This is a picture of the drum I play each day. I might miss playing a day occasionally, but I'm real committed to playing it regularly. The blue chair came from my mother's house after she died. It was a gift to her from her children. It has motors in it to either use it as a LazyBoy type of recliner, but the real feature is that it will tilt forward to assist older people get out of the chair. This feature makes it possible to adjust it to a comfortable seat to play my drum.

The other articles in the picture won't be seen in this particular arrangement again, because while remodeling my house things got moved around. A lotta stuff finally got thrown away during this transition, and will never be seen again.

This is a test run to see what the page looks like with a photograph on it. If this works and it looks right, then I'll be posting a picture and writing comments about the picture. This shot is of the remodeling I'm doing on my house. This shows the lastest work I've done on it. Maybe this will work for me or it won't.

I switched over to the new Blogger format. That should renew this old account and get things started. I guess I'll have to get with Rainey to figure out how to post photographs here. My plan is to post one photograph and write about the content of the photo.

I don't know whether this blog is still working for me. I haven't posted for a long time. This message is just to see if it still works. I wanna put some pictures up.

I sorta intended to put some photos on this blog, but my interest in photography seems to be lagging. My brother loaned me his old camera for me to figure out whether or not I wanna buy one for myself. It keeps shutting itself down after each picture I take, even with new batteries. That's discouraging, but it shouldn't intervene if I really wanted to take photos. I have a difficult time trying to figure out why I'm taking pictures of stuff. Meanwhile, you can see some excellent pictures at my friend Rainey's blog at:

http://raineyp.blogspot.com

It's about time to write another entry to keep this blog current. I've been writing on livejournal, but now I have use of a digital camera, and I may want to put some of the pictures I take here. Of course, I have to figure out how to do that first.

I'm occasionally writing a blog over at:

http://home.earthlink.net/~fe1ix/

Most of the stuff I write is at:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/fe1ix/

I keep these older blogs up just so I can download copies if I ever take the notion. I enjoy the livejournal format for blogging much better because it comes with it's own comment section and allows me to edit blog entries after I've published better. Any comments that show up on the livejournal blog sends me an e-mail with several options in how I can treat the comment section.

The summer heat has backed off for a week or so. I haven't really been suffering from it all that much because I stay in the air conditioning that's at least moderately comfortable. It does lock me in to being inside though. If I go outside for over 15-20 minutes I start perspiring like crazy, and it takes at least a half hour to cool down again once I go inside.

The activity that has suffered most as a result of the heat has been my drumming. It's hard to get up the energy to deal with the heat and the physical exertion of playing the drum. The more I practice the less energy it takes to do the same thing. Ben and I played for about an hour this morning and I could tell I hadn't played as much since it got real hot. Ben has been practicing by himself a lot recently, and he sounds a lot more confident in his abilities. Exploring the drum has been one of the more rewarding things I've done in a long time.

It's about time for me to write something else on this blog site to keep it active. I'm writing regularly on:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/fe1ix/

I'm understanding more about my life and how it's been affected by my being a miser. I expected to get old and die, but I didn't really think about myself as a miser. Recently I wrote that I divorced my first wife over a chair she bought. Now I've figured out that I divorced my second wife over a car. She went out and bought the damn thing without telling me anything about it first.

Of course, if she had told me about it I would have been a total asshole and made her feel like shit. The more I uncover about my real motives the worse i feel about treating other people as if they should act like me. Of course they shouldn't act like me. Acting like a miser can be an unpleasant experience. No need for that.

It literally took five minutes from the time I clicked on the Blogger link for this new entry page to show up on my screen so I could start writing this blog entry. This should change tomorrow. "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow. Tomorrow's just a day away. " At least, Sprint promised they'd install their fastest iteration of DSL tomorrow. I'm afraid to get my hopes up. There will probably be a freak snow storm that prevents them from doing it for another month.

Anyway, I'm writing my regular blog at LiveJournal now:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/fe1ix/

I will probably drop my Earthlink account after I get hooked up wirelessly to my brother's DSL account next door and use one of his e-mail accounts to get my mail. That will kill my ability to keep the Earthlink blog. I'll probably keep this blog up to keep it active until I decide whether or not I want to copy the entries to my hard drive. I've written a lot of stuff on this blog and I may want to use it to put together a book of some kind. First though, I have to copy the entries to the Earthlink blog. As soon as I cancel that account I won't be able to get there anymore.

Considering my history I doubt that will ever happen. I hardly ever read one of these entries again after I have published it, so the idea of editing a bunch of stuff from my past doesn't seem to inspire me to action. I basically write to put my past into some sort of order to give my gestalt a bit of integrity. I certainly understand that my description of some past event changes each time I write about it. That's not important, what does seem important though, is that I can reach for a version of reality that seems plausible for the present situation. Truth being a very relative state of affairs.

I've been putting off my dental problems. I never did have good teeth. I was getting fillings in the first grade. It never really got any better. I could have probably taken better care of my teeth and gone to the dentist more often, but more often than not the money had to go someplace else. I've still got all of my front teeth, but like an old horse, all the grinders in back are either missing or near gone. I gotta get some partials so I can eat better, but I keep putting it off. I have practically stopped smiling and showing my teeth. Opting for a closed-mouth grin instead. I see a lot of old people doing that. Losing my teeth don't seem so critical in the face of death. I'm not growing old gracefully, I'm just growing old. I haven't had many health problems, and I don't have many now. A touch of arthritis occasionally. Nothing persistent. My parents and their parents all lived long lives. I may live a long time too. On the other hand I could get shot before nightfall or hit by lightning or killed by a meteorite. I think the jealous husband deal is out the window though.

I feel a little lethargic and uninspired today. I got two more pieces of furniture to retrieve from my mother's house. I kind of dread going over there and getting them. We're supposed to get everything out of her house next Sunday. With the stuff already gone from the attic and upstairs bedroom, and everything in the cellar cleared out, it should be easy enough to finish it. There is a finality to it that seems to have some nostalgic emotion to it. We put mother in her grave and cleaned her house out and distributed her stuff among us. The airport authority will soon come in and bulldoze the house my mother and father lived and died in level to the ground, and then move the ground it sat on to a different place. Them ol' boys needed a taxi-way for their little airplanes they fly on Sundays to get away from it all. My mother and father's house was in their way. They got no mufflers on them Harley's up in the sky. They just make circles around town so everybody can see and hear them. Noisy crowd... that. Bragging rights...

I find my need to stop making claims to exist as a real impediment to writing prose. Back when I only wrote poetry I could disguise the claims I made in such a way as to conceal it to some degree. I wrote a long post on a shaman's group in which I discussed how moving around and dealing with strangers alone had caused me to let go of a lot of the stuff that seemed reliable when I was younger. When people live in a community and play the role assigned by that community it seems difficult for them to find out who they really are. They have to be who the other takes them for. I suspect some people think that putting a bunch of etheogens in their bodies so that their normal way of doing gets suspended, think they are dealing with a new reality, but then they go back to doing what they were doing previously, as if what they "learned" from etheogenic products never happened. They show up for work on time and nobody gnows anything happened to them at all. They have to do that. They're paid good money to be who they were hired to be. No real risk at all was taken. Fly them to La Paz without any money or identification and they would be totally lost and reduced to childishness. No blame. Being reduced to childishness might be one of the best things that could happen to them.

Children seem to get educated to learn to get ahead. For some, the head they get is the only one they will ever have until they face old age and death. Old age and death doesn't seem to have much respect for their education or where they think it's gotten them. It might seem difficult to put on the act you got paid for pretending to, when cancer is eating your belly up full time. Such reduces one to childishness in a very convincing way. Better not wait for that. The time to run away from home is now. Nobody gnows what all you've done when you down and out. Nobody cares. They got their own row to hoe. The hopeless have a hard time selling hope to other hopeless people. That can be a useful thing to understand. Hope is the only thing for sell in the world.

How oddly this week has passed by. I've had lots of visitors and been around my natal family more than usual. Mother's death so soon after the holidays has brought us together again just after we were glad for everyone to be home again. We have been dividing mother's household goods. We have to get them out of the house before they bulldoze it. They've already bought the house through eminent domain, and there's a deadline for getting what we want out of THEIR house. My siblings and I are being ever so kind to each other. All of us vowing that we won't fight over the inheritance, but forces are shaping up that indicate such might not be so. I've said earlier that I wouldn't fight over these things, but I was wrong. I will fight for my rightful share, and if I get anything out of it, I won't give it to the poor either. Well, except for myself, of course. I am is poor.

I'm actually not truly poor. I do own a little property, but my financial resources are such that paying taxes on it requires living evenly more frugally than if I didn't have it. Things may get a little better, but I'll still have to budget with a meticulousness and devotion that doesn't come natural to me. Actually, maybe it's really elegance that I'm a little short on instead. Like any other problem I encounter, I romanticize my low-ball existence into an adventure I'm eager to engage in. Why would I not?

I'm getting flack from several sources about my use of projection as a writing tool. One of these sources are inside my family. Maybe there are two of them or maybe really just one acting for the another's concerns, yet feigning that concern as their own invention. All of these people are females. My writing seems to elicit concern from the court ladies. I can't help from being somewhat alarmed because they have always come through for me in the past. Maybe because they feel so protective toward me, they feel priviledged to empower themselves to critic my descriptions. No blame.

I do appear to stand before some portal presently. I am is abandoning indulgences from the past with little regard. It seems more serious than it has in the recent past, and it's behavior suggest a change of heart. I feel patient about letting it unfold itself to me, but not so eager to encounter the source of these changes that I feel a need to openly embrace what might get sot before me. My mood reminds me of the ambiance the croaking of Poe's raven conjures in me.

"Once more into the breech!"

It amuses me how open people are to setting themselves up for the kill. It's as if they have no idea they are projecting their idea of reality on to the world around them. Yes, I am aware that I have existed in that state for most of the years of my life, but now that I understand that basic principle and employ my understanding of to the efforts of the other it sometime embarrasses me that I could have been so naive. The trick is that if I were that naive then, how naive could I possibly be now. Perhaps everyone haven't had this experience. I can't possibly gnow that can I? I can only assume that the other perceives only their own idea of reality. I certainly can't take that for any sort of universal truth. Perhaps they are similar to me, and have no more volition in the process of making judgement than I do. Some may perceive how the world mirrors ourselves back to us and manipulate me own opinions back to me as their advantage, and I never catch on. Perhaps not. Whenever I use the other's words to provide them with their own idea of self that seems to be the end of their argument. On the other hand, perhaps they find me trivial and boring. Poor babies. They gnow not what they do.

The media information we're getting from the tsunami catastrophe about what the survivors believe caused the tsunamis seems interesting. The Muslim imams are telling them that it happened because Allah is pissed off about how they have been behaving, and the scientists are telling them that it happened because of earthquakes and plate movements. According to the reporters, some of the survivors seem to rest easier with the latter descriptions, but many of them actually believe the imams, and some appear to feel guilty about their neighbor's and kinsmen's deaths as if something they did were responsible for the tsunamis. This is the proper societal response in much of the world. This confrontation between the values of the East and West seems very much like a larger version of the Scopes trial on an international scale.

To accept the argument of Arthur Schopenhaer (who I've been a little fascinated with lately) where reason exists as the activity of the will substituting abstract thought for perceptual understanding, and performs these substitutions of their own volition in order to change the expected results presumed by nature, then in effect, this might amount to Western societies insisting that their reason for doing what they do conflicts with the Muslim societies reason for doing what they do, and it's the Scopes trial all over again. This time it's happening on an international scale. The "evolutionists" in this global trial are vastly outnumbered. The use of reason as the pivotal point of contention appears to exist as the same argument that has existed since civilization began. As far as I can see, the argument is between charisma and logic. Charisma usually wins in these arguments.
.

I woke up at 0430 this morning. I didn't intend to wake up so early, but my younger brother had asked me to eat breakfast with him and so I thought this would work out fine. We kind of settled on a time to get together. He told me he wasn't sleeping well, and usually was up by three in the mornings, and so he would be available any time after then. We arranged that when I got up at my usual time between six and seven, I would stop by his house and pick him up, and away we would go.

Since the restaurant doesn't open until 0530, I drove down to his house at 0545 to pick him up. Nobody was up at his house. I lightly tooted the horn and that brought no response, so I came back home. All of this is well and good, of course, I didn't wanna get out this early, but it'll work out fine in the long run. I'm supposed to meet him and my older sister today to go through mother's stuff and sort it out for the various family members.

I'm not crazy about doing this, but it's gotta be done. As soon as the legal questions are addressed the airport authority will bulldoze her house down, so we gotta get what we want out of it. When asked what I might want I told them that I wanted practical stuff, and if nobody else wanted it I would like to have her refrigerator. It's a full sized one with a freezer compartment probably as big as my small dorm-type refrigerator, and I'm looking forward to being able to buy frozen meat in larger packages that will be much less expensive for me. I asked if there was any money left over, and expected the answer I got. Not much.

I went to eat breakfast in my usual fashion this morning. I knew there would be people there that would offer condolences for my mother's death, and I wasn't sure how I might respond to them. As it turned out I sense that I seemed rather defiant about their efforts to console me, when there was nothing to console. This one guy I've eaten with in the past many times stopped by my table to offer his condolences, and when I remarked that I felt pleased to think my mother's spirit had made a clean getaway, he remarked that he was glad for my mother, but his heart went out to me. It seemed quite clear that like many people, he simply didn't gnow what to say and was going through the motions in some effort to be kind. I could have made it easier for him, but I sometime think I don't have those skills or if I do, I ignore them to satisfy some other urge. I gotta learn to lie in these situations, so that people can feel comfortable with their rituals. Aww... screw 'em. LOL

I don't gnow exactly how I SHOULD feel about my mother dying two days ago. I do gnow I don't look forward to her funeral tomorrow. I'm just glad it's tomorrow instead of today. I woke up feeling absolutely wonderful this morning. I still find it difficult to believe this spring-like weather we've had on the East Coast now for the last two weeks. It's supposed to get up into the seventies today, and it didn't get below sixty last night. Naturally, since it's officially the winter season now, this miracle will not last forever, but it's wonderful NOW.

Hillary wrote to tell me of experiencing a sort of new found freedom in her mother's death. I seem to be experiencing somewhat the same. My sleeping patterns have not changed. I feel good physically. After I had rested up from that long drive yesterday I felt good last night too. I gotta take a long shower and shave so I'll at least not stink around all these people who are coming in for the funeral. I've been told my mother's youngest sister is driving in with her daughter, but the rest of her family is either dead or never knew my mother because we moved a thousand miles away from where both of my parent's families grew up a long time ago. That's a two-way street. We never got to gnow them all that well for the same reason.

I had hoped this airport deal would be settled before my mother died. With my mother's death I will have to deal with the government as a more direct participant than previously. My sister's having my mother's power of attorney really made things easy for me. She and my younger brother have handled this deal without me having to be directly involved, but that power of attorney ended with my mother's death. Hopefully, their relationship with the lawyer they hired will keep the momentum going, and all I'll have to do is nod my head, agree with their strategies, and I won't have to make a public spectacle of myself to get it over with. Admittedly, I would like for it to be over. I seem quite sure I would have accepted their first offer just to be done with it, but since that offer has more than doubled since the process begun, and my sister and brother are asking at least ten times that much, if not more, then it's better for me to stay on the sidelines and let them do what they gotta do. They say we'll at least get the last good offer, so we have nothing to lose by going to jury trial. Maybe I can get away with going for another long drive.

I've always seemed to run away from hassles. Like with my mother's death, I ran away to be by myself, while my siblings gathered together to console each other. I owe it to myself to understand how I feel about it, because how I feel about it is what I gotta deal with.

Aaah... the sun is shining, it's unseasonably warm, and I'm hearing things about how the various groups are planning to feed the family with all sorts of good stuff to eat. My favorite memory of the Baptist Church as a child. Just imagining ten different styles of fried chicken and a multiplicity of different potato salads and green bean casseroles.... plus pecan pie up the yinyang. Whatta life!

Is it your doubt of your father's strength that which kept him from realizing his potential in the past, and even now? If you change your mind to a more productive attitude toward your present interests, and through your own hard work show your father how you have always wanted him to be, will your father then blossom and become what he wanted to be before you came along? Why have you been so cruel? '-)

You WILL become your father if you live long enough. The time to make your father into the kind of person you want to be-co-me then... is now.

It is so easy to see how other people are screwing up there lives and not see our own. But, in the way I have decided to think about things, how other people are screwing up their lives is exactly the way we are screwing up our own.

My friend David provides me with this kind of feedback. He is constantly telling me how his life is going to hell. I've known him for thirty years and he has constantly been falling apart for that entire time. We exchanged snail mail occasionally for years, and with the advent of e-mail it has changed to several exchanges a day. Sometime I hate to get posts from him because I gnow that his post will be filled with his latest catastrophes. He constantly yearns for advice. It's not my particular advice he seeks for, it's advice he can get from anybody. I would swear he is the original model for the Chicken Little fairytale. A while back, I would try to comfort him, but now all he gets from me is the most sarcastic shit I can conjure. The truth of it is that all I can do is project what I would think of myself if I found myself in the predictament I interpret his posts to represent... as if I were him doing what I would do if I were able to see through his eyes. Well, I can't.

I don't have a clue about what he faces in his life. I don't gnow why his relationships and marriages fall apart. I don't gnow why his business failed. I don't gnow why his two sons get into trouble or why they don't appreciate the sacrifices he had made to make their life better. I don't gnow why he hasn't been able to devote the time his considerable artistic talents need to flourish. I'm not going to spend all day convincing him he has talent. I'm not ignoring my talent, why should I give a shit if he ignores his. He's the one who cheats himself of his talent. I don't have an opinion on how the tattoo he got to irritate his former lover mad looks or whether it's cool for a man in his mid-fifties to get tattoos. He got tattooed. It's a little too late for opinions. I only gnow I would feel idiotic if I did it.

He doesn't wanna hear that, and I don't wanna tell him that. I don't understand the reason he got the next cartoonish tattoo a week later. By now, I gnow better than to have an opinion or to offer advise that might lift him out of the abyss of his folly. If I did have advice for him, it would be advise I should take myself, and I gnow better than to take such lousy advice. Nobody gnows. Nobody...

If you simply attempt to say what you witness in your own inner world, you'll "see" more. When you feel like what you've written satisfactorily accomodates what you see inwardly, satisfying that small part of your gestalt allows you to move on to something else you have developing in the periphery, and allows you to attempt to describe and satisfy that as well. Ideally, one might learn to describe and satisfy arising thoughts as they appear with hesitation.

Since you're the only one who "sees" what appears in your mind's eye, you're the only one you have to satisfy about how well you've manifested your vision before the world of man.

Even when you're satisfied with your description of your inner world, every witness to your writing reads what they think you've written, and as if you wrote what you wrote for
their reasons. That's true freedom, and may exist as the real meaning behind Aleister Crowley's famous quote: "Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law."

Take "the law" into your own hands. Why would you not? Nobody gnows. Nobody...

I did get out of the house today. I went to breakfast, sat by myself and worked crossword puzzles. I could hear a few of the fellows I sit with fairly regular talking, but I just haven't wanted to be around others right now. I wanted to be around people in general, that's why I went to the restaurant. I just didn't want to do the small talk and general banter the breakfast crowd seems to insist on. When I have encountered acquaintances in my movements around town I feel good about seeing them, I just don't feel the need to keep up appearances presently. I don't wanna hear the stories. I got my own stories going on in my unconscious, and I suspect those stories (whatever they are) won't brook any competition from the external world right now.

Just like writing allows me to understand what I have on my mind, conversation does the same thing. I listen to what I say to people in the same way I read what I write. The problem with me remaining secluded in some sense now is that the information that reveals itself in conversation can't be taken back, whereas I can write stuff and decide if I wanna go public with it after the fact.

Part of the stuff that I find out about through writing seems to suggest something will be revealed soon that will scare the hell out of me. I took some chances with Billy's visit the other night, and the direction our session took literally took my breath away. I found myself suggesting things for him to do that has implications of a somewhat miraculous nature. I heard myself saying it to him, and as we both gnow that what I suggest to him I'm simultaneously suggesting to myself. Our hypnosis together is a shared adventure. What happens to him, happens to me. Our entire encounter has been designed this way. But, I didn't expect this. It came out of nowhere.

When it did start coming out and I did begin to grok the significance of what I was suggesting to him I got so excited I could barely continue the session. The whole of it was astounding beyond my wildest dreams, and for sure I have never encountered these ideas in the media. It's taken decades of study and going to schools and seminars to develop the understanding such concepts require. Much less the patience it takes to satisfy the egos I'm dealing with in a way that brings the results I need to realize the next step. I don't gnow what I'm doing. I don't have a hint of a plan. the entire session depends on how each step, each process unfolds itself. In the interim of not gnowing the next step appears. If I don't charge once more into the breech as it opens, those opportune moments disappear in moments like yesterday's dreams.

I have entertained serious doubts and fears of approaching these concepts through Billy's actions mostly because I'm afraid something might happen to him before we can bring these concepts to fruition. He is taking heart medicine. He told me that since he has had this present crisis they have tripled his dosage in an attempt to bring his heart under control.There don't seem to be very many people around that could develop the trust Billy has in me that it takes to access things like this. My other frequent acquaintances wouldn't dream of entering this world with me. They consider themselves daring and cutting edge in a lot of ways, but broaching the notion of doing hypnosis together seems equivalent to asking them to let me string them up and beat them within an inch of their lives. I don't really blame them. Trust comes from within, and if they don't trust themselves they will never trust me. I don't gnow what those fears are. If they knew what frightens them, I would gnow too and might be able to alleviate them.

Kismet. Too bad. We both lose.

If I had a digital camera I could post a photograph of how the ground can be seen through the cracks in the floor of my house. The floor in place presently was only intended for sub-flooring, and so the spaces between them wouldn't make any difference once a proper hardwood floor got installed. The sub-flooring's only purpose was to provide strength for the regular flooring. But, alas, I haven't installed the regular flooring nor even have the foggiest what that purported flooring might be made up of.

A house for me is just a place to get in out of the weather. Once that is accomplished, the niceties of social custom don't particularly impress me. Those artful touches seem always offered as an accomodation for the vagaries of local gossip. Who cares? I'm okay. It's cold outside right
now... and with my little $29 space heater I am comfortable here in my room. that's all I care about. For my visitors, it's 'root little pig or die'. Sure, that's not exactly a tactful attitude to display if I were running for public office, but I don't even gnow what public offices exist to run for, much less possess the acumen to pursue such trivialities.

I followed a link offered the other day to a site devoted to the late Gregory Bateson. There was a Jung quote that caught my attention... as Jung's quotes usually do... and I come away from the reading of it with a deeper understanding of why I had to deal with the eccentricities of what's called schizophrenia. As I read those descriptions I realized that my so-called "insanity" truly existed as an in_sanity, and that I had spent my life learning to accustom myself to making sense out of my inner yearnings in preference to acquiring the social advantages offered by
manipulating the external aspects of the sensory frame.

It intrigued me to read what I was typing as I wrote the last entry to my other blog. I wrote a little of how I had accepted the challenge of being shunned by society in general, to systematically explore the very aspects of life the general public appears to shun at all costs. Candidly, I didn't realize that I was challenged or that what I attempted to describe was considered taboo.

In any case, the end result of my taking on the unsupported task of allaying what frightened me personally (as opposed to what was supposed to frighten me), was that I became familiar and comfortable in the midst of what had previously freaked me out. Perseverance in the path I
felt had heart placed me outside of the class system in it's entirety. It has only been through time that I have come to understand it was okay for me to do what I did in response to life's challenges.

Many of the challenges I confronted in my opting to walk in my own shoes was the isolation it brought in it's train. This feeling of isolation peaked around the time I approached thirty years. I simply couldn't fathom how my stubbornly following my heart's impulses could lead me through the darkness my extreme feelings of isolation tormented me with. I did not gnow why was I hanging on to some isolated hope I could only pray would eventually save me from this ecstagony of isolation.

Weep and moan, weep and moan,
and cry to one's own pity.
To live this life in such a way
is just a little shitty.
It clings like putty to the soul
and pules for understanding.
But, no one hears
with glued-up ears
the pleas of silent ranting...

Now, some thirty years after I wrote this first verse of a strategic poem in my life, I choose isolation simply because I can. I've grown accustomed to it's face.

I have remembered my father's story all of my life. I don't know how much of it is true. Either on his part or of my memory of what he told me. He talked to me about how to deal with animals a lot when I was a kid. I like to think of what he did as his way of teaching me to control my own animal nature. I don't seem all that sure his stories were all meant that way these days.

The particular story I'm contemplating was one in which he told of having an encounter with a stubborn mule. I don't remember the details of the event, but I do remember how he told me he handled that stubborn mule. He said he chained it to a tree, took a length of baling wire and twisted a large metal bolt into the end of it, and then beat the mule within an inch of it's life. He would laugh delightedly when he boasted that the mule never gave him any trouble after that. I remember as a child telling him that if I had been the mule I wouldn't have given him any trouble after such a beating either.

He told me another story I haven't forgotten. When he was attending college he worked at the State Hospital part time as an attendant in the psycho ward. This would have been in the 1920s, and there were no drugs to give the patients to calm them down. He told me several stories of his relationship with the patients and they always fascinated me because my father was the only person I actually knew that had experienced being in the presence of real crazy people. I figured that if anybody knew what crazy people looked and acted like it would be my father.

I don't know if my father's responses to his stories were due to him being a nervous type person who might either laugh or cry when emotionally startled or whether he really enjoyed remembering the reactions of his victims, but when he told of how he and the other attendants would deal with difficult patients, he usually had to stop the story to allow himself full laughter. They would put soft soap into socks to avoid leaving bruises, and then gang up on the miscreant and beat them unmercifully into submission.

I think my father may have told me those stories simply to intimidate me by planting the seed that if I acted like what he thought was animal behavior, I might end up like that mule. Often, in my youth, my father would get angry with me and tell me that I was as stubborn as a mule and beat me. Other times he would accuse me of acting crazy and would beat me. I don't gnow if I consciously connected his stories with the beatings back then.

I guess I learned his lessons well. Do whatcha gotta do when dealing with animals and crazy people. Don't let them get the upper hand. Just stop them. Stop them dead if you have to. My father's interpretation of "have to" could be a little nebulous and leave me shaking with fear that one day he would go over the line and literally kill me. I reckon I learned to create that same type of impression with uncertainty myself when I am is my father. I'm scared I might go over the line with it myself. The existence of these precedents do not provide comfort or company in my agedness.

My father, however, does not exist as the most terrifying image I can be possessed by. The experiences I have endured since I was a child have negated the lengthy contemplations I devoted to my father's antics. Even more terrifying is being stripped of my entire ideated construct of sensory reality, only to fully realize it only IS as a construct, and that my construct of sensory reality had been constructed by, of all the incompetent bumblers in the world, me. That's the scariest thing I gnow.

For some reason when I go to the vitamin and additive counter at the drug store I have found myself staring at the bottles of acidophilus pills. Last night I decided to buy a bottle of them just in case my body is telling me that's what I need right now. I used to hear about it being put in milk, but when I look for it in that section I can't find it anymore.

I took one of the pills last night and when I went to bed and lay there watching the late shows I could feel my GI tract gurgling away. This morning I have been to the bathroom twice.

I don't have many intestinal problems these days, but this low carb diet I cling to does seem to make me a little constipated occasionally. Dark chocolate from everything I can figure. I eat oatmeal fairly regular, and I can tell a real difference when I do, but oatmeal is definitely a cereal and is therefore taboo on the low-carb deal.

I don't get out much anymore. In the last two weeks I have only been to the grocery store a few times. I don't even go outside my house very often. I'm perfectly aware that I need to get out into the sunlight to boost my psychological bearings, but I seem to get everything that needs to be done, done from my room.

The schools have let out and people are on Christmas vacation. I hope to see a little more of my working friends in the next couple of weeks. Some of us have quasi-plans to get together sometime during this period to celebrate something. Probably the Solstice itself more than anything else. The victory of the light over darkness is taken for granted these days, but I suspect it has not always been so. What really impresses me about the soltices is that the Earth actually stops for a moment to start wobbling the other way.

It's very interesting to me how I respond to people who write in discussion groups. I just subbed to this new group and knew I had to wiggle my way into the dialog. The problem was that at the time I subscribed the group was having a sort of flame war going on. It wasn't a viscious sort of flame war, but irritating nevertheless. I moved to put a stop to that and just when I seemed to be making some progress fate stepped in and the owner of the group stepped in and layed down the law.

This seemed to exist as the point where the dialog I hoped for appeared. The list owner is a good writer and expresses his point of view with lucidity. I introduced myself to him with an observation that seemed evident in his writing to me, and which he had not noticed as it occurred. This allowed me to begin asking him questions that interests me about his world view. The first statement that intrigued me was one in which he stated that throughout his prodigitous and apparently lucid dreamtime he moved from one dream to another dream within the original dream. Upon discovering he could evoke this response he moved from dream to dream, and soon could not tell the difference between his dream states and the commonly supposed reality of sensory perception. Then, he made the statement that allowed me to become part of his dream. He stated that no matter which dream or reality he found himself in he was always the same me being that. This is the attitude that guarantees trust from me. I responded to this statement by writing that I was always me everywhere I found myself also. Why would we not be since there is only One me? Of course, I am is the only one who can grok this in the immediacy of now. Would that not seem true?

Since I switched to writing on my Earthlink sponsored blog I don't think anyone reads this one anymore, so I've decided to use it to keep up with myself. I seem to be losing or breaking my connections with the few friends I have. It's not as though there are new ones around the corner that might preclude my old set of friends. I haven't the slightest clue as to what might shape my tomorrows. I can't afford any plans. I could certainly make life more interesting for myself in some way, but presently there is nothing. I don't particularly care what happens in the world anymore. I used to read the newspapers with some interest and try to keep up, but all the "news" is no news to me at all. How many opinions can I tolerate on why the Iraq war goes the way it does? The local news only tries to make the latest killings interesting. What kind of insight does it take to understand why the young warriors kill or get killed to prove their manhood? Same for sports. It's been over forty years since I participated in sports on a regular basis. About the most physical I get is to take a walk or climb on my exercise machine for the sole purpose of keeping the blood running through my body on a somewhat contiguous basis. It does take some amount of energy to play the drum, and so I count that in the recommended daily exercise.

I guess I'm lonely. I've lived alone now for the last twenty some years without any intimacy with another human. I do have some visitors. These are the friends I wrote of above. They have their own lives to deal with. The fact that they bother with me at all is somewhat of a curiosity. Their friendship with me will certainly not get their name mentioned in the society columns, and they certainly can't use me as a reference for whatever career changes they might contemplate. I'm not even a has-been, because I never have been nothing to brag about in the first place. Here today, gone tomorrow... without so much as a whimper.

I've always traveled when I got like this. That's not going to happen. At least I don't see any indication that I'm go travel. As always, I can't afford to travel and stay in motels. Just one night in a moderately expensive motel would blow whatever budget I could afford for traveling at all. I seem to have lost the desire to go hitch-hiking. It ain't like I'm seeking any more. I've answered about all the questions about life I ever had... and then some. Everything that I've learned in my quest is totally useless, or just more of the same. Without something unique to offer such just seems a waste of everybody's time.

The world sure is changing fast now. I first began to notice the lack of response on my e-mail discussion groups about a year ago. Now it's dwindled down to nothing. A digital friend recently wrote that he think everybody who has had something to say has said it. That would mean to me that people really don't have that much to say. I guess if you discover that you don't have much to say and you have said what you do have to say a few times you might just give up and quit trying. Several people have suggested to me that I give up and stop trying. Well, I'm not. I feel like it sometime, but I've got nothing better to do. At least nothing I can afford.

It's the same thing with traveling. True, I can't afford to do a lot of traveling, but the real reason I don't travel any more than I do is that I already gnow what's gonna happen when I get there. Like yesterday afternoon. One of my friends came over and told me he had been instructed by another mutual friend to come by and pick me up so that we could all get together where he was burning off some woods. That sounded like a fun thing to do, but I sensed that the friend who came by my house wasn't all that eager. He had written me an e-mail earlier wanting to gnow if I wanted to play some music together, so I asked him if he wanted to play a little while before we went to watch the fires. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what he'd had in mind. We'd both been around a lot of brush fires, so we knew exactly what we were missing. He got his guitar out of his car and I sat down in front of my drum, and we went to it. We play for a couple of hours, and about dark we decided to join our other friend.

By the time we got to the farm where the fire was going, the fire had just about burned out and only a few straggling fires lingered. We found our friend and he was torned between being glad to see us and being mad because we had come so late. We walked around the fire which had hurned beneath the pine trees for about 3-5 acres. While it was now fully dark, there was enough light for us to at least see the road in front of us. When we got back to the cars we stood around talking for a while. I strolled off on my own several times. I began to notice the cold and upon rejoining my friends at the meeting site I announced I was ready to go home.

When we got back to the house, my guitar playing friend and I played music for a couple more hours. Although the room we were playing in was not heated, he seemed comfortable. Personally, I was getting a little tired of being cold. I mentioned that if we went upstairs my bedroom was heated and we could warm up. He didn't want to, so we stayed downstairs until he decided it was time to go home. When he left, I came upstairs and finally began to feel the warmth in my feet.

Wow! Blogger.com has really changed since Google bought them out. I haven't posted here because I pretty much had to jump my butt just to publish here. When I changed internet providers to Earthlink (which is a happy change) they provided me with space for a blog and an automatice setup system to make it happen, so I've been writing over there for a while. They seem to have made things much easier here and so I might start publishing on this blog again.

I've spent the afternoon attempting to get my water system insulated for winter. I've put it off for a while because messing around with insulation is just not my favorite thing to do. One of the things that tied me up was trying to find the right size threaded cap to close off the hose for the sprayer in my kitchen sink. My kitchen is not insulated or heated and so having to worry about having the sprayer hose freeze up was enough to cause me to remove it completely. I don't use my kitchen that much because I eat out most of the time. One of the aspects of having a cold kitchen when I do cook though, is that I don't have to put leftovers in the fridge.

I only cook one pot meals. I got my chili recipe down to how I like it, and when I cook chili I usually make enough for about three meals. When it's warm I let the chili cool overnight, and then the next morning I scoop what's left up into plastic bags and put it into my small refrigator and eat it up before the week's up. Not in the winter though. I just turn off the heat and let it sit there until I'm ready for more chili. Where I want some more I just turn on the stove and heat it up again.

I've been publishing on my Earthlink blog site (http://home.earthlink.net/~fe1ix/) for a while now. It's a lot easier to publish there because I don't have to jump through so many hoops to publish. I have read a few items about how much Blogger.com has changed since Google took over. It may be a lot easier to publish here now, but I'm too lazy to go through the motions of bringing this blog up-to-date. Publishing here would be much easier if I knew how to code HTML to make the template do right. I worked at it for a while, but haven't gone far enough to gain enough confidence to make it happen. Don't matter. Gone die of something or the other anyway whether I learn to code HTML or not.

I just got a little help from a member of a discussion group I belong to. She advised me to use HaloScan to be able to get comments from my visitors. I attempted to follow the directions as well as I could. I just hope this works. A little feedback occasionally could be encouraging and help me to decide what to write about.

Now to publish this and see if it shows up on my blog page.

I still don't gnow how to make active links appear on the page. The address to my new Earthlink blog is:

http://home.earthlink.net/~fe1ix/

I'm setting up another blog on Earthlink. I got 10 megs of space on their server when I switched ISPs. The blog is automatically set up by Trellix and has lots of editing available so that it's possible that the new blog won't look so raggedy. I would have to learn HTML to be able to set this blog up in the same way, and although I have been through a simple tutorial on HTML I still don't grok it enough to make this blog look like I want it to. I don't know if I'll keep this blog up or just concentrate on the new one. When I get it like I want it I'll post the link here.

I keep hearing rumors that a few more people are reading this blog. That makes me feel good. I wish I could set it up so that people could send me feedback directly from here, but I don't know how to make that happen. I participate on a few discussion lists. I think if I could get enough feedback from my blog I probably would unsub from the discussion groups and focus on writing fairly exclusively to my blog. Actually, that would change the content of my blog quite a bit. Some of you may have noticed that my last few entries have been directed toward individuals. Those individuals are people that participate on the discussion groups I belong to.

You appear more ensconced in your process than I am. I
neither gnow there is an end or that there is a God. As for
"me", it appears to exist as the last entity standing when
all the other attachments have lost the anglicized
reflection that lends illusion it's mirage-like form.

It's still a little clumsy, but reveals how inter-dimensional travel has it's foibles a little better. Still needs work. Please tell me if you think
it coherent and has some unity of direction. I want it to have flow and with no blame drawn for the telling itself. I'll probably approach it from a thousand different directions anyway. I'd like this to "make sense".

Candidly, I would like for it to have such irrefutable integrity that it slips right through to the other's consciousness of me without arousing suspicion in it's guardian persona. I would like for it to overcome the
implied complications it describes. I want it to reach across the best defenses any persona could construe... and be-co-me with my true friend in the shared specious present.

Some people write viruses for computers... others write viruses for personas. LOL

I find myself contemplating simultaneous dimensions in which the lingo that's useful in one dimension doesn't transliterate so well to the lingo of
another. Consciousness, because of the immediacy of it's presence, groks all dimensions without distinguishing one from the other, (like the mind-to-mind communication that happens out of body), and seemingly without realizing the differences between them until it finds itself in another
dimension, where the persona created for the present dimension, finds itself unable to transliterate the personality lingo created for the other dimension.

Consciousness/awareness responds to what appears before it despite all apparent differences, and always, always seeks unity unto itself. Like a mother hen attempting to gather all her chicks under her wings at the start of a storm. Like Einstein trying to bring all the Physics theories into one general theory of relativity.

The hen's actions have flow. Einstein's actions has flow. But the attempted interaction between isolated personality dimensions exists as a Tower of Babel.

Political boundaries in the sensory-perceived dimension appear to support this same Tower of Babel, which leads me to consider the old adage, "As above, so below."

I have enjoyed writing on my discussion groups, but it's been hectic attempting to write anything for my blog. I did watch a PBS documentary about the Medici last night that intrigued me somewhat.

The part of the documentary that interested me existed as to how use patronage of the arts as a political strategy. I had never thought of it this way before. The guy who was responsible for the greatest rise in power of the medic family was Cosimo, who used his family's great wealth for the benefit of the citizens of Florence. People would line up outside his castle and seek his influence on their behalf. This set up a situation in which the great unwashed was favorably inclined to protect the Medici from rival families and political groups hellbent on grabbing his power for themselves. The entire documentary exposed how his strategy protected the family, even after he died. His son, Lorenz, apparently learned from his father, and his efforts to stay in power through the use of patronage succeeded for a long time, but eventually fell through when he became more interested in participating in the work of the artists instead of taking care of the family banking business. When some key investments fell through and his source of income dwindled, he could not continue to serve the people because his influence was seriously limited due to the lack of money to keep the masses happy. Eventually, his libertine lifestyle elicited a martyr who preached against him and turned the very people he had used to protect his family against him. It seems as if his "foreign film festival" cost him everything including his life.

I have been invited to a foreign film festival at a local community college by a friend of short acquaintance. The "whiz kid" who invited me promised a very interesting affair. I am ever so eager to show up and broaden my perspective in the company of a very sweet person who gives the appearance of being quite dandy. Why would I not?

When a subscriber on one of the e-mail discussion groups asked the group, "Is self esteem completely self referential, or does it include feedback?", my response interested me, and so I put it here to look at occasionally.

"The persona is that which in reality one is not,
but which oneself as well as others think one is"
~ Carl Jung

Defining esteem appears to obviate it's usefulness. Which seems fairly ridiculous because such appears to position the creator of such ideated constructs smack dab between the definer and the defined. Both of which exist only in the creator's imaginator as some racy, hyped-up neurons potentially ready to drum up anything lusted for into an illusion of quasi-certainty some call knowledge.

I seem somewhat obsessed by the concept that the reason homo sapiens occupy the top of the food chain (As far as I gnow.) happened due to our superior ability for mimicry. I became who I think I exist as because I believed the view of the world that got constructed for me during my formative years.

My family seemed hysterical about teaching me to look both ways before I crossed the street. This "rule" held force even in the absence of my parents and extended to my older sisters who had already learned this rule. If I approached the street and did not look both ways they yelled at me, and grabbed my arm and yanked me silly. Then, they would drag me kicking and screaming before my parents. That usually resulted in unsavory punishment. My older sisters just loved it. By dragging me before my mother and father's kangaroo court they made sure Momma and Daddy loved them because they looked after their little brother. They swelled with pride to have helped me learned the ropes. I must have got yanked at, yelled at, and beaten dozens of ti-mes before I decided to become the sort of person who looked both ways before I crossed the street.

True, deciding to become the type of person who faithfully looks both ways before I cross the street might appear only as some insignificant glitter on the surface of the masks I made for myself as I grew my personalities by such "teamwork", but as my lovely sister-in-law likes to point out, "Inch by inch it's a cinch!"

Four and a half years later my younger brother got born, and by the ti-me he could walk I had developed a grand pomposity about knowing the home rules and the fact that he didn't. I became my older sisters just for him, and do you think he appreciates it today? NOOOOOO!!!

The odd thing about this confusing phase of my young life happened when I dragged my younger brother kicking and screaming before my parents (like had happened to me)to report his ignorance or violation of the rules, I got called a tattletale and usually me that got punished instead of him. When I tearfully asked why I didn't get patted on the head and bragged on like my sisters did, they looked at me like they would an idiot and remind me of my gender. I
"Quit bullying your little brother!" Whack!

Jeez! I just couldn't win. So, when my pubic hair showed up and that first little pearl appeared to indicate the arrival of "manhood", I decided to make my masks like I wanted to. Why would I not? A person has got to do something... don't they?

Another cold Saturday morning in the middle of Winter. At least the Sun gets through and will warm up above freezing today. I just hate having to wear all these clothes to keep warm. Ahhh... I remember being nakid all day long last summer. Those were the days!

Every year I enjoy burning of the dry grass of my lawn right into the edge of the woods. There have been a couple of times it's got away from me and burned a bit of the woods around me. I have a reputation in my family for not always containing these fires. They always have to come and help me put the fire in the woods out when I do that. I've had good luck this year. Maybe that's because I bought a long hose to be able to control it.

I burn the grass off because if a fire got started in the woods the dry grass would take it right to my wooden house. I enjoy watching fire also. There have been many times camping out that I have stayed warm with a small fire. In my youth, we lived at several houses that had fireplaces to keep the house warm. My mother cooked on a wood kitchen range. My father was always clearing land and burning the brush heaps off at night. We would have to be there to pick up the trash wood like roots and broken limbs. Many times we would stay up most of the night to watch the fire that it didn't get away from us. Burning my lawn off brings it all back. Some of my recent friends might not realize how big a role fire has played in my life.

I don't seem to have many serious thoughts in my mind recently. I have found a new e-mail friend from the Netherlands that I'm exploring with presently. He seems to have figured out what's going on and has a flair for words. It continuely amazes me how many people possess English as a second language and write in it with aplomb. Some of the words that fall into my writing gets on their nerves, but usually they write better in English than I do. It makes me wonder what they write in their primary language.

The European's linguistic talents make me wonder why foreign languages were not mandantory at an early age where I was raised. The nearest place that spoke a different language than English was Mexico, and the closest point of Mexico from the coastal plains of North Carolina is over 1500 miles away. Nobody worried about learning another language. They taught French and Latin in High School, and I took a couple of years of French. I made bad grades. It wasn't very interesting to me. I didn't think I would ever need it, and because I don't possess it, I never have needed it. I kind of wish I had needed it. I could have used it while I was working those Cajun shrimp boats, but they speak a completely different dialect than what I learned in school. Besides, they all spoke English too.

I am attempting to teach myself to draw pictures of stuff. I was inspired by the comments of a friend of mine whose son is a good artist. I asked him how his son learned to draw. He told me that his son started out by tracing other people's stuff. I thought that might work for me, so I bought some tracing paper. The tracing paper I first bought wasn't very translucent, and the place I bought it had the only supply of it in this small town. I decided to drive over to Fayetteville where they have more options. I found some better tracing paper, and I bought a cheap drawing instruction book at the Bargain Table at Barnes and Nobles. I bought it because I thought if I traced the pictures used for demonstration in the book I could practice the lessons and learn a little at the same time. This didn't work out. It was too easy for me, so I just started drawing the examples in the book freehand. My efforts didn't look so hot, but between reading the book and drawing the examples I think I got a few ideas. Hopefully, with any discipline at all I will practice drawing instead of playing these stupid card games on the computer. I'm thoroughly addicted to playing Hearts and Spider Solitaire for hours at a time. If I spent that time drawing instead I should be able to represent myself pretty good in a while. I have harbored a desire to start drawing for a long time now. Maybe it's time has come.

I wrote this tonight and liked it so much I decided to immortalize by putting it on a well-maintained server.

That's the whole point of freedom. I can write anything I
want to, and you can react to what I write in any way you
want to react. The viability of such a condition is directly
proportionate to what rings yo' dingdong.

I find it absolutely amazing that people continuously betray themselves by their accusations of the other. Sure, I gnow that many people don't realize they are doing this when they make judgements of others, and more, they never will gnow or understand this phenomenon. They see what they would think of themselves if they acted or spoke what they "think" the other does and says. Why is it so difficult for them (and me!) to grasp that we are not what we attempt to make ourselves into through ideation. We are not our masks. We are not our personalities. But, something else altogether. This entire concept is expressed by Carl Jung as tersely as possible.

The persona is that which in reality one is not,
but which oneself as well as others think one is"
~ Carl Jung

So, how can people come to understand that which is real does not depend on the thinking process and accept themselves as they truly are? There may be many ways of doing such, but the only way I gnow to come to the realization that it's what we see of ourselves in others that can help us to understand. How we describe the other is the starting point. This morning a post arrived from a member of a discussion group I subscribe to in which she described me as bitter and full of self-hatred because of the way I confronted another woman who was threatening suicide. That is exactly what she would think of her own person if she wrote what she interpreted me to have written. She would think SHE was bitter and full of hatred if she has responded to this potential suicide victim as she judged me to be doing. Needless to say, she will never realize her accusation of me foreshadows her own self-betrayal. Just as my own judgements and accusations of the other determines who I might think I am.

It is by my own observations of what I accuse the other of being like that I can discover how I have made these arrangements with myself over my entire life. There were options I could have exercised to reject my judgement of myself. I made decisions to be-co-me the illusion I have unwisely believed and accepted as truth. I never did become what I pretended to be for the sake of the other, and I never will become what I have accepted as my fate, no matter how convincing my arguments with myself are. This is the flaw of the Mosaic argument, "I am that." This is the logic of the so-called demi-urge Jehovah. This is the original sin of Christiandom. It is what the sinner cries out to be saved from... himself.

I keep fooling around with writing stuff. Last night it took me over four hours to write a three paragraph post. During that time I probably wrote at least 4-5 pages of stuff that got edited out. I attempt to describe something that simply can't be described in verbal or written language. The topics I use for these types of writing are not consciously chosen. They usually arrive for me as an innocent post from one of the subscribers to the discussion lists I participate in. If I'm lucky, these writings might relate to the original topic chosen by the other. I get lots of complaints from the people I abuse this way. They seem to think I oughta stick to the subject they were discussing. No blame.

For me, the fun begins when I realize that I'm not really responding to their posts, but to an inner demand that I try to clarify what it is that I'm really attempting to write about. Many times I don't gnow myself until much later. The three paragraph rendering I created last night was not realized until my last dream this morning just before I woke up.

The world I foolishly attempt to describe gets experienced in a completely different realm than our sensory perceived world. One of the reasons this has proved difficult is that in that world things happen in a flow that cannot be frozen in ti-me by words. By the ti-me I find the words to describe it, it has already changed, and what I describe is no longer the truth of what appears in my mind's eye. It's truth is in the very changes that make it impossible to capture.

When I first began to learn to weld I imitated the experienced welders that had perfected their technique. I bought the same type of clothes they wore. This wasn't just hero worship. It became a necessity. The sparks from my welding burned up all the clothes I possessed at the beginning of my endeavor. The experienced welders bought heavy cotton shirts that were not as vulnerable to heat as the synthetic fibers. Of course, cotton still burns but not as swiftly as the synthetics. Since I found it useful to buy thick cotton shirts and pants it just seemed natural to buy clothes that looked spiffy. Wrangler denim shirts and pants fit the bill. They are designed in a western style. The shirts have imitation pearl snap buttons. This makes it easy to get off my body when they caught fire. Welder's clothes catching on fire is not a rare event. The red-hot buckshot balls that fly off the welding process can go unnoticed during the process of welding. The welder is concentrating on the product of their work.

Writing, for me, is a lot like welding steam pipes. Welding steam pipes is a persnickety business. An unnoticed or ignored mistake can result in people getting killed. A pinpoint hole in a high-pressure steam pipe can concentrate it's invisible force with such laser-like power that walking through it can literally cut an arm or a leg off. People have literally had the heads cut off. Most steam pipe welds are X-rayed to detect such flaws. It is a profession that requires the most skilled welders in the world. It can take a long time to acquire the skill necessary to make a perfect weld. The coming of the nuclear power plants just upped the ante to even more ridiculous heights. It takes another welder to understand exactly how much skill it takes to make this happen, and appears to prove the old adage, "It takes one to gnow one."

I don't write to impress anyone but myself when I get into this particular writing mode. I'm the only one who gnows what I'm attempting to describe. I don't expect the other to understand the understatement that lies beneath my writing in this way. I'm just using the other as an excuse to do what I love to do. I don't really blame the other for getting mad at me. I'm not apathetic about their discomfort, it's just that I can't do anything about it. Only they are responsible for their own interpretations of what they think I intimate.

I can only see myself in the other and can't possible write stuff that would lower their anxiety and yet accomplish the desired results. Most of the time I create writings like this I just delete it when I'm done. Arriving at the point where I decide to delete what I've written can be iffy. Sometime I copy and paste what I've written in a file I keep for this sort of thing. I treasure these writing more than I should, and when I realize that my valuing of them hurts me more than it helps, off they go into the wild blue yonder. Now, I send some of them to this blog. I hardly ever read what I've written in this blog after I've posted it. I got other fish to fry.

I watched an interesting documentary of the life of George Balanchine last night. He was a Russian who was the founder and choreographer of the American ballet theater. I had heard of him, of course, but I didn't gnow much about his life and how he came to such dominance on the American ballet scene. Before the program was over I was seeing him as a regular guy who had something to give and offered it to the American people.

Since I was born and raised in just another series of small towns in the American south I didn't have any real experience with ballet. It was just some fancy dancing done by sophisticated people from somewhere else. No blame. It was only after I had gone away and saw the world just like the Navy promised, and returned home to go to college that I became a little more familiar with ballet. The college I attended had a strong drama and dance program. I decided for reasons I don't fully understand to study acting. Part of the required drama major required courses was a couple of course in ballet. These classes didn't really amount to much. They were just general courses in which the movements were demonstrated so that the students were given a basic understanding of what the fundamentals were. We were not required to dance much. But, the little dancing we did brought a response from the teacher that if I had gotten the training early enough I would have made a good ballet dancer. Secretly, I was very pleased with this comment.

I used to go to the ballet practice room to watch the dancers work out at the barre. Hanging around these classes wasn't allowed generally, but since the dance school was part of the drama program and we were in such intimate contact, the acting majors were allowed to watch. To my compadres in the acting classes I pretended to be there just to watch the young girls prance around in the leotards, and I most certainly was there for that reason, but as the semesters passed there was other reasons I hung around. I was amazed by the athleticism of the dancers, and the concentration with which they practiced getting their groove on.

Last night I distinctly heard Balanchine say that reality doesn't happen here on earth as represented by our normal, everyday lives, and the dance imitated the real world that is undescribable in this world. As I watched the stars of American ballet perform, I began to realize he might be right, and that I was extremely familiar with the world the dancers were trying to imitate.

I hadn't realized how focused Balanchine was on the American story. I have experienced the dedication that emigres practice in my own occupation. While working at Fort Bragg as a mechanical engineer that worked under the aspices of the Army Corps of Engineers I could not help but to notice that the engineers that came to America from other places around the world appeared to be more strict about the rules than native born Americans. They seemed much more devoted to seeing to it that the government got the best product for it's money than the native sons. Naturally, I questioned them about this, and they told me that I had no idea what a privilege it was to live in America. I'm sure they are right.

What surprised me while watching the dances that Balanchine orchestrated that most of them used American composers and the dancers danced around themes like the square dance, jitterbug, the black bottom, and other contemporary and western styles. The results fascinated me. I gnew these things. I was familar with them. I recognized those dances my older sisters learned when I was a kid. My father was a square dancer and a very popular caller who called the twists and turns of the American square dance. And here Balanchine was saying that these dances and movements came from an entirely different world to form what we gnow as reality here.

For me, it is the dance that really shows the relationship between male and female in our earthly societies. The women are the real stars, and the men support what they do. The men dance around to women to help them display the strength and flexibility that men are just not built for. True, they have to be able to move gracefully and possess great strength, but they really can't command or solicit the emotion that the great female dancers can. So, if what we experience here in this sensory perceived world is merely an imitation of a more real world than we can portray, in this other world that is more real than this the women are the fancy dancers there too. How disenchanting. LOL

Posting on this blog is not exactly an easy thing to do. I think it's because I don't know how to code my entries into HTML. The biggest problem I have is with word wrapping. All these programs I use just to get there are a hassle. Many times when I am responding to an e-mail I get carried away and decide that my post is too large to post to a group discussion. I decide to put what I've written in my blog. Especially if I think it is extensible. But, my e-mail program has a wysiwyg editor that is adamant about word wrapping. So, when I copy and paste what I've written in my e-mail program into a program called w.bloggar, which posts to my blog without me having to log in and out at Blogger.com, it keeps it's original e-mail wysiwyg formatting, and I have to manually unformat it line by line so it will look right when it's automagically converted to HTML by the Blogger.com digital mechanizations. Even then, that laborious line by line cesspool of meticulousness I've undertaken to make things come out right ends up looking rag-tagged and amateurish. Imagine that!

I've had the same problem with using NotePad. As uncomplicated as NotePad is, there is still a pulldown menu to turn word wrapping on and off. I used to just highlight the text, turn word wrapping off, and the e-mail formatting would detoxify. Poof! Then, for some reason, that didn't work any more and I ended up having to unformat line by line again. Some time I just say "Screw it!" and refuse to write for my blog at all. That'll show 'em! HAH!

I've found a somewhat happy medium. Lee created an e-prime editing program for me to use as a tool to check my writing to see if I was adhering to the e-prime principle of omitting the usage of the verb "to be" in my writing. All I had to do to find out if I used the 'to be' verb was to copy and paste what I'd written into Lee's little program, and it highlights every usage of the verb 'to be' where it appears. This feature allows me to correct or rewrite any words or passages of that ilk, and then, another button allows me to retest my editing. Eventually, when I get the piece copacetic with the e-prime gods, there is a button to paste the edited text back to the Clipboard, and then to wherever I want to paste it from there.

One particularly anguishing day, after I'd gotten several complaints about not posting for some ridiculously short time, like a month, and was sanguinely attempting to remedy my remissitude, I remembered that Lee's program didn't do page wrap. Inspired, I booted it up and wrote a piece, pasted it to the Clipboard, then pasted it inside of wbloggar, and it worked just as easy as eating mom's apple pie. I had to do a minimum of line by line editing.

So, now, due to Lee's generosity, I am no longer intimidated by the thought of struggling through the redundant process of editing and re-editing just to write a bunch of crap like this. Yippee!

I keep imagining this novel about a crazy old woman who lives outback and who is kind to animals and a menace to her neighbors. A virtual crackpot who sees the world in her own way and lives her own dreamtime.

The only images I get about the appearance of the main careactor is a little too bag-lady to give this ol' gal her due. She is very smart and can be quaintly amusing. I wanna surround this central careactor as though she were the center of a zodiac, and then go around through the signs and houses to reveal a perspective of this central careactor from the angular view of each sign or house. I wanna explore what might happen if this woman allowed the various opinions around her to be reflected in her outlook on life, and if she did, then to create a history of how acting out these various astral mandates juked her around. Maybe even go for the gold, and describe this careactor as she might be if she reflected all those opinions back to their source, and like the fabled Emperor was, indeed... nakid!

Maybe I could even put the mojo responsible for her present condition on a sequence of flashbacks that pointed out how special she was as a young girl, even in her formative years, and how despite those graceful advantages, the only person her neighbors recognized her for now... was a crazy old woman from a far off island... and the girl she pretends to be still... is now 'fare gone'. A little bonkers... but harmless.

HAH!!! The fools! Kathy/Norman Bates City... mark my words!

The only visualization that seems difficult is what she would wear to a catered affair. Would she wear flowers in her hair? Or display disdain with the aloofness of some mythical and ancient Despair. I'm thinking that she might dress up a bit differently than usual. At least for the sake of possible evasive tactics and the universal immunity granted to overt eccentrics. A fact of matter given form for her wacky birdsong ways.

If I can just figure out how this woman would dress herself socially for this occasion I could tell this tale and have the entire plot unfold in an elegant private banquet hall where annual awards were being given to the top breeders of the best foxhounds that season. I could place the different cliques (signs and houses) at separate tables around the room, each with their own assigned point of view, and move the story from table to table to expose how each group saw this woman from their biased, but natural perspective.

Cross-table conversations could segue to each part of the story as it moved around the room. The story line would require me to describe how the fixed central careactor looked from the various cliques around the room.

I refuse to imagine her without a hat. She's gotta have a hat on. But... what kind of hat? Big, small, floppy, crisp... onions, extra cheese? Moreover, would that hat have a solid or variegated color for a hatband? Plumage?

I'm getting posts telling me it's time to write a bunch of unsubstaniated crap again. I realize I have been amiss. I have been having too much fun lately. I have been stoned on good indica and other sacraments for over a month now. That's the way it is with me. I have weak careactor. Saturn in Aries, whatta ya expect.

I studied astrology for a good long time. At the beginning it was difficult for me to get an image of exactly what I wanted from this study. I had learned how to read Tarot cards previous to entering this study and had run a lot of spreads for people. I didn't wanna take a magical approach to astrology either black or white. The woman who was helping me to learn what I could was not much help in me finding a direction I wanted to go with this study. I gnew from other pursuits that the direction I started studying would prevail over anything that came to light during my studies, so I waded through a bunch of different authors to see what they offered. Finally I was given a gift from a stranger that allowed me to proceed. It was a book by a Danish composer who had taken an interest in astrology. His name was Dane Rudyar.

Once I found the direction I wanted this to go I started learning to make charts. To make charts I had to have a bunch of books like ephemera to look up information to figure out what went where. The first chart I figured out was my own natal chart. Everything I studied about astrology related to my natal chart. After all, it was me that I needed to understand.

As I studied the various interpretation books I began to accumulate I realized there was some sort of informal standard astrologers used as a measure of where they were at with this hobby. To claim any proficiency at all a student of this way had to make at least a thousand charts and interpret them. I was studying other things besides astrology at the time, and it took me about five years to create a thousand charts. I guess this was a sort of apprenticeship. During that time I came to understand what was really going on with this study. It was really just a system for thinking about things, and as I understood this, I began to realize that most all of the things humans study is system thinking. Formal education included. Maybe, especially formal education.

There does seem to exist a limit to what one can learn through systematically wading through randomly generated data that depends on presuppositions of doubtful bent. We "see" what we think is there, and that's what we act like is so. But, what we see is determined by symbols of categorization that confines our ideations to a very limited perspective in a very huge universe, and our presuppositions are constantly changing, even as we ourselves are changed.

I dreamed of something this morning that had me thinking about it being a part of the stuff I experienced in the first xxx trip I did a week ago. It had to do with eyesight and the way I saw things during that first trip. Something happens there I need to remember or reconstruct for sure. I didn't remember the dream content when I got outta bed. As far as I'm concerned, this sacrament has produced some of the most useful experience or gnowing I have encountered. I don't gnow what that means yet, but there are residuals of what I experienced with xxx that has lingered in noticeable ways. I think it has something to do with peripheral comprehension. I'm pretty sure that's what I was involved with in this morning's dreams. I'm thinking it's the kind of stuff that shows up in delta consciousness rather than the more hypnogogic REM dream material. At one point, I lay in bed zombied out. By zombied out I mean that I lay in one position without moving for a long period of time (maybe an hour in earth time). Time was obviated and all I experienced during that period introduced extra-ordinary content difficult to describe. The entire time I 'saw' no object possessed by an individual nature, but was enveloped in a misty neon haze similar to a city scene when there is fog downtown and the neon lights seem to fuse with the mist and present amazing halos in the mist that surrounds them. A glowing light. That's all I "saw" during this period.

There was something else going on. I wasn't alone.

I appeared to be having a type of conversation with my true self about my real feelings in regard to various events that transpired during my waking state. That data in waking beta is compiled to set and setting historically. What I experienced in this state was comparatively raw, undefined data, and yet it was code (hex?). This machine level language evidenced itself in this intimate conversation with my "self". I write that in full awareness that I am not a computer programmer, and I don't write computer code, and yet this seems like an apt, yet possibly erroneous metaphor. This solitary discussion had to do with detecting the concealed truth hidden behind the ordinary modality of data perceived in the sensory fashion. The socially constructed language we use is so restrictive. The conversation seemed like some sort of negotiation between the values of the 3D world of the sensory modalities, and the inherent value of the same uncompiled machine language data set. Does translation of the physical machine level code to our native language function as a compiler for raw modality input?

The sensory-perceived data appeared so flimsy, so incomplete and so unfulfilling that it performs like a rather tasty appetizer or salad without the filet mignon or dessert to finish the meal to satiation. Or, perhaps like expecting the menu itself to provide the sustanance of a consumed meal. The nature of this sacrament is definitely about... Communion. This communion took place between what I call "me" and what I call the Witness. This name-calling is totally senseless.

Something vital is ordinarily omitted during this process.

On the other hand, the fullness of the primaeval data was such that it made comprehension of logical order absolutely impossible. It came streaming at me through the foveal (societally-ordered) vision so indomitably and with such lack of restraint that I could not make heads or tails of it. Unpolarized information. Impossible to "think" about. It came at me relentlessly while I was laying there on the bed. If I picked out one section of it for analysis and froze it through polarization, the situation became inanely ridiculous. I would find myself completely out of flow and soon realize I was laying in my bed letting this sacrament have it's way with me. Subsequently, I would find myself fascinated and attracted to the flow again and thus experiencing content that could not be picked apart and reunified through it's parts. It was like an All... or no thing paradigm over which I had little power over.

These two variations of comprehension was what was being negotiated. What was at stake was a balance point of values. I couldn't "make sense" of the stream of primaeval data experienced during flow, nor could I experience flow if I attempted to "make sense" of the data by dissembling it. By "make sense" I mean to indicate some ritual of polarization, segueing into interpreting the value of the the constructed polarized opposites in the physical world system of ideation and projection.

The "balance point" exists in such a way that I could, hopefully, receive the primaeval data very briefly and then attempt to "make sense" of it briefly. Having my attention pulled into the event horizon of the source of the primaeval data queered the deal, just as easily as attempting to categorize and analyse too big a portion of it. It seemed as if I had to jump a fence to graze the grassthat was greener on the other side, and then hop back over the fence to chew it. If I took too long to graze I blew it, and if I chewed my cud too long I blew it. Like in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, my timing had to be "just right".

I just got through cooking a whole pound of bacon. I became very happy while I was cooking that bacon. I knew that I was gone cook that bacon just the way I like it. What I didn't realize was how long that was going to take. Frying up bacon the way I like it takes a surprisingly long time. I guess that's because I'm so parsnickity about wanting crisply fried bacon. When I say crisp I mean every part of the bacon slice. I don't like no pooches of unfried fat poking up like a while whale. I literally quit eating in restaurants because I didn't like the way they cooked it. Ordering bacon for breakfast at a restaurant is sometime equivalent to ordering heated fat. I ain't no Eskimo, and I live in temperate climate. Ugh!

The biggest reason I haven't cooked my own bacon very much is because of the way I have lived on the run. I always traveled. I didn't live no one location for very long. Staying somewhere for two years would end up driving me crazy and I usually found myself creating whatever sort of diversion it took to find an excuse to fly. I liked to go on the bum and hitch-hike all around the country for months at a time, and even the trade I finally mastered forced me to travel to get work. The type of industrial structures that require the services of my trade were usually huge industrial complexes like refineries, power plants, chemical and pharmaceutical complexes costing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Those kinds of industries don't get build just anywhere. Many times they are built in some fairly isolated places because of the danger of chemical leaks and/or explosions. So, the construction crowd that builds these sorts of edifices move around the country a lot. They get paid a fairly good wage for doing it, so while technically it is migrant labor, the wages can run close six figures a year if you're lucky enough to get enough work throughout the entire year. These highly skilled people are sometime referred to as 'road trash' by the locals of the communities they invade. I did belong to what's called a company union when I first learned to weld at a big shipyard in Mississippi. But, once I went on the road and started working construction jobs I didn't keep my ties with the union. I liked working non-union jobs. Getting a non-union job is a totally different proposition than being in a local branch of a national union. In the first place it's every man for himself. Getting and keeping the job was totally up to me. I had no advocate other than what wit and grit I could muster up to get along with people and perform the work skillfully enough to satisfy the man. There are some groups or crews who travel together and use their personal ties to help each other get jobs. Usually these crews were run by a strong leader who usually worked in the administrative or supervisory team. Some times it was a family thing with the majority of the crew being kinfolk of some kind. It could exist as a fairly secure situation because they stuck together politically and if you took on one of them you took all of them on. Somehow, I never did fall in with one of these groups. I liked to go to these remote places not knowing anybody who lived there or even know any of the people with whom I would be working. I like being a stranger in a strange land. It allows me to become anybody I want to portray, and as a stranger, nobody could prove the personality I pulled out of my hat was for real or not. What they perceived when I unloaded my tool box was all they had to go on, and that was more than just fine with me, it was the joy of my existence.

It just didn't work with my marriages. I would leave our bed in the mornings, go out and become someone completely different than the person I was the day before, and by the time I came back that night, not only did my wives insist that I become the person who left home that morning, but insisted that I stay that way until I could escape the next morning with a new voice inflection and a fresh look about my eyes to become a completely new creation just to see if I could make it work and get strangers to accept my creation without suspicion. During my hitch-hiking I got into a lot of cars with a lot of different people, and sometime ride with them for hours or even days of constant conversation. I might average spending some appreciable amount of one-on-one face time with forty or more different people a week for months at a time. How could I not imitate each one of them to at least some degree? The most fun for me is to watch various careactors mix and match to suit completely unpredictable situations without incurring blame. My wives wanted me to stay the particular persona that won their affection, but for me it was just a passing fancy. I hardly ever read the same book twice.

The bacon I was frying come in a package that stated that it was thick sliced bacon. When I opened the packaging I saw that there wasn't much lean meat in it. It wasn't sliced thick either. I was robbed! I started frying up bacon a few months ago when I adopted this low carb diet. This diet creates havoc with the food at the local restaurant I've been eating breakfast/brunch at for many years whenever I was in town. Now I'm in town all the time and going to this place to eat every morning had gotten stale. With the incompatibility of their menu and my diet I found myself eating at home more ofter.

Founding out that it takes a long time to cook bacon as crisply as I prefer it has been a revelation to me. I can only get it the way I like it if I keep the temperature of the burner hot enough to cook the bacon, but not so high that it burns the bacon before it crisps all the fat. So, after I warm my expensive new omelet skillet I reduce the heat to medium so it will cook thoroughly without burning up. It takes me up to thirty minutes to cook four slices of bacon. Because I hadn't spent much time cooking bacon before I didn't really understand what I was asking a cook to do to make me happy. Particularly my wives who also worked and we were usually so rushed in the mornings to get out the door, asking them to spend an additional thirty minutes to get my bacon right was pure thoughtlessness. Frankly, I don't think I was such a hot catch that they would jump through their butts to please me at all. In reflection I realize they gave more than I deserved.

The kitchen is downstairs. There is no heat downstairs. In fact, there are no panes in the window holes, only screen wire to keep out the bugs. But that doesn't really work all that well either, because there is lots of other holes in the walls to let them in. The subflooring I put in green has spaces a half inch wide in places where on a bright day the ground under the house can be seen between each board. So, I was dressed warmly as I fried all the bacon in the package. I had turned on the FM radio and was tuned into a classical station that was playing some light, cheerful music. After my feet got cold enough I didn't really feel them anymore. Actually the cool temperature seem to suit the entire situation quite nicely. It didn't matter if I took two days to cook that bacon. I didn't have anything planned until the middle of next month. Not one single scheduled event to which I would have to dash away and not get my bacon at just the rightj crispiness.

Several times while the bacon was slowly reaching perfection I turned down the volume of the radio and played my flute. My embouchure was very good today. I made up several protracted songs and played with great satisfaction. When all the bacon was cooked I had already eaten about ten slices. I felt this great joy envelope me. I'm a bacon frying son-of-a-gun!

Sarah, in reference to an earlier comment you made about physical laws being bent or sidestepped. This is probably the central focus of my contemplations presently. Former experiences have had this happening with my own person. My current opinion is that what is conventionally called 'knowledge' is
the culprit responsible for making such events unlikely. It would be difficult for me to swear that any conscious effort on my part was designed to get these results. I feel lucky to remember such events at all. The more of me that is my contemporary-life memory is not restricted inside the "white room" to the particular body and life force I use presently. Getting those extended me-mores acquired in an undifferentiated dimension back across the veil of forgetfulness to beta consciousness, however, has never been a sure thing with me. I am somewhat apathetic about my inability to concentrate more intensely upon randomly chosen unemotional objects and topics convenient to my need for self importance, while the necessary focus automagically appears in more pertinent scenarios, although I'm never really sure whether this happens as an act of personal volition or is guided by unseen forces.

The recent discussion the group had about superstring theory made a strong impression with me. Especially in regard to the remarks about there being eleven completely separated dimensions mathematically possible as parallel universes. This notion has really excited me about specific experiences I remember from other eras that posited a distinct, but warily different environment for me.

For me, all possible dimensions exist simultaneously in no-time. I think it may be possible/probable that we cause events to happen in a pre-selected dimension that wouldn't happen of it's own process in that dimension without outside impetus unless I continuously, even though unknowingly strive for a recognizable, repeatable seminal experience while knowingly present in the other proposed dimensions where similar dimensional restrictions do not hold sway. Something of this sort may have been evidenced in the pyramid building era. My personal experience informs/deludes me, for better or worse, that other dimensions can be consciously acted upon, but getting reliable feedback to fine-tune the somewhat unpredictable results in that other dimension from another dimension simultaneously, can require the in situ cunning intuitively gained through a broad spectrum of human experience.

I wrote about this earlier in regard to using the rituals modeled in the primary sensory-based dimension as guideline to creating a state of consciousness in an unfamiliar dimension where self-awareness is at best speciously present, but not to the degree that personal volition to consciously conjure in that other dimension can be evoked spontaneously at will. My current conviction is to actively conjure a support cast of "way-shower" allies through visualization practices that will stimulate the active consciousness when present in the other dimension in order self-stimulate to use the sometime incomprehensible resources of that seemingly mythological "place".