Another Saturday night home alone. Nothing on television worth watching. I'd like to see the Duke/Carolina game, but it's on ESPN and I only get over-the-air programming. I've had a sinus headache all day. Must be coming down with something. I can feel it in both ears. I gotta do the salt treatment on my sinuses.
The wind blew hard all day bringing in the cold front. It's about stopped now. It not gone get super cold tonight, just down to freezing, and then it's supposed to be moderate for the next week or so. I put foam earplugs in this morning to keep from hearing the wind howling. Between the ear plugs, having the television on the basketball games, and playing the drum machine on my digital keyboard, the sound of the wind didn't freak me out like it usually does. I must have some kind of phobia about the wind howling. I don't even like it blowing in my face. The idea of riding a motorcycle don't set well with me because of the wind.
I guess I've just spent the entire afternoon occupying myself in small ways to take my mind off the wind. I might as well say because of death. I already know the wind will be howling the moment I croak. It has every time i've died so far. It's been that kind of day. I'm probably just gonna go to bed early and get this day over with.
Friday, March 07, 2008
It's been an odd weather day. It rained all morning and much of the afternoon. It's supposed to rain some more before daylight. This is just what we need around here. We're in the worst drought in history, so any rain is good news. They say the reservoirs up around the Triangle have filled up with enough water now to get through the summer. That's much better than it was 2-3 weeks ago. The drought sure brought the fragility of our water supply to everyone's attention. In this drought-stricken area, water is the new oil.
I've switched my piano practice from the mornings to the afternoons and evening. It takes too long to write my morning blog to push it in order to play the scales. The writing always comes first. Practicing the scales is about all I'm doing with music right now. I am playing the pentatonic blues scale more often in addition to the major and natural minor scales. Presently I'm only practicing the Bb pentatonic scale, but I intend to learn pentatonic scales of the other eleven keys and make it part of my regular routine.
I intend to get around to studying chord progressions once I feel satisfied I'm making progress playing the scales. It's not proceeding as fast as I hoped it might. Some of the scales I can play at a fair clip, but the ones I have trouble with is a different story. Sometimes I feel like I've learned the scales of a particular key, and the next time I get around to it on the Circle of Fifths, it's like I never played it before. I don't have a clue why that happens. Today I spent at least an hour playing the E Major scale over and over. I tried to play it correctly at the tempo of that 8BeatModern drum machine setting i like so much. That's what took an hour. Playing it at that tempo and finally not making a mistake.
I may have to go through all twelve keys that way. it's not really a case of "have to". I seem quite sure the speed will come in time. I just kinda like it when it finally happens that I can keep up with the 8BeatModern tempo and not make any mistakes. By the time I get it right, my fingers are warmed up and it feels like I'm flying. It's the fingering deal that's still in transition. I don't even try to follow the fingering system I found on the internet so much any more. Even when I seem unsure of myself and look it up, I'm right more often than not. I've just gotten to the point where I understand why it has to be done a certain way. There may be exceptions to the rules, but i can take that into account later if I need to.
There is a reason why I'm spending so much time learning these scales and making sure I use the right fingering. I wanna know what to do so well, in this regard, that i can literally forget about the scale fingering, and concentrate on speed. I'm starting to do that already, but it's a little worrisome. Sometimes my fingers go faster than my conscious mind can keep up with where my fingers land. There are occasions when i realize that I'm not doing it right. Then, I have to slow down and play the problem scale slowly and surely until I can do it correctly at a fairly fast rate of speed. I love doing this remedial work. It's a lot like editing these blog entries. I enjoy the editing part a little more than the writing part.
Learning to play these scales brings the thetic and non-thetic consciousness' into direct confrontation. My non-thetic mind wants to go out on it's own and fly, but it doesn't care if it makes careless mistakes, and it doesn't want to conform it's efforts to play with other people. My thetic mind does. That's where my thetic consciousness has to intercede. I want my non-thetic mind to woo my thetic mind. I want it to dazzle it with it's brilliance. My thetic consciousness is somewhat sadistic. It demands more and more discipline from my non-thetic consciousness, but my non-thetic consciousness is up to the task. It can be excruciatingly seductive. Oh, happy day. ;-)
I've switched my piano practice from the mornings to the afternoons and evening. It takes too long to write my morning blog to push it in order to play the scales. The writing always comes first. Practicing the scales is about all I'm doing with music right now. I am playing the pentatonic blues scale more often in addition to the major and natural minor scales. Presently I'm only practicing the Bb pentatonic scale, but I intend to learn pentatonic scales of the other eleven keys and make it part of my regular routine.
I intend to get around to studying chord progressions once I feel satisfied I'm making progress playing the scales. It's not proceeding as fast as I hoped it might. Some of the scales I can play at a fair clip, but the ones I have trouble with is a different story. Sometimes I feel like I've learned the scales of a particular key, and the next time I get around to it on the Circle of Fifths, it's like I never played it before. I don't have a clue why that happens. Today I spent at least an hour playing the E Major scale over and over. I tried to play it correctly at the tempo of that 8BeatModern drum machine setting i like so much. That's what took an hour. Playing it at that tempo and finally not making a mistake.
I may have to go through all twelve keys that way. it's not really a case of "have to". I seem quite sure the speed will come in time. I just kinda like it when it finally happens that I can keep up with the 8BeatModern tempo and not make any mistakes. By the time I get it right, my fingers are warmed up and it feels like I'm flying. It's the fingering deal that's still in transition. I don't even try to follow the fingering system I found on the internet so much any more. Even when I seem unsure of myself and look it up, I'm right more often than not. I've just gotten to the point where I understand why it has to be done a certain way. There may be exceptions to the rules, but i can take that into account later if I need to.
There is a reason why I'm spending so much time learning these scales and making sure I use the right fingering. I wanna know what to do so well, in this regard, that i can literally forget about the scale fingering, and concentrate on speed. I'm starting to do that already, but it's a little worrisome. Sometimes my fingers go faster than my conscious mind can keep up with where my fingers land. There are occasions when i realize that I'm not doing it right. Then, I have to slow down and play the problem scale slowly and surely until I can do it correctly at a fairly fast rate of speed. I love doing this remedial work. It's a lot like editing these blog entries. I enjoy the editing part a little more than the writing part.
Learning to play these scales brings the thetic and non-thetic consciousness' into direct confrontation. My non-thetic mind wants to go out on it's own and fly, but it doesn't care if it makes careless mistakes, and it doesn't want to conform it's efforts to play with other people. My thetic mind does. That's where my thetic consciousness has to intercede. I want my non-thetic mind to woo my thetic mind. I want it to dazzle it with it's brilliance. My thetic consciousness is somewhat sadistic. It demands more and more discipline from my non-thetic consciousness, but my non-thetic consciousness is up to the task. It can be excruciatingly seductive. Oh, happy day. ;-)
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Stutter-stepping like a weary old man comes natural when walking uphill. Especially in uneven terrain where unknown pitfalls might lie beneath some lovely blades of lespedeza. I was out walking around the farm just now. For the most part I stuck to the driveways and dirt roads close to the house here. I intended to walk to the back of my brother's hayfield. There is a well formed farm lane all the way to the hay field,and then the sandy track of the roadway dissolves into an even spacing of coastal bermuda grass that's cultivated for mowing it for hay. The regular cutting of it in the summer keeps it looking less like a lawn, and more like the rough grass along the fairways of a golf course.
In it's dormant season coastal bermuda turns a mottled color of mixed browns. Since the hayfield is not a golf course there are streaks of taller grass the mower missed that make odd patterns. Those streaks of mature, unmowed grass provide various types of birds and small animals camouflage to hide in temporarily, but they don't fool the red-tailed hawks for long. It depends on the time of day and how much of a shadow the angle of the sunlight creates for them to hide in.
For the last couple of weeks my brother has invited a group of rabbit hunters to cruise through the whole farm with their miniature beagle dogs that can go anywhere a rabbit can. They're cute as a button until you realize they're there doing their very best to track down and kill the easter bunny. That's enough to turn an egg-based Easter back into a quiet religious or astrological observation.
I don't know why the science boys are trying to figure out what happened to the dinosaurs when the answer is so obvious to every predator known or not to mankind. Not only did they taste like chicken. They were chickens. Every meat-eater on the planet wanted a slice of that. Especially the white meat. Then, as now.
The breast meat on a healthy dinosaur must have fed a pack of hyenas or wolves two miles wide. Why live dangerously on the periphery of a migrating herd of grazing animals, when the carcass of one dinosaur or mastodon would feed the whole neighborhood including the scavengers for a couple of days or more. That's what happened to the dinosaurs. They found those same mushrooms Alice ate, and turned themselves into gamecocks, then moved to South Carolina as mascots.
Small is better in guerilla warfare when bullets are flying everywhere. There have been times I wished there was a piece of mushroom I could eat and shrink down to the size I'd need to be to hide in a rabbit hole like Alice did. My biggest problem is that I can't believe it's actually happening when it is actually happening. I run around giggling as if trying to realize it's not something I'm reading or dreaming about instead. Bullets aren't hungry carnivores seeking you out for sustenance. it doesn't bode well to make yourself big to scare them away.
There are certain sacramental mushrooms people imbibe that might allow them to shrink in size enough to hide in rabbit holes, but for me that feast is wasted on getting small. I was born a shrinking violet. I've explored everything small. Not enough curiosity about the microcosm bides my time for it anymore. Once I divide my prey enough to conquer, I find no rhyme or reason to get jiggy about conducting an audit of the spoils of my victory. That's what ghouls and buzzards are for. Have you ever argued with their union stewards?
The macrocosm is just too voluminous and overwhelmingly ponderous for me to imagine cutting it down to byte-sized bits I can process to make my mark in an unstoppable world of constant change. Occasionally I lie outside and stare at the sky at various times of the day and night. I am not particularly amused. I'd like to be. That's why I do it or tell myself so. Okay, sometimes I do it because I'm tired of walking the back forty.
Especially in the remote hay fields when it chilly outside, and the afternoon sun can feel so warm while I'm stretched out on the protected leeward slope. It's easy to lay there and fade to nothingness out in the open where no human can see me or know I'm there. Nobody knows or cares. Freedom can't not be free. Which begs the question in such open air: Have I transcended the need for transcendence or unknowingly succumbed to the unyielding bombardment of those pesky, blind-siding neutrinos?
Finding something that might fascinate me about staring out into space could possibly solve a lot of my personal problems. Such as why I get drunk or stoned to excess more frequently than respectable, and have to take off my shoes and lie flat of my back in order to keep from dying with my boots on. It's as if I become a part of everything I'm not usually, in order to unite with life watching itself in the reflection of my false death.
In it's dormant season coastal bermuda turns a mottled color of mixed browns. Since the hayfield is not a golf course there are streaks of taller grass the mower missed that make odd patterns. Those streaks of mature, unmowed grass provide various types of birds and small animals camouflage to hide in temporarily, but they don't fool the red-tailed hawks for long. It depends on the time of day and how much of a shadow the angle of the sunlight creates for them to hide in.
For the last couple of weeks my brother has invited a group of rabbit hunters to cruise through the whole farm with their miniature beagle dogs that can go anywhere a rabbit can. They're cute as a button until you realize they're there doing their very best to track down and kill the easter bunny. That's enough to turn an egg-based Easter back into a quiet religious or astrological observation.
I don't know why the science boys are trying to figure out what happened to the dinosaurs when the answer is so obvious to every predator known or not to mankind. Not only did they taste like chicken. They were chickens. Every meat-eater on the planet wanted a slice of that. Especially the white meat. Then, as now.
The breast meat on a healthy dinosaur must have fed a pack of hyenas or wolves two miles wide. Why live dangerously on the periphery of a migrating herd of grazing animals, when the carcass of one dinosaur or mastodon would feed the whole neighborhood including the scavengers for a couple of days or more. That's what happened to the dinosaurs. They found those same mushrooms Alice ate, and turned themselves into gamecocks, then moved to South Carolina as mascots.
Small is better in guerilla warfare when bullets are flying everywhere. There have been times I wished there was a piece of mushroom I could eat and shrink down to the size I'd need to be to hide in a rabbit hole like Alice did. My biggest problem is that I can't believe it's actually happening when it is actually happening. I run around giggling as if trying to realize it's not something I'm reading or dreaming about instead. Bullets aren't hungry carnivores seeking you out for sustenance. it doesn't bode well to make yourself big to scare them away.
There are certain sacramental mushrooms people imbibe that might allow them to shrink in size enough to hide in rabbit holes, but for me that feast is wasted on getting small. I was born a shrinking violet. I've explored everything small. Not enough curiosity about the microcosm bides my time for it anymore. Once I divide my prey enough to conquer, I find no rhyme or reason to get jiggy about conducting an audit of the spoils of my victory. That's what ghouls and buzzards are for. Have you ever argued with their union stewards?
The macrocosm is just too voluminous and overwhelmingly ponderous for me to imagine cutting it down to byte-sized bits I can process to make my mark in an unstoppable world of constant change. Occasionally I lie outside and stare at the sky at various times of the day and night. I am not particularly amused. I'd like to be. That's why I do it or tell myself so. Okay, sometimes I do it because I'm tired of walking the back forty.
Especially in the remote hay fields when it chilly outside, and the afternoon sun can feel so warm while I'm stretched out on the protected leeward slope. It's easy to lay there and fade to nothingness out in the open where no human can see me or know I'm there. Nobody knows or cares. Freedom can't not be free. Which begs the question in such open air: Have I transcended the need for transcendence or unknowingly succumbed to the unyielding bombardment of those pesky, blind-siding neutrinos?
Finding something that might fascinate me about staring out into space could possibly solve a lot of my personal problems. Such as why I get drunk or stoned to excess more frequently than respectable, and have to take off my shoes and lie flat of my back in order to keep from dying with my boots on. It's as if I become a part of everything I'm not usually, in order to unite with life watching itself in the reflection of my false death.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
I get a better idea of why I'm attempting to learn more about how to play a piano and teach myself to play the major and minor scales now. It's something to do to taking my mind off stuff that really matters, but it doesn't help to dwell on.
Today I found out my daughter has some undefined health problems, and my state of poverty (that I seem so smug about) ain't no help to her. From what she writes it's as though not having health insurance is more troubling to her than actually being sick.
I don't think I would be much help making myself sick over not being able to solve her financial problems by writing a check. I can't even do that for myself. I was dirt poor and living catch as catch can on the streets when i met her mother. Her leaving me put me right back into the financial nowheresville she found me. My daughter is probably gonna have to work the system. I hate it for her. That's a blow to anybody's dignity, but an orderly retreat is a strategy, not an admission of defeat.
She don't have a clue what's going on with me, health-wise, and neither does anybody else. Another episode with my heart yesterday has me convinced I won't be of any help or of any detriment to anyone sooner than later. It doesn't matter.
I'm more convinced that ever this stuff travels and runs in families. My conclusions about this is probably just more of my hocus pocus, but I'm convinced I'm more likely to heal my daughter through healing myself than any other way. I don't actually have a Plan B. I feel pretty helpless to help others when I refuse to help myself. Fatalism is a hard row to hoe.
The learning curve is catching up with me on the piano scales. I seem to go backwards and forwards trying to make recognizable progress playing them. This afternoon I kept working F major, Eb Major, C# major, and Bb major over and over redundantly. At the time, it didn't seem like all that repetition was paying off for me while I was doing it. My experience playing musical instruments allows me to know it is gonna most likely pay off for me later, but I'm a glutton for immediate gratification. Human beings don't have a choice about living in the past, since it's impossible to live in the unformed future, and doubly damned hard to stay centered in the right damned now.
The one thing about practicing anything with an attitude of sincerity, is that's practically guaranteed the practicing is gonna make it easier down the road to do whatever it is you wanna get good at. Presently, to an outsider looking in at me banging away at my digital keyboard, it might appear that the only thing I'm ever gonna get good at by doing what I do, is playing the major and minor scales, and not much else. I hope they won't feel deprived if I announce to them that's okay with me. I never took the time to learn to do them before, when knowing how to play the scales would have been a mo' bettah. That was then. This is now. It virtually enchants me to sit here and do them methodically over and over again, just because I can.
The only method to stay centered in the flow of not this/not that which seems to work for me is to treat the entire onset of life's unknowable possibilities as plausible, but not convincing. The temptation to take hope in some enticing notion of what could be under more optimal conditions... someday... somewhere over the rainbow... for a price, immediately removes any option I have to stay in the flow that changes me to what life demands of being.
The only attitude that has won the day for me, in this regard, has been to realize in the immediacy of whatever prevailing influences carry the moment, and despite my abject despair at being totally devoid of hope, I still have a right to be here. Freedom, under any proposed constraint, is still not free, to not be free. Does not Ka, the world serpent, guarantee it's unchanging demeanor?
Unless you consider all serpents one snake, I've met a few reptiles in the dreamtime that distinctly do not favor or resemble the traditional form of Ka. Maybe the appellation Ka was chosen by the Magi as a universal tag for all reptiles in some prehistoric oral tradition. Oddly enow, I might swear I've seen neon serpents that innocently cause death by the initial shock and awe caused to a neophyte first realizing their actual, non-thetic presence in the seemingly eccentric dimension of the ex-is-tense.
Avatars. It's like finding out you've been lied to, and there really are snakes in Ireland.
Today I found out my daughter has some undefined health problems, and my state of poverty (that I seem so smug about) ain't no help to her. From what she writes it's as though not having health insurance is more troubling to her than actually being sick.
I don't think I would be much help making myself sick over not being able to solve her financial problems by writing a check. I can't even do that for myself. I was dirt poor and living catch as catch can on the streets when i met her mother. Her leaving me put me right back into the financial nowheresville she found me. My daughter is probably gonna have to work the system. I hate it for her. That's a blow to anybody's dignity, but an orderly retreat is a strategy, not an admission of defeat.
She don't have a clue what's going on with me, health-wise, and neither does anybody else. Another episode with my heart yesterday has me convinced I won't be of any help or of any detriment to anyone sooner than later. It doesn't matter.
I'm more convinced that ever this stuff travels and runs in families. My conclusions about this is probably just more of my hocus pocus, but I'm convinced I'm more likely to heal my daughter through healing myself than any other way. I don't actually have a Plan B. I feel pretty helpless to help others when I refuse to help myself. Fatalism is a hard row to hoe.
The learning curve is catching up with me on the piano scales. I seem to go backwards and forwards trying to make recognizable progress playing them. This afternoon I kept working F major, Eb Major, C# major, and Bb major over and over redundantly. At the time, it didn't seem like all that repetition was paying off for me while I was doing it. My experience playing musical instruments allows me to know it is gonna most likely pay off for me later, but I'm a glutton for immediate gratification. Human beings don't have a choice about living in the past, since it's impossible to live in the unformed future, and doubly damned hard to stay centered in the right damned now.
The one thing about practicing anything with an attitude of sincerity, is that's practically guaranteed the practicing is gonna make it easier down the road to do whatever it is you wanna get good at. Presently, to an outsider looking in at me banging away at my digital keyboard, it might appear that the only thing I'm ever gonna get good at by doing what I do, is playing the major and minor scales, and not much else. I hope they won't feel deprived if I announce to them that's okay with me. I never took the time to learn to do them before, when knowing how to play the scales would have been a mo' bettah. That was then. This is now. It virtually enchants me to sit here and do them methodically over and over again, just because I can.
The only method to stay centered in the flow of not this/not that which seems to work for me is to treat the entire onset of life's unknowable possibilities as plausible, but not convincing. The temptation to take hope in some enticing notion of what could be under more optimal conditions... someday... somewhere over the rainbow... for a price, immediately removes any option I have to stay in the flow that changes me to what life demands of being.
The only attitude that has won the day for me, in this regard, has been to realize in the immediacy of whatever prevailing influences carry the moment, and despite my abject despair at being totally devoid of hope, I still have a right to be here. Freedom, under any proposed constraint, is still not free, to not be free. Does not Ka, the world serpent, guarantee it's unchanging demeanor?
Unless you consider all serpents one snake, I've met a few reptiles in the dreamtime that distinctly do not favor or resemble the traditional form of Ka. Maybe the appellation Ka was chosen by the Magi as a universal tag for all reptiles in some prehistoric oral tradition. Oddly enow, I might swear I've seen neon serpents that innocently cause death by the initial shock and awe caused to a neophyte first realizing their actual, non-thetic presence in the seemingly eccentric dimension of the ex-is-tense.
Avatars. It's like finding out you've been lied to, and there really are snakes in Ireland.