I'm losing interest in many activities that fascinated me previously. I just surfed over to youtube to watch the Eric Clapton video so that i could play keyboard along with it. When I logged in to youtube there was a dialog box informing me that a group I had subscribed to a while back had a new lecture video onboard for me to look at. As much as six months ago I might have found the topic of this lecture interesting enough to sit through it, but not today.

Aside from the sheer weight of the increasing numbers that incrementally sneak up on a body, there is this other aspect of aging to consider. Anything that's gonna take ten years to appear on the consumer market bears no interest for me. If I'm not dead from some horribly painful disease or laid up by some debilitating accident or being out and out murdered by premeditation ten years from now, there's a good chance I'll be incapacitated by senility and won't know my ass from a hole in the ground.

I've never considered myself a Michael J. Fox fan, he was after my time, but I like his work as an actor when I've seen it on TV. I don't remember exactly what sort of crippling disease he came down with, but he comes to mind when I listen to the trumpeted news reports that suggests some miraculous cure for whatever disease he's got has been discovered, and then feel humiliation for them when they close the sound bite with some understated, almost confidential comment, that it will be at least ten more years before it can possibly make it through the bureaucracy of the FDA, and then the news reader moves on to the next item on the teleprompter as if no harm was done.

I empathize with anybody who is tempted to false hope by this sort of thoughtlessness. I'm disgusted myself, so It's hard for me to think of the possible response of Fox and other people with this sort of problem watching this kind of news report. I painfully imagine them reflecting on what has happened to their body in the last ten years, and trying to guess what it'll be like in ten more years, if they survive long enough for this "miracle cure" to get through the bureaucratic rigamarole in Washington and help them.

Worse, a lot of this miracle crap is vaporware. It never gets to market after all the hyped up hope it was supposed to offer. That's out and out cruelty, pure and simple. I blame the media, not the researchers or their sponsors. I think being cautious about what gets fobbed off on the public is necessary. Why do the media do that to people? Just to have something interesting to say on the six o'clock? Do they announce it just to assure the people who don't have the disease that if they do get it, down the road, there'll be a cure for whatever it is. Doesn't that consider the people with the disease as throwaways? It's a disgraceful practice. There oughta be a law.

This situation reminded me of one of the more odious duties of politicians. Normally, I cop a fairly sarcastic attitude toward politicians, but I don't envy them one bit. What if it should fail? They're the first ones marched to the guillotine. When I consider what they might have to deal with when the family members of thousands of constituents who have loved ones with fatal diseases come to petition the government to miraculously legislate a cure for whatever ails them, I'm pretty sure my response would be to sarcastically suggest a mercy killing, and reach for the bottle in my bottom desk drawer. It's situations like this that makes it easy for me to ignore the very idea of devoting myself to public service. I'd become a dyed-in-the-wool drunk in a short amount of time.

I choose myself over them. All I have to do to convince myself I took the right path is to imagine myself sitting in some government office all day, listening to people piteously demand the government help them save their loved ones, when it ain't gwine happen. I'm glad I was born in Spring when the path of inwardness dictates a spirit quest instead of offering oneself up as being-for-the-other. I'm not jealous of the Fall and Winter folk who can be naturally obsessed with this socially-oriented behavior as I am with individuation. No blame.

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.