Sunrise Through The Trees

I couldn't sleep last night because of you. Who are you? You are the parents who insist their children get a narrow point of view while being raised. You are the child who's known only one point of view while growing up but senses there's more to life. You are those who want more and those who want less.

Over the past few days, while watching a few spectacles centered on sports arenas broadcast to television screens, I paid attention to the adverts which pay, in part, for my viewing. Many of them told me about the money I'd save by spending money, often in the $500-$1000 range and sometimes in the $3000-$5000 range, depending on products being advertised. Overall, I felt a nostalgic touch, as if the adverts were still aimed toward the mass consumption audience, even in adverts for alcoholic beverages ("drink more because we've packed fewer calories," "drink lots because we added two more drops of artificial flavoring!").

Earlier this morning, while I stared at the ceiling in near-darkness and imagined little insects crawling around that farted glow-in-the-dark gas which my optic nerve was trying its darnedest to detect, I thought about you and I thought about those adverts. I thought about what defines us.

Before I retired a few years ago from a day job, I managed several small projects, totaling in the tens of millions of dollars. Saving $500 a year would have gotten me fired. My company wanted savings in the X to XX million dollar range, or significant sales increases to compensate for lack of savings while a new technology hit the market.

Therefore, I am of two minds here. I enjoy watching sports but sitting in front of a small box, even one close to 60" diagonal, and letting myself get exposed to adverts for savings of small change tells me that I am not the demographic the product companies are after. At the same time, the cost to go to to the same sporting events and watch them live is cost-prohibitive to my frugal budget.

As the Earth turns and the view of the Sun comes close to my eyes, the landscape slowly breaks into individual items out of the general dim silhouette moments ago. So, too, my understanding of the universe slowly wakes up and brightens my view of life.

Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? My generation now runs the executive branch of the U.S. government. The U.S. president is 10 months older than I am. Those of our age actually have control of the world. We have come of age, as they say, after making significant progress in our growing-up stage. Wise, we depend on those of many ages and backgrounds to run the machines that make our lives better - political, financial, industrial, academic, religious, etc.

I no longer sit back and let the older generation tell me what to do because I am now in charge of my life. I am me because of you so I am in charge of your life and you in charge of mine.

I have 14,809 days to keep learning. In some number of days less than that time, my generation will pass the torch that keeps the lamp of our species burning bright.

I did not vote for Barack Obama and do not support many Democratic ideals (especially since I am a fiscal conservative at heart) but I will not let detractors stop my generation from having its day in the sun! We will go after the detractors until our last breath, if necessary, to shape our species up and prepare us for the next tens of thousands of years of growing up we still have to do. We will hunt down the cowardly suicide bomber trainers and do what we have to do with them to better our species. We will not rest. We don't care what your colour is, how you dress, how you speak, what you do or who you hang out with. We spent our youth discovering we are all the same and we will not waste our training on backwards thinking.

Because I could not sleep last night, I had several hours to contemplate the future of our species. I saw that we make progress when we put aside insignificant differences, which accounts for most of what we do everyday, and work together to improve our living conditions. I don't have time to waste on vegetating in front of a TV any longer if I want our generation to make a difference in where our species will be 10 or 20 years from now when we finally relinquish our responsibilities to the next generation.

I'm not out to make our planet a peace fest or a love nest. I'm out to save us from ourselves and get us on the path to a prosperous future, starting now. As usual, I'll keep using humour but my days of sitting on the sofa are over. Time to return to the workforce and push us a little harder in the right direction, one company and one industry at a time. If I'm lucky, in my lifetime I'll see us having an interplanetary broadcast system that, instead of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, will actively beam intergalactic broadcasts of what our species has accomplished to points all over the universe (sure, we don't know the risks or rewards for such a scenario but we're already noisy now).

I'll start today by seeing how we can convert or retrain our war profiteering into space research and exploration. How do we train kids that the path to heaven includes building rockets to the Moon instead of strapping bombs to our chests? How do you say that the rigours of space are equivalent to infidels? How do we coordinate our navies into solely stopping pirates instead of chasing after each other? How do we turn our armies and air forces into profitable means of both protecting good governments and getting us onto other planets? Do beauty pageants and racecar events fit into this scheme?

My future started over 47 years ago and it's happening today. How about yours?

A Moment Alone Together

Felt like I visited a hippie commune tonight, complete with '60s-era interpersonal communications issues enhanced by frequent drug use, a common theme of movies from my childhood in the '60s. In other words, my wife and I saw "Where The Wild Things Are." When the hero is a child psychologist, or rather a child pretending to be a group leader, then the monster in the closet is the ego, not blood dripping off teeth or coat buttons reflecting like flesh-eating dragon's eyes. I credit the acting and CG facial effects of the Wild Things for giving the movie the sort of depth "Pan's Labyrinth" showed that "Labyrinth" didn't.

Afterward, we ate a late dinner at Tony's Little Italy restaurant. Our server, Elizah P, shared my love of two main courses - lobster-stuffed ravioli and Italian sausage and peppers - and the rum-soaked cake for dessert. At the table next to us a mother hugged and rocked her son sitting on her lap. She leaned over to get bites of bread while her husband seemed to sit there as if his brain was in another time zone, totally disinterested. After while, the boy went to an empty table and was king of the feast, eating fried potato strips from a large red McDonald's cardboard box. The boy played funny faces with his mother.

I chose the lobster ravioli, splitting a cup of olives with my wife while drinking a glass of house Chianti; she ate baked ziti with meatballs (for my dessert, rum cake; for hers, chocolate-covered cannoli). At another table, a young couple drank diet Pepsi and Mr. Pibb, the woman ordering a grilled chicken salad.

We debated the ceiling light fixture covers. To me, they look like glass punch bowls in the colour of 1930s pressed glass. To my wife, they looked like upside-down sunny-side up fried eggs with glass door knob finials stuck in the middle.

We have one life here to share with each other. Tonight, the young mother with the French fry boy, her long hair a mix of blonde and brunette down to the bottom of her shoulder blades, wearing a black-and-white striped sweater over a svelte, small frame, kept glancing my way but never making eye contact with me until the moment her husband had taken their son to the toilet.

A smile. A quiet, shared moment. Never long enough. And never longer than you want it to be. We know these moments when we reveal our beings, prepared to share our weaknesses, dropping the masks as if to say, "I do not know who I look like to you. I wish that all the problems of my life and that of yours is forgotten in this moment we give each other." Romance novels hover over scenes like this, page after suspense-filled page. Serial soap opera TV shows freeze camera shots on these looks just before going to commercial breaks. We get one shot. We give one shot. Like a photograph or woodcut engraved in our memories.

I always wish there was more time; time to mold the image of the face, the shape of the nose, the curve of the eyebrows, the variation of the eye colours, the upturned smiling lips; time to read and write thoughts by facial expression only; time to breathe in the aromas of the room, the tomato sauce, the garlic salad dressing, the olive oil, the perfume; and time to savour thoughts like these in the moment.

Tonight, I had the time and shared it with the woman who loves her son with all her heart and wants her husband to give her just a few minutes' attention at dinner, a hug with her son a joy but not the same as hugging the man with whom she brought her son into the world. Yes, that's what her smile told me - "give me what I seek: recognition" - that she begged and demanded at the same time.

In our rush we forget ourselves. By forgetting ourselves we forget those around us who are themselves because of us. We forget that our problems are there to be shared with empathy for those listening empathetically. I love my wife and sometimes we forget each other even when one is talking and the other hearing but not listening. We have the ability to listen and think at the same time but it takes patience to slow down our thought process to listen to others. When we take time to listen, the love between us feels infinite.

The more I love my wife by telling her that I love her, both privately and publicly, the more I love those around me and the better I can listen, talk and think. Thanks goes out to the woman sitting nearby who listened to the conversation between my wife, the server and me and heard me tell the server how much I love my wife by the compliments I gave my life partner through what I said to Elizah.

A shared look is a look of love and an appreciation for one another. I appreciate my wife, and the mother next to us tonight appreciates her husband and son. Together, with a moment of infinity captured in one look, the young mother and I shared our appreciation for one another that we share with the ones we love.

I read that a globally popular musician wrote that she was a geek in primary and secondary school. I don't know what else she said but I know what she means. One's dedication to one's life begins at an early age. We drive ourselves forward and the harder/faster we drive, the farther we get. How far we get depends on factors outside our determination, including luck/fate/god's(gods') will, but if we aren't driving ourselves we'll probably get nowhere fast. I look at all sorts of people who've reached great heights in our societies - Madonna, Peyton Manning, Hu Jintao, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, to name a few - and know that they are where they are because of their drive, determination and willingness to share with others, giving everyone they meet the feeling that the moment they shared together was special.

Tonight's movie shared a similar message but not as direct - be yourself, unselfishly. I hope Elizah and the mother at the next table saw the same message from me. Don't wait to be yourself - when you are yourself and when you share yourself, give wholeheartedly, knowing that your love is infinite when you give unselfishly.

Where is I, Stan?

In global news today, the cartography business is taking off after the announcements of the Stans - Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, as well as Iran and Iraq - that they were officially joining together to form two new states, Sunnistan and Shi'iteistan. They released notes of their secret meeting to form one country, Islamistan, which detailed the continuing fight over the "right" destiny of the Muslims, paralleling the long struggle of the Jewish people to form one state, which in turn showed the internal struggle of all countries to define themselves in one form.

Immediately, the United States condemned the move, saying that it will make the polarisation of its country more pronounced. However, one cartographer pointed out that the left-leaning East and West coasts of the U.S. could not become one country separated by the right-leaning middle. Another cartographer pointed out the ability of Canada to hold itself together despite the French-speaking province of Quebec. Northern Irish residents cheered the move, approving land separation based on minor religious differences.

Analysts have flooded the airwaves. Is this good for our world? Is it bad? Where will the price of oil go? How will the military-industrial complex respond to this threat to their marketing campaign that had turned the whole area into a profitable battleground? Will FIFA have new locations from which to choose future World Cups? Should the 2016 Olympics be taken from Rio and split between the two new countries? Will there be an upswing in the price of Persian rugs?

Russia, India and China are expected to announce an upcoming set of joint military exercises along the borders of Sunnistan and Shi'iteistan.

Further details will be released by the new governments, including the proposal that the two countries will share one seat in the United Nations, showing solidarity.

Meanwhile, Kuwait is sweating bricks, looking at its lonely place between Saudi Arabia and these new nations. Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE will release statements in the next day. Nations of the African continent are said to be in talks to reconfigure their borders and perhaps declare themselves one nation, should Sunnistan and Shi'iteistan create regional peace and prosperity.

The Texture of Yellow-Green

Bright, sunny day - the hickory tree leaves, redbud leaves, and oak leaves find their warm, temperate zone days drop from a boil to a simmer on the pot of Earth's crust. Photosynthesis and chlorophyll fade in level of importance. Dormancy soon dominates. Life in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere turns to thoughts of winter.

Outside my window, redbud seeds hang signs of hope, unaware of themselves waiting for a strong wind to release them from their storage boxes and become themselves anew.

= = =

I am myself today, which means I am aware of myself as you in all our forms, in all our locations. I see the guys with long locks of hair, Ted Nugent style, moving from seat to seat at a college football game. I see the father in his National Guard jacket escorting his beautiful daughter to the football field. I see the men in stripes, whose jobs they take seriously, requiring them to memorize a book-sized set of rules and endure the anger of players, coaches and fans, all to maintain a balanced sense of fair play on the field of battle that life rarely grants us - I salute your neutrality, grit and determination. I see the mothers cheering their sons knocking each other down to help their team win. I see the police officers and security guards directing traffic and pulling aside raucous, inebriated fans, all to ensure the safety of a community in movement. I see commerce in action, too, from the hand-painted adverts on fence walls to zeppelins floating overhead, talking heads with microphones on the sideline and in the media booth facing camera operators all tuned to the hidden voice in their ears talking from the producer's or director's command post (a nod, as well, to the IT folks behind the scenes, running cables and setting up information networks in today's Internet world - how else would we get our instant handheld media device updates?).

= = =

Today, I look at the colour streaming through the trees, visible particle-waves bouncing off my eyeballs, and feel the colour yellow-green. Not silky smooth. Not sandpaper rough. A slight resistance when I rub the colour between my fingers. Velour. Velveteen. Sometimes this side of yellow. Sometimes that side of green. The colour of a deciduous leaf about to fall to the ground. I hold the colour in my head, a concept I still find amazing many decades after I said my first word and recognized my first fellow member of our species.

They say that science is destroying the sense of wonder of our place in the universe, turning our millennial-long development of religion and god(s) into an atheist mindset. I disagree. No matter what we believe, or which god(s) we devote our lives to, every waking moment is a miracle and every thought/sensation a new discovery, regardless of our scientific community's desire to dissect minutiae down to slices of infinitesimally-small bits of iota.

I smile. I relax my shoulder muscles. I am alive. I may have been created by a god or may be a god for all I know. What I know doesn't matter. Knowledge is not all. A tree cannot see me. A tree cannot prevent me from knocking it down or understand my knowledge of xylem and phloem. A tree and I don't have to have that knowledge. We exist.

Last night, while I let my thoughts wander and my body slip into a sleep state, a thought bounced around, humourous but insightful. What's in a label? Local inhabitants of this area where I live have been called American Indians and native Americans but they are neither. They never knew Amerigo Vespucci - they owed no allegiance to the European leaders of their time. They, we, are of one species. We are not Americans. We are Earth-bonded creatures. The land does not owe us anything. We are not riveted into one place (although private ownership laws allow us to claim a place on land for a set period of time). Thus, we can wander wherever we want and toss labels aside like a combine cutting wheat.

I am just one person. I happen to be male. I happen to have a low amount of melanin in my skin. I can choose to reinforce stereotype labels associated with melanin levels and I can choose not to reinforce stereotypes. I choose the latter. What I reinforce is others' behaviour, the only sure thing I know via what I see, hear, feel, taste and smell, recombined by what I process in my thoughts. I know it's not always easy to overcome stereotypes, especially ones where feelings of superiority or inferiority have formed one's personality, but we can toss aside these feelings if we choose to believe we're truly free and truly one species on one planet set to explore the rest of the universe together.

The Sweet Smell of Victory

Birdland. Trojan band. Fireworks. Complete game plan. The streak is over! Long live the streak.

Tonight, I celebrate the first win in how many games? 27? 28? But I celebrate not for myself or my wife, both of us licking our lips after munching fresh, hot doughnuts from the fountain of youthful delights up the road that we call Krispy Kreme. While slowly sipping a large cup of robust brew, I sit back and blink my red, tired eyes.

What did I see tonight?

Homecoming. Trojans vs. Hornets. Red vs. Blue. Girls in dresses sporting mums. Fathers with matching flowers hanging on their lapels. A tiara. Mothers and aunts hugging their debutantes waiting for their makeup to shine. A father and daughter flashing the rock-and-roll sign with fist pumping outstretched forefinger and pinkie. Students standing and cheering their mates on the field. About 45 deg F. Metal seating - stands - for the audience, including parents, relatives, marching band, and curiosity seekers. Who will be crowned homecoming king and queen at halftime?

A long pass or two but mainly running up the middle, leaping over the pile, fresh legs digging into thighs, shins and dirt, pushing and pulling, one more yard and then drop to the ground. Sweeps. Handoffs. Plunging across the goal line. Touchdown!

Long sheets of misty rain settling over the crowd. Muddy field. Football the way you want to play football, with grass in your teeth and mud in your ears. Uniforms uniformly cold, wet and wearing the scars of helmet-to-shoulder pad battles. Trench warfare without the mustard gas, hot dogs bearing mustard instead. Hot chocolate too hot to keep stocked, selling hot water at the concession stand. Hot hands on the air dryer in the bathroom for frozen digits.

Trudging Trojans. Swarming Hornets. Pound for pound on pound of flesh. Pounding. Wounding. Diving. Catching. Dropping. Passing.

Streaks on the windscreen. Sometimes you're the bug. Sometimes you're the windshield wiper. Streaks of another streak, a string of losses. Biting. Stinging. Numbing. Fearing.

Unbelievable? On this cold, wet evening, unmistakably fall weather in north Alabama, the Tennessee border so close you can smell it, a group of young men overcame the stench of defeat and stepped up a notch, their heads held high. Humble but sure of themselves.

You can never make up for a loss. But you can move on to the next tough test and overcome mistakes. You knock down the obstacles that excuses are made of - the shoulda, the coulda, the woulda, the must, the have-to - and march into the arena.

You eat the clichés like a breakfast of champions, taking care of business, throwing off the yoke of the agony of defeat and putting on the crown of the thrill of victory. You don't care about words. You care about your tackling responsibility, your blocking assignment, your ball handling, your pass pattern, your interception ability.

Your daily problems can wait. Your girlfriend, your father, your brother, your schoolwork, your part-time job are momentarily forgotten. You are a warrior, a battle-hardened fighting machine. You are a man. Flesh and blood not taking it anymore. You're the one dishing it out this time.

You own four 12-minute periods. You pace yourself, your burning desire to win on reserve. You bend a little just before your second wind kicks in but you do not break. You. will. not. quit.

While the visiting marching band plays tunes from Broadway musicals, you meet with your coaches and teammates plotting out the second half of the game like ol' Broadway Joe Namath, a boy himself once singing the likes of sweet home Alabama long before the legend of "Run, Forest, run," sang out in the minds of those who confused movie plots with history.

This win belongs to you, the players, the coaches, the cheerleaders, the dance team, the marching band, the students, the parents, the teachers, the administration, the announcers, the press, the field workers, the concession stand operators, and everyone involved in making a high school football game a community event.

We will talk about this night the rest of our lives. On Friday, 16th October 2009, the Hazel Green High School Trojans football team won 20-17 over the Chelsea Hornets. Heroes will be made over and over in the retelling. Catches will be recalled 10, 20, 30 years from now. Bashing tackles will be retold until the whole family can see in their dreams every turning jaw and compressed chest on the field from this night. Penalties will be discussed and refrains of "three blind mice" sung about bad referee calls or calls that luckily went our way.

Fifty years from now, when an old man is watching his great grandson pick up a ball for the first time, someone will hear him whisper, "One dark, stormy night, on the sixteenth of October in oh-nine, I found out what it was like to be a winner. Not just in my heart but here in the power of these arms and legs on a football field in Hazel Green. Not just as myself but as a teammate. It's your turn, son. Pick up the winning family tradition that ball represents and make me proud."

The Public Auction

Someone told me they heard that the government was going to have a public auction. Now, I ain't much of one to keep track of what the government is doing, having plenty to keep my little ol' mind occupied, but I was wondering what the government has to auction to the public. I mean, ain't the government public by dee-fault?

I never heard such a quantified quandary in my life. My friend Jeb says that it's not the government's fault that they're having a public auction. The government caint hep itself in a case like this.

I disagree. It's not the government's job to have a public auction. It's the people's job to auction public assets. After all, we're a government of the people, by the people, paid and bought for the people. Or paid off. Maybe bought off.

I'm no professor so I won't have the brain knowledge to collect the facts about this public auction. I'm just an ol' country fellow who's got no chickens to raise or corn to ferment and bottle. Poor in thoughts and deeds.

There's no right or privilege involved in getting a public auction started, anymore than there's a right or privilege for water, electricity or high speed communications. Reckon that's all I know. Time to put my teeth back in and get some vittles for supper. Maw, you ready to go to town?!

Puzzle of the Moment

Aporia. Glossolalia. Hildegard of Bingen. Cyrus' cylinder. Voynich manuscript. Poems of Victor Hugo. Brassolaeliocattleya. Magnetic pole. Wrinkled skin. Euphoria. Immortality. Heineken Cup. Remote storage. Potting soil. Tumbled rocks. Pencil sharpener. Pull chain. Harmonica. Matchbook. Twill tape. Croakies. Copper calligraphy ink. Charge card. Alkaline battery. Screwdriver. Eohippus. Lake Tanganyika. Perth. Patagonia. Zero degrees Celsius. Digital waveform. Layered. Ion drive. Woven basket. Equinox. Medieval. Ming. Micron. Tally. TTTE. Hill of Content. Solar system communication grid. Mill. Coast. Press. Flame. Applied practicality.

Bay Bulls

Quick post. Double bonus night: 1) Jon Gruden wearing a shirt supporting the USF Bulls, home of my father's post-graduate alma mater, and 2) my team's quarterback getting player of the week honors. Another win like Saturday's and he'll get name recognition, too!

Caught part of the Monty Python Q&A/T&A/DNA session tonight - interesting, will have to finish watching on ifc.com later this week after resolving Pakistan issue. À bientôt!

Packing The Heat

You know what, in the midst of my foray into humour, part of me is burning mad. I'm tired of brothers and sisters bombing brothers and sisters in and around Pakistan. Time to take action. See you in a few days. These assholes with their desire to kill others have run out of time. No more monkeying around my funny bone. Kick the neighbourhood association into gear and flush out the geeks wiring up their explosive playtoys.

The planet is my backyard. You kill someone(s) with a bomb anywhere on this planet and you're messing with me and my associates. We take no prisoners. We listen to no excuses.

You got my attention. Now you get the attention you deserve. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place? You know why? You just struck out. Time to say goodbye.

Temporal

A few years ago, while taking a work break to visit the Manhattan isle for entertainment in the guise of training toward PMP (Pimp My Project) certification, I saw a theatrical farce called Spamalot which rehashed material from a movie that rehashed material from a series of comedy sketches.

Tempest.

I use material from my life, which rehashes what I've already done. Thus, I mix reality and fantasy, having made love to the most wonderful woman on the drive to class last night, she and I using the erasable board markers to circle targets for treasure hunting truffles tucked temptuously in titillating ticklish hideaways.

Out of Touch.

What are pupils and irises but students and flowers? What is an optic nerve but what is an optic nerve?

Facts are fictions, anyway. History is a pot of apple butter on the boil. Molasses are really made of mole asses?

There's really no such thing as a better cup of tea. A cup of tea better be a cup of tea. Not better. And not a butter cup, neither.

And that woman I made love to. Well, she made love to me, too. Like making change, only without the change purse. Straps, though (or seatbelts, if you prefer items with only one purpose). Woulda used whips but had to handle the steering wheel and gear knob. Two hands. Two feet occupied with accelerator and clutch. Whatta drive. No need for a putter this time, the rest of the golf bag plenty for a round of fairways and greens. Par for the course, as they say.

Time out.

Page Up / Page Down / Home / End

As I've told you, I have a constant dilemma - being a hermit in the midst of a desert of people and being a switchboard operator who's making JIT (just in time) connections between people whose lives are key to my success. At once, I want to be alone and want to be surrounded by people I love. But so what? That's what being a responsible adult is all about.

Speaking of responsibility, I've conducted more research, courtesy of my friends. Did you know that we're using up the planet's oxygen? That's right. By putting more and more talking heads on television and radio, their voices and the equipment they use are consuming vast quantities of oxygen. In fact, a secret, conspiratorial laboratory is working day and night to create more oxygen so we can have more impartial news coverage. One researcher contacted me and showed me diagrams of devices that directly siphon off the breath of public speakers and pump the air deep into oceans. The carbon dioxide buildup will take centuries before there's any effect, the researcher said.

Bad news. I took the researcher's data and entered it into my planetary simulation program which includes the activities of the antlike creatures we call humans. The effect of carbon dioxide buildup is not the main problem. The main problem is the effect of the giant straws shoved down into the oceans. Large populations of brine zebra mussels will clog the straws and attract giant squids and octopi, which in turn will stir up gadzillions of zooplankton and disrupt the ocean currents.

But don't worry. The switch of the magnetic poles in the next few years will overshadow the catastrophic effect of massive temperature swings across the planet.

So, while you glue your ears to the words and images of your favorite soothsayer, who assures you of your place in society, the combined effects of soothsaying will transform the planet into one giant swamp where alligators, crocodiles and eerie swamp gas will rule, and whales will sprout feet and wander land, hunting humans for sport.

More fun reading: http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/104ns_002.htm

A Runaway Rolling Row In The Heath

"Are you sure about this?"

"Absolutely, sir."

"You mean it?"

"With certainty."

"And you promise this is the last expansion?"

"Well, sir, we could take land from Ireland but there might be resistance."

"We want to make sure about this one. I don't want to face another crisis."

"Sir, by turning the last hectare of land in the north and all the land in-between, from Plymouth to Aberdeen, into a fully-operational set of runways and space ports, we guarantee that the British Isles will be the one and only hub for international flight for all destinations reached by crossing the Northern Hemisphere and into space via the centrifugally-neutral North Pole line."

"Very well. Prepare the speech and I'll talk to our citizens to explain yet again why converting our English cottage housing estates into underground cities is best for our country."

"Excellent, sir. You won't regret it one bit."

"Regret? Never. And schedule a flight to my newly-renovated plantation on Montserrat."

"Yes, sir. Anything else you want, Prime Minister Beckham?"

"Tell Victoria to bring the grandkids along."

Help, I'm Fallon and I Can't Get This Flying Circus Off The Set

In my youth, a playmate of mine introduced me to the comedy right of passage, including an album with a matching tie and handkerchief. Somewhere I have a book by those boys of British humour. Now, 30+ years later, we get a glimpse of the madcap teamwork of the partial Monty on late night U.S. TV. Still having fun and staying out wheelchairs for now, including a stint on IFC later this month.

Pop. Pop. Pop Music. Humour. Television programming.

What about local entertainment? Do we find joy in our own communities?

Of course we do. But we don't get national adverts to pay for them very often. In and around my wife's hometown, international entertainers have roots - Diana Ross, Charlie Chase, "Doc" McConnell, Archie Campbell, Tennessee Ernie Ford. However, local performers are just as talented, musical and funny (sometimes, all three!), carrying separate day jobs and night gigs in their thoughts and actions.

I have played the role of a news junkie lately, using my personal connections and headline news to create a blog to entertain myself. This morning, I sat in the garage, watching chipmunks stopping at my feet and Carolina wrens flying around my head looking for food and shelter inside my domicile. Their lives were my moment of fun, relaxation, humour and entertainment for a couple of hours. They taught me that I've been repeating myself in ways that may not add to advancement of my species. But then again, it might. If the 40-year old genius of the Monty Python writers/actors can keep them going and going and going (cue up the pink Energizer bunny beating a drum), then repetition is not a bad thing, I suppose.

We are who we are and can be who we are not. We can never be who we were but can appear to repeat the actions of our previous selves. In other words, time for more humour - pardon my Scottish - look on the shite side of life.

Systematic Satire

For those who think I take myself seriously in any shape, form or fashion, recall my modus operandi is satire in the moment. I express what I see around me in humourous terms, humour for myself and perhaps for others. I make fun of myself first, as well as make fun of those who make fun of themselves (e.g., the last blog entry pokes fun at the atheist/nontheist/theist groups all at once, all while poking fun at me, too).

To me, a pile of spaghetti noodles may look like a mass of writing worms [writing? what are they writing? how about WRITHING?!] which saves someone else from the edge of starvation at the same time. Point of view is key to a good punchline.

Now, get out there and have fun!

Time To Admit The Truth

In order to move on to the next set of thoughts, I want to admit the truth to you. I am a religious person. I have no religious dogma that directs my daily thoughts or actions but I practice a religion that has no name. I am alive. That's the religion I practice every moment. I treat life as life and see that all lives want to live. To live, some lives consume other lives. As a matter of fact, all lives consume other lives, living and dead.

In my religion, I stop short of giving thought to thoughts. I do not recognize consciousness as an important function in my religion. I only recognize life. Even then, I'm not sure what life is but I don't have to be sure because I don't exist anymore than any other life exists.

Life motivates me to live. All else is icing on the cake.

There, I've said it. Now you know why you are more important to me than anyone or anything because you are alive. Life is the ultimate reason why we're here. If you have other definitions for life, then use them but celebrate life, every life, in the process.

That's all I know and all I see. Now I can relax and concentrate on more concrete goals. No more bottling up inside what I've long known and understood. Can't get trapped in words if I see that words are meaningless. Freedom to be me.

Remember, I truly believe I'm the only one who reads these words. My goal is not to please others. My goal is to see life in simple terms I can understand and treat life as the only game in town. From there, I can make decisions and act upon ways to spread life as I know it out into the local habitable bodies of the universe. In the meantime, I enjoy what life as I know it is about, including sporting events, discussions, movies, festivals, games, politics, religion, companionship, learning, teaching and sleeping. Happiness is living, living happiness. Happiness is being me, no matter what others think, celebrating with others who are being themselves no matter what I think.

The Importance of a Speech Center

How important are your brain and vocal folds? Do you consider them ordinary tools? Do you treat every human utterance with reverence or acknowledging grunts? Are sound and writing significant?

For years, I treated books like delicate artwork, trying not to bend the pages, crease the binding and definitely not lining the margins with handwritten notes. Every book was a treasure to me (and still is) but now I feel free to write comments when they come to me, for use later on in understanding my interpretation of the work at a certain age and how the zeitgeist influenced me.

My life is my one and only life here and now. It is no less or more important than any other life. Every word I utter, every thought I make, every symbol I scratch make me who I am and who I will be looking back at who I was and will be.

My life is life as I know life, the conversion of matter into deliberate outputs of energy. When my life here is over, I will have no deliberations to make. My component parts will be liberated. I will be free in a completely new sense, my cells decomposing into free radicals of another sort. Molecules. Atoms. Alive in another deliberating life (or lives, really).

I have never existed. I've only been told I exist. The fact is we exist. We mold the mesh network that holds us together in what we tell each other is a species on what we tell each other is a planet.

Life is a mystery to me. I know what I've been told is supposed to be life and why I'm here but the fact remains I know nothing. I do not even know I exist. I see I exist through the response of the environment around me, including this unit I call myself the body.

Have you ever held a cloud in your hands? We are clouds. We are somewhat fixed in our shapes by the exterior protection we call skin wrapped about a skeletal form but we can exist in many forms and shapes, with and without appendages or other body parts.

To know I do not exist is a fallacy just like saying I exist without knowing why. In other words, I am using words, these symbols, to represent what I observe wordlessly, my thoughts organized around sounds set in sequential order, supported by my eyes and the artificial concept of time.

To exist and not exist at the same time has taken me on an interesting journey. There is me, the person with a socially-established identity, and not-me, the happenchance meeting of chemicals bouncing across the surface of a large mass slowly cooling down internally while spinning like a top around a hotter mass.

To understand both conditions means admitting understanding neither. Separating and connecting. Spreading and collecting.

Life is not sacred and life is not secular. Life is sacred and life is secular. Either. Both. Members of what we call our species will act with driven passion to firmly establish the existence of ourselves both sacredly and secularly. Loving. Killing. Reproducing. Cloning.

I do not control perception. I do not control reality. I, or it, lives. That's all I can and will do. Words and sounds exist without me. I emit and omit words and sounds that others emit and omit. My goal is not to be original because I have plenty of words and languages and sounds to repeat infinitely without repeating myself. My goal is to give what I see as similar representations of myself - my species - the opportunity to keep reproducing itself regardless of the words and sounds it reuses or invents, without me around eventually, my words and sounds lost in the noise of life in no time flat.

I am more important than anyone or anything, because without me I am not me. With me I am me and not me, but I will always not be me without me. I am me because of you so you are more important than anyone or anything, too. But am I not me because of you or not me not because of you? Perhaps not me because of not you? Thus, are you not you because of not me or not because of me?

Sounds and thoughts. Sacred and ridiculous, ludicrous and sublime. Sometimes good enough is enough good to suffice.

Another Look Back

In college, a friend of mine had a collection of humour on LP records, including those of Tom Lehrer, such as:

National Brotherhood Week/When You Are Old and Gray

My parents had humour on LPs by Andy Griffith and Bob Newhart. I had humour by Cheech and Chong and Richard Pryor on LPs and 8-track tapes. Guess kids listen to humour on MP3s and mobile phone video links these days. What about tomorrow?

We often figure out we aren't saying anything new when we look back, which I hope encourages us to find new humour to get us out of our troubles today.

The sky's getting darker - there's rain ahead in the local forecast here. Are mosquitoes far behind when their bellies get fatter? Time for lunch and afternoon reading. G'day, mates!

Piano Hero

We have new electronic toy games for guitars and drums. What about one called Piano Hero? Let's start with this guy's interpretation of a classic:

Perahia Plays Beethoven

Redux Revisited

Thanks to blue-eyed Alyssa at Taco Mac for the service the other night. You and your manager (Jerry?) made our fresh kettle chips enjoyable as an after-dinner appetizer. Stephanie was quiet at Carson's last night. I didn't catch the name of our server at Barley's on Saturday but congrats to you guys on the upgrade to two bars with two sets of 48 beer taps, one smoking and one nonsmoking, just in time for 31st October celebrations. Oh, and a late nod to Naomi at Dreamland BBQ in the Atlanta area - nothing like a familiar Alabama venue near ol' Terminus.

I. Adagio sostenuto, Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor for Piano, Op. 27, by Beethoven. Is the composition good, great or fantastic? I don't know. The music changes my mood, that much I can tell you. What about the other two movements? Right now, I can't remember.

Is it true that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is really a Douglas Adams' remake of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now? Or is the other way around? Right now, I can't remember.

Meanwhile, changes are shaking up at EU headquarters. Word comes to me that the way it was is the fear for the way it will be. War is always a good profitmaking venture to get one out of economic doldrums, especially when others feel all warm and fuzzy about peace breaking out across the globe. As much as I desire peace, peace tends to be a break between skirmishes and wars just as quiet is the parents' break between inner-fighting and authority-rebelling children. Is there a true balance between war and peace? Tolstoy never said. Did Joan of Arc prove otherwise?

We are one species. We can cooperate in peaceful competition or take our affairs onto the battlefield. We can do both and we can do neither. The planet doesn't care. Right now, I can't remember. Any way, I'm going to enjoy the changing colors of the light passing through the tree canopy this afternoon. Happiness is seeing lichen spread on wet tree bark just as much as seeing if there's water on the Moon in the dust cloud no one saw.

All The Information We Think You Need

To tell you what we think you need to hear, we took a survey of experts on current topics. We present you the results of the survey:

• According to a survey of witch doctors, the smog will clear today if you remember to take your preventative purge medicine.
• According to a survey of druids, the alignment of oak leaves portends a long drought somewhere nearby while rain will cause others to change their route to success.
• According to a survey of voodoo doctors, your army of zombies will resist you in completing the stimulus recovery construction project you started.
• According to a survey of economists, with their jobs on the line for missing this world downturn, they cautiously predict an optimistic view of the future, with growth occurring sometime soon (but not too soon (and not too late, either)).
• According to a survey of futurists, the future will happen whether we want it or not.
• According to a survey of bookies, there's a 50-to-1 chance that a disaster will cause a wild bet to pay off.
• According to a survey of surveyors, a GPS unit will provide less accuracy than a plumb line when GPS satellites fall from the sky.
• According to a survey of journalists, freedom of the press equates to better pay...but not necessarily for journalists.
• According to a survey, surveys provide less reliable information than going with your gut instinct.

Thanks for reading all the information we think you need. See you again tomorrow so we can prove to our advertisers that we get them the people we think they need to give us the money we know we need.

"World Media Day" Revisited

Please read my reposted blog entry, "World Media Day." I found out that a link I posted in the blog entry contained comments in a forum that do not reflect my opinion. The link has been replaced with one appropriate to the subject and the blog entry arranged to support the new link.

Thanks for your understanding. Now back to kicking someone's butt who deserves my rebuttal. Ahh...the Internet. Where would I be without something to interrupt my view of los Dolphins y los Jets, led by Mark Sánchez? Now, back to the game!

Grown-up 'Tude

Ever wondered what the E*Trade baby will look like when he grows up?

Here he is now: shankopotamus

Here he is as a real man: "all growed up"

World Media Day

My apologies. I am rewriting this blog entry - someone pointed out a series of negative comments at the bottom of a forum I hadn't scanned completely, comments that do not reflect my point of view.

Sorry I missed the events of the World Media Summit. Here's the address from the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao:

http://www.worldmediasummit.org/english/2009-10/09/content_17889208.htm

As always, we are responsible for ourselves and our behaviour around others. I take responsibility for my actions in not fully reading through a forum. I leave you with this thought:

You're out with your friends. One of them pulls out a bag of chicken eggs and throws the eggs on a house. Another friend pulls out a bag of rocks and breaks the house windows. You have done nothing in regards to these actions because they happened too quickly for you to stop them. Are you jointly responsible?

Given In The Name Of...

A friend, Lynda Ward, started a conversation on facebook about the goal of the recent announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize. My response:

Nobel started this with the intent to award those who created peace congresses. In this day and age of facebook and twitter, perception is just as strong as reality, it seems. Can we say that we're creating reality by strengthening perception in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the current leader of the free world, who represents hope and peace for the future?

...

We can hope that this effects positive change for international cooperation and peace, no matter the reason for the premature issue of the award.

l33t / gyaru-moji

Several months ago, I read the book, The Scots-Irish in the Hills of Tennessee by Billy Kennedy, which I picked up from a Scottish Tartans museum gift shop, if I remember correctly (my memory being about as accurate as the details in the book). The book reminded me that our species has the knack of seeing what it wants to see and recording what it wants to remember.

Yesterday afternoon, I wandered the streets of a small Tennessee village, eating Sunday brunch at the McKinney restaurant in Hales Springs Inn with my wife and mother in-law, later gawking at and buying from the vendors' booths of the Heritage Days festival.

I stood with my 92-year young mother in-law, both of us leaning against a lamppost, and watched the people walking past. Across the street, a man wearing a plastic hood, leather apron and thick oil-stained gloves stirred corn seeds in a big metal pot to make kettle corn. Next to me, a young man and his family sold wooden swords and wooden shields for kids to play knights with. My wife and a former secondary schoolmate of hers visited with hometown friends further down the road. I pulled out my pocket moleskine and wrote notes, describing to myself views of the passersby...

The people occupying the roads and sidewalks represent a portion of the species to which I belong. Their history is my history, in whole and in part. Some came here of their own volition. Some were born in the area. Some are descendants of those who were brought unwillingly. Their clothing styles: denim blue jeans, T-shirts, ballcaps, all covered with familiar sports logos; "Sunday best," 'go to church' suits and dresses; goth; biker; independent; camo; Kenyan; cowboy; square/country dance; Halloween. Herb shop sellers. Woodworkers. Quiltmakers.

I know these people, having grown up them or those like them in my childhood. They rest assured in the conviction their local ways of living are right. They may or may not travel much farther than the grocery market or nearby villages. They represent the majority of our species, content with the life they inherited from their parents and other adult caretakers. They speak a language and dialect understood by a small population.

Exclusivity is elitist by nature, despite calls for inclusiveness. Rare is the person who speaks all languages, all dialects, all jargon, with complete understanding and openness.

My goal is still getting our species on other planetary bodies while giving us room to enjoy and celebrate our subcultures.

A week ago my wife and I drove through the mountains of north Georgia and north Alabama. In the middle of nowhere, we crossed the border between the states and stopped for a petrol fillup. Inside the store, the shopkeeper read an Indian newspaper and sold drinks/snacks to hungry travelers. On the outside, the store looked like any other store in the world, advertising beer, soda, and cigarettes. Inside, the Caucasian driver of a jacked-up, camo-painted pickup truck, wearing worn overalls and a ballcap with the number of his favorite NASCAR driver, stood in the store with me, a retired engineering manager, international business consultant and technical institute instructor, and spoke to the Indian shopkeeper, three subcultures easily mixing and engaging one another in the arena of commerce.

Our subcultures rain down on this planet and drown the earth with our desires, dreams, habitual practices and beliefs. We may hold up the names of individuals like gods, preserving their words and images for posterity, but we are mainly composed of those whose voices are forgotten within two generations. How many lost voices equal the words of one we praise? A rhetorical question. Every one of us is important, a concept we forget when we make celebrities and demigods out of other people.

Makes 12 oz (340 gm)

63 times the rock completed a circumference. Shedding. Melting. Leaving a trail. Unnamed. Edifice eschewing. No goals. No objectives. Existing.

Mix. Stir. Pour. Smoking or non-smoking. Standing in a vase. Clear.

Basic. Measurable. Analysis. Mass. Weight. Compound.

Mass equals knees on the lotus flower bowing to Mecca.

Helmet. Force. Acceleration. Score. Cheer. Groan.

Light reflection. Rotation. Omen. Tail. Named. Periodic.

Trail of tears. Suicide market bomber. Freedom fighting freedom. No deposit. No return.

Simple Answers

Two solutions provided to me in support of getting our bodies back in motion: hard work and experimentation.

• Solution One: Hard Work

The first solution proposed to me is the simple mantra of "Rome wasn't built in a day." We get what we want when we put our thoughts in order, concentrate on one important task and perform all the smaller tasks necessary to complete the work. We don't get what we want by wishing it so. We gather together with those who are willing to dedicate themselves to the same task and work, not talk, put our feet in motion and place our hands on the tools that'll get the job done.

• Solution Two: Experimentation

The second solution proposed to me is the realization that we discover our goals are often well-intentioned but misguided only after we've started down the path to reach our goals. Sometimes our goals become unnecessary because of changing conditions. Sometimes we missed information that would have pointed us in a different, more accurate, direction to reach our goals. We solve problems by experimenting even if we strongly believe we know the actions we'll take to reach our goals (in other words, constantly question your assumptions).

• Conclusion

Are these solutions complementary or complimentary, contrasting or distracting? Either/or? Neither/nor? And/but? Not only/But also? Indications that it'll rain later today?

They're a good start. They are some of the ideas we need to keep in mind as we seek concrete tasks to work on. I'll keep posting your ideas as they come in.

Have a great day!

I Need Your Help

10 Oct 2009, 22:20

If I am you and you are me and we are millions and millions of unemployed people and growing, then I have a question for you/myself:

What are we doing?

We. That’s the word I’m concerned about. The value of the exchange of goods and services flows around the world in miniscule increments of time but nearly unimaginable bundles of wealth. We own the system we worked for, whether we know it or believe it or not. We have the solutions to the problems that make us feel trapped in the system. We own our behaviours. We are responsible for our actions and reactions. We have no one to blame for wherever we are or whatever we’re doing.

I, if I am you, look for the solution to the problem of what to do next, knowing as I do that I have unresolved issues that will remain with me while I solve the problem at hand. There is no perfect life but there are plenty of balanced lives with happiness a primary component of the life in balance.

The solution I seek is one where happiness meets peace while I’m in control of the life I own in the system I own with you. It’s seeing that instant gratification needs that are catered to by the marketing and advertising around you, both in straightforward business terms and in unintentional jealousy/envy terms (e.g., “keeping up with the Joneses”), can be overcome when we treat each other as responsible adults who seek viable solutions.

It’s not about being green or saving the environment. It’s not about giving up or sacrificing. It’s about you and your family. It’s about you. It’s about me.

The solution starts with an honest evaluation of your/our lives, our families, our backgrounds, our strengths, our weaknesses, our powers, our gifts, our humour, our sadness, our future.

The solution continues with believing we own the system and then figuring out how to put the system to valuable use in our lives in every moment, never once saying “it’s out of my hands” or “that’s not my job.”

The solution requires volunteers. The solution requires blood, sweat and tears. The solution includes setbacks. We’ll fall down BUT we’ll have each other to pick us up one at a time. We don’t have to have the right answer all the time because we can rely on our combined knowledge and capabilities to examine a problem and find the most viable solution, always keeping in mind that no one solution satisfies everyone all the time.

I need your help. I am looking at the problem of a jobless recovery [I don’t see a problem but I use the word to describe my analysis of the current situation in global economics]. As most of the major world economic centers get closer to reporting positive growth (as if “negative growth” is a real term! but who likes to use the word “shrinkage” or “contraction”?), many of us will still have no economic strength of our own in comparison to what we had or what we wanted. What we had or what we wanted is not necessarily what we have to have or have to want – it’s often what we allowed ourselves to believe because of the influence of those around us.

Therefore, here’s where I need your help. I need your help in redefining what it is that I really want. Do I really want a house full of items I rarely use? Do I really want a life where I’m running back and forth between activities that I don’t fully enjoy? Do I want to walk through life and ignore most of the people around me?

I’m standing at the edge of a ravine and can’t get to the other side. I can build a bridge halfway across the divide but need you to build the other half so we can connect the halves where I have what you need and you have what I need.

It doesn’t look easy but when we put our bodies into motion we make it easy with every movement in every moment.

I’m looking at the solutions we provide each other but I only have one pair of eyes connected to one brain that searches this giant computer system composed of seven billion people connected one way or the other. Our planet is small and sometimes our voices are very tiny. Someone out there has a piece of the puzzle that completes the image that describes the solution to unemployment. Actually, more than one person has a piece. Some of us have the same piece - when we combine our voices, we reach out to complete the solution like fans at a sporting event shouting the same name over and over.

Often, after burying my thoughts in the words of others, I see a solution that’s off-kilter, filtered through a funhouse prism. I haven’t found enough words about the constipated bank loan problem or the rising unemployment problem to give me a solution worth laughing about. I’ve only heard complaints that enough is not being done.

I don’t care that Bernanke or Summers or the IMF has firm control of the situation and is ready to take charge when things get worse. I want to hear from those who have put viable, positive solutions into place. I’m more interested in fire prevention than firefighting. I’m more interested in positive behavior reinforcement than crowd control. Action, not reaction.

I wish I had the solution to give you, but in this case the solution is in your hands and thoughts. You may be five years old or 105 years old. You may be an illiterate field worker or an academic superstar. You may have no expertise in the area of research you studied but you found a working solution.

The solution I offer is you. In doing so, I am exposing my greatest weakness, which is not wanting to admit I don’t have all the answers. It’s like admitting defeat, only I’m actually admitting you are my victory. My worst fear is my greatest triumph. I have felt mental pain and anguish these last few days because the solution, this blog entry, is the last thing I wanted to write. I’ve always been able to find a way out of a trap. In this case, I found out that you are the one who has to open the trap for me, no easy admission for a person who believes that self-sufficiency is the number one reason that life exists, due to self-preservation. Don’t know why that is since I rationally know that no one lives on an island and space is not a true vacuum.

Enough for now. I’ve got to mull on this a few more days and let you solve the problem(s) for me while I keep my mouth shut about them. You’ll find the solution(s) when you least expect them, like going to the market for bread and finding a delicious, nutritious fruit you’d never seen before, changing your diet forever and making your family stronger because you happened to glance in a different direction while talking with a neighbour at the bread booth.

Concentrated Fragrance Oil

Effectual change or effective change? Defective pocket change? Hidden charges? Depth charges? Effective depth? Change depth? Dearth? Hearth? Mantel? Mantle?

Now that the word is out, are we out of words? If we see that Muslims and Jews have more in common than Jews and Christians and that Christians and Hindus have more in common than Kurds and Hans, is that enough to put in one sentence to search for effective change deep in one's hidden, charged pocket?

How heavy is a skyscraper in comparison to the ice on Greenland? Is Singapore sinking faster than Hong Kong or Manhattan? Is the Matterhorn rising faster than Everest or the Andes peaks?

I broke off a crust of bread and rubbed a sensitive spot on my gums while eating it. Volcanoes and zits pop up every day. Scabs form where scrapes occurred. Scabs cross picket lines to feed their families.

We can believe. We can belief. We can tuna in canneries and vegetables in glass jars.

Rational people will believe anything they deem rational. Reasonableness is not required. Belief. Be, leaf - photosynthesize your life-giving moment.

A moon crash and a peace prize. Totally unrelated except in time. But you'll still have those who think watches and calendars are conspiratorial, the Earth is flat, no one landed on the moon and the moon is made of green cheese.

We define the future today and then figure out how to live it. We write history backwards and forwards and forget it. Categorize a mass, motivate the mass to mass and the mass will believe it exists for its own sake - categorize with care and concern for all, including those who mass, those who don't mass, those who oppose the mass and those who don't go to mass.

Effectual and effective are not the same, no matter how great or small the desired change. Time is important and irrelevant. Those who don't want change are equal to those who want change because we're all the same but we're not. Watch for those who want to be more equal than others and find the change you made but not necessarily sought. Then you'll know the difference between effectual and effective.

I don't write the rules. I write them down. I don't know what life is all about. I trust that everyone else does and go from there. The future is always bright to me because I laugh no matter how hard I'm crying. Why be serious when the absurd is so much more interesting?

Spring Tension

I made a breakthrough today. Most mornings I wake up, eat breakfast, shower, shave and dress in order to prepare myself to wind up the potential energy of the "motorised engine" of my automotive transportation device. The windup key has always been difficult to handle, the design engineers not putting much thought into the ergonomics but much into the aesthetics of the giant metal crank - pretty, red key but no easy grip locations.

While brushing my teeth, I looked at the windup facial hair shaving device I use. Instead of a windup key, it uses a pull-string to tighten the metal windings.

I watched the cat run around the flat and then it dawned on me!

I do not need to manually turn the windup key on the automobile springed gearing. Instead, I need an auto-mechanical device to wind it for me.

Thus, I pulled out the bicycle pump, attached it to a bellows from the fireplace and used air pressure to crank the windup key in circles, foot push by foot push.

My neighbours will no longer make fun of my windup boy-toy car. I have even found a way to remove the windup key and create a connection point for the bicycle pump/bellows winding device. Of course, I will have to stop along the roadside and pump-wind the spring every kilometer or so but I still get to work without the need for fossilised liquid fuel or horse power to accelerate my enclosed transportation device.

I think tomorrow I will find a way to install the bicycle pump/bellows winding device inside the car so that I can pump along the way, storing air pressure on an as-needed basis and getting my exercise, too. This will allow me to enjoy my morning and evening commutes during inclement weather.

My coworkers may scoff at me but I pay no road taxes because my vehicle has no federally-recognized definition of an engine/motor and my insurance company classifies my transportation device as a home use product covered by my house insurance.

The money I save I invest in more ways to redefine living within and outside of the system, just like the walls of my house are also the fields on which I grow my food crops, the roof is the power source for my electrically-powered house and yard devices, and the ceiling the place to store and dry my harvest. The only framed pictures I have are windows. The floor holds the furniture I use for clothes/drygoods storage and sitting/lying down, both aesthetic and functional in nature.

Famous Words of a Local Politician

While parts of the world move forward profitably, the part of the world in which I live continues to argue and fight over small matters, facing higher unemployment and slow growth. Reminds me of the "house divided" speech by a former national leader:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_House_Divided_Speech

I am dizzy with anticipation, holding my breath, waiting for someone to step forward and say we are neither Democrats nor Republicans but people of the same country who belong to the same species on the same planet. The time for pointing fingers is over. Time to make snap decisions and be willing to face the consequences. Leaders. Coaches. Mentors. Not squabbling political processors.

Imagine Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey joining together to say they're taking over the reins and driving this wagon, wiping away the mudslinging of Washington D.C. and moving us forward, joining forces with the rest of the planet instead of pushing everybody down to get ahead.

Oh well, time to wake up from that daydream and get back to work while trudging through all this donkey don't-doo flowing down the Potomac. Even my Mexican friends recognize the reticence of the leaders of this country to make progress. What if Central and South American countries formed their own EU (European Union, that is, or perhaps Estados Unidos II)?

Clasped Hands

In these moments of happiness, I take out the Book of the Future to look back upon this time and the next few years ahead.

What happens if there is not a superpower left to dictate world policy changes? What if many nations join together and abolish nationhood? Those with a clear vision to share with their followers will lead them into the new era, shedding old labels and adopting new ones.

I am a happy man. I have many friends, seen and unseen, known and unknown, upon whom I depend. They may use nonviolent protest, passive resistance, working within the system or other methods to change their place in the world. They may build businesses or break them down. They may give with no desire for receiving payment in kind. They may take without asking.

Happiness is understanding without thinking. Happiness is responsibility for no reason.

When one can enter a system with no other requirement than the ability to injure another person, the system perpetuates violent power. When overpopulation pushes nonviolence and violence together, which one survives? Happiness is seeing your potential and living up to it. If your potential involves overcoming nonviolence, then what's the matter with being happy?

I do not own the world. I see the world in which we live. Peace and happiness are mine, often joined like clasped hands. If I have to choose one or the other, which one survives? Do I want to be unhappily peaceful or happy without peace? The Book of the Future only tells me what will happen, not how I'll feel.

• When the new world currency emerges after 2018, what then?
• When the glaciers completely melt that feed the world's major rivers, then what?
• When fresh water and food production completely fall out of private hands, to whom do you turn for basic necessities?
• When corporations get governments to force you to pay fees for everything you do, where do you go to be free from your corporate citizens?

I love my species. I love my planet. But I don't have to love living with those who want what I have earned after I've paid my share of living with everyone else. If I drive a motorised vehicle, I expect to have to pay for operating it on public roads. But if I am alive, I don't expect to have to pay to be alive - health insurance companies in my country want citizens to pay heavy fines if they do not buy mandatory health insurance policies - I don't love corporate citizens who expect to stick their hands in my pocket for being alive. Such government legislation encourages me to live below the poverty line. It's as bad as asking corporate citizens to pay taxes for having employees, which encourages me not to hire employees.

My thoughts are incomplete right now. I have to look at the bigger picture before I can say what's really in my thoughts. Instead, in the interim I ponder democratic tax policies versus communist joint property ownership versus the bribe/fee system used by loose government associations.

Freedom is many things, including the right to private ownership. I own myself, to begin with. I own my children, as long as they'll have me, and they own me. I own at least enough belongings to shelter myself in public. After that, my private ownership freedoms encounter those of other persons/families; then, the inter-personal/familial agreement process picks up. Private land versus public land. Private education versus public education. Open source versus trademark/patent. Lending, borrowing, buying, selling, giving, receiving.

The future is full of old ideas and new. The future is today, tomorrow and yesteryear. The future is free of words and full of words. Family, religion, politics and sports will occupy us just as much tomorrow as it does today.

The future is about ownership. The future is about freedom. Individual freedom for seven billion and growing. Freedom for one species on one planet and expanding.

I value my freedom. I value my species. How important is my freedom in consideration of survival of my species? I laugh at the enormity of that question. People die every day answering that question, their lives no laughing matter.

You are my peace. You are my happiness. You are my future. You are my freedom. You are me and I am you - we own each other because we're one species, one family. If one of us or one million of us or one billion of us has to lose freedom, or even die, to save our species, which one of us will it be? We'll never know until it happens.

Peace. Happiness. Freedom. Ownership. The Book of the Future guarantees that you can't have all four of them - which one, two or three of them will you take, if someone will be willing to offer you the choice?

Traveling Pack

I've noticed that a pack of birds seem to travel my neighbourhood - the chickadees, woodpeckers, cardinals, goldfinches and tufted titmouse birds - looking at my empty birdfeeders and then eating what they can find in the nearby trees on their way to the next feeding station. Cowbirds and wrens get in the mix and stir up the chirping.

Humour?

What's the best way to get roaches and ants into your house? Buy and strategically place around your domicile the poison-laden traps designed to attract them. The more you get rid of, the more you get. Or so it may seem? lol

People In Wood Houses Shouldn't Raise Squirrels

Do you ever sit in a place empty of all but you as a representative of your species and listen? I hear chattering woodpeckers, trees bending to the lower angle of the sun this time of year, insects buzzing, crows calling, and leaves rustling. That's the headline news in this part of the world, along with a weather report of generally cooler air temperature that draws the moths out. Red berries brighten on the burning bushes. A few leaves fall on the driveway. A slow and exciting news day.

I live on the edge of a suburban forest, my wife and I sharing an artificial cave called a house, with 19 separated areas we call rooms further labeled as bedrooms, hallways, bathrooms, closets, living room, kitchen, and more. Two-thousand square feet of living space. Two people. Two operational motor vehicles. Three nonoperational motor vehicles. Furniture. Clothes. Stuff.

We use gallons of water and petrol a day. We discard several trash bags of debris a week. We feed two indoor cats. We water a few indoor tropical evergreen plants. We pay to insure the house, belongings, vehicles and our bodies for reimbursement should disaster occur. We buy electricity to operate machinery like this computer.

Our mode of living is copied by millions of people around the world (in the billions, I guess). Our use of the planet's resources is described as middle class living, with luxuries like driving a mile to the corner store to buy grocery goods, including frozen items that we can quickly transport home without thawing and exposing our groceries to foodborne illness-causing bacteria like salmonella.

Our life is pleasant. No wars. No pestilence. No neighbourhood violence to speak of. Easy to say peace and prosperity influence our thinking. We can let others make the hard decisions about what seven billion people should do to live together without even thinking about them ourselves, if we want (them = the hard decisions and the seven billion people).

A sheltered life, influenced by family issues such as birth, death, age-specific achievements and the like.

Some people refer to this as a life to be envied while others say it is a life of inconsequential activities to be overcome. Regardless of what others say, it is the life I have led the majority of my days. I don't envy my life and I don't cast aside my life. I am who I am as well as how and where I grew up.

Thus, I cannot confidently describe how to find peace and happiness outside the lifestyle I have most fully experienced.

Just like I cannot describe to you why a yellow jacket wasp insists on landing on my leg this afternoon (the soap I use?) - I am allergic to yellow jacket venom but I am confident the insect won't insert its stinger in me for no reason.

I look at the world through my eyes and with my thoughts. I make decisions and judgments based on who I am while imagining the lives of others. I see countries like I see my neighbours - different but not needing to go to war over ideological issues.

I have read that if everyone lived my life, our planet would be used up. I accept that assessment. To accommodate a more affluent species, I have reduced my daily consumption habits, including no lawn mowing, lower food intake, less electricity used and fewer kilometers driven. I am frugal but I still enjoy a few luxuries including this blog posting.

Practice what you teach. I am not the world. I am not my neighbours. I am me. I will always be me - one with and part of the universe while part of me sees myself separate from the universe.

A leaf falls from a tree, turns into soil and feeds the tree to turn out more leaves. Is the soil the tree? Is the tree the soil? The tree and I share the same air - are we each other? What about the yellow jacket tasting my leg, the gnat buzzing my ear or the mosquito draining my blood? Perhaps I am my neighbours. Maybe I am the world. We are me and I am them.

The secret to living is no secret. We're all connected. Poison the squirrel chewing on the house and you kill a hawk. Kill the hawk and more squirrels show up to chew on your house.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Perhaps we will find enough water vapour on the Moon Friday to justify accelerating the moon habitation schedule. And if we don't? Then what?

Meanwhile, I thank Rebecca and Jayna for taking care of the fresh banana pudding today - the grocery market was full of smiling faces. Some days, I need your smiling faces more than I want to admit (like today when I'm fighting off a depressive mood instead of working through it happily - there's a thin line between self-deprecation and self-hatred I'm trying not to cross today).

Oh well, time to work on class prep material after enjoying a sunny afternoon washing cars and putting up an outdoor tent to cover the '62 Dodge Lancer.

Two In Common?

I glanced at the news last night and found out that a talk-show host/comedian had been confessing his sins in the national spotlight. I haven't kept up with the comedian's life since I saw him live in person a year and a half ago when I was accosted in the street by a person giving away tickets to the Late Show who insisted they needed people to fill seats. I can see why - the main guest that night was an aged comedian named Charles Grodin showing bad photos of horses and the best skit the show's writers had was seeing if a tub of cottage cheese floated - typical style humour for that show.

From the news, I gather that the comedian is reverting to the same techniques used by religious show hosts when losing viewers. Do you remember Jim and Tammy Faye Baker or Jimmy Swaggert? Anyone who airs their dirty laundry on the national stage is getting desperate. But these days, desperate times call for desperate measures, eh, Mr. Letterman? Is it time to start asking your viewers to send in their seed money? Do you have gold clothes hangers or need to send your wife on a retail shopping therapy trip to save your marriage?

Of course, Johnny Carson nursed the divorce jokes for years so this is old hat, or could be, for ol' Letterman.

My wife enjoyed watching They Might Be Giants on Jimmy Fallon's show last night. She's glad Letterman is not part of her viewing routine - Letterman's humour never was her taste and an old man talking about cheating on his wife is definitely not appetizing - there's nothing funny about bragging about breaking your wedding vows, especially with a young son to inherit the braggart's YouTube swagger videos about his mother.

We all make mistakes but does that mean advertisers or viewers have to agree with you after apologizing? No. Others aren't complicit by living in the same society. We move on to something else more positive. My wife and I striked Letterman from our viewing a long time ago and now we know why. Bottom line: he's just not that funny. Time to give young kids an opportunity to save CBS from itself.

Too hilarious to take seriously?

Someone told me the housing collapse based economic crisis was a covert means of shifting world economic power faster than planned. If so, then continue to enjoy the show:

http://www.independent.ie/business/world/economic-balance-of-power-shifts-to-the-east-1905435.html

Jimmy Carter, do you have any poignant advice for our fed policy advisors? Bernanke may be in over his head after all the crap piles up around him.

Peace is just as tenuous for religious leaders as for political ones (or both):

• http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/barack-obama-cancels-meeting-with-dalai-lama-to-keep-china-happy-1905659.html


• http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/california-failing-state-debt

I live on the only habitable planet within a lifetime's reach. If I take any of this with a semblance of seriousness, then I've lost the joy that watching a falling rain drop brings.

Discombobulated

Have I mentioned EIEIO, the Eastern Institute for Enlightenment and Intellectual Output? I had a T-shirt when I was a teenager that had that moniker on it, referring to the Hokies, the home of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, better known as Virginia Tech. From my father's experience of teaching at Viriginia Tech and my uncle's experiences teaching at Duke and Florida State, I grew up knowing what college life was about, including the T-shirt satirized logo craze. I also knew about regular college life, such as going to class, studying, watching TV, playing sports and attending sports events (not failing to mention the party life of many college coeds).

By the time I got to college, starting my gradual student career at the Georgia Institute of Technology (better known as Georgia Tech, the Yellow Jackets, Rambling Wreck, MIT of the South, et al), I was ready for all that college life had to offer.

That is, I was ready to be an adult on my own, excel or pass, succeed or fail. Here I am, 30 years later, and I'm still ready to be an adult, with successes and failures (i.e., "lessons learned") notched on my belt.

At middle age, I can no longer say I don't know what I want to be when I grow up because I've stopped growing up. Instead, I'm growing older. Wiser, too, I suppose (long ago having received the certificate of Wise Guy from the school of hard knocks).

Learning is a lifelong process. We may or may not need formal learning in our adult years in order to accomplish our goals. For instance, I'll keep learning as long as I live, whether through interaction with my environment or careful study of text and labwork in an actual and/or virtual classroom setting.

This past weekend, I attended a series of events tied to a formal wedding ceremony. The events included people from two families and out of those two families, there were a limited number of invited attendees.

Today, I feel discombobulated (a word about as big as the cigar I smoked after the wedding to celebrate the entry of my cousin and other guys into man-hood). I sense a change in the output of words from world governments. I sense a change in my understanding of my place in the universe. I sense a change in the way businesses and corporations are dividing up revenue streams. My discombobulation centers on the change I don't sense - the change in the moods of groups of people around the world.

I don't know when my last day on this planet will occur. Assuming I never leave the planet, I have approximately 14822 days to keep learning before my existence as a member of our species ends here.

I am a member of one of the groups of people on this planet. If I feel discombobulated, then other people probably feel that way, too. I cannot speak for others who feel this way. I can barely see why I do.

I admit I made a mistake this past weekend. I did not invite uninvited family members to crash a family party to which I was invited. I had the opportunity to show others that we're all the same and failed to make that point clear. The world is a little less bright this week because of my limited desire to change the world one person at a time. I cannot turn back the clock. I cannot undo what I didn't do.

I learned a lesson about myself this weekend, a type of lesson I may never be able to apply my new learning to - we are all family, all seven billion of us. If we forget that we're family, we make bigger mistakes later on, from family quarrels to nuclear war. I cannot make up for my mistake this weekend but I will eventually recover from my discombobulation. Who will I be? I'm too discombobulated at this moment to imagine if I'll be better or worse. Right now, I don't like myself so I can only see the worse side of what I'm to become - not a time to think about the past, present or future. I cannot change the past so there's no need to punish myself, just look for the lesson learned and move on.

Quit Pushing

"Have you ever heard of the Aristocrats?"

"Aristocats?"

"No, the Aristocrats?"

"Hmm...sounds familiar...are you referring to those who rule by fear and love, fear of their might and love of their lavish expenditures?"

"Could be...but have you heard of what they can do?"

"What can they do?"

"Is that the question?"

"I don't know...is it?"

"If you were called the Aristocrats, what would you do?"

"What would I do?"

"That's what I asked, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

"But what would you do?"

"What would you do?"

"If I were the Aristocrats?"

"What if you were the Aristocrats?"

"If I were the Aristocrats, what would I do?"

"Isn't that the question?"

"If I were the Aristocrats, what would you do?"

"What would I do?"

"What would I see?"

"If you were the Aristocrats?"

"If you were watching the Aristocrats, what would happen?"

"You mean, if you were watching the Aristocrats?"

"If I was performing as the Aristocrats watching the Aristocrats, what could possibly happen?"

"If I was watching the Aristocrats perform as the Aristocrats with me in and out of the performance, what would happen next?"

"But what would happen first?"

"Who are the Aristocrats?"

"Who are the Aristocrats?"

"Isn't that what I asked you?"

"But isn't that the question we're trying to answer?"

"Is it?"

"Is what?"

"Is that the purpose of the Aristocrats?"

"What is the purpose of the Aristocrats?"

"Isn't it?"

"Do you think so?"

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you think the Aristocrats' performance is what their purpose is all about?"

"Isn't the purpose of the Aristocrats to question their performance?"

"No, isn't the performance the purpose of their purpose?"

"Is the purpose their performance of their purpose?"

"Yes, their purpose is to question their performance, isn't it?"

"But who are the Aristocrats?"

"Aren't you?"

"Aren't I what?"

"Aren't you who they are?"

"They are who?"

"The Aristocrats?"

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"The Aristocrats?"

"Very aristocratic, wouldn't you say?"

"Is it time for their performance?"

"Do you think we're ready for such a performance?"

"Do you?"

What is a species worth?

Checked Field&Stream magazine today and found this interesting post:

http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/fishing/2009/10/chad-love-paddlefish-warning-china

Reminds me of the thought that it's often those who fish and hunt whose gaming licenses pay for the primary support of the environment in many places.

Regardless of the food we eat or the labels we choose like meateater or vegetarian, we get our food from somewhere on this planet - if we don't know where our food comes from or how it's being grown then we lose out on who we are and where we're headed.

Speaking of which, time for lunch! Beef sausage, fried potato strips and ice cream. The three squirrels can have my share of hickory nuts this afternoon.

Addiction

Concrete solutions. Like knowing the effect of artificial food products on one's body - if positive, eat/drink in moderation and if negative, stop using. Every life form seeks growth media. When separated from the environment in which a life form naturally lives or gravitates toward...

A mourning dove flies past my head. A fox runs along the eating path left by the turkeys. No, I'm wrong. A couple of small deer chase each other through the woods with a mother following close behind. The deer are so small I thought they were foxes at first, or even dogs but their spotted backs gave them away today. Crows call out not too far away.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the feeling of substances oozing through my veins. I drank a lot of artificially flavored liquids this past weekend, despite knowing from experience that I feel lumps or clots making their way through my blood circulation system the day after drinking sweetened liquids.

Our species no longer has to worry about its existence on a day-to-day, eat-or-die level. Clumps of our species do, though, through poor environmental conditions like drought, pollution, natural disaster, war.

In general, we long ago conquered local environmental hazards and made extra-survival conditions the norm. As individuals, we can concentrate on whatever we want, no matter what happens or we know will happen.

We have placed high monetary burdens on our strongest habits yet many of us maintain our habits, anyway (alcohol/tobacco consumption and motor vehicle operation being ready examples to show). We adjust our habits to accommodate our communal need for governance and paying for governing bodies.

[Didn't mean to write another dissertation on our species but I'm here so I'll finish this up and think up another comedy skit later this afternoon.]

Is it my responsibility to pay for the habits of others? No. Thus, taxing the goods/services with which others support their habits is acceptable to me.

My goal is still the same - focus on the species and see what it's capable of and doing to/for itself. If our habits on a macroscale are destroying our capabilities, then we should develop and teach healthier addictive habits for ourselves while using monetary disincentives as a slight deterrence (with the goal of using the disincentives to fund the newer habits), knowing some people will insist on maintaining old, destructive habits because of their bodies' lifeseeking needs, negative as they may seem to observers.

Caution: Rotating Blades

Diving down into the shallow depths of my brain network, rarely aware I see through the windows of my soul, my green-and-gold orbs, my ocular non-nocturnal vision my all, building slabs, hieroglyphs, woven fabrics, binocular nests. A scribe bent over the scroll. A weaver bent over the loom. A potter bent over the wheel. A cook grinding grain. Open to the world, the universe just a concept. Turkeys digging through the leaves in front of me. Squirrels cracking nuts with gravity as leverage. Almost too cool for butterflies.

I have seen only a small part of what I'm told is an elliptically-round sphere on which I live with the rest of this landscape of ecospherical beings. I do not know. I don't have to know anything. I act. I react.

We complicate matters to make matter matter. Always these words, these images, these quests for quest's sake. Close my eyes to see rods and cones act/react, or so I'm told. I see red and gray and hints of blue, green and yellow, flickering and fading borders. Open my eyes to renew the optical storyline.

I've never watched turkeys dig through the forest floor. Deliberate birds. Don't seem wary of predators. Part of the overpopulating deer and turkey groups in this part of the world. One, two, three four, five, six, seven, peck, peck, peck, eight, nine, dig, eat, fluff feathers, peck, wander closer, scare out chipmunk, stop and look at me for a moment, wander on, another chipmunk on the run, squirrels high in the trees dropping nuts and scampering down to find and bury them before the turkeys get closer, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom at my feet, five to ten pound weights on short storklike legs, gray heads, brown feather-covered bodies, taking turns looking up, a small hawk flies in and the turkeys gather and gobble in warning, one turkey flying up into the tree to scare off the hawk, another turkey flying into the tree, ten, eleven, twelve, another turkey up into the tree and figuring how to get to the hawk (chicken hawk?), a fourth flies higher and pushes the hawk further up the canopy, the first flies higher and moves the hawk to another tree, charcoal-brown feathers and walnut-brown feathers and goldenrod feathers, a cardinal calling nearby, the squirrels and chipmunks out of sight by now, a bluejay squawks, turkeys balancing on limbs designed for leaves, pecking order still being held, the hawk following this roving smorgasbord that knows how to live another day, turning around and heading back deeper into the woods, a lone turkey keeping watch, too far to tell if sick or male or just what keeps it separated from these dozen females in front of me.

Ted Turner owns just under two million acres of land in North and South America, raising bison, bear and other species. I claim one acre with my wife. Ted and I don't know each other but we know what we know - land relatively untouched by our species teaches us who we really are. I can dig into my brain connections, pull them apart and rearrange them but it's still one brain in one body of one species on one planet in one solar system of one galaxy in one supercluster of one region of one universe. We may claim ownership and jurisprudential jurisdiction of the land, sea and air but we own nothing. We belong to the land, sea and air, which owns us just as much as we own it. When we understand our relationships to this place, symbolism aside, we understand where to go in developing our species. Otherwise, we're playing with memes, thinking the color of our eyes describe what we see.

Family Entertainment

New version of sitting around the television with family during gatherings, reunions and parties - watching YouTube. Some phrases thrown out last night while participating in this new old-style event: "Windows Song," "Miranda," and "Frozen Munich"; also, videos of wedding dances, laughing babies and crying cats. Thanks to Steve, Jennifer, Anna, Tory and my wife for suggestions (others, too, I'm sure).

And congratulations to Steve and Amy for tonight's main event. The best is yet to come!

Liopu Thnjedcty

Liopu looked at her son, wondering what he would look like 20 years from now, when he would be 25 and she 41. She watched him playing in the street with the other neighbourhood kids, kicking a small ball made of scrap pieces of canvas sewn together and stuffed with old clothing.

Liopu smiled. She looked at the text on the mobile. Her buyer would arrive soon.

She grew a small patch of specialty herbs in the windows of her flat, taking up the kitchen, bedroom and toilet with plants potted in whatever containers she could find, including hubcaps, coffee cups, discarded sheets of aluminium foil, lampshades, street signs and vinyl shower curtains.

Liopu sat on the curb and mentally counted her sales for the week. Three more weeks and she would have enough money to buy new clothes for her son, Fexcvit. He never complained about his looks despite the chiding from adults and jokes from kids who made fun of him.

Liopu walked back into the flat and began bagging up more herbs for her next customer, a blend of Nicotiana palm d'anise, Hypericum capsaicin, and other hybrids she had inherited from her mother.

Growers had tried to steal her secrets for propagating the plants, never successful. She carefully guarded the germ that was required to cause the plant seeds to pop open and grow. She knew the places to gather the soil that contained the algal film which acted as a growth medium for the germ.

Her mother had never told Liopu the name of the germ or who shared the secret with Liopu's mother so she did not name the germ, either. She trusted that her mother's decision to store no identification of the germ in her thoughts was key to keeping others from discovering the secret. Liopu also knew that her son would not want to learn the secret so Liopu was growing and selling the plants as quickly as she could to find a new means of making a living.

Liopu did not care about the secret's worth to the rest of her extended family or to the people of her country. In fact, she did not think about others besides her son. The father of her child had shown up one evening while her mother was away and promised Liopu many treasures in exchange for one night alone together. He left with her treasure and never returned. After returning and learning what happened, her mother kicked Liopu out and died within a year from loneliness. Liopu had only her son left, as far as she knew. That and the secret with which she mothered herself and her son. Nothing else mattered.