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.