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.

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.

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.

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 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?