I've finally found an exercise I like to do. It seems silly, but I get fascinated to see if I can actually pull it off. I've been thinking about how I need to learn how to play stuff using the circle of fifths, and I ran across this article that suggested that one could play simple tunes like nursery rhymes, but play them in every key using the circle of fifths as a guide for where to go next. I don't even know the name of the last song I was playing. It was a familiar tune I had on my mind. I played it through with each hand separately until I got pretty good at it in that key, and then counted out to a fifth below the root of what i had just played, and figured out how to play that simple melody in the new key, until I'd gone through all the keys.

I love doing this playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. There are so many classical songs like Beethoven's Ninth that are grounded in this nursery rhyme ditty. Copland's Appalachian Spring steals from it flagrantly. I read an article yesterday, as a matter of fact it was in that book I downloaded, that people remember what they memorized before they were twenty years old easier than material learned after that. I've found that to be pretty much true.

The idea is to be able to transpose from one key to the other with some degree of ease. Using the songs you learned before you were twenty years old. Fortunately, I had to memorize a lot of songs before I was even out of high school. If I learn enough about music theory to write down the music I've already composed I'll be delighted, but if I'm able to use the music I memorized before I was twenty as a source for going further than I've dreamed, I'll be ecstatic. It doesn't take much.

Earlier I practiced playing the blues pentatonic scales in four different keys. I'm beginning to understand why I can sing the blues, but it's always been difficult to accompany myself instrumentally while i sing the blues. I can easily see why I have to become totally familiar with the pentatonic scales, and probably the other ones too. Other ones? Today I read where at some conservatory a student had to demonstrate familiarity (to whatever degree) with 61 different scale systems. I'm only beginning to learn how ignorant I am about what's what when it comes to music theory.

This new web site I discovered the other day is very helpful in learning how to play the various scales. It has this chart where I click on the specific type of scale and the key I wanna play it in, and it highlights the keys on a keyboard graphic. Not only that, but it has a separate dialog box that spells the notes in the scale by their letter name. It doesn't show the notes on a staff, but that's fine with me. I'll write them all out, and that way I'll become even more familiar with what the notes and spelled out chords look like at a glance.

I don't know which picture I posted. I've never possessed any control over my photos. That's probably why I haven't used my camera very much.

Yesterday was tres manic/depressive. I was sad that I'd bought that cheap plastic thing from Best Buy, and then happy again that I was able to find a BIOS battery locally. I was happiest of all when my brother soldered in the new battery, we turned it on, and my synthesizer cranked right up like it was a brand new machine. I've already run through some of the ear-training exercises this morning. I probably won't do anything any differently than I've been doing it, but I got the right stuff to make what i wanna happen to happen.

When it comes down to it I had troubles with input devices. Both called keyboards. The Apple Bluetooth keyboard just doesn't work as advertised. I liked the feel of the keys, and when I went ahead and bought the new Apple USB keyboard I got reliability. I don't have to deal with the "Connection Lost" dialog boxes 20 times an hour that interrupts my creative flow.

I never realized how sweet the keyboarding action is on my old synthesizer until I went out shopping and touched a lot of different brands of digital keyboards. It ought to. It cost three times as much twenty years ago. I got nothing against the new synthesizers. I'd buy one in a New York minute. I just can't afford one that's at least equivalent to my old one. Not that it matters all that much. I don't use 80% of the features on this old one.

It's the same way with my computer. When push comes to shove, my computer merely replaces my typewriter just like my synthesizer replaces a piano. The digital version is way better and easier to manage than the analog devices, but my first impressions were created around the analog strategies, and it's hard to get past that baggage and use them for what they offer beyond merely replacing an old technology.

It takes too much time to try to get beyond these imprinted behaviors. They are deeply embedded habits that merely date me. They are not any better or worse than other ways of eating wot's sot before me in the specious present. I use all these mechanical/digital devices for the same purpose. To address the external world. A couple of sticks and a hollow log to beat on would accomplish the same purpose.

The older I get the less sense the world makes to me. There is no behavior whatsoever that's gonna change anything or any reason for anything to change. I particularly question whether human wisdom amounts to a hill of beans. Life screwing itself to make more life. Speech is the slime the snail oozes out to crawl on. It has and needs no me-and-thee-ing (meaning) to it. I see what I think is over there where you are, and you see what you think is over here. We both see in each other what we have made ourselves into for the sake of the other, and that's all there is to either of us. Whatta drag, man.

I'm feeling a little smug tonight. I took care of some things today I've let slide a little too long. Ben had to go to Fayetteville to run some errands for his wife, and he asked me if I wanted to ride along. I sure did. I needed to get some things that's a little harder to find in a small town.

The wonderful part of shopping today is that I didn't actually intend to do any of what i accomplished except to buy a wired Apple keyboard to replace the Bluetooth one I've been trying patiently to use. Ain't gwine happen. I've been driving myself batshit crazy about computer keyboards recently. All Apple keyboards. The first one I got was mechanically inferior. The Bluetooth one was esthetically pleasing, but technically inferior. Like with the three bears, I'm hoping this wired replacement keyboard is just right.

I think maybe I expect too much from wireless gadgets. I expect they to perform as promised or at least as well as the wired stuff. Sometimes they do. For a while. If everything is just peachy. Even I perform well under favorable conditions. The unfortunate side of this predicament is that my experiences with wireless devices tell me they are not reliable as I expect reliable to be.

For the last fifteen years I've been keyboarding so much in it's like i think with my fingers. I pretend to use writing to direct or instruct my intention to where I want it to go. I won't swear it works, but my directions to my intent either happens in real time right before my eyes or not at all. If I complete the details and logistical considerations of a strategy and sit back in my chair to reflect on what I've written into or out of my life, it doesn't interrupt my creative flow very much either pro or con. If my creative flow gets interrupted through no fault of my own, or if it miraculously turns out that Chicken Little was right all along, my creative juices can get out of whack, and I feel two bricks short of a load.

If I converse with another person face to face, I deliberately attempt to back off in order to encourage them to have their say. Why would I not? I have everything to gain by listening to what the other believes to be God's own truth. But, once they enter the fray, i expect them to hold their own and do what's right for them. I got my own fish to fry.

Contrarily, when I compose the thoughts drifting through my mind by writing them down, I don't have to consider what other people think at all. They're not there, and can only speak of their own experiences. I'm not trying to tell my own version of truth as much as i am trying to say what I perceive beyond the pale of my subjective vision. i don't have a clue what any objective truth is, except maybe in the specious present, and if I cling to that beyond the pale of it's believability, then I usually end up humilated for letting myself get drawn in to a fool's game.

Another thing I did today that I've meant to do for some time now was to buy a new set of sheets. I live alone. I have to do everything that gets done here, and without anybody to remind or nag me to remember all the little things I need from time to time. I kept forgetting to buy new sheets while I was out and about. That's not so unusual these days. Many times I shop by impulse and at odd opportunities. i go out and about to perform one specific chore, and then decide to stop by some store on the way home. The only shopping list that works for me to write the stuff I need down in the palm of my hand, and that way I don't forget my list when I pop into the store unexpectedly.

The staff notebook I bought a month or so ago has been an irritant to me because the staff lines are drawn too close together I have a difficult time seeing the notes that have to be crammed together to fit inside the staff lines. I went to a nearby music store to see if they had any staff books with wider lines. Fortunately, they had one booklet that had wider lines, and five or six other staff books with the narrow lines. I guess the narrow lined ones are more popular.

The ear training exercises I do are helping a lot, but not necessarily with sight reading. I am going to start spelling out all the chord variations in note form so i'll become familiar with what they look like. I was fairly successful learning the key signatures that way. I wrote them out time and time again until they were easy to remember.

When I realized I had to move on to the next step in doing the ear-training exercises I was sort of intimidated by the fact that the next logical step would be to take on the Jazz Chords. I dialed up the first set of exercises and what I hoped would be fairly simple process to practice. I was wrong. I was back to square one like i was with the inversion exercises. I didn't know what any of the chord options they provided to choose from. Okay, maybe one or two of them. I already knew what a minor seventh should sound like.

The 'Fixed Root" option would apply, so all the exercises would be based on that fixed root. I needed a way to figure out what the chord names meant before I could work the exercises. I backed out of the ear training sight and decided to Google up "Jazz Chords" to see if I could find some information that would resolve my dilemma.

I got lucky. The second link in the result page turned up this site:

http://www.apassion4jazz.net/keys.html

It not only provides names for all the possible chords, jazz or not, and shows which piano keys to press to see what it sounds like. I intended to take the information this site provided and spell out the chord options provided by the ear-training site. I bought a staff book for this very purpose, but the staff lines in it are printed so close together I can't draw the notes in, so I used some graph paper and drew out staff lines big enough for me to write out the chords. Then, I penned in the chords with the labels I got from the ear training site and looked them up on the "a passion for jazz" site. Hopefully, one of these days I won't have to stop to look everything up each time I need it.

I began to understand what was going on much quicker than I expected. I figured out which chord the server played by looking at the chords I spelled out. I could have gone back to the chord chart site where it showed the exact piano keys to press, but i wanted to read the stuff I drew myself to see what happened.

I was able to follow the same process I used to figure out the major, minor, diminished, sus 4th, and augmented 5th chords. I had to put my fingers on the right keyboard notes and play them to figure out my answer. I started out with the root triad, which in this case was C#, and figured out which fingers I had to move or add to come up with the same sound the server provided. When I got eight out of ten right the first time, I knew I was on to something. This was doable.

I don't know why I didn't realize the next step would be based on the last step. It always has. For me, anyway. I got so happy when I figured out for myself the fixed root was C#. I think doing this stuff with a piano keyboard is one of the main reasons I've been able to understand the little bit I have. It's so right there in front of me, and all I have to do is count out the notes one by one if I have to, at least I can, eventually, and that's a big deal to me.

All of this still serves the single purpose I have in trying to learn this stuff. I wanna be able to sit down in front of a keyboard, lay my fingers randomly on the keys, and start figuring out where I want to go from here for as long as it pleases me. If what I do next is jazz or blues or blue suede shoes that's just fine. I got a feeling that where this takes me might end up being a big surprise.

I finally saw the trough that drains where those big mountains were east of the Appalachian range on Google Earth. It drains into the Pee Dee River basin. The Appalachian range ain't all that young, but it upsurged into being in between the western slope of this huge extinct mountain range. There is not much left of the old mountain range. What's left of the old peaks can be seen when approached from the west on U.S.64 just before you descend into the Yadkin River valley.

There is not enough left of the old mountains to suspect the original upsurge went as high or higher than the Himalayas. Right here in North America. It may not be all that unusual for mountains to reach for the sky like that over the eons, and then tumble back into the oceans. The southern end of the Andes mountain range is said to be approaching the height of the Himalayas right now. People are having to find another place to live. Hasn't it always been thus? If it ain't one thing, then it's another.

There are a bunch of programs on PBS about what's going on in North Carolina. They are made locally and seem a little hokey, but some of them are fairly informative. One of those programs is about the new grape wineries locating in the Yadkin River valley. The Yadkin River is what drains the western edge of those old worn down mountains and the foot hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a part of the Appalachian Range.

The land they're growing grapes on now with such success in the Yadkin Valley is some old dirt. It's what's left after all the rocks rotted and eroded away. What don't rot or are the last to rot away are sometime semi-precious stones. Even high quality emeralds and some diamonds. This only happens on really old dirt that used to be mostly rocks. It apparently takes a long time for the lesser stone to rot away from the jewel stones.

This area seems like an ideal place for growing wine grapes. Probably better than California. When I win the lottery, I'm gonna buy all the land I can get in the Yadkin Valley. It's relatively cheap now, but it won't be for very long.

They grow grapes here on the coastal plains too, but it's really too muggy here for anything but the native grapes like muscadine to thrive. The rotting in the swamps here on the coastal plains literally heats the air just above it and it hangs in the air because it's so flat. People get fungi in their lungs here from constantly breathing this trapped swamp air. According to the seasons and the various spores floating around in the bottom of the barrel, they can turn into vampires through positive hallucination. European grape stocks seem to need more drainage than we got here from the air and water. They both move too slowly here. The delicately refined European rootstock find it difficult to reproduce here because literally get the vapors.

My hands are dry and slide across the keys easily. Low humidity. Low temperatures. Winter. The forecast is for it to get cold and stay that way for a while. I've got my own ideas about that. My forecasts are as good as the professionals if not better. Half the weather report on the six o'clock is these guys teaching us about their new toys. I think they've got too much information to make sense of any of it consistently. People get too serious about the weather. It's just something to talk about. It's just something to say. It's just another birdsong that never was meant to have any other meaning except as it relates to procreation.

I don't look at weather the way I used to. I've spent much of my life outside. I never actually intended for it to be that way. I've never had any problems with being inside or with sitting on my ass for long periods of time. I bummed around and traveled as a homeless person for at least a decade on and off, and then when i finally became a journeyman craftsman it was working a trade that did most of their work outside in the open air. Some jobs were inside, but most were not.

I never meant to work in the construction trade as a pipewelder/fitter. It was just easy money. I knew how to survive in that world. To me it was a good way to get some money pretty fast. Practically every job I worked on for over twenty years was always gonna be the last one. Most of the time I worked for the large construction companies. They pay the most money when they're hiring. They're the quickest to lay you off when the dealings done. That was a good thing for everybody. It's a tough world where the hard part is to stay emotionally uninvested.

The first job I got as a pipewelder was with the shipyard that trained me to be one. Previous to their hiring me I was just a dependable hand with basic welding skills and no experience. I showed up. That was ninety-five percent of holding on to your job. As far as I was concerned, they were giving money away. I wasn't about to miss work if they were going to pay me just to show up.

I was thirty five years old when I first learned to weld. Most of the jobs i had before I learned to weld were equivalent to being a burger flipper or some sort of assistant manager's job where I got sick of being there for the little of nothing they paid me. When i started welding my pay even as a green hand was at least twice the minimum wage, and the people I worked for acted pleased to have me there.

I got paid every Friday, and it was enough to pay our bills and put a little something back for a rainy day. Working at that shipyard was some of the happiest marital periods of my life. It was a steady job that paid decent money. Who can't have a good marriage when the bills get paid? Apparently me.

It was the money that pipewelders made working industrial construction that attracted me. I was making decent money at the shipyard. My family was living in one of the first decent apartments we'd had for a year or two. I didn't leave well-enough alone. I wanted to be where nobody knew my name. I can not be there when you need me with the best of 'em.

The Winged Seraph

Where in the void of thoughtless passion
can the passion of thought be called love?
In the passion of love no limits of ration
can surpass the peace of a dove.
That a dove is at peace is apparent
when seen in subliminal flight,
and it flies without reference to thinking,
and it's instincts make love out of sight.

January, 1972

I never actually knew why I wrote poetry. I stopped writing after I got up with the woman who was to become my second wife. The poem above was composed to contain an attitude. I wanted to preserve the attitude the poem contains for selfish reasons. By reciting the poem as a mantram or chant I can reinstitute the original attitude, and by displaying that attitude in the prevailing situation can turn it about in what some take to be fair play. It allows me to let a lotta things pass without being duped.

Poems can act like force fields might if force fields were actually real. I don't try to change the world to suit my needs. Some people do and doing that works just fine for them. I change my attitude, because in essence that's all it is that I am.

I had to look up the term "dissemble" in several dictionaries to satisfy myself with what it was supposed to mean. In the way I had seen it used, it means to feign insanity, but it could also be used if the pretender wasn't pretending.

Feigning insanity can act as a very powerful mojo. The only real problem in pulling it off as a successful strategy is being able to come across as the real deal. If such can be made so, however, many, if not most, people will respond to the possibility they are confronted with an insane person, as if they encountered a deadly snake. That's a very desirable response sometime, but only if my act works, and I appear plausible and convincing.

The term "ring-pass-me-not" may not be clear as it could be to me. I remember it as a phrase that implies a specific distance away from a starting point at which an airplane leaving New York on a transatlantic flight to Paris can't turn back to New York, because after a certain distance away from New York, they only have enough fuel to get them where they're going.

It's about the same way as when I need people to think I'm insane for my own selfish purposes. Once i commit to the role I have to carry through all the way to Paree.

I drove up to Raleigh today to get another keyboard. This bluetooth keyboard is a good idea if it would just work as advertised. I spent $20 worth of gas to have the Geniuses put new batteries in it and told me it was fixed. I tried to buy a keyboard with a USB cable, but they wouldn't sell me one. They insisted my old keyboard was fixed now. I should quit acting like a crotchety old codger and quit bothering them. I got so disgusted with their patronizing attitude i just left the store.

I like this little keyboard. It has a small footprint and don't take up so much space on my desk. I never used the calculator keys on any keyboard I ever owned. They're extraneous and wasted on me. I'm not denying that if I had ever had a reason to use the calculator keyboard for any reason and go used to it, it might be very useful. My brother seems to use it a lot, but he uses a spreadsheet program a lot too. It's a business tool.

While i was at a large shopping center I looked for a new mouse. I scoff at the very idea of using the Apple Mighty Mouse. I'm addicted to the Logitech mouses. There was a large Best Buy store near the Apple store I went to about my keyboard, and the only mouses they had were the wireless type. I'm getting less and less fond of wireless devices, but it's all they carry on the store shelf these days. I ended up not buying a new mouse. They did have the Apple Bluetooth keyboards exactly like mine, but they didn't have the USB wired ones. Foiled again.

I was amiss the other day when I said that I was waiting to see if Apple would come out with a small computer that used a SSD storage device. I ignored the fact that the Asus EEE laptop comes with a small capacity SSD. The highest capacity they offer is 8 GB, but it hasn't come out yet, They have a 2GB model that sells for around $300. This seems like to me a development that will finally kill the desktop, except for people like me who use a computer for little more than a communication device. I am hoping next week Apple will announce a tablet computer with the same features as the iPhone, but just a little bit bigger and use an SSD exclusively for storage.

I'm beginning to realize that owning an iPhone might be all the computer I need. For good or ill, I only use a computer to be online with. I hardly ever get e-mail anymore, and oddly enough, have gotten fairly used to that. I realized the potential of a personal computer as a communication device very soon after I first went online. When I bought my first computer, a Mac Classic with a 9" B&W screen (but one of the first hard drives that was a huge, huge 40 MB capacity, I had some strange ideas about what I could or would do with a personal computer.

I couldn't really afford to buy that computer. I just wanted it. I was totally amazed that i could go to the store and buy one for myself. I can't even say I knew it's true value. My reasoning was that unless I owned my own computer I'm never know. I don't know now. I never truly understood what possessiveness meant until the fire was lit under my desire to own a computer. I never used my first computer to go online with. It was far too slow and didn't have enough memory to handle the traffic of a modem.

That's not exactly true about being possessive only about getting a computer. I wanted to own my own EEG machine with at least as much intensity. I become engulfed by sheer, unadulterated lust. I'm loath to admit that may have been the whole point. I used to love being consumed by lust. It was to die for. Literally. I took huge chances to experience uncontrollable lust. There was hardly any act of selfishness I couldn't lie at it's door without blame. Maybe I oughta be ashamed of my expressed wantonness, but it worked for me. In the past, it truly crippled me and made me so helpless to resist it's temptations only divine intervention could have helped.

Sometime, I think I got driven to those extremes by prejudiced, unseen witnesses just out to prove to me that I could do better outside of the safety of my familiar old rut. Usually, I will not to be driven out of my flow or my groove or even my own way of picking cotton. I like ruts, but getting stuck still happens occasionally. I like letting the reins go slack to allow the horse to find it's own way back to it's warm stall. i like grooves even mo' bettah than ruts. For some reason they just seem more elegant and sophisticated. I have mentioned my delusions of grandeur, have i not?

When I write about having spent nearly a decade bumming around the country hitch-hiking, I may not have made it clear how moving around like that most every day for sometime years could keep me from falling back in the ruts I was taught to think was okay for being a homeboy. I caught one ride in eastern California with a man who was driving to his mother's funeral in South Carolina, and it took less than three days to cross the entire country. Conversely, I have left the east coast and not gotten to the west coast for months, and then not leave the west coast for a couple more months, before taking six months more than that to get back to North Carolina.

I might catch 5-10 rides a day and travel anywhere from having to walk five miles to get across some large town to the other side where I could catch a ride, to riding 500 miles each day for a week in a row. I might ride with 50-100 different drivers a week, and one size did not fit all. I've lived a wasted life making no bones about it. it has been an absolutely wasted life. I haven't left much room for guessing about that.

I just watched a local program on PBS I've seen several times. It's about four fiddle players who basically play blue grass. The final fiddle player featured is this young guy from Marshall, North Carolina, and he's the reason I watched the show again. The interesting aspect of how these fiddlers are compared comes to the fore with this young fiddler. It seems very obvious to me that he's had classical training. It shows. I like to watch lots of different kinds of performers who have done their homework. It seems to happen the other way round too. Players who don't have much formal training seem to seek it even after they've been successful in the business.

I'm very impressed with how doing the exercises on the ear-training web site has changed how I think about music. The most impressive aspect of it is how it's improved my hunt and peck sort of playing the keyboard. I'm still pretty bad at it, and any improvement no matter how small would be a blessing for my neighbors, but I do seem to be striking the exact right note on the keyboard more often.

I've been doing the exercises labeled Perfect Pitch not because I expect to find out I have perfect pitch, but because the exercises are there, and because I understand the instructions. There are other exercises on the web site I have not been able to practice because I don't understand what the criterion is.

The Perfect Pitch exercises is just what you might expect they would be. The server plays a note and the participant checks the box of the note they think it might be, and hit the Submit button to see if you're right. These exercises are the only proof I need that I don't have perfect pitch. I miss getting the right answer a lot, and so far practice don't lead me to think I'm ever gonna be perfect.

But, what else I got to do? Sometimes I actually guess the exact note and get a disquieting sort of "atta boy" from the server. I'll take all the atta boys I can get from practically any source at this juncture. I'm doing these exercises on the presumption that practicing them repeatedly might improve my sense of relative pitch over time.

That's what's going on with learning blues chords. I've been playing the chords to that one blues song for a few weeks now. I thought I'd be less patient than I have been to get the first song under my belt, and move on to conquer the known blues world in a few short weeks, but no, probably not.

I really struggled with getting my fingers to go to those strange keys on the keyboard, but as expected, over time, making my fingers obey me got a little easier. The most difficult part of the ordeal for me has been to get my fingers to go to the right keys, and to go their fast enough to make sense of what I was playing. The criterion for this specific endeavor being just to keep up with the same chords being played by the server.

I've gotten even more used to playing the chord progressions to Adam's Apple, and I've played them for so long now that I can not only keep up with the tune as it's played by the server, but am able to put my own hooks in where the idea appeals to me. What i haven't yet been able to do is fit a traditional turnaround in the 11th and 12th measures in place of the chords I've been playing.

One thing about this that tickles me more and more is that with the passage of time and the redundancy of my practice I am playing different parts of this blues song with more confidence, and that allows me to concentrate on the other parts that don't yet come as natural to me as I would like.

I have worked out a standard twelve bar blues progression with a standard turnaround for the left hand that counts out perfect every time to twelve bars. The turnaround is divided evenly between the 11th and 12th bars. I try to stick to an exact count so that I''ll be able to see what mistakes fits in when I'm practicing. I love making mistakes that sound interesting. It's the only way I know how to compose new stuff.

I sure got up early this morning. I performed my morning routine before nine o'clock. Ben has been in and out several times today. He got something evil and probably sinful on his mind. I know all the signs and omens. It's no damn fun for him if he doesn't think he's getting away with something.

I know a lotta people like that. Myself, for one. I think I burned out on what I thought fun was by the time I reached the age of forty. After that I had to reinvent myself to have fun. I became what i needed to be to suit the occasion. What I do to amuse myself has gotten simple and easy. I know what counts, and only do that. Since it's my rules for what having fun is supposed to be like, and i can change them as I will in midstream, then, why would I not?

It might appear as if I might seem inclined to make up my mind about what the truth of any situation might be just from the sheer presence of it. Sometime i act like what's in my face is all there is to it. That, there is no wizard behind the curtain. I could swear that I see objects without the presence of they history or what they might become if I were god. The things I find sot before me are good enough until the moon comes over the mountain. Until then, I'll bide my time, and watch and prey.

Capturing drifting thoughts by writing them down is not in all ways the cat's meow. It's like trying to still remember last night's dreams at lunchtime. Dreams are drifting thoughts too. All the images we make into what we want them to be for our sake comes from the same source, and it's like an ever-flowing spring.

I experienced genuine hallucinations a lot even before I began using the sacraments. I've written more than once about having a heat stroke while I was plowing cotton with a mule when I was thirteen years old. I'd be glad to call seeing that puff adder a hallucination if it wasn't for the fact that the mule stopped and turned around to look at it too.

That's how I saw the snake in the first place. I followed the mule's gaze, and there it was. Yet, when I walked over to look closer at it, it was gone. It was fresh plowed dirt, and not nary a sign of no snake. No snake could have crawled on the fresh-turned dirt without leaving a sign.

The next thing I knew about was getting water poured all over me to cool me off. They found me unconscious at the end of the row. Dropping 400 micrograms of ol' Lucy is a lot easier on my body, and the snakes I see are psychedelic colors that glow in the dark. Sometime I form the opinion that all the neuronic movement in my brain and nervous system oozes throughout my body like disjointed snakes crawl. I think that's why real snakes can scare the shit outta me. How did they escape? It's hell doing the Medusa gig on cue, but turnabout is only fair play I suppose.

Some of the snakes I see while upsurged into an altered state of consciousness apparently don't appear to have to be snakes all the time. It wouldn't surprise me at all if my experience of winter was just a spell cast on me by the snakes taking residence within me during the cold months. When they return to they own cold bodies I feel like a boy again.

Saturn used to rule both Capricorn and Aquarius. Winter. Old age. Senility. Soft, crumbly bones. Repatriation. Mindlessness. Hopelessness dancing on the edge of the great abyss as if deprived of they senses. Then, a newly discovered planet called Uranus became the ruler of Aquarius, and they've been confused ever since. What happened to their snakes?

An interesting thing happened. The LiveJournal blog I've been writing on got sold to the Russians. Not that it means anything. I'm sure things will stay just the way they have been, but I was raised during the Cold War and all that propaganda must have prejudiced me. So, I started looking around for maybe a new place to write, and since Google bought Blogger.com the situation has really changed here.

I decided to go to the Settings and check out the changes. Everything about how this account is managed has changed. It's a lot easier to change things around now. I changed one of the links to represent my LiveJournal account on the right side of the page. That turned out well. I'm not competent in HTML, but it turned out okay.

In the picture I posted below of my class picture from the fourth grade, I'm the fifth kid from the left in the third row. This was the last time I was ever actually happy as a child. It astounds me there were so many Indians in the class. They didn't have a separate Indian school in that village. I was punished once for playing with one of the guys in this picture. I'm glad things changed. Children don't know they're supposed to discriminate against people until they're taught.

I'm impressed with what Google has done with Blogger.com. It's pretty easy to use by comparison when I set this account up four years ago. I've changed the settings to disallow comments here also. I don't give a damn what you think about the drifting thoughts I capture. I still love you, but I ain't about to be yo' bitch.

I gotta write something here just to keep this blog alive. This was the first blog I had. It has historical importance to me in that sense. I haven't taken any photographs lately. Buying a digital camera turned out just like i expected it to. I like to look at other people's photographs, but taking pictures of things just doesn't do much for me in place of the real thing.

I took this picture in a shallow gully to make it look like mountains. It didn't exactly work, but the idea took.

Well, I can't upload any photos. I don't know why. C'est la vie...

I don't know exactly how I got to this blog site, but since I'm here I might as well create an entry to keep the site updated. This was my first blog site. In the archives are a lot of stories about the weird places I've slept. The child in the picture is my grand daughter. I've never seen her in person.

This is the bonfire we lit for the winter solstice over at Rainey's house. This excellent photo was taken by Rainey Parker.

I've been taking some pictures of his little Buddha statue next door at my brother's house. It seems like a fun thing to do during various times of the year.

My new interest in photography seems a little forced. I reasoned that I owed it to myself to give it a whirl. I might appear to be obsessed with my house, and I am I suppose, because I take a lot of photographs of it. The ones I'm taking now has to do with the recent renovations to this house. It's mostly noteworthy because I began building this house over twenty years ago. I have lived in it during the entire construction of it, however slow that might be. This renovative work is the first real effort I've made in a long time. I seemed perfectly willing to let it rot down around me. Im not sure I feel any differently now.

This house is about all I've ever created to represent me when I'm gone. It will exist as my only remains as long as it remains. Frequently, I entertain the concern that this house will serve as my crematorium. Not intentionally, but because I'm getting older, and displaying the forgetfulness of the elderly. To what degree, I have no way of knowing. Everything I do makes sense to me most of the time. It's a little difficult to justify complete confidence in my competence with my collection of burnt pans and boilers laying around. Forgetting I've got stuff cooking on the stove is not an infrequent event. Each time it happens I renew my vows, but then it happens again, and I find myself sighing in comic relief.

This picture just stood out among most of the pictures I took around this time. The browns and reds in a warm light stand out against the gray of the windows. The window behind the chair used to have leaks all around it, and the window on the right just wasn't there. This is my sitting area. It looks much neater than it used to. Look at the same chairs in a pic just below.

I finally arranged my photo albums so I could post a specific picture. It all has to do with my ignorance of the iPhoto program on the Mac.

This photo shows the new decks we built on the east side of the house. The remodeling work on the southwest corner of the house can be seen. That's my friend Ben up on the second floor deck.

I cannot for the life of me get my library of photos to come up among the selections I can choose from on my browser. I get the same titles whether I've deleted them from the iPhoto program or not. This is messing with my mind. This is definitely not one of the plans that have come together for me. Most all of my photos are labeled with the numbers the program assigned them when I downloaded them from my camera to my computer. It's laborious just to hunt through them and find the ones I wanna write about. I end up just picking any photo that shows up when I click on something. Whatta drag...

I'm having problems uploading pics. It's gotta be my ignorance of how to catalog my photographs on my computer. Anyway, this is one of the shots of my house at some stage of development. There is more done than this picture shows. Maybe I can figure out how to get my logistics correct somewhere down the road.

These three girls taught me a lesson I'd been learning all day. Today was the first time i've taken my new camera out in public where there were a lot of people around. The occasion was a local barbeque cookoff. The building behind the girls is the county courthouse. I saw two of the girls standing near a temporary stage the sponsors had erected in their dance leotards. I asked them if I could take some pictures of them. They giggled and started posing right away. Then the girl in the center approached and asked if she could be in the pictures. Just to see what would happen I began to ask them to move this way or that, and they seemed to have a really good time posing for a perfect stranger. This was a real informative day. I'm beginning to understand why some people are so attracted to photography.

This is a shot I took from the north end of the family pond just west of my house. I take a lotta pictures of this pond. The surface of the water is always changing and there are a few stumps sticking up out of the water here and there that make for a good focus point. I took this shot from the paved road. The land behind the pond goes on for a mile or so and joins my younger brother's property. If you could follow to the right of the picture you would see how the land gradually slopes down to the river where we own both sides of it for a while. Most of the land along the river is swampy and floods every time it comes a good rain. It's just beautiful to me down there in the swamp. I'll go down there and take some pictures as soon as the bugs go away. We had a couple of hurricanes through here a few years ago, one following the other. The eye of both storms passed right through here and tore a lot of the trees in the swamp down.

The pond is there because my father and two younger brothers built the dam for it while I was away in the Navy. My father bought this property during that same period. I was raised across town on a much smaller farm. He sold the place I was raised to buy more land here. I was a little disappoint they sold my home place, but it was only a place we lived for 4-5 years so I wasn't that attached to it. I don't possess the sentimentality for this farm my younger brothers have. It's home to them from an early age. I am attached to my house. It's made of cypress trees I cut down in the swamp and hauled to the sawmill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://raineyp.blogspot.com

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

I'm occasionally writing a blog over at:

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

Most of the stuff I write is at:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Once more into the breech!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kismet. Too bad. We both lose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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