The Wonderful World of Oliver Fontaine
These simple words cannot express
The joy he brought and happiness
That filled our lives and made us glad;
To all of us he was a dad
Who'd listen and then offer up
Nonjudgmental words of love.
With glasses perched upon his nose
He struck the perfect "wise man" pose,
For deep within that furrowed brow
He'd learned to live life here and now;
Short in stature but tall on life
He found the highs amidst the strife.
What would he say if he were here
To see on every face a tear?
Perhaps he'd put his arm around
Our burdened shoulders, then turn our frown
Into a smile of love that said
His love was from the heart, not head.
Although he's gone, he hasn't left,
For deep within each sorrowed breast
He placed an ever-burning light
That shows the knowledge and insight –
Unselfish, trusting giving love –
He knew we're blessed from One above.
So let's not mourn or fret for long
Or sing his praises in a song;
Let's take his joy, not our remorse,
And focus on a cheerful course;
Support logistics can, you see,
Live out our main man's legacy.
[from: "Of Friends, Neighbors, Lovers and Miscellaneous Passers-by", 1992, published by Tree Trunk Productions]
Showing posts with label past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label past. Show all posts
19 April 2010
Volume/Displacement
After much searching, top-secret astronomers discovered where the future government's time machine ended up.
Turns out that a time machine is a timespace machine, placing the traveler(s) and the machine in the exact location of space where that time occurred, taking into account the expansion of space, the natural movement of galaxies, stars, planets, etc., as well as a previously undiscovered change in subatomic makeup (you know, that whole dark matter/energy thing).
Top-secret medical advisors think this might be a way to cure diseases, by sending people to a different place in timespace (as opposed to the conventional spacetime, a minor difference but significant), rearranging their subatomic structures such that "modern" diseases can't form.
Now, how do we communicate with the timespace travelers and figure out how to tow them back to our spacetime location?
Turns out that a time machine is a timespace machine, placing the traveler(s) and the machine in the exact location of space where that time occurred, taking into account the expansion of space, the natural movement of galaxies, stars, planets, etc., as well as a previously undiscovered change in subatomic makeup (you know, that whole dark matter/energy thing).
Top-secret medical advisors think this might be a way to cure diseases, by sending people to a different place in timespace (as opposed to the conventional spacetime, a minor difference but significant), rearranging their subatomic structures such that "modern" diseases can't form.
Now, how do we communicate with the timespace travelers and figure out how to tow them back to our spacetime location?
18 April 2010
Past Fishing Expositions
How do you sneak your people into other countries under the cover of open daylight? Easily!
What kind of fish are you going to catch today? Do you catch, photograph, identify and release?
What kind of fish are you going to catch today? Do you catch, photograph, identify and release?
16 April 2010
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:
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.
- "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
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.
11 April 2010
Mama Cass' Carcasses
Small, gnat-sized insects tap the surface of the backyard pond. Hard to believe a few weeks ago I could see the sky through the bare branches of the trees now nearly fully leaved.
Mountain phlox and mayapple blooms peak up out of the underbrush.
The purple dogwood has seven blooms this year. Last year several dozen.
The hawk finds a spot to perch above a feeding squirrel.
Life under the canopy of suburban woods.
The more efficient the automation, the faster the response time of the superorganism.
Ears buzzing so loud these days, I can't hear a clock alarm or a cat purr.
How deep is black? When you can't tell the difference between real life and a book of fiction. Can Elvis Cole solve this one? A peaceful overthrow in one piece, one fell swoop, for once.
How depressingly funny or mildly humourously depressing can a flick be? When it feels like a cross between others you've seen, mixing a last married couple scenario, an out-of-towners out-of-water feel, a touch of Soho after hours and an adult adventure in babysitting called Date Night. A bird on a wire and all those others, too.
The cure for the blues? Seeing chocolate bunnies at the Chocolate Crocodile after drowning one's liver in a tall mug of Guinness with a Red Robin because P. F. Chang's was full.
One day soon I'll be deaf. What kind of bionic ear should I wish for, since LASIK has worked so well for my sight about six years now?
Do I want to read the Book of the Future today? Not really.
Kenny Chesney, Dolly Parton and Megan Fox - entertainment products of east Tennessee birth.
When was the last time you sat next to Mandy Moore at a UFC event?
In which/what world do I live? Am I an IndyCar/NASCAR/F1/Rally fan, a Lowe Mill fan, a pop cinema fan, a woodlands/jungle hike fan, a football/rugby fan or ... any and all of the above?
I live - I'm a fan of everything.
Seduced by my senses, unaware of what's really around me. What do I don't know I know I almost know?
When the superorganism is ready, will it rip the fabric of spacetime space and step across the threshold? Can it solve the puzzle of why no other superorganisms are visible in this universe?
Why can some people find simple pleasure in repetitive tasks and weekend backyard BBQ parties while others will not be happy until this planet's creatures are safely ensconced in another spot outside of this universe?
How many times can we laugh at the barbarians who show their primate selves in the fearmongering about one-world government? Can we not see we're one people already?
If you feel out of control of the situation, admit the fact and go on.
How many caves have you explored?
Can you tell the difference between a person who has killed another person and one who has not?
Do you know the definition of risk?
Do you know the definition of life?
The Book of the Future ... the crystal ball ... the bag of other tricks yet unused ...
Don't worry about one-world governments forcing you to change your lifestyle/culture. We need you to maintain your subcultures so that dichotomies occur all along the borders between "pure" subcultures for change to happen seemingly spontaneously. From discord, confusion and conflict rise unique solutions to problems that haven't been invented yet.
The Balance of Power. We know what's going to happen next because you predict your own unpredictability predictably. Like tuning an engine. When all aspects of living are known and your unique limited combination of aspects observed and recorded, the world of our species within the well-studied ecosystem of this planet provide measurable parameters upon which one can depend reliably.
The "mysteries" of life are slowly revealed to you for proper dissemination and absorption by the subpopulations of the superorganism. Pockets of resistance are natural responses by the environment and expected (although never welcomed by purists in the field of efficiency expertise).
You accomplish so much more when you trust the future's already been formed for you. Quit seeing it in hindsight and let your foresight be your guide.
If we think we have to wait for a Contact-like moment, a deus ex machina, to rescue us from ourselves, then we'll keep waiting. We are our own alien species, so to speak, with the ignorance of knowledge about the future already in us.
What's next? Hmm ... to know that I know what I'm going to see in the Book of the Future before I look at it is the sign that I'm believing the message of this fictional blog too much.
In one hand, fiction. In the other hand, nonfiction. In one's knowledge, the knowledge that others fulfill futures presented to them as if they're assignments and by others subconsciously through the power of subtle persuasion. Thus, are the futures fact or fiction or both and when were they one, the other or both?
The Book of the Future doesn't say because the Book of the Future is its own self-referential conflict, spirals within spirals looping back and forth within and out of themselves with no discernible beginning or end in sight of our localised lives.
Time to step out of the local culture again and show what the Book of the Future says about other subcultures in the superculture/superorganism called us, our species, our one-world self governing body, if you will accept that definition gladly (or at least without wincing). You might just find out if you're a "Yes" or a "No" and why.
Mountain phlox and mayapple blooms peak up out of the underbrush.
The purple dogwood has seven blooms this year. Last year several dozen.
The hawk finds a spot to perch above a feeding squirrel.
Life under the canopy of suburban woods.
The more efficient the automation, the faster the response time of the superorganism.
Ears buzzing so loud these days, I can't hear a clock alarm or a cat purr.
How deep is black? When you can't tell the difference between real life and a book of fiction. Can Elvis Cole solve this one? A peaceful overthrow in one piece, one fell swoop, for once.
How depressingly funny or mildly humourously depressing can a flick be? When it feels like a cross between others you've seen, mixing a last married couple scenario, an out-of-towners out-of-water feel, a touch of Soho after hours and an adult adventure in babysitting called Date Night. A bird on a wire and all those others, too.
The cure for the blues? Seeing chocolate bunnies at the Chocolate Crocodile after drowning one's liver in a tall mug of Guinness with a Red Robin because P. F. Chang's was full.
One day soon I'll be deaf. What kind of bionic ear should I wish for, since LASIK has worked so well for my sight about six years now?
Do I want to read the Book of the Future today? Not really.
Kenny Chesney, Dolly Parton and Megan Fox - entertainment products of east Tennessee birth.
When was the last time you sat next to Mandy Moore at a UFC event?
In which/what world do I live? Am I an IndyCar/NASCAR/F1/Rally fan, a Lowe Mill fan, a pop cinema fan, a woodlands/jungle hike fan, a football/rugby fan or ... any and all of the above?
I live - I'm a fan of everything.
Seduced by my senses, unaware of what's really around me. What do I don't know I know I almost know?
When the superorganism is ready, will it rip the fabric of spacetime space and step across the threshold? Can it solve the puzzle of why no other superorganisms are visible in this universe?
Why can some people find simple pleasure in repetitive tasks and weekend backyard BBQ parties while others will not be happy until this planet's creatures are safely ensconced in another spot outside of this universe?
How many times can we laugh at the barbarians who show their primate selves in the fearmongering about one-world government? Can we not see we're one people already?
If you feel out of control of the situation, admit the fact and go on.
How many caves have you explored?
Can you tell the difference between a person who has killed another person and one who has not?
Do you know the definition of risk?
Do you know the definition of life?
The Book of the Future ... the crystal ball ... the bag of other tricks yet unused ...
Don't worry about one-world governments forcing you to change your lifestyle/culture. We need you to maintain your subcultures so that dichotomies occur all along the borders between "pure" subcultures for change to happen seemingly spontaneously. From discord, confusion and conflict rise unique solutions to problems that haven't been invented yet.
The Balance of Power. We know what's going to happen next because you predict your own unpredictability predictably. Like tuning an engine. When all aspects of living are known and your unique limited combination of aspects observed and recorded, the world of our species within the well-studied ecosystem of this planet provide measurable parameters upon which one can depend reliably.
The "mysteries" of life are slowly revealed to you for proper dissemination and absorption by the subpopulations of the superorganism. Pockets of resistance are natural responses by the environment and expected (although never welcomed by purists in the field of efficiency expertise).
You accomplish so much more when you trust the future's already been formed for you. Quit seeing it in hindsight and let your foresight be your guide.
If we think we have to wait for a Contact-like moment, a deus ex machina, to rescue us from ourselves, then we'll keep waiting. We are our own alien species, so to speak, with the ignorance of knowledge about the future already in us.
What's next? Hmm ... to know that I know what I'm going to see in the Book of the Future before I look at it is the sign that I'm believing the message of this fictional blog too much.
In one hand, fiction. In the other hand, nonfiction. In one's knowledge, the knowledge that others fulfill futures presented to them as if they're assignments and by others subconsciously through the power of subtle persuasion. Thus, are the futures fact or fiction or both and when were they one, the other or both?
The Book of the Future doesn't say because the Book of the Future is its own self-referential conflict, spirals within spirals looping back and forth within and out of themselves with no discernible beginning or end in sight of our localised lives.
Time to step out of the local culture again and show what the Book of the Future says about other subcultures in the superculture/superorganism called us, our species, our one-world self governing body, if you will accept that definition gladly (or at least without wincing). You might just find out if you're a "Yes" or a "No" and why.
31 March 2010
Famosa Restaurant El Rey Sol en la Avenida
Looking into the Book of the Future sends shocks through my system every so often.
First, there was the revelation that Japan, Great Britain, Spain and France owned large stretches of North America (the Book of the Future shows the past, too, because present time is irrelevant).
Next, I saw that countries do not exist because people control governments through cooperation and/or coercion.
Then, I saw my old body decomposing after death. [Should that shock me? Not normally, but today it did.]
I flipped page after page and watched the rise and fall of piles of money as negotiations went back and forth. I lost count of the countries, businesses, individuals and groups who faced each other from atop equally-high stacks of cash and then faded away.
And then I saw the whole Book of the Future the way it really exists - devoid of people, absent of their temporary self-importance and others' idols to worship.
I saw us as we really are - background.
Right now, I'm numb.
To say I don't exist is an exercise in symbol arrangement. To see none of us exists, which makes me and all that is around me while I type this nonexistent, has caught me off-guard/offguard/off guard.
Am I off my rocker? Am I touched? Do I really think I exist to say I don't exist when I really don't exist to think I exist?
We cannot imagine life without life, a universe without some beings from Earth around. We believe we have this slight comfort in knowing that a few metallic objects drifting away from Earth will represent us should we destroy ourselves here. We cannot see a supernova wiping out our solar system along with all evidence of our civilised existence.
I don't know what to tell you. The Book of the Future told me today that we're all in the past and what I'm typing now no longer exists.
I am stunned.
Between now and then, we accomplish much. As a species, we keep advancing the state-of-the-art, but in one timeline we don't figure out how to move enough of us thousands of light-years away to save any type of Earthlings, people or otherwise, from total annihilation.
The future is not guaranteed. It's only probabilistic trajectories in all directions from all points of space and time.
I'm stepping away from the computer and the Book of the Future for a few days. Today, seeing that all that is around me will not exist in living form in one probable future has made me dizzy from spinning in a loop of unbelievable improbability.
You keep playing games with one another - I'm too dazed and confused to play along. I'm going to enjoy the sunshine at the regular speed of light, about eight minutes and nineteen seconds "old." Why do I feel so much older all of a sudden? Almost 48 and I think and feel like I'm 98. Words have lost their significance in this 24-hour period. Think I'll spend some time drifting in and out of crowds, enjoying people in all their wonderful shapes and sizes who are happily ignorant of the future, barely aware of governments interpreting modern-day Enigma machines and knowingly letting their enemies kill government citizens so the governments don't give away what they know.
I miss the innocence of ignorance. Some say they get sad watching their family members succumb to memory loss. I'm not so sure. Tasting the freedom of absolute power, invincibility and immortality - sort of like Icarus touching the sun - is wished by many and survived by few. Omnipotence and omniscience - be careful what you ask for - if you know what you're doing, you'll drive yourself insane trying to run day-to-day operations while completely aware of the permanence of the future's impact on the present.
I'm taking a break. See you in a new timeline where I hope we figure out how to meld our hundreds of sovereignties together like one big brain and solve the problem of how to create a self-sufficient planetlike transportation device to get some of us (in new semihuman form) and many of our non-people Earthlings on a trajectory where we're not at the mercy of our neighbours in this part of the galaxy. If only I'd live to see the solution! Some of you will (I hope) - I envy you, when (or if) you do (if I read enough of the Book of the Future before I pass it on, I'm sure I'll see the future where you absolutely will; I'll just have to depend on faith and belief for now, eh?).
First, there was the revelation that Japan, Great Britain, Spain and France owned large stretches of North America (the Book of the Future shows the past, too, because present time is irrelevant).
Next, I saw that countries do not exist because people control governments through cooperation and/or coercion.
Then, I saw my old body decomposing after death. [Should that shock me? Not normally, but today it did.]
I flipped page after page and watched the rise and fall of piles of money as negotiations went back and forth. I lost count of the countries, businesses, individuals and groups who faced each other from atop equally-high stacks of cash and then faded away.
And then I saw the whole Book of the Future the way it really exists - devoid of people, absent of their temporary self-importance and others' idols to worship.
I saw us as we really are - background.
Right now, I'm numb.
To say I don't exist is an exercise in symbol arrangement. To see none of us exists, which makes me and all that is around me while I type this nonexistent, has caught me off-guard/offguard/off guard.
Am I off my rocker? Am I touched? Do I really think I exist to say I don't exist when I really don't exist to think I exist?
We cannot imagine life without life, a universe without some beings from Earth around. We believe we have this slight comfort in knowing that a few metallic objects drifting away from Earth will represent us should we destroy ourselves here. We cannot see a supernova wiping out our solar system along with all evidence of our civilised existence.
I don't know what to tell you. The Book of the Future told me today that we're all in the past and what I'm typing now no longer exists.
I am stunned.
Between now and then, we accomplish much. As a species, we keep advancing the state-of-the-art, but in one timeline we don't figure out how to move enough of us thousands of light-years away to save any type of Earthlings, people or otherwise, from total annihilation.
The future is not guaranteed. It's only probabilistic trajectories in all directions from all points of space and time.
I'm stepping away from the computer and the Book of the Future for a few days. Today, seeing that all that is around me will not exist in living form in one probable future has made me dizzy from spinning in a loop of unbelievable improbability.
You keep playing games with one another - I'm too dazed and confused to play along. I'm going to enjoy the sunshine at the regular speed of light, about eight minutes and nineteen seconds "old." Why do I feel so much older all of a sudden? Almost 48 and I think and feel like I'm 98. Words have lost their significance in this 24-hour period. Think I'll spend some time drifting in and out of crowds, enjoying people in all their wonderful shapes and sizes who are happily ignorant of the future, barely aware of governments interpreting modern-day Enigma machines and knowingly letting their enemies kill government citizens so the governments don't give away what they know.
I miss the innocence of ignorance. Some say they get sad watching their family members succumb to memory loss. I'm not so sure. Tasting the freedom of absolute power, invincibility and immortality - sort of like Icarus touching the sun - is wished by many and survived by few. Omnipotence and omniscience - be careful what you ask for - if you know what you're doing, you'll drive yourself insane trying to run day-to-day operations while completely aware of the permanence of the future's impact on the present.
I'm taking a break. See you in a new timeline where I hope we figure out how to meld our hundreds of sovereignties together like one big brain and solve the problem of how to create a self-sufficient planetlike transportation device to get some of us (in new semihuman form) and many of our non-people Earthlings on a trajectory where we're not at the mercy of our neighbours in this part of the galaxy. If only I'd live to see the solution! Some of you will (I hope) - I envy you, when (or if) you do (if I read enough of the Book of the Future before I pass it on, I'm sure I'll see the future where you absolutely will; I'll just have to depend on faith and belief for now, eh?).
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!
13 March 2010
Flashback, 19th May 1995 - The Farmer’s Almanac Guide to Shakespeare: A 1/2-Act Play
The Farmer’s Almanac Guide to Shakespeare: A 1/2-Act Play
To be performed in a casual setting; the performer should wear an old hat, dirty overalls, and a wornout pair of boots and be holding a large book, preferably the works of Shakespeare.
Hi folks, I was gonna tell y’all about the weather and how my farm was doin’ and all that but this morning I picked up this stack of tall tales that’s been holdin’ up one end of my kitchen table ever since my daughter got kicked outta eighth grade for chewin’ tobacco.
The fellow in this here book says that old psychiatrists have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes all yellowed-over, their gums are red from gnawin’ and that they lack their sanity, together with having weak legs, so they have to hang onto the toilet when they pee (kinda like some of them politicians after they’ve had a few sips of my moonshine...er, I mean cough medicine). I don’t mean to insult the bunch of you but that purty well describes the rest of us here today. But as I was sayin’, you can tell this fellow has a lot on his mind, and he uses some purty fancy words to say all what he’s got to say. I especially like this story, called...
The Good Ol’ Boy Hamlet
[The performer makes a sound, clearing the throat, thrusts the book out in an overdramatic fashion and then pulls the book in close as if the words are hard to see, bending down to study the page for a few seconds before saying the following paragraph slowly, as if getting used to reading out loud.]
I heard this speech once, but it was never acted; or if it was, not more’n once; it didn’t please a lot of folks; it was like fancy fish eggs to the people: but it was -- as I reckon, and others, whose judgments in such matters are much smarter’n mine -- an excellent speech, every sentence put together purty well and set down with as much modesty as a cunning politician.
[The performer stands up straight and holds the book back out, then loudly enunciates the following, overacting as much as possible.]
To seed or not to seed the fields: that is the question:
Whether this brain of mine can suffer
The Cadillacs and Pierce Arrows of winnin’ the lottery fortune,
Or take pesticides against a sea of boll weevils,
And by sprayin’ end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by sleep to say I end
The heartache and the thousand bumps to my butt
That a tractor’ll do to ya, it’s a sitiation
Definitely to be wished fer. To die, to sleep:
To sleep: perchance to dream : ah, there’s the rub of Ben Gay;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When I have taken off these dirty overalls,
Must give me pause: that’s the respect
That makes a calamity of this long life;
For who would bear the naggin’ and complainin’ of your spouse,
The government taxes, the businessman’s contempt for farmin’,
The pains of your ol’ sweetheart’s love, the delay of your farm loan approval,
The overbearin’ county commissioners and the free handouts
That lazy farmers whose crops fail take,
When I myself could quietly make
Out like a barefoot bandit? who would bear the burdens,
To grunt and sweat under this weary life,
But that the wonder of somethin’ after death,
The undiscovered country from whose boundaries
No traveller has returned, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we don’t know of?
Thus conscience does make Christians of us all;
And thus the natural-born worldly will
Is replaced with Jesus and his cast of angels,
And enterprises of great importance and in regards
to this moment our thoughts run to God
And lose the love for the world. -- Listen now!
My fair wife! She calls me back to the dinner table for some vittles.
Well, folks, I’d best be going afore she up and feeds my supper to the hogs.
- 19 May 1995
[from: http://web.archive.org/web/20080515162808/www.geocities.com/bigcove/homepage.html]
To be performed in a casual setting; the performer should wear an old hat, dirty overalls, and a wornout pair of boots and be holding a large book, preferably the works of Shakespeare.
Hi folks, I was gonna tell y’all about the weather and how my farm was doin’ and all that but this morning I picked up this stack of tall tales that’s been holdin’ up one end of my kitchen table ever since my daughter got kicked outta eighth grade for chewin’ tobacco.
The fellow in this here book says that old psychiatrists have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes all yellowed-over, their gums are red from gnawin’ and that they lack their sanity, together with having weak legs, so they have to hang onto the toilet when they pee (kinda like some of them politicians after they’ve had a few sips of my moonshine...er, I mean cough medicine). I don’t mean to insult the bunch of you but that purty well describes the rest of us here today. But as I was sayin’, you can tell this fellow has a lot on his mind, and he uses some purty fancy words to say all what he’s got to say. I especially like this story, called...
The Good Ol’ Boy Hamlet
[The performer makes a sound, clearing the throat, thrusts the book out in an overdramatic fashion and then pulls the book in close as if the words are hard to see, bending down to study the page for a few seconds before saying the following paragraph slowly, as if getting used to reading out loud.]
I heard this speech once, but it was never acted; or if it was, not more’n once; it didn’t please a lot of folks; it was like fancy fish eggs to the people: but it was -- as I reckon, and others, whose judgments in such matters are much smarter’n mine -- an excellent speech, every sentence put together purty well and set down with as much modesty as a cunning politician.
[The performer stands up straight and holds the book back out, then loudly enunciates the following, overacting as much as possible.]
To seed or not to seed the fields: that is the question:
Whether this brain of mine can suffer
The Cadillacs and Pierce Arrows of winnin’ the lottery fortune,
Or take pesticides against a sea of boll weevils,
And by sprayin’ end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by sleep to say I end
The heartache and the thousand bumps to my butt
That a tractor’ll do to ya, it’s a sitiation
Definitely to be wished fer. To die, to sleep:
To sleep: perchance to dream : ah, there’s the rub of Ben Gay;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When I have taken off these dirty overalls,
Must give me pause: that’s the respect
That makes a calamity of this long life;
For who would bear the naggin’ and complainin’ of your spouse,
The government taxes, the businessman’s contempt for farmin’,
The pains of your ol’ sweetheart’s love, the delay of your farm loan approval,
The overbearin’ county commissioners and the free handouts
That lazy farmers whose crops fail take,
When I myself could quietly make
Out like a barefoot bandit? who would bear the burdens,
To grunt and sweat under this weary life,
But that the wonder of somethin’ after death,
The undiscovered country from whose boundaries
No traveller has returned, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we don’t know of?
Thus conscience does make Christians of us all;
And thus the natural-born worldly will
Is replaced with Jesus and his cast of angels,
And enterprises of great importance and in regards
to this moment our thoughts run to God
And lose the love for the world. -- Listen now!
My fair wife! She calls me back to the dinner table for some vittles.
Well, folks, I’d best be going afore she up and feeds my supper to the hogs.
- 19 May 1995
[from: http://web.archive.org/web/20080515162808/www.geocities.com/bigcove/homepage.html]
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.
Who's Gonna Get Us Off This Planet?
How long have you worked with your colleagues? Did it start in preschool? Do you think you only started when you took your first "real" job?
When I was a small child, I attended a seminar on personal growth. At the end of the seminar, the speaker told the young people in the audience she had a special message for those interested in more information so a smaller group of us gathered in another room with her.
The speaker asked how many of us could keep a secret and then had us play the "pass the secret" game (you know, where one person whispers a message in the ear of another, that person whispers the message in the ear of the next person, and so on, until the message has reached the ears of the original message-giver).
As the speaker whispered in the ear of the first person, she took quick glances at three of us in the room. Being acutely aware of adult behaviours, the three of us knew what she meant.
When the message got to me, I could tell the first kid of the three of us had modified the message by adding a phrase at the end, so I added another short phrase.
By the time the message got to the speaker, it had four parts.
The speaker thanked us for our participation and asked three to stay behind, including myself and two kids different than the two other ones I'd seen her signal.
The speaker explained that she was part of a very special group. She had watched us kids carefully and knew by our actions we could be trusted to follow our instincts and not follow instructions that indicated they were to be followed to the letter. You follow?
She told us she'd contact us later on. It might be days or it might be months but she'd let us know when she was back in town and had instructions for us to read very carefully, choosing for ourselves the direction we would take.
A few months later, my parents announced we were taking a tour of Washington, D.C. They excitedly told the family all the places they wanted us to see and asked us what we wanted to see. Of course, I wanted to visit the Smithsonian.
Just before our trip, the speaker showed up at my school to give a lecture on the flight of the Alice Springs camelback warbler. I attended the lecture and talked with the speaker afterward.
The speaker told me that while visiting buildings in Washington, I was to get lost from my parents and any tour group I was with. During my childlike, innocent wanderings, I was to gather information about certain subjects using whatever I had at my disposal. The speaker handed me a piece of paper, trained me with methods in how to enhance eidetic memory, had me memorise the list of words on the paper and then eat the paper (it had the sweet taste of ground horse hooves).
Back in those days, it was easy to wander through buildings.
When we walked into a building with a tour group, I would read the names of important people listed on the public display, get lost, and ask adults I bumped into if they could point me in the direction of my [uncle/aunt such-and-such]. Most adults were all too helpful and pointed me to elevators or hallways I could duck into until they disappeared.
That was in the 1970s. The speaker made it clear that the information I gathered would not be used for 30 or 40 years so I would be safe in having a long stretch of time between my face being seen and the data being put to use.
I had forgotten about the speaker and the information until recently.
While reviewing a multidimensional chart of population density versus wealth distribution versus manufacturing capability versus natural resource ownership/access versus education level versus military strength versus underworld valuation, I saw some of my old data.
During my childhood wanderings, I looked through the desk drawers of supposedly famous/powerful people, discovering their hidden trusts, foundations and other methods for keeping their wealth or estates off the books. I found accounting ledgers that showed who was depositing money in offshore accounts, offering free holidays, "loaning" free automobiles/houses/holiday homes, and the record of other terminology that a young person is not supposed to know about.
Using both my eidetic memory and a cheap tourist camera, I captured a lot of data. That was all I was supposed to do. However, as a child who had inside information, including names, and a cruel sense of humour for my age, I accidentally bumped into those famous/powerful people and asked them vague questions, dropping hints that on the surface made no sense, sending some people scrambling back to their offices or out of their offices in confusion. Then, I'd make myself obvious and get "found" by building security guards who'd kindly escort me back to my parents.
Now, while I watch political maneuvers that make no sense, I understand what's going on. I see politicians who are secretly figuring out if they can find a profitable way to get gambling casinos and "bingo halls" raised to the level of stock exchanges and regulated by the SEC. I see lobbyists who want to tie universal health care coverage to the court ruling on the federal authority of enforcing the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I see corporate lawyers wanting to go after Chinese glass quality control while Toyota is facing a decrease in public trust. I see the U.S. president going after education and the Russian president going after Olympic trainers in the same light. In other words, who paid for the coup in Niger and who was paid to expose a "coup" in Turkey?
While my associates sort out the details to feed questions to the new set of speakers we've got combing through the tangled mess of public education for a few new recruits to join the network of associates that doesn't exist, I'm moving on to another project.
I've been told that a space agency leader is learning why some people are not good politicians and will be reined in properly. Therefore, I'm not going to worry about how the political effect on space exploration will play out. If I can see the difference between a player and a "playa," then so can those who I trust to take care of business using the politically-correct, public channels of communication. If not, then my associates know what to do next. Pedigree has never been a good form of shielding against the need of the many.
My associates rarely take the direct approach. We have time on our side. Lots of time. Decades, if that's what it takes. I remind them that I'm a nice guy and want all of us to use happy ways to move the world forward. They remind me that I'm a writer, the messenger boy, by my choice. We all have choices to make in how we take turns leading the network. I've made mine and they have their choices to make. Together, we'll get the job done, for our species, no single person more important than the other. Some will get rich along the way, some will get fame and power, some will keep their anonymity and some will take quiet walks in the woods. Never sacrifice freedom of choice to achieve our greater goals.
When I was a small child, I attended a seminar on personal growth. At the end of the seminar, the speaker told the young people in the audience she had a special message for those interested in more information so a smaller group of us gathered in another room with her.
The speaker asked how many of us could keep a secret and then had us play the "pass the secret" game (you know, where one person whispers a message in the ear of another, that person whispers the message in the ear of the next person, and so on, until the message has reached the ears of the original message-giver).
As the speaker whispered in the ear of the first person, she took quick glances at three of us in the room. Being acutely aware of adult behaviours, the three of us knew what she meant.
When the message got to me, I could tell the first kid of the three of us had modified the message by adding a phrase at the end, so I added another short phrase.
By the time the message got to the speaker, it had four parts.
The speaker thanked us for our participation and asked three to stay behind, including myself and two kids different than the two other ones I'd seen her signal.
The speaker explained that she was part of a very special group. She had watched us kids carefully and knew by our actions we could be trusted to follow our instincts and not follow instructions that indicated they were to be followed to the letter. You follow?
She told us she'd contact us later on. It might be days or it might be months but she'd let us know when she was back in town and had instructions for us to read very carefully, choosing for ourselves the direction we would take.
A few months later, my parents announced we were taking a tour of Washington, D.C. They excitedly told the family all the places they wanted us to see and asked us what we wanted to see. Of course, I wanted to visit the Smithsonian.
Just before our trip, the speaker showed up at my school to give a lecture on the flight of the Alice Springs camelback warbler. I attended the lecture and talked with the speaker afterward.
The speaker told me that while visiting buildings in Washington, I was to get lost from my parents and any tour group I was with. During my childlike, innocent wanderings, I was to gather information about certain subjects using whatever I had at my disposal. The speaker handed me a piece of paper, trained me with methods in how to enhance eidetic memory, had me memorise the list of words on the paper and then eat the paper (it had the sweet taste of ground horse hooves).
Back in those days, it was easy to wander through buildings.
When we walked into a building with a tour group, I would read the names of important people listed on the public display, get lost, and ask adults I bumped into if they could point me in the direction of my [uncle/aunt such-and-such]. Most adults were all too helpful and pointed me to elevators or hallways I could duck into until they disappeared.
That was in the 1970s. The speaker made it clear that the information I gathered would not be used for 30 or 40 years so I would be safe in having a long stretch of time between my face being seen and the data being put to use.
I had forgotten about the speaker and the information until recently.
While reviewing a multidimensional chart of population density versus wealth distribution versus manufacturing capability versus natural resource ownership/access versus education level versus military strength versus underworld valuation, I saw some of my old data.
During my childhood wanderings, I looked through the desk drawers of supposedly famous/powerful people, discovering their hidden trusts, foundations and other methods for keeping their wealth or estates off the books. I found accounting ledgers that showed who was depositing money in offshore accounts, offering free holidays, "loaning" free automobiles/houses/holiday homes, and the record of other terminology that a young person is not supposed to know about.
Using both my eidetic memory and a cheap tourist camera, I captured a lot of data. That was all I was supposed to do. However, as a child who had inside information, including names, and a cruel sense of humour for my age, I accidentally bumped into those famous/powerful people and asked them vague questions, dropping hints that on the surface made no sense, sending some people scrambling back to their offices or out of their offices in confusion. Then, I'd make myself obvious and get "found" by building security guards who'd kindly escort me back to my parents.
Now, while I watch political maneuvers that make no sense, I understand what's going on. I see politicians who are secretly figuring out if they can find a profitable way to get gambling casinos and "bingo halls" raised to the level of stock exchanges and regulated by the SEC. I see lobbyists who want to tie universal health care coverage to the court ruling on the federal authority of enforcing the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I see corporate lawyers wanting to go after Chinese glass quality control while Toyota is facing a decrease in public trust. I see the U.S. president going after education and the Russian president going after Olympic trainers in the same light. In other words, who paid for the coup in Niger and who was paid to expose a "coup" in Turkey?
While my associates sort out the details to feed questions to the new set of speakers we've got combing through the tangled mess of public education for a few new recruits to join the network of associates that doesn't exist, I'm moving on to another project.
I've been told that a space agency leader is learning why some people are not good politicians and will be reined in properly. Therefore, I'm not going to worry about how the political effect on space exploration will play out. If I can see the difference between a player and a "playa," then so can those who I trust to take care of business using the politically-correct, public channels of communication. If not, then my associates know what to do next. Pedigree has never been a good form of shielding against the need of the many.
My associates rarely take the direct approach. We have time on our side. Lots of time. Decades, if that's what it takes. I remind them that I'm a nice guy and want all of us to use happy ways to move the world forward. They remind me that I'm a writer, the messenger boy, by my choice. We all have choices to make in how we take turns leading the network. I've made mine and they have their choices to make. Together, we'll get the job done, for our species, no single person more important than the other. Some will get rich along the way, some will get fame and power, some will keep their anonymity and some will take quiet walks in the woods. Never sacrifice freedom of choice to achieve our greater goals.
26 February 2010
See disclaimers on the backside of this blog
Before you continue reading this blog entry, please pick up the web browser and turn it over. New rules and regulations require that I disclose the location of all fine print.
Okay, are you finished reading the details about my disclaiming any direct knowledge regarding the hints, tips and data discussed in this blog? Good! Let's go on to the latest, then.
My apologies to international readers. A few colleagues of mine in this country are pressing me to reveal the future outcome of the health care legislation debate that dominates the local news because politicians can use this time to negotiate other deals more important to them in the short-term. As I've told my distinguished colleagues many times, I have already revealed the future on this one many times.
Do you understand how a satirical novel works? The plot turns back on itself and reveals that it is a living corpse within a tragicomedy that breaks down into sad but funny subplots which all point back to the original plot as if none of them existed in the first place. The best satirical novel in the world will reveal that the readers did not exist until they became players within the novel who see themselves reading themselves being formed and unformed at the same time. A reader becomes the novel and then they both go away to reappear in pieces and parts in the fantastical creations of other works of art (and life that imitated art and art that imitated life and life that imitated art that imitated life and...) that have and will not have existed at any point in time.
Universal health care in a nutshell, you see? No matter how they font the title or backlight the leading actors' faces, the facts remain the same - they will appear as you before your eyes and when you see yourself, they (and you) disappear just as suddenly, absorbed into everything around you as if they already existed in the first place.
So, pick your favorite poison. Rising costs. Rising liabilities. Rising expenses. Rising assets. Rising coverage. Rising dough. Cooked books. Less coverage. More coverage. Fewer doctors. More doctoring. More patients. Less patience. It will all turn out to be the same.
That's the funny thing about the Book of the Future. Simple predictions for complex scenarios. Different futures for the same future. I'll see you in the same place we agreed not to meet. It won't be us we run into, anyway. But we'll be there just the same. After all, your reading of the disclaimer proved the point you'll read anything, including words that never existed, except in the future that's not going to happen because we left it to relive the past we can't go back to.
Just like before.
Okay, are you finished reading the details about my disclaiming any direct knowledge regarding the hints, tips and data discussed in this blog? Good! Let's go on to the latest, then.
My apologies to international readers. A few colleagues of mine in this country are pressing me to reveal the future outcome of the health care legislation debate that dominates the local news because politicians can use this time to negotiate other deals more important to them in the short-term. As I've told my distinguished colleagues many times, I have already revealed the future on this one many times.
Do you understand how a satirical novel works? The plot turns back on itself and reveals that it is a living corpse within a tragicomedy that breaks down into sad but funny subplots which all point back to the original plot as if none of them existed in the first place. The best satirical novel in the world will reveal that the readers did not exist until they became players within the novel who see themselves reading themselves being formed and unformed at the same time. A reader becomes the novel and then they both go away to reappear in pieces and parts in the fantastical creations of other works of art (and life that imitated art and art that imitated life and life that imitated art that imitated life and...) that have and will not have existed at any point in time.
Universal health care in a nutshell, you see? No matter how they font the title or backlight the leading actors' faces, the facts remain the same - they will appear as you before your eyes and when you see yourself, they (and you) disappear just as suddenly, absorbed into everything around you as if they already existed in the first place.
So, pick your favorite poison. Rising costs. Rising liabilities. Rising expenses. Rising assets. Rising coverage. Rising dough. Cooked books. Less coverage. More coverage. Fewer doctors. More doctoring. More patients. Less patience. It will all turn out to be the same.
That's the funny thing about the Book of the Future. Simple predictions for complex scenarios. Different futures for the same future. I'll see you in the same place we agreed not to meet. It won't be us we run into, anyway. But we'll be there just the same. After all, your reading of the disclaimer proved the point you'll read anything, including words that never existed, except in the future that's not going to happen because we left it to relive the past we can't go back to.
Just like before.
13 February 2010
Relish Treasure Finder
I consider myself one of you. Fortunate to have friends all over the world - friends I found engaged in work situations, sitting in classrooms, focused on retail shopping, walking down the street or cheering in the stadium. I've worked with and for people of many social, cultural, and family backgrounds, with gender preference never an issue that was or became an issue. We were and still are who we are. We need be no more or less than us.
Thus, it pains me when I see trends emerge that contradict what I believe friendship to be - a sample of the cosmos of cosmic relationships. Especially when I can do little to stop the trends that appear to be our society out of control. Even more so when I see that it is selfish people or groups who are working others into a frenzy unnecessarily so.
You are my brothers and sisters. Like siblings with distinctly different personalities, I will disagree with you when I feel you're taking a wrong turn in life. You may not listen to me or know I'm talking to you but I'll hold my ground and maintain my train of thought until you catch on to what I'm saying.
In my walk through life today, driving through north Alabama with my wife, seeing all the small stores and cafes that have folded during this economic downturn, including one of our favorites, the Blue Willow, I have met new friends and talked with you on short but intimate terms. We learn what we can in those quiet moments of one-to-one eye contact. The deep browns, the light greens, the sparkling blues.
I love you all. You know that and hopefully you see my loving smile when we look at each other. I am happy to meet you even if just for a quick glance across the clothes racks at Unclaimed Baggage Center or the tables at Thai Garden or when my wife and I bought Girl Scout cookies from a mother and her cheerful daughters at Star Market.
I will not accept defeat. I will not let the world of disagreement drag me into a fight that is not mine. Look at ourselves. We're the only ones on this planet together. Your ancestors aren't brandishing weapons. Your unborn descendants aren't making the rules. It's you and me. That's it. So get over the ancestor worship. Quit quoting ancient texts and claim you can do nothing but repeat yourselves because some dead people said that's what you have to do to live or die. I don't care about your dead family. I have dead family, too, you know. I have ancestors-turned-to-dust who would expect me to participate in genocide without blinking an eye. In fact, they'd expect me to trade an eye for an eye, literally and metaphorically speaking. I disregard their deadly decision-making. I'm smarter than them and so are you.
Forget who you think you are. You are not you. I am not me. We are one and the same. I've said it over and over, repeating those who know what I'm talking about. Let's use our common sense here, not our short-sightedness.
I picked up some books at Unclaimed Baggage today, books that I wanted to enrich my understanding of us and what makes us think we have to take wrong turns in life. If you're a biker, a truck driver, a forklift operator, a dressmaker, a teacher, a banker, a farmhand, a religious leader, or a student, you learn something new every day. You see new adverts. You pick up a new trick in the trade. You adapt to changing weather patterns. You adjust your buying habits to your increasing or decreasing income. You can learn, too, by reading and studying books outside your limited understanding of your subculture and see just how rich and powerful a mix of subcultures really is (because, no matter what you think you believe, your subculture is not the only one thinking it's the only one that knows and stays on the true path to wealth both here in this life and beyond). Here are some books that I would not normally read but have chosen to read because I believe every one of you has something important to teach me. I hope you can find similar books, or websites or people to teach you that we all contribute to our people's good health and happiness.
History is full of one subculture meeting another, with violent clashes where one group kills people in the other group, along with their knowledge that would have helped the next civilisation grow and thrive, forcing everyone to start over.
In a recent movie, a cinema character called another one a con artist for turning people's flats and houses into ideal selling points because furniture and home accessories were moved in temporarily to make the place a home. We all fall victim to con artists of this sort. We create self-promotional marketing campaigns and turn ourselves into walking adverts that simplify who we are and what we represent. Don't be fooled by your own confidence trick. Just like aboriginal people of the Pacific Northwest who put up totem poles to indicate their wealth and status, we are not the carvings we create. We are not the magic tricks we play on stage. Don't be a victim of your own imagination.
Most good sports coaches will tell you to get out of your head and get into your body. Your thoughts do not score goals. Your thoughts do not win games. Your bodies make the moves that help you achieve your victories.
I am talking to you, to us, as bodies here. We can win together when we get the images out of our heads that falsely indicate we are part of some subgroup that's better than others. The fact is that our success and failure depend on people all over this planet who use their bodies to complete tasks we could not achieve with ease.
You can keep fighting each other, if you want. I will not stop you. But I will work to ensure those who want to turn each other into mortal enemies will be sequestered and put into a hole where neither one of you will escape alive unless you decide that you have better things to do, like working with the rest of us to share our subcultures and learn from one another. Again, we don't have to like each other or agree but we can give each other room to enjoy our subcultures how we choose as long as it doesn't include killing those in other subcultures.
I'll give you some more time to think about this. Then, at some point in the future, you will have to make a decision. Respect one another and all of our rights to celebrate our subcultures, or don't. If you choose the latter, then you'll deal not with me (I'm an easygoing guy) but with those who have been trained to take care of intolerance. It's not a threat or a promise. It's just the way we are, you and me.
Meantime, I've got to get back to the world of those who do want to work well with others. I don't have time for those who want to drag others down with them. See you on the bright side. With a smile. And a hearty laugh.
Thus, it pains me when I see trends emerge that contradict what I believe friendship to be - a sample of the cosmos of cosmic relationships. Especially when I can do little to stop the trends that appear to be our society out of control. Even more so when I see that it is selfish people or groups who are working others into a frenzy unnecessarily so.
You are my brothers and sisters. Like siblings with distinctly different personalities, I will disagree with you when I feel you're taking a wrong turn in life. You may not listen to me or know I'm talking to you but I'll hold my ground and maintain my train of thought until you catch on to what I'm saying.
In my walk through life today, driving through north Alabama with my wife, seeing all the small stores and cafes that have folded during this economic downturn, including one of our favorites, the Blue Willow, I have met new friends and talked with you on short but intimate terms. We learn what we can in those quiet moments of one-to-one eye contact. The deep browns, the light greens, the sparkling blues.
I love you all. You know that and hopefully you see my loving smile when we look at each other. I am happy to meet you even if just for a quick glance across the clothes racks at Unclaimed Baggage Center or the tables at Thai Garden or when my wife and I bought Girl Scout cookies from a mother and her cheerful daughters at Star Market.
I will not accept defeat. I will not let the world of disagreement drag me into a fight that is not mine. Look at ourselves. We're the only ones on this planet together. Your ancestors aren't brandishing weapons. Your unborn descendants aren't making the rules. It's you and me. That's it. So get over the ancestor worship. Quit quoting ancient texts and claim you can do nothing but repeat yourselves because some dead people said that's what you have to do to live or die. I don't care about your dead family. I have dead family, too, you know. I have ancestors-turned-to-dust who would expect me to participate in genocide without blinking an eye. In fact, they'd expect me to trade an eye for an eye, literally and metaphorically speaking. I disregard their deadly decision-making. I'm smarter than them and so are you.
Forget who you think you are. You are not you. I am not me. We are one and the same. I've said it over and over, repeating those who know what I'm talking about. Let's use our common sense here, not our short-sightedness.
I picked up some books at Unclaimed Baggage today, books that I wanted to enrich my understanding of us and what makes us think we have to take wrong turns in life. If you're a biker, a truck driver, a forklift operator, a dressmaker, a teacher, a banker, a farmhand, a religious leader, or a student, you learn something new every day. You see new adverts. You pick up a new trick in the trade. You adapt to changing weather patterns. You adjust your buying habits to your increasing or decreasing income. You can learn, too, by reading and studying books outside your limited understanding of your subculture and see just how rich and powerful a mix of subcultures really is (because, no matter what you think you believe, your subculture is not the only one thinking it's the only one that knows and stays on the true path to wealth both here in this life and beyond). Here are some books that I would not normally read but have chosen to read because I believe every one of you has something important to teach me. I hope you can find similar books, or websites or people to teach you that we all contribute to our people's good health and happiness.
- Home Life in Colonial Days, by Alice Morse Earle
- The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria
- A Maggot, by John Fowles
- The Mad Ones, by Tom Folsom
- The Face Behind The Veil, by Donna Gehrke-White
- Sinn Féin: A Hundred Turbulent Years, by Brian Feeney
History is full of one subculture meeting another, with violent clashes where one group kills people in the other group, along with their knowledge that would have helped the next civilisation grow and thrive, forcing everyone to start over.
In a recent movie, a cinema character called another one a con artist for turning people's flats and houses into ideal selling points because furniture and home accessories were moved in temporarily to make the place a home. We all fall victim to con artists of this sort. We create self-promotional marketing campaigns and turn ourselves into walking adverts that simplify who we are and what we represent. Don't be fooled by your own confidence trick. Just like aboriginal people of the Pacific Northwest who put up totem poles to indicate their wealth and status, we are not the carvings we create. We are not the magic tricks we play on stage. Don't be a victim of your own imagination.
Most good sports coaches will tell you to get out of your head and get into your body. Your thoughts do not score goals. Your thoughts do not win games. Your bodies make the moves that help you achieve your victories.
I am talking to you, to us, as bodies here. We can win together when we get the images out of our heads that falsely indicate we are part of some subgroup that's better than others. The fact is that our success and failure depend on people all over this planet who use their bodies to complete tasks we could not achieve with ease.
You can keep fighting each other, if you want. I will not stop you. But I will work to ensure those who want to turn each other into mortal enemies will be sequestered and put into a hole where neither one of you will escape alive unless you decide that you have better things to do, like working with the rest of us to share our subcultures and learn from one another. Again, we don't have to like each other or agree but we can give each other room to enjoy our subcultures how we choose as long as it doesn't include killing those in other subcultures.
I'll give you some more time to think about this. Then, at some point in the future, you will have to make a decision. Respect one another and all of our rights to celebrate our subcultures, or don't. If you choose the latter, then you'll deal not with me (I'm an easygoing guy) but with those who have been trained to take care of intolerance. It's not a threat or a promise. It's just the way we are, you and me.
Meantime, I've got to get back to the world of those who do want to work well with others. I don't have time for those who want to drag others down with them. See you on the bright side. With a smile. And a hearty laugh.
23 January 2010
The Diamond Seas of Sutra
Do you thank someone for altering the course of your personal history? Do you tell the person next to you, who's recounting her lifelong goal of looking up at the Sistine Chapel while her daughter is upset about the hotel swimming pool, that you appreciate her getting you your midlife retirement started when, in fact, you had other plans even though the retirement took you down a more comfortable path? See what I'm saying about destiny. Your moments are not yours - they belong to everyone and everything around you. Make believe all you want about why but the fact remains they do.
More gifts from the temporary library ownership of my parents who received these treasures from Bill:
But an hour or so watchin' a spirited redhead, whether it be Amy Adams or Julie Y., is a moment one never forgets. Always a soft spot in me heart for the scandalous Scandinavian orange flames in the follicles of one's hair. A long list, including Robyn, Annette, and many others best not mentioned on this worldwide broadcast. Kissin' on the steps of castles, especially one between Shannon and Ennis...dear, sweet memories. No O'Grady or Callaghan or odd leap days occurring on Mondays.
I've lost me place in me thoughts. Where was I? Why the sudden thought of Quigley Down Under or losses on NCAA basketball courts?
This is my Internet. This is my history of our people. This is what I know about what has happened and what will happen. I know that Obama has suddenly become unpopular. I know I didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation (I didn't vote for his predecessor, either). I know that political parties are old news. Politicians are going the way of dinosaurs in this and many other countries. Corporations run the real show. A show of hands on who agrees with me? Ah, yes, see the CEOs, the CTOs, the CFOs, the movers and shakers shaking hands and wining and dining each other to keep the deals moving along smoothly. This, my friends, is real life - no illusions necessary. We will find a way to make Obama popular again when it becomes necessary to get certain deals done in the not-so-distant future. Right now, we need to follow the age-old pattern of pleasing the people in the portion of the population who did not vote for the current U.S. president so that they do not resort to means that further slow down the economy. After that is taken care of, we'll wheel precedental public opinion back around just in time to approve plans that make public education more educating and improve test scores to show the presidential administration likes improving the future lives of its country's children. All the other fuss about universal health care coverage, "green" goods/services and more jobs will get jumbled together and poured into a mold that will come out in watered-down bills on Capitol Hill to satisfy some of the people some of the time.
So relax. Sit back. Have a beer with me and set your feet up on the coffee table. Be a man or woman or whoever you want to say you are. It's all right. We're family. There are no secrets between us. We can watch television or tune our Internet tablets to the same website and synchronise our thoughts and feel the buzz and excitement of mass hypnosis. Everyone repeat after me: "Ommmmm, my kneepad's me bum, ommmm."
It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, all those people who've volunteered so hard in Haiti get a free ride on the Disney cruise ship back to Disney World for their free day at the amusement park.
Do you have a fix on the Irish sense of humour? Can you enjoy a moment with Jennifer Rudley at Beauregard's and know what I'm talking about? Or bite into a bagel at Bruegger's and feel the love? Or play chauffeur to your wife as she takes you from Tuesday Morning to Bed, Bath and Beyond to Marshall's to Pier One to TJ Maxx to Wal-Mart to not find a set of matching twin bed covers and curtains?
And all the while you're tracking some satellites you aren't sure about, using your friend's quasi-magical rocket ship to get closer and point your X-ray vision at the circuit boards on board those geonongeosynchronous orbital solarionpowered orbs, making sure your sevenbillionperson-strong simulation program takes into account more junk in Earth's trunk so you can tell your friendsinouterspace what to expect next just so they can pad your untraceable retirement account that has no meaning to those who count currency exchange and real estate as spare change in one's portable percevalian tale. Have you ever seen a castle with intricate interlocking stones and wondered how they were able to build a fortress that has withstood time and motion?
You see, I consider myself fortunate. Those few days when I was on my own...well, there have been many moments when I had days that no one could account for but anyway...anyway, those first few days when I was traveling the monorail tour of America, I missed telling you about a chance meeting I had with a young Italian named "Fred." Fred was a previous acquaintance of mine from my days in the old student slums of Knoxville, a place many of you call Fort Sanders. Back before all the condo developers took away the personality of the place and turned it into schizo-highville. Fred had a few connections that...well, let's just say he was connected. Or is.
So here I was, thinking I was doing my own thing, charting my own course when I discovered Fred had put someone on my trail. How he did it, I don't know. I'm not a paranoid person. I don't suspect someone's following me around all the time so I don't have this keen sense of people tracking me. I just assume that I'm famous in my own thoughts, paparazzi taking me pictures and recording my conversations for the day I get my Tiger stripes and have some 15 minutes of infamy worth pawning for gold at whatever sensational news outlet that holds people's attention during that time in peopled history.
I stopped at a random freeway exit and pulled into a petrol station. I walked into the bathroom to relieve myself of the water I'd downed at the last rest stop. Fred stood beside me at the next urinal and quietly told me he had some business to take care of with me.
You don't know Fred, do you? He's what I can only guess is a real Sicilian straight out of the old stories - olive skin, short in stature, slicked-back black hair and a friendly manner without being over-friendly.
Fred and I retired to the back of the petrol station where Fred had a beatup Toyota Corolla and a driver waiting for us. We rode around the little desert town while Fred explained to me what he had in mind for me to take care of for him the rest of our lives in business together.
Those of you who do business with me know I ain't a squealer. Occasionally, I slip some of our business dealings into my stories but never enough to pin down exactly what we've been actually doing.
Don't get me wrong. My business in on the up-and-up. I have no qualms about waking up in the morning with a clean conscience (having a clean consciousness is a different subject entirely). However, because of who I am and what I know and the connections I can make between the past, present and future, certain associates of mine get information they can use to...how do I put this? My friends know what I'm talking about so let's keep it open and honest here. My friends know what I'm capable of. How they deal with what they get from me is their own business.
After all is said and done (and it never is, is it?), I'm just a storyteller. I spread it on so thick that there's no longer any truth that those who don't know what I'm talking about can know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? If you only knew!
There've been other sets of days when no one knew where I was or what I was doing when I ran into other associates like Fred who wanted information that benefited us both. You see, it's all about casual conversations and dropping hints and three-dimensional messages written in time and groups of the same people standing at bus stops everyday in different arrangements that my life's all about. It's junkyards that are rearranged for amateur pilots to fly over and take pictures of. It's small stores in outoftheway places where no one buys anything but produce moves off shelves allthesame. It's speaking Spanish and Hindi and Russian allatonce. It's nonsense phrases and character sketches. It's not speaking at all and getting the story told clearly to those who speak no languages that you know. Do you speak organic circuitry? Do you see without seeing time-based movement?
I wish I didn't know what I know I don't know I know. I'd like to say what I think I know I think. But I can't. It's not a secret. I'm not hiding anything. It's just that these symbols, these words, are useless to tell you what I know. I'm not the only one who knows what I can't tell you I know I think I know. All I can do is communicate with those who know and get accomplished what we know we know how to do with those who know others who know. No kidding.
It's not about the money. It's not about power. At least for me. I've got more of those than I'll ever need. No, for me it's just about access to words and phrases like these.
Some call it bargaining with the devil. Some call it singing with the angels. Some call it being the one past the lives of all the previous lives one had to get here. It's more than that. It's all of that and none of that.
Some days I can run into some of you who know what I'm talking about and put up my "I don't know what you're talking about" mask of living shallowly in the moment. Some days I can't. Some days I want to do one but do the other, instead. In other words, I want to pretend the old illusions still exist. Ignorance is bliss they say but they're wrong.
Many of you are old beyond your years, older than anyone can imagine, old in knowledge and the ways of the ways things really work. For you, I bow my head in acknowledgment of what you know, what we know, what we still have to learn. Oglala, Amazonian, Celtic or Zambian, it doesn't matter. Old World or New World. East or West. We accept that people can just be people and let it be done like that. Everyday worries are just as important as anything else one can do. The solid facts of life. Birth, love, death.
When one has seen one's life written on the sands of history and erased by the rapid winds of change, one knows enough to know all - the people can have what they want - one needs nothing anymore.
Peace, power, war, weakness, fleeting, forever, ignorance, doubt, knowledge, assuredness... Orwell said it best: it's all the same. The rest is history.
More gifts from the temporary library ownership of my parents who received these treasures from Bill:
- Deutsche Bildkarte (Panoramic Map and Index of Germany's Outstanding Sights), with Index and Interpretation, Edited by Karl-Otto Gassdorf, Darmstadt, 12,60 DM ($3), (c) 1954
- 44 Irish Short Stories: An Anthology of Irish Short Fiction from Yeats to Frank O'Connor, Edited by Devin A. Garrity, (c) 1955
- Ireland: A Terrible Beauty, by Jill and Leon Uris, (c) 1975
- The Great Cities: Dublin, by Brendan Lehane and the Editors of Time-Life Books, (c) 1978
- The land of Ireland, by Brian de Breffny, (c) 1979
But an hour or so watchin' a spirited redhead, whether it be Amy Adams or Julie Y., is a moment one never forgets. Always a soft spot in me heart for the scandalous Scandinavian orange flames in the follicles of one's hair. A long list, including Robyn, Annette, and many others best not mentioned on this worldwide broadcast. Kissin' on the steps of castles, especially one between Shannon and Ennis...dear, sweet memories. No O'Grady or Callaghan or odd leap days occurring on Mondays.
I've lost me place in me thoughts. Where was I? Why the sudden thought of Quigley Down Under or losses on NCAA basketball courts?
This is my Internet. This is my history of our people. This is what I know about what has happened and what will happen. I know that Obama has suddenly become unpopular. I know I didn't vote for him because of his party affiliation (I didn't vote for his predecessor, either). I know that political parties are old news. Politicians are going the way of dinosaurs in this and many other countries. Corporations run the real show. A show of hands on who agrees with me? Ah, yes, see the CEOs, the CTOs, the CFOs, the movers and shakers shaking hands and wining and dining each other to keep the deals moving along smoothly. This, my friends, is real life - no illusions necessary. We will find a way to make Obama popular again when it becomes necessary to get certain deals done in the not-so-distant future. Right now, we need to follow the age-old pattern of pleasing the people in the portion of the population who did not vote for the current U.S. president so that they do not resort to means that further slow down the economy. After that is taken care of, we'll wheel precedental public opinion back around just in time to approve plans that make public education more educating and improve test scores to show the presidential administration likes improving the future lives of its country's children. All the other fuss about universal health care coverage, "green" goods/services and more jobs will get jumbled together and poured into a mold that will come out in watered-down bills on Capitol Hill to satisfy some of the people some of the time.
So relax. Sit back. Have a beer with me and set your feet up on the coffee table. Be a man or woman or whoever you want to say you are. It's all right. We're family. There are no secrets between us. We can watch television or tune our Internet tablets to the same website and synchronise our thoughts and feel the buzz and excitement of mass hypnosis. Everyone repeat after me: "Ommmmm, my kneepad's me bum, ommmm."
It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, all those people who've volunteered so hard in Haiti get a free ride on the Disney cruise ship back to Disney World for their free day at the amusement park.
Do you have a fix on the Irish sense of humour? Can you enjoy a moment with Jennifer Rudley at Beauregard's and know what I'm talking about? Or bite into a bagel at Bruegger's and feel the love? Or play chauffeur to your wife as she takes you from Tuesday Morning to Bed, Bath and Beyond to Marshall's to Pier One to TJ Maxx to Wal-Mart to not find a set of matching twin bed covers and curtains?
And all the while you're tracking some satellites you aren't sure about, using your friend's quasi-magical rocket ship to get closer and point your X-ray vision at the circuit boards on board those geonongeosynchronous orbital solarionpowered orbs, making sure your sevenbillionperson-strong simulation program takes into account more junk in Earth's trunk so you can tell your friendsinouterspace what to expect next just so they can pad your untraceable retirement account that has no meaning to those who count currency exchange and real estate as spare change in one's portable percevalian tale. Have you ever seen a castle with intricate interlocking stones and wondered how they were able to build a fortress that has withstood time and motion?
You see, I consider myself fortunate. Those few days when I was on my own...well, there have been many moments when I had days that no one could account for but anyway...anyway, those first few days when I was traveling the monorail tour of America, I missed telling you about a chance meeting I had with a young Italian named "Fred." Fred was a previous acquaintance of mine from my days in the old student slums of Knoxville, a place many of you call Fort Sanders. Back before all the condo developers took away the personality of the place and turned it into schizo-highville. Fred had a few connections that...well, let's just say he was connected. Or is.
So here I was, thinking I was doing my own thing, charting my own course when I discovered Fred had put someone on my trail. How he did it, I don't know. I'm not a paranoid person. I don't suspect someone's following me around all the time so I don't have this keen sense of people tracking me. I just assume that I'm famous in my own thoughts, paparazzi taking me pictures and recording my conversations for the day I get my Tiger stripes and have some 15 minutes of infamy worth pawning for gold at whatever sensational news outlet that holds people's attention during that time in peopled history.
I stopped at a random freeway exit and pulled into a petrol station. I walked into the bathroom to relieve myself of the water I'd downed at the last rest stop. Fred stood beside me at the next urinal and quietly told me he had some business to take care of with me.
You don't know Fred, do you? He's what I can only guess is a real Sicilian straight out of the old stories - olive skin, short in stature, slicked-back black hair and a friendly manner without being over-friendly.
Fred and I retired to the back of the petrol station where Fred had a beatup Toyota Corolla and a driver waiting for us. We rode around the little desert town while Fred explained to me what he had in mind for me to take care of for him the rest of our lives in business together.
Those of you who do business with me know I ain't a squealer. Occasionally, I slip some of our business dealings into my stories but never enough to pin down exactly what we've been actually doing.
Don't get me wrong. My business in on the up-and-up. I have no qualms about waking up in the morning with a clean conscience (having a clean consciousness is a different subject entirely). However, because of who I am and what I know and the connections I can make between the past, present and future, certain associates of mine get information they can use to...how do I put this? My friends know what I'm talking about so let's keep it open and honest here. My friends know what I'm capable of. How they deal with what they get from me is their own business.
After all is said and done (and it never is, is it?), I'm just a storyteller. I spread it on so thick that there's no longer any truth that those who don't know what I'm talking about can know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? If you only knew!
There've been other sets of days when no one knew where I was or what I was doing when I ran into other associates like Fred who wanted information that benefited us both. You see, it's all about casual conversations and dropping hints and three-dimensional messages written in time and groups of the same people standing at bus stops everyday in different arrangements that my life's all about. It's junkyards that are rearranged for amateur pilots to fly over and take pictures of. It's small stores in outoftheway places where no one buys anything but produce moves off shelves allthesame. It's speaking Spanish and Hindi and Russian allatonce. It's nonsense phrases and character sketches. It's not speaking at all and getting the story told clearly to those who speak no languages that you know. Do you speak organic circuitry? Do you see without seeing time-based movement?
I wish I didn't know what I know I don't know I know. I'd like to say what I think I know I think. But I can't. It's not a secret. I'm not hiding anything. It's just that these symbols, these words, are useless to tell you what I know. I'm not the only one who knows what I can't tell you I know I think I know. All I can do is communicate with those who know and get accomplished what we know we know how to do with those who know others who know. No kidding.
It's not about the money. It's not about power. At least for me. I've got more of those than I'll ever need. No, for me it's just about access to words and phrases like these.
Some call it bargaining with the devil. Some call it singing with the angels. Some call it being the one past the lives of all the previous lives one had to get here. It's more than that. It's all of that and none of that.
Some days I can run into some of you who know what I'm talking about and put up my "I don't know what you're talking about" mask of living shallowly in the moment. Some days I can't. Some days I want to do one but do the other, instead. In other words, I want to pretend the old illusions still exist. Ignorance is bliss they say but they're wrong.
Many of you are old beyond your years, older than anyone can imagine, old in knowledge and the ways of the ways things really work. For you, I bow my head in acknowledgment of what you know, what we know, what we still have to learn. Oglala, Amazonian, Celtic or Zambian, it doesn't matter. Old World or New World. East or West. We accept that people can just be people and let it be done like that. Everyday worries are just as important as anything else one can do. The solid facts of life. Birth, love, death.
When one has seen one's life written on the sands of history and erased by the rapid winds of change, one knows enough to know all - the people can have what they want - one needs nothing anymore.
Peace, power, war, weakness, fleeting, forever, ignorance, doubt, knowledge, assuredness... Orwell said it best: it's all the same. The rest is history.
19 January 2010
An Attitude of Altoids At Altitude
Another character sketch filed into the morgue. This current book under wraps, under revision, in consideration, not a book that wants to tell a story easily. Deadends. Dead characters. Ghosts. Apparitions. Appellations.
While traveling the heavily conservative backroads of the not-so-common wealth of Virginia, passing through the burg of Lynch, host to the university-level learning dedicated to liberty, I found myself remembering my youth.
4-H Club trips. Popeyes/pdiddles - one-eyed cars (a missing or burned-out headlight) that add to kisses. Counting cows and losing your total when you pass a cemetery/graveyard. Hiking Mt. Rogers and Whitetop Mountain with my future wife, other fellow summer campers, Boy Scouts and Explorer Scouts.
Soon, all will feel different. A new smell in the air. Methane. Cow gas. Chicken droppings. Farm land as far as the eye can see from the road. Corn. Soybeans. Sorghum. Cotton.
The land of make-believe. Bales of hay rolling down the hill. Old barns propped on arthritic elbows, their time timed out.
Drinking beer in a German restaurant near Abingdon, where my father worked in a room in the Martha Washington Inn, now a luxury hotel suite, once home to the Virginia Tech Extension Office.
We remember well those we well remember. Mr. Douglas. A cute girl who went to Emory & Henry. 'Tis sweet to be remembered, isn't it?
How do we define living? With these words? Not at all. With the argument about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Hardly.
We cannot define living. Living defines us. We do not think. We react. We shake, rattle and roll into the next second.
These. Thebes. Thesis.
If you want to live forever, then don't pay attention to time. Pay attention to change. Phases. Shifts. Movement. You have a limited number of heart muscle movements before you die - count on it. To live forever, you must lose heart.
While traveling, I lost contact with my friend the inventor. This afternoon, snugly secure in my portable cocoon, I checked in on my friend's progress. On my friend's website was the sign, "Out To Launch." Huh? So I checked email where my friend detailed the reason for being unavailable. Turns out my friend's invention is a miniaturised rocket ship. Or rather, a rocket ship that miniaturises you and takes you where you want to go. Even using the phrase rocket ship is incorrect but best to describe the vehicle or transportation device.
I haven't seen this thing yet myself so the simplified version is all I can offer you. You, or what you think of as you, enter a chamber. Inside the chamber, a set of instruments record your vital signs, determining your physical health. Upon meeting the health status criteria my friend has set forth, you and all the states of energy passing through you at the moment are temporarily slowed down and measured for how they react to one another. After measurement, the chamber transforms the interacting states of energy into a compressed version of themselves ("zipped up" in computer parlance), creating a smaller, boxed-up version of yourself. That version is then scanned and saved and stored in the "rocket ship." Every version stored on the rocket ship merges with all the other versions, which become part of the rocket ship, too.
The rocket ship has a propulsion system but I'm not smart enough to describe it to you. When (or if) my friend returns from a test trip, I'll get my friend to tell you more about how the rocket ship travels. My friend has claimed in the past that we need not worry about escaping Earth's gravitational pull if we construct a device that simply disappears, whatever that means.
Meanwhile, I sit here and watch us child-like bipeds think we're grownups just because we can accumulate facts, trinkets and wealth. Soon we'll find out just how young we truly are. Like infants. And after that, seven billion people will have a single goal in mind after all. Amazing, isn't it, looking back at our brief foray into the ebb and flow of civilisation creation and seeing how many mistakes we let become central facts of our existence?
I hope I can find my friend and let you know what I'm talking about. If not...well, in that case, carry on. Most of you won't know the difference, anyway. I almost didn't and it would have let me pursue a "normal" life in our intertwined societies, always worrying about the price of eggs in China or a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia. Now, I don't worry. I laugh. I explore. I feed my curiosity, knowing how much more there is to discover than what one mere planet can offer. Some of you already know what I'm talking about. Some of you, like me, celebrate. Some of you try to stifle the truth. Some try to take advantage of their fellow species. The truth won't set you free - the truth simply makes you more like yourself, good, bad, or diffident.
While traveling the heavily conservative backroads of the not-so-common wealth of Virginia, passing through the burg of Lynch, host to the university-level learning dedicated to liberty, I found myself remembering my youth.
4-H Club trips. Popeyes/pdiddles - one-eyed cars (a missing or burned-out headlight) that add to kisses. Counting cows and losing your total when you pass a cemetery/graveyard. Hiking Mt. Rogers and Whitetop Mountain with my future wife, other fellow summer campers, Boy Scouts and Explorer Scouts.
Soon, all will feel different. A new smell in the air. Methane. Cow gas. Chicken droppings. Farm land as far as the eye can see from the road. Corn. Soybeans. Sorghum. Cotton.
The land of make-believe. Bales of hay rolling down the hill. Old barns propped on arthritic elbows, their time timed out.
Drinking beer in a German restaurant near Abingdon, where my father worked in a room in the Martha Washington Inn, now a luxury hotel suite, once home to the Virginia Tech Extension Office.
We remember well those we well remember. Mr. Douglas. A cute girl who went to Emory & Henry. 'Tis sweet to be remembered, isn't it?
How do we define living? With these words? Not at all. With the argument about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Hardly.
We cannot define living. Living defines us. We do not think. We react. We shake, rattle and roll into the next second.
These. Thebes. Thesis.
If you want to live forever, then don't pay attention to time. Pay attention to change. Phases. Shifts. Movement. You have a limited number of heart muscle movements before you die - count on it. To live forever, you must lose heart.
While traveling, I lost contact with my friend the inventor. This afternoon, snugly secure in my portable cocoon, I checked in on my friend's progress. On my friend's website was the sign, "Out To Launch." Huh? So I checked email where my friend detailed the reason for being unavailable. Turns out my friend's invention is a miniaturised rocket ship. Or rather, a rocket ship that miniaturises you and takes you where you want to go. Even using the phrase rocket ship is incorrect but best to describe the vehicle or transportation device.
I haven't seen this thing yet myself so the simplified version is all I can offer you. You, or what you think of as you, enter a chamber. Inside the chamber, a set of instruments record your vital signs, determining your physical health. Upon meeting the health status criteria my friend has set forth, you and all the states of energy passing through you at the moment are temporarily slowed down and measured for how they react to one another. After measurement, the chamber transforms the interacting states of energy into a compressed version of themselves ("zipped up" in computer parlance), creating a smaller, boxed-up version of yourself. That version is then scanned and saved and stored in the "rocket ship." Every version stored on the rocket ship merges with all the other versions, which become part of the rocket ship, too.
The rocket ship has a propulsion system but I'm not smart enough to describe it to you. When (or if) my friend returns from a test trip, I'll get my friend to tell you more about how the rocket ship travels. My friend has claimed in the past that we need not worry about escaping Earth's gravitational pull if we construct a device that simply disappears, whatever that means.
Meanwhile, I sit here and watch us child-like bipeds think we're grownups just because we can accumulate facts, trinkets and wealth. Soon we'll find out just how young we truly are. Like infants. And after that, seven billion people will have a single goal in mind after all. Amazing, isn't it, looking back at our brief foray into the ebb and flow of civilisation creation and seeing how many mistakes we let become central facts of our existence?
I hope I can find my friend and let you know what I'm talking about. If not...well, in that case, carry on. Most of you won't know the difference, anyway. I almost didn't and it would have let me pursue a "normal" life in our intertwined societies, always worrying about the price of eggs in China or a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia. Now, I don't worry. I laugh. I explore. I feed my curiosity, knowing how much more there is to discover than what one mere planet can offer. Some of you already know what I'm talking about. Some of you, like me, celebrate. Some of you try to stifle the truth. Some try to take advantage of their fellow species. The truth won't set you free - the truth simply makes you more like yourself, good, bad, or diffident.
11 January 2010
04 January 2010
Mt. Ofolympicproportions
"And I say that we throw 30 more virgins into the giant crack in the earth."
"Why?"
"Well, my illuminated, enlightened, glorious leader, it will appease the gods."
"And what shall I tell the families who are sacrificing their daughters for this theory of yours?"
"Tell them...tell them they are gaining great favour with the gods."
"By that, you mean I will have to bribe them through some backdoor method that they will not be aware of?"
"If, my great and wonderful, all-seeing empire builder...if that is your wish."
"Let me think about it for a minute. Hmm...so you think the gods want to fill this new gap in the earth with young female bodies? And does this mean they act as some sort of paste or mortar to hold our empire together? Will this keep my monuments intact? Will the temples stand firm just because we threw some people into a new crevice?"
"Oh, Magnificent One, you ask many wise questions."
"Wise? I am not wise. I am curious, that's all. What is a person made of that the gods need to keep from causing more earthquakes? I mean, are the people sacrificial idiots? Do we rule by fear and intimidation just so I can wear these gold-threaded outfits and eat fresh fruit all year long?"
"Tremendous thoughts, my lord. You capture the ideas of many rulers before you."
"Do I? I just don't know... What if these virgins could think for themselves? Would any of them have ideas for creating expansion joints that let our buildings, bridges and roads sway with earthquakes and not fall apart?"
"Grand and encouraging master, we have no choice but to sacrifice the virgins. The people demand we keep the gods happy."
"Yes, yes, I see. Leave me alone for half a day. I will consult with my private gods to divine the purest and most precise answer we need to make the people, the government, the gods and you - part of my advisory team - happy."
"As you desire."
"As I command!"
"Yes, my lord. I will return for midday meal and accept your new command."
"Go, go. I will call for you when I'm ready."
"I will just close this door behind me."
"Alone with my thoughts once again. Hmm... what is an earthquake? It is a movement of dirt and rock. And what is a movement of dirt and rock but a larger version of our rock cutting and road laying? Thus, it is reorganisation. The gods are reorganising this planet for their purposes. Therefore, like the ants who rebuild their homes in another area after we've paved roads from one city to the next, we must rebuild our homes in another area after the gods have shaken apart our fortresses and temples. How do I convince the people to move to an area less prone to earthquakes? I send the virgins on a quest. But which virgins? Dilemma, dilemma... I don't need just the prettiest. I don't need the daughters of families too big to support themselves. I want young women fit to explore new territory, think on their feet in uncharted waters, fight indigenous populations to create areas for settlement. Where do I find such women? City life has softened my most battle-hardened soldiers. I can't imagine what it's done to the female children of my soldiers and their civilised wives.
"Let me turn to my private altar and light incense to my gods. Here is scent of vanilla for you, Green Frog, bringer of rain and facial warts if we rub you too much for good luck. Here is the burning evergreen branch for you, Bleached Coral, protector of fish and sharp reminder that the ocean floor is not all soft sand. Here is the crushed wormwood for you, Dark Cloud, storehouse for lightning and tornadoes, favorite tools of the greater gods.
"What would you have me do? You have brought me here to this palace, made me head of the biggest empire the world has ever known. What do you want me to do for you? What will make everyone happy, or at least temporarily distracted from their daily woes so that it appears I have saved them from themselves one more time?
"Green Frog, why do you never smile? Why do you sit there and judge me with that blank stare? Bleached Coral, why do your branches hold ground even in the strongest wind? Dark Cloud, why do you come and and go as you please, never here when we need you? What do all of you combined try to tell me, especially when I do not listen?
"The incense. Your answers. I am beginning to see the light. A contest. The gods want the virgins to compete against one another. Of course, it makes sense. But what sort of contest? I am clearing my thoughts to see what you are trying to tell me. The... contest... will... be... a written test? Hmm...I don't know about that. We have not taught virgins how to read. We only raise them to be sacrifices, a duty which requires no formal training, only staying indoors out of the light of the blistering sun and learning to dress nicely and smile.
"Oh, I see what you're saying. The contest includes the training of the virgins. In fact, it includes all unmarried women and... and any men not inclined to fight first and ask educated questions later. You want to pit the best and brightest against one another! Why didn't I think of that? It will focus the whole empire on itself! We are going to create a new class of citizens.
"No more human sacrifices. Now we will require the people to give up their children for the duty of the expansion of the empire. We will classify our children according to learning ability. We will sequester the best and brightest for purposes only the gods know. Right now, you gods want them to figure out where to move the empire to a place more pleasing to you. I love you, my gods. You have given the people a new quest, a new purpose, something that will keep them occupied for years and years while they prepare their children to be the most pleasing to the gods. By creating this new class of educated people, you have helped me figure out how to ration the limited building resources we have right now during this natural disaster you caused. How much cheaper it will be to make reading materials instead of building new temples! How much easier it will be to house the children together in one place instead of importing slaves to watch over the children spread out among individual homes while their parents play the game of civilisation!
"Guard, call forth my chief advisor! I am ready to pronounce my next edict!"
"As you command, ma'am."
"That's Madame Emperor to you, specially-trained palace guard that you are."
"Yes, Madame Emperor, ma'am."
"Why?"
"Well, my illuminated, enlightened, glorious leader, it will appease the gods."
"And what shall I tell the families who are sacrificing their daughters for this theory of yours?"
"Tell them...tell them they are gaining great favour with the gods."
"By that, you mean I will have to bribe them through some backdoor method that they will not be aware of?"
"If, my great and wonderful, all-seeing empire builder...if that is your wish."
"Let me think about it for a minute. Hmm...so you think the gods want to fill this new gap in the earth with young female bodies? And does this mean they act as some sort of paste or mortar to hold our empire together? Will this keep my monuments intact? Will the temples stand firm just because we threw some people into a new crevice?"
"Oh, Magnificent One, you ask many wise questions."
"Wise? I am not wise. I am curious, that's all. What is a person made of that the gods need to keep from causing more earthquakes? I mean, are the people sacrificial idiots? Do we rule by fear and intimidation just so I can wear these gold-threaded outfits and eat fresh fruit all year long?"
"Tremendous thoughts, my lord. You capture the ideas of many rulers before you."
"Do I? I just don't know... What if these virgins could think for themselves? Would any of them have ideas for creating expansion joints that let our buildings, bridges and roads sway with earthquakes and not fall apart?"
"Grand and encouraging master, we have no choice but to sacrifice the virgins. The people demand we keep the gods happy."
"Yes, yes, I see. Leave me alone for half a day. I will consult with my private gods to divine the purest and most precise answer we need to make the people, the government, the gods and you - part of my advisory team - happy."
"As you desire."
"As I command!"
"Yes, my lord. I will return for midday meal and accept your new command."
"Go, go. I will call for you when I'm ready."
"I will just close this door behind me."
"Alone with my thoughts once again. Hmm... what is an earthquake? It is a movement of dirt and rock. And what is a movement of dirt and rock but a larger version of our rock cutting and road laying? Thus, it is reorganisation. The gods are reorganising this planet for their purposes. Therefore, like the ants who rebuild their homes in another area after we've paved roads from one city to the next, we must rebuild our homes in another area after the gods have shaken apart our fortresses and temples. How do I convince the people to move to an area less prone to earthquakes? I send the virgins on a quest. But which virgins? Dilemma, dilemma... I don't need just the prettiest. I don't need the daughters of families too big to support themselves. I want young women fit to explore new territory, think on their feet in uncharted waters, fight indigenous populations to create areas for settlement. Where do I find such women? City life has softened my most battle-hardened soldiers. I can't imagine what it's done to the female children of my soldiers and their civilised wives.
"Let me turn to my private altar and light incense to my gods. Here is scent of vanilla for you, Green Frog, bringer of rain and facial warts if we rub you too much for good luck. Here is the burning evergreen branch for you, Bleached Coral, protector of fish and sharp reminder that the ocean floor is not all soft sand. Here is the crushed wormwood for you, Dark Cloud, storehouse for lightning and tornadoes, favorite tools of the greater gods.
"What would you have me do? You have brought me here to this palace, made me head of the biggest empire the world has ever known. What do you want me to do for you? What will make everyone happy, or at least temporarily distracted from their daily woes so that it appears I have saved them from themselves one more time?
"Green Frog, why do you never smile? Why do you sit there and judge me with that blank stare? Bleached Coral, why do your branches hold ground even in the strongest wind? Dark Cloud, why do you come and and go as you please, never here when we need you? What do all of you combined try to tell me, especially when I do not listen?
"The incense. Your answers. I am beginning to see the light. A contest. The gods want the virgins to compete against one another. Of course, it makes sense. But what sort of contest? I am clearing my thoughts to see what you are trying to tell me. The... contest... will... be... a written test? Hmm...I don't know about that. We have not taught virgins how to read. We only raise them to be sacrifices, a duty which requires no formal training, only staying indoors out of the light of the blistering sun and learning to dress nicely and smile.
"Oh, I see what you're saying. The contest includes the training of the virgins. In fact, it includes all unmarried women and... and any men not inclined to fight first and ask educated questions later. You want to pit the best and brightest against one another! Why didn't I think of that? It will focus the whole empire on itself! We are going to create a new class of citizens.
"No more human sacrifices. Now we will require the people to give up their children for the duty of the expansion of the empire. We will classify our children according to learning ability. We will sequester the best and brightest for purposes only the gods know. Right now, you gods want them to figure out where to move the empire to a place more pleasing to you. I love you, my gods. You have given the people a new quest, a new purpose, something that will keep them occupied for years and years while they prepare their children to be the most pleasing to the gods. By creating this new class of educated people, you have helped me figure out how to ration the limited building resources we have right now during this natural disaster you caused. How much cheaper it will be to make reading materials instead of building new temples! How much easier it will be to house the children together in one place instead of importing slaves to watch over the children spread out among individual homes while their parents play the game of civilisation!
"Guard, call forth my chief advisor! I am ready to pronounce my next edict!"
"As you command, ma'am."
"That's Madame Emperor to you, specially-trained palace guard that you are."
"Yes, Madame Emperor, ma'am."
24 December 2009
Eve of Deletion
The day next to the day that I will write the last entry for the blog "Life In The Cove." Many random thoughts to put down before I close this out and move on to the next adventure:
1. I never finished the tale of the trip in the fall of 1984 when I spread the love and joy that only a petrol company credit card can. The cliched image of the majestic beauty of a plume of snow, a faint white feather, arching over the top of Mt. Shasta. Before that, running into an auto body shop to get a leaking tyre fixed, the mechanic offering to repair the tyre if I explained to his satisfaction, his Oregon common sense, what a Tennessee Volunteer is - right or wrong, I told him it was a nickname given for the irregulars who volunteered to fight in the War of 1812 - he accepted my ready answer and sent me on my way after also replacing a broken headlight. Stopping at the California state line for emissions testing and discovering that the emissions tester was from Johnson City, Tennessee, and couldn't believe I was from Kingsport and had attended ETSU (main campus in Johnson City) - she admitted she missed east Tennessee but loved her California lifestyle. Not finding my hometown friend, Joey, a CalTech student, at the last known address I had for him on Wilshire Boulevard, with no forwarding address to help me so I drove out of the LA basin, stopped in the desert outside of town for a few hours and contemplated what to do. I'd driven from Nashville to Seattle, from Seattle to LA, and now from LA to...? Before I left southern California, I stopped in the east LA area because I'd run low on petrol. Off the freeway, I found the neighbourhood I was in contained folks who spoke no English. My 1st, 2nd, and 7th grade Spanish language lessons had faded, leaving me with the basic hello/goodbye/my name is expressions, which help little when asking if there is a petrol station that would accept my credit card or a place for me to exchange my Coke glass bottles for cash. Eventually, an older Asian lady told me she'd accept some of my Coke bottles for $2 worth of petrol but I had to leave the neighbourhood and get on the freeway because I was in a nrighbourhood in which I didn't belong. Back in the desert, I found that a plugged tyre loses air quickly, forcing me off the road late one evening. I found a small town with two petrol stations - stopping at one, I asked if I could purchase a used tyre with my credit card. The young man (more like a boy in his early teens) said that he couldn't fix or replace my tyre but his twin brother running the other petrol station could replace the tyre and let me charge the repair to the this petrol station. [I wish I could make this kind of stuff up but it's true, a small town with twin boys running the town's only petrol stations for their father - is that normal for small towns? I don't know.] At the other petrol station, the twin brother showed me where the mechanic who no longer worked there (due to a head injury which happened because he) had accidentally inflated a tyre with the tyre iron still stuck between the new tyre and the rim, shooting the tyre iron up into the roof of the metal mechanic shop roof. Both twins quizzed me about my trip around the country, wondering if they were any different or more special than anyone I'd met along the way. Normal in their appearance and behaviour, the fact they were 12 years old and operating two petrol stations on their own was unique enough that I told them they were the most different guys I'd met. Then, back on the straight shot east, painted deserts, pueblos and roadrunners racing past the monorail windows. Showing up back at the parental units' home, the phoenix rising from ashes, the prodigal son returned. The start or renewal of writing for myself, using the world of text, history, data, and wisdom to layer my life within pages of modern hieroglyphs.
2. Remembering the financial panic that struck not long after Andrew Jackson served in the timeframe of the 1830s as chief executive administrator of the largest political entity on this continent. Cycles. Decisions. The hindsight of hindsight. The species of species. Thanks to John Meacham (American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House) for the insightful history lesson. Looking for similar info from Saawariya and Dostoevsky.
3. The number of relatively young people listed in the obituary section of my hometown newspaper, their common cause of death cited as "died unexpectedly." Is it my imagination or does there seem to be a higher number of these deaths than in years past?
4. Signs that the global economy is picking up, with increased backorders for electronic parts.
5. Seeing how much time children spend teaching and disciplining their parents, as much if not more than the other way around. If you're of reading age, I recommend you research ways to better educate your parents.
6. Turning the compositions of Orlando Gibbons into new tunes, each note a word, each chord a scent, each musical phrase an image, then breaking that down into a very ultrawideband broadcast (exactly how many wavelengths can you send and receive?), using latent time passages to re-broadcast the composition, now jumbled out of sequence and reassembling itself according to a mathematical formula that "sees" multiple dimensions at once, the x, y, and z of three-dimensional space a simple starting place. We're geared to hear music in the 20 to 20,000 Hz soundwave range or so we've been led to believe. What if you knew you heard and felt more? What if life as you know it was a symphonic tour de force? Can you place all seven billion of us in that musical score? Can you hear the triumphant and tragic melodic phrases that the air you breathe makes in its intermixing with the rest of the local features of the universe? Are you ready to sing more than a few chorus lines?
7. Slowing down and listening to the echoes of the environment around me, the expressions of the universe that never quite get formulated in my thoughts. Looking at and not seeing the people patterns my life has made so comfortably easy to see. For instance, microwave oven radiation and wireless radio communication signals don't mix well.
8. One more day before I close this chapter of the book of life.
9. One more day before we discover the door that unlocks a brand-new future for our species, before we discover we are not a species, before we make the leap across the chasm that divides the repetitious behaviours of ones on this planetary body from a fascinating superset of stimuli and step into a new way to live, Earth's gravitational pull more a thought, a faded memory, than anything we can call reality. We put distractions away, grow into new shells, new combinations of energy levels and become that which we can barely dream possible. We are, or will be, no longer we.
10. Circadian rhythms. Light therapy. Body part replacement techniques. Creation science versus evolutionary science. Ancient history. Time to let go of time. No room for commercial enterprises. No place for political debates. And then this blog disappears to make way for the next new thing(s). Can you see the future?
1. I never finished the tale of the trip in the fall of 1984 when I spread the love and joy that only a petrol company credit card can. The cliched image of the majestic beauty of a plume of snow, a faint white feather, arching over the top of Mt. Shasta. Before that, running into an auto body shop to get a leaking tyre fixed, the mechanic offering to repair the tyre if I explained to his satisfaction, his Oregon common sense, what a Tennessee Volunteer is - right or wrong, I told him it was a nickname given for the irregulars who volunteered to fight in the War of 1812 - he accepted my ready answer and sent me on my way after also replacing a broken headlight. Stopping at the California state line for emissions testing and discovering that the emissions tester was from Johnson City, Tennessee, and couldn't believe I was from Kingsport and had attended ETSU (main campus in Johnson City) - she admitted she missed east Tennessee but loved her California lifestyle. Not finding my hometown friend, Joey, a CalTech student, at the last known address I had for him on Wilshire Boulevard, with no forwarding address to help me so I drove out of the LA basin, stopped in the desert outside of town for a few hours and contemplated what to do. I'd driven from Nashville to Seattle, from Seattle to LA, and now from LA to...? Before I left southern California, I stopped in the east LA area because I'd run low on petrol. Off the freeway, I found the neighbourhood I was in contained folks who spoke no English. My 1st, 2nd, and 7th grade Spanish language lessons had faded, leaving me with the basic hello/goodbye/my name is expressions, which help little when asking if there is a petrol station that would accept my credit card or a place for me to exchange my Coke glass bottles for cash. Eventually, an older Asian lady told me she'd accept some of my Coke bottles for $2 worth of petrol but I had to leave the neighbourhood and get on the freeway because I was in a nrighbourhood in which I didn't belong. Back in the desert, I found that a plugged tyre loses air quickly, forcing me off the road late one evening. I found a small town with two petrol stations - stopping at one, I asked if I could purchase a used tyre with my credit card. The young man (more like a boy in his early teens) said that he couldn't fix or replace my tyre but his twin brother running the other petrol station could replace the tyre and let me charge the repair to the this petrol station. [I wish I could make this kind of stuff up but it's true, a small town with twin boys running the town's only petrol stations for their father - is that normal for small towns? I don't know.] At the other petrol station, the twin brother showed me where the mechanic who no longer worked there (due to a head injury which happened because he) had accidentally inflated a tyre with the tyre iron still stuck between the new tyre and the rim, shooting the tyre iron up into the roof of the metal mechanic shop roof. Both twins quizzed me about my trip around the country, wondering if they were any different or more special than anyone I'd met along the way. Normal in their appearance and behaviour, the fact they were 12 years old and operating two petrol stations on their own was unique enough that I told them they were the most different guys I'd met. Then, back on the straight shot east, painted deserts, pueblos and roadrunners racing past the monorail windows. Showing up back at the parental units' home, the phoenix rising from ashes, the prodigal son returned. The start or renewal of writing for myself, using the world of text, history, data, and wisdom to layer my life within pages of modern hieroglyphs.
2. Remembering the financial panic that struck not long after Andrew Jackson served in the timeframe of the 1830s as chief executive administrator of the largest political entity on this continent. Cycles. Decisions. The hindsight of hindsight. The species of species. Thanks to John Meacham (American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House) for the insightful history lesson. Looking for similar info from Saawariya and Dostoevsky.
3. The number of relatively young people listed in the obituary section of my hometown newspaper, their common cause of death cited as "died unexpectedly." Is it my imagination or does there seem to be a higher number of these deaths than in years past?
4. Signs that the global economy is picking up, with increased backorders for electronic parts.
5. Seeing how much time children spend teaching and disciplining their parents, as much if not more than the other way around. If you're of reading age, I recommend you research ways to better educate your parents.
6. Turning the compositions of Orlando Gibbons into new tunes, each note a word, each chord a scent, each musical phrase an image, then breaking that down into a very ultrawideband broadcast (exactly how many wavelengths can you send and receive?), using latent time passages to re-broadcast the composition, now jumbled out of sequence and reassembling itself according to a mathematical formula that "sees" multiple dimensions at once, the x, y, and z of three-dimensional space a simple starting place. We're geared to hear music in the 20 to 20,000 Hz soundwave range or so we've been led to believe. What if you knew you heard and felt more? What if life as you know it was a symphonic tour de force? Can you place all seven billion of us in that musical score? Can you hear the triumphant and tragic melodic phrases that the air you breathe makes in its intermixing with the rest of the local features of the universe? Are you ready to sing more than a few chorus lines?
7. Slowing down and listening to the echoes of the environment around me, the expressions of the universe that never quite get formulated in my thoughts. Looking at and not seeing the people patterns my life has made so comfortably easy to see. For instance, microwave oven radiation and wireless radio communication signals don't mix well.
8. One more day before I close this chapter of the book of life.
9. One more day before we discover the door that unlocks a brand-new future for our species, before we discover we are not a species, before we make the leap across the chasm that divides the repetitious behaviours of ones on this planetary body from a fascinating superset of stimuli and step into a new way to live, Earth's gravitational pull more a thought, a faded memory, than anything we can call reality. We put distractions away, grow into new shells, new combinations of energy levels and become that which we can barely dream possible. We are, or will be, no longer we.
10. Circadian rhythms. Light therapy. Body part replacement techniques. Creation science versus evolutionary science. Ancient history. Time to let go of time. No room for commercial enterprises. No place for political debates. And then this blog disappears to make way for the next new thing(s). Can you see the future?
19 December 2009
Stacking The Deck, Cheating The Future
While I wait a few more days to open my gift of lyrical soundmaking, I see the past.
Waiting... Waiting? Not waiting! Planning. Preparing. Listening. Dancing in the middoe of stores to music from hidden speakers o'erhead.
How often do you lean against a fence post and watch the young calves or kids dancing in the field? Do you compare the children's behaviour to that of their parents who methodically eat and chew, eat and chew, eat and chew and poop?
Do you ever see adult cows or goats dancing on new feet? Should you? Would you expect to see such a sight?
Tonight, my wife and I wandered through the menagerie of the import/export business as exemplified by a chain of stores called Pier 1 Imports. We gazed at the shiny baubles, played with the sparkly bangles and stared at the shiny beads. We also snapped our fingers and jiggled our bodies to the rhythm of seasonal songs.
And then in came the past, a group of teenagers dressed in the latest fun fashions, including faux fur lumberjack hat, who turned on the mimeograph machine in my head, pulled out the slide projector in my skeleton closet and flipped the transparencies of my yout'. There was I 30 years ago, skinny and young and having fun again for the very first time.
What is time? Ask the inventors of chess. Ask the king of kings, the ancient shahs of the Iranian regions of Persia. The rulers of India. Ask the emperors of Asia, Europe and Mexico. Seek out the meaning of time where time has no meaning on Mars.
I know the future. I know the past. I know some parts of this moment that was the future, now the moment, now the past. I know I will make wonderful music together. I will experiment and make sound combinations that have meaning only to dust devils on alien soils.
Tonight, I saw the past and the future and the future and the past. Thirty-year increments at a time.
Tonight, the shock of time that does not exist shook me, the person who does not exist.
I saw myself 30 years ago and didn't know what to tell me. I mean, after all, what's there to say that hasn't been said in any number of tales, both ancient and new? What could I possibly say to the person who hasn't yet lived the life that others dream and wish for that person to fulfill, both in their fantasies and the fantasies of that person who's full of promise and potential?
"Hey, look at me! I'm you 30 years from now. Is this what you want? Is this what you dream about?"
A slice of time that 30 years ago I and my friends called FHMS (Fort Henry Mall Syndrome). Now I know that FHMS is universal but back then I didn't. Back then I had ideals that guided me and my interaction with friends. Back then I thought that I lived on a rare mountaintop, a life paved with gold and lined with low-hanging fruit. I can now say I know better. FHMS is life but I hadn't live life to know that then.
So what if I lived a sheltered life in my teens? I can't go back. I can only look forward. Where in the crowd is me 30 years from now, looking back at myself in my late 40s and saying, "WOW! If I only knew then what I know now!"
In a few days I'll capture thoughts like these with musical notes and fragrant oils, with computer bits and bytes and lyrical pieces, climbing the vertical ladder of life from rung to rung, swinging back and forth, caught in Earth's gravitational pull for the moment but 30 years from now?
As I accept the fact that everything I think is a combination of everything that's been thought, then I can think about what hasn't been combined by groups of people who are thinking thoughts that have already been thought. I'm not trying to escape the world of people. I'm getting the world of people to stop thinking of themselves as living on one world, while at the same time believing I'm the only person reading what I write, because I am one person in one species on one planet in one solar system. What I can do and think, anyone else can. What anyone else can do and think, so can I.
Have you ever smelled the Sun rise over the moons of Saturn? Have you ever heard a comet crash into Jupiter's atmosphere? Have you ever shaken moon dust out of your spacesuit? Some of you will. Thirty years from now we'll laugh at how simple everything seemed as this calendar year ended and the next one began. I'm planning for that future right now. Aren't you?
Page two...
Waiting... Waiting? Not waiting! Planning. Preparing. Listening. Dancing in the middoe of stores to music from hidden speakers o'erhead.
How often do you lean against a fence post and watch the young calves or kids dancing in the field? Do you compare the children's behaviour to that of their parents who methodically eat and chew, eat and chew, eat and chew and poop?
Do you ever see adult cows or goats dancing on new feet? Should you? Would you expect to see such a sight?
Tonight, my wife and I wandered through the menagerie of the import/export business as exemplified by a chain of stores called Pier 1 Imports. We gazed at the shiny baubles, played with the sparkly bangles and stared at the shiny beads. We also snapped our fingers and jiggled our bodies to the rhythm of seasonal songs.
And then in came the past, a group of teenagers dressed in the latest fun fashions, including faux fur lumberjack hat, who turned on the mimeograph machine in my head, pulled out the slide projector in my skeleton closet and flipped the transparencies of my yout'. There was I 30 years ago, skinny and young and having fun again for the very first time.
What is time? Ask the inventors of chess. Ask the king of kings, the ancient shahs of the Iranian regions of Persia. The rulers of India. Ask the emperors of Asia, Europe and Mexico. Seek out the meaning of time where time has no meaning on Mars.
I know the future. I know the past. I know some parts of this moment that was the future, now the moment, now the past. I know I will make wonderful music together. I will experiment and make sound combinations that have meaning only to dust devils on alien soils.
Tonight, I saw the past and the future and the future and the past. Thirty-year increments at a time.
Tonight, the shock of time that does not exist shook me, the person who does not exist.
I saw myself 30 years ago and didn't know what to tell me. I mean, after all, what's there to say that hasn't been said in any number of tales, both ancient and new? What could I possibly say to the person who hasn't yet lived the life that others dream and wish for that person to fulfill, both in their fantasies and the fantasies of that person who's full of promise and potential?
"Hey, look at me! I'm you 30 years from now. Is this what you want? Is this what you dream about?"
A slice of time that 30 years ago I and my friends called FHMS (Fort Henry Mall Syndrome). Now I know that FHMS is universal but back then I didn't. Back then I had ideals that guided me and my interaction with friends. Back then I thought that I lived on a rare mountaintop, a life paved with gold and lined with low-hanging fruit. I can now say I know better. FHMS is life but I hadn't live life to know that then.
So what if I lived a sheltered life in my teens? I can't go back. I can only look forward. Where in the crowd is me 30 years from now, looking back at myself in my late 40s and saying, "WOW! If I only knew then what I know now!"
In a few days I'll capture thoughts like these with musical notes and fragrant oils, with computer bits and bytes and lyrical pieces, climbing the vertical ladder of life from rung to rung, swinging back and forth, caught in Earth's gravitational pull for the moment but 30 years from now?
As I accept the fact that everything I think is a combination of everything that's been thought, then I can think about what hasn't been combined by groups of people who are thinking thoughts that have already been thought. I'm not trying to escape the world of people. I'm getting the world of people to stop thinking of themselves as living on one world, while at the same time believing I'm the only person reading what I write, because I am one person in one species on one planet in one solar system. What I can do and think, anyone else can. What anyone else can do and think, so can I.
Have you ever smelled the Sun rise over the moons of Saturn? Have you ever heard a comet crash into Jupiter's atmosphere? Have you ever shaken moon dust out of your spacesuit? Some of you will. Thirty years from now we'll laugh at how simple everything seemed as this calendar year ended and the next one began. I'm planning for that future right now. Aren't you?
Page two...
The Last Laugh?
An image worth remembering: college dorm rooms then versus now. And a thanks to Abdul along with all the others who helped at the Holiday Inn (some for years now!) during the annual marathon - only a week ago this year?
While thinking about the direction to take after this winter's solstice (a/k/a New Year (a/k/a choose your favorite people-picked calendricalifictitious counting method)), I have decided to get out of the arts-and-crafts scribbling, scratching, typing writing mode for a while and focus my thoughts on musical and scent notation.
Meanwhile, I watch the world of people spin past my eyes again and again until I've gotten dizzy with repetition, myself in the middle of the blizzard of stirred-up dust and flurries of activity we call being busy, the cartoonish Tasmanian devil or other fantasy flickster in a whirlwind of tumbleweeds escaping escarpments and fences. History, mystery and headlines jumbled together in a 1,000,000,000,moo,000,000,000-piece 3D jigsaw puzzle, self-assembling and falling apart night after night to the tune of clicking keys in typewriter factories and paddleboat/steamboat excursions. I can either flatten myself onto the snowball gaining mass rolling ahead of the avalanche sliding off the melting glacier or I can step aside and gather moss on my own timescale. The former was fun for a while. Time is later for the latter, but not too late.
For those who will share their lives with me in the moment, I thank you ahead of time for taking time out of your busy schedule to smile, being kind and gracious to a middle-aged guy like me. You are my reason for being - otherwise, I'd hightail it to the woods and be a hermit eating nuts and grubs, whistling along with the wind tickling the tree leaves, the limbs creaking to no special beat and the insects singing love songs while hiding from the birds singing whatever comes to mind.
My next adventure will tell its tale through musical instruments, melodies and harmonies influenced by minimalism, nature, experimentation and whatever these hands, eyes, ears and nose (using trees (like cedar) and herbs (like garlic chives) from my yard) can fit together in and out of the world of "music." Time to put my thoughts into a place where words and peopled historical patterns make less sense. One more celebration of true freedom, another step toward understanding if freedom is a word, an idea, or an approximation of the unobtainable. One being on one planet being alive. Feeling alone in my loneliness of feeling like I'm the first one repeating the journey, trailblazing a path overgrown since it was last tread by many before me long ago - knowing full well that my atoms and molecules, my genetic makeup, allow me to compose my own version of recombinant DNA at the macro-, social-organism level.
Thus, I don't know if we'll meet in this blog again. In other words, if I want to put images, sounds, smells, and tastes together into a new experience, how do I project this experience onto the Internet and thus have it available for download by you? Describing such an experience with words is not enough. Putting a description and soundtrack together is closer but still farther from the "truth" of the experience. This Internet is such a young, incomplete (and often immature) communication medium, is it not? Superimposing the Internet on real life (augmenting reality) is not a goal I seek. I want to superimpose real life on the Internet. Being there, all our warts, freckles, smells, imperfections and thoughts intact, with the Internet as we know it today simply a catalog or extended memory space supplementing, not supplanting reality. Why? So that when one of us circles the Moon on an outer space spa trip, all of us can go along if we want. The question to you is which one do you want to be, the traveler who creates the experience or the one who experiences the traveler's trip?
In other words, we'll meet again soon. It's simply a question of how, not where and when.
While thinking about the direction to take after this winter's solstice (a/k/a New Year (a/k/a choose your favorite people-picked calendricalifictitious counting method)), I have decided to get out of the arts-and-crafts scribbling, scratching, typing writing mode for a while and focus my thoughts on musical and scent notation.
Meanwhile, I watch the world of people spin past my eyes again and again until I've gotten dizzy with repetition, myself in the middle of the blizzard of stirred-up dust and flurries of activity we call being busy, the cartoonish Tasmanian devil or other fantasy flickster in a whirlwind of tumbleweeds escaping escarpments and fences. History, mystery and headlines jumbled together in a 1,000,000,000,moo,000,000,000-piece 3D jigsaw puzzle, self-assembling and falling apart night after night to the tune of clicking keys in typewriter factories and paddleboat/steamboat excursions. I can either flatten myself onto the snowball gaining mass rolling ahead of the avalanche sliding off the melting glacier or I can step aside and gather moss on my own timescale. The former was fun for a while. Time is later for the latter, but not too late.
For those who will share their lives with me in the moment, I thank you ahead of time for taking time out of your busy schedule to smile, being kind and gracious to a middle-aged guy like me. You are my reason for being - otherwise, I'd hightail it to the woods and be a hermit eating nuts and grubs, whistling along with the wind tickling the tree leaves, the limbs creaking to no special beat and the insects singing love songs while hiding from the birds singing whatever comes to mind.
My next adventure will tell its tale through musical instruments, melodies and harmonies influenced by minimalism, nature, experimentation and whatever these hands, eyes, ears and nose (using trees (like cedar) and herbs (like garlic chives) from my yard) can fit together in and out of the world of "music." Time to put my thoughts into a place where words and peopled historical patterns make less sense. One more celebration of true freedom, another step toward understanding if freedom is a word, an idea, or an approximation of the unobtainable. One being on one planet being alive. Feeling alone in my loneliness of feeling like I'm the first one repeating the journey, trailblazing a path overgrown since it was last tread by many before me long ago - knowing full well that my atoms and molecules, my genetic makeup, allow me to compose my own version of recombinant DNA at the macro-, social-organism level.
Thus, I don't know if we'll meet in this blog again. In other words, if I want to put images, sounds, smells, and tastes together into a new experience, how do I project this experience onto the Internet and thus have it available for download by you? Describing such an experience with words is not enough. Putting a description and soundtrack together is closer but still farther from the "truth" of the experience. This Internet is such a young, incomplete (and often immature) communication medium, is it not? Superimposing the Internet on real life (augmenting reality) is not a goal I seek. I want to superimpose real life on the Internet. Being there, all our warts, freckles, smells, imperfections and thoughts intact, with the Internet as we know it today simply a catalog or extended memory space supplementing, not supplanting reality. Why? So that when one of us circles the Moon on an outer space spa trip, all of us can go along if we want. The question to you is which one do you want to be, the traveler who creates the experience or the one who experiences the traveler's trip?
In other words, we'll meet again soon. It's simply a question of how, not where and when.
15 December 2009
Epilogue Yule Log Catalog of Logged Logjams
Subtitle: Ode to Miranda, Who Took Care of Five Customers, Five Cheques
What is a day? A moment divided. A set of sensations. A series of situations. Smoky blue eyes. Happiness accounted for and noted.
I will start a new blog, a new attitude, a different opinion. This blog afterthought an afterthought, an aftertaste, a reaching out from the fog, a tap on the shoulder, a smile, an agreement, an "I'm not sure what I'm doing but I'm here in the typing phase of my existence away from the from a livescribe pen and notepad to let myself (yourself) know I am (we are) alive and doing well."
I pause, taking a sip from a cylindrical glass of wasser to say hello to you who may read this. Me, in other words, in this moment, in one thought, one idea, one expression of a person's thought(s).
I want to be more than I am. I am happy to be me who is who I am in this moment, my limited vocabulary limited by my typing skills, by my thoughts, by my experience(s) with you, lonely as we are now/then.
I see your eyes. I see the eyes of Miranda, the gray/blue, blue/gray reflections coming back to me as we conversed during your memorisation of my ordering from the restaurant menu, your knowing pretty much what the other regular patrons around me would tell you what they wanted to eat. And then there was Sarah this evening, an order taker joining me and others (including my constant companion, my cohort, my spare change, my lifesaver, my bedsharer, my spouse, my wife), who passed brown and clear bottles of brewed hops and grains (i.e., beer) at the BeerQuest in the Heritage Club in Huntsville for an evening of good times between those who wanted to gather downtown for privileged drinking, a few hours of hoppy fun.
We know our presidential leader, our national icon, smokes tobacco-filled cigarettes.
We accept what we cannot change. We know Tammy Harrington (Herrington?) [like my friend Ann-Marie in HHI], whose automobile license tag reads "WINEDIVA," or some such, kept track of the beer-tasting festivities tonight, recording which beers from which state outside of Alabama provided the tongue-tingling sensations (our tastebuds tickled by high-gravity fermentation) which we'll remember best. Harry and Laura say the Upland Nuthugger did the trick. Others picked other brews.
And what a list, too (do I dare try to name some, if not most, of them all?):
Sarah (with an "h", with a smile, with...well, with her boyfriend Adam who finally showed up, Harry and his wife Laura providing a counterbalance). Laura, who couldn't sing, but who missed the boys' choir this year. Sarah, who grew up in a "holler" 10 miles south of the Tennessee border and 10 miles east of the Lawrence County line. Robert, who has shown up with 100 kinds of beer and who brought friends in times past who brought gallons of fresh brews for tasting / sampling / drinking / guzzling.
Anyone remember the Chicken Shack or the River Club? Anyone remember boilermakers?
Have you ever had 1/4 shot Jameson, 3/4 shot Bailey's, all dropped into a glass of Guinness?
And then the team who cleaned up after us, going to school, taking classes, wondering when they'd get to enjoy the festivities and/or have someone clean up after them.
Time for another blog. Another look at life. A new perspective. This epilogue accounted for and added up.
I enjoyed working with Glenn and Ryan and Janeil and Lawrence and Jim and others who piled and handed food to the 33rd Rocket City marathon runners/DNFs on Saturday. I met Eric Patterson (sp?), Carol (my wife's college roommate), Erin (a UTK alumnus/supporter) and many others whose faces smiled/flashed at me during the aftermath of sweaty/satisfied finishers passing through the food line.
I've seen faces in other places while looking at mobile phone providers who want my business. I still use my old-fashioned Nokia 3120 (old model) to answer calls and peruse a tiny screen for the occasional foray into the media mall world, not yet convinced to plunge into the 3G/GPS universe of Internet browsing, letting my spouse use her iPod touch to touch the worldwide web of YouTube and Google searching.
"Michelle, ma belle..", another song sung after a server served us at Chili's. "Tres bien ensemble." Built very well?
I know the faces, the smiles, the persons/people whose faces have recognised mine. Need we say more? Loneliness/alone, we know the looks. Time to find another space to share with you. Another time, perhaps? I'll post one more entry sometime to let you where I'll land. This epilogue has found its epic finish. Time to bid adieu. Adios. À bientôt. Friends from Dominican Republic to ROC, I say hello and farewell (or fair well, as the case may be). We face a new beginning, a new tomorrow, an old yesterday, a moment in forever where our paths will cross. Until then, I bow and say thanks for being my friend for the brief time we spent together. Lenier and Anita, I hope I got your names right because our friendships were right at the time...
What is a day? A moment divided. A set of sensations. A series of situations. Smoky blue eyes. Happiness accounted for and noted.
I will start a new blog, a new attitude, a different opinion. This blog afterthought an afterthought, an aftertaste, a reaching out from the fog, a tap on the shoulder, a smile, an agreement, an "I'm not sure what I'm doing but I'm here in the typing phase of my existence away from the from a livescribe pen and notepad to let myself (yourself) know I am (we are) alive and doing well."
I pause, taking a sip from a cylindrical glass of wasser to say hello to you who may read this. Me, in other words, in this moment, in one thought, one idea, one expression of a person's thought(s).
I want to be more than I am. I am happy to be me who is who I am in this moment, my limited vocabulary limited by my typing skills, by my thoughts, by my experience(s) with you, lonely as we are now/then.
I see your eyes. I see the eyes of Miranda, the gray/blue, blue/gray reflections coming back to me as we conversed during your memorisation of my ordering from the restaurant menu, your knowing pretty much what the other regular patrons around me would tell you what they wanted to eat. And then there was Sarah this evening, an order taker joining me and others (including my constant companion, my cohort, my spare change, my lifesaver, my bedsharer, my spouse, my wife), who passed brown and clear bottles of brewed hops and grains (i.e., beer) at the BeerQuest in the Heritage Club in Huntsville for an evening of good times between those who wanted to gather downtown for privileged drinking, a few hours of hoppy fun.
We know our presidential leader, our national icon, smokes tobacco-filled cigarettes.
We accept what we cannot change. We know Tammy Harrington (Herrington?) [like my friend Ann-Marie in HHI], whose automobile license tag reads "WINEDIVA," or some such, kept track of the beer-tasting festivities tonight, recording which beers from which state outside of Alabama provided the tongue-tingling sensations (our tastebuds tickled by high-gravity fermentation) which we'll remember best. Harry and Laura say the Upland Nuthugger did the trick. Others picked other brews.
And what a list, too (do I dare try to name some, if not most, of them all?):
- Moosbacher Schwarze Weisse
- Dragonfly IPA
- Hog Heaven Barleywine by Avery
- Dogfish Raison D'etre
- Blackheart English-style IPA
- Bathbeer Nuezeller Blofter-Brau
- Boulevard Dry Stout
- Unibroue Dark Ale (Terrible?)
- Unibroue Trois Pistoles
- Stone Vertical
- Stone XI (11th) Anniversary
- Jefferson Bourbon Barrel Stout
- Dogfish Palo Santo Marron
- Sierra Nevada Harvest Fresh Southern Hemisphere Hop
- Midas Touch Ale
- Upland Nuthugger Brown Ale
- Upland Chocolate Ale
Sarah (with an "h", with a smile, with...well, with her boyfriend Adam who finally showed up, Harry and his wife Laura providing a counterbalance). Laura, who couldn't sing, but who missed the boys' choir this year. Sarah, who grew up in a "holler" 10 miles south of the Tennessee border and 10 miles east of the Lawrence County line. Robert, who has shown up with 100 kinds of beer and who brought friends in times past who brought gallons of fresh brews for tasting / sampling / drinking / guzzling.
Anyone remember the Chicken Shack or the River Club? Anyone remember boilermakers?
Have you ever had 1/4 shot Jameson, 3/4 shot Bailey's, all dropped into a glass of Guinness?
And then the team who cleaned up after us, going to school, taking classes, wondering when they'd get to enjoy the festivities and/or have someone clean up after them.
Time for another blog. Another look at life. A new perspective. This epilogue accounted for and added up.
I enjoyed working with Glenn and Ryan and Janeil and Lawrence and Jim and others who piled and handed food to the 33rd Rocket City marathon runners/DNFs on Saturday. I met Eric Patterson (sp?), Carol (my wife's college roommate), Erin (a UTK alumnus/supporter) and many others whose faces smiled/flashed at me during the aftermath of sweaty/satisfied finishers passing through the food line.
I've seen faces in other places while looking at mobile phone providers who want my business. I still use my old-fashioned Nokia 3120 (old model) to answer calls and peruse a tiny screen for the occasional foray into the media mall world, not yet convinced to plunge into the 3G/GPS universe of Internet browsing, letting my spouse use her iPod touch to touch the worldwide web of YouTube and Google searching.
"Michelle, ma belle..", another song sung after a server served us at Chili's. "Tres bien ensemble." Built very well?
I know the faces, the smiles, the persons/people whose faces have recognised mine. Need we say more? Loneliness/alone, we know the looks. Time to find another space to share with you. Another time, perhaps? I'll post one more entry sometime to let you where I'll land. This epilogue has found its epic finish. Time to bid adieu. Adios. À bientôt. Friends from Dominican Republic to ROC, I say hello and farewell (or fair well, as the case may be). We face a new beginning, a new tomorrow, an old yesterday, a moment in forever where our paths will cross. Until then, I bow and say thanks for being my friend for the brief time we spent together. Lenier and Anita, I hope I got your names right because our friendships were right at the time...
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