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".

Ecstagony

Caught eternally between
the love of my hating,
and the hate of my loving,
I sit unconcerned,
alone,
in my reflection of fear.
Hoping with the de-liberation
of hard-learned patience
for the ti-me to co-me
of my final deliverance
from the agony and ecstasy
of making believe
the images of my imagination
will set me free
from the ever clinging
fate of dualistic opposites.
Realization is always
one step beyond knowing
the unknown.

fmp 8/3/71


If I were to edit this poem from today's perspective, and I guess I have below. I would simply omit the lines... "from the ever clinging fate of dualistic opposites"

This phrasing seems youthfully didactic. It interrupts the flow of the original intent. To credit the scoundrel in me, I probably stuck it in there after the fact to impress some incidental person, for reasons that I no longer retain,

By removing those extraneous lines, the dimension is more authentically 'sound' to me, as if the right hocus pocus could actually deliver a sight yet undifferentiated, although dynamically and potentially "there" all along.

You gnow what I mean, the effect of the word on those who have ears to hear is similar to the reaction of neuron receptors when unlocked by the right chemical imprint. If the utterer's rituals proceed as planned and his mojo gets the correct combination of juices flowing, even the sky is not the limit. The carefully chosen abracadabra can open sesame any thick Wall of Jericho in existense, and when All Fall Down, as Herlihy might write, possess it's gratefully humbled inhabitants by the mystical appearance of the grail host shining forth in full regalia.

It's just a scam... Man! They've made at least a dozen movies about it! Some with spectacular special effects of truly bombastic appeal. But, even if it is the work of some fly-by-night broom straddler, it's just gotta be true! Is this not at least how it should be? Twinkle, twinkle, little star...

Ecstagony

Caught eternally between
the love of my hating,
and the hate of my loving,
I sit unconcerned,
alone,
in my reflection of fear.
Hoping with the de-liberation
of hard-learned patience
for the ti-me to co-me
of my final deliverance
from the agony and ecstasy
of making believe
the images of my imagination
will set me free.
Realization is always
one step beyond knowing
the unknown.

fmp 8/3/71

i have written a new mantrum. Now I gotta figure out how to repeated enough times to make it so. LOL

Yes, I agree with you completely. What you describe is entirely possible. Perhaps, when enough caring people rally to your cause, and do so in such a manner as to provide you with whatever you might need to make it so, your clarion call can rouse the will of the people and you will prevail despite all odds. Rest assured, dearest one, that you have my support. My best wishes to you in this endeavor!

I suppose things are going fairly well for me. It seems more and more difficult to contemplating how my life is going by comparing it with the run-of-the-mill daily grind sort of thing. It seems as if that has become rather impossible. I can only compare where I'm at NOW with where I was THEN, and so now and then I think I'm doing better or worse according to what part of my life comes up for reframing. I am constantly reframing the events of my life for the more detached audience I represent to my person presently.

Sure, some of the events of the past would not meet muster in the here and now. The words and actions that took place under extenuating circumstances then, seem ludicrous now, so my reframing makes the appropriate changes and is filtered for acceptable content. It's the rating system that appears to
go through the most change. After all, what is more appropriate for a 64 year old man pales in comparison with the dynamic in-your-face behavior of a much younger James Lee Hamilton. What a drama queen that boy was!

Reframing is basically a NLP term I use for what some call a recapitulation of my life. This recapitulation exists as a very slow process. Not every experience is available for review on demand, but seems more digital in nature. In other words, I find it difficult to conjure a particular time to review and then run it like a serial movie in my mind's eye from that point backward or forward to make sure I didn't miss any part of it. Rather, specific events pop up in my imaginator one after the other in quick succession, and I get what I can get when I can get it. Very haphazard way of doing things. Besides, if I run across an event that completely absorbs my attention, then more than likely I will attach to the emotions of that event to the degree that I lose all other reference points associated with that event.

I admit, however, that as I age, and as the more emotionally charged careactorizations of my past get rewired to a more sophisticated concatenation. More of those experiences seem more manageable. In this way, by the overall reduced static induced by my paltry efforts appears to allow me to reach deeper past those sensational moments that have taken up so much of my attention. If I live long enough, and am able to maintain at least some perseverance of my recapitulative efforts, my entire personality careactorizations will no long exist.

My life has grown amazingly uncomplicated. I just congratulated myself for remembering that I had already poured my second cup of coffee and turned the coffe pot off an hour ago. It's no wonder I still smack my lips and tongue to enjoy the aftertaste of seriously rich gourmet coffee. It's my only real indulgence other than cigarettes. Everything else is dealt with very severely. I have not left my house today. The weather is cold and rainy. Very raw and unforgiving. I have an inside place to be, why would I leave it.

Earlier, I wrote a bit on caring. Caring can kill you. When carried to extremes it will make you crazy. The act of caring should be banned. There is no good end to it. There appear to exist mandated acts of caring. Things people are naturally expected to care about. God, family, job, and a sense of patriotism for one's own way of life as handed down from the ancestors. These are those worrisome things we get led into thinking we "should" worry about them. As if it's out duty and responsibility to care about some things. Even if we have to fake it. Even if we have to pretend these things are sacred to us, whether they are or not, we should respect tradition. Oh... yeah?

The ultimate rebellion in life is when we decide not to invest in needless caring. In the Gospel of Thomas it is written that when Jesus's disciples asked him what was the secret of becoming Christ-like, he told them "Don't lie, and don't do anything you don't want to." He may have been directly addressing this issue of caring, or at least pretending to care, when you actually don't. I have been pretending to care about a bunch of petty formalities that have become too much of a burden to bear. For some time now I have devised insignificent little ways to see what kind of response I might get if I told the truth about how I really feel or don't feel about some of the sacred cows my community holds so dear. In most cases, they never blink an eye. "Another one bites the dust..."