steel gray, the sun a washed-out yellow blotch just setting over the hilltop.

People sounds - airplanes, two helicopters, motor vehicles (road-based) - making their presence known over my hissing ears.

Leafcup alive and doing well. Frost-damaged grass, like miniature swamp bamboo. A buzzard circling to the NW. Gray squirrel on gray rocks. A cool, gray day.

Power towers nearby. Bleached snail shells. A crow calling to friends. Robins in a cedar tree. Prickly pear, bloomin' sedum and ferns on rock pedestals atop the rocky bald. Deer prints in the dirt.

All the comfort and familiarity of one's home woods in the suburban jungle.




Above, a video capturing images from yesterday's sojourn atop Little Mountain, set to the guitar music of Andrés Segovia, playing Suite for solo cello no. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: Prelude by J.S. Bach, and the piano music of Youri Egorov, playing Estampes: Soirée Dans Grenade by Claude Debussy. Images frozen in place by the Elph (Canon PowerShot SD1000), a handy pocket cam for those like me who don't have an all-in-one Swiss Army mobile phone that slices / dices julienne fries and happens to make international phone calls while filing your nails and working out your horoscope to 20 decimal places to help you decide if your new boy/girlfriend will dump you just before the holidays to save money on gift giving.

[Glossary to be continued because this book of a blog just won't end...]

Scoring The Asphalt Ribbon

Have you ever killed and eaten living things? Birds, goats, wheat, rice, corn, fish, dogs, ants, bamboo shoots, scorpions... Before you killed them, did you take care of their growth from the very beginning? Does your regular source of barter exchange involve the care and feeding of living things?

I have raised fish. I have killed and cleaned fish I've eaten. I have met the animals that were later killed for my consumption. I have raised vegetables that I've killed, cleaned and eaten. I have eaten food caught and killed in the wild by me. In other words, I am part of this planet of eat and be eaten. I do not distinguish the types of organisms I consume by their brain function. Instead, I pay attention to the amount of nutrition they provide versus the waste they add to my body (paying attention does not mean I eat a healthy meal everytime). Another fact: my species has consumed my species throughout the course of its culinary history.

The day I decided to hit the road and escape the problems that weighed me down, I had very little money and no food. My plan - to drive to Seattle, Washington, and dive car bumper first into the Pacific Ocean - included no thought of food.

In the back of the station wagon, I had a bicycle, several empty Coke bottles, a stack of clothes and the material I studied to improve my job situation at Steak&Ale. I also had a small poster of the touring concert series by The Who.

At one point in time I thought about chronicling my monorail journey across the middle of the North American continent but decided that bookshelves are already crammed with tales of woe, whims, and wonders by more famous and perhaps better writers than humble ol' me. Although 25 years have passed since I drove west across the face of our planet, I recall many details but mainly strong impressions of my solo trek.

Crossing the muddy Mississippi River.

Reading speed limit signs and the explanation of monetary fines per increase in speeding over the legal limit.

The rolling hills of the open prairie.

Rows and rows (and rows (and rows (and rows))) of corn and wheat.

Using a petrol company credit card to pay for my motoring along the highways and freeways, wondering if there was a monthly or total limit to what I could charge.

Going days without eating food, drinking water from bathroom sinks in roadside parks and rest stops.

Picking up a couple of young hitchhikers who had been kicked out of a flat and were making their way to a family member's pad in hopes of starting over. Watching them pick dead grass out of their hair that had accumulated from them sleeping on a sheltered embankment the night before - their looking like a couple of primates picking insects out of each other's fur, telling me more about my place in the universe and the definition of true love than any song on the radio about love (i.e., lust) ever could. Giving them my last three dollars because I knew they needed it more than I did, especially after them wisely pointing out they were more messed up in their journey through life than I was.

Sleeping in the back of the station wagon for a couple of weeks, washing my clothes in the bathroom sinks from which I drank.

Using the concert poster and the training manuals to block the setting sun's reflection on the front dashboard from blinding me.

The kindness of strangers, instant kinship formed along the route, showing me the smartass, snobbish sarcasm of my youth was no longer useful in establishing myself in the moment.

Food deprivation causing me to whiteout while driving, giving me insight into the workings of one's body but also enlightening me that premature death was no solution, only an escape mechanism, that my destiny, if such existed, had already been decided when I met my girlfriend when she and I were 12 years old at a summer camp in the mountains of North Carolina (now my wife of 23+ years). I saw that she was the fellow primate I was willing to sleep on the side of the road with and pick straw out of her hair the next day.

I drove on, not ready to meet my fate, finally daring to ask a petrol station attendant if I could charge food to my credit card, eating a bag of potato crisps, drinking a bottle of orange juice and wolfing down some M&Ms after he said yes.

Seeing how far a tank of gas will last, pushing my luck a couple of times and making it to the next road exit on fumes.

The beauty of desolation.

The touristy glitz of Wall Drug.

Tumbleweeds.

The Black Hills.

Discussing the curse of modern technology (a Chevy 4x4) with a native American who wondered why a Tennessean wanted to drive through the small towns of Montana just to see Seattle.

Wondering if the station wagon would make it up the steep mountains without overheating or breaking down.

The oasis of Coeur D'Alene.

Spokane.

At last, Seattle, with houses, houses, and more houses packed between tall conifers. The rush hour traffic, people in a hurry, a far cry from what I imagined the Pacific Northwest to be. Feeling like my journey would not come to an end there after all. Finding a map to chart my trip down the Pacific coast to Pasadena - another story, another time.

Small details coming back in focus... Getting out of the station wagon in the middle of the night to pee, looking up at the sky and seeing our place in the Milky Way as clear as any people-prepared map. Waking up sometimes to hear noises and finding the car next to me the next day had its windows broken out and nobody around to claim ownership of the car. The enterprise of society at work in every town I passed through. Abandoned homesteads. Wondering when and if I'd get back home and what I would say, not wanting to use the phone to give away my whereabouts until I'd had more time to think through solutions to my dilemma, no deus ex machina waiting in the wings to save me. Solar-powered, no-water toilets in the middle of nowhere. The squeak of the car seat springs. Topping off the oil and losing the oilcap, only to find it down in the engine bay a couple of days and many hundreds of miles later. Getting used to a bicycle as a bedside companion. A person tapping on the back window, making sure I hadn't frozen to death in the mountains. Dirt tracks going across four lanes of the freeway, indicating to me a farmer or rancher traveling from one part to another of a land tract that was bisected by strips of asphalt ribbon. Getting up in the morning with the over-the-road, tractor trailer / lorry drivers, going from daybreak to dusk like migrating birds or caribou, or industrious ants.

Wondering when not looking back would turn into looking forward...

Random Mantric Tricks

Last night watching a field general shed tears of being blessed with good health despite the other side declaring victory in battle on turf in downtown Atlanta...

Yesterday afternoon watching the smile of an art consultant in Big Cove feeling glad that her clients were finding a suitable frame for some space shuttle prints after the original frame pattern was found to be unavailable...

Friday evening stretching one's back muscles after the best deep tissue massage ever received in upper back area at the Westin Spa in Huntsville (thanks to a gift certificate from an office party giveaway)...

Thinking back to the radio announcer who compared a football moment to Leonard Nimoy...

Knowing that our species maintains separate cultures which all build belief in their versions of living waters...

Realizing how much I miss the mountains of home, the Tri-Cities area of upper east Tennessee, where Andreas has opened his new restaurant, Freiberg's, in Johnson City, and I still enjoy a good pizza at one of my Kingsport employers (now called Rush Street, then called Chicago Dough Company (and before that, a Pizza Inn in Richton Park)) where Jerry reminded me how much he loves the east TN mountains, too; going with my father to see his professorial office at ETSU and remembering my student days there; helping my father and his colleagues unload trees to sell in support of the Colonial Heights Optimist Club which supports youth; where my mother always finds tree ornaments at Colonial Heights Pharmacy, near where my wife took her mother to see the winter light display at the Bristol Motor Speedway, not far from where my wife's hometown religious center hosts an interim speaker, Earle B., who encouraged me to write this paragraph (whose ancestor, like mine, fought at the Battle of King's Mountain) and an established restaurant in Kingsport, Cheddar's, is opening a store in Huntsville...

Tossing back a hefeweizen brewski courtesy of our hometown brewer, Old Towne, at Bearegard's, to balance the habanero sauce...

Thinking about supporting the 2010 population census to understand how accurately we count, categorize and store data on people of this section of the North American continent and nearby land areas...

Recalling how world travel and immersing oneself in local cultures teaches you that there is no one way to live a good, healthy life, and that IP addresses are filtering points for maintaining sets of cultural memes, distorting reality...

Listening to the recording of a pianist like MMW and marveling at the ability of one who can repeat long stretches of typing on a set of 88 keys, making me wonder how many of us could do the same thing on a computer keyboard, practicing something like this blog entry over and over and over again and be able to repeat it with our eyes closed, speeding up and slowing down, typing softer and louder to give the words emotional meaning, even though the typing here would be a sequence of single "notes" instead of chords. Why is it we can hear a combination of musical notes and sense both their individual tones and the total harmony but we can't hear a combination of seemingly unsung words the same way? Well, leave that to the thought/brain dissectors to answer, I suppose...

When I type while listening to others' music, I suppress the music in my head which would normally come out in my word combinations, turning these words and phrases into dry deserts of ideas instead of expressing myself as purely as I think thought symphonies. In other words, I am entertaining my brain with someone else's music instead of entertaining me/you with my musical-like typing. A tough choice, listening to the wonders of the universe as discovered by musicians or creating my version of the universe in all the wonders I sense and feel when typing as if I'm totally alone, a solitary node in the web of life...

These past few weeks I have enjoyed my happiness, freedom more than an idea to me. I have known about the turmoil in the world of my species, from discotheque fires in Russia to camo/colour showdowns in the halls of Chesterfield secondary schools, but have released myself from feeling responsible for what others choose to do to represent our species on this planet. I represent our species one person at a time, in one time and one place, limited to just so many dozens of years. I take responsibility for my expression of freedom in seeing us as one species destined for more than we can imagine, growing outwardly in the definition of one species while repeating much of what we've already done, cycles within cycles, interlaced, interlocking, concentric, syncopated circles. The rest is up to you. Represent us well.

Anthropomorphosis

A friend of mine told me about a person who put his eccentric showmanship to commercial use and wrote the book, "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage," a tale of modern technology at work (author's name: Clifford Stoll). The writer also carried his fame into public presentations, accentuating his seemingly exceptionally bizarre behaviour, even in front of so-called stern, straight-laced, top military brass.

Evangelising is not just a quasi-religious style of living. We look up to modern icons because of their ability to evangelise themselves through their strong personalities and/or the strong personalities of those around them (such as family, friends, colleagues, agents, producers, fans and foes alike). As you know, history is really just the retelling of instant fame and fortune in the moment. Doesn't matter if you were famous or infamous, notorious or inglorious, as long as you got noticed.

Some people get fame. Some people get fortunes. Some people get both when they only sought one. Most of us get neither.

Because we are who we are - people, members of one species - we communicate no other way but person-to-person. Can you see that we anthropomorphise everything, then?

I live in the realm of our species. I do not expect to wake up and quack like a duck one day, seeking grass to eat and a pond to paddle across while keeping my eyes out for land and water predators. My innate duty is self-preservation and then preservation of our species. By default, my life is focused on the life of us.

Do we all see that? I don't know. Some people focus on themselves to the exclusion of the rest of the living things on this planet. Some people see us as just one more species on this planet that the universe can give or take.

How do we pay homage to ourselves as bipedal primates and see ourselves as equal to all parts of the universe at the same time? How do I pay attention to my bodily needs, my social desires, the needs/desires of people around me, the needs/desires of people I can't or will never see, the needs/desires of other living things on this planet and the existence of other parts of the universe that don't qualify as living systems?

In other words, I don't seek fame or fortune. I expect to find sufficient food, clothing, shelter and adventures to fill my bodily needs and brain's social desires. In that old, classic psychology description, I have fulfilled my self. In the same vein, I have seen wonders of the universe beyond normal comprehension and thus consider myself self-actualised. I exist on the superficial level of social/civil life and find other levels just as easy to place my existence, if I want to believe they exist (e.g., a swirling set of atoms/molecules like a tornado/hurricane/typhoon that spins up and dies off, unnamed by the universe except by our anthropomorphic habits). I do not understand everything I see but I have reached a state in my life where I trust others who say they do understand what I do not. I have seen the universe for what it is and can let go of my having to have a historical place in it.

I live in the moment. I live in the moment with you. You have needs/desires different than mine. Because my needs/desires are met, I can pick and choose your needs/desires I want to help you meet or achieve.

Thus, I walk the path that others have walked before me. My behaviour may or may not be unique in the moment between us, but ultimately any one of my behaviours is repetitive, either by me or someone before, during or after me. I have reached the state of my life where I want to help others regardless of personal gain in the form of fame or fortune.

A few friends of mine have asked me to help them find a way to be more financially successful than they are right now. I see a path of success for them and their needs/desires. I also see the path is wide enough for others to join. The path contributes to what I see as an idea that integrates preservation of me, my species and the living/nonliving things around us. As one of my friends said, he does not want to wrap his hands around the whole world because such a person stretches too thin and can be easily crushed. Instead, find a small crack and, like a fungus, squeeze in the space and fill it. Blend in with the environment instead of trying to smother it. Grow with the space instead of trying to overwhelm it. You may not seek fame and fortune in the process. If, however, the process is successful for everyone and everything around you, fame and fortune may follow. There's nothing wrong with that. In that case, people will accept your eccentricities and perceived personality quirks - they may even reward you for them!

Never put yourself down for who you are. Congratulate yourself for being the only person in the world who is exactly, accurately, precisely like you all the time. You don't have to be famous or wealthy to be you. Fill your needs and desires - if they match the needs and desires of others, fame and fortune will find you. Take care of you and you take care of your species. Take care of your species and your species will take care of you. Try it and see. I might be right!

My blog may be interesting or boring, correct or wrong, but my blog is me. I believe in who I am and have gotten all the success I've ever wanted. Time to share my success with you. Some day I'll get you circling the Moon on a cruise ship. We get closer to our launch date moment by moment. There goes another moment. Have you booked your ticket yet? Won't be long now!

Riverview Flat

In the summer of 1984, I enjoyed my freedom. I was in the last break before what should have been my senior year in university. I had changed college majors many times, most of them discussed here, I believe, and was ready to move out on my own. A friend of mine, Amy Easter, agreed to share a two-bedroom flat with me on the other side of the river from the campus of UTK.

Oftentimes, life imitates art because we like to appear in art form ironically.

The manager of the Riverview Flat Complex told me his name was Casey. Casey stood about 5'8", his shoulders wide and upper body muscular. We chatted a few times while I moved furniture into the flat.

Casey had worked as a bouncer, earning the nickname "Casey at the Bat" for his use of a stick of wood to smack disruly patrons out the front door. Before his bouncer job, he had been a gymnastics instructor but gave up that job because he was getting too old to throw and catch out-of-control athletic bodies that flung themselves at him.

I had saved up enough money to pay the first month's rent as well as half the deposit. Amy was supposed to come up with the other half but she had lost her job and wanted to negotiate with me to cover the cost of both moving in and possibly future full payments of rent until she found a job.

By 1984, I had decided I was a writer. I did not qualify my writing ability and did not judge myself against a perfect model although I had writing heroes I looked up to, including Orwell, Burroughs, Tolkien, Poe and Plath. Little did I know of James Agee or Cormac McCarthy.

I had sought publication in two literary magazines, one at ETSU and one at UTK, getting my first rejection slips. I read the editions that could have contained what I had written - the literary magazine poetry/prose selections were no better or worse than mine. I decided that I had been right to start my own underground publication at ETSU called Swashbuckler. With the little money I had, I managed to publish a few issues of the Swashbuckler, including submissions by anonymous donors who had sent work to my student mailbox posted in the publisher section.

In Knoxville, Rus Harper, an experimental/punk musician, ran his own underground rag and I had little desire or money to compete against him so I supported his work.

By my second month in the flat, I realized I could not afford to support Amy's and my lifestyles. She was not my girlfriend so there was no incentive of long-lasting love to keep us together. On top of that, an infestation of fleas in the flat had reached a level I never thought possible, considering I barely had money for food, let alone flea killer insecticide power to cancel the circus act of my jumping and flipping around to avoid the nearly invisible acrobats nibbling any of my body parts they could get a hold of.

Given the choice of either roaches or fleas, I'll take roaches. At least they have the decency to avoid you when they share a flat with you.

But wait, that's not all! My bank account was overdrawn, I had no credit cards to charge my rent on, my flatmate had decided I was no fun since I wouldn't pay her half of the rent and provide us food, and my job at Steak&Ale restaurant was getting way too serious for me.

I had taken a job at Steak&Ale because my hours at Taco Bell were insufficient to provide a living wage. There were so many available workers from around the UTK campus that the Taco Bell management on the Strip could keep our weekly hours low, getting a full staff whenever they wished, making those of us with unusual school hours get lousy paychecks in the process.

But I had decided to quit school for a while. I had spent several years drifting from one institute of higher learning to another, switching majors like underwear, and was building a student loan I thought I'd never repay (probably around $4k to $6k at the time).

My job at Steak&Ale was simple - wash dishes, bus tables and put garnish on dinner plates, with occasional forays into the salad bar area to refill rabbit food containers. I liked the simplicity of the job but the management team saw I was too well organized, turning the dishwashing assignment into an efficient minifactory of clean utensils and other items that'll fit into a square, shiny-metal steam box, anticipating which plates, knives, forks and cooking gear needed to be ready next. Hey, is there anything the matter with taking pride in doing your job, no matter what it may be? Of course not.

That is, unless you don't want to get the attention of management. Since I was no longer in school, the general manager thought he'd put my natural "work ethic" initiative to work by training me to be a bartender and bookkeeper for Steak&Ale. After all, he said, most of his employees were either current or former college students and none of them showed the drive to perfect their jobs like me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bragging about being a dishwasher, busboy or salad bar tender. I just don't like hearing people being upset or disappointed about my interaction with them. You know what I mean. I dislike rejection of any kind.

So I carried the bar recipe book with me and studied the restaurant's accounting books - daily receipts, food expenses, etc. I worked at the bar a little so I could get used to the atmosphere and expectations of the bar patrons. If you've ever tended bar, you know the organizational mindset it takes to pretend like you're just some fun-loving goofy person who knows how to mix a few drinks and entertain those who want to watch you put on a show for good tips.

Meanwhile, because I was training for a new job, my per-hour pay was reduced to a training salary, making it completely impossible for me to pay the next month's rent.

I drove back to the Riverview complex and was prepared to tell Casey I was going to miss the next month's payment but could make it up with increased pay I expected to get with my accounting and bartending jobs in the coming months.

Have I ever told you this story? Probably not. As I said and you know, life imitates art. That afternoon, I walked up the flight of stairs to my flat and saw Casey drag a guy out of the adjacent flat. He held the guy's arm like a twig and literally threw the guy down another flight of stairs. When the guy came up the stairs to fight back, Casey grabbed a baseball bat off the ground and swung a few times in the air. They cussed at each other for a minute or so, long enough for me to get my key in the door.

Casey turned to see me walking into my flat. He asked if I had resolved my lack of funds issue with Amy. I told him I had not. He laughed. I looked at the bat in his hand. He saw my consternation and set the bat back down, explaining to me that the guy he'd kicked out had not paid rent for a few months but always seemed to have enough money for dope.

I asked Casey what would happen if I missed a month's rent. He laughed again. He said he liked me 'cause I always stopped to say hello to him when he was around so he considered me a friend and could let a month's rent slip every now and then. Except maybe not the next month because a lot of people were skipping their rent and he was getting heat from the owner for being too soft. Thus justifying the loud display with my neighbour just now so everyone in the complex could hear Casey was getting serious about rent collection.

After Casey left, I hurried across the carpet into the kitchen to avoid feeding the fleas. The fridge was empty. The hidden bag of potato crisps was gone, presumably eaten by Amy and/or her boyfriend. All I had was the bar recipe book, my car key and a glass of warm water to drink.

I turned on the radio, listening to 90.3, WUTK, an alternative rock station at the time, playing some typical college rock and Reggae but also punk and other "noise" to calm us wild ones down.

I sat down and wrote a few poems that interlaced the Casey scenes with a broken love story. I thought about my girlfriend who was about to finish up her last quarter at Tennessee Tech, two hours' drive away from my forlorn location.

Quite frankly, I felt trapped and had thoughts of ending it all. I had failed miserably as a college student because I couldn't find a subject that interested me long enough to say it was something I wanted to do the rest of my life. I was working a job as a dishwasher training to be a bartender who couldn't pay the rent on a cheap flat because my flatmate had ditched me when I wouldn't take sexual favours in exchange for rent payments (her number and variation on a theme of sexual partners make "Sex and the City" look like amateur hour - I didn't know which or how many STDs she was carrying; best be broke than too poor to get fixed!).

I weighed my options. Face Casey and his bat in a few weeks. Quit my job and go back to school fulltime. Kill myself. Hit up my friends for money.

Finally, I decided to go see my girlfriend the next day.

I drove to Tennessee Tech and visited with my girlfriend for a while. By the way I said goodbye to her, she knew something was up (I think I said "Fair well" instead of "See you later"). I drove to Nashville, going to the Vanderbilt library to look at maps (I chose Vanderbilt because it was one of two places, including Georgia Tech, where I had I received full college scholarship offers when I was a senior in secondary school). I looked at all the places in the United States to visit. I thought about the storybook ending of driving off a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway so I wrote down the names of interstate freeways I could travel to get there.

I decided I would drive to Seattle, Washington, and, if I hadn't decided to kill myself by then, I'd drive down to Pasadena to visit one of my childhood best friends majoring in Applied Science and Literature at Cal Tech.

Why am I telling you this right now? Because earlier today I was driving around north Alabama, enjoying the sunshine and scenery except for the glare of the dashboard reflecting in the windscreen. The midday glare reminded me of the long drive from Nashville to Seattle and the daily glare of the setting sun on the dashboard of the station wagon as I drove west from dawn to dusk in late September 1984.

I call the drive out west my Disneyland tour of the United States, riding past famous landmarks and vistas as if I sat on a monorail, stopping for nothing but petrol along the way. [The trip and the mini-adventures are ripe for telling another time.]

Hard to believe 25 years have passed by since I found myself in a nearly impossible situation, but I wouldn't (and can't) trade a minute of it. Nothing in my life up to then had been sufficient to stop my perpetual motion in one direction.

Casey at the Bat. A metaphor. A euphemism. A tired cliché. A cultural literary landmark. A legend of sports and Western society.

I could mask and twist and turn my adventure into an ironic or satirical farce that hides the facts and truth in some hilarious road trip or scary movie. Or I can let life plainly imitate art and share a slice of my life with you to let you know that I've been there with those of you whose lives didn't lead them where they or their families thought they should.

Like they say, failure is not an option. You make choices and then you make more choices. That's all we do. We choose to do whatever we want to do, even when we feel we're trapped and can't do anything we want.

Despite early setbacks, I retired comfortably at 45 to practice my writing more thoroughly. I've enjoyed this long, strange trip of the first half of my life through highs and lows and comedy and tragedy. Most of it's been fun. It's been one adventure after another, that's for sure. This midlife adventure of writing everyday has been a blast but it's time for my next adventure, which may take away from my daily writing.

With time, I'll let you know more. I'm interested in a small startup that should help create a few jobs in this economy of relatively high unemployment. Some of you I know will be perfect to help get this startup moving fast. Let's make it a success while we're having a blast and a good time. Life's too short not to enjoy what you're doing. I'll see you when you see me.

Snapshot of a Pre-WWII Childhood/Post-WWII Adulthood

A few days ago I received a set of books from the childhood of two family relations of mine. In order of pulling them out of the cardboard box:

• The Illustrated Bible Story Book by Seymour Loveland, (c) 1935 by Rand McNally, edition of 1938
• Harbrace College Handbook by John C. Hodges (The University of Tennessee), (c) 1941, 1946 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.
• The Yeats Country - a guide to the places in the West of Ireland associated with the life and writings of William Butler Yeats, (c) 1962, 1963 the Dolmen Press
• "Survival Under Atomic Attack," February 1951, Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 20-111
• Walk In His Ways by Marian Black, given on 17th July 1943
• The Story Road by Gertrude Hildreth (Teachers College Columbia University), (c) 1952 by The John C. Winston Company
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Illustrated by E.A. Wilson, (c) 1941 special contents of this edition by the Limited Editions Club, Inc., given on Christmas 1945
• So That's The Reason (Bobby and the Old Professor, Book I) by R. Ray Baker, Photographic Illustrations by E.N. Stanger, (c) 1939 by The Reilly & Lee Co.
• Housekeeping in Old Virginia, Edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, (c) 1879 by John P. Morton and Company, a reprint of the Original (c) MCMLXV, Favorite Recipes Press, Inc.
• Song and Service Book for Ship and Field, Army and Navy, Edited by Ivan L. Bennett, Chairman of the Editorial Committee, (c) 1941 by A.S. Barnes and Company, Inc.
• The Fields of Home by Ralph Moody, Illustrated by Tran Mawicke, (c) 1962 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., (c) 1953 by Ralph Moody
• Poems to Inspire by Nick Kenny, (c) 1959 by T.S. Denison & Company, Inc.
• One Hundred and One Famous Poems With a Prose Supplement (Revised Edition), An Anthology Compiled by Roy J. Cook, (c) 1958 by Contemporary Books, Inc.
• Reading-For-Men, (c) 1958 by Nelson Doubleday, Inc., given on 19th December 1958

Two bluejays in the trees, a female jogger and her canine companion passing by on the street, a moment alone with my thoughts, a warrior for peace, contemplating and connecting with others to secure ships to shore during an economic maelstrom and still find ways to conduct commerce to keep violent dissidence at bay. Foment revolutions of innovation rather than chaos and anarchy.

You, me - we have all the problems here before us. We have solutions hidden in attics and vaults, used and reused and resold and repackaged. We can repeat ourselves without knowing when, how or why and feel we've accomplished something new.

A name is not an answer. A symbol is not the thing it stands for. We approach the situation and apply salve rather than rub salt in the wounds unless smelling salts are required and then consciousness is raised for all.

Is Afghanistan South Africa, with Soweto and Swaziland coming and going as independent states within a state? Are protectorates an answer? Should self-rule include division of territories or complete reconfiguration? Permanent nomadic tribal zones? A Somali war zone? The semi-permeable, porous membranes between Syria and Iraq and between the U.S.A. and Mexico are not solutions, unless you want the feel-good measures of failed policies of the past.

How do you, in times like these, when people will work for any company that pays for their standard of living standards, let the apple cart seller keep pushing the military-industrial complex down the cobblestone street offering wares to anyone with ready cash so that small-scale, regional conflicts do not escalate into disruption on the global scale, every country getting a piece of the apple pie cooked up by unseen chefs that everyone knows about? How do you declare war on an enemy who does not exist? How do you avoid giving legitimacy to a group of people who want to declare you as their sworn enemy? How do you give them the inch they want without giving them the itch to take the next mile?

A people is faceless. A person has a face, a voice, a dream, a wish, a past, a present and a future in thoughts and action. How do you give the person the power for self-sufficiency? A person is a node in a social network. Which do you feed first, the node or the network?

A soldier given orders to find a perp will follow orders until ordered otherwise. What if the technology and business of soldiering was poured into farming and villaging, fighting famine and poverty? Could we still justify the government expense of such an endeavour? Could we overcome tribal resistance to interference in the hills of Kentucky and the Afghan terrain by applying new technology to improve the lives of tribes and clans without disrupting the life they want of being left alone? Could we find profitable crops to replace marijuana and poppies? Or do we legitimise the illicit drug trade by authorising growing zones, knowing a portion of the global population is susceptible to drug experimentation and abuse, no matter how much we teach abstinence? Is there an approach that satisfies liberals, moderates and conservatives in all walks of life at one point in time? One solution with many faceted applications?

Are we finally past fighting wars on grounds of religion or religious grounds? Can we get past using personal beliefs to mass bodies against one another? Or is that the only way to do so?

Millions of people out of work looking for help without wanting to resort to government aid. How do you spend a dollar somewhere else to generate four over here? How do you play with exchange rates to put debts into play? The EUBRICUSASEAN alliance cooperating on/competing for setting up an alternative/green power/Internet grid in Afghanistan? If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. Another alternative, with Afghan tribes like native American (American Indian) reservations building gambling casinos in the middle of the U.S.A., sharing the profits with professional developers. If the so-called Christian West can condone taking money from gambling heathens then can't the Muslim East take money from gambling infidels?

I don't know. I'm just asking questions I'm digging up from a box of old books. The solutions are up to all of us to work together and figure out.

A Platform for Enhancing Performance

Part of me will always be part of me. I will always carry the tearer-apart, the see-what's-inside, the test-until-it-breaks geek in me. Thus, when I buy a new high-tech toy, I try it with something not originally made for it, such as open source software in closed hardware architecture. Link O' The Day for those who like to experiment.

Time for a lunch of home-delivered dinner, a Monday Night Football favourite filler, a rainy Tuesday leftover. Today's a good day for rugby, a real romp in the muddy rough.

C-ring

Freedom from the moment. The chemical smell of prêt-à-porter clothing. The slow crunch of plate tectonics. A friend's wishful kiss from 30 years ago. The kiss of a great-grandchild 30 years from now. Liver spots. Acne. Bald infant. Bald elder. The paunch of middle age. The pounce of an infant.

Love. Romance. A lingering look. A flirtatious glance. A flower petal. A secret note. A dance in moonlight. A sunlight stroll.

Fixing gutters. Inflating tyres. Reinstalling laptop software. Washing dirty clothes.

Everyday. Ordinary. Love hidden in the mundane. The ironed shirt. The polished minivan.

Exciting. Thrilling.

Burning. Passion.

Dinner for six. Party of one.

Brevity. Bravery. Bright. Brought. Breathless.

Soft. Velvet. Light touch.

The shape of a mouth by the turn of the teeth. Natural. Luminescent.

Serene. Quaint. Whispers.

A sentence of spaces. A plethora of periods.

Dot. Dot. Dot. Dote.

Zanzibar. Excalibur. Shangri La. Atlantis.

Insomnia. Ammonia. Onomatopoeia.

Those eyes. Those eyes. Those eyes. That smile. Those eyes.

Muscles. Tissue. Cells. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. That face. That look.

Your persona.

The equational linguistical equatorial linguiniful questionunfull believable. Sounds you hear.

One. Two. Two. One. One life. Two. Count. Days filled. Thoughts filled. Sepia toned. Dusty road. City. Country. Name a century. Set the mood. You and him. You and her. You and you. Her and him. You. Him. Her.

Waltz. Iambic pentameter. Carol of the Bells.

Flip-flop. OR. NOT. AND. Clock. UNIX epoch. Belle Époque.

And. Still. Only. Words.

Words are not the same as emotions. A wrinkle speaks louder than words.

Madame Curie. A. G. Bell. H. G. Wells. Chiang Kai-shek.

Can you remember your piano recital from fifth grade? Your best friend's favorite music at the time? Your favorite shirt? Your mother's favorite birthday present? Your father's shaving preference? The eye colour of the boy or girl who had a crush on you?

Do you see the future of transportation? Do you see the next stock you'll sell? The next deal you'll close? The average growth of your investment portfolio?

Do you preach what you practice? Do you sow what you reap? Do you take care of your combine? Do you safely store your seeds? Do you drink rice or eat it? Do you bake wheat or ferment it?

Do you count off for misspelled words or credit the student for creative sentence structure?

Do you swallow your food or take the bus? Do you find freedom from the moment?

Do you?

If a ring implies a circle, what is a C-ring?

An imagined, unfulfilled romance lasts longer than this poem. More elegant. More elastic. More elegiac. More mores. A perfect endless line drawn by a radius. A PNP transistor that never fails. Free of words. Free of the moment. Everlasting. Infinite.