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.
Friday, May 09, 2008
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.