There are some settings I don't know how to change to get Feedburner to work on this site, so I'm changing over to a new one where is does work. At the bottom of the page of Apple Pan Dowdy there's a dialog you can use to do an RSS subscription to let you know there's a new entry. Here's the new site"
http://applepandowdy.blogspot.com/
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Allone
I get disgusted with myself sometime because I seem so selfish. I've spent so much time alone there is not a lot about my life that I shared with many people. They just weren't there the same time I was.
There has been a stream of people through my life at different times. I was married with children for all too brief a spell. We were together when we were together and that was a long time ago. I seem to meet people explosively and part from them explosively. After we're not together anymore, we're practically never together again.
I hitch-hiked around North America for 7-8 years off and on. Sometime for weeks or months and sometime years at a time. Hardly ever stopping and never for long. Three days before. Three days after. I worked around the country as a pipewelder and pipefitter for twenty old years.
I was attracted to working what's called "time jobs". Lots of overtime money. Twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week. Shutdowns. I worked on a lot of chemical plants. Petroleum plants. Pulp mill plants. Mostly new work. I didn't like going to those places after they operated for a while. I was only there to make money.
I didn't travel with groups. It would probably have been better if I had, but I didn't do this kind of work because it was my only option. It was just a way to make enough money to not have to work for a while. Construction trash. A bunch of drunks, ex-cons, and ne'er-do-wells. Irish travelers. Because I didn't travel with a group I was usually one of the first ones to leave after we'd worked ourselves out of a job. We did work. We had some pride. No union. Just wit, grit, and the ability to pass a 6G test standing on our heads.
Pipewelding for a living depends on that one thing. You have to pass a welding test on every job you go on. Even if its with the same company. There are usually so few people who can pass those welding tests, that if you can, you don't have to kiss nobody's ass. It's a two-edged sword though. If you fail a welding test it's hard on yo' nerves. Not nearly as hard as the iron worker has it if he fails his test of courage. Now, that there is a hard row to hoe. One misstep and... splat!
The money boys need your skills to build those industrial sites so the investors can make a profit on their money. If they piss too many of the skilled craftsmen off the job shuts down, and they gone be hell to pay for the sycophants wearing them ice cream clothes. I stumbled into welding by accident, but it sho' wuz a lesson unto me.
The point I make about working construction is that I wasn't around the same people very often. As a single-handed welder I might work four or five jobs a year in completely different parts of the country without running into the same people more than once or twice coincidentally. When I claim that nobody knows, I'm more often right than wrong. I have literally lived my life like a stranger in a strange land, but it wasn't necessarily my own decision a lot of the time.
I'm perfectly aware that it's my ability, even my strong desire to be alone that makes me seem curious to a lot of people. People don't seem to understand why I don't appear to need them like they seem to need other people. I don't know why they feel incomplete. I studied acting for years. It was my major in college. There might be times I act like I need people if that suits my purposes. That seems to be what people expect. It's when I walk away from them without what they consider the proper rituals and ceremonies that they become suspicious I might not be as needy as them.
It's not really to get away from people that i withdraw. I like people just fine. I withdraw to attend to stuff I can't attend to if I allow people's neediness to distract me. They can't know when they're screwing it up for me when they insist I calm their deep fears and breath occasionally. The fact that i scare the hell outta myself every once in a while by feigning death. It's not my intention to feign death, it's just that to get when I intend I really can't pay that much attention to decorum for the sake of the other.
Have you ever noticed when you suddenly realized that you've been fascinated by some spectacular sight the likes of which you've never perceived in yo' life, and when you do, you have to take a huge breath because while in your state of awe you forgot to breathe? I take this to extremes at times. I think I get more fascinated by the ways of the world than some others, and that seems to worry them to no good end. Sometime, I do know you're 'coming and I do bake a cake. Well... sorta.
I kind of think what I do is pretty mundane stuff. Especially in the very recent past during the time I read Sartre. One type of consciousness is the mundane kind that's merely awareness such that each species has adopted or adapted for their own specific needs. The other type of consciousness is special to homo sapiens. Sartre (at least his English translation) states that is type of consciousness is a thetic or theoretical sort of abstracted consciousness. The trick about having two types of consciousness is that you can't have one without the other, and it's a mighty temptation for homo sapiens to think they can, and desire it mightily. Might make right! Right?
I don't withdraw into myself to pursue altered states of theoretical consciousness. Some people might. How the hell would I know? How can I project my intuitions into theories? I can project my theoretical imaginings upon the other in order to see a mirror image of what I theorize about my own possibles, but i can't follow them back into the inner recesses of the rabbit holes via intuition? It takes a theoretical consciousness to do that, but nobody has to retreat into themselves to discover those mysteries.
I pursue altered states as a method of withdrawal from the temptations of the sensory domain. It's not easy to get started. One has to abandon their rules of conscience to even have a chance. For many, if not most people, They adopt their rules of conscience to get ahead, that's why it seems so odd to discover they already have a head, and there is no need to seek one. "Just leave them alone, and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them."
I used the rules of conscience I adopted to shape my life to be-co-me with a former state of being. I was literally attempting to become something I am is not. I am is what it is, but it's not what it is not, too. It's okay to knot be what I am is sometime. As a matter of fact, I am not what I am is quite often, and I'm getting to like it more and more. Granted, being what I am is not seems a little scary at times, but I am is because it thinks, and thinking is a circle game, created for it's earthly aims. I am is me, and that's All there is to IT. '-)
There has been a stream of people through my life at different times. I was married with children for all too brief a spell. We were together when we were together and that was a long time ago. I seem to meet people explosively and part from them explosively. After we're not together anymore, we're practically never together again.
I hitch-hiked around North America for 7-8 years off and on. Sometime for weeks or months and sometime years at a time. Hardly ever stopping and never for long. Three days before. Three days after. I worked around the country as a pipewelder and pipefitter for twenty old years.
I was attracted to working what's called "time jobs". Lots of overtime money. Twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week. Shutdowns. I worked on a lot of chemical plants. Petroleum plants. Pulp mill plants. Mostly new work. I didn't like going to those places after they operated for a while. I was only there to make money.
I didn't travel with groups. It would probably have been better if I had, but I didn't do this kind of work because it was my only option. It was just a way to make enough money to not have to work for a while. Construction trash. A bunch of drunks, ex-cons, and ne'er-do-wells. Irish travelers. Because I didn't travel with a group I was usually one of the first ones to leave after we'd worked ourselves out of a job. We did work. We had some pride. No union. Just wit, grit, and the ability to pass a 6G test standing on our heads.
Pipewelding for a living depends on that one thing. You have to pass a welding test on every job you go on. Even if its with the same company. There are usually so few people who can pass those welding tests, that if you can, you don't have to kiss nobody's ass. It's a two-edged sword though. If you fail a welding test it's hard on yo' nerves. Not nearly as hard as the iron worker has it if he fails his test of courage. Now, that there is a hard row to hoe. One misstep and... splat!
The money boys need your skills to build those industrial sites so the investors can make a profit on their money. If they piss too many of the skilled craftsmen off the job shuts down, and they gone be hell to pay for the sycophants wearing them ice cream clothes. I stumbled into welding by accident, but it sho' wuz a lesson unto me.
The point I make about working construction is that I wasn't around the same people very often. As a single-handed welder I might work four or five jobs a year in completely different parts of the country without running into the same people more than once or twice coincidentally. When I claim that nobody knows, I'm more often right than wrong. I have literally lived my life like a stranger in a strange land, but it wasn't necessarily my own decision a lot of the time.
I'm perfectly aware that it's my ability, even my strong desire to be alone that makes me seem curious to a lot of people. People don't seem to understand why I don't appear to need them like they seem to need other people. I don't know why they feel incomplete. I studied acting for years. It was my major in college. There might be times I act like I need people if that suits my purposes. That seems to be what people expect. It's when I walk away from them without what they consider the proper rituals and ceremonies that they become suspicious I might not be as needy as them.
It's not really to get away from people that i withdraw. I like people just fine. I withdraw to attend to stuff I can't attend to if I allow people's neediness to distract me. They can't know when they're screwing it up for me when they insist I calm their deep fears and breath occasionally. The fact that i scare the hell outta myself every once in a while by feigning death. It's not my intention to feign death, it's just that to get when I intend I really can't pay that much attention to decorum for the sake of the other.
Have you ever noticed when you suddenly realized that you've been fascinated by some spectacular sight the likes of which you've never perceived in yo' life, and when you do, you have to take a huge breath because while in your state of awe you forgot to breathe? I take this to extremes at times. I think I get more fascinated by the ways of the world than some others, and that seems to worry them to no good end. Sometime, I do know you're 'coming and I do bake a cake. Well... sorta.
I kind of think what I do is pretty mundane stuff. Especially in the very recent past during the time I read Sartre. One type of consciousness is the mundane kind that's merely awareness such that each species has adopted or adapted for their own specific needs. The other type of consciousness is special to homo sapiens. Sartre (at least his English translation) states that is type of consciousness is a thetic or theoretical sort of abstracted consciousness. The trick about having two types of consciousness is that you can't have one without the other, and it's a mighty temptation for homo sapiens to think they can, and desire it mightily. Might make right! Right?
I don't withdraw into myself to pursue altered states of theoretical consciousness. Some people might. How the hell would I know? How can I project my intuitions into theories? I can project my theoretical imaginings upon the other in order to see a mirror image of what I theorize about my own possibles, but i can't follow them back into the inner recesses of the rabbit holes via intuition? It takes a theoretical consciousness to do that, but nobody has to retreat into themselves to discover those mysteries.
I pursue altered states as a method of withdrawal from the temptations of the sensory domain. It's not easy to get started. One has to abandon their rules of conscience to even have a chance. For many, if not most people, They adopt their rules of conscience to get ahead, that's why it seems so odd to discover they already have a head, and there is no need to seek one. "Just leave them alone, and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them."
I used the rules of conscience I adopted to shape my life to be-co-me with a former state of being. I was literally attempting to become something I am is not. I am is what it is, but it's not what it is not, too. It's okay to knot be what I am is sometime. As a matter of fact, I am not what I am is quite often, and I'm getting to like it more and more. Granted, being what I am is not seems a little scary at times, but I am is because it thinks, and thinking is a circle game, created for it's earthly aims. I am is me, and that's All there is to IT. '-)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Pale Horse
I used to be a dancing fool, and then I got mixed up with the wrong people. I married a woman who was raised by Fundamentalists who thought dancing was a sin, and that got in my way for a while. Before her, I literally didn't realize their were heathen like that. They were against everything I ever wanted to explore. Then, I "tuned in, turned on, and dropped out", and dancing found it's way back into my life, and all was love and kisses for a while, until I rode tha pale horse one time too many and it taught me I better find a path with heart if I wanted what i came for before the chance was gone.
The only thing I seem to have really practiced in this body since I've had it has been to find out all the possible ways to abandon it at the first appearance of the light. Sure, I've remembered what's what after I had to let it go temporarily while i was bartering for this particular body, but it's easy to get distracted with illusion and all the fascinating mannerisms that intrigue the other into offering enticements to stick around.
Pale horse? I guess it might be easy for some to guess I've been reading about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I never have studied the mythology behind this too much. I'm thinking maybe I will. I know I'm intrigued by the very notion of reading about "a pale horse" ridden by a pale green rider the colour of death. Mostly as a descriptor. If I haven't been intrigued to the point of even a low-level research into the possible me-and-thee-ing (meaning) of "a pale horse" with a "pale-as-death rider", then if I use these terms as descriptors because they fascinated me without going to the trouble to find out why, then there is a good chance most of my readers won't go to that trouble either, so that's why I'd better do it, just in case they get a hair up their ass, and do look it up..
Besides, there are those other colored horses that can also be a source of intrigue. The "black horse". The "red horse" (anybody with a right hemisphere just knows this has got to get Martian), and the "white horse". You have studied The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, have you not? Same symbols. Same colours. Sa-me me-and-thee-ing. It's the story of Everyman all over again, about the Hero Of A Thousand Faces. That's all anybody really kneads to gnow whether they know it or not.
I like to sit here and make up a bunch of lies to amuse myself. Time flies. There's nothing else to do. I've never denied myself too many opportunities no matter what it cost me. It's cost me plenty. But still, I realize that if I don't get up and move my body occasionally it will cause me more problems than I really wanna deal with because eventually it'll force me back to begging. "There's no fool like an old fool."
That's why I'm enjoying the drum machine on my digital keyboard. Presently, I've got #018 16BeatUpTempo kicking it out over and over and over again. I just love that about digital computations. It's been playing in the background for at least two hours without the slightest variation. Two hours that I don't even remember because everything was sonically the sa-me. Why would I? The tie-to-me (time) went flying, leaving the body here to create non-sense to cover it's tracks.
Dancing to the rhythms provided by the drum machine brings me back down to Earth. It provides me with some aerobic exercise. It changes my mind to include my physical body and all it's aches and pains. I don't have to stay here. But, when I'm there, I get lonely for it. I may have to get another body soon. The nostalgia I've developed for this one is a great weakness I intend to over-co-me. Soon.
The only thing I seem to have really practiced in this body since I've had it has been to find out all the possible ways to abandon it at the first appearance of the light. Sure, I've remembered what's what after I had to let it go temporarily while i was bartering for this particular body, but it's easy to get distracted with illusion and all the fascinating mannerisms that intrigue the other into offering enticements to stick around.
Pale horse? I guess it might be easy for some to guess I've been reading about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I never have studied the mythology behind this too much. I'm thinking maybe I will. I know I'm intrigued by the very notion of reading about "a pale horse" ridden by a pale green rider the colour of death. Mostly as a descriptor. If I haven't been intrigued to the point of even a low-level research into the possible me-and-thee-ing (meaning) of "a pale horse" with a "pale-as-death rider", then if I use these terms as descriptors because they fascinated me without going to the trouble to find out why, then there is a good chance most of my readers won't go to that trouble either, so that's why I'd better do it, just in case they get a hair up their ass, and do look it up..
Besides, there are those other colored horses that can also be a source of intrigue. The "black horse". The "red horse" (anybody with a right hemisphere just knows this has got to get Martian), and the "white horse". You have studied The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, have you not? Same symbols. Same colours. Sa-me me-and-thee-ing. It's the story of Everyman all over again, about the Hero Of A Thousand Faces. That's all anybody really kneads to gnow whether they know it or not.
I like to sit here and make up a bunch of lies to amuse myself. Time flies. There's nothing else to do. I've never denied myself too many opportunities no matter what it cost me. It's cost me plenty. But still, I realize that if I don't get up and move my body occasionally it will cause me more problems than I really wanna deal with because eventually it'll force me back to begging. "There's no fool like an old fool."
That's why I'm enjoying the drum machine on my digital keyboard. Presently, I've got #018 16BeatUpTempo kicking it out over and over and over again. I just love that about digital computations. It's been playing in the background for at least two hours without the slightest variation. Two hours that I don't even remember because everything was sonically the sa-me. Why would I? The tie-to-me (time) went flying, leaving the body here to create non-sense to cover it's tracks.
Dancing to the rhythms provided by the drum machine brings me back down to Earth. It provides me with some aerobic exercise. It changes my mind to include my physical body and all it's aches and pains. I don't have to stay here. But, when I'm there, I get lonely for it. I may have to get another body soon. The nostalgia I've developed for this one is a great weakness I intend to over-co-me. Soon.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Either On Earth Or In Heaven
Some people take it that I'm addressing them personally because that's what they need from me. Why else would they read my shit? It's not true, and they don't care anyway. Why would they bother? I don't know what the truth is. I don't rightly care. To me it's a subjective affair at best, and only disturbing to think otherwise. I don't need/knead yo' blessing or consider your disdain a curse.
#020 JazzRock
Have you ever notice that about yo'self? That you feel misunderstood, and yet at the same time you of all people specifically know everything there is to know. If you know everything there is to know, then one of the things you must know is that everybody knows everything just like you, and for that reason alone, it's not possible that you could be misunderstood. Maybe the only problem you actually have is that there is nothing for a problem solver like you to figure out. It's all kismet, man, fatalism rules!
What's understood on the "everybody knows" level is not transposable to the "nobody knows" level of understanding. A chess grandmaster can't automagically scrub up, man the scalpels and do brain surgery as if it were just a chess game. Contrarily, the brain surgeon might get emasculated big time in a Washington Square chess match for $10 a throw. Expertise don't change it's stripes or spots for love nor money.
Practically every wisdom book ever taken seriously for any enduring amount of time at all speaks of unity of some described sort being the goal of all endeavors. Sartre writes about homo sapiens being possessed of two types of consciousness', the thetic and non-thetic. Whether that's the same as saying theistic and atheistic is a moot point for some.
The ancient Coptic translations of the Gospel of Thomas persistently states that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven a person must "make the two into One". Atonement seems to mean a lot in many different disciplines. I've studied a lotta mostly unapproved systems for bringing unity about, but I don't think the main chance is about systems of expertise.
Homo sapiens became masters of the known world a long time before they invented writing and the more abstract systems of dividing and conquering. Why does that have to be an ongoing process? Why can't the rich just get rich and stay that way? Why doesn't money make people as happy as they dream it will?
I don't hear too many people saying that power would make them happy, so what's the difference in thinking that money will make you happy. Money makes you powerful. Power makes you happy because it brings you money? Money and power are possible. At least for a while. For some, the only goal worth pursuing is immortality. You can be forgiven for desiring money or power. Everybody understands why you might want that, but not immortality?
44 Jesus said, "Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
#020 JazzRock
Have you ever notice that about yo'self? That you feel misunderstood, and yet at the same time you of all people specifically know everything there is to know. If you know everything there is to know, then one of the things you must know is that everybody knows everything just like you, and for that reason alone, it's not possible that you could be misunderstood. Maybe the only problem you actually have is that there is nothing for a problem solver like you to figure out. It's all kismet, man, fatalism rules!
What's understood on the "everybody knows" level is not transposable to the "nobody knows" level of understanding. A chess grandmaster can't automagically scrub up, man the scalpels and do brain surgery as if it were just a chess game. Contrarily, the brain surgeon might get emasculated big time in a Washington Square chess match for $10 a throw. Expertise don't change it's stripes or spots for love nor money.
Practically every wisdom book ever taken seriously for any enduring amount of time at all speaks of unity of some described sort being the goal of all endeavors. Sartre writes about homo sapiens being possessed of two types of consciousness', the thetic and non-thetic. Whether that's the same as saying theistic and atheistic is a moot point for some.
The ancient Coptic translations of the Gospel of Thomas persistently states that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven a person must "make the two into One". Atonement seems to mean a lot in many different disciplines. I've studied a lotta mostly unapproved systems for bringing unity about, but I don't think the main chance is about systems of expertise.
Homo sapiens became masters of the known world a long time before they invented writing and the more abstract systems of dividing and conquering. Why does that have to be an ongoing process? Why can't the rich just get rich and stay that way? Why doesn't money make people as happy as they dream it will?
I don't hear too many people saying that power would make them happy, so what's the difference in thinking that money will make you happy. Money makes you powerful. Power makes you happy because it brings you money? Money and power are possible. At least for a while. For some, the only goal worth pursuing is immortality. You can be forgiven for desiring money or power. Everybody understands why you might want that, but not immortality?
44 Jesus said, "Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
Friday, May 09, 2008
Quietly Not There
Despite all my whining this morning i got everything I usually do done. Maybe even more than usual. I played all my scales and boogie woogie exercises. I spent four or five hours with visitors. I tried mightily not to whine to them, and was only partially successful. I sort of have something to live for now. At least for the next year. I wanna see what happens after I have played the scales every day for a year.
The big deal about his is that I have to do it long enough to get bored. That's a very critical stage in the learning process I favor. I am thoroughly convinced that bored people are boring. Hardly anything frightens me more than the idea that I'm boring. I'll go to any lengths to keep that from happening. That's my true motivation for practically any project I undertake.
Many of the projects that attract me are those in which there is a period in the process in which the biggest problem is becoming bored with the material, and stopping because it's so hard to carry on. If I don't carry on though, if I do reach a point where I break out, if I haven't practiced long enough, then I don't have enough material to use when I do break out to do something interesting to keep from getting bored.
Yesterday when Rainey and I played together for a brief time, I played triads in the key of C Major. I could have done the same thing I did yesterday five years ago or better. I don't know why I didn't at least play a little bit of the boogie woogie I've been practicing. Probably because even though I have practiced it some, it still sounds very amateurish.
I've said that one of the reasons I wanted to learn and practice the major and minor scales is so that I could transpose songs to any other key and be able to play competently. I don't know if that's what I'm actually attempting to do. I don't think I'm preparing myself to play with other people. I think I'm doing this to satisfy some personal urge or whim. That's why I don't care if it appears that I'm making progress or not. I'm not doing what I'm doing for-the-other, but for-myself.
The big deal about his is that I have to do it long enough to get bored. That's a very critical stage in the learning process I favor. I am thoroughly convinced that bored people are boring. Hardly anything frightens me more than the idea that I'm boring. I'll go to any lengths to keep that from happening. That's my true motivation for practically any project I undertake.
Many of the projects that attract me are those in which there is a period in the process in which the biggest problem is becoming bored with the material, and stopping because it's so hard to carry on. If I don't carry on though, if I do reach a point where I break out, if I haven't practiced long enough, then I don't have enough material to use when I do break out to do something interesting to keep from getting bored.
Yesterday when Rainey and I played together for a brief time, I played triads in the key of C Major. I could have done the same thing I did yesterday five years ago or better. I don't know why I didn't at least play a little bit of the boogie woogie I've been practicing. Probably because even though I have practiced it some, it still sounds very amateurish.
I've said that one of the reasons I wanted to learn and practice the major and minor scales is so that I could transpose songs to any other key and be able to play competently. I don't know if that's what I'm actually attempting to do. I don't think I'm preparing myself to play with other people. I think I'm doing this to satisfy some personal urge or whim. That's why I don't care if it appears that I'm making progress or not. I'm not doing what I'm doing for-the-other, but for-myself.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Cowboy Singin' At The Break Of Day
When Ben came over this morning I told him about getting the converter box coupons and buying the converter box. He wanted to see what it looked like right away. He saw the weak signals i was getting with my old antenna. I had another antenna i got from my parent's old house when they went to tear it down. It is a much bigger antenna, and it still had the brackets on it from before. We mounted that old antenna on the edge of the upstairs deck and played around with it to see if we could get a stronger signal. We actually did.
I'm not getting all the stations I got with an over-the-air analog signal, but the ones I do get are very clear and the sound is clean as a whistle. I was eager to get this coupon and converter box because it would be a cheap way for me to find out how many digital stations I could pick up here at my house. That's the only way I could assure myself that if I bought one of the new wide-screen LCD television sets that I would receive enough stations to make it worth my while. I think the answer is yes.
I don't know the digital TV lingo very well. I've only read about it. I've seen the demos at the big box stores. There is a large Sony TV set up at Sam's Club over in the regional town nearby. I feel like an Okie walking around in New York City when I see it. It's the most realistic images I've ever seen. I have thought it was possible to send pictures of that resolution and detail over the air. $6000. I won't be buying one of those sets. Not without winning the lottery.
The thing of it is that the picture I'm getting on my old style TV set is a much better picture that what I was getting just yesterday. The situation is a lot like my DSL connection. I have the cheapest and therefore the slowest DSL account my ISP offered. It's still more than i can really afford. If I paid $5 more a month I could upgrade to twice the download speed. I'm not gonna do it. Compared to dial-up, the speed improvement of even the slowest DSL account is easy to live with.
I probably won't ever have the highest quality electronic gadgets in my house because I'm poor as a church mouse, I got a couple of other gadgets that cost me plenty considering my budget, but I use both of them much more often than I watch television. My two keyboards. The one I use to compose words is obviously my favorite way to waste time. The other one I'm just getting around to learning how to use. I don't seem much in a hurry to do that. I know that it will come in time, but not of my own choosing.
Some of the scales of the major and minor keys are becoming very familiar to me. Familiar by touch and some even by sight. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm writing about. Intellectually, I know which piano key to press down on in the correct sequence, and I know which fingers to use to do that. Accomplishing that in a smooth, rhythmic fashion is another story.
What I mean about some of the scales of some of the twelve keys becoming more familiar to me is that I anticipate what the next note will be and where it's located, and I'm not having to figure it out rotely so much. The sooner I recognize which note I should play next and why, the more confidently I can attack each note and thus the entire scale. Like D Major. My fingers seemed so clumsy when I first started playing D Major I thought I'd never get through it easily without making one mistake after the other. So, I practice playing D Major apart from when I played all the scales, and I practiced with separate hands sometime for an hour before I played D Major with both hands.
Now, when I'm playing through the major and minor scales by following the Circle of Fifths and I get around to D Major, it's like I can relax and cruise through this one. I don't have to be so careful about making a mistake. I don't make so many mistakes in choosing the wrong piano key. The biggest problem I'm having playing the scales is using the wrong finger, even if it's the right note in the sequence.
As far as the notes are concerned, I know when i've made a mistake from the sound. Somehow, I can take that into account, anticipate the approaching problem area as I play, and eventually reach for the correct note. How I react to striking the wrong piano key and hearing the wrong sound in the wrong place, has progressed from immediately getting confused, losing my place in the sequence, and having to start from the beginning of the scale again to figure out how to get past that mistake.
The most common way I realize I have drifted off from using the correct finger to play the correct note is when I play the scale from the low register to the highest register and back down again, and reach the root note with some other finger than the one I started the scale with. There may be a couple of exceptions, but generally that's a no/no. I'm supposed to end back up on the root note with the same finger I started out with or I've done something wrong. I may have played all the right notes in the scale, but used the wrong finger to do it with. That's my most common mistake playing these scales.
I don't think it's gonna be that long before I start using my friend Rick's technique for playing the scales. It's not actually his technique. It the technique one of his teachers used, and the way he tells of it seems to indicate the practice to him was loathsome. His teacher would put a dime on the back of each of his hands while he played the scales, and if one of the dimes fell off or he made a mistake, he had to start all over from the beginning.
I've tried to do that. Well, at least with a dime on one hand. It's not easy for me to do. I find myself really having to reach for the piano key with just the finger I use to press it down. The most difficult part of this so far is to not use my hand to reach for the note, just my finger, or the dime falls off. I can see where practicing to use my fingers independently like could be useful in all sorts of endeavors. Like playing with my fingers individually on my djembe drum. Presently, I don't have that much control over my fingers to play the drum that way, but I can see where I might one day.
I'm not getting all the stations I got with an over-the-air analog signal, but the ones I do get are very clear and the sound is clean as a whistle. I was eager to get this coupon and converter box because it would be a cheap way for me to find out how many digital stations I could pick up here at my house. That's the only way I could assure myself that if I bought one of the new wide-screen LCD television sets that I would receive enough stations to make it worth my while. I think the answer is yes.
I don't know the digital TV lingo very well. I've only read about it. I've seen the demos at the big box stores. There is a large Sony TV set up at Sam's Club over in the regional town nearby. I feel like an Okie walking around in New York City when I see it. It's the most realistic images I've ever seen. I have thought it was possible to send pictures of that resolution and detail over the air. $6000. I won't be buying one of those sets. Not without winning the lottery.
The thing of it is that the picture I'm getting on my old style TV set is a much better picture that what I was getting just yesterday. The situation is a lot like my DSL connection. I have the cheapest and therefore the slowest DSL account my ISP offered. It's still more than i can really afford. If I paid $5 more a month I could upgrade to twice the download speed. I'm not gonna do it. Compared to dial-up, the speed improvement of even the slowest DSL account is easy to live with.
I probably won't ever have the highest quality electronic gadgets in my house because I'm poor as a church mouse, I got a couple of other gadgets that cost me plenty considering my budget, but I use both of them much more often than I watch television. My two keyboards. The one I use to compose words is obviously my favorite way to waste time. The other one I'm just getting around to learning how to use. I don't seem much in a hurry to do that. I know that it will come in time, but not of my own choosing.
Some of the scales of the major and minor keys are becoming very familiar to me. Familiar by touch and some even by sight. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm writing about. Intellectually, I know which piano key to press down on in the correct sequence, and I know which fingers to use to do that. Accomplishing that in a smooth, rhythmic fashion is another story.
What I mean about some of the scales of some of the twelve keys becoming more familiar to me is that I anticipate what the next note will be and where it's located, and I'm not having to figure it out rotely so much. The sooner I recognize which note I should play next and why, the more confidently I can attack each note and thus the entire scale. Like D Major. My fingers seemed so clumsy when I first started playing D Major I thought I'd never get through it easily without making one mistake after the other. So, I practice playing D Major apart from when I played all the scales, and I practiced with separate hands sometime for an hour before I played D Major with both hands.
Now, when I'm playing through the major and minor scales by following the Circle of Fifths and I get around to D Major, it's like I can relax and cruise through this one. I don't have to be so careful about making a mistake. I don't make so many mistakes in choosing the wrong piano key. The biggest problem I'm having playing the scales is using the wrong finger, even if it's the right note in the sequence.
As far as the notes are concerned, I know when i've made a mistake from the sound. Somehow, I can take that into account, anticipate the approaching problem area as I play, and eventually reach for the correct note. How I react to striking the wrong piano key and hearing the wrong sound in the wrong place, has progressed from immediately getting confused, losing my place in the sequence, and having to start from the beginning of the scale again to figure out how to get past that mistake.
The most common way I realize I have drifted off from using the correct finger to play the correct note is when I play the scale from the low register to the highest register and back down again, and reach the root note with some other finger than the one I started the scale with. There may be a couple of exceptions, but generally that's a no/no. I'm supposed to end back up on the root note with the same finger I started out with or I've done something wrong. I may have played all the right notes in the scale, but used the wrong finger to do it with. That's my most common mistake playing these scales.
I don't think it's gonna be that long before I start using my friend Rick's technique for playing the scales. It's not actually his technique. It the technique one of his teachers used, and the way he tells of it seems to indicate the practice to him was loathsome. His teacher would put a dime on the back of each of his hands while he played the scales, and if one of the dimes fell off or he made a mistake, he had to start all over from the beginning.
I've tried to do that. Well, at least with a dime on one hand. It's not easy for me to do. I find myself really having to reach for the piano key with just the finger I use to press it down. The most difficult part of this so far is to not use my hand to reach for the note, just my finger, or the dime falls off. I can see where practicing to use my fingers independently like could be useful in all sorts of endeavors. Like playing with my fingers individually on my djembe drum. Presently, I don't have that much control over my fingers to play the drum that way, but I can see where I might one day.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
This Worrisome land
It's been a strange day. I almost forgot to vote. I was very surprised that there was no line. Either when i got to the polls or by the time I left. I went to vote when i did because I got the digital converter box coupons by snail mail today. Radio Shack was the only place in town that carried them that had any in stock. They were $10 more than I expected. In the end I had to pay $24 above and beyond the $40 coupon. I figured that was a cheap enough price to pay to find out how well I can receive over-the-air digital signals. Now, after all this time of being curious, I have a pretty good idea. Lousy. I get lousy over-the-air digital signals here. Just as i figured. This does not bode well for my TV watching after they cut off the analog broadcast signal next February. The poor get poorer.
I did get a couple of stations pretty good, and when the signal was strong it was very good. I guess I am more impressed by the sound than the picture. The sound is either on or off, and it's pretty quiet about it either way. Very seldom is the analog audio signal quiet. Even on the best of days there seems to be some static in the audio. I may be able to rig up a better antenna setup and improve what I'm getting. I don't watch a lot of TV, but sometimes it's a good distraction from the rut I'm usually in.
I really am interested in the results of the elections today. I don't think the results will prove to be that dynamic. I don't think either candidate will leave the race when the dealings done. When i turned the news on a while back, the first thing the announcers said was that the polls were still open and they didn't have any results yet. They implied that tuning in around eight o'clock tonight might prove more fruitful. It'll probably be over by nine o'clock.
One incident happened at the polls while I was there. A bent over, shriveled up old black man came in just behind me. I had to wait for the only person in line in front of me to get their business straight. I heard the old man explain that he couldn't read or write and that he had never voted before.
By the time they arranged for someone to read the list of candidates to him and helped him make his mark on the ballot, I has messed my ballot up by marking two candidates when i was only allowed to vote for one. The person helping the old man with his ballot was the person who had to approve of me getting another ballot, so i stood there listening while she helped him.
He only wanted to vote for Obama and a woman for the governor's office, and a woman for the Senator seat. After he had made his mark for those three offices he didn't vote anymore. The woman read him the candidates for some other offices too, but after each one he would tell her, "No ma'am. I don't know nothing about what those people are running for. I just wanted to vote my first time in my whole life, for a black man."
I did get a couple of stations pretty good, and when the signal was strong it was very good. I guess I am more impressed by the sound than the picture. The sound is either on or off, and it's pretty quiet about it either way. Very seldom is the analog audio signal quiet. Even on the best of days there seems to be some static in the audio. I may be able to rig up a better antenna setup and improve what I'm getting. I don't watch a lot of TV, but sometimes it's a good distraction from the rut I'm usually in.
I really am interested in the results of the elections today. I don't think the results will prove to be that dynamic. I don't think either candidate will leave the race when the dealings done. When i turned the news on a while back, the first thing the announcers said was that the polls were still open and they didn't have any results yet. They implied that tuning in around eight o'clock tonight might prove more fruitful. It'll probably be over by nine o'clock.
One incident happened at the polls while I was there. A bent over, shriveled up old black man came in just behind me. I had to wait for the only person in line in front of me to get their business straight. I heard the old man explain that he couldn't read or write and that he had never voted before.
By the time they arranged for someone to read the list of candidates to him and helped him make his mark on the ballot, I has messed my ballot up by marking two candidates when i was only allowed to vote for one. The person helping the old man with his ballot was the person who had to approve of me getting another ballot, so i stood there listening while she helped him.
He only wanted to vote for Obama and a woman for the governor's office, and a woman for the Senator seat. After he had made his mark for those three offices he didn't vote anymore. The woman read him the candidates for some other offices too, but after each one he would tell her, "No ma'am. I don't know nothing about what those people are running for. I just wanted to vote my first time in my whole life, for a black man."
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Hopelessness Rules!
I worked all fall and part of the winter clearing the underbrush out that grew up after those two hurricanes come through here within a matter of weeks. The first one softened things up by soaking the ground down to the bottom of the tap roots, and the second hurricane come along and ripped and tore all the trees up. It looked like a war zone for years.
Before the hurricanes my house was surrounded by thirty year old Southern yellow pines that rose a good sixty feet (18.25 M) into the blue sky and most of those pines were over a foot in diameter at their base. They provided a canopy that kept the underbrush to a minimum. I could see down the slope to the farm pond my father and brothers created by damming up a small creek. It was a very attractive sight. On the other side of the pond is the cow barn and a couple hundred acres of pasture that runs all the way down to the flood plains of the river.
After the hurricanes removed 90% of that canopy by force, mother nature started growing all kinds of plants where the sun could now shine in. In a year I couldn't see the pond any more because the rapidly growing underbrush became a visual barrier between the pond and me. I was very sad about my quaint little hootch in the pines having the romantic background ripped away. Without the trees my formerly quaint hootch looked more like the rathole it actually is, and I seem more like a penniless recluse than an old beatnik/hippie who has seen a thing or two. Who hasn't?
At least I'm a penniless recluse who still has his health. The arthritis I whine about is about the only physical problems I'm possessed by in any persistent manner. At the age of sixty-nine an increasing number of my high school classmates have had serious problems and some have died. Oddly, not a great number. Most of the ones I know about that got killed by accidents or got sick and died were considered well off, and on the whole, fairly decent, respectable people. The men were thought of as good fathers to their children. Not like me. They died anyway. What's the point of being good or bad if you're gonna die anyway?
Why life? Why death? No, really? What's the point? Even if you get to be a rock and roll star and live fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory or drag it out in some loquacious, hardscrabble misery for as long as you possibly can... what's the point of life at all?
Maybe what I'm really asking is: What's the point of consciousness? What is the point of being consciously aware of the futility of life if you're just gonna die anyway. What is there to be gained by that? If the facticity of being consciously aware of life and death made any difference to anybody about anything, then that might mean there is such a thing as hope.
That is absolutely not true. Believing in hopelessness instead of hope is our only salvation. Hope is the only product anybody got for sale for any reason. Repent! Stop buying into hope. It's a shell game. First you see it, then you don't. Losing hope is the only thing in life that really hurts. Just say no! Hopelessness rules!! '-)
Before the hurricanes my house was surrounded by thirty year old Southern yellow pines that rose a good sixty feet (18.25 M) into the blue sky and most of those pines were over a foot in diameter at their base. They provided a canopy that kept the underbrush to a minimum. I could see down the slope to the farm pond my father and brothers created by damming up a small creek. It was a very attractive sight. On the other side of the pond is the cow barn and a couple hundred acres of pasture that runs all the way down to the flood plains of the river.
After the hurricanes removed 90% of that canopy by force, mother nature started growing all kinds of plants where the sun could now shine in. In a year I couldn't see the pond any more because the rapidly growing underbrush became a visual barrier between the pond and me. I was very sad about my quaint little hootch in the pines having the romantic background ripped away. Without the trees my formerly quaint hootch looked more like the rathole it actually is, and I seem more like a penniless recluse than an old beatnik/hippie who has seen a thing or two. Who hasn't?
At least I'm a penniless recluse who still has his health. The arthritis I whine about is about the only physical problems I'm possessed by in any persistent manner. At the age of sixty-nine an increasing number of my high school classmates have had serious problems and some have died. Oddly, not a great number. Most of the ones I know about that got killed by accidents or got sick and died were considered well off, and on the whole, fairly decent, respectable people. The men were thought of as good fathers to their children. Not like me. They died anyway. What's the point of being good or bad if you're gonna die anyway?
Why life? Why death? No, really? What's the point? Even if you get to be a rock and roll star and live fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory or drag it out in some loquacious, hardscrabble misery for as long as you possibly can... what's the point of life at all?
Maybe what I'm really asking is: What's the point of consciousness? What is the point of being consciously aware of the futility of life if you're just gonna die anyway. What is there to be gained by that? If the facticity of being consciously aware of life and death made any difference to anybody about anything, then that might mean there is such a thing as hope.
That is absolutely not true. Believing in hopelessness instead of hope is our only salvation. Hope is the only product anybody got for sale for any reason. Repent! Stop buying into hope. It's a shell game. First you see it, then you don't. Losing hope is the only thing in life that really hurts. Just say no! Hopelessness rules!! '-)
The Art Of Mimicry
I've been a little bit lost about what I want to practice playing on the piano next. Tonight, I may have found the direction I have been looking for. This digital keyboard has lots of voices and rhythms and tempos and such to fiddle around with. Tonight I stumbled across a combination of settings that seemed very useful for what I wanna do on the keyboard other than play scales. I want to combine several practices to include with playing the scales around the Circle of Fifths.
This electronic keyboard plays the style i want it to play using the specific type of piano I want it to use. All I have to do is punch some buttons and it starts playing the options I select. When I punch the button for the keyboard to play the boogie woogie as accompaniment, it splits the keyboard so that the boogie woogie is played the left hand bass line below the note F5, and above that point the keyboard stays in the grand piano mode.
What I discovered was that i could play chords with my right hand to the preset boogie woogie bass line, and make it sound pretty good. The digital keyboard plays the boogie woogie as accompaniment in the root key over and over again, until I choose to play the IV chord and subsequently the V chord to eventually start the turnaround. I only have to strike one note to choose the key I want it to play in, and the digital programming plays the rest of the notes of the boogie woogie automatically. So, just by choosing one note at a time I can have the keyboard play the boogie woogie accompaniment for any of the twelve bar blues chords in any of the twelve keys.
I have no idea if this description makes sense. It's probably flat-out wrong. I haven't written about playing the keyboard long enough to polish the stone. What I'm attempting to describe is how the keyboard plays the boogie woogie as accompaniment for any key below F4 according to which note i strike on the keyboard. What this means to me is that i can use this preset programming to follow the Circle of Fifths in order to practice playing the boogie woogie in all twelve keys.
That may be all I have time to do. I think I have a pretty good ear for music, but I ain't a quick study who can sit down at a keyboard for the first time and play anything they want in about twenty minutes. It's taking forever for me to get as far as I have. If I can play the boogie woogie by memory using both hands in all twelve keys six months after I started practicing I'll be happy. Accomplishing that might lead me into jazz and rock and roll. i don't ask much of myself. Of course, if I didn't have carpal tunnel and arthritis in both hands and wrists it might go a little faster.
I'm playing through the pain as if a professional athlete. I don't know why. Maybe just because I can. Today it seems to have helped to play even though it got really painful at times. Maybe I just want this to happen so bad I can't let a little something like bone-rattling pain stop me at this juncture. Nobody knows. I'm doing this where nobody can hear me, so when i write "nobody knows", they literally don't know because they're not here to witness if I'm playing or not. I'm writing about it here, but you have to take my word that I'm doing what I claim to.
When I was on the road by myself with no resources and no place to stop and lay down behind closed doors, I had to push through any symptoms of illness. I couldn't afford to get sick, and so I didn't. I don't wait for tragedy to strike before i write it off either. Well, maybe once or twice, but not usually. I write a lot. I can't prove it does anything for me.
One of the facets of the enneagrams I found convenient was how it explained to me in a very convincing manner is that the way I have lived my life is exactly how a person of my nature has to be. Many of the mundane problems I've had with significant others is how I have to be alone a lot. Studying the enneagrams helped me to understand why I needed so much time alone with myself. I hadn't realized what a big deal it is for me to have that privacy. Literally to be out-of-sight and out-of-mind of any other homo sapien.
It's my need to be allone that has been the most difficult part to explain to concerned others. Until the last decade or so I didn't realize the depth of my need for alone time. To explain why I need it satisfactorily, I'd have to understand completely, and I never will. Why should I attempt to explain myself through and through? With no room for error. I don't understand even a little bit why I aspire to some purportedly exotic states beyond the sensory pale. The mental and physical requirements of the subjective experience forces me to abandon every emotional obstacle that holds me back from letting myself be drawn into those mysterious states of the lightness of being. Those states of being me.
The idiosyncratic whims of a silly old man? Maybe. Why the hell not? Who cares? Everybody including me "sees" what they think is out there, and that's what they act like is so. Everybody knows at some level life is merely a contrived lie designed to placate our deliberate ignoring. Designed to placate their fear of the Terror. It's absurd to be afraid of what one is not nor could be. I can't imitate what the other doesn't mirror back to me for reflection. Nobody knows that's possible, but he ain't telling. If only Nobody was a real boy, he could be a Somebody instead.
This electronic keyboard plays the style i want it to play using the specific type of piano I want it to use. All I have to do is punch some buttons and it starts playing the options I select. When I punch the button for the keyboard to play the boogie woogie as accompaniment, it splits the keyboard so that the boogie woogie is played the left hand bass line below the note F5, and above that point the keyboard stays in the grand piano mode.
What I discovered was that i could play chords with my right hand to the preset boogie woogie bass line, and make it sound pretty good. The digital keyboard plays the boogie woogie as accompaniment in the root key over and over again, until I choose to play the IV chord and subsequently the V chord to eventually start the turnaround. I only have to strike one note to choose the key I want it to play in, and the digital programming plays the rest of the notes of the boogie woogie automatically. So, just by choosing one note at a time I can have the keyboard play the boogie woogie accompaniment for any of the twelve bar blues chords in any of the twelve keys.
I have no idea if this description makes sense. It's probably flat-out wrong. I haven't written about playing the keyboard long enough to polish the stone. What I'm attempting to describe is how the keyboard plays the boogie woogie as accompaniment for any key below F4 according to which note i strike on the keyboard. What this means to me is that i can use this preset programming to follow the Circle of Fifths in order to practice playing the boogie woogie in all twelve keys.
That may be all I have time to do. I think I have a pretty good ear for music, but I ain't a quick study who can sit down at a keyboard for the first time and play anything they want in about twenty minutes. It's taking forever for me to get as far as I have. If I can play the boogie woogie by memory using both hands in all twelve keys six months after I started practicing I'll be happy. Accomplishing that might lead me into jazz and rock and roll. i don't ask much of myself. Of course, if I didn't have carpal tunnel and arthritis in both hands and wrists it might go a little faster.
I'm playing through the pain as if a professional athlete. I don't know why. Maybe just because I can. Today it seems to have helped to play even though it got really painful at times. Maybe I just want this to happen so bad I can't let a little something like bone-rattling pain stop me at this juncture. Nobody knows. I'm doing this where nobody can hear me, so when i write "nobody knows", they literally don't know because they're not here to witness if I'm playing or not. I'm writing about it here, but you have to take my word that I'm doing what I claim to.
When I was on the road by myself with no resources and no place to stop and lay down behind closed doors, I had to push through any symptoms of illness. I couldn't afford to get sick, and so I didn't. I don't wait for tragedy to strike before i write it off either. Well, maybe once or twice, but not usually. I write a lot. I can't prove it does anything for me.
One of the facets of the enneagrams I found convenient was how it explained to me in a very convincing manner is that the way I have lived my life is exactly how a person of my nature has to be. Many of the mundane problems I've had with significant others is how I have to be alone a lot. Studying the enneagrams helped me to understand why I needed so much time alone with myself. I hadn't realized what a big deal it is for me to have that privacy. Literally to be out-of-sight and out-of-mind of any other homo sapien.
It's my need to be allone that has been the most difficult part to explain to concerned others. Until the last decade or so I didn't realize the depth of my need for alone time. To explain why I need it satisfactorily, I'd have to understand completely, and I never will. Why should I attempt to explain myself through and through? With no room for error. I don't understand even a little bit why I aspire to some purportedly exotic states beyond the sensory pale. The mental and physical requirements of the subjective experience forces me to abandon every emotional obstacle that holds me back from letting myself be drawn into those mysterious states of the lightness of being. Those states of being me.
The idiosyncratic whims of a silly old man? Maybe. Why the hell not? Who cares? Everybody including me "sees" what they think is out there, and that's what they act like is so. Everybody knows at some level life is merely a contrived lie designed to placate our deliberate ignoring. Designed to placate their fear of the Terror. It's absurd to be afraid of what one is not nor could be. I can't imitate what the other doesn't mirror back to me for reflection. Nobody knows that's possible, but he ain't telling. If only Nobody was a real boy, he could be a Somebody instead.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Memsistors AndThe Revival Of Analog
Sometime it doesn't do me any good to try to bull my way into making something happen. I don't know if I have much choice. It's part of the operating system or BIOS. There are certain conditions or situations where what comes natural to me ain't good enow for what's happening in the present tense.
That reminds me of the recent news of HP Labs coming up with a working prototype of a memsistor. First the Berkley professor Chua did the mathematics in 1971, then the Williams team manifested Chua's possibilities in 2008.
The memsistor is considered to be the missing link of electronics theory. I don't know what all that might mean, but then again, none of these guys know yet either. It's gonna be fun reading about how they will react when the light bulb turns on. What we all seem to agree on is that this is some awesome shit. Technology imitates life. If memsistors were missing in electronic theory, then their psychic equivalent was missing in human theory.
When the physicists figure out how the memsistors will change electronics the behaviorists will figure out how they will empower humans. This has everything to do with visualization in my world. If there has been a missing link to the mechanizations that have unfolded so far, then rethinking them in light of the memsistor should prove astonishing. Your milage may vary.
Just like the discovery of the missing link in electronic theory is gonna change everything analog and digital, and not necessarily for the better, then the possibles that appear in human consciousness because of the changes the memsistor's arrival makes, then the possibilities for humans will be discovered also.
I was born into a house that had no electricity. Power generating plants were slow to reach the rural areas. Even when we did move into a house that had electricity, the only thing it was used for was to power a light bulb and maybe a radio. None of the modern conveniences that we have now was available back then.
There is one vivid moment I remember to this day. I was playing on a bare wooden floor in the living room of a house we rented from a Ms. Pollock. On my left was an open fireplace which had live embers glowing even though it was not cold. Lined up along the edge of the burning coals were a series of cast iron appliances that my mother was using to iron my father's white shirts he wore with a tie each day at work. The fire was to heat the ironing devices. The radio was on and playing the same song over and over throughout the afternoon. The room was fairly dark even though there was a light bulb dangling from the ceiling with a dim bulb barely lighting the room.
My mother was crying while she mindlessly ironed my father's dress shirts and listened intently to the radio. It was worrisome to see my mother cry. I didn't see any reason for it. So, that's why I asked her why she was crying.
"Do you hear that music, boy?" she answered back.
"Yes, Momma. Is that why you're crying?"
"That was his favorite song."
"Whose favorite song, Momma?
She sniffled, and didn't answer right away.
"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He died today. He was one of the greatest men who ever lived. That was his favorite song. Home On The Range."
My mother always addressed FDR using his full name. I guess it was her idea of showing respect. The Great Depression made a deep impression on both she and my father. They both experienced it living in Mississippi, which was already the poorest state in the union even before the Depression struck. Roosevelt's efforts to give people jobs by creating them through the government saved them from what to them was a fate worse than death.
I remember our family getting it's first electric refrigerator, and cooking stove, and clothes washing machine. i remember the back-breaking work these appliances replaced. It was a relatively long time before they begin wiring the whole house for electricity and every room had it's own receptacles and outlets. It was sort of a miracle that the whole family was proud of. We didn't have to work so hard to look respectable.
Looking respectable wasn't so easy when I was a kid, but it was even more difficult earlier before modern transportation brought factory-made products more often to the country stores. The local stores that sold ready made products were always operated by strangers. Many of them from the North. Carpet-baggers. Jewish families. They were desperately needed.
The local people literally didn't know what to do about stuff made cheap in factories. They made their own cloth and other materials through blood, sweat, and tears. Each item was sacred. Every scrap of cloth was used and reused until they literally couldn't be repaired. They saved every bottle and glass like they were precious treasures. Broken family heirlooms were kept anyway.
My mother made our clothes from the cloth sacks flour and chicken feed came in. She was so proud she could provide her children with good clothes. Her children did not go through the great depression. The comments we got from our school mates about how tacky the clothes she made for us looked must have hurt her terribly. Life was cruel to my mother. I don't know many mothers life is not cruel to.
It took forever to change the people who survived the two great wars and the great depression into being a throwaway society. The fact that they fought this change tooth and nail was one of life's greatest mysteries for me until I was called to provide in the same way they did. I failed. Miserably.
I guess this description of how long it can take for even educated people to adopt new technology is kind of lame. Many of the people my own age are totally intimidated by the thought of learning to use a computer. A lot of them much smarter than me. It's gonna get even more confusing for everybody, much less the ones who couldn't adopt to the digital revolution. The memsistor is gonna change both the digital and analog worlds. Especially when it's realized that the earlier technology was not as good as it could have been if the early adaptors had known about this missing element. It's gonna make humans different too. This is the discovery needed to for humans to really become cyborgs.
That reminds me of the recent news of HP Labs coming up with a working prototype of a memsistor. First the Berkley professor Chua did the mathematics in 1971, then the Williams team manifested Chua's possibilities in 2008.
The memsistor is considered to be the missing link of electronics theory. I don't know what all that might mean, but then again, none of these guys know yet either. It's gonna be fun reading about how they will react when the light bulb turns on. What we all seem to agree on is that this is some awesome shit. Technology imitates life. If memsistors were missing in electronic theory, then their psychic equivalent was missing in human theory.
When the physicists figure out how the memsistors will change electronics the behaviorists will figure out how they will empower humans. This has everything to do with visualization in my world. If there has been a missing link to the mechanizations that have unfolded so far, then rethinking them in light of the memsistor should prove astonishing. Your milage may vary.
Just like the discovery of the missing link in electronic theory is gonna change everything analog and digital, and not necessarily for the better, then the possibles that appear in human consciousness because of the changes the memsistor's arrival makes, then the possibilities for humans will be discovered also.
I was born into a house that had no electricity. Power generating plants were slow to reach the rural areas. Even when we did move into a house that had electricity, the only thing it was used for was to power a light bulb and maybe a radio. None of the modern conveniences that we have now was available back then.
There is one vivid moment I remember to this day. I was playing on a bare wooden floor in the living room of a house we rented from a Ms. Pollock. On my left was an open fireplace which had live embers glowing even though it was not cold. Lined up along the edge of the burning coals were a series of cast iron appliances that my mother was using to iron my father's white shirts he wore with a tie each day at work. The fire was to heat the ironing devices. The radio was on and playing the same song over and over throughout the afternoon. The room was fairly dark even though there was a light bulb dangling from the ceiling with a dim bulb barely lighting the room.
My mother was crying while she mindlessly ironed my father's dress shirts and listened intently to the radio. It was worrisome to see my mother cry. I didn't see any reason for it. So, that's why I asked her why she was crying.
"Do you hear that music, boy?" she answered back.
"Yes, Momma. Is that why you're crying?"
"That was his favorite song."
"Whose favorite song, Momma?
She sniffled, and didn't answer right away.
"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He died today. He was one of the greatest men who ever lived. That was his favorite song. Home On The Range."
My mother always addressed FDR using his full name. I guess it was her idea of showing respect. The Great Depression made a deep impression on both she and my father. They both experienced it living in Mississippi, which was already the poorest state in the union even before the Depression struck. Roosevelt's efforts to give people jobs by creating them through the government saved them from what to them was a fate worse than death.
I remember our family getting it's first electric refrigerator, and cooking stove, and clothes washing machine. i remember the back-breaking work these appliances replaced. It was a relatively long time before they begin wiring the whole house for electricity and every room had it's own receptacles and outlets. It was sort of a miracle that the whole family was proud of. We didn't have to work so hard to look respectable.
Looking respectable wasn't so easy when I was a kid, but it was even more difficult earlier before modern transportation brought factory-made products more often to the country stores. The local stores that sold ready made products were always operated by strangers. Many of them from the North. Carpet-baggers. Jewish families. They were desperately needed.
The local people literally didn't know what to do about stuff made cheap in factories. They made their own cloth and other materials through blood, sweat, and tears. Each item was sacred. Every scrap of cloth was used and reused until they literally couldn't be repaired. They saved every bottle and glass like they were precious treasures. Broken family heirlooms were kept anyway.
My mother made our clothes from the cloth sacks flour and chicken feed came in. She was so proud she could provide her children with good clothes. Her children did not go through the great depression. The comments we got from our school mates about how tacky the clothes she made for us looked must have hurt her terribly. Life was cruel to my mother. I don't know many mothers life is not cruel to.
It took forever to change the people who survived the two great wars and the great depression into being a throwaway society. The fact that they fought this change tooth and nail was one of life's greatest mysteries for me until I was called to provide in the same way they did. I failed. Miserably.
I guess this description of how long it can take for even educated people to adopt new technology is kind of lame. Many of the people my own age are totally intimidated by the thought of learning to use a computer. A lot of them much smarter than me. It's gonna get even more confusing for everybody, much less the ones who couldn't adopt to the digital revolution. The memsistor is gonna change both the digital and analog worlds. Especially when it's realized that the earlier technology was not as good as it could have been if the early adaptors had known about this missing element. It's gonna make humans different too. This is the discovery needed to for humans to really become cyborgs.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Memsistors And The End Of Human Beings
I had a visitor who was only here as part of his agenda. It actually had nothing to do with me except as I fulfilled the role he assigned me in his duty to his world. He has only assigned just enough time in his schedule for me to play this role he had already written all the dialogue for, and when I attempted to insert my own agenda for my own reasons, he lit out like a jumping jack for parts unknown. I'm nothing if not accommodating. Wham! Bam! Thank kew, Ma'am!
I had intended to tell him about this news article I read to see what he might think of it, but as I mentioned above, he didn't wanna hear it. No blame. So, I'll just write out what I meant to use him to explore. It's not much. Just a news article about the invention of a new type of computer memory that's gonna be mo' bettah, and faster than all the rest. But, of course, there is more to it, but I might have misinterpreted.
Here's a link to one of the articles that came speculating to the forefront this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/technology/01chip.html?em&ex=1209787200&en=c4345e5bcda95925&ei=5087%0A
There are some sites with detailed prophecies of why this new invention is such a big deal. This invention will not lose it's contents when the computer is shut down. That's a big deal for the computer to have "Instant On" capabilities. There's more. This type of memory will remember what's been put in it. It retains a certain kind of imprint or trace for what has been stored in it.
That's the part of what this invention is about. The pundits speculate that it's ability to retain a certain degree of history of it's own use that can provide computers to have more human-like abilities. This is the invention that supposedly the robotics crowd has been waiting to come into being to be able to create robots that think for themselves. Yippee?
We may have to become cyborgs to survive. Maybe we already are cyborgs of a type that can only realize itself for what it is at a certain point of evolution. We are certainly making ourselves into the future tense. We are making more of ourselves all the time. Humans are each the result of their own begottenness. Self-begotten. Only begotten. The child is the father of the man. The man is the only begotten son of the child.
Here is a link to a discussion of this new invention called a "memristor" where nerds are discussing the future possibilities implied by it. They're talking Nobel Prize on the same day it's publicly announced.
>>Of course you can still use it to store digital data, but the real fun will come when you interconnect these things to emulate the analog behavior of the brain. This is where the claim of pattern recognition and facial recognition come in. They're not actually talking about software there but the actual analog capabilities of circuitry built with memristors.<<
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/30/211228&from=rss
When Isabella wrote about "self-begotten/only begotten" she was referencing some early Gnostic literature in which a certain type of god was self-begotten. I Googled these terms up, and the results page had many links to the Gnostic sites where their use of these expressions are spelled out. But, my original inspirations upon becoming aware of just the words themselves threw me right back into my remembering vision which was itself my subjective history of what sorts of traces of what my memory banks had previously employed. That's what makes me think that we're probably self-generating cyborgs from the git go.
Looking at this sperm and an egg thing from a cyborg point of view, we make ourselves from the point of conception into a computerized zombie to the point of ridiculousness and absurdity. Homo sapiens are just a flash in the pan to life in general, but are the results of a long incubation. An incubation of what? What's the end game for what life has evolved to in the relatively short period of time it's supposedly occupied the joint? Procreant to procreant to procreant? That's what it's all about? Is that all there is?
I read Robert Monroe's books about astral travel. In these books he described what he "saw" while he was out of his body. He described one "heaven" he passed by on his way to other places that was for creatures who thought having sex was to closest thing to heaven they ever understood. He described this place as literally crawling with naked people all wiggling around to have sex surrounded by sex for eternity.
The reason I was attracted to reading Robert Monroe's books was because of my own unsolicited ventures with astral travel. I've somehow been popping in and out of my body or somebody else's body for as long as I can remember. That's apparently about all the essence of me does. It moves.
I paid Bob Monroe's asking price for attending the introductory seminar at his school called Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. I read the books, then I wanted to see the movie. Mostly, I wanted to meet this man whose writings had a big influence on me. I had already traveled out of my body a lot, but not of my own volition. I wanted to go through his program to see if that was possible for me. All I really found out was that it was impossible for me not to travel outside of my body if I wanted to have my own space port. That's about all the human body is to me anymore. A place to rest up in between spirit quests.
I had several conversations with Robert Monroe when he came over to where current class was in session. I asked him a few questions and the other people in the group asked him more. He was so familiar with the questions people asked him that he would start out his answer with the page number of the book that aroused their suspicions. I didn't remember to ask him the one question I really wanted to know the answer to: Was that sex heaven he wrote about a metaphor for Earth.
I had intended to tell him about this news article I read to see what he might think of it, but as I mentioned above, he didn't wanna hear it. No blame. So, I'll just write out what I meant to use him to explore. It's not much. Just a news article about the invention of a new type of computer memory that's gonna be mo' bettah, and faster than all the rest. But, of course, there is more to it, but I might have misinterpreted.
Here's a link to one of the articles that came speculating to the forefront this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/technology/01chip.html?em&ex=1209787200&en=c4345e5bcda95925&ei=5087%0A
There are some sites with detailed prophecies of why this new invention is such a big deal. This invention will not lose it's contents when the computer is shut down. That's a big deal for the computer to have "Instant On" capabilities. There's more. This type of memory will remember what's been put in it. It retains a certain kind of imprint or trace for what has been stored in it.
That's the part of what this invention is about. The pundits speculate that it's ability to retain a certain degree of history of it's own use that can provide computers to have more human-like abilities. This is the invention that supposedly the robotics crowd has been waiting to come into being to be able to create robots that think for themselves. Yippee?
We may have to become cyborgs to survive. Maybe we already are cyborgs of a type that can only realize itself for what it is at a certain point of evolution. We are certainly making ourselves into the future tense. We are making more of ourselves all the time. Humans are each the result of their own begottenness. Self-begotten. Only begotten. The child is the father of the man. The man is the only begotten son of the child.
Here is a link to a discussion of this new invention called a "memristor" where nerds are discussing the future possibilities implied by it. They're talking Nobel Prize on the same day it's publicly announced.
>>Of course you can still use it to store digital data, but the real fun will come when you interconnect these things to emulate the analog behavior of the brain. This is where the claim of pattern recognition and facial recognition come in. They're not actually talking about software there but the actual analog capabilities of circuitry built with memristors.<<
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/30/211228&from=rss
When Isabella wrote about "self-begotten/only begotten" she was referencing some early Gnostic literature in which a certain type of god was self-begotten. I Googled these terms up, and the results page had many links to the Gnostic sites where their use of these expressions are spelled out. But, my original inspirations upon becoming aware of just the words themselves threw me right back into my remembering vision which was itself my subjective history of what sorts of traces of what my memory banks had previously employed. That's what makes me think that we're probably self-generating cyborgs from the git go.
Looking at this sperm and an egg thing from a cyborg point of view, we make ourselves from the point of conception into a computerized zombie to the point of ridiculousness and absurdity. Homo sapiens are just a flash in the pan to life in general, but are the results of a long incubation. An incubation of what? What's the end game for what life has evolved to in the relatively short period of time it's supposedly occupied the joint? Procreant to procreant to procreant? That's what it's all about? Is that all there is?
I read Robert Monroe's books about astral travel. In these books he described what he "saw" while he was out of his body. He described one "heaven" he passed by on his way to other places that was for creatures who thought having sex was to closest thing to heaven they ever understood. He described this place as literally crawling with naked people all wiggling around to have sex surrounded by sex for eternity.
The reason I was attracted to reading Robert Monroe's books was because of my own unsolicited ventures with astral travel. I've somehow been popping in and out of my body or somebody else's body for as long as I can remember. That's apparently about all the essence of me does. It moves.
I paid Bob Monroe's asking price for attending the introductory seminar at his school called Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. I read the books, then I wanted to see the movie. Mostly, I wanted to meet this man whose writings had a big influence on me. I had already traveled out of my body a lot, but not of my own volition. I wanted to go through his program to see if that was possible for me. All I really found out was that it was impossible for me not to travel outside of my body if I wanted to have my own space port. That's about all the human body is to me anymore. A place to rest up in between spirit quests.
I had several conversations with Robert Monroe when he came over to where current class was in session. I asked him a few questions and the other people in the group asked him more. He was so familiar with the questions people asked him that he would start out his answer with the page number of the book that aroused their suspicions. I didn't remember to ask him the one question I really wanted to know the answer to: Was that sex heaven he wrote about a metaphor for Earth.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Accustomed To Her Face
I'm doing some strange stuff now trying to familiarize myself with the 88 key piano keyboard. Nothing that a third-grader wouldn't do better. I feel like i oughta get bolder. I'm playing the major and minor scales every day and understand why I'm doing it, but it gets a little staid, and so I'm working on learning chord progressions. I'm using the material I found at:
http://chordmaps.com/part10.htm
There is a chart about three quarters of the way down the page I've found useful when it's used for making a chart map. I've been learning several songs written in Bb major, so I made up a chart for the chord progression in Bb. I play triads with my left hand in the designated sequence, and doodle around in the same scale as the chord I'm playing with my left hand. I have to look at the map to see what chord to play with my left hand, but that gives me wiggle room to experiment with my right hand. I think I'm actually fiddling around with modes.
I've read a lot of articles on modes recently. At first I was intimidated, but theoretically modes are quite simple to understand. The hardest part for me is getting used to all those weird mode names. Eventually, should I live so long with out going totally senile, those mode titles will become so familiar to me I'll become contemptuous of them.
The way the site owner at chartmaps.com has things laid out it should be simple enough to write some songs that sound pretty good just using his formula for chord progressions. I might end up writing some songs just to remember the sequence of his map for chord progressions.
I like well-formed patterns to practice that are instructive. Etudes. Little songs designed just to teach certain techniques that can become standard fare. That's the way I like to break the rules. To learn them so completely that i get bored with them and start making mistakes that sound good.
I'm not worried much about getting stuck in some prescribed routine for that very reason. I learn prescribed routines for the sole purpose of becoming bored with them. If my audience doesn't know the prescribed routine as well as I do, then how will they be able to discern the cleverness of how I deliberately incorporate mistakes and make them interesting.
I like to use nursery rhymes and other stuff that a lot of people get taught as children. With my flute I would try to play simple songs that most people are fairly familiar with like Hickory, Dickory, Dock, the mice ran up the clock..". I would play the song several times until my listeners would remember it well, and then I would start making mistakes in such a way as to beg their forgiveness.
They generally forgive me at first, but then I make more mistakes, and after a while it starts to appear as if I'm deliberately making mistakes to irritate them, and just about the time they're ready to despoil me, I play the original tune again, and they know they've been duped for the simple pleasure it gives me to see their self-begotten faces. That's the only face I'm ever gonna talk to like they're grownups.
http://chordmaps.com/part10.htm
There is a chart about three quarters of the way down the page I've found useful when it's used for making a chart map. I've been learning several songs written in Bb major, so I made up a chart for the chord progression in Bb. I play triads with my left hand in the designated sequence, and doodle around in the same scale as the chord I'm playing with my left hand. I have to look at the map to see what chord to play with my left hand, but that gives me wiggle room to experiment with my right hand. I think I'm actually fiddling around with modes.
I've read a lot of articles on modes recently. At first I was intimidated, but theoretically modes are quite simple to understand. The hardest part for me is getting used to all those weird mode names. Eventually, should I live so long with out going totally senile, those mode titles will become so familiar to me I'll become contemptuous of them.
The way the site owner at chartmaps.com has things laid out it should be simple enough to write some songs that sound pretty good just using his formula for chord progressions. I might end up writing some songs just to remember the sequence of his map for chord progressions.
I like well-formed patterns to practice that are instructive. Etudes. Little songs designed just to teach certain techniques that can become standard fare. That's the way I like to break the rules. To learn them so completely that i get bored with them and start making mistakes that sound good.
I'm not worried much about getting stuck in some prescribed routine for that very reason. I learn prescribed routines for the sole purpose of becoming bored with them. If my audience doesn't know the prescribed routine as well as I do, then how will they be able to discern the cleverness of how I deliberately incorporate mistakes and make them interesting.
I like to use nursery rhymes and other stuff that a lot of people get taught as children. With my flute I would try to play simple songs that most people are fairly familiar with like Hickory, Dickory, Dock, the mice ran up the clock..". I would play the song several times until my listeners would remember it well, and then I would start making mistakes in such a way as to beg their forgiveness.
They generally forgive me at first, but then I make more mistakes, and after a while it starts to appear as if I'm deliberately making mistakes to irritate them, and just about the time they're ready to despoil me, I play the original tune again, and they know they've been duped for the simple pleasure it gives me to see their self-begotten faces. That's the only face I'm ever gonna talk to like they're grownups.
Monday, April 28, 2008
How Jiggly Is Jiggy?
I've got a regional weather radar report bookmarked so that I can watch a worrisome line of storms approaching from the west. When I go to the Weather page on WRAL.com they offer live reports from either satellite or radar images. I usually elect to see time-lapsed eight hour sequences of the radar images of the storms. For some reason I haven't thought of bookmarking the regional radar page. It's where I usually end up at. Clicking on the Bookmark brings up the latest sequence of images. The weather systems move across the screen like a download progress bar.
I like to think of electrical storms as dragons. That's what the Asians call electrical storms. I was in Formosa and witnessed a long line of people doing a dragon dance. It seemed to go on for miles. The sheer numbers of people stunned me. I didn't realize when I was there what the dragon represented. If I'd known I could have understood what they were doing better. I was raised in hurricane country. On the coastal plains we sometime have electric storms in the winter.
I empathize with the Asians with their Dragon dances and what they represent. I can't bluff my was through my fear of lightning. I be unabashedly looking for shelter when the sky goes BOOM! Monsoon. Tropical storms. Rainy season. Hurricanes. All dragons. They spew forth fire (lightning) destroy the crops (wind and hail), and blow you house of cards to hell and back. The Wicked Dragon Of The North. Witches. Covens. Liquids swirling around in the pot as the witches (hurricanes) dance naked and howl like Banshees. All this stuff waddles like a duck, and it quacks.
One of the more interesting facets of the manner in which scientists look with askance at the so-called heathen ways ("lightning is how they smirk, and then give hurricane names as if they were living entities with their own ground of being. I'm enjoying sitting here writing on and off with all the doors and windows open so I can hear the wind and feel the pressure changes as the dragons swoop and swirl.
The squall line split and went around us. It didn't happen all of a sudden. i could tell as much as a half hour ago on the web site radar screen it was breaking up. I should be happy. There's been lots of tornados and considerable damage. The early news reports showed the latest tornado results. Another hour and the rough part that's risky will be past here.
I sure am enjoying the digitally perfect drumbeat the drum machine on my digital keyboard is playing in the background. I've never owned anything like this gadget. I admit the sound isn't exactly like it would be if I were in the same space as a real live drummer, but it's very good. The quality of it caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting the drumbeats to sound so real.
I can listen to these drumbeats when listening to songs with people displaying their personalities drive me nuts. By that I mean that I get distracted by the emotion I sense in their voices and instrumentals. I got other fish to fry. I can't write with recorded music playing, but I seem to be able to move right along with just a drumbeat playing.
Just now, the last drumbeat the machine was playing finally got on my nerves, and I reached over and pushed a button that made the next drumbeat on the list start playing immediately. The fact that there is no lapse in one drumbeat to the next amazes me, but that's digital. All or nothing. The drumbeat I punched up changed just enough to keep my interest going. I must have gotten up three or four times and boogied my ass off until I had to stop. I shoulda had one of these machines a long time ago. Getting my heart rate pumped up by dancing is more interesting than mere exercising.
I became intrigued when my brother brought his twin grandsons around. They can walk, but not talk yet. Younger than two years I think. I watched them walk. They stutter stepped like old men do, or rather, old men stutter step like toddlers do. One on the way up, and the other one the way out.
I like to think of electrical storms as dragons. That's what the Asians call electrical storms. I was in Formosa and witnessed a long line of people doing a dragon dance. It seemed to go on for miles. The sheer numbers of people stunned me. I didn't realize when I was there what the dragon represented. If I'd known I could have understood what they were doing better. I was raised in hurricane country. On the coastal plains we sometime have electric storms in the winter.
I empathize with the Asians with their Dragon dances and what they represent. I can't bluff my was through my fear of lightning. I be unabashedly looking for shelter when the sky goes BOOM! Monsoon. Tropical storms. Rainy season. Hurricanes. All dragons. They spew forth fire (lightning) destroy the crops (wind and hail), and blow you house of cards to hell and back. The Wicked Dragon Of The North. Witches. Covens. Liquids swirling around in the pot as the witches (hurricanes) dance naked and howl like Banshees. All this stuff waddles like a duck, and it quacks.
One of the more interesting facets of the manner in which scientists look with askance at the so-called heathen ways ("lightning is how they smirk, and then give hurricane names as if they were living entities with their own ground of being. I'm enjoying sitting here writing on and off with all the doors and windows open so I can hear the wind and feel the pressure changes as the dragons swoop and swirl.
The squall line split and went around us. It didn't happen all of a sudden. i could tell as much as a half hour ago on the web site radar screen it was breaking up. I should be happy. There's been lots of tornados and considerable damage. The early news reports showed the latest tornado results. Another hour and the rough part that's risky will be past here.
I sure am enjoying the digitally perfect drumbeat the drum machine on my digital keyboard is playing in the background. I've never owned anything like this gadget. I admit the sound isn't exactly like it would be if I were in the same space as a real live drummer, but it's very good. The quality of it caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting the drumbeats to sound so real.
I can listen to these drumbeats when listening to songs with people displaying their personalities drive me nuts. By that I mean that I get distracted by the emotion I sense in their voices and instrumentals. I got other fish to fry. I can't write with recorded music playing, but I seem to be able to move right along with just a drumbeat playing.
Just now, the last drumbeat the machine was playing finally got on my nerves, and I reached over and pushed a button that made the next drumbeat on the list start playing immediately. The fact that there is no lapse in one drumbeat to the next amazes me, but that's digital. All or nothing. The drumbeat I punched up changed just enough to keep my interest going. I must have gotten up three or four times and boogied my ass off until I had to stop. I shoulda had one of these machines a long time ago. Getting my heart rate pumped up by dancing is more interesting than mere exercising.
I became intrigued when my brother brought his twin grandsons around. They can walk, but not talk yet. Younger than two years I think. I watched them walk. They stutter stepped like old men do, or rather, old men stutter step like toddlers do. One on the way up, and the other one the way out.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Ka, And The Phony Noise-makers
It's the pad on the heel of my palm opposite my thumb on my left hand that's killing me or maybe it's the other way around. I feel a deep stinging, burning sensation that's different than the dull aching bone-weary pain of the carpal tunnel syndrome mofo. I just went upstairs to take some horse-pills of ibuprofen to soothe the savage beast. I'm just getting to the point when I'm getting the boogie woogie down pat with my left hand, and then the joint of my pinky finger starts raising hell, and I have to take a break. After I get it down right I won't be pounding so hard.
It's difficult to tell how much the arthritis is responsible or the carpal tunnel is responsible or whether my constant pounding away at the keyboard is responsible, but most likely it's all three. I don't care. It'll just have to hurt. I think it will back off on it's own ere long, but if it don't, maybe I can turn the pain into pleasure and find something new and different to get excited about. It's been a while. Decades.
The last year in my so-called "sexy sixties" better pick it up if that description is gonna hold no truck with me. I used to have a few perversions I could count on to get me excited, but like all the other wages of sin I paid my pound of flesh for, they went the way of all good things. I don't like doing stuff that hurts. I really worked at it. I had expert mentors, but I was never able to get over the hump with pain. Now, there is nothing left. Pain was my last best hope to experience some sort of physical pleasure. Instead of making me squeal with delight, It's probably gonna be just more of the same.
I did take the left hand work I've been doing another step in the same direction. I'm working at playing the boogie woogie bass run with each hand in turn, and using the other hand to chord the root and the minor seventh. A couple of sources of info I have got me to thinking of labeling the chord structure with the numbers of the scales of each key. In particular when I transpose the boogie woogie and seventh chord to the next key in the circle of fifths.
A friend who visits fairly regular gets angry with me because of the way I approach music. Particularly since I purchased this new keyboard. He hates I practice exercises rather than just get drunk and make merry. He doesn't play music. He don't have a clue what I'm attempting to accomplish by what I'm doing. It's easy enough to forgive him for being irritated and confused. I don't rightly know what I'm doing either. And yet, I do.
I know how to get into a flow and take everybody with me. I know a lotta different ways to accomplish that. I know what it takes for me to get there so the other will follow. I reckon I stumbled into that accidently when I was a kid. What I stumbled into was a deep curiosity about how i could be duped by charismatic people. It's not an intellectual process.
The ritual is what it's not. At first, it had to be intellectually comprehended so my body could be trained to respond to certain moods and feelings in order to enhance them through repetition and redundancy. I had to know in my own person what it took me individually to get into flow. Flow ain't no stranger to nobody. The thing I had to realize was that in a crowd there are as many rituals of flow being followed as there are people. The idea is to get them all synched up (entrained) to the same folkways in the immediacy of now.
In the way I learned it, there has to be a constant to rally around. It can be anything. Fingers tapping on a table. Keys being rattled in one's pocket. Just so it's about the same frequency and at the same beat longer than any of the other ambient sounds. People gonna try to break the monotony to keep from being enslaved to it, but people are basically joiners. You can't let them break your stride. Just keep on keeping on. As if you have a right to be there doing exactly what you're doing without their permission. Soon enow, when they can't fight you, they'll join you, then they'll all j'in in. Why would they not?
We all do it pretty at every chance we get. Birds do it and fly. Bees do it and die. Queens do it and sigh, but I don't do it, and I'll tell you why. I promised my mother that I'd be true. But, I'll tell you what I will do. I'll stay still and let you do it, as long as I don't move, that ain't cheating.
There is a part of the classical story about what happened when Gautama sat under the Bo Tree and received enlightenment that keeps popping back up in my mind. It may be a triviality that could easily be ignored as unimportant to the overall purpose of the metaphor.
I only know this story in a general way. I've never studied it or tried to memorize it. to me it's just an amusing story that a lotta people treasure for their own reasons. I never actually studied Buddhism with the idea of becoming a Buddhist. Why swap dogmas when one is as good as the other? I was a book worm for a long time. I read several versions of the classical Buddha-under-the-Bo Tree-accounts. My version might be all wet. It's just what I remember from a long time ago.
I guess the moment this event that fascinated me happened might have been some sort of test or trial to see if it would get Gautama to abandon his effort to achieve enlightenment and to get up and walk away like practically everyone else who had tried it.
The part I really feel uncertain about involves the world serpent named Ka. The Protestant faith I was exposed to and pretty much believed in as a child never said nothing about not "world serpent". Sure, the snake in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve, but nothing like what was described as being their for Gautama with those riotous crowds of phantasmagoric spirits showed up and tried to scare the hell outta him. I've seen them suckers. They scary. Real scary. 'Nuff said?
I suspect most people have encountered something somewhere that scared the Bejesus outta them. I sure have. I've sought it out to see what I'd do. It was Gautama's response to the arrival and fierce appearance of these weird goblins that fascinates me. I've felt like I understood why he did what he did a bunch of different times, but ere long, I find myself wondering about it again, and worry about if I truly got his point. Instead of getting up like I probably would have and running all out and at any cost for my life, he merely pointed to the ground as if to say, "I have a right to be here."
What does that mean? Every version I've encountered has been translated in the same way. None of them ever said he actually said anything. They all say he pointed to the ground "as if to say" he had a right to sit under that Bo Tree and seek enlightenment. Why would that answer satisfy those horrific, scary apparitions?
I could be wrong. Somebody might point that out to me in no uncertain terms (or would if I allowed Comments) I got it all wrong. But, I distinctly remember it being said that the world serpent Ka arose behind Gautama and spread his hood over Gautama as if to shield him from the rear. He got his back.
So what made those phantasmagoric creature go back to where they came from? From Gautama insisting he had a right to be there, or that huge damn snake rising up behind him and scaring them off. Sometime I like to think that even Gautama might settle for thinking it was him and his calm gesturing that made those demons go away, when it was actually some force behind him he didn't see, that tacitly did the trick.
It's difficult to tell how much the arthritis is responsible or the carpal tunnel is responsible or whether my constant pounding away at the keyboard is responsible, but most likely it's all three. I don't care. It'll just have to hurt. I think it will back off on it's own ere long, but if it don't, maybe I can turn the pain into pleasure and find something new and different to get excited about. It's been a while. Decades.
The last year in my so-called "sexy sixties" better pick it up if that description is gonna hold no truck with me. I used to have a few perversions I could count on to get me excited, but like all the other wages of sin I paid my pound of flesh for, they went the way of all good things. I don't like doing stuff that hurts. I really worked at it. I had expert mentors, but I was never able to get over the hump with pain. Now, there is nothing left. Pain was my last best hope to experience some sort of physical pleasure. Instead of making me squeal with delight, It's probably gonna be just more of the same.
I did take the left hand work I've been doing another step in the same direction. I'm working at playing the boogie woogie bass run with each hand in turn, and using the other hand to chord the root and the minor seventh. A couple of sources of info I have got me to thinking of labeling the chord structure with the numbers of the scales of each key. In particular when I transpose the boogie woogie and seventh chord to the next key in the circle of fifths.
A friend who visits fairly regular gets angry with me because of the way I approach music. Particularly since I purchased this new keyboard. He hates I practice exercises rather than just get drunk and make merry. He doesn't play music. He don't have a clue what I'm attempting to accomplish by what I'm doing. It's easy enough to forgive him for being irritated and confused. I don't rightly know what I'm doing either. And yet, I do.
I know how to get into a flow and take everybody with me. I know a lotta different ways to accomplish that. I know what it takes for me to get there so the other will follow. I reckon I stumbled into that accidently when I was a kid. What I stumbled into was a deep curiosity about how i could be duped by charismatic people. It's not an intellectual process.
The ritual is what it's not. At first, it had to be intellectually comprehended so my body could be trained to respond to certain moods and feelings in order to enhance them through repetition and redundancy. I had to know in my own person what it took me individually to get into flow. Flow ain't no stranger to nobody. The thing I had to realize was that in a crowd there are as many rituals of flow being followed as there are people. The idea is to get them all synched up (entrained) to the same folkways in the immediacy of now.
In the way I learned it, there has to be a constant to rally around. It can be anything. Fingers tapping on a table. Keys being rattled in one's pocket. Just so it's about the same frequency and at the same beat longer than any of the other ambient sounds. People gonna try to break the monotony to keep from being enslaved to it, but people are basically joiners. You can't let them break your stride. Just keep on keeping on. As if you have a right to be there doing exactly what you're doing without their permission. Soon enow, when they can't fight you, they'll join you, then they'll all j'in in. Why would they not?
We all do it pretty at every chance we get. Birds do it and fly. Bees do it and die. Queens do it and sigh, but I don't do it, and I'll tell you why. I promised my mother that I'd be true. But, I'll tell you what I will do. I'll stay still and let you do it, as long as I don't move, that ain't cheating.
There is a part of the classical story about what happened when Gautama sat under the Bo Tree and received enlightenment that keeps popping back up in my mind. It may be a triviality that could easily be ignored as unimportant to the overall purpose of the metaphor.
I only know this story in a general way. I've never studied it or tried to memorize it. to me it's just an amusing story that a lotta people treasure for their own reasons. I never actually studied Buddhism with the idea of becoming a Buddhist. Why swap dogmas when one is as good as the other? I was a book worm for a long time. I read several versions of the classical Buddha-under-the-Bo Tree-accounts. My version might be all wet. It's just what I remember from a long time ago.
I guess the moment this event that fascinated me happened might have been some sort of test or trial to see if it would get Gautama to abandon his effort to achieve enlightenment and to get up and walk away like practically everyone else who had tried it.
The part I really feel uncertain about involves the world serpent named Ka. The Protestant faith I was exposed to and pretty much believed in as a child never said nothing about not "world serpent". Sure, the snake in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve, but nothing like what was described as being their for Gautama with those riotous crowds of phantasmagoric spirits showed up and tried to scare the hell outta him. I've seen them suckers. They scary. Real scary. 'Nuff said?
I suspect most people have encountered something somewhere that scared the Bejesus outta them. I sure have. I've sought it out to see what I'd do. It was Gautama's response to the arrival and fierce appearance of these weird goblins that fascinates me. I've felt like I understood why he did what he did a bunch of different times, but ere long, I find myself wondering about it again, and worry about if I truly got his point. Instead of getting up like I probably would have and running all out and at any cost for my life, he merely pointed to the ground as if to say, "I have a right to be here."
What does that mean? Every version I've encountered has been translated in the same way. None of them ever said he actually said anything. They all say he pointed to the ground "as if to say" he had a right to sit under that Bo Tree and seek enlightenment. Why would that answer satisfy those horrific, scary apparitions?
I could be wrong. Somebody might point that out to me in no uncertain terms (or would if I allowed Comments) I got it all wrong. But, I distinctly remember it being said that the world serpent Ka arose behind Gautama and spread his hood over Gautama as if to shield him from the rear. He got his back.
So what made those phantasmagoric creature go back to where they came from? From Gautama insisting he had a right to be there, or that huge damn snake rising up behind him and scaring them off. Sometime I like to think that even Gautama might settle for thinking it was him and his calm gesturing that made those demons go away, when it was actually some force behind him he didn't see, that tacitly did the trick.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Reframing The Stone
Why gainsay the abysmal stench of my downscale mechanisms? I bear no shame. The balmy ocean breeze wafts past my flared nostrils bearing the sulfurous odour of decaying kelp. It's piled up in wiggly rows along the white beach and marks the highest tide from the last tropical storm that passed by wailing. Until the seaweed lies there in the unrelenting sun covered with black flies and fiddler crabs and rots completely, the picture postcard beaches will smell like rotten eggs, and thereby taint paradise.
Atlantic City, 1971
Sores on lips that run from the brain
that comes from the sky in the form of rain
to start the weeds a'growing.
Bed-a-bye treetops the cradle rocks on.
The children stop talking to ice-cream cones
for the kettle of onions that boiling.
Other times than this are drearier than
the day before the new house burned.
Fortune never deals the players fair.
Yet, the changes are constant,
and drifting thoughts don't apply.
@July, 1971
Edited 4/24/08
_
Atlantic City, 1971
Sores on lips that run from the brain
that comes from the sky in the form of rain
to start the weeds a'growing.
Bed-a-bye treetops the cradle rocks on.
The children stop talking to ice-cream cones
for the kettle of onions that boiling.
Other times than this are drearier than
the day before the new house burned.
Fortune never deals the players fair.
Yet, the changes are constant,
and drifting thoughts don't apply.
@July, 1971
Edited 4/24/08
_
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Surrounded By Oceans
It's amazing to me what playing the scales everyday has wrought. I don't exactly know how to describe what I'm experiencing. I tried to explain yesterday by saying that my fingers seem to be getting to the place where they know where to go better than my head does. I'm still dealing with bottlenecks, but the bottlenecks I'm attempting to open up are now what would be real progress not that long ago. In some manner I'm beginning to get out of my own way.
Today I started playing the chorale part of Beethoven's Ninth. I forget what it's called. It's the part everybody knows and sings to or hums. It's Germany's freaking national anthem. A lovely tune. It evolved from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, as a lot of classical songs did. I was playing single notes with my left hand. I played the same tune graduating one half-step at a time and played it in all twelve major keys without many serious mistakes. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I expect from playing these scales daily. I expect to be able to play anything I can play by memory in any key major or minor without exception and no dilly-dallying around.
I'm working with my left hand a lot these days when I'm not playing the scales. Playing the scales doesn't take near as long as they did, so I'm trying to get that boogie woogie thing going with my left hand. I'm using the Circle of Fifths to play the same boogie woogie in all twelve keys and playing the root and minor seventh to accompany with my right hand. It's a slow process.
Another thing is going on as a result of playing the scales. Today when I drove to the Post Office to mail the ISP monthly payment I walked around for about a mile to get some exercise, then I went back to my car, but I didn't crank it up and leave right away, I like to sit in my car and work crossword puzzles in the big parking lots and watch people as they come and go.
When i do that I usually listen to a classical music station that actually plays a lot of music and keeps the chatter down. Oddly enow, they call themselves The Classical Music Station. A perculiar thing happened. At the end of a song they were playing the announcer re-stated the title and composer again, and told what key it was written in, and when he did that I perked up. I knew the key of E Flat Minor. I play it every day.
Then, he announce the next piece he was going to play and told that it was written in A Flat Major. This time i "saw" the entire scale as I practice it on the keyboard. I'm beginning to visualize the 88-key keyboard layout. This was a very exciting moment for me. I don't know if I'll continue to spend all that much time on the piano as my main instrument. If I can complete my visualization of it so that I can use the piano keyboard for reference when I play other instruments, it will have served it's purpose.
I can't foresee how this development will affect how I'll approach playing music in the future. I've only guessed how learning to play the scales and playing them daily will change what I think is possible for me. For one thing I'm beginning to realize it's impossible for me to not have perfect pitch. I don't know how to explain that statement. I write it because of how I play by memory.
I hear what I play before I play it, I've always heard the music in my imagination. I just didn't know where the sounds I hear are on the keyboard. Now, I'm beginning to know where the notes are I've always heard in my psyche. Not just thetically either, but intuitively. i don't know where that's going, but it's okay with me. When I started playing that Beethoven melody in every key, at the end of playing in each key I didn't have to reflect on what the next key was. My fingers automatically went there, and I knew it was right. I looked it up afterward. My fingers were right every single time. I'm already hard to live with, this might make me impossible to be in the same room with.
I'm not joking about being hard to be around. I've had three people tell me so recently. they claim I don't care how I act around them or how I treat them. They say there is nothing they can do about the way I treat them, because I'm the only person they know of that they can talk openly with about what matters to them. if that's true, then it's a one-way deal.
I can get the same response outta anybody I want to. But, I don't. I get the response I get from my friends, and they're about the only people I bother with in person. I'm as stuck with them as they are with me. The world is changing really, really fast now. Does China really only have twelve days of coal left to power their industry? The food shortage deal is on the national news now. Things are gonna get exciting. world wide, and it might be sooner than we think.
Today I started playing the chorale part of Beethoven's Ninth. I forget what it's called. It's the part everybody knows and sings to or hums. It's Germany's freaking national anthem. A lovely tune. It evolved from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, as a lot of classical songs did. I was playing single notes with my left hand. I played the same tune graduating one half-step at a time and played it in all twelve major keys without many serious mistakes. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I expect from playing these scales daily. I expect to be able to play anything I can play by memory in any key major or minor without exception and no dilly-dallying around.
I'm working with my left hand a lot these days when I'm not playing the scales. Playing the scales doesn't take near as long as they did, so I'm trying to get that boogie woogie thing going with my left hand. I'm using the Circle of Fifths to play the same boogie woogie in all twelve keys and playing the root and minor seventh to accompany with my right hand. It's a slow process.
Another thing is going on as a result of playing the scales. Today when I drove to the Post Office to mail the ISP monthly payment I walked around for about a mile to get some exercise, then I went back to my car, but I didn't crank it up and leave right away, I like to sit in my car and work crossword puzzles in the big parking lots and watch people as they come and go.
When i do that I usually listen to a classical music station that actually plays a lot of music and keeps the chatter down. Oddly enow, they call themselves The Classical Music Station. A perculiar thing happened. At the end of a song they were playing the announcer re-stated the title and composer again, and told what key it was written in, and when he did that I perked up. I knew the key of E Flat Minor. I play it every day.
Then, he announce the next piece he was going to play and told that it was written in A Flat Major. This time i "saw" the entire scale as I practice it on the keyboard. I'm beginning to visualize the 88-key keyboard layout. This was a very exciting moment for me. I don't know if I'll continue to spend all that much time on the piano as my main instrument. If I can complete my visualization of it so that I can use the piano keyboard for reference when I play other instruments, it will have served it's purpose.
I can't foresee how this development will affect how I'll approach playing music in the future. I've only guessed how learning to play the scales and playing them daily will change what I think is possible for me. For one thing I'm beginning to realize it's impossible for me to not have perfect pitch. I don't know how to explain that statement. I write it because of how I play by memory.
I hear what I play before I play it, I've always heard the music in my imagination. I just didn't know where the sounds I hear are on the keyboard. Now, I'm beginning to know where the notes are I've always heard in my psyche. Not just thetically either, but intuitively. i don't know where that's going, but it's okay with me. When I started playing that Beethoven melody in every key, at the end of playing in each key I didn't have to reflect on what the next key was. My fingers automatically went there, and I knew it was right. I looked it up afterward. My fingers were right every single time. I'm already hard to live with, this might make me impossible to be in the same room with.
I'm not joking about being hard to be around. I've had three people tell me so recently. they claim I don't care how I act around them or how I treat them. They say there is nothing they can do about the way I treat them, because I'm the only person they know of that they can talk openly with about what matters to them. if that's true, then it's a one-way deal.
I can get the same response outta anybody I want to. But, I don't. I get the response I get from my friends, and they're about the only people I bother with in person. I'm as stuck with them as they are with me. The world is changing really, really fast now. Does China really only have twelve days of coal left to power their industry? The food shortage deal is on the national news now. Things are gonna get exciting. world wide, and it might be sooner than we think.
Monday, April 21, 2008
The Roll Of The Dice
I've had a good day playing the scales. It's like my fingers are beginning to recognize where they need to go next before I do. I'm hardly doing anything else each day musically but to practice what's difficult for me separate from when i go through the whole kit and caboodle in the evening.
Tonight I stopped working my way through the Circle of Fifths, and played the key of F Major repetitively. First the left hand separately and then the right. When I was more satisfied with the results, I played F Major with both hands until it seemed to flow more smoothly. I'm beginning to get a little bit of intuitive flash about where this is headed. I'm gonna loan my body out and let unembodied spirits use it to play my piano in order to remember the old days through me. Man, they gonna owe me big time when I croak.
There were certain moments back when I traveled a lot with a guitar and a sleeping bag. Those were the luxury items I got to take with me sometime. I'm considered a fair singer, but even I know I was not an accomplished instrumentalist. It did cross my mind occasionally that it would help my repertoire considerably if I could intersperse some solo instrumental licks in between the verses of the songs I wrote to sing. About the best I ever got out of myself, in that regard, was that I could play a few bass runs with my thumb while I strummed chords with the other fingers.
A man who picked me up hitch-hiking on the way from Portland to Pendleton, Oregon asked me to take a drink with him, and then after we did that, he asked me to sing and play the guitar I had with me for him. The whiskey put me in a pretty good mood, and so I sang a couple of the songs I'd written. After a few more slugs off that pint bottle he had hauled out, he began to sing with me. I switched over to singing some familiar songs I thought he might know the words to, and by the time we got to Pendleton we were pretty good friends.
Just before we got there he asked me if I wanted a job singing in a bar where he knew the owner. He kinda laid it out for me so I could make up my mind. The man brought a band in for the week-end, but Sundays through Wednesday he hired a solo act to try to entice his rush hour customers to stay for one more drink before they drove home for the night.
The man paid me $35 a night, all the beer I could drink, and whatever tips I could hustle from the customers. I'd been on the road for months living catch as catch can, and this offer was a windfall for me. My original patron who got me the job in the first place insisted on paying for me a room at an old downtown hotel for a week. I was in hog heaven. The owner liked the way I made money for him, and began slipping me a twenty dollar bill on the side a couple a times a night.
This turned out to be a real opportunity for me to make a name for myself as a singer/songwriter in that part of the country. A couple of guys who were agents came in the bar, heard me sing, made me an offer I couldn't refuse. To cut to the chase, I blew it. Maybe because it seemed too good to be true.
I got mixed up with a waitress who worked at the coffee shop of the old downtown hotel. It turned out that she had just been released from prison for cutting up her old boyfriend. When she started obsessing on my whereabouts every moment I wasn't in her sight, I knew I had to run for my life.
That's happened a lot with me. I must have a blind spot. It may be that I'm the male counterpart to this type of woman, and they keep thinking they've met their soul mate. I don't particular like that part of me some women find interesting. How could I possibly love it in them?
On the other hand, in my natal astrology chart, in the Seventh house of partners, where the Moon resides exalted in Taurus, and conjoined within the same degree with the planet Uranus, all the interpretation books I ever studied claimed a person with this configuration in their nativity would be attracted to unusual, eccentric partners who would act more as a nurturer than a lover to me.
What a drag, man. I'm don't believe I"m that kind of person. The oracle might be right. It might be what I actually need. I just can't stand the manner in which I have to conduct myself to satisfy their need in that way. I'd rather do without.
Tonight I stopped working my way through the Circle of Fifths, and played the key of F Major repetitively. First the left hand separately and then the right. When I was more satisfied with the results, I played F Major with both hands until it seemed to flow more smoothly. I'm beginning to get a little bit of intuitive flash about where this is headed. I'm gonna loan my body out and let unembodied spirits use it to play my piano in order to remember the old days through me. Man, they gonna owe me big time when I croak.
There were certain moments back when I traveled a lot with a guitar and a sleeping bag. Those were the luxury items I got to take with me sometime. I'm considered a fair singer, but even I know I was not an accomplished instrumentalist. It did cross my mind occasionally that it would help my repertoire considerably if I could intersperse some solo instrumental licks in between the verses of the songs I wrote to sing. About the best I ever got out of myself, in that regard, was that I could play a few bass runs with my thumb while I strummed chords with the other fingers.
A man who picked me up hitch-hiking on the way from Portland to Pendleton, Oregon asked me to take a drink with him, and then after we did that, he asked me to sing and play the guitar I had with me for him. The whiskey put me in a pretty good mood, and so I sang a couple of the songs I'd written. After a few more slugs off that pint bottle he had hauled out, he began to sing with me. I switched over to singing some familiar songs I thought he might know the words to, and by the time we got to Pendleton we were pretty good friends.
Just before we got there he asked me if I wanted a job singing in a bar where he knew the owner. He kinda laid it out for me so I could make up my mind. The man brought a band in for the week-end, but Sundays through Wednesday he hired a solo act to try to entice his rush hour customers to stay for one more drink before they drove home for the night.
The man paid me $35 a night, all the beer I could drink, and whatever tips I could hustle from the customers. I'd been on the road for months living catch as catch can, and this offer was a windfall for me. My original patron who got me the job in the first place insisted on paying for me a room at an old downtown hotel for a week. I was in hog heaven. The owner liked the way I made money for him, and began slipping me a twenty dollar bill on the side a couple a times a night.
This turned out to be a real opportunity for me to make a name for myself as a singer/songwriter in that part of the country. A couple of guys who were agents came in the bar, heard me sing, made me an offer I couldn't refuse. To cut to the chase, I blew it. Maybe because it seemed too good to be true.
I got mixed up with a waitress who worked at the coffee shop of the old downtown hotel. It turned out that she had just been released from prison for cutting up her old boyfriend. When she started obsessing on my whereabouts every moment I wasn't in her sight, I knew I had to run for my life.
That's happened a lot with me. I must have a blind spot. It may be that I'm the male counterpart to this type of woman, and they keep thinking they've met their soul mate. I don't particular like that part of me some women find interesting. How could I possibly love it in them?
On the other hand, in my natal astrology chart, in the Seventh house of partners, where the Moon resides exalted in Taurus, and conjoined within the same degree with the planet Uranus, all the interpretation books I ever studied claimed a person with this configuration in their nativity would be attracted to unusual, eccentric partners who would act more as a nurturer than a lover to me.
What a drag, man. I'm don't believe I"m that kind of person. The oracle might be right. It might be what I actually need. I just can't stand the manner in which I have to conduct myself to satisfy their need in that way. I'd rather do without.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The Totalitarianism Of The Written Word
Burning off the underbrush yesterday was a real chore. I've done nothing but sit around today. I may turn on my drum machine and dance to 085 BrazilianSamba for a while just to get my blood moving throughout my body. I like the cowbells.
I don't know what's going on with my musical pursuits. I was doing a lot of ear-training exercises, but not recently. I play the major and minor scales along with some blues chords and the related pentatonic scales. As usual, I pretend I know all there is to know about what I should do next. That's what some people do.
I'm still thinking about Walt Whitman being convinced his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, would stop slavery and prevent the Civil War in one fell swoop. In my opinion, Whitman had to cop to that arrogance or he could not have written what he did. That's how poets earn their reputations for being a little wacko. They have to make grand assumptions in order to make the quantum leaps they do to describe other dimensions.
People who are able to focus a little beyond the pale of human reason usually have to pay the piper in odd, sometime unexpected ways. There is a book around I've been exposed to called The Urantia Book:
http://www.urantia.org/
I just realized I could Google the particulars about this book up. I didn't know there was a fancy web site now where you can send your cards and letters, but I should have. Fine. You can read all about it. I'm still gonna use my memory of what it's about to make the point I attempt to, even though by using the link above, you can easily prove how slack my long term memory system can be at times. I don't actually care. I don't wanna hear it. That's why I changed the Comments setting to Off.
I was informed that this book was produced by automatic writing. I suspect that's a little bit of what I do here, but I don't seem so other worldly in my daily quests. My muses are as apt to cuss like a sailor as they are to wheedle and croon. They appear to enjoy shocking my readers with off-the-wall word-salad that makes me seem like a fool to some. Why would I not agree?
The Urantia Book itself is the proof this sort of channeling can be done. I just don't know how useful it is to people who appear to have their own way of seeing the world. I like it that the author (or authors?) did what they did, and I'm prone to think each seeker should do their own automatic writing for what it can reveal to them about themselves.
I discover relationships between lots of discreet memories of distinct events I'm somewhat convinced may have actually happened as I write everyday, but without rhyme or reason. I don't have to know where I'm at to be there. How else could I control my creativity except by yielding to temptation?
A fellow named Larry provided me with a definition for existentialism that has proved very useful. Particularly because previous to Larry's description I didn't really have one I could live with. He stated that an existentialist was a person who was fully in control of their creativity. I don't know what percentage of the world's population would agree with Larry, but he makes sense to me.
What seems to have helped me express my self in writing in the way that most satisfies me is my decision to abandon any judgments I might make about the truth or falsity of what flows out of my fingers on to my computer screen. This was an easy decision to to make, because I don't know what the truth is. I don't write to discover the truth. I write to find out for myself what the world has to say. Right damned now! Let the dead past bury it's dead.
I don't know what's going on with my musical pursuits. I was doing a lot of ear-training exercises, but not recently. I play the major and minor scales along with some blues chords and the related pentatonic scales. As usual, I pretend I know all there is to know about what I should do next. That's what some people do.
I'm still thinking about Walt Whitman being convinced his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, would stop slavery and prevent the Civil War in one fell swoop. In my opinion, Whitman had to cop to that arrogance or he could not have written what he did. That's how poets earn their reputations for being a little wacko. They have to make grand assumptions in order to make the quantum leaps they do to describe other dimensions.
People who are able to focus a little beyond the pale of human reason usually have to pay the piper in odd, sometime unexpected ways. There is a book around I've been exposed to called The Urantia Book:
http://www.urantia.org/
I just realized I could Google the particulars about this book up. I didn't know there was a fancy web site now where you can send your cards and letters, but I should have. Fine. You can read all about it. I'm still gonna use my memory of what it's about to make the point I attempt to, even though by using the link above, you can easily prove how slack my long term memory system can be at times. I don't actually care. I don't wanna hear it. That's why I changed the Comments setting to Off.
I was informed that this book was produced by automatic writing. I suspect that's a little bit of what I do here, but I don't seem so other worldly in my daily quests. My muses are as apt to cuss like a sailor as they are to wheedle and croon. They appear to enjoy shocking my readers with off-the-wall word-salad that makes me seem like a fool to some. Why would I not agree?
The Urantia Book itself is the proof this sort of channeling can be done. I just don't know how useful it is to people who appear to have their own way of seeing the world. I like it that the author (or authors?) did what they did, and I'm prone to think each seeker should do their own automatic writing for what it can reveal to them about themselves.
I discover relationships between lots of discreet memories of distinct events I'm somewhat convinced may have actually happened as I write everyday, but without rhyme or reason. I don't have to know where I'm at to be there. How else could I control my creativity except by yielding to temptation?
A fellow named Larry provided me with a definition for existentialism that has proved very useful. Particularly because previous to Larry's description I didn't really have one I could live with. He stated that an existentialist was a person who was fully in control of their creativity. I don't know what percentage of the world's population would agree with Larry, but he makes sense to me.
What seems to have helped me express my self in writing in the way that most satisfies me is my decision to abandon any judgments I might make about the truth or falsity of what flows out of my fingers on to my computer screen. This was an easy decision to to make, because I don't know what the truth is. I don't write to discover the truth. I write to find out for myself what the world has to say. Right damned now! Let the dead past bury it's dead.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Burning The Woods Down
Driving back home from having breakfast to the cafe I had to stop twice to write something down on paper. A drifting thought, if you will. What I wrote on the top margin of a flyer for the Farmer's Home Furniture Store was: 1)The non-thetic mind is what learns things. The thetic mind is what teaches it. 2) The non-thetic mind is docetic. It can't become human, because to become human is to err. Non-thetic consciousness simply can't make errors, because it doesn't make judgments. Judgment is required for errors to possess being.
I'm not sure what this meant to me at the time. I got home, and before I got settled in to write about it Ben showed up with enough garden hose to reach back in the woods where I wanted to burn the piles of brush I cut down to allow me to see the pond from my house.
He was in a helpful mood and I could readily see that he had brought that hose over here in order to help me burn the brush piles, so we got started around 2 o'clock and burned those brush piles off and also about a quarter of an acre of undergrowth besides that. We sort of bit off more than we could chew on purpose. The fire really cleaned the woods up between here and the pond.
I don't know how many of the rare wild orchids I burnt up in the fire. They'll either find their way back or they won't. There's plenty of them on my brother's property next door. He told me just a couple of days ago they were blooming. I'm pretty sure the fire will bring them back stronger. Like pruning fruit trees does.
The longleaf pines this area is famous for require forest fires occasionally to survive. Not having forest fires where people have settled is as responsible for some localized species going extinct as anything else. Like the extinction of the white pine forests up around the Great Lakes and up through Canada. Talk about your raping the land. That's as cruel as it gets.
I'm too tired to write anymore. Tending that fire wore me out.
I'm not sure what this meant to me at the time. I got home, and before I got settled in to write about it Ben showed up with enough garden hose to reach back in the woods where I wanted to burn the piles of brush I cut down to allow me to see the pond from my house.
He was in a helpful mood and I could readily see that he had brought that hose over here in order to help me burn the brush piles, so we got started around 2 o'clock and burned those brush piles off and also about a quarter of an acre of undergrowth besides that. We sort of bit off more than we could chew on purpose. The fire really cleaned the woods up between here and the pond.
I don't know how many of the rare wild orchids I burnt up in the fire. They'll either find their way back or they won't. There's plenty of them on my brother's property next door. He told me just a couple of days ago they were blooming. I'm pretty sure the fire will bring them back stronger. Like pruning fruit trees does.
The longleaf pines this area is famous for require forest fires occasionally to survive. Not having forest fires where people have settled is as responsible for some localized species going extinct as anything else. Like the extinction of the white pine forests up around the Great Lakes and up through Canada. Talk about your raping the land. That's as cruel as it gets.
I'm too tired to write anymore. Tending that fire wore me out.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Medusa
I've always had a problem with weeping. Just now I was watching a video in which a man was playing a digital keyboard and singing this old familiar song. I knew the video wasn't actually about him. He was sort of a straight man for this sexy, red-haired young woman standing at a microphone with a fiddle and a bow. This scenario would never have worked with an older woman or a male fiddler. Not for a man. I don't know what might work for women viewers.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/117
She's waiting. She bows an accompanying note or two. Then, she starts playing... and stops. She's waiting again, and this goes on for most of the video. I'm watching the progress bar that indicates how far along the video is, and it's getting toward the end, and this prick-teaser ain't doing shit. Why am I watching this stupid video?
Then, when the video is almost over, she starts playing. She's a pretty good fiddler, but so what? Red-headed sexpots by the score are trying to make it big in show business on a continuous basis, what's the big deal about this one?
Then, she starts doing a freaking highland fling of some kind, and at the same time she was playing this pretty good fiddle tune. She was really cutting a rug and sawing the hell outta that fiddle. Wow!
Then, the crowd erupts into sheer pandaemonium, the fat guy accompanying her on the keyboard got up filled to the brim with sheer exuberant adoration... gave her a big hug... and the video was over! Whaaa....?
So, what does this description have to do with my opening sentence about weeping? It was the fact that I got so worked up about what I expected to happen in the video, that when it did happen, I suddenly felt so emotionally overwhelmed that I started weeping with joy, and couldn't shut it down for about 10-15 minutes.
This episode happened here at my house where I'm alone. I understood everything all along the way. I was happy even though I was perfectly aware my uninvited session of puling would be followed by some Humpty Dumpty-like fall. All Fall Down.
I once had a girl friend who asked me if I wanted to watch her have a sexual climax while she was taking a bath. How could I possibly say no? All I had to do was watch. I didn't have to do anything to her to help or hinder. I was actually in love with her rather than being lust for her, and aye, that was the rub (no pun intended).
She didn't rub herself either. She'd been taught that was nasty. Crazy Capricorn bitch couldn't break her parent's rules, so she made up some new ones. No blame. What happened was that she skootched her bottom down toward the end of the tub by lifting her legs back she could thrust her vagina under the rushing flow of warm water coming out of the faucet, and the warm water provided the friction she needed without touching herself.
I didn't really pay a lot of attention to that end of things. I wanted to see her face when she reached a climax. I agreed with her parents. There is some nasty shit going on down in them nether parts. Some good. Some bad. Sometime both at once.
This woman was a fine specimen of womanhood. She was 46 years old at the time. Sixteen years younger than me. She didn't have the body of a teenager, but she was pretty close. She hadn't had any children. I lived with her day and night for about six weeks. I knew her diet. It wouldn't be worth it to me, but she was near the end of that rodeo. Newer, more devastating tactics would be required.
What I'm saying is that she was a beautiful woman for her age. I wouldn't say the age part her that to her face, I don't care what sort of lack of character that indicates. Hell still hath no fury like a woman scorned, and this woman seemed like she eagerly looked for a reason to cut you.
I saw her face when she climaxed. She was of Greek descent, and I saw Medusa there in her face when she cum hard. In that moment I understood everything she had deliberately hidden from me with her female wiles. None of her feminine mystique (my-stick?) survived her fall from grace. I saw the darkness and ran for my life.
It took a while. It's not unusual for me to meet my match in a woman. It's not my option. Ever. I work hard to make it so. Selah.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/117
She's waiting. She bows an accompanying note or two. Then, she starts playing... and stops. She's waiting again, and this goes on for most of the video. I'm watching the progress bar that indicates how far along the video is, and it's getting toward the end, and this prick-teaser ain't doing shit. Why am I watching this stupid video?
Then, when the video is almost over, she starts playing. She's a pretty good fiddler, but so what? Red-headed sexpots by the score are trying to make it big in show business on a continuous basis, what's the big deal about this one?
Then, she starts doing a freaking highland fling of some kind, and at the same time she was playing this pretty good fiddle tune. She was really cutting a rug and sawing the hell outta that fiddle. Wow!
Then, the crowd erupts into sheer pandaemonium, the fat guy accompanying her on the keyboard got up filled to the brim with sheer exuberant adoration... gave her a big hug... and the video was over! Whaaa....?
So, what does this description have to do with my opening sentence about weeping? It was the fact that I got so worked up about what I expected to happen in the video, that when it did happen, I suddenly felt so emotionally overwhelmed that I started weeping with joy, and couldn't shut it down for about 10-15 minutes.
This episode happened here at my house where I'm alone. I understood everything all along the way. I was happy even though I was perfectly aware my uninvited session of puling would be followed by some Humpty Dumpty-like fall. All Fall Down.
I once had a girl friend who asked me if I wanted to watch her have a sexual climax while she was taking a bath. How could I possibly say no? All I had to do was watch. I didn't have to do anything to her to help or hinder. I was actually in love with her rather than being lust for her, and aye, that was the rub (no pun intended).
She didn't rub herself either. She'd been taught that was nasty. Crazy Capricorn bitch couldn't break her parent's rules, so she made up some new ones. No blame. What happened was that she skootched her bottom down toward the end of the tub by lifting her legs back she could thrust her vagina under the rushing flow of warm water coming out of the faucet, and the warm water provided the friction she needed without touching herself.
I didn't really pay a lot of attention to that end of things. I wanted to see her face when she reached a climax. I agreed with her parents. There is some nasty shit going on down in them nether parts. Some good. Some bad. Sometime both at once.
This woman was a fine specimen of womanhood. She was 46 years old at the time. Sixteen years younger than me. She didn't have the body of a teenager, but she was pretty close. She hadn't had any children. I lived with her day and night for about six weeks. I knew her diet. It wouldn't be worth it to me, but she was near the end of that rodeo. Newer, more devastating tactics would be required.
What I'm saying is that she was a beautiful woman for her age. I wouldn't say the age part her that to her face, I don't care what sort of lack of character that indicates. Hell still hath no fury like a woman scorned, and this woman seemed like she eagerly looked for a reason to cut you.
I saw her face when she climaxed. She was of Greek descent, and I saw Medusa there in her face when she cum hard. In that moment I understood everything she had deliberately hidden from me with her female wiles. None of her feminine mystique (my-stick?) survived her fall from grace. I saw the darkness and ran for my life.
It took a while. It's not unusual for me to meet my match in a woman. It's not my option. Ever. I work hard to make it so. Selah.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
What's What?
I've kept a blog online for as long as the archives on this blog shows. This was my first blog site. I've written lots more on the other sites I've kept. Especially for the last couple of years with the LiveJournal blog (see Links, lower right side). I write a lot of personal stuff that allows my readers to think they know a lot about me, but nobody knows. A person who has been reading my blogs might think they know me pretty good, but all they actually know is what they read into what I write.
I've tried real hard to be what the other required. Especially before I realized that's not possible. Something about me is all things to all people. True, it's my eye-mage they use for a mirror, But, it's their conclusion, and it all relates to who they would be if they were what they think I am is.
I know this now, and this no-ing could serve as the excuse I need to crawl back into the woodworks of ho-me (whole or holy me). I haven't figured out how to equate the terms "know" and "no" in order to make clear my intent. To know something requires one to no it, to deny it's ex-is-tense. That's the state-of-being from which the negating takes place. A state-of-being external to is-ness. Ex-is-ness. Consciousness can't upsurge into Is-ness because is-ness is where consciousness upsurges from. Consciousness upsurges from wholeness. From that which is complete. Where no thing is lacking. There's plenty of nothing to go around. Eat, drink, and be merry!
For a thing to be a thing instead of a no thing, that is, for an object to possess being outside of is-ness, independent of it's source, then it must have it's own ground of being. Consciousness does not. It's doesn't have a leg to stand on. Consciousness exists when on it's upsurged vision quest/sojourn, but it's only a temporary state of affairs. Which begs this question or two to be answered: What gains consciousness and what loses consciousness. There is no sense in asking "who" gains or loses consciousness. Who only ex-is-es when it's outside the plenitude. There is no individuality inside the plenitude (being-in-itself) In is-ness, so who isn't and can't be a something inside of nothingness. Who acts like the persona, but can't BE what it seems. Who doesn't do is-ness. What does. What be-co-me-s with consciousness as a convenience, and still ex-is-ts once who dissipates into nothingness. So, what's what?
I've tried real hard to be what the other required. Especially before I realized that's not possible. Something about me is all things to all people. True, it's my eye-mage they use for a mirror, But, it's their conclusion, and it all relates to who they would be if they were what they think I am is.
I know this now, and this no-ing could serve as the excuse I need to crawl back into the woodworks of ho-me (whole or holy me). I haven't figured out how to equate the terms "know" and "no" in order to make clear my intent. To know something requires one to no it, to deny it's ex-is-tense. That's the state-of-being from which the negating takes place. A state-of-being external to is-ness. Ex-is-ness. Consciousness can't upsurge into Is-ness because is-ness is where consciousness upsurges from. Consciousness upsurges from wholeness. From that which is complete. Where no thing is lacking. There's plenty of nothing to go around. Eat, drink, and be merry!
For a thing to be a thing instead of a no thing, that is, for an object to possess being outside of is-ness, independent of it's source, then it must have it's own ground of being. Consciousness does not. It's doesn't have a leg to stand on. Consciousness exists when on it's upsurged vision quest/sojourn, but it's only a temporary state of affairs. Which begs this question or two to be answered: What gains consciousness and what loses consciousness. There is no sense in asking "who" gains or loses consciousness. Who only ex-is-es when it's outside the plenitude. There is no individuality inside the plenitude (being-in-itself) In is-ness, so who isn't and can't be a something inside of nothingness. Who acts like the persona, but can't BE what it seems. Who doesn't do is-ness. What does. What be-co-me-s with consciousness as a convenience, and still ex-is-ts once who dissipates into nothingness. So, what's what?
Monday, April 14, 2008
I worked on a boogie woogie rhythm with my left hand tonight after I got through playing the scales. I turned on the metronome and counted out the twelve bar blues I've been wanting to learn to play. The digital metronome has a chime sound at every fourth beat, and once I figured out how to listen for that chime ringing I was able to stay on count, and it worked out pretty good. The exciting thing about it for me is that I was able to do the turnaround in the right place more frequently. Before tonight, I had been trying to cram the turnaround into the twelfth measure, when it actually starts in the eleventh measure.
I don't know much about the history of the blues, and I don't particularly care if I don't. All I know is that I have had a time trying to play the blues on my guitar. Damned shame too. I needed material like crazy. Back when I was traveling around and playing for whatever I could pass the hat for, I didn't realize the blues have a fairly standard form like the twelve bar blues chords. Nobody ever told me. I didn't know to ask. I suspect I somehow thought that people were born knowing how to play the blues. They might be born to have the blues, but it takes a little more than that to learn to play an instrument well enough to get anybody to abide you while you practice. Even when I found out more about the particulars of how the blues are played, it hasn't come easy to me.
I seem to take too strict a point of view about learning the particulars about playing the blues. I have to know what's right before I start taking liberties. That's what I believe my problem has been. I took liberties with the little bit about the blues I did know or thought I knew, and it threw everything outta whack. I tried to fake it until I could make it, and it didn't work worth a damn.
This time I'm gone get it right. I finally know what's right, more or less, and I'm pretty sure if I can get to the place where I can play what I think is the right way to play the blues. That's right, I wrote "what I think is the right way", I deliberately did not state that I wanted to play what I felt was the right way to play the blues. That's the kind of blues I wanna play, and if there ain't no sech thang, dahlink, there sho' nuff will be soon.
The scales are coming along real good from my point of view. I'm still fairly clumsy when I play them. I'm not unhappy about being so inept at this stage. I enjoy being dogged about trying to play each and every scale effortlessly. That could take years, if it ever happens at all.
Right now I can't play the keyboard anywhere near as well as I played the guitar, and I wasn't that instrumentally great at playing the guitar. Mostly I strummed chords to accompany me singing the songs I wrote. If I keep on keeping on I think I'll get to the point where I can perform my old songs and accompany myself on the piano. I'm trying to go a little further than that though. I'm trying to learn a bit more about music theory and maybe gussy them up with some low-down blues.
I didn't really compose any songs. I figured out some chords to go with the poems I wrote. The poems are supposed to be performed, and making them into songs made it easier to get them heard. It's odd how people will accept the same words as lyrics that they won't accept as a poem. It surprised me how many people memorized my poems as lyrics. It didn't necessarily make me feel special. The same people memorized lots of poems in the form of lyrics.
There are other circumstances in which other people don't recognize I'm reciting poetry and pretending I'm doing something else. I used my poetry as an enchantment when I read palms and tarot cards. Those people had their own idea of what I was supposed to be doing, and couldn't be convinced of anything else. That's what human freedom is all about. Nobody knows.
I probably got too much out of it when I read palms. I hardly ever read palms for money. I read palms for entertainment. Mine, preferably, and the person I was holding hands with if possible. I found reading palms to be one of the most revealing ways possible to observe the other, and also observing myself observing others.
There was always a third person plural in the present tense of my palm-reading. That's what performing is all about to me. There is another me watching me read palms. A witness that is also me. I spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to get this silent witness to use me to have it's say. The problem with that is I am also it and it's like I'm trying to get myself to do something that part of me is aloof from.
You came my way
and thought you'd go,
but I saw your mind,
and knew you'd know
if I told you
the very truth
about myself
which is aloof
from worldly things.
I am a light
from very far
that shines
with all the beauty
which we worship
in a star,
and is in day
the very night
the shadow
of a very bright
daydream.
I'm here
to show you
through the night,
and take you to
another light
that shines alone
throughout the years
to give you hope
instead of fears
of dying.
When I quit
you'll want to die.
You'll bow yo' head
and wonder why
you spent yo' time
to sit and sigh
while I was here
to satisfy
yo' need
for crying.
July, 1973
Edited 4/14/08
Several people have accused me of having to be insane in order to write this poem. They wanted to know who gave me permission to write as if I had the right to make stuff like that up merely to amuse myself. Well, nobody much, and I did. Larry said that an existentialist is a person who controls their own creativity. It just doesn't make sense to me not to. I don't necessarily believe it makes a damn one way or the other if a person controls their own creativity. How else can one approach the notion of allowing their creativity to control them? You can't have One without the Other.
Other people are going to make what I write into their own idea of what they see on their computer monitor. They can only understand what they would have meant to say if they wrote the same exact words they claim I wrote, but for their own reasons instead of mine. Nobody knows. Not you. Not me. Not nobody. How can me-and-thee-ing (meaning) actually occur in real time outside of some imagined idea of ourselves as the other?
I don't know much about the history of the blues, and I don't particularly care if I don't. All I know is that I have had a time trying to play the blues on my guitar. Damned shame too. I needed material like crazy. Back when I was traveling around and playing for whatever I could pass the hat for, I didn't realize the blues have a fairly standard form like the twelve bar blues chords. Nobody ever told me. I didn't know to ask. I suspect I somehow thought that people were born knowing how to play the blues. They might be born to have the blues, but it takes a little more than that to learn to play an instrument well enough to get anybody to abide you while you practice. Even when I found out more about the particulars of how the blues are played, it hasn't come easy to me.
I seem to take too strict a point of view about learning the particulars about playing the blues. I have to know what's right before I start taking liberties. That's what I believe my problem has been. I took liberties with the little bit about the blues I did know or thought I knew, and it threw everything outta whack. I tried to fake it until I could make it, and it didn't work worth a damn.
This time I'm gone get it right. I finally know what's right, more or less, and I'm pretty sure if I can get to the place where I can play what I think is the right way to play the blues. That's right, I wrote "what I think is the right way", I deliberately did not state that I wanted to play what I felt was the right way to play the blues. That's the kind of blues I wanna play, and if there ain't no sech thang, dahlink, there sho' nuff will be soon.
The scales are coming along real good from my point of view. I'm still fairly clumsy when I play them. I'm not unhappy about being so inept at this stage. I enjoy being dogged about trying to play each and every scale effortlessly. That could take years, if it ever happens at all.
Right now I can't play the keyboard anywhere near as well as I played the guitar, and I wasn't that instrumentally great at playing the guitar. Mostly I strummed chords to accompany me singing the songs I wrote. If I keep on keeping on I think I'll get to the point where I can perform my old songs and accompany myself on the piano. I'm trying to go a little further than that though. I'm trying to learn a bit more about music theory and maybe gussy them up with some low-down blues.
I didn't really compose any songs. I figured out some chords to go with the poems I wrote. The poems are supposed to be performed, and making them into songs made it easier to get them heard. It's odd how people will accept the same words as lyrics that they won't accept as a poem. It surprised me how many people memorized my poems as lyrics. It didn't necessarily make me feel special. The same people memorized lots of poems in the form of lyrics.
There are other circumstances in which other people don't recognize I'm reciting poetry and pretending I'm doing something else. I used my poetry as an enchantment when I read palms and tarot cards. Those people had their own idea of what I was supposed to be doing, and couldn't be convinced of anything else. That's what human freedom is all about. Nobody knows.
I probably got too much out of it when I read palms. I hardly ever read palms for money. I read palms for entertainment. Mine, preferably, and the person I was holding hands with if possible. I found reading palms to be one of the most revealing ways possible to observe the other, and also observing myself observing others.
There was always a third person plural in the present tense of my palm-reading. That's what performing is all about to me. There is another me watching me read palms. A witness that is also me. I spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to get this silent witness to use me to have it's say. The problem with that is I am also it and it's like I'm trying to get myself to do something that part of me is aloof from.
You came my way
and thought you'd go,
but I saw your mind,
and knew you'd know
if I told you
the very truth
about myself
which is aloof
from worldly things.
I am a light
from very far
that shines
with all the beauty
which we worship
in a star,
and is in day
the very night
the shadow
of a very bright
daydream.
I'm here
to show you
through the night,
and take you to
another light
that shines alone
throughout the years
to give you hope
instead of fears
of dying.
When I quit
you'll want to die.
You'll bow yo' head
and wonder why
you spent yo' time
to sit and sigh
while I was here
to satisfy
yo' need
for crying.
July, 1973
Edited 4/14/08
Several people have accused me of having to be insane in order to write this poem. They wanted to know who gave me permission to write as if I had the right to make stuff like that up merely to amuse myself. Well, nobody much, and I did. Larry said that an existentialist is a person who controls their own creativity. It just doesn't make sense to me not to. I don't necessarily believe it makes a damn one way or the other if a person controls their own creativity. How else can one approach the notion of allowing their creativity to control them? You can't have One without the Other.
Other people are going to make what I write into their own idea of what they see on their computer monitor. They can only understand what they would have meant to say if they wrote the same exact words they claim I wrote, but for their own reasons instead of mine. Nobody knows. Not you. Not me. Not nobody. How can me-and-thee-ing (meaning) actually occur in real time outside of some imagined idea of ourselves as the other?
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Heal Thyself
I seem convinced I have an allergic reaction to the chemicals used for tanning leather, and some food allergies too, that I have never considered to be allergic reactions before. I bought some leather sandals that were made in China last year. I really liked them. They were probably the best made sandals I've ever owned, and i was looking forward to wearing them again this summer. That's not gonna happen. I just took those sandals out to my trash burning pile, and they're going up in smoke. They may or may not be responsible for the lesions I have on my feet. But, the descriptions I've read suggest they are the problem.
Last Spring I had the same problem break out on my second toe on both feet. There was a little of it on my big toe also. When the same thing happened this Spring and when I heard some people whining about their allergic reaction to pollens, I suddenly realized that might be what was going on with my toes. It still might be somewhat responsible, but I kept searching for more specific symptoms that described what I was experiencing, and the leather chemical reaction popped up when I searched for "allergies + feet". I stopped wearing the sandals immediately, and now the lesions on my toes seem to be healing, and the redness on my big toes is gone.
It's weird to think I might have serendipitously run across the real source of these lesions. They didn't respond to any of the external salves and treatments I used. They didn't heal up all summer. I'm thinking it was only because I stopped wearing the sandals when it got cold that the lesions healed up. I think this reaction happened to me internally too. My kidneys started getting a little sore around the same time my toes broke out, and that soreness is pretty much gone away too. I'm still gonna be careful about my diet. I may be allergic to wheat glutin too. Rainey's gonna tell me "I told you so." I oughta listen to that man more often.
Last Spring I had the same problem break out on my second toe on both feet. There was a little of it on my big toe also. When the same thing happened this Spring and when I heard some people whining about their allergic reaction to pollens, I suddenly realized that might be what was going on with my toes. It still might be somewhat responsible, but I kept searching for more specific symptoms that described what I was experiencing, and the leather chemical reaction popped up when I searched for "allergies + feet". I stopped wearing the sandals immediately, and now the lesions on my toes seem to be healing, and the redness on my big toes is gone.
It's weird to think I might have serendipitously run across the real source of these lesions. They didn't respond to any of the external salves and treatments I used. They didn't heal up all summer. I'm thinking it was only because I stopped wearing the sandals when it got cold that the lesions healed up. I think this reaction happened to me internally too. My kidneys started getting a little sore around the same time my toes broke out, and that soreness is pretty much gone away too. I'm still gonna be careful about my diet. I may be allergic to wheat glutin too. Rainey's gonna tell me "I told you so." I oughta listen to that man more often.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
The game of Sudoku amazes me. It lets a liberal arts major like me think in some simplistic way about numbers without using those numbers as mere symbol. Using numbers has always been more like work than play to me. I've done it when I had to. More than once I've made a living manipulating numbers in a very strict-time manner. Sudoku is just a game.
The reason I'm carrying on about Sudoku is that I just paid $20 for the license to legally install a stand alone software program that does nothing but generate some practically infinite number of Easy, Medium, and Hard Sudoku.
I had my own way with online Sudoku sites and the Flash games that abound around the internet. Those sorts of places seem to come and go, most of them never really get too hard to solve. But, I generally like to play the game, and had my eye out for a greater challenge. When I saw a review of this Sudoku game called Latin Squares, and it had a Demo for downloading so I could look it over.
I did download the Demo and really liked the way the game is laid out. It's a little gaudy and is way over the top with the neon colors, but it works in a very simple manner like no other Sudoku game before.
If you are familiar with the Sudoku classical layout it's four squares filled nine smaller squares that altogether make up one big square that is the classical Sudoku game board form. Each of the four sections of the big square has nine smaller squares inside each the quarter sections. Three squares across and three squares downward and one square in the middle to make nine. So, you end up with nine numbers inside each of the nine squares in each of the four quarters of the big square Sudoku game board. Right?
The game starts out with a limited group of random numbers placed in each of the nine squares spread across all four sub-squares of the big square. Each of the four sub-squares have nine cubes inside it, and only the numbers one through nine are possible in each of the four squares. The goal is to have all thirty-six of the smaller squares contain one of the nine numbers so that there can only one of each of the nine numbers in any of the smaller squares in all four quarters either vertically or horizontally. To win you have to figure out which numbers go where. The game gets exponentially more difficult when fewer original numbers are given.
What makes the Latin Squares game so easy to play that I'm willing to forgive all the gaudy, jukebox-like flashing lights and being forced to respond to more Yes/No dialog boxes than I like, is the simple way I can point and click the numbers on and off with one mouse click. Other Sudoku games are much more complicated to get such a simple thing done.
No quick decisions are necessary in Sudoku. There is usually a timer in the computer versions of the game. Playing Sudoku is slower moving and more contemplative than action games. Each move has to work out with every other square in the thirty-six square game board or it's just no-bones-about-it wrong. Inside each of the nine squares are a second set of nine marker numbers lined up inside each square in the same way the larger squares are in the four large squares.
If I play Sudoku on paper I like to have a professional grade gum eraser to use because i make so many mistakes the nub of an eraser on a No. 2 pencil ain't gwine cut it.
On the computer an eraser is not needed. I can't see the small numbers inside the squares unless I highlight them with the cursor. If I left-click on one of the small numbers it immediately becomes a big number that represents the larger square. If I right-click on one of the smaller number it remains the same size, but it remains highlighted to remind me that specific number of the nine possible numbers has a better chance than the others of being THE number.
Winning a difficult Sudoku game is all it takes to make me feel like Einstein. It must be my genes and the luck of the draw. Some people spend millions and never get the thrill I get from an odd computer game. Granted, it's a cheap thrill, but for only $20 I can make them cheap thrills add up fast.
What's so cool about this game and the reason I paid their asking price is the intelligent way the developer/s allows the player to review their options, and execute their decisions without a hassle, and then undo it easily if their original decision doesn't work out.
Wasting what little life I have left away playing computer games is insignificant compared to the time I waste away capturing drifting thoughts by writing them down in words. It's pretty obvious I don't always choose the precise term to fit in the precise place it needs to be, but it's ever so much fun when I consider that many people don't even have my very limited options.
The reason I'm carrying on about Sudoku is that I just paid $20 for the license to legally install a stand alone software program that does nothing but generate some practically infinite number of Easy, Medium, and Hard Sudoku.
I had my own way with online Sudoku sites and the Flash games that abound around the internet. Those sorts of places seem to come and go, most of them never really get too hard to solve. But, I generally like to play the game, and had my eye out for a greater challenge. When I saw a review of this Sudoku game called Latin Squares, and it had a Demo for downloading so I could look it over.
I did download the Demo and really liked the way the game is laid out. It's a little gaudy and is way over the top with the neon colors, but it works in a very simple manner like no other Sudoku game before.
If you are familiar with the Sudoku classical layout it's four squares filled nine smaller squares that altogether make up one big square that is the classical Sudoku game board form. Each of the four sections of the big square has nine smaller squares inside each the quarter sections. Three squares across and three squares downward and one square in the middle to make nine. So, you end up with nine numbers inside each of the nine squares in each of the four quarters of the big square Sudoku game board. Right?
The game starts out with a limited group of random numbers placed in each of the nine squares spread across all four sub-squares of the big square. Each of the four sub-squares have nine cubes inside it, and only the numbers one through nine are possible in each of the four squares. The goal is to have all thirty-six of the smaller squares contain one of the nine numbers so that there can only one of each of the nine numbers in any of the smaller squares in all four quarters either vertically or horizontally. To win you have to figure out which numbers go where. The game gets exponentially more difficult when fewer original numbers are given.
What makes the Latin Squares game so easy to play that I'm willing to forgive all the gaudy, jukebox-like flashing lights and being forced to respond to more Yes/No dialog boxes than I like, is the simple way I can point and click the numbers on and off with one mouse click. Other Sudoku games are much more complicated to get such a simple thing done.
No quick decisions are necessary in Sudoku. There is usually a timer in the computer versions of the game. Playing Sudoku is slower moving and more contemplative than action games. Each move has to work out with every other square in the thirty-six square game board or it's just no-bones-about-it wrong. Inside each of the nine squares are a second set of nine marker numbers lined up inside each square in the same way the larger squares are in the four large squares.
If I play Sudoku on paper I like to have a professional grade gum eraser to use because i make so many mistakes the nub of an eraser on a No. 2 pencil ain't gwine cut it.
On the computer an eraser is not needed. I can't see the small numbers inside the squares unless I highlight them with the cursor. If I left-click on one of the small numbers it immediately becomes a big number that represents the larger square. If I right-click on one of the smaller number it remains the same size, but it remains highlighted to remind me that specific number of the nine possible numbers has a better chance than the others of being THE number.
Winning a difficult Sudoku game is all it takes to make me feel like Einstein. It must be my genes and the luck of the draw. Some people spend millions and never get the thrill I get from an odd computer game. Granted, it's a cheap thrill, but for only $20 I can make them cheap thrills add up fast.
What's so cool about this game and the reason I paid their asking price is the intelligent way the developer/s allows the player to review their options, and execute their decisions without a hassle, and then undo it easily if their original decision doesn't work out.
Wasting what little life I have left away playing computer games is insignificant compared to the time I waste away capturing drifting thoughts by writing them down in words. It's pretty obvious I don't always choose the precise term to fit in the precise place it needs to be, but it's ever so much fun when I consider that many people don't even have my very limited options.
Monday, April 07, 2008
I've done some reading in the past. I appear to get more out of discovering the world through the auspices of my own docetic spirit than wading through other people's baggage or even my own. After I publish my blog each day, I never read what I wrote in the archives. It's too embarrassing.
Some smart aleck once told me I was a specious sort of person, and the expression on his face when he said that made it seem like I was being accused of not measuring up to his expectations. I looked up the term "specious" in an old unabridged dictionary I had laying around, and it's definition of specious confirmed for all time that I wasn't receiving a compliment by this fellow.
It was the next definition underneath specious that drew my attention. That entry was entitled "specious present". Even the old dictionary called it an archaic expression. Usually employed by philosophers to indicate the eternal now. That didn't compute at first. Respectable philosophers associating the term specious with the eternal now? Sure enough, reading the rest of the entry confirmed I'd read it right. How could that be?
The answer was revealed in the next description. Certain philosophers concluded that the present must be treated as if it's ongoing value is somewhat specious. Specious in the sense of being plausible, but not convincing. If any possibility arrives from the future that is so convincing you follow it into the past, you've abandoned the immediacy of now.
Contrarily, it concluded, if you get enticed by the possibilities of the future before they reveal their true nature in the cauldron of the present, you're counting yo' chickens before they hatch.
"Do this, don't do that, can't you read the signs?"
_
Some smart aleck once told me I was a specious sort of person, and the expression on his face when he said that made it seem like I was being accused of not measuring up to his expectations. I looked up the term "specious" in an old unabridged dictionary I had laying around, and it's definition of specious confirmed for all time that I wasn't receiving a compliment by this fellow.
It was the next definition underneath specious that drew my attention. That entry was entitled "specious present". Even the old dictionary called it an archaic expression. Usually employed by philosophers to indicate the eternal now. That didn't compute at first. Respectable philosophers associating the term specious with the eternal now? Sure enough, reading the rest of the entry confirmed I'd read it right. How could that be?
The answer was revealed in the next description. Certain philosophers concluded that the present must be treated as if it's ongoing value is somewhat specious. Specious in the sense of being plausible, but not convincing. If any possibility arrives from the future that is so convincing you follow it into the past, you've abandoned the immediacy of now.
Contrarily, it concluded, if you get enticed by the possibilities of the future before they reveal their true nature in the cauldron of the present, you're counting yo' chickens before they hatch.
"Do this, don't do that, can't you read the signs?"
_
Sunday, April 06, 2008
To reach enlightenment via meditation is to amicably attain an inspired state of hopelessness and feel satisfied in that enough is enow.
It a hopeless cause to argue the positive aspect of hopelessness. In meditation, it is hope that diverts one's attention to industry and away from the nothingness of nevermind. Hope is about stuff that matters. Matter is wot covers you up six-foot under when you croak. Who needs things to matter? Nincompoops?
One cannot aspire to the state of ecstagony using hope as a vehicle. That's the polar opposite of what one does when they practice mediating nothingness with the hope of individuation. One can't hope and stay in the specious present at the same time. That's why once the immediacy of Now! is attained unheroically, one must abandon hope. Don't you read the signs. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
Which begs this question: How can one cling to somethingness when nothingness is all that's left when the chance is gone? It's not like nothingness stops consciousness from claiming Is-ness as it's ground-of-being... is it? Are consciousness and somethingness the same sheepish concept in wolf's clothing? There's nothing to either one of them. Consciousness don't seem able to ex-is without constantly inculcating denial.
The Great Pretender
Ooh Ooh yes I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh)
Just laughing and gay like a clown (ooh ooh)
I seem to be what I'm not (you see)
I'm wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you're still around
~ The Drifters
http://www.links2love.com/love_lyrics_134.htm
_
It a hopeless cause to argue the positive aspect of hopelessness. In meditation, it is hope that diverts one's attention to industry and away from the nothingness of nevermind. Hope is about stuff that matters. Matter is wot covers you up six-foot under when you croak. Who needs things to matter? Nincompoops?
One cannot aspire to the state of ecstagony using hope as a vehicle. That's the polar opposite of what one does when they practice mediating nothingness with the hope of individuation. One can't hope and stay in the specious present at the same time. That's why once the immediacy of Now! is attained unheroically, one must abandon hope. Don't you read the signs. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
Which begs this question: How can one cling to somethingness when nothingness is all that's left when the chance is gone? It's not like nothingness stops consciousness from claiming Is-ness as it's ground-of-being... is it? Are consciousness and somethingness the same sheepish concept in wolf's clothing? There's nothing to either one of them. Consciousness don't seem able to ex-is without constantly inculcating denial.
The Great Pretender
Ooh Ooh yes I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh)
Just laughing and gay like a clown (ooh ooh)
I seem to be what I'm not (you see)
I'm wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you're still around
~ The Drifters
http://www.links2love.com/love_lyrics_134.htm
_