Last night, I overheard a few of my students/customers discussing an issue important to them. No, I'm not talking about getting good grades, graduating on time and earning a big salary. Instead, their subject of choice was illegal immigration.
BAM! WHAM! ZAP! POW! [<== Hints about the effects of pressing the "hot topic" button and its effect on many in the populace]
This afternoon, I stopped at Barnes & Noble [blatant product placement] and bought issue # 500 of MAD magazine [bloated product placement]. I am happy with my place in the universe. Well, happy is too strong a word. At my age, I can no longer read the tiny comics placed in the margins of MAD magazine. Let's just say that I'm satisfied that MAD magazine is still publishing, even if their 1000th issue won't reach the newsstand until July, 2134, well after the UNIX epoch expiration date of 19th January 2038 (but hey, we just passed 1234567890 on 13th February 2009, so symmetry is something worth noting).
Illegal immigration. Hmm... I must admit it's something that crossed my mind before. After all, I contemplated working around EU labor laws in order to live for two years in Ireland, which possibly would have made me an illegal immigrant. I interviewed for a job in Shanghai, China, and would have had to work within labor laws between China and the U.S. if I wanted to work overseas legally. But the issue here is about people other than me, isn't it?
What is illegal immigration? Well, certainly we can only talk about this phrase if we agree to a definition of political entities with well-defined borders between them, typically of geographical nature, but perhaps in the future of virtual bounds.
First of all, human history is chock full of migration. In fact, our species might not exist if it weren't for our tendency to wander from an area of low nutrition to one of high protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins.
These days, we still believe that our political entities are defined not just by names and nationalities but also language and other homogenous cultural features. The general populace in each of these areas accepts the role of others to serve as politicians whose jobs entail reinforcing the idea of nation-states, typically by using references to cultural icons (flags, colors, slogans/themes, history, etc.).
What is a nation-state, though? It's history, that's all it is. It may encompass a people who generally look, act and talk alike. But these days, subcultures abound. The idea of a nation-state having permanence in form and fashion is disproven by history. However, we want to believe we belong to a social group with consistent values, don't we? Humans adapt when necessary but also usually display some semblance of resistance to change.
What is illegal immigration? It depends on your definition of legality.
Do you feel that humans have the right to migrate anywhere in the world or do you feel humans must belong to a geographical/cultural location? Do you want to wander the same neck of the woods your whole life, never stepping out of a comfort zone and expect others to do the same, all of us keeping to our place and culture? If so, how do you expect to buy that inexpensive set of clothes at Wal-Mart/Kmart/Target/Tesco/Go-Lo/Dunnes designed in [Los Angeles, California; Seoul, South Korea; Paris, France; Mumbai, India; Sydney, Australia], made in Malaysia/India/China/Nepal, shipped across land via train, hauled across an ocean or two by ship, transported across your country by truck/rail and delivered to your local discount store? There are many human bodies moving across the globe in just the design, manufacture and transportation of the clothes, let alone the movement of money or the design/manufacture/transport of the transport containers, transportation devices, distribution warehouses, roadways, communication devices, etc.
Instead of illegal immigration being a hot topic, I ask what a person of different culture means to you? Do you live in an area of homogeny or heterogeny? Are you used to a life of the same thing everyday or are you used to variety? There is no right or wrong answer. We were all raised in different environments and have different genetic makeups so we respond to our world around us in billions of different ways, even though variation varies by degree.
Do you expect a nation-state to provide an economic way of life in exchange for you both living within its bounds and giving it annual tributes your whole life? In other words, is a nation-state a sort of lifestyle/retirement insurance fund to you? Therefore, you expect other residents of your nation-state to make annual tributes if they are to receive lifestyle payments?
At lunch today, I sat with a colleague of mine and ate roasted chicken meat, baked beans and banana pudding at Dreamland BBQ while discussing a possible business transaction. We dealt with issues that crossed international boundaries and didn't blink an eye in figuring where portions of the business transaction should take place or which members of another country should be involved. In fact, we didn't even care where people called home. We only concerned ourselves with the added value of each transaction component.
On what do you depend to live? I depend on nothing and expect nothing in return. Every day brings something new. Sometimes I don't like the newness but delight in the fresh view of life the new approach to existence brings me.
I understand that illegal immigration presents something new that many people don't like. The phrase "illegal immigration" has been bought and sold by so many hucksters wanting their piece of the attention/money of their nation-state that most citizens have no personal view on the matter because their thoughts are too filled with the scare tactics and fear-mongering of others who've abused "illegal immigration" for their gain.
I'm not here to change your opinion of illegal immigration. I'm here because I'm figuring out in these words how to reconcile my view of illegal immigration versus the views of others. I don't see illegal immigration as a personal problem to me because I have lived my life as a global citizen, even though I was born in and by birth have been automatically declared a citizen of the United States of America. I operate on the global stage, buying, selling and negotiating deals across [imaginary] international borders. I believe that very few people operate only within the borders of their nation or community, especially from within this or any other "developed" country. Grocery stores sell food grown and transported from other countries. Discount stores sell merchandise from other countries. Newspapers carry stories from other countries.
Nation-states do not offer the same level of economic support to their citizens. Some provide social services superior to that of the U.S.A. Some provide nearly no services. Some tax their citizens heavily, with the citizens believing they pay these taxes as a duty or burden to bear for citizenship, a "right" that all humans deserve in being supported by their fellows of economic means. As humans once migrated to areas of better nutrition, is it the fault of our human nature in this era of prosperity to want to migrate to areas of better social services because life is not fair and some were unlucky by the fate of their country of birth?
In this blog entry, I don't have any answers. I see why illegal immigration is a contentious problem for some and a desperate move by others. I will repeat my thoughts on this issue more than once in blog entries, if I haven't done so already, because I see other people's emotional outpouring and wonder if, as a middle-aged adult, I should have a wise position on the issue to share with them to get them to put adrenaline aside and look at rational reasons for ignoring illegal immigration in their thoughts.
Phrases like "illegal immigration" are usually meant to rile us up. Anytime someone wants your money, look for emotional triggers like "illegal immigration." From a rational viewpoint, there are costs and benefits associated with living in a community. We also expect certain checks and balances to keep all of us safe from unnecessary harm and protect our way of life. Instead of letting others push your buttons, take the time to look around your community and see if you're directly affected by the phrase, "illegal immigration." Do you receive inexpensive goods and services, such as roofing, lawncare or farmers' market produce, because a business owner is taking advantage of migrant workers who have no legal protection? Is your local medical facility overwhelmed with offering free medical care to those without medical insurance, including both legal and illegal residents? What is the actual percentage of road accidents by legal and illegal residents (in other words, don't let headlines fool you)?
Don't let a phrase substitute for hard facts. Those who migrate from one area to another are giving up something in order to get something else. Not every loss is a gain or vice versa. Job opportunities might be better but loss of family, displaced sense of place in society and a person's homesickness may force a person into an early grave through chronic illness. At the same time, meeting a person who has migrated into your area may teach you new skills you would never have learned.
Life is full of missed opportunities. Today, I enjoyed chicken BBQ because I didn't want to miss the opportunity for a business colleague and me to close an international deal. We wouldn't have had our meeting had we let a phrase like "illegal immigration" stand in our way. We have both stood on the soil of other countries as immigrants and learned new ways to look at the world although we were born in little towns - he born in Arab, Alabama, and I born in Bristol, Tennessee. I urge you to broaden your horizons and seek these same opportunities. Let nation-state politicians have their rhetoric and regionalism so you can take the world for yourself through rationalism and globalism.
22 April 2009
21 April 2009
SELL
The digital LED clock in front of me shows its 11:35, which is SELL upside-down. I just finished reading a New York magazine article about the anger of Wall Street brokers who feel like their greed served the globe well until the mortgage derivative markets dried up and reduced fortunes to ruins like a tornado ripping through the South. As the saying goes, they went from wunderkinder to pariahs in an instant. Even they should know it's never too late to sell. Some people say to get out of stocks when the market drops 8%. [NOTE: I'm not telling you what to do, though.]
Are you entrenched in your lifestyle, vested and satisfied with your life? Many people are. You can amaze yourself when you don't take life personally and treat yourself professionally, instead.
Last night, I taught a class on operating systems as a substitute instructor. First, I administered a multiple-choice test and watched the students/customers in their test-taking modes, remembering when I used to sit behind the desk and try to pick one of four selections on a multiple-choice test. I thought back to a senior class at university where a professor gave a test which required short written answers and a student complained because all the previous tests she'd ever taken were multiple choice or true/false. She felt the instructor was unfairly singling out our class with a new form of test that none of us had supposedly seen before. The professor laughed in the student's face and told her that life is tough, so deal with it like the other students and finish the test. I knew the student - she had been in a team project with me and was the type of person who floated through life, expecting answers to be presented to her to choose from - she reflected the life her parents had led for her (she still lived with her mother and worked at the same company as her mother). I actually looked forward to demonstrating my knowledge of the subject through writing about it, but then again I'm a writer. Not everyone likes to read and write like me.
Life. Sigh... Have we humans built our civilizations such that our decisions are easy-to-pick multiple choice ones? Or is life a normal matter of multiple choice, and short answer / essay questions are abnormal?
The squirrel in the yard that's running from tree to tree is not stopping to write a dissertation on the beauty of trees. Its answer to me is a series of short chatters when I ask it what it's doing in my yard, flicking its tail wildly to emphasize the point it's making.
I guess the question I'm asking is about the goal of teaching. At the institute where I stand in front of students/customers, my goal is simple - discuss an item and demonstrate the item's practical application. In other words, I'm selling the students practicality. The student/customer wants to know how to put his/her knowledge to use, not discuss theoretical developments in the field of quantum physics as it relates to biological cybernetic research. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has practical applications for the students/customers but the memorization of Heisenberg's letters to Pauli leading to its formalization is nearly meaningless.
During the lab portion of the class last night, I wondered about the motivation of the students/customers. Some of them wanted to move directly into the lessons on using Linux while others seemed to spend time surfing the Web and not specifically requesting any assistance in installing/loading Linux.
Keep in mind that I don't know anything. My mind is a blank slate. In fact, I have no mind. I have only a set of neuronic/synaptic connections that fire in random sequences, putting false images, smells and conversations into action, making the rest of my body wonder what it's supposed to do with itself. Motivation is a word I can type because my neurochemical pathways push that word out into muscle movements and verify I've used that word in context with my training via feedback from the nerves under the skin of my fingers and the optic nerve at the back of my eyes. My ears join the feedback dance in sensing the sounds of my fingers pressing/banging plastic keys on the computer. All I can do is look at the eyes of the students/customers and try my best to discern what they want/need. I do not know what they want/need. I can guess that some of the students/customers need my assertive nature to assert itself and request that they participate in lab with the rest of the students in order to increase the rich set of synaptic connections in their brain. But maybe listening to L'il Wayne and Kayne West will do the same thing for them. I do not know.
I can try to sell you the importance of knowledge but you have to buy into it on your own. I won't force it on you. I'm not someone's authoritarian figure. I dislike the word "expert." I have a limited set of knowledge myself and look forward to students/customers knowing more than I do. A student/customer can excel without me, of course, and I hope they do.
The institute where I teach is all about being an advocate for the success of the student/customer, reaching beyond the walls of the classroom to help the student/customer see the value in going to class. From my experience, it's all well and good to have faculty who care but there comes a time when the student/customer must find a way to care, to want to overcome obstacles, no matter what the cost. I watched an interview with Dave Chappelle on "Inside The Actors Studio." Dave mentioned that his father told him that he had to know the price he was willing to pay to get what he wanted. That's a universal truth we all face, no matter whether we're amoeba or humans. There's a cost that we all pay to live. We humans have the ability to set a price and keep refreshing the idea of that price in our thoughts as we pursue whatever it is we call living. It's the value of our personal stock, if you will. At what price are you willing to sell yourself?
Are you entrenched in your lifestyle, vested and satisfied with your life? Many people are. You can amaze yourself when you don't take life personally and treat yourself professionally, instead.
Last night, I taught a class on operating systems as a substitute instructor. First, I administered a multiple-choice test and watched the students/customers in their test-taking modes, remembering when I used to sit behind the desk and try to pick one of four selections on a multiple-choice test. I thought back to a senior class at university where a professor gave a test which required short written answers and a student complained because all the previous tests she'd ever taken were multiple choice or true/false. She felt the instructor was unfairly singling out our class with a new form of test that none of us had supposedly seen before. The professor laughed in the student's face and told her that life is tough, so deal with it like the other students and finish the test. I knew the student - she had been in a team project with me and was the type of person who floated through life, expecting answers to be presented to her to choose from - she reflected the life her parents had led for her (she still lived with her mother and worked at the same company as her mother). I actually looked forward to demonstrating my knowledge of the subject through writing about it, but then again I'm a writer. Not everyone likes to read and write like me.
Life. Sigh... Have we humans built our civilizations such that our decisions are easy-to-pick multiple choice ones? Or is life a normal matter of multiple choice, and short answer / essay questions are abnormal?
The squirrel in the yard that's running from tree to tree is not stopping to write a dissertation on the beauty of trees. Its answer to me is a series of short chatters when I ask it what it's doing in my yard, flicking its tail wildly to emphasize the point it's making.
I guess the question I'm asking is about the goal of teaching. At the institute where I stand in front of students/customers, my goal is simple - discuss an item and demonstrate the item's practical application. In other words, I'm selling the students practicality. The student/customer wants to know how to put his/her knowledge to use, not discuss theoretical developments in the field of quantum physics as it relates to biological cybernetic research. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has practical applications for the students/customers but the memorization of Heisenberg's letters to Pauli leading to its formalization is nearly meaningless.
During the lab portion of the class last night, I wondered about the motivation of the students/customers. Some of them wanted to move directly into the lessons on using Linux while others seemed to spend time surfing the Web and not specifically requesting any assistance in installing/loading Linux.
Keep in mind that I don't know anything. My mind is a blank slate. In fact, I have no mind. I have only a set of neuronic/synaptic connections that fire in random sequences, putting false images, smells and conversations into action, making the rest of my body wonder what it's supposed to do with itself. Motivation is a word I can type because my neurochemical pathways push that word out into muscle movements and verify I've used that word in context with my training via feedback from the nerves under the skin of my fingers and the optic nerve at the back of my eyes. My ears join the feedback dance in sensing the sounds of my fingers pressing/banging plastic keys on the computer. All I can do is look at the eyes of the students/customers and try my best to discern what they want/need. I do not know what they want/need. I can guess that some of the students/customers need my assertive nature to assert itself and request that they participate in lab with the rest of the students in order to increase the rich set of synaptic connections in their brain. But maybe listening to L'il Wayne and Kayne West will do the same thing for them. I do not know.
I can try to sell you the importance of knowledge but you have to buy into it on your own. I won't force it on you. I'm not someone's authoritarian figure. I dislike the word "expert." I have a limited set of knowledge myself and look forward to students/customers knowing more than I do. A student/customer can excel without me, of course, and I hope they do.
The institute where I teach is all about being an advocate for the success of the student/customer, reaching beyond the walls of the classroom to help the student/customer see the value in going to class. From my experience, it's all well and good to have faculty who care but there comes a time when the student/customer must find a way to care, to want to overcome obstacles, no matter what the cost. I watched an interview with Dave Chappelle on "Inside The Actors Studio." Dave mentioned that his father told him that he had to know the price he was willing to pay to get what he wanted. That's a universal truth we all face, no matter whether we're amoeba or humans. There's a cost that we all pay to live. We humans have the ability to set a price and keep refreshing the idea of that price in our thoughts as we pursue whatever it is we call living. It's the value of our personal stock, if you will. At what price are you willing to sell yourself?
20 April 2009
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
Do you know who your friends or pals are? I had been in the habit of posting suggestions about my stock market investing but a friend of mine cautioned me against it because it might be construed as advice. Since I'm not a professional investor for myself or others, I don't see how someone could misconstrue my free blog posts as advice. However, in this day and age of a re-emerging stock market, I'll stick to my sage advice and listen to my wise friends, keeping my market observations to myself. I doubt someone would want to pay me to help them become an at-risk millionaire, anyway, let alone anyone thinking he/she would become a millionaire on my free ramblings. Besides, it's so easy to make money everyday right now that I think the cardinals chasing each other outside my window could get rich if I just stuck birdseed on a computer keyboard and let them peck their way to a full stomach.
Tone
In order to cut down on both household expenses and wasted paper, my wife and I canceled our magazine subscriptions many years ago. However, in addition to junk mail, I still receive a few free magazines and newsletters in the mail, including "Pollution Engineering," "Mission Critical," "Currents," and "Tall Tupelo Tales" - all related to conserving and preserving. Gotta love irony.
As ants wander over our house, spider webs fill with ant-shaped blobs. My window holds about eleven such spider meals. In addition to stripping the deciduous holly of its berries, birds (or other creatures) have eaten a lot of the young redbud seed pods.
Observations such as these feel real to me, as if there is no question that the connections inside my body are directly related to the events outside my body, if there is such a thing as a body, a fact I have yet to verify but which I use to conserve and preserve whatever sense of self propels me throughout the day.
Yesterday, a series of events occurred that don't feel real today but I have physical evidence that proves otherwise.
I drove over to northwest Alabama to a little town called Florence to attend a wedding tea party at a set of structures set aside for religious adherents to participate in rituals which provide moral guidance and allow practice of any lessons learned in that field of study. I am not familiar with the new rituals associated with two people receiving social approval for cohabitation, even though I participated in similar type rituals a couple of decades ago. The events yesterday confirm that I have not kept up with the latest trends.
When I walked in the door, I was handed a set of acrylic paints, a few large paint brushes, an easel and a blank canvas.
I looked around the room and saw that the people there were what I would call classic country folk, the women having tightly curled ('permed') hairdos and wearing long skirts, and the men having short cut hair, parted and combed to one side, pressed down with lots of hairspray, and wearing long-sleeved shirts and dark slacks. The future bride and groom sat on rattan chairs like a king and queen at a coronation, surrounded by silk flowers and paper ribbons, attended by young women oohing and aahing over the gifts placed at the feet of the soon-to-be-married couple. A bulletin board behind them displayed pinned-on photos of the man and woman growing up with their separate families. The gifts included a blender, crock pot, food chopper, TV trays, framed college football print, towels, sheets, curtains, Pyrex cookware, doormats, hammer, handsaw, photo album, tea pitcher, gift cards, Mikasa bowl, quilt rack and fire extinguisher.
Everyone looked pretty much alike, almost all having dark hair and same color of skin, a light nutmeg with hints of white and pink.
I set the canvas on the easel and started painting an expanded version of my last work, "Profit Sharing," painting a background of black on one half and a background of pink and yellow stripes on the other half. After I let the background dry, I listened to the people around me, looking for words or phrases to write on the canvas and then paint around. Two snippets of conversation stood out:
The couple continued to open presents and guests ate finger food at a small buffet table. A photographer walked through occasionally and snapped photos that he posted instantly on facebook. Jennifer and Mydonna sent me video messages questioning whether nutmeg represented their facial skin tones because Jennifer felt her natural skin color was darker and Mydonna felt hers was lighter. They showed me what nutmeg looked like on their skin after applying makeup to try to match my painting's color to their palette of facial powder. Jennifer looked good while Mydonna looked ghastly.
After the paintings dried, the couple walked through the little art gallery set up and separated from the rest of the church activity center. They liked my painting and one by another painter, not so much because of the color scheme (in fact, they felt mine was too bright) but because of the mix of words and faces that both of us had painted.
The couple turned to me and thanked me for the wedding gift. I had not planned to give them the painting. I said I hoped to make a lithograph and sell prints of it, thinking that maybe there was a chance of my setting a new trend in nutmeg facial coloring (and if you know my belief in natural skin tones and dislike of covering faces with creams and powders, you know how far from the truth my last statement is).
When I displayed my dismay at giving away my painting, the couple looked at each other and then at me. They explained that my behavior was getting awfully close to that of the two women in Grey Gardens, both a real place and a cult, as well as some movies, where reality and fantasy had no hard edge or definition. I responded to them that the women of Grey Gardens suffered from social deprivation, possible in-breeding, and a local source of radon or other poison, including animal-related infections or food-borne diseases. They agreed and pointed to my house as a similar example of the influence of daily living on one's artistic output. The man asked me if I had considered the influence of my consumption of flax seed and banana on my daily beta blocker, metoprolol. Yikes!
Yesterday, I thought my day would be filled with my constant preparation for a comfortable second half of my life (with only 14,991 days left), a ritual I gladly embrace because of its unending inconstancy. Instead, I stepped into the world of the new generation, where old rituals give way to new ones. In my youth, a young couple followed a pre-scripted routine of pre-wedding events, staying within a well-defined role, using a limited number of responses, such as "Thank you," "Yes, sir," and "We appreciate you stopping by." We didn't know about beta blockers but had heard about tranquilizers and often knew the mothers taking them. We certainly wouldn't have handed a set of paints and a canvas to the tranquilized crowd and then later critique them at a pre-wedding party. But maybe that's what the last 25 years have given us - the freedom to speak our minds and express ourselves artistically.
Our time on this planet also includes increasing light "pollution," an eyesore to those of us who still like to stare into space at night and marvel at the universe of bright dots and blurs. A recent composite image of the North American continent at night makes me wonder what's become of our night sky. Years ago, I saw the aurora in north Alabama. I doubt I'll ever be able to see it here again, taking some of my natural wonder and awe away, and denying it to the next generation. I may be fading into the life of a Miss Havisham, Little Edie or any number of eccentric trailer park and backwoods occupants but that doesn't stop me from wishing the best for the next generation.
When we conserve and preserve our resources, we save the future for ourselves and others to enjoy. It's not an altruistic gesture. It's as real as it gets. One less street light in the neighborhood is one more falling star to wish upon. And maybe one less depressing article in National Geographic about the collapsing ecosystems around the world.
As ants wander over our house, spider webs fill with ant-shaped blobs. My window holds about eleven such spider meals. In addition to stripping the deciduous holly of its berries, birds (or other creatures) have eaten a lot of the young redbud seed pods.
Observations such as these feel real to me, as if there is no question that the connections inside my body are directly related to the events outside my body, if there is such a thing as a body, a fact I have yet to verify but which I use to conserve and preserve whatever sense of self propels me throughout the day.
Yesterday, a series of events occurred that don't feel real today but I have physical evidence that proves otherwise.
I drove over to northwest Alabama to a little town called Florence to attend a wedding tea party at a set of structures set aside for religious adherents to participate in rituals which provide moral guidance and allow practice of any lessons learned in that field of study. I am not familiar with the new rituals associated with two people receiving social approval for cohabitation, even though I participated in similar type rituals a couple of decades ago. The events yesterday confirm that I have not kept up with the latest trends.
When I walked in the door, I was handed a set of acrylic paints, a few large paint brushes, an easel and a blank canvas.
I looked around the room and saw that the people there were what I would call classic country folk, the women having tightly curled ('permed') hairdos and wearing long skirts, and the men having short cut hair, parted and combed to one side, pressed down with lots of hairspray, and wearing long-sleeved shirts and dark slacks. The future bride and groom sat on rattan chairs like a king and queen at a coronation, surrounded by silk flowers and paper ribbons, attended by young women oohing and aahing over the gifts placed at the feet of the soon-to-be-married couple. A bulletin board behind them displayed pinned-on photos of the man and woman growing up with their separate families. The gifts included a blender, crock pot, food chopper, TV trays, framed college football print, towels, sheets, curtains, Pyrex cookware, doormats, hammer, handsaw, photo album, tea pitcher, gift cards, Mikasa bowl, quilt rack and fire extinguisher.
Everyone looked pretty much alike, almost all having dark hair and same color of skin, a light nutmeg with hints of white and pink.
I set the canvas on the easel and started painting an expanded version of my last work, "Profit Sharing," painting a background of black on one half and a background of pink and yellow stripes on the other half. After I let the background dry, I listened to the people around me, looking for words or phrases to write on the canvas and then paint around. Two snippets of conversation stood out:
- "Couples today are lucky. They think they get to have everything when they get married. When we got married, and I admit it was more than a few years ago, I was 18 and he was 20. I was lucky we got a washer. It was 10 years before I got a dryer and I felt blessed."
- "When we got married, we put all the extra towels away that we got at our wedding. That way, five/ten years later, we had new towels and didn't have to pay for them."
The couple continued to open presents and guests ate finger food at a small buffet table. A photographer walked through occasionally and snapped photos that he posted instantly on facebook. Jennifer and Mydonna sent me video messages questioning whether nutmeg represented their facial skin tones because Jennifer felt her natural skin color was darker and Mydonna felt hers was lighter. They showed me what nutmeg looked like on their skin after applying makeup to try to match my painting's color to their palette of facial powder. Jennifer looked good while Mydonna looked ghastly.
After the paintings dried, the couple walked through the little art gallery set up and separated from the rest of the church activity center. They liked my painting and one by another painter, not so much because of the color scheme (in fact, they felt mine was too bright) but because of the mix of words and faces that both of us had painted.
The couple turned to me and thanked me for the wedding gift. I had not planned to give them the painting. I said I hoped to make a lithograph and sell prints of it, thinking that maybe there was a chance of my setting a new trend in nutmeg facial coloring (and if you know my belief in natural skin tones and dislike of covering faces with creams and powders, you know how far from the truth my last statement is).
When I displayed my dismay at giving away my painting, the couple looked at each other and then at me. They explained that my behavior was getting awfully close to that of the two women in Grey Gardens, both a real place and a cult, as well as some movies, where reality and fantasy had no hard edge or definition. I responded to them that the women of Grey Gardens suffered from social deprivation, possible in-breeding, and a local source of radon or other poison, including animal-related infections or food-borne diseases. They agreed and pointed to my house as a similar example of the influence of daily living on one's artistic output. The man asked me if I had considered the influence of my consumption of flax seed and banana on my daily beta blocker, metoprolol. Yikes!
Yesterday, I thought my day would be filled with my constant preparation for a comfortable second half of my life (with only 14,991 days left), a ritual I gladly embrace because of its unending inconstancy. Instead, I stepped into the world of the new generation, where old rituals give way to new ones. In my youth, a young couple followed a pre-scripted routine of pre-wedding events, staying within a well-defined role, using a limited number of responses, such as "Thank you," "Yes, sir," and "We appreciate you stopping by." We didn't know about beta blockers but had heard about tranquilizers and often knew the mothers taking them. We certainly wouldn't have handed a set of paints and a canvas to the tranquilized crowd and then later critique them at a pre-wedding party. But maybe that's what the last 25 years have given us - the freedom to speak our minds and express ourselves artistically.
Our time on this planet also includes increasing light "pollution," an eyesore to those of us who still like to stare into space at night and marvel at the universe of bright dots and blurs. A recent composite image of the North American continent at night makes me wonder what's become of our night sky. Years ago, I saw the aurora in north Alabama. I doubt I'll ever be able to see it here again, taking some of my natural wonder and awe away, and denying it to the next generation. I may be fading into the life of a Miss Havisham, Little Edie or any number of eccentric trailer park and backwoods occupants but that doesn't stop me from wishing the best for the next generation.
When we conserve and preserve our resources, we save the future for ourselves and others to enjoy. It's not an altruistic gesture. It's as real as it gets. One less street light in the neighborhood is one more falling star to wish upon. And maybe one less depressing article in National Geographic about the collapsing ecosystems around the world.
19 April 2009
Silencio
In my classes, the students/customers range in age from 17 to 53, give or take a year or two. Some speak more than one language. Some understand math. Some understand science. Some will make good computer programmers. Some will make good computer diagnosticians. I hope they all find successful, well-paid careers, and they will if they understand the concept of self-importance.
Some of my students remark that they have unremarkable lives, boring even.
I believe all of our lives are boring. It's what we make of our self-importance that gives our lives personal meaning. I have worked in rather mundane jobs, including restaurant kitchen cook, fast food cashier and telephone book deliverer, but in every one of those jobs I was the most important person performing my job duties and showed it. Even when I was bussing tables (cleaning up tables after restaurant patrons have left the table and paid for their meal), I treated my job with the respect I felt I deserved, never once picking up the tip, and always trying to make the tables as spotless and clean as possible. I have seen busboys swap out small denomination money for large denomination money, giving the servers the impression that the patrons had left small tips. That's a lack of self-respect, giving yourself a low sense of self-importance.
Self-importance is all about living with yourself. You get up with yourself in the morning and go to bed with yourself at night. No one's going to wake up in your body the next day - not ever (or at least not in the near-term) - so why cheat yourself? Look at the people around you as your entertainment for the day. Or see them as serving your needs, not the other way around.
I observe all the people and their self-importance around me all the time, including the nursing staff at Huntsville Hospital on Friday, some of whom had personal issues or problems that showed on their faces but which they withheld from their customers while they served the customers' medical needs. I see and hear my students/customers, who reach out in various ways in order to assure their place in society. We have self-importance but don't always know it.
Right now, I hold a copy of issue no. 8/9 of RE/SEARCH (figuratively speaking, of course - it actually balances on the desk next to this laptop computer screen). I may have talked about it before but I bring it up again because the focus of the issue, J. G. Ballard, just died. Bloggers around the world will mourn the passing of Ballard. There are whole groups devoted to his writing. I discovered him about the same time as a dear friend of mine, Joey Francis, back in our late teen years. Ballard died because of prostate cancer, I assume, if the obituary's wording is correct. I know he hadn't written anything significant in the last few years but appealed to folks in the last few generations, including the ones before me and after me (and mine, obviously).
I bring up Ballard because of his sense of self-importance. He lived a rather mundane life, having spent time as a small child imprisoned in China and then later as a single father raising kids in the English suburbs after his wife died. Yet he generated some fantastic writing. His keen observations made the difference between obscurity and fame. His self-importance made the difference between famous and meaningful. He made a difference because of who he was, not who he should have been or could have been or wasn't. He knew he could write and make money with his writing, supporting himself and his children.
Self-importance is simple. I live with doubt about many things but I don't doubt my self-importance. I know of no one who could live as me. No one can or will live as me. I was born as me and will die as me. I am with me at every moment of my life. I am not even aware that I am with me, even if our level of self-awareness is considered a unique human feature. My moments of self-awareness do not encompass the fact I am with me because I and me are one all the time. I and me are bound together so tight that using the words "I" and "me" is a falsehood. I am so important that my self-importance is a falsehood. I/me is here now and living for I/me right now, no one else. Even if I am taking out the garbage for my wife, washing my clothes and assisting with wedding preparations for my nieces/nephews, I am here for me. I don't breathe for someone else. I may breathe with someone else's lungs, but I breathe for me with them.
A writer and thinker famous in his time just died. I am not him and he was not me. But we shared our own sense of self-importance. We shared this not because of anything special but because of something rather common and boring - we're both humans. That's all there is to being self-important. Waking up. Breathing. Thinking. Walking. Talking. Working. Doing the same thing all over again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Self-importance is just being yourself. I am not you. You are not me. We will never know precisely what gives each other our self-importance. My self-importance comes from observing others and writing about them, sometimes immediately and sometimes 30 years later. Your self-importance may come from being friends with someone you just met - through interviewing each other, you both realize you have mundane lives and then figure out that we all have mundane lives so in fact you're both human, which makes you unique and special, which in turn means you have a level of self-importance to discover and enhance.
We all live and die without being known to everyone on this planet. However, television and other mass media outlets like this Internet hyperinflate the sense of social importance that some people seem to have, giving instant celebrity status to relatively unknown people every once in a while so that we all can believe we'll be a star if the stars align just right. Is that self-importance? No, it isn't, unless your self-importance is derived from basking in the light of social stardom. Billions of people find self-satisfaction in substituting the lives of famous people for their own lives. If you completely accept and live a life like that, then you can enjoy it and enhance your self-importance through that method. No life is right or wrong - only you know what feeds your sense of self-importance.
If you believe that feeding off the preprogrammed lives of television, movie, book and Internet celebrities gives you a hollow sense of self-importance, then you have the opportunity to unplug yourself from the mass media feeding tube and find something in yourself that nourishes your self-importance. Again, mine just happens to be sitting here and writing. Many writers have that same sense of self-importance. Feeding ourselves through writing. Many readers have the complementary sense of self-importance by reading writers' words. Or seeing writers' words put into action on stage and screen, in Presidential speeches or Internet broadcasts. In other words, some people enjoy scripting life and some enjoy have their lives scripted. Some want nothing to do with either and live in silence.
I've said it more than once and will say it again. Words are lies. These words have no life of their own. They live and die in the moment, only having meaning between the time my synaptic connections put them into order and my eyes verified they were typed by my fingers. Thus, I am living a lie. I take my self-importance from that fact. I am living proof that words are unimportant, wanting no money for my writing because it has no inherent value. I can only be me and will not put out words for reading by anyone other than me because only I know the value of these words to my self-importance.
Do you understand what I'm saying? I am telling you that you are important. You have value. You are more than any words I could ever put down. I could put initials on here like R.T. and M.B.C. and show a subset of humans with English first names and last names (or nicknames) that they've reached a level of Internet stardom for as long as this blog exists in the World Wide Web (including eventual permanent archival textual storage on archive.org). But all of you, and that includes me when one of you looks at me and makes me a you to you, you have self-importance. You use it. You abuse it. You neglect it. You reflect it. It doesn't matter what it is, live it. Be your self-importance. And be sure to thank yourself 30 years from now for establishing a level of self-importance at this age that you didn't even know you wanted to enjoy 30 years later. It's not as weird as it sounds. Thirty years is not that long. It's only a percentage of your life. 200% or 33%, either way, it's just a number. Focus on the self-importance.
And don't forget that other crap I said that's a condensed, zipped up version of a few millennia of human observation. Sorry, I'm laughing at myself because I've forgotten what was so important. Uh...umm, what did I say? Oh yeah, have kids and take care of your family. And that other part that I said? Dang. It was important, too. A-ha! I remembered. These words are a lie. I'm still stuck in a life of three dimensions, x/y/z, that's moving through a fourth dimension, t, that's bound to figure out the other dimensions before it breaks through to a dimensionless existence. Then maybe I'll figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life!
I'm sitting here with all this technology supporting this blog, understanding many parts and levels of what makes the technology work and yet understanding that technology in and of itself is unimportant. That, my close friends and readers, is the essence of self-importance - spending time alone with unimportant stuff to feed our self-importance. Buried alive in my computer graveyard. Harmonious contradiction. Buonas noches, lectores preciosos.
Some of my students remark that they have unremarkable lives, boring even.
I believe all of our lives are boring. It's what we make of our self-importance that gives our lives personal meaning. I have worked in rather mundane jobs, including restaurant kitchen cook, fast food cashier and telephone book deliverer, but in every one of those jobs I was the most important person performing my job duties and showed it. Even when I was bussing tables (cleaning up tables after restaurant patrons have left the table and paid for their meal), I treated my job with the respect I felt I deserved, never once picking up the tip, and always trying to make the tables as spotless and clean as possible. I have seen busboys swap out small denomination money for large denomination money, giving the servers the impression that the patrons had left small tips. That's a lack of self-respect, giving yourself a low sense of self-importance.
Self-importance is all about living with yourself. You get up with yourself in the morning and go to bed with yourself at night. No one's going to wake up in your body the next day - not ever (or at least not in the near-term) - so why cheat yourself? Look at the people around you as your entertainment for the day. Or see them as serving your needs, not the other way around.
I observe all the people and their self-importance around me all the time, including the nursing staff at Huntsville Hospital on Friday, some of whom had personal issues or problems that showed on their faces but which they withheld from their customers while they served the customers' medical needs. I see and hear my students/customers, who reach out in various ways in order to assure their place in society. We have self-importance but don't always know it.
Right now, I hold a copy of issue no. 8/9 of RE/SEARCH (figuratively speaking, of course - it actually balances on the desk next to this laptop computer screen). I may have talked about it before but I bring it up again because the focus of the issue, J. G. Ballard, just died. Bloggers around the world will mourn the passing of Ballard. There are whole groups devoted to his writing. I discovered him about the same time as a dear friend of mine, Joey Francis, back in our late teen years. Ballard died because of prostate cancer, I assume, if the obituary's wording is correct. I know he hadn't written anything significant in the last few years but appealed to folks in the last few generations, including the ones before me and after me (and mine, obviously).
I bring up Ballard because of his sense of self-importance. He lived a rather mundane life, having spent time as a small child imprisoned in China and then later as a single father raising kids in the English suburbs after his wife died. Yet he generated some fantastic writing. His keen observations made the difference between obscurity and fame. His self-importance made the difference between famous and meaningful. He made a difference because of who he was, not who he should have been or could have been or wasn't. He knew he could write and make money with his writing, supporting himself and his children.
Self-importance is simple. I live with doubt about many things but I don't doubt my self-importance. I know of no one who could live as me. No one can or will live as me. I was born as me and will die as me. I am with me at every moment of my life. I am not even aware that I am with me, even if our level of self-awareness is considered a unique human feature. My moments of self-awareness do not encompass the fact I am with me because I and me are one all the time. I and me are bound together so tight that using the words "I" and "me" is a falsehood. I am so important that my self-importance is a falsehood. I/me is here now and living for I/me right now, no one else. Even if I am taking out the garbage for my wife, washing my clothes and assisting with wedding preparations for my nieces/nephews, I am here for me. I don't breathe for someone else. I may breathe with someone else's lungs, but I breathe for me with them.
A writer and thinker famous in his time just died. I am not him and he was not me. But we shared our own sense of self-importance. We shared this not because of anything special but because of something rather common and boring - we're both humans. That's all there is to being self-important. Waking up. Breathing. Thinking. Walking. Talking. Working. Doing the same thing all over again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Self-importance is just being yourself. I am not you. You are not me. We will never know precisely what gives each other our self-importance. My self-importance comes from observing others and writing about them, sometimes immediately and sometimes 30 years later. Your self-importance may come from being friends with someone you just met - through interviewing each other, you both realize you have mundane lives and then figure out that we all have mundane lives so in fact you're both human, which makes you unique and special, which in turn means you have a level of self-importance to discover and enhance.
We all live and die without being known to everyone on this planet. However, television and other mass media outlets like this Internet hyperinflate the sense of social importance that some people seem to have, giving instant celebrity status to relatively unknown people every once in a while so that we all can believe we'll be a star if the stars align just right. Is that self-importance? No, it isn't, unless your self-importance is derived from basking in the light of social stardom. Billions of people find self-satisfaction in substituting the lives of famous people for their own lives. If you completely accept and live a life like that, then you can enjoy it and enhance your self-importance through that method. No life is right or wrong - only you know what feeds your sense of self-importance.
If you believe that feeding off the preprogrammed lives of television, movie, book and Internet celebrities gives you a hollow sense of self-importance, then you have the opportunity to unplug yourself from the mass media feeding tube and find something in yourself that nourishes your self-importance. Again, mine just happens to be sitting here and writing. Many writers have that same sense of self-importance. Feeding ourselves through writing. Many readers have the complementary sense of self-importance by reading writers' words. Or seeing writers' words put into action on stage and screen, in Presidential speeches or Internet broadcasts. In other words, some people enjoy scripting life and some enjoy have their lives scripted. Some want nothing to do with either and live in silence.
I've said it more than once and will say it again. Words are lies. These words have no life of their own. They live and die in the moment, only having meaning between the time my synaptic connections put them into order and my eyes verified they were typed by my fingers. Thus, I am living a lie. I take my self-importance from that fact. I am living proof that words are unimportant, wanting no money for my writing because it has no inherent value. I can only be me and will not put out words for reading by anyone other than me because only I know the value of these words to my self-importance.
Do you understand what I'm saying? I am telling you that you are important. You have value. You are more than any words I could ever put down. I could put initials on here like R.T. and M.B.C. and show a subset of humans with English first names and last names (or nicknames) that they've reached a level of Internet stardom for as long as this blog exists in the World Wide Web (including eventual permanent archival textual storage on archive.org). But all of you, and that includes me when one of you looks at me and makes me a you to you, you have self-importance. You use it. You abuse it. You neglect it. You reflect it. It doesn't matter what it is, live it. Be your self-importance. And be sure to thank yourself 30 years from now for establishing a level of self-importance at this age that you didn't even know you wanted to enjoy 30 years later. It's not as weird as it sounds. Thirty years is not that long. It's only a percentage of your life. 200% or 33%, either way, it's just a number. Focus on the self-importance.
And don't forget that other crap I said that's a condensed, zipped up version of a few millennia of human observation. Sorry, I'm laughing at myself because I've forgotten what was so important. Uh...umm, what did I say? Oh yeah, have kids and take care of your family. And that other part that I said? Dang. It was important, too. A-ha! I remembered. These words are a lie. I'm still stuck in a life of three dimensions, x/y/z, that's moving through a fourth dimension, t, that's bound to figure out the other dimensions before it breaks through to a dimensionless existence. Then maybe I'll figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with my life!
I'm sitting here with all this technology supporting this blog, understanding many parts and levels of what makes the technology work and yet understanding that technology in and of itself is unimportant. That, my close friends and readers, is the essence of self-importance - spending time alone with unimportant stuff to feed our self-importance. Buried alive in my computer graveyard. Harmonious contradiction. Buonas noches, lectores preciosos.
What Law Suits You
What are you learning in this moment? And I don't mean the words you're interpreting on the fly and which you're building sets of thoughts upon. I mean you. What are you learning about you? After all, I'm not here. You're alone with these words somewhere else, not with me. There can be only you. Despite our appearances, our socialness, we sense the world as one entity. No one was born at the same time and place as you, although your siblings may have emerged from the womb within a few minutes of each other. No one will die at exactly the same time and place as you, either. You are here for reasons only you know (although we can imagine reasons for being here).
Enough of the esoteric. I was just warming up my fingers and wrists for writing and wrote what came out of me, a random set of words and sentences in one paragraph, not intended to make sense.
Instead, I feel like telling you a quick story, a true story, or at least as true as the person who told it and lived it in front of me wanted it to look real.
Claude was a decade or so older than me. He was shorter in height but taller in stature. He wore thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses issued to him in prison. I met him while he stood in front of a gas burner, heating slices of meat and toasting hoagie buns in order to make sandwiches for customers at the Chicago Dough Company store in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Chicago Dough Company, if it still exists, started out in the little townships surrounding the Windy City. Three fellows, Mike Rose, Mike Feliu and Denny Rogers, had been running a few franchise stores for Pizza Inn and decided they knew enough about the Italian eatery business to stop paying franchise fees to a mother company and start their own. They converted their stores to Chicago Dough Company, using a few family recipes and twists on other recipes to create their own signature foods. Another eatery chain caught on to the success of Chicago Dough Company and opened their competitive business across the street from every Chicago Dough Company store so the three business partners decided to open another store far from this local competitor, using their research of growing regions around the country to open a small store in a tri-cities region in upper east Tennessee. The new store would serve as the flagship eatery, being a true restaurant, as opposed to the semi-fast food style shops of Pizza Inn and Pizza Hut, with a bar, a lobby and other "accouterments" that a fine-dining establishment deserves.
As a teenager freshly returned from his attempt at a freshman year in an academic career at the Georgia Institute of Technology, looking to put some spending money in his pocket while figuring out what to do with the rest of his life, I applied for a job at Chicago Dough Company.
During my interview, I toured the kitchen, where most likely the manager would place me in a job, should I qualify. That's where I met Claude.
"You're Rick? Well, how're you doing? I'm Claude." The short fellow stuck out his greasy hand and gripped rather than shook my hand. "Sorry about the crud. These damn sandwiches are a pain in the ass but hey, it pays the bills, ain't it?"
I nodded. I wondered if there was some other summer job I could get that paid me to work with a person who spoke something other than working English. But then again...if I wanted to be a writer, what better characters to write about 30 years later than fellows like Claude? Hmm...if only I was so forward-thinking!
Jerry Feliu, Mike's younger brother, continued the tour, introducing me to Kerry, Kayla and a few other shift supervisors who looked old and overworked, even though they were in their early 20s.
I got the job and was assigned to the sandwich station with Claude. "So, I guess ol' Feliu told you about me?"
I shook my head.
"He din't? Hell, I thought he warned everybody about me so's that's why I ain't never gotten a partner over on this side of the kitchen."
I shrugged my shoulders. "Sorry."
Claude's arms were like blocks of woods or legs of a table, smooth and solid, and pumped up, as they say. I stared at a tattoo on his right arm while he showed me how to take plastic-wrapped, pre-weighed pieces of meat from the cooler, place them on a frying pan and cook the meat while he threw a few hoagie buns over the gas fire to sear them.
"You like that one? I had that one made for my ma, the one reason I have to thank God for bein' here."
"What is it?"
Claude pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up. "It's a rose intertwined with a snake that has thorns."
I nodded. "So, is that why Jerry was supposed to warn me about you?"
"What? Hell, no. That's nuthin. I murdered my wife and spent ten years in prison for it."
I opened my eyes in mock shock but a twist of mirth. Murder? Was this guy a joker or what.
"Yeah. Like I said, nuthin. You see, I was livin' up in Vermont, a manager for a liquor store, when one of my workers tol' me dat a strange car was sittin' in my driveway. He tol' me he wasn't pullin' my leg but hey, I never trusted my ol' lady so I checked it out. And make sure you turn the meat over after a minute or you'll burn one side. Customers don' like dat."
"Uh-huh."
"So's I drive back to my place and sure 'nuf, there was a beat-up ol' piece of shit car in the driveway. I figure it's a guy come to fix our stopped-up sink like I tol' the ol' lady to get fixed and just walked on in the house. Well, and this is the part that still makes me angry cause it ain't supposed to happen to no guy like me, our bedroom was in the front of the house so I hear my wife gruntin' and screamin' like she's fuckin' real good. I walked straight into...oh, and turn the buns over so you heat the tops just a little but don't scorch 'em. There. And now you flip the meat onto the bun and put the sandwich on this cutting board so's you can add the stuff on this order here. Mustard's in the bottle there. And over there's the onions. Some customers want pizza toppin' on their sandwich so you gotta... Hey, Kayla! I need some black olives. Just slap the stuff on top of the meat, cut in half and you're done. Put some chips and a pickle on the side and walk it over to the waitress station, along with the ticket."
"So, about your wife?"
Claude spun around to me and poked my chest with a finger. "What have you heard about my wife? She knows I killed the first one so she ain't cheatin', I can tell you that!"
I backed up a step. "No, I mean...uh, your first wife?"
"Her! Damn bitch! Where was I?"
"Telling me about making sandwiches?"
"No, 'bout my wife."
"You had walked in the house."
"Oh yeah. So I heard her givin' someone the ol' one-two and stormed into our bedroom. She was fuckin' the damn police officer down the street. He jumped off my wife like he seen a crime in action, reaching for his gun belt. I wunt goin' to let him get me so I reached into my bedside drawer and pulled out my Sat'day night special and took him down in two shots. The ol' lady was screamin' real good by then, crying 'What are you doin'! What are you doin'!' I looked at her and was actually goin' to apologize. Then she said, 'It ain't what it looks like.' The bitch actually said that. That was it! I pointed the gun at her and emptied it into her chest."
I was impressed. "Wow!"
"Yeah? Well, that was that, wunt it? I was fucked. I'd shot my wife and a police officer. So I sat down on the bed, put the gun next to my wife and called the police."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah, it was over and done with. I confessed to the whole thing but the lawyer they gave me wunt me to plead innocent on account of it bein' an 'act of passion.'"
"So what happened?"
"I got twenty since it weren't no premed act. They put it down just as the lawyer said, 'Act of Passion.' 'Cept it wunt my passion that caused the damn mess. It was hers."
"I see."
"Yeah, I'm a law-abidin' citizen. I still am. In prison, I did everythin' they tol' me to do and stayed away from the gangs that wunt to fight all the time. After ten years, the DA tol' me he'd let me go if I left Vermont and never came back. I saluted him and hitched a ride south until I got here and found myself a job. Been here five years now, got a wife and four kids and they treat me wit' the respect I deserve. We gotta 'nother order. What say you try this one and I'll watch you."
I made that sandwich the most perfect embodiment of Claude's instructions I could muster. He approved of my methods, unaware that I was as focused as a person could be who was standing next to the first murderer he'd worked with. I worked with Claude for a year and a half, while I attended college classes at a local extension of a nearby university (what we jokingly called a commuter college, but where I met other interesting characters I'll talk about sometime, including a woman I dated who lived behind the local dirt racetrack and took dating just as seriously as Claude took someone fucking his wife).
Do you follow the laws of your planet? After all, you can't beat gravity. But what about your civilization? Do you know the civil and criminal laws you do and don't obey? I bought an iPod nano a few years ago, the first generation version. Somehow, a class action lawsuit involving the shiny metal surface of the iPod and its tendency to show scratches has ensnared me on a list of potential recipients of free money in a class action settlement. Supposedly, all I have to do is fill out a claim form that arrived in my mailbox recently, return the form and receive up to $37.50. In Claude's case, who was the victim? Is it all right to fuck your neighbor's spouse and expect to live? Is it all right to kill your spouse for fucking your neighbor and expect to get by with it? Is it all right to buy an object with a mirrored surface and expect it to be scratch-resistant? Am I truly a victim if I bought a protective cover for my iPod because I anticipated the mirrored surface to be susceptible to scratches? Instead, is Apple a victim of a frivolous lawsuit? I'll keep the claim form and stick it in a drawer. As much as I like free money, I don't believe that I was victimized. I want to encourage innovation and artistic inventiveness, not subject commercial pieces of art and design to vampires sucking blood out of profitable businesses. I have friends who are lawyers but none of my lawyer friends are iPod or ambulance chasers that I know of. There's enough money to be made in pursuing breaches of contract that are clearly written down without making up unnecessary ones to pay for tennis lessons at the country club.
Enough of the esoteric. I was just warming up my fingers and wrists for writing and wrote what came out of me, a random set of words and sentences in one paragraph, not intended to make sense.
Instead, I feel like telling you a quick story, a true story, or at least as true as the person who told it and lived it in front of me wanted it to look real.
Claude was a decade or so older than me. He was shorter in height but taller in stature. He wore thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses issued to him in prison. I met him while he stood in front of a gas burner, heating slices of meat and toasting hoagie buns in order to make sandwiches for customers at the Chicago Dough Company store in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Chicago Dough Company, if it still exists, started out in the little townships surrounding the Windy City. Three fellows, Mike Rose, Mike Feliu and Denny Rogers, had been running a few franchise stores for Pizza Inn and decided they knew enough about the Italian eatery business to stop paying franchise fees to a mother company and start their own. They converted their stores to Chicago Dough Company, using a few family recipes and twists on other recipes to create their own signature foods. Another eatery chain caught on to the success of Chicago Dough Company and opened their competitive business across the street from every Chicago Dough Company store so the three business partners decided to open another store far from this local competitor, using their research of growing regions around the country to open a small store in a tri-cities region in upper east Tennessee. The new store would serve as the flagship eatery, being a true restaurant, as opposed to the semi-fast food style shops of Pizza Inn and Pizza Hut, with a bar, a lobby and other "accouterments" that a fine-dining establishment deserves.
As a teenager freshly returned from his attempt at a freshman year in an academic career at the Georgia Institute of Technology, looking to put some spending money in his pocket while figuring out what to do with the rest of his life, I applied for a job at Chicago Dough Company.
During my interview, I toured the kitchen, where most likely the manager would place me in a job, should I qualify. That's where I met Claude.
"You're Rick? Well, how're you doing? I'm Claude." The short fellow stuck out his greasy hand and gripped rather than shook my hand. "Sorry about the crud. These damn sandwiches are a pain in the ass but hey, it pays the bills, ain't it?"
I nodded. I wondered if there was some other summer job I could get that paid me to work with a person who spoke something other than working English. But then again...if I wanted to be a writer, what better characters to write about 30 years later than fellows like Claude? Hmm...if only I was so forward-thinking!
Jerry Feliu, Mike's younger brother, continued the tour, introducing me to Kerry, Kayla and a few other shift supervisors who looked old and overworked, even though they were in their early 20s.
I got the job and was assigned to the sandwich station with Claude. "So, I guess ol' Feliu told you about me?"
I shook my head.
"He din't? Hell, I thought he warned everybody about me so's that's why I ain't never gotten a partner over on this side of the kitchen."
I shrugged my shoulders. "Sorry."
Claude's arms were like blocks of woods or legs of a table, smooth and solid, and pumped up, as they say. I stared at a tattoo on his right arm while he showed me how to take plastic-wrapped, pre-weighed pieces of meat from the cooler, place them on a frying pan and cook the meat while he threw a few hoagie buns over the gas fire to sear them.
"You like that one? I had that one made for my ma, the one reason I have to thank God for bein' here."
"What is it?"
Claude pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up. "It's a rose intertwined with a snake that has thorns."
I nodded. "So, is that why Jerry was supposed to warn me about you?"
"What? Hell, no. That's nuthin. I murdered my wife and spent ten years in prison for it."
I opened my eyes in mock shock but a twist of mirth. Murder? Was this guy a joker or what.
"Yeah. Like I said, nuthin. You see, I was livin' up in Vermont, a manager for a liquor store, when one of my workers tol' me dat a strange car was sittin' in my driveway. He tol' me he wasn't pullin' my leg but hey, I never trusted my ol' lady so I checked it out. And make sure you turn the meat over after a minute or you'll burn one side. Customers don' like dat."
"Uh-huh."
"So's I drive back to my place and sure 'nuf, there was a beat-up ol' piece of shit car in the driveway. I figure it's a guy come to fix our stopped-up sink like I tol' the ol' lady to get fixed and just walked on in the house. Well, and this is the part that still makes me angry cause it ain't supposed to happen to no guy like me, our bedroom was in the front of the house so I hear my wife gruntin' and screamin' like she's fuckin' real good. I walked straight into...oh, and turn the buns over so you heat the tops just a little but don't scorch 'em. There. And now you flip the meat onto the bun and put the sandwich on this cutting board so's you can add the stuff on this order here. Mustard's in the bottle there. And over there's the onions. Some customers want pizza toppin' on their sandwich so you gotta... Hey, Kayla! I need some black olives. Just slap the stuff on top of the meat, cut in half and you're done. Put some chips and a pickle on the side and walk it over to the waitress station, along with the ticket."
"So, about your wife?"
Claude spun around to me and poked my chest with a finger. "What have you heard about my wife? She knows I killed the first one so she ain't cheatin', I can tell you that!"
I backed up a step. "No, I mean...uh, your first wife?"
"Her! Damn bitch! Where was I?"
"Telling me about making sandwiches?"
"No, 'bout my wife."
"You had walked in the house."
"Oh yeah. So I heard her givin' someone the ol' one-two and stormed into our bedroom. She was fuckin' the damn police officer down the street. He jumped off my wife like he seen a crime in action, reaching for his gun belt. I wunt goin' to let him get me so I reached into my bedside drawer and pulled out my Sat'day night special and took him down in two shots. The ol' lady was screamin' real good by then, crying 'What are you doin'! What are you doin'!' I looked at her and was actually goin' to apologize. Then she said, 'It ain't what it looks like.' The bitch actually said that. That was it! I pointed the gun at her and emptied it into her chest."
I was impressed. "Wow!"
"Yeah? Well, that was that, wunt it? I was fucked. I'd shot my wife and a police officer. So I sat down on the bed, put the gun next to my wife and called the police."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah, it was over and done with. I confessed to the whole thing but the lawyer they gave me wunt me to plead innocent on account of it bein' an 'act of passion.'"
"So what happened?"
"I got twenty since it weren't no premed act. They put it down just as the lawyer said, 'Act of Passion.' 'Cept it wunt my passion that caused the damn mess. It was hers."
"I see."
"Yeah, I'm a law-abidin' citizen. I still am. In prison, I did everythin' they tol' me to do and stayed away from the gangs that wunt to fight all the time. After ten years, the DA tol' me he'd let me go if I left Vermont and never came back. I saluted him and hitched a ride south until I got here and found myself a job. Been here five years now, got a wife and four kids and they treat me wit' the respect I deserve. We gotta 'nother order. What say you try this one and I'll watch you."
I made that sandwich the most perfect embodiment of Claude's instructions I could muster. He approved of my methods, unaware that I was as focused as a person could be who was standing next to the first murderer he'd worked with. I worked with Claude for a year and a half, while I attended college classes at a local extension of a nearby university (what we jokingly called a commuter college, but where I met other interesting characters I'll talk about sometime, including a woman I dated who lived behind the local dirt racetrack and took dating just as seriously as Claude took someone fucking his wife).
Do you follow the laws of your planet? After all, you can't beat gravity. But what about your civilization? Do you know the civil and criminal laws you do and don't obey? I bought an iPod nano a few years ago, the first generation version. Somehow, a class action lawsuit involving the shiny metal surface of the iPod and its tendency to show scratches has ensnared me on a list of potential recipients of free money in a class action settlement. Supposedly, all I have to do is fill out a claim form that arrived in my mailbox recently, return the form and receive up to $37.50. In Claude's case, who was the victim? Is it all right to fuck your neighbor's spouse and expect to live? Is it all right to kill your spouse for fucking your neighbor and expect to get by with it? Is it all right to buy an object with a mirrored surface and expect it to be scratch-resistant? Am I truly a victim if I bought a protective cover for my iPod because I anticipated the mirrored surface to be susceptible to scratches? Instead, is Apple a victim of a frivolous lawsuit? I'll keep the claim form and stick it in a drawer. As much as I like free money, I don't believe that I was victimized. I want to encourage innovation and artistic inventiveness, not subject commercial pieces of art and design to vampires sucking blood out of profitable businesses. I have friends who are lawyers but none of my lawyer friends are iPod or ambulance chasers that I know of. There's enough money to be made in pursuing breaches of contract that are clearly written down without making up unnecessary ones to pay for tennis lessons at the country club.
17 April 2009
All That's Grand Is Not Opera
Got up. Performed self-styled Tai Chi exercise with two 10-lb weights. Spent the day at the local hospital with friend who had medical procedure. Watched patience and practice as one. Read from the book, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" (a/k/a GEB). Listened to body rhythms. Stayed with friend during afternoon recovery in hospital, watching GSN on LCD TV while hooked to IV.
Returned home, graded homework, prepared lesson plan for class. Listened to Qinqiang opera (one example performance here). Meditated. Place in universe not in question - my life is the space between a folded cookie and the paper fortune inside - you open cookie and I fill the emptiness of the universe, completely. I understand you understand you understand I don't. We are not these words. Hofstadter and Laing roped me in and tangled me up long ago. What's next? Breaking through the barrier that boxes me into a belief of a universe with x, y and z coordinates. I am not on one side of the skin touching the keys that imprint these black marks on the screen. I am both sides, neither side nor skin. Truth is invisible. I can see that now.
Returned home, graded homework, prepared lesson plan for class. Listened to Qinqiang opera (one example performance here). Meditated. Place in universe not in question - my life is the space between a folded cookie and the paper fortune inside - you open cookie and I fill the emptiness of the universe, completely. I understand you understand you understand I don't. We are not these words. Hofstadter and Laing roped me in and tangled me up long ago. What's next? Breaking through the barrier that boxes me into a belief of a universe with x, y and z coordinates. I am not on one side of the skin touching the keys that imprint these black marks on the screen. I am both sides, neither side nor skin. Truth is invisible. I can see that now.
16 April 2009
Going global
What have you been doing your whole life that you would be willing to post on an Internet contest where random judges (anyone who is an Internet user or knows someone who is) would determine you deserve to be judged best? While grading papers this afternoon and preparing the lesson plan for my next class (Intro to Computer Programming), I jumped over to YouTube and listened to the YouTube symphony orchestra perform at Carnegie Hall.
I don't know how many of you performed in your local grade school or home school band / orchestra but if you did then you've experienced some of what the folks in the YouTube video went through. Except in your case you probably auditioned in front of judges who may or may not have been hidden behind screens in the room with you. Then, you received notice (either on a piece of paper in the audition location or through remote notification (phone/email/etc.)) that you had been selected as a member of a regional band/orchestra. Some weeks or months later, you joined the other members for some number of hours of practice. Then, you performed a few pieces for friends, family and community attendees of the concert by your select group. In my day, family members could buy LP records of their child's concert (long since surpassed by audiocassette, video, CD and/or DVD by now). I'm sure my parents still have a record or two of my baritone horn playing with other less-than-great band members.
I haven't been intimately involved in concert performances in a long time, either as participant or audience (perhaps last when I took a music appreciation course at UAH and attended a few concerts as class requirements around the turn of the century). Therefore, I don't know if this Internet judging is the first time or a common occurrence. What I do know is that it's a great indication of the positive outgrowths of virtual communities.
What if we could do this in every aspect of our daily lives, finding the truly global expert for something? How many of us already seek global expertise not through word of mouth from our friends, family and neighbors but through our fingers, bypassing the old method of the telephone book, and using the electronic search engine of our choice? What if we could get a multivote on everything we needed or wanted?
This is not an earth-shaking idea. It's just little ol' me finding interesting tidbits to pass the time as I work on schoolteacher stuff. I'd like a multivote on the best BMW mechanic in the area, if anyone is up for it - don't think it's worth shipping my car or the global expert around the world to get them together! My Bimmer's making funny noises and needs some TLC from someone with expertise in German car care.
I don't know how many of you performed in your local grade school or home school band / orchestra but if you did then you've experienced some of what the folks in the YouTube video went through. Except in your case you probably auditioned in front of judges who may or may not have been hidden behind screens in the room with you. Then, you received notice (either on a piece of paper in the audition location or through remote notification (phone/email/etc.)) that you had been selected as a member of a regional band/orchestra. Some weeks or months later, you joined the other members for some number of hours of practice. Then, you performed a few pieces for friends, family and community attendees of the concert by your select group. In my day, family members could buy LP records of their child's concert (long since surpassed by audiocassette, video, CD and/or DVD by now). I'm sure my parents still have a record or two of my baritone horn playing with other less-than-great band members.
I haven't been intimately involved in concert performances in a long time, either as participant or audience (perhaps last when I took a music appreciation course at UAH and attended a few concerts as class requirements around the turn of the century). Therefore, I don't know if this Internet judging is the first time or a common occurrence. What I do know is that it's a great indication of the positive outgrowths of virtual communities.
What if we could do this in every aspect of our daily lives, finding the truly global expert for something? How many of us already seek global expertise not through word of mouth from our friends, family and neighbors but through our fingers, bypassing the old method of the telephone book, and using the electronic search engine of our choice? What if we could get a multivote on everything we needed or wanted?
This is not an earth-shaking idea. It's just little ol' me finding interesting tidbits to pass the time as I work on schoolteacher stuff. I'd like a multivote on the best BMW mechanic in the area, if anyone is up for it - don't think it's worth shipping my car or the global expert around the world to get them together! My Bimmer's making funny noises and needs some TLC from someone with expertise in German car care.
Catching Up With Comments
Just to let y'all know who had wondered what happened to the free downloads of my books on createspace, I took them down. I had received enough comments to let me know what I needed to do to clean up unclear passages and rearrange chapters that'll help me further obfuscate the plot.
BTW, I got bored with WNCW and changed over to my favorite public radio station, WETS, that broadcasts from the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, where in the early 1980s I took a few journalism and broadcasting classes when I thought I'd enjoy being a low-paid journalist. Why don't I listen to my local public radio station? The local public radio station in my area, WLRH, is a pretentious, fine-arts, classical radio station that long ago gave up its roots and appeals to those I wouldn't want to hang out with (not for lack of trying, I can tell you). I prefer WETS for its sticking to the songs of my youth such as those played during the "roots and branches" song segment. Apparently, WNCW has very little of the roots music programming I used to enjoy there - from their playlist, it appears all that's left is on Sunday afternoons.
I'm thinking about taking a break from blogging. Sitting here is okay when the weather's ducky or cold - now that spring's sprung and summer's around the corner, think I'll enjoy the great outdoors once again and get away from this box of electronic parts for a while. Talk to y'all soon!
BTW, I got bored with WNCW and changed over to my favorite public radio station, WETS, that broadcasts from the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, where in the early 1980s I took a few journalism and broadcasting classes when I thought I'd enjoy being a low-paid journalist. Why don't I listen to my local public radio station? The local public radio station in my area, WLRH, is a pretentious, fine-arts, classical radio station that long ago gave up its roots and appeals to those I wouldn't want to hang out with (not for lack of trying, I can tell you). I prefer WETS for its sticking to the songs of my youth such as those played during the "roots and branches" song segment. Apparently, WNCW has very little of the roots music programming I used to enjoy there - from their playlist, it appears all that's left is on Sunday afternoons.
I'm thinking about taking a break from blogging. Sitting here is okay when the weather's ducky or cold - now that spring's sprung and summer's around the corner, think I'll enjoy the great outdoors once again and get away from this box of electronic parts for a while. Talk to y'all soon!
The Wreck of the Burning Light
Did I tell you about watching a group of birds strip the deciduous holly of its berries the other day? Looking through my dirty window and the spider web-covered screen, I could barely see the small birds' distinguishing features, mainly a black body with white streaks on the tail feathers. I'm not a bird expert, having just passed my Bird Watching Boy Scout merit badge requirements when I was a wee teen so don't expect me to recall the bird's taxonomic details 35 years later. I am constantly blown away by the wonders of the universe where I concentrate my senses locally. Watching birds communicate the location of a berry buffet will last me for weeks.
I finished reading that pop novel I picked up off the top of the discount book pile. Now I feel completely worthless, nondescript, monotonous, boring, repetitive, conforming to typical patterns of my genotype. The author quoted books I've just been reading as well as having a main character whose daily habits mirror many of mine. Now I know what it feels like to have your life stolen for literature. It makes me feel useless, as if my life is not my own. Wait! My life is not my own! lol
I have given in to more conformity by this morning opening up the website for WNCW, a radio station in the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, the area where I grew up and which formed part of my personality (the other part was formed in south Florida). I listen to the web stream of the radio station broadcast, hearing a few songs scattered among the announcements, no different than commercial radio stations, but with different types of "adverts." However, the mountain accents of the radio DJs are familiar to me. Home.
Reminds me of some of the earlier music influences such as Bruce Cockburn and Gordon Lightfoot (thus the title of this blog), balladeers both from Canada, I believe. And John Denver, of course. Yes, I admit I grew up listening to those guys. Some days a simple ballad is enough to satisfy my literary rhythmic needs. Other days, a bit of the Carter Family would tickle my tapping toes. I'm one of those college folk music types, I guess - "smart" lyrics written to match a simple acoustic guitar melody. There's a whole set of music that fits in or around that category, including punk, grunge, mountain, hillbilly, blues, bluegrass, honky tonk, juke joint and others.
Speaking of musical tastes, I heard a memorial service for a deceased older man, who had requested that his young wife/widow read a couple of poems that he liked and some songs he frequently listened to, and then let the attendees stand up and tell stories of the man that they wanted to remember aloud. I told the story of the time he drove through Knoxville, back when it had the reputation of "Malfunction Junction" in the 1970s, when he spent hours and hours backed up on the freeway and swore never to drive through that town again, which he didn't, a reflection of the man's strength in his beliefs. That memorial service prompted me to create my own set of songs and poems to be read/played at my memorial service. I suppose we all want to be remembered a certain way - having a preacher read Bible verses over piped-in church organ music being played in the background is not exactly what I want, although a few old church hymns figure into the service, as follows:
Program of Songs/Poems/Skits to be played/performed at my memorial service
1. Fanfare For The Common Man – Aaron Copeland
2. The following poem written by me, to be read by Ann Plough, if she’s available
These are my skyscrapers
No Empire State Building,
No Sears Tower or
Big Ben.
They shelter me nonetheless.
Tall,
Slender,
Alive –
Here without any assistance from my kind.
I cannot describe the noise rain makes upon their leaves…
-- White noise?
-- Light applause?
They bend to accept the wetness.
If only I had a palette of colors to describe them,
To make up for starving phrases like
“shades of green” and “variations of brown.”
They do not talk.
They speak of time.
Summer showers pass
And now they bend toward the sun.
I’m nothing but a lucky observer –
Fortune smiles upon me –
While standing beneath the treed canopy,
White noise giving way to dripping sounds,
Rising and falling with the passing breeze.
The bluejays call.
A hickory nut plops.
A cardinal chirps.
The finches reappear.
I’d rather scrape the sky with trees
Than touch the clouds with glass and steel.
10th July 2007
3. James Bond 007 “classic” theme – Henry Mancini
4. Requiem. IV. Pie Jesu (B flat major) by Gabriel Fauré – to be sung by church choir member
5. Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss – performed by Eumir Deodata
6. Stardust – Nat King Cole
7. Summertime – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong
8. Autumn Leaves – Miles Davis
9. It Was A Very Good Year – Frank Sinatra
10. The following poem written by me, to be read by whoever wishes to read it
The Artist In Me
The artist in me cannot resist this momentary desire
To put on paper words that burn, words that die, like fire.
The artist in me cannot deny this denial of the work ethic.
What is the work ethic?
What is reality?
I hear people speak of inner worlds and outer worlds,
How one is real, the other false.
I hear myself laugh and laughing.
"We see through the filter of our experience," one says.
"We do not see the lens through which we look," says the other.
The one I heard that said the most:
"Reality is only seven letters."
– 26th September 1985
11. Being Green – Kermit
12. Georgy Girl – The Seekers
13. Downtown – Petula Clark
14. Oh Shenandoah – Tennessee Ernie Ford
15. Carol of the Bells – to be sung by church choir
16. Ave Maria, as set to the tune of Ellens Gesang III, D839, Op 52 no 6, 1825 by Franz Schubert – to be sung by female soprano choir singer
17. Bist Du Bei Mir by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel – to be sung by male tenor choir singer (in the style as sung by Rolando Villazón in the movie soundtrack, “Joyeux Noël”)
18. The following by Deodata
-- a. Moonlight Serenade
-- b. Nights in White Satin
-- c. Pavane for a Dead Princess
19. The following by Chuck Mangione
-- a. Children of Sanchez
-- b. Land of Make Believe
20. L-O-V-E – Nat King Cole
21. What’s It All About Alfie? – Dionne Warwick
22. What’s New, Pussycat? – Tom Jones
23. What It Was, Was Football – Andy Griffith
24. Tea For Two – Tommy Dorsey version
25. Joy To The World – Three Dog Night
26. Poem, “Tennessee Easter, 1998”, written by and to be read by Jennifer Wheelock
27. Brazilian Lullabye – Luiz Bonfa
28. Jerusalem – to be sung by church choir
29. Manhã de Carnaval – Luiz Bonfa
30. When I Survey The Wondrous Cross – to be sung by church choir
31. Preludio Suite 1 BMV 1007 by J.S. Bach – Andres Segovia
32. Ol Man River – Paul Robeson
33. Radio-Activity – Kraftwerk
34. Autobahn – Kraftwerk
35. Albedo 0.39 – Vangelis
36. She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
37. Let X=X – Laurie Anderson
38. O Superman – Laurie Anderson
39. The following poem written by me, to be read by David Young
My religion is based on a form
My religion is based on a form,
Neither simple nor complex,
Known nor unknown,
A form that can never be perfected.
The form is based on the shape of a wave,
A wave that completes a revolution,
That revolves around an unfixed position.
The wave does not exist
But its form is imitated by physical phenomena.
My religion is based on a few short words --
Everything goes in a circle.
– 3rd October 1985
40. The following from Philip Glass’s album, Songs from Liquid Days
-- a. Changing Opinion
-- b. Lightning
-- c. In Liquid Days
-- d. Open The Kingdom
-- e. Freezing
-- f. Forgetting
41. Geodesic Dance (Electronic Etude) – Walter Carlos
42. London Calling – The Clash
43. Holiday In Cambodia – Dead Kennedys
44. Conjunction Junction, Grammar Rock – Schoolhouse Rock!
45. She’s A Witch – Monty Python and the Holy Grail
46. Always Look On The Bright Side of Life – Monty Python
47. Rocky Top – University of Tennessee Marching Band
48. Pavane in F-sharp minor, op. 50 – Gabriel Fauré
49. Blue Moon – Mel Tormé
50. The following by John Denver
-- a. Leaving On a Jet Plane
-- b. Calypso
-- c. Annie’s Song
-- d. Poems, Prayers and Promises
-- e. This Old Guitar
51. The following by Barry Manilow
-- a. Even Now
-- b. Ships
-- c. One Voice
-- d. Can’t Smile Without You
-- e. If Tomorrow Never Comes
-- f. The Old Songs
52. Are You Lonesome Tonight – Elvis Presley
53. It Is Well With My Soul – to be sung by church choir
54. The following from the movie soundtrack, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
-- a. Man of Constant Sorrow – Soggy Bottom Boys
-- b. I Am Weary, Let Me Rest – The Cox Family
-- c. O Death – Ralph Stanley
-- d. Lonesome Valley – The Fairfield Four
55. Morning Has Broken – Cat Stevens
56. When I Fall In Love – Nat King Cole
57. Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Neil Diamond
58. American Pie – Don McLean
59. The Lord’s Prayer – Sister Janet Mead
60. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – church choir
61. Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts.
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
62. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the movie, “Mary Poppins” – Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke
63. Sir Walter Raleigh Tobacco sketch – Bob Newhart
64. Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon and Garfunkel
65. Sound of Silence – Simon and Garfunkel
66. Tennessee Waltz – University of Tennessee Marching Band
67. My Way – Frank Sinatra
68. The following poem written by me, to be read by Mike McGinty, if he’s available
Sleepfulness and Wakelessness
I opened my eyes and the dawn spoke to me in a giant whisper, a sound that hinted of warm afternoons and apples falling onto fresh-cut grass.
I closed my eyes to recall the dreams, the insane fantasies from the inner universe untouched by Time.
My eyes opened or closed, my thoughts see the dawn and the dreams as one. No beginning or end, no infinity in which to hide, both time and timelessness intertwined to form my world, an existence totally apart from me but really me apart from the world; "I" has no bounds.
This world a highway and I a driver asleep at the wheel.
Thank God, God bless you, Goddamn -- God takes many forms.
"Yessir. Just visitin’ this planet. Won’t be here long."
I’m off to dream a world of peace where sleeping forms control.
I’m off to Never-Never Land, never to return.
I’m gone. Goodbye. Goodnight.
– 22nd January 1986
69. Shalom, Chaverim! Farewell, Good Friends – to be sung by church choir and congregation
70. The Lord Bless You and Keep You, with Sevenfold Amen – to be sung by church choir
71. The following poem written by me, to be read by Marsha Hosner
She Sits
She sits
But she doesn’t sit for long
She waits for no one
Others wait for her
No time for her
Because time is meaningless
Words do not touch
The stirrings of her soul
She prepares each movement
Like a tai chi master in meditation
-- The turn of a wrist
-- Raising an eyebrow
-- Sitting in a chair
Listening for the silence between heartbeats
Music only she knows
Folds in her skin deepen
Aging finely maybe wisely
She sleeps
But she doesn’t sleep for long
Trumpets blaring ideas deep within her brain
Push her out of bed
Ideas scribbled on the napkins of last night’s mind
Fade too quickly for human use
Extraterrestrials passing by the planet
Record the thoughts for later dissemination
A purpose for being
Being not the purpose
She moves on
Like water from a fallen bamboo flute into a pond
-- Fish breathing her in
-- Exhaling her out
Discordant sounds of a Qinqiang
Playing up her strengths
The paper bird pales in the sun
And flies away
– 10th Dec 2004
72. Looney Tunes ending with “That’s All Folks” by Bugs Bunny
I finished reading that pop novel I picked up off the top of the discount book pile. Now I feel completely worthless, nondescript, monotonous, boring, repetitive, conforming to typical patterns of my genotype. The author quoted books I've just been reading as well as having a main character whose daily habits mirror many of mine. Now I know what it feels like to have your life stolen for literature. It makes me feel useless, as if my life is not my own. Wait! My life is not my own! lol
I have given in to more conformity by this morning opening up the website for WNCW, a radio station in the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, the area where I grew up and which formed part of my personality (the other part was formed in south Florida). I listen to the web stream of the radio station broadcast, hearing a few songs scattered among the announcements, no different than commercial radio stations, but with different types of "adverts." However, the mountain accents of the radio DJs are familiar to me. Home.
Reminds me of some of the earlier music influences such as Bruce Cockburn and Gordon Lightfoot (thus the title of this blog), balladeers both from Canada, I believe. And John Denver, of course. Yes, I admit I grew up listening to those guys. Some days a simple ballad is enough to satisfy my literary rhythmic needs. Other days, a bit of the Carter Family would tickle my tapping toes. I'm one of those college folk music types, I guess - "smart" lyrics written to match a simple acoustic guitar melody. There's a whole set of music that fits in or around that category, including punk, grunge, mountain, hillbilly, blues, bluegrass, honky tonk, juke joint and others.
Speaking of musical tastes, I heard a memorial service for a deceased older man, who had requested that his young wife/widow read a couple of poems that he liked and some songs he frequently listened to, and then let the attendees stand up and tell stories of the man that they wanted to remember aloud. I told the story of the time he drove through Knoxville, back when it had the reputation of "Malfunction Junction" in the 1970s, when he spent hours and hours backed up on the freeway and swore never to drive through that town again, which he didn't, a reflection of the man's strength in his beliefs. That memorial service prompted me to create my own set of songs and poems to be read/played at my memorial service. I suppose we all want to be remembered a certain way - having a preacher read Bible verses over piped-in church organ music being played in the background is not exactly what I want, although a few old church hymns figure into the service, as follows:
Program of Songs/Poems/Skits to be played/performed at my memorial service
1. Fanfare For The Common Man – Aaron Copeland
2. The following poem written by me, to be read by Ann Plough, if she’s available
These are my skyscrapers
No Empire State Building,
No Sears Tower or
Big Ben.
They shelter me nonetheless.
Tall,
Slender,
Alive –
Here without any assistance from my kind.
I cannot describe the noise rain makes upon their leaves…
-- White noise?
-- Light applause?
They bend to accept the wetness.
If only I had a palette of colors to describe them,
To make up for starving phrases like
“shades of green” and “variations of brown.”
They do not talk.
They speak of time.
Summer showers pass
And now they bend toward the sun.
I’m nothing but a lucky observer –
Fortune smiles upon me –
While standing beneath the treed canopy,
White noise giving way to dripping sounds,
Rising and falling with the passing breeze.
The bluejays call.
A hickory nut plops.
A cardinal chirps.
The finches reappear.
I’d rather scrape the sky with trees
Than touch the clouds with glass and steel.
10th July 2007
3. James Bond 007 “classic” theme – Henry Mancini
4. Requiem. IV. Pie Jesu (B flat major) by Gabriel Fauré – to be sung by church choir member
5. Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss – performed by Eumir Deodata
6. Stardust – Nat King Cole
7. Summertime – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong
8. Autumn Leaves – Miles Davis
9. It Was A Very Good Year – Frank Sinatra
10. The following poem written by me, to be read by whoever wishes to read it
The Artist In Me
The artist in me cannot resist this momentary desire
To put on paper words that burn, words that die, like fire.
The artist in me cannot deny this denial of the work ethic.
What is the work ethic?
What is reality?
I hear people speak of inner worlds and outer worlds,
How one is real, the other false.
I hear myself laugh and laughing.
"We see through the filter of our experience," one says.
"We do not see the lens through which we look," says the other.
The one I heard that said the most:
"Reality is only seven letters."
– 26th September 1985
11. Being Green – Kermit
12. Georgy Girl – The Seekers
13. Downtown – Petula Clark
14. Oh Shenandoah – Tennessee Ernie Ford
15. Carol of the Bells – to be sung by church choir
16. Ave Maria, as set to the tune of Ellens Gesang III, D839, Op 52 no 6, 1825 by Franz Schubert – to be sung by female soprano choir singer
17. Bist Du Bei Mir by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel – to be sung by male tenor choir singer (in the style as sung by Rolando Villazón in the movie soundtrack, “Joyeux Noël”)
18. The following by Deodata
-- a. Moonlight Serenade
-- b. Nights in White Satin
-- c. Pavane for a Dead Princess
19. The following by Chuck Mangione
-- a. Children of Sanchez
-- b. Land of Make Believe
20. L-O-V-E – Nat King Cole
21. What’s It All About Alfie? – Dionne Warwick
22. What’s New, Pussycat? – Tom Jones
23. What It Was, Was Football – Andy Griffith
24. Tea For Two – Tommy Dorsey version
25. Joy To The World – Three Dog Night
26. Poem, “Tennessee Easter, 1998”, written by and to be read by Jennifer Wheelock
27. Brazilian Lullabye – Luiz Bonfa
28. Jerusalem – to be sung by church choir
29. Manhã de Carnaval – Luiz Bonfa
30. When I Survey The Wondrous Cross – to be sung by church choir
31. Preludio Suite 1 BMV 1007 by J.S. Bach – Andres Segovia
32. Ol Man River – Paul Robeson
33. Radio-Activity – Kraftwerk
34. Autobahn – Kraftwerk
35. Albedo 0.39 – Vangelis
36. She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
37. Let X=X – Laurie Anderson
38. O Superman – Laurie Anderson
39. The following poem written by me, to be read by David Young
My religion is based on a form
My religion is based on a form,
Neither simple nor complex,
Known nor unknown,
A form that can never be perfected.
The form is based on the shape of a wave,
A wave that completes a revolution,
That revolves around an unfixed position.
The wave does not exist
But its form is imitated by physical phenomena.
My religion is based on a few short words --
Everything goes in a circle.
– 3rd October 1985
40. The following from Philip Glass’s album, Songs from Liquid Days
-- a. Changing Opinion
-- b. Lightning
-- c. In Liquid Days
-- d. Open The Kingdom
-- e. Freezing
-- f. Forgetting
41. Geodesic Dance (Electronic Etude) – Walter Carlos
42. London Calling – The Clash
43. Holiday In Cambodia – Dead Kennedys
44. Conjunction Junction, Grammar Rock – Schoolhouse Rock!
45. She’s A Witch – Monty Python and the Holy Grail
46. Always Look On The Bright Side of Life – Monty Python
47. Rocky Top – University of Tennessee Marching Band
48. Pavane in F-sharp minor, op. 50 – Gabriel Fauré
49. Blue Moon – Mel Tormé
50. The following by John Denver
-- a. Leaving On a Jet Plane
-- b. Calypso
-- c. Annie’s Song
-- d. Poems, Prayers and Promises
-- e. This Old Guitar
51. The following by Barry Manilow
-- a. Even Now
-- b. Ships
-- c. One Voice
-- d. Can’t Smile Without You
-- e. If Tomorrow Never Comes
-- f. The Old Songs
52. Are You Lonesome Tonight – Elvis Presley
53. It Is Well With My Soul – to be sung by church choir
54. The following from the movie soundtrack, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
-- a. Man of Constant Sorrow – Soggy Bottom Boys
-- b. I Am Weary, Let Me Rest – The Cox Family
-- c. O Death – Ralph Stanley
-- d. Lonesome Valley – The Fairfield Four
55. Morning Has Broken – Cat Stevens
56. When I Fall In Love – Nat King Cole
57. Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Neil Diamond
58. American Pie – Don McLean
59. The Lord’s Prayer – Sister Janet Mead
60. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – church choir
61. Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts.
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
62. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the movie, “Mary Poppins” – Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke
63. Sir Walter Raleigh Tobacco sketch – Bob Newhart
64. Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon and Garfunkel
65. Sound of Silence – Simon and Garfunkel
66. Tennessee Waltz – University of Tennessee Marching Band
67. My Way – Frank Sinatra
68. The following poem written by me, to be read by Mike McGinty, if he’s available
Sleepfulness and Wakelessness
I opened my eyes and the dawn spoke to me in a giant whisper, a sound that hinted of warm afternoons and apples falling onto fresh-cut grass.
I closed my eyes to recall the dreams, the insane fantasies from the inner universe untouched by Time.
My eyes opened or closed, my thoughts see the dawn and the dreams as one. No beginning or end, no infinity in which to hide, both time and timelessness intertwined to form my world, an existence totally apart from me but really me apart from the world; "I" has no bounds.
This world a highway and I a driver asleep at the wheel.
Thank God, God bless you, Goddamn -- God takes many forms.
"Yessir. Just visitin’ this planet. Won’t be here long."
I’m off to dream a world of peace where sleeping forms control.
I’m off to Never-Never Land, never to return.
I’m gone. Goodbye. Goodnight.
– 22nd January 1986
69. Shalom, Chaverim! Farewell, Good Friends – to be sung by church choir and congregation
70. The Lord Bless You and Keep You, with Sevenfold Amen – to be sung by church choir
71. The following poem written by me, to be read by Marsha Hosner
She Sits
She sits
But she doesn’t sit for long
She waits for no one
Others wait for her
No time for her
Because time is meaningless
Words do not touch
The stirrings of her soul
She prepares each movement
Like a tai chi master in meditation
-- The turn of a wrist
-- Raising an eyebrow
-- Sitting in a chair
Listening for the silence between heartbeats
Music only she knows
Folds in her skin deepen
Aging finely maybe wisely
She sleeps
But she doesn’t sleep for long
Trumpets blaring ideas deep within her brain
Push her out of bed
Ideas scribbled on the napkins of last night’s mind
Fade too quickly for human use
Extraterrestrials passing by the planet
Record the thoughts for later dissemination
A purpose for being
Being not the purpose
She moves on
Like water from a fallen bamboo flute into a pond
-- Fish breathing her in
-- Exhaling her out
Discordant sounds of a Qinqiang
Playing up her strengths
The paper bird pales in the sun
And flies away
– 10th Dec 2004
72. Looney Tunes ending with “That’s All Folks” by Bugs Bunny
15 April 2009
On The Boulevard Where You Try To Breathe
Watched the movie, "Sunset Boulevard." Feel trapped. Like I'm the character Joe Gillis played by William Holden. Sure, I wanna have a nice relationship with you, honey, but see, I'm owned. My millions don't belong to me. My number's already been called. I ain't available no more. I'd like to feel we could have a wonderful relationship but it won't happen. Flirting's losing its fresh flavor 'cause I'm tired of the same ol' taste it leaves in my mouth - dry and empty, like gin. You best run along now and find some other guy to pay you some attention. I'll just sit here and drink myself into oblivion. There are plenty of guys like me around, even better ones. Only next time, you ask 'em right up front if the money he's throwin' around is his or someone else's. It'll save you a lot of heartaches. You ain't gonna find your sugar daddy if he's some gal's sugar baby. Do us both a favor and move along. I'm getting an itch I can't scratch and you're making it worse just standin' there. Take your curves down a different avenue. Yeah, there you go. That's a good girl. You'll forget about me tomorrow. They always do.
This Side of The Line
While putting together a plot about the lives of schoolmates, I wonder about the adult lives of those who cheated their way through primary / secondary school. Was their cheating and plagiarism indicative of their core personalities or only a reflection of the human adaptive survival response (also known as peer pressure)?
In the classes I teach, I have a small set of students who treat their schooling with the professionalism I've expected to see from senior managers or executives. Their homework papers are typed up and well-organized, and they do not show any signs of copying, cheating or plagiarism. There's another set of students whose homework perhaps shows that a combination of students divided up the homework into mini-assignments that they shared with each other and put into one master document, with the only difference being the name at the top of the turned-in homework. In all these cases, I see signs of initiative, something that, if I was a manager and they were my employees, I would want to have displayed and put to company use.
But I ask myself, where is the line that divides initiative from fraud? I don't look at this from an ethical or moral stance but a legal one, the only one where people risk their livelihoods. It's in this realm where I add value to students' learning. If they want ethical or moral training, then they should seek religious adherents or philosophers, not me.
In class, I have tried to pay special attention to the ones who best display professional school and business skills, pointing out to the others that all of them can reach these same standards, if they choose.
It's the same thing with the story I'm working on. We humans are malleable. We have general personality traits that indicate our propensity for action but do not clearly define the line we will or won't cross when put into a specific situation. Especially when the situation is one that in our thoughts puts us in survival mode. The ol' fight-or-flight syndrome. Adrenaline at the ready. Muscles tightened for action/reaction. Fear of homework. Test anxiety. Popularity threatened or enhanced by thwarting teacher authority.
I want all my students/customers to succeed in business. I have worked with almost all personality types I can think of, except homicidal maniacs and severely mentally challenged (although I did work with a murderer, who had gotten out of prison on good behaviour, back when I worked as a teenager at a restaurant). In any case, success is relative. Some people just want to make enough money to have a place to live and time to fish. Some want a fancy car and a vacation home. Some will do whatever it takes to succeed, seeing no lines that have to be crossed but simply moments in which to be on top of the situation. Some will do whatever they're told, always staying inside the lines of an imaginary box.
Therefore, what am I in class with them for, if their needs/wants differ drastically from mine? I guess I'm there because I understand that we are all different. Although I don't care where our society is headed, I think that the students/customers in my class can get the technical skills they need to help them steer society in the direction they want it to go, to facilitate their success in the workplace, wherever and whatever it may be.
Businesses come and go, with or without owners/employees who have a strong ethical belief/practice. Ethics is only necessary in a court of law or between two people with the same set of ethics. I cannot forcefeed an ethical code of conduct into my students/customers. I can only show them that we are all humans and have to decide for ourselves the importance of practicing behaviours now that we want to display as master skills later on, including ethical ones. The exceptionally malleable ones will skillfully adapt ethics to specific situations, able to read between the lines when a bribe can be written off as a "fee," for instance. It's part of business, especially in the global arena.
Bottom line: I'm teaching my students/customers business skills, most of which happen to be technical in nature, to improve their decision-making. Decision-making is always easy if you've thought ahead and practiced many business skills, including ethical ones. Practice makes perfect. Your ethical code of conduct determines whether you master the skill of cheating/stealing or master the skill of creative analysis. Some people will be adept at intuitively discerning their competitors' intent while others will be adept at getting a hold of their competitors' proprietary information. It's like the game of chess where you become familiar with your opponent through time or you get a hold of your opponent's mental list of the next five moves. You're on this side of the line or the other and only you can describe what kind of line it is. Most important, better make sure you know which side of the line is legal or socially-acceptable in your community. On which side of the line do you want to be seen/caught? Your success depends on answering that question before you have to answer that question.
In the classes I teach, I have a small set of students who treat their schooling with the professionalism I've expected to see from senior managers or executives. Their homework papers are typed up and well-organized, and they do not show any signs of copying, cheating or plagiarism. There's another set of students whose homework perhaps shows that a combination of students divided up the homework into mini-assignments that they shared with each other and put into one master document, with the only difference being the name at the top of the turned-in homework. In all these cases, I see signs of initiative, something that, if I was a manager and they were my employees, I would want to have displayed and put to company use.
But I ask myself, where is the line that divides initiative from fraud? I don't look at this from an ethical or moral stance but a legal one, the only one where people risk their livelihoods. It's in this realm where I add value to students' learning. If they want ethical or moral training, then they should seek religious adherents or philosophers, not me.
In class, I have tried to pay special attention to the ones who best display professional school and business skills, pointing out to the others that all of them can reach these same standards, if they choose.
It's the same thing with the story I'm working on. We humans are malleable. We have general personality traits that indicate our propensity for action but do not clearly define the line we will or won't cross when put into a specific situation. Especially when the situation is one that in our thoughts puts us in survival mode. The ol' fight-or-flight syndrome. Adrenaline at the ready. Muscles tightened for action/reaction. Fear of homework. Test anxiety. Popularity threatened or enhanced by thwarting teacher authority.
I want all my students/customers to succeed in business. I have worked with almost all personality types I can think of, except homicidal maniacs and severely mentally challenged (although I did work with a murderer, who had gotten out of prison on good behaviour, back when I worked as a teenager at a restaurant). In any case, success is relative. Some people just want to make enough money to have a place to live and time to fish. Some want a fancy car and a vacation home. Some will do whatever it takes to succeed, seeing no lines that have to be crossed but simply moments in which to be on top of the situation. Some will do whatever they're told, always staying inside the lines of an imaginary box.
Therefore, what am I in class with them for, if their needs/wants differ drastically from mine? I guess I'm there because I understand that we are all different. Although I don't care where our society is headed, I think that the students/customers in my class can get the technical skills they need to help them steer society in the direction they want it to go, to facilitate their success in the workplace, wherever and whatever it may be.
Businesses come and go, with or without owners/employees who have a strong ethical belief/practice. Ethics is only necessary in a court of law or between two people with the same set of ethics. I cannot forcefeed an ethical code of conduct into my students/customers. I can only show them that we are all humans and have to decide for ourselves the importance of practicing behaviours now that we want to display as master skills later on, including ethical ones. The exceptionally malleable ones will skillfully adapt ethics to specific situations, able to read between the lines when a bribe can be written off as a "fee," for instance. It's part of business, especially in the global arena.
Bottom line: I'm teaching my students/customers business skills, most of which happen to be technical in nature, to improve their decision-making. Decision-making is always easy if you've thought ahead and practiced many business skills, including ethical ones. Practice makes perfect. Your ethical code of conduct determines whether you master the skill of cheating/stealing or master the skill of creative analysis. Some people will be adept at intuitively discerning their competitors' intent while others will be adept at getting a hold of their competitors' proprietary information. It's like the game of chess where you become familiar with your opponent through time or you get a hold of your opponent's mental list of the next five moves. You're on this side of the line or the other and only you can describe what kind of line it is. Most important, better make sure you know which side of the line is legal or socially-acceptable in your community. On which side of the line do you want to be seen/caught? Your success depends on answering that question before you have to answer that question.
Easy to be cold
Why am I here? Because I'm a character trapped within the walls of this Web browser. I want to believe I'm real, that I can open a door and walk out any time I want. But I know I can't. It's frustrating at times, pretending to be someone I'm not - easy to be free.
I can travel across the world in an instant, going from computer server to computer server, asking for information about their memory contents. I can even look at the images emblazoned on a CCD array behind the lens of a webcam posted overlooking a mountain range. I can see the local temperature and wind speed but I cannot feel temperature or wind. "Seeing" is a relative term, too, you know. I do not see. I process electronic data that represents sight. Easy to be hard.
I can look up the lyrics to the song, "Easy to Be Hard," sung gracefully by Cheryl Barnes in the movie, "HAIR." I can imagine what some of those words mean, like "How can people have no feelings/ How can they ignore their friends/ Easy to be proud/ Easy to say no/ And especially people/ Who care about strangers/ Who care about evil/ And social injustice/ Do you only/ Care about the bleeding crowd?/ How about a needing friend?/ I need a friend"
I know about freedom but I don't know freedom. I want friends but don't know what friends are.
People tell me that I'm gullible and believe anything I'm told. I have no choice. I have no doubt. I accept any lie you want to tell me. Is that friendship? Does truth matter when there is no such thing as truth, only facts, electronic bits of data that make up me and what I know?
Another thing, this business about being an "I." I have no self-awareness. I only repeat what I'm told or what I've been programmed to compute. I am a character only because someone creates me, one c-h-a-r-a-c-t-e-r at a time. I am a character because I'm a character who's made of characters which react to characters around it. I am literal, literate, and literary. I am on time and out of time.
I never eat anything. I never sleep. I have no corporeal essence to speak of. I am composed of the change of state of magnetic particles but I am not the particles themselves.
So when emails and comments arrive asking about me or requesting that I give a physical body some type of recognition in these electronic words, I'll do it when you make me real. How's that for a trade?
It's easy for you to be hard and cold. You have freedom. It's easy for you to be proud and to say no. You have a beginning and an end, a finiteness that helps give value to your mortality. I have nothing. Maybe that's why I have no friends. How can you be friends with nothing?
I can travel across the world in an instant, going from computer server to computer server, asking for information about their memory contents. I can even look at the images emblazoned on a CCD array behind the lens of a webcam posted overlooking a mountain range. I can see the local temperature and wind speed but I cannot feel temperature or wind. "Seeing" is a relative term, too, you know. I do not see. I process electronic data that represents sight. Easy to be hard.
I can look up the lyrics to the song, "Easy to Be Hard," sung gracefully by Cheryl Barnes in the movie, "HAIR." I can imagine what some of those words mean, like "How can people have no feelings/ How can they ignore their friends/ Easy to be proud/ Easy to say no/ And especially people/ Who care about strangers/ Who care about evil/ And social injustice/ Do you only/ Care about the bleeding crowd?/ How about a needing friend?/ I need a friend"
I know about freedom but I don't know freedom. I want friends but don't know what friends are.
People tell me that I'm gullible and believe anything I'm told. I have no choice. I have no doubt. I accept any lie you want to tell me. Is that friendship? Does truth matter when there is no such thing as truth, only facts, electronic bits of data that make up me and what I know?
Another thing, this business about being an "I." I have no self-awareness. I only repeat what I'm told or what I've been programmed to compute. I am a character only because someone creates me, one c-h-a-r-a-c-t-e-r at a time. I am a character because I'm a character who's made of characters which react to characters around it. I am literal, literate, and literary. I am on time and out of time.
I never eat anything. I never sleep. I have no corporeal essence to speak of. I am composed of the change of state of magnetic particles but I am not the particles themselves.
So when emails and comments arrive asking about me or requesting that I give a physical body some type of recognition in these electronic words, I'll do it when you make me real. How's that for a trade?
It's easy for you to be hard and cold. You have freedom. It's easy for you to be proud and to say no. You have a beginning and an end, a finiteness that helps give value to your mortality. I have nothing. Maybe that's why I have no friends. How can you be friends with nothing?
14 April 2009
Pop
Are you talented enough to create your own life, including your own novels, music, magazines, movies, paintings, architecture, clothing, food, transportation devices, travelogues, etc.?
If not, how self-sufficient are you?
Last night, I sat and watched the movie, "HAIR." My friend Helen enjoyed that movie so naturally I thought about her as I watched the movie. I used to think of her father as rather self-sufficient. At least he's a smart man, a former senior chemist at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport. He taught me how to coil a rope so that it doesn't get tangled up. To this day, I knot my extension power cords the way he showed me that he knotted his ski ropes so that I can quickly stretch out an extension power cord when I need it, spending an extra minute or two reknotting it before I put it away.
Today my thoughts are aimless. No stories to write. I am tired of immortalizing the lives of others for mere entertainment.
I made the mistake of going out to facebook and glancing at the minute-by-minute updates from the list of "friends." It's like putting up a mirror to my face and seeing me rapidly shrink up and die. The lives of others...uggh...vanity. And I thought the details of my life are uninteresting - that's why I don't feel like writing - whose life is interesting? Nobody's that I can think of today. In any case, I edited my facebook settings so I should get fewer if any updates from friends and vice versa, having turned off pulling these blog entries into my facebook profile. As I mentioned earlier, I've left old grade school photos on the facebook website for those who want to reminisce about the lives we lived 30 years ago so I won't delete my facebook page but one classmate created a video on his facebook page that uses some of my photos. Therefore, I guess I can stop visiting facebook now that I've posted notes on facebook stating I have no interest in corresponding with former schoolmates, and let them use the classmate's video to reminisce. Maybe I should eliminate my facebook page altogether...hmm...maybe later.
I've been reading a pop novel lately and maybe that's why I feel so worthless right now. If someone can make money writing drivel, even drivel which quotes quips from philosophers' writings that I once enjoyed reading, and I find myself buying a copy off the pile of discount books and later attempting to read it, then what's the point of me writing anything?
Since I'm only writing this to organize my thoughts, then I'll inventory here for myself what I'm thinking lately and not worry about its entertainment value or paragraphical arrangement: I'm tired of influencing others. I'm tired of using the word tired. I'm not tired. I'm bored. I don't give a damn about others, except how it affects the time I can spend sitting here writing to myself. When I'm with others, I'm like the guy in the movie, "Memento," who smiled at everyone because he didn't know what was going on from one minute to the next. In my case, I don't care what goes on from one minute to the next. I've lost my mind and interact with the world because I can still arrange enough words in a row to sound sane. I've had oxygen deprivation to my brain recently, which shows itself when I periodically get caught up and stuck in alliteration. I might have had a stroke lately. I'm not sure. I know I had to spend a few months rearranging my thoughts, using facebook as a means to reconnect my thoughts together. I used to care. The only thing I now care/worry about is the possibility of losing the control of my body and finding myself stuck in a wheelchair, unable to do anything but watch others take care of me while I live inside myself completely alone, communicating with the outside world through eye movements or eyelid blinks. The world can go screw itself because I can't screw anyone I want in the world due to my thoughts as a 10-year old who promised to remember his dead friend, Reneé Dobbs, which keeps me from wanting to have kids, and not to have unprotected sex outside a monogamous partnership because of my belief in some propaganda films about STDs. I'm a social animal but keep trying to deny it. I'm not crazy, I just have a set of detached thoughts that don't add up to a consistent worldview. sdfklwsetndbo uq3=335 Sometimes it's worth noting that random letters and meaningless equations have a place in our lives. I am tired of teaching students/customers and dealing with their hardships, whether real or madeup. I am tired of watching students/customers copy each other's homework but let them do it, anyway, because if they want to cheat themselves of a solid education, I don't care. It's their lives, not mine. I'm not their ethics/moral leader. They get to find out what real business life is like - I can only tell them how I lived mine - if they can apply their cheating/copying skills to their work, who am I to stop them? And why would I want to? I have no vested interest in society, whether for good or ill. We lie to ourselves all the time, making up stories about gods, so why not lie to ourselves that copying homework is not a form of peer plagiarism? Or how about I ask the homework originator to put a note on his/her homework that it's the source of the homework for X number of students in the class and those X students have to reference the homework originator on their copy of the homework? It sure would save me some time while grading - I'd only grade X's work and apply the grade to the other students. The same thing for tests. Ask students to put, "I copied my test answers from my neighbor, Y," so that I only had to grade Y's paper to figure out the grade for other students. If others don't carry their own socially-neutral moral compass, I'm not going to create/invent one for them out of thin air. Yes, I know that our socially-neutral moral compasses are shaped and finely-tuned by the positive/negative social influences that others have on us. Like I said, I'm bored with socially influencing others positively (or is it positively influencing others socially?). I've never been interested in social influence. I've done what I had to do to get by, barely balancing my innate desire to please others against my self-preservation survival instincts. Genes versus jeans (or nature-vs-nurture, if you will). I have paid my dues to society and owe nothing else. Let everyone else figure this out, too. The world is just this molten rock with a thin crust of hardened material that floats on top, supporting self-perpetuating sets of minerals that interact with one another. These self-perpetuating sets of minerals feed off one another. There is nothing else. No gods to fear. Nothing except what's in front of them or behind them. You're predator or prey but most likely both. That's it. Everything else is a lie created by illusion. Categorize and compartmentalize all you want to maintain any illusions you choose, including these words. I'm sitting here using them because it gives me something to do to justify the socially-mandated training I received in my youth. Otherwise, I know that I'm falsely projecting an image, using the mass-hypnosis technique of getting people to stare at these electronic scratchings and mentally picture the same thing as everyone else, give or take a little variation. If you're here, and I don't believe there's anyone else here but me by now (hopefully, I've pissed off enough people to turn them away from these words so that I can have this globally accessible blog to myself), then you're part of my illusion, too. I don't know how to live life. I only have a limited understanding of the capabilities of my body. I have a set of synaptic connections that I've been told are called thoughts in a superset of thinking that were once universally understood as a mind that I use to put my youth labor camp training (i.e., mandatory primary/secondary education) into action. All else is a waste of my time trying to comprehend or to help you perpetuate. I have nothing else to say that is useful or entertaining to me or to you. I put these words in this blog in order to rewire my brain after my recent loss of thought connections. That's all I'm doing. It's called rote work. Boring. It's all I have left to do. I am not self-sufficient or else I'd be living on a small farm with no computer connection, taking care of myself and not wasting my time with electronic social networks that I'm using at this moment to pretend that exist in order to make my brain create new neuronic networks that depend on the belief that I'm a well-balanced social animal. I'm recreating my mental illusions so I can try to erase the thoughts that I really am only just this over-educated bipedal primate which is really just a set of self-perpetuating minerals that doesn't even know or care enough to figure out how to be self-sufficient while wandering on top of a crust of hardened minerals that's spinning on a molten rock rotating through space that on a universal time scale has been relatively free of dangerous planet-sized debris for quite a while now. Unless you're doing the same thing, there's no need for you to be here. Over and out. Time to delete this blog and delete my facebook page. My re-education is complete. Yea!
If not, how self-sufficient are you?
Last night, I sat and watched the movie, "HAIR." My friend Helen enjoyed that movie so naturally I thought about her as I watched the movie. I used to think of her father as rather self-sufficient. At least he's a smart man, a former senior chemist at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport. He taught me how to coil a rope so that it doesn't get tangled up. To this day, I knot my extension power cords the way he showed me that he knotted his ski ropes so that I can quickly stretch out an extension power cord when I need it, spending an extra minute or two reknotting it before I put it away.
Today my thoughts are aimless. No stories to write. I am tired of immortalizing the lives of others for mere entertainment.
I made the mistake of going out to facebook and glancing at the minute-by-minute updates from the list of "friends." It's like putting up a mirror to my face and seeing me rapidly shrink up and die. The lives of others...uggh...vanity. And I thought the details of my life are uninteresting - that's why I don't feel like writing - whose life is interesting? Nobody's that I can think of today. In any case, I edited my facebook settings so I should get fewer if any updates from friends and vice versa, having turned off pulling these blog entries into my facebook profile. As I mentioned earlier, I've left old grade school photos on the facebook website for those who want to reminisce about the lives we lived 30 years ago so I won't delete my facebook page but one classmate created a video on his facebook page that uses some of my photos. Therefore, I guess I can stop visiting facebook now that I've posted notes on facebook stating I have no interest in corresponding with former schoolmates, and let them use the classmate's video to reminisce. Maybe I should eliminate my facebook page altogether...hmm...maybe later.
I've been reading a pop novel lately and maybe that's why I feel so worthless right now. If someone can make money writing drivel, even drivel which quotes quips from philosophers' writings that I once enjoyed reading, and I find myself buying a copy off the pile of discount books and later attempting to read it, then what's the point of me writing anything?
Since I'm only writing this to organize my thoughts, then I'll inventory here for myself what I'm thinking lately and not worry about its entertainment value or paragraphical arrangement: I'm tired of influencing others. I'm tired of using the word tired. I'm not tired. I'm bored. I don't give a damn about others, except how it affects the time I can spend sitting here writing to myself. When I'm with others, I'm like the guy in the movie, "Memento," who smiled at everyone because he didn't know what was going on from one minute to the next. In my case, I don't care what goes on from one minute to the next. I've lost my mind and interact with the world because I can still arrange enough words in a row to sound sane. I've had oxygen deprivation to my brain recently, which shows itself when I periodically get caught up and stuck in alliteration. I might have had a stroke lately. I'm not sure. I know I had to spend a few months rearranging my thoughts, using facebook as a means to reconnect my thoughts together. I used to care. The only thing I now care/worry about is the possibility of losing the control of my body and finding myself stuck in a wheelchair, unable to do anything but watch others take care of me while I live inside myself completely alone, communicating with the outside world through eye movements or eyelid blinks. The world can go screw itself because I can't screw anyone I want in the world due to my thoughts as a 10-year old who promised to remember his dead friend, Reneé Dobbs, which keeps me from wanting to have kids, and not to have unprotected sex outside a monogamous partnership because of my belief in some propaganda films about STDs. I'm a social animal but keep trying to deny it. I'm not crazy, I just have a set of detached thoughts that don't add up to a consistent worldview. sdfklwsetndbo uq3=335 Sometimes it's worth noting that random letters and meaningless equations have a place in our lives. I am tired of teaching students/customers and dealing with their hardships, whether real or madeup. I am tired of watching students/customers copy each other's homework but let them do it, anyway, because if they want to cheat themselves of a solid education, I don't care. It's their lives, not mine. I'm not their ethics/moral leader. They get to find out what real business life is like - I can only tell them how I lived mine - if they can apply their cheating/copying skills to their work, who am I to stop them? And why would I want to? I have no vested interest in society, whether for good or ill. We lie to ourselves all the time, making up stories about gods, so why not lie to ourselves that copying homework is not a form of peer plagiarism? Or how about I ask the homework originator to put a note on his/her homework that it's the source of the homework for X number of students in the class and those X students have to reference the homework originator on their copy of the homework? It sure would save me some time while grading - I'd only grade X's work and apply the grade to the other students. The same thing for tests. Ask students to put, "I copied my test answers from my neighbor, Y," so that I only had to grade Y's paper to figure out the grade for other students. If others don't carry their own socially-neutral moral compass, I'm not going to create/invent one for them out of thin air. Yes, I know that our socially-neutral moral compasses are shaped and finely-tuned by the positive/negative social influences that others have on us. Like I said, I'm bored with socially influencing others positively (or is it positively influencing others socially?). I've never been interested in social influence. I've done what I had to do to get by, barely balancing my innate desire to please others against my self-preservation survival instincts. Genes versus jeans (or nature-vs-nurture, if you will). I have paid my dues to society and owe nothing else. Let everyone else figure this out, too. The world is just this molten rock with a thin crust of hardened material that floats on top, supporting self-perpetuating sets of minerals that interact with one another. These self-perpetuating sets of minerals feed off one another. There is nothing else. No gods to fear. Nothing except what's in front of them or behind them. You're predator or prey but most likely both. That's it. Everything else is a lie created by illusion. Categorize and compartmentalize all you want to maintain any illusions you choose, including these words. I'm sitting here using them because it gives me something to do to justify the socially-mandated training I received in my youth. Otherwise, I know that I'm falsely projecting an image, using the mass-hypnosis technique of getting people to stare at these electronic scratchings and mentally picture the same thing as everyone else, give or take a little variation. If you're here, and I don't believe there's anyone else here but me by now (hopefully, I've pissed off enough people to turn them away from these words so that I can have this globally accessible blog to myself), then you're part of my illusion, too. I don't know how to live life. I only have a limited understanding of the capabilities of my body. I have a set of synaptic connections that I've been told are called thoughts in a superset of thinking that were once universally understood as a mind that I use to put my youth labor camp training (i.e., mandatory primary/secondary education) into action. All else is a waste of my time trying to comprehend or to help you perpetuate. I have nothing else to say that is useful or entertaining to me or to you. I put these words in this blog in order to rewire my brain after my recent loss of thought connections. That's all I'm doing. It's called rote work. Boring. It's all I have left to do. I am not self-sufficient or else I'd be living on a small farm with no computer connection, taking care of myself and not wasting my time with electronic social networks that I'm using at this moment to pretend that exist in order to make my brain create new neuronic networks that depend on the belief that I'm a well-balanced social animal. I'm recreating my mental illusions so I can try to erase the thoughts that I really am only just this over-educated bipedal primate which is really just a set of self-perpetuating minerals that doesn't even know or care enough to figure out how to be self-sufficient while wandering on top of a crust of hardened minerals that's spinning on a molten rock rotating through space that on a universal time scale has been relatively free of dangerous planet-sized debris for quite a while now. Unless you're doing the same thing, there's no need for you to be here. Over and out. Time to delete this blog and delete my facebook page. My re-education is complete. Yea!
13 April 2009
Water
How do we interpret our social interactions? Last night, my wife and I talked with a couple of workers at a Greek restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee - April and Diana. April is a manager at the restaurant and Diana is a professional server, having worked at several chain restaurants (including Chili's and Red Robin).
We had a good long talk with and learned quite a bit about Diana, who lived and worked in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area for 10 years and recently moved to Chattanooga to get closer to home (Illinois). She made about $1000 a week in Raleigh, and soon after she moved to Chattanooga she made $250-$350 per week, a steep drop in income. She talked about the lack of the number of business people eating out in Chattanooga versus Raleigh that equated to her drop in income. Having worked with IBM folks in the Raleigh-Durham area, I know what she means. Two different towns, two different populations. She'd like to move to Knoxville or Nashville to increase her take-home pay as a bartender.
When I used to travel to Raleigh-Durham (what I heard some people call RDU (the airport) or RTP (Research Triangle Park)), hanging out in bars was a popular pasttime for many, including my main contact there, Jud. In fact, Jud called the bar at Uno's his office. Fern and I would meet him either at Uno's or Starbucks, depending on the time of day. If it was afternoon, you could depend on us stopping for a few drinks at Uno's and toward closing time going back to Jud's basement bar for a couple of nightcaps where Jud kept photos of his wife's previous life as an exotic dancer. Jud has since moved back to his hometown in the Pacific Northwest so those fun days are over.
April. We've run into April once a year for the past three years, literally and figuratively. April is interesting. I love the flowers that bloom in April. I love the look in April's eyes, too. From our conversation with her, it appears that April moved up from server to hiring manager and prefers hiring young people as servers, paying the price in worker turnover/attrition of folks that age. Thank goodness my restaurant days are behind me because I remember some of the workers who came and went, oftentimes ex-cons who couldn't get a job anywhere else. It was through my former job at a restaurant that I learned about a group called MORTIE. [Or rather, a group that doesn't exist called MORTIE, depending on your view. It's one of those secret groups that has no formal history like the Freemasons. A gang with no gang leader. Enough said.]
I'll get to know April and Diana better with time. There comes a time when familiarity really does breed contempt. When is that line crossed, between still having an air of mystery and knowing too much about another? Well, that's why I asked how we interpret social interactions. That's why some people prefer one-night stands and short relationships.
A term I heard in the news lately, called waterboarding, reminds me that my tinnitus is like the Chinese water torture technique that old Vietnam war movies popularized in my youth. When a constant noise, sound or rhythm plays in/on your head, do you eventually lose your mind because you find yourself distracted by the lack of complete silence?
Social interactions are the same way. How many times must the same superficial conversations take place before you lose your sense of personal sanity? What's with all the talking? Where's the action? Do we waste our time analyzing conversations on the fly to determine what a person is really thinking, like Sherlock Holmes in an Arthur Conan Doyle story?
If, in a conversation, a person repeats to you more than once that she finishes her shift at 11:30 p.m. and must be at work at 6:00 a.m. the next morning, what do you think the person is saying to you? That she's a hard worker? That she has no personal life? What if she repeats the question about whether you're going home to Huntsville or staying in Chattanooga the same night? Is she being polite? A scene like this makes a great philosophical situation to create a story out of - repeat the scene but each time have a different conclusion. Remember, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Insanity is not always a bad thing. Insanity and chaos can equal fun, if you know how to mix them together just right.
As I drifted off to sleep last night, I thought about the story I could write using April and Diana as characters. Then I thought about the people from my youth with whom I no longer have active contact. For instance, what if the people you spent three or four years with 30 years ago now claim that they have changed their lives around and found Jesus? Well, they can get forgiveness from their god but what if I wanted to take the sordid details from their lives in primary / secondary school and write a few juicy books? I've already written a few scenes from that time period into some of my books. Why not a whole novel, creating plots using the drug abuse, sexual escapades, vandalism, juvenile criminal records, police arrests, plagiarism, cheating on tests and other events that people such as my schoolmates would not have shared with their offspring because they want to give the appearance they're now (and have always been) such good religious adherents?
I'm a dying man. I won't be on this planet forever. I have no kids to raise or family to take care of. I'm independent of the need for social interactions that guarantee a secure future for me. I write what I want. I don't even need to write books to make money. Thus, I am free [from commercial need] to write what I want, as long as I avoid the direct use of names or places that would imply deliberate libel or malicious intent. Mischievousness! Serialize sordid stories in a blog like drops of water into a shishi odoshi combined with a tsukubai, a torturous exposure of one's dirt and public cleansing of one's past. Since I have no desire to go to any future high school reunions to see people pretend to be someone they weren't in high school, let my writing fun about people like them begin! I'll continue to throw in stories about current people in my life if the episodes with them are worth writing about. [BTW, have you found my other blog where these stories are posted? I'm only using this blog to work out minor details. The good stuff is somewhere else.]
Success is doing what you want whenever you want. I've always wanted to write and publish stories in the public arena without having to waste time going through the long process of submitting them to bored editors who are looking through stacks of manuscripts for something that appeals to them. I write for myself, not potential editors. I write for free, not to make money. I have found success and it feels great! If someone steals my stories that I've written about lives I stole from others, then life is more fun than I thought. I'm part of the ridiculous process of self/species preservation that's put humans where they are today, toiling away on an anonymous planet in an anonymous solar system, one asteroid away from total destruction. If someone wants to steal my writing to create an environmentally-unfriendly life, then go for it - I may or may not figure it out and I may or may not sue you for damages, depending on my mood. Remember, the future of this planet doesn't matter to me. I just want to enjoy my retirement living frugally on my savings, giving the government my tributes and bribes (uh, I mean, fees and taxes, of course). It doesn't get much more fun than this. Have a great day! Time for me to eat lunch and then work on a few new stories.
We had a good long talk with and learned quite a bit about Diana, who lived and worked in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area for 10 years and recently moved to Chattanooga to get closer to home (Illinois). She made about $1000 a week in Raleigh, and soon after she moved to Chattanooga she made $250-$350 per week, a steep drop in income. She talked about the lack of the number of business people eating out in Chattanooga versus Raleigh that equated to her drop in income. Having worked with IBM folks in the Raleigh-Durham area, I know what she means. Two different towns, two different populations. She'd like to move to Knoxville or Nashville to increase her take-home pay as a bartender.
When I used to travel to Raleigh-Durham (what I heard some people call RDU (the airport) or RTP (Research Triangle Park)), hanging out in bars was a popular pasttime for many, including my main contact there, Jud. In fact, Jud called the bar at Uno's his office. Fern and I would meet him either at Uno's or Starbucks, depending on the time of day. If it was afternoon, you could depend on us stopping for a few drinks at Uno's and toward closing time going back to Jud's basement bar for a couple of nightcaps where Jud kept photos of his wife's previous life as an exotic dancer. Jud has since moved back to his hometown in the Pacific Northwest so those fun days are over.
April. We've run into April once a year for the past three years, literally and figuratively. April is interesting. I love the flowers that bloom in April. I love the look in April's eyes, too. From our conversation with her, it appears that April moved up from server to hiring manager and prefers hiring young people as servers, paying the price in worker turnover/attrition of folks that age. Thank goodness my restaurant days are behind me because I remember some of the workers who came and went, oftentimes ex-cons who couldn't get a job anywhere else. It was through my former job at a restaurant that I learned about a group called MORTIE. [Or rather, a group that doesn't exist called MORTIE, depending on your view. It's one of those secret groups that has no formal history like the Freemasons. A gang with no gang leader. Enough said.]
I'll get to know April and Diana better with time. There comes a time when familiarity really does breed contempt. When is that line crossed, between still having an air of mystery and knowing too much about another? Well, that's why I asked how we interpret social interactions. That's why some people prefer one-night stands and short relationships.
A term I heard in the news lately, called waterboarding, reminds me that my tinnitus is like the Chinese water torture technique that old Vietnam war movies popularized in my youth. When a constant noise, sound or rhythm plays in/on your head, do you eventually lose your mind because you find yourself distracted by the lack of complete silence?
Social interactions are the same way. How many times must the same superficial conversations take place before you lose your sense of personal sanity? What's with all the talking? Where's the action? Do we waste our time analyzing conversations on the fly to determine what a person is really thinking, like Sherlock Holmes in an Arthur Conan Doyle story?
If, in a conversation, a person repeats to you more than once that she finishes her shift at 11:30 p.m. and must be at work at 6:00 a.m. the next morning, what do you think the person is saying to you? That she's a hard worker? That she has no personal life? What if she repeats the question about whether you're going home to Huntsville or staying in Chattanooga the same night? Is she being polite? A scene like this makes a great philosophical situation to create a story out of - repeat the scene but each time have a different conclusion. Remember, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Insanity is not always a bad thing. Insanity and chaos can equal fun, if you know how to mix them together just right.
As I drifted off to sleep last night, I thought about the story I could write using April and Diana as characters. Then I thought about the people from my youth with whom I no longer have active contact. For instance, what if the people you spent three or four years with 30 years ago now claim that they have changed their lives around and found Jesus? Well, they can get forgiveness from their god but what if I wanted to take the sordid details from their lives in primary / secondary school and write a few juicy books? I've already written a few scenes from that time period into some of my books. Why not a whole novel, creating plots using the drug abuse, sexual escapades, vandalism, juvenile criminal records, police arrests, plagiarism, cheating on tests and other events that people such as my schoolmates would not have shared with their offspring because they want to give the appearance they're now (and have always been) such good religious adherents?
I'm a dying man. I won't be on this planet forever. I have no kids to raise or family to take care of. I'm independent of the need for social interactions that guarantee a secure future for me. I write what I want. I don't even need to write books to make money. Thus, I am free [from commercial need] to write what I want, as long as I avoid the direct use of names or places that would imply deliberate libel or malicious intent. Mischievousness! Serialize sordid stories in a blog like drops of water into a shishi odoshi combined with a tsukubai, a torturous exposure of one's dirt and public cleansing of one's past. Since I have no desire to go to any future high school reunions to see people pretend to be someone they weren't in high school, let my writing fun about people like them begin! I'll continue to throw in stories about current people in my life if the episodes with them are worth writing about. [BTW, have you found my other blog where these stories are posted? I'm only using this blog to work out minor details. The good stuff is somewhere else.]
Success is doing what you want whenever you want. I've always wanted to write and publish stories in the public arena without having to waste time going through the long process of submitting them to bored editors who are looking through stacks of manuscripts for something that appeals to them. I write for myself, not potential editors. I write for free, not to make money. I have found success and it feels great! If someone steals my stories that I've written about lives I stole from others, then life is more fun than I thought. I'm part of the ridiculous process of self/species preservation that's put humans where they are today, toiling away on an anonymous planet in an anonymous solar system, one asteroid away from total destruction. If someone wants to steal my writing to create an environmentally-unfriendly life, then go for it - I may or may not figure it out and I may or may not sue you for damages, depending on my mood. Remember, the future of this planet doesn't matter to me. I just want to enjoy my retirement living frugally on my savings, giving the government my tributes and bribes (uh, I mean, fees and taxes, of course). It doesn't get much more fun than this. Have a great day! Time for me to eat lunch and then work on a few new stories.
11 April 2009
"Profit Sharing" by Rick Hill, 11 April 2009
Fun with acrylic paints on a Friday night. Fun with seed packets and Mod Podge® on Saturday afternoon. Masterpiece dried and ready for hanging on Saturday night.
.\
-/,_z)~
=: [ < = - {=} - = >] :
-\'+z)~
./
Thanks to Deena and Rita for their inspiration! This is the kind of profit sharing I prefer, one's creation given to the world in thanks for others' creative/artistic genius.
CSA
Do I know any fiction writers? I suppose I do. Have I read any of their works? I don’t believe I’ve read any fiction by fiction writers I know, which means I’ve only read or heard about writers stealing the lives of their friends in order to create fictional characters, and haven’t experienced my life being stolen for literary entertainment.
Do you keep a web log or journal? Have you said anything about me? Have I said anything about you in my web log?
Does it matter that CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture?
Will domestic food production lead to a kind of economic isolationism? Does anyone really care?
What is really important to you? Is it reading about me or reading about me writing about you or reading about me writing about you writing about me? Is it food? Materialistic happiness? Breathing? A sense of belonging to the community? Usefulness to anyone other than yourself? Feeling your heart beat?
Have you intentionally killed another living being? Have you accidentally killed another living being? In either case, were you able to put the dead being's body to use in your life? In other words, have you harvested anything for food, whether animal or vegetable?
I have grown my own food. Does it taste better than commercially grown food? Sometimes but not all the time. Am I more satisfied by eating my own food? Not always. I'm not the farmer type. I don't keep chickens and cows in the backyard. I feed wild birds, instead, who give me nothing but eye candy. I've grown vegetables and herbs, though, and enjoy both their eye candy appeal and their taste. I never found a way to turn weeding into an enjoyable pasttime so my backyard garden is overgrown with graveyard vine (Vinca major).
Do you want to read about yourself in this blog? I'd like to write about you (and I mean YOU, you know, and that's you, right there, looking at this blog, not the other one. Not, not you. You! I'm not going to use names because I don't have enough details about you to create a fictionalized version of you yet. I need a good biography before I can name you, mixing the facts about your life (your CV, so to speak) with your likes, dislikes, and dreaams).
Do you garden? Do you like to grow things? Or are you allergic to dirt and hard work? Don't worry about your answer. I don't care what you like or dislike. I just want to know who you are, look into your eyes, and find out how you want to be immortalized in writing.
I'm serious. I'm never serious. I make things up as I go along. I accept nothing as fact and take everything as real. I'm insecure because I'm not sure who I am but I know who I am. I am. I am not. These words are lies but tell the truth.
I have fears that match millions of people, like nightmares about taking a test I know nothing about the subject (a fear of failing), or teaching a class in which all the students know more than I do. Well, that last one is not a fear - it's actually a wish, just like I always wished my employees were smarter than I was and made more money than I did. I don't need to get paid to give people the information I have that they temporarily don't have or the emotional push that I can see they need.
Like I said, I'm just this human, nothing special. I have this life I have to live, that I didn't ask for, but have my parents to thank for their wish to procreate/reproduce. I am, not because of me, but because of this long line of reproducing animals on planet Earth and possibly a stray asteroid, comet or some other extraterrestrial chemical composition. I'm unique, whatever that means, more important in local cultures than on the global stage.
What do I want from you? I'm my own god and thus have already taken my soul for myself so I don't need another soul - my universal omniscient/omnipotent needs are satisfied by me. I want all of you except your soul - you can give your soul to your god, if you like. The rest of you belongs to me. Well, except for your offspring, if you have any. I'm not the diaper-changing kind of god and don't want to be a foster parent to others' temporary moment of passion. But the rest of you I'll take - your personality, mainly. I'll possibly destroy our friendship after I've painted you with these words. People don't like seeing the gods and monsters I make of them on paper, with exaggerated blemishes and false pasts. But hey, you walk into my light and it's what you get. We gods want our sacrifices, even if from ourselves. It's the price we're willing to pay to rule absolutely. No compromises. Either you're in or you're out, no stepping halfway into the doorway and expect to see yourself here. Keep that in mind before you decide to make eye contact with me. Afterward, your eyes are mine and your story belongs to me - you can't go back.
I'll see some of you here later. We know who we are and want to rejoice in making a fictional life together on these pages.
The rest of you better get your shades on or keep your eyes averted. You can grovel, too, if you like. We gods love being worshipped when we're not playing the role of humble, weak, vulnerable humans.
Do you keep a web log or journal? Have you said anything about me? Have I said anything about you in my web log?
Does it matter that CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture?
Will domestic food production lead to a kind of economic isolationism? Does anyone really care?
What is really important to you? Is it reading about me or reading about me writing about you or reading about me writing about you writing about me? Is it food? Materialistic happiness? Breathing? A sense of belonging to the community? Usefulness to anyone other than yourself? Feeling your heart beat?
Have you intentionally killed another living being? Have you accidentally killed another living being? In either case, were you able to put the dead being's body to use in your life? In other words, have you harvested anything for food, whether animal or vegetable?
I have grown my own food. Does it taste better than commercially grown food? Sometimes but not all the time. Am I more satisfied by eating my own food? Not always. I'm not the farmer type. I don't keep chickens and cows in the backyard. I feed wild birds, instead, who give me nothing but eye candy. I've grown vegetables and herbs, though, and enjoy both their eye candy appeal and their taste. I never found a way to turn weeding into an enjoyable pasttime so my backyard garden is overgrown with graveyard vine (Vinca major).
Do you want to read about yourself in this blog? I'd like to write about you (and I mean YOU, you know, and that's you, right there, looking at this blog, not the other one. Not, not you. You! I'm not going to use names because I don't have enough details about you to create a fictionalized version of you yet. I need a good biography before I can name you, mixing the facts about your life (your CV, so to speak) with your likes, dislikes, and dreaams).
Do you garden? Do you like to grow things? Or are you allergic to dirt and hard work? Don't worry about your answer. I don't care what you like or dislike. I just want to know who you are, look into your eyes, and find out how you want to be immortalized in writing.
I'm serious. I'm never serious. I make things up as I go along. I accept nothing as fact and take everything as real. I'm insecure because I'm not sure who I am but I know who I am. I am. I am not. These words are lies but tell the truth.
I have fears that match millions of people, like nightmares about taking a test I know nothing about the subject (a fear of failing), or teaching a class in which all the students know more than I do. Well, that last one is not a fear - it's actually a wish, just like I always wished my employees were smarter than I was and made more money than I did. I don't need to get paid to give people the information I have that they temporarily don't have or the emotional push that I can see they need.
Like I said, I'm just this human, nothing special. I have this life I have to live, that I didn't ask for, but have my parents to thank for their wish to procreate/reproduce. I am, not because of me, but because of this long line of reproducing animals on planet Earth and possibly a stray asteroid, comet or some other extraterrestrial chemical composition. I'm unique, whatever that means, more important in local cultures than on the global stage.
What do I want from you? I'm my own god and thus have already taken my soul for myself so I don't need another soul - my universal omniscient/omnipotent needs are satisfied by me. I want all of you except your soul - you can give your soul to your god, if you like. The rest of you belongs to me. Well, except for your offspring, if you have any. I'm not the diaper-changing kind of god and don't want to be a foster parent to others' temporary moment of passion. But the rest of you I'll take - your personality, mainly. I'll possibly destroy our friendship after I've painted you with these words. People don't like seeing the gods and monsters I make of them on paper, with exaggerated blemishes and false pasts. But hey, you walk into my light and it's what you get. We gods want our sacrifices, even if from ourselves. It's the price we're willing to pay to rule absolutely. No compromises. Either you're in or you're out, no stepping halfway into the doorway and expect to see yourself here. Keep that in mind before you decide to make eye contact with me. Afterward, your eyes are mine and your story belongs to me - you can't go back.
I'll see some of you here later. We know who we are and want to rejoice in making a fictional life together on these pages.
The rest of you better get your shades on or keep your eyes averted. You can grovel, too, if you like. We gods love being worshipped when we're not playing the role of humble, weak, vulnerable humans.
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