I am damned for not paying my bills.

I am damned for not answering my phone.

I am damned for being over-erotic.

I am damned for not disliking the 90 degree-plus heat but instead taking the opportunity to run in it.

I am damned for running late in the cemetery and e drinking beers afterwards.

I am damned for drinking Milwaukee’s Best Ice.  They say the ‘e’ in Best is a long vowel.  I say 36 cents a can is cheap.

I am damned for learning how to hack into websites the only way you can—by hacking into websites.

I am damned for walking by a pretty girl the other day in a one-on-one situation begging for salutation and not even smiling or saying ‘hello’,

I am damned for listening to the songs of birds and watching the flight of dragonflies rather than indulging in the din or rampant humanity and taking flight from reality though immergence into pop culture.

I was damned for being too brilliant in my youth and still damned because I pretend I haven’t aged.

I am damned for caring when I should have just fucked things off and damned for fucking things off when I’m expected still to care.

I am damned because Alfalfa once wished Cotton was a monkey.

And I’m damned because baby organ-grinder monkey fuzz on a girl’s forearm so turns me on.

Still running miles am I in the summer heat and not complaining one bit about the weather.  Running and adjusting to, accepting the heat makes me stronger and less dependent on certain comforts that many consider essentials.  Don’t need no air conditioning.  Can ration my take on water.  I avoid shade when possible.  And love to write after running in the blazeful Sun.

In the cemetery, after hours but before sunset, there is no one for company.  It’s alright though.  I’m easing back into a childhood condition of solitude and a sense of psychic sentience.  If ever I’m to be an assist to mankind, it will probably be viewing the world from just such a cast into the cosmic far-reach. 

O how alive is the Earth—and we, the emoting.

This post is not completed.  No, it will never be completed.

I’ve run 25 miles in the last five days.  Felt strongest on the 25^th mile.  *yawns*  I’m not tired.  I’m about to wake up.

Are woman getting stranger?  In my opinion, yes, they are.  And so is my opinion.

I can’t believe that when I  was a teenager my fondest wish for death was to die in a supernova.  Do you have any idea what the implications were for the rest of you?

I bring my intelligence to bear… I bring my intelligence to a bear…  I bring my intelligence to bare…  oops, I’m naked.

I live in hyper-obscurity, bet accept it.   It is, of course, the reason that I’ve been able to be so psychic-active most of life and yet stay subliminal to the fated powers that wonder and search and stab in the dark at me.

I’m going to sneeze.  *sneezes*  Another prophecy come true.

I’m going to have sex. *waits…*

Oh well, prophecies are much too over-rated.

Forsaken but not forlorn, I understand the weakness of those who have parted company.

Alone but not lonely, I have all of Nature as my companion.

Still but not silenced, my unspoken musings are a freshness spontaneous, unpracticed, unperformed.

Challenged but not defeated, I make a sport out of everything.

Horny but not demonized, I sometimes draw glances as if I were the once great Pan.

Childlike but not childish, I laugh at folly knowing that I’m next.

Bartered but not bitter, I  get on, get off the Great Merry Go-Round.

Desireless but not Nirvana-devoured, my Path ahead still promises adventure.

My running in Dreamland (Lake View Cemetery) is well-recorded on this blog.  For instance, if I remark that I ran 19 miles in Dreamland last weekend, many of you will have heard of such reports before.  (It was still true, nonetheless.)  But what I’ve never spoken about before are the little self-tricks that I often submit myself to in order to get the running done. 

For instance, last Sunday I ran seven tortuous miles in horrendously humid 90-degree air under blazing Sun.  I doubted, shortly after my start, that I’d finish even two miles, though I had set out with an intention to run five.  And so, underway but faltering, I re-challenged myself to run three at a minimum.  And pushed on.  By lessening my expectation of myself, I was able to heroically push on. 

When I finally reached the shirt-soaked two mile mark I had initially doubted I could finish, I told myself: “Okay, those two were just the last  two miles of the five you originally started out to run—now you’ve still got those first  three to run.  But only three.  Remember: you re-challenged yourself to those three.  And three are all that are left—the first  three.” 

O what a sleight of mind!  Ah, what tortured self-logic to get tricked by!  My hope and expectation remained three.  I stayed in the ‘three mode’.  I had been doing three.  I could still do just three.

However, after weltering on and on and finally as I was  nearing completion of those cunning, treacherous, interposing three miles, I suddenly re-attained my senses, came intellectually clean, and acknowledged my self-delusion: “Okay, so those first two miles weren’t actually the ‘last two’ and these three are clearly not the ‘first three’.  They are, in fact, only the middle three.  So run two more now just for pretending to be so clever with yourself.” 

And so, self-chastised, I did.  Had I started out, however, to run 7 miles and counted straightforwardly up, I would have faded after just a few without a doubt.

Do you ever delude yourself to achieve a greater end?

You break in two.
I am a witness.
I sniff for glue, get a whiff,
but get too high before I can harness it
and to your break apply.

I have seen fragile and intrepid auras .  Unexpected, previously unexamined auras of living, embodied, possibly like-you spirits.  Before, in this life.  I have.  And marveled most immaculately at such mysterious immediations.

Something tells me I’m about to embark upon such aura-sightings again.  Like…woo.  

I’ve never seen an aura via blog before.  Except (almost, if almost counts) for MommaRose, who once appeared me to in a delirium of flu I was suffering about 3 years ago as a preeminently ‘nothing but the Music’ fluctuation of internetted light.  I didn’t even share that with her.  Go figure: I’m such a recluse when I go vibrational mystic.

Most romantics proclaim: “Light of my Life!”  But I ponder: the life of my light.  The perpetually scopic.  The drunken photons emanating from the Sun.

True imaginative intercourse.  I wonder what the hell that is.  As I find myself ever always alone, under the gun, on the run.

Ooops.  I woke up this morning and remembered that I had this thing called Xanga.  Funny how in (going on) 6 years here this thing called Xanga has faded from total frontal constant consciouness into a luxury outlet available to me only when I'm not otherwise preoccupied.

I'm still running, running in the heat, running in the soaking-ocean humidity of mystical Dreamland.  Miles and miles and miles...  Dreams and dreams and dreams... 

I really don't like the state of Israel.  It sucks and play off of the United States much too much.  Still, I can't blame it for the current new violence in the Middle East.  Not at all.  Wish I could, but I can't.  It's doing exactly what I would do if I were responsible for directing retaliatory operations.  Fucking copycats of my mindset.  Bastards.

Do wildfires really 'rage'?  I mean, are they angry, ya think?  I think they are just over-excited.  I'm tired of hearing all the time about "raging wildfires" out west.   Why not just add a little variety now and then and say "quaking wildfires", "dashing wildfires" or "consuming air-suckfires"??  Anyway, I wonder what it feels like to be a healthy tree burning to death.  "Why me?  Why me?!"   I wonder if Pando, the largest and longest-living organism on Earth, ever burned to a crisp what its last sentiment would be?  Maybe "I'll be damnned."  Or possibly "It's about time."

It's hard not to be over-imaginative.  But I'm trying really hard.  The real problem is distinguishing between genuine psychic intuition and wishful/dreadful fantasy.  If challenged simultaneously by both, you must embrace one and let entirely go of the other.  It doesn't, and yet it does, matter which.  Both hint, suggest, lead into emerging realities and away from matters of fact.  It all depends on who you intend to be and what world you choose to unseal your fate.

Repeat: This blog is not I (though sometimes about me)
           This blog is a reflection,
           A narcissistic upwelling
           And not my identity.

           If I am the microcosm
           And the cosmos the macrocosm,
           This blog can serve to span the chasm
           Of all that constitutes my self
           Or selflessness
           Enswirled by the reality (and un-)
           Of the infinitely intervening phantasms.

 times 10.  Then take two pills (one to make you big, the other small), and call me something else in the morning.

By the way, Narcissus as a mythic character is very much misunderstood.  Today we refer to ‘narcissism’ to describe a psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation and lack of empathy.  Basically, someone 'full' of his or herself.  And, indeed, the ‘common account’ of the myth of Narcissus describes a youth so preoccupied with the beauty of his own reflection in a pool that his worshipful female admirer (would-be girlfriend) Echo, fades, in her unremitted love, to the precipe of nothingness.  (She was, however, mercifully immortalized by the gods to live on forever in the mountains as—an echo—what else?!)  And in punishment for his own self-infatuation, Narcissus eventually falls into the pool and drowns.

But the true myth of Narcissus depicts a youth who falls in love with the face he encounters while peering into a pool—an image that he is not aware is either an image or himself.  In other words, he believes he is looking out into a strange magical world and seeing and loving ‘another’, though we, as omniscient observers, are aware that it is only his own reflection.   When, however, he realizes that the person of his fascination and fixation all along was himself, in horror he submits to the water’s seduction and slips away from life as the only honorable course available.  He was a lover, a true lover, though totally deluded, who found subsequent new enlightenment in a liquidy submersion.  And like many in myths who find demise going underground or underwater or into the underworld, he re-emerges reborn as fresh as a—flower!  Such is the power, if pursuing one’s true fate.

So my advice, if you find that blogging is becoming larger than life, is: find (or write) a mantra like mine above and spin it on your prayer wheel 10 x 10 x 10 googolplex times.  Or go take a leap into your psychic pool…and to the watery element submit.

This morning I planted a tree in Dreamland.

In an 'old', mostly forgotten section of the cemetery.

Acer palmatum (Japanese Maple)

'Inaba Shidare'
'Cascading Leaves of Rice'

In memory of Marnie's Dad, Jim Malone of The Diamonds, who died several months ago.

It was something I promised to do back then.  I admit I'm slow, tardy even, but I try to make good on my promises.

Then I ran 7 miles, kicked back for a reflective few moments to drink a beer, and hit the road. 

Damn right North Korea deserves world condemnation.  It’s obvious that what they are up to is trying to kill endangered species of innocent whales in the Japan Sea and that’s a most odious thing.  Save the Whales!  Attack North Korea!  Make Communism extinct!

-This divides what’s written above from what’s written below-

*looks at the divider above*  You know, I’ve been looking for a good succinct standalone blogging-thought divider.  I used bullets yesterday, but since I’m somewhat a pacifist (Really?  Since when?), I generally abhor resorting to bullets.  I don’t like line dividers, decorative or non-decorative, or boxes either.  So maybe I’ll just stick with my declarative divider of above.  Or shorten it to:

-This divides what’s above from what’s below-

If my feelings were intermediated as colors, I’d become an artist/painter.
If my feelings were intermediated as sounds, I’d be a musician.

Since my feelings are intermediated as words, I am a blogger/writer/poet.

If my feelings weren’t, I’d lay in the hay all day.

If you see me laying in the hay, you are welcomed to plop and join me.

 -This divides what’s above from what’s below-

I’m going to plant a tree in memoriam in Dreamland this weekend.  It’s something I promised someone.

-This divides what’s above from what’s below-

 Redone

with just pinkies intertwined we lay down side by side
under summer stars, in a cemetery, to watch the world swirl
far away from the bare touch of our share.
life takes to life—and now look what i’ve found.

i think: if the stars could fall,
they’d fall as i do into love:
not out of the sky, but into each other.
but it is the night that falls and not the stars.

darkness into darkness gathers
across the scape of crypted land
as I snuggle into the warmth that you provide
and likewise you unto my manness scending.

our closing moments suddenly seize eternity by the balls—
oh my god, no, that was your  hand!
ha ha ha what are you doing, baby?
don’t stop…don’t stop…don’t stop…

the cemetery surges:
while spirits rise,
the frenzied scent of heated love decants
across the shaken firm of earth.

yet for all the eruptions of rapt emotions,
our pinkies remain entangled
like the strands of ivy (clinging to embedded tombstones)
over which we roll, and roll, and roll…

it’s then that I realize
that we’ll never, never again be apart—
for even death, as a voyeur, unearths upon our thrill
and a gathering of ghosts is already clamoring for an encore.

and so, like good actors upon a mortal stage, we oblige and bow
once again in perpetual animalistic unison,
with the trail of stars overhead too much confused,
yet our pinkies still, and now forever, entwined.

• What the hell is up with foam always falling off the Space Shuttles at launch?  I just cannot believe that they don't have a superior material available that doesn't fall off.  Would you fly on airplanes if everytime they took to air you were informed that some bolts were falling off?  hrmmm...*wonders if the bolts are falling off and we are just not being informed*


• Scientists can be very, very weird.  Here's a study where they put one group of ants on stilts and partially amputated the legs of others.  Damn thing is they discovered something amazing about ant navigation. 


• Ever sit on one of those automated sensor flushing toilets and get up or move to adjust yourself only to have it flush before you're done?   I've run into too many of them and wonder why they don't just program a delay into them so that if you get up or move around a bit but don't leave the vicinity immediately then the flush gets suppressed.  Damn things can flush 3 or 4 times just because you take the time to zip up your pants.


• The internet is truly a trip.  Just found an online scientific journal article in Chinese from China where I'm listed as one of several scientific sources.  The chances of ever becoming aware of such a mention without the web are infinitessimally small.  Can you imagine, someday, an omniweb linking together all the intelligent life in the universe capable of recording information?  ha.  I wonder if humanity would be considered for inclusion?!


• A posionous chameleon snake was recently discovered in Borneo.  Apparently, it is extremely rare for a snake to display any chameleon behavior:
  

  "The discovery of the 'chameleon' snake exposes one of nature's best-kept secrets. Its ability to change color has kept it hidden from science until now," said Bambang Supriyanto, a WWF specialist on Borneo. -CNN
  
  But the "what's wrong with this story" aspect leaped at me when I read:
  
  "I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket," said Mark Auliya, a reptile expert and a consultant for the group. "When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white."
  
  Duh!   Aren't chameleons supposed to 'blend in'?!  If it changes into a contrasting color, then scientists should have discovered it long ago! 

Happy Fourth, y'all!

Solitude,of a time past...

Sitting, still soul, in Dreamland, beholding my own body,

realizing it really is my fucking body.

Or not so fucking, but mine nonetheless.

On the top, hot step of a dark-stoned mausoleum I perch.

Ran 5 miles.  So what?  I do it all the time.

Love and relationship fantasies find play in my mind. Amuse me.  Move on.

There’s that one about being a Clyde to her Bonnie.   But I am so much more a man than Clyde ever was and I have yet much the better part of myself to be.  How silly a notion for me to so imagine me—though I can see her as Bonnie still.

And there’s another who’s the carnate core of copious romantic yearnings and the prompt of my most passionate poetic confessions.    It’s all about the poetry.   Here’s hope that the verse, at least, endures.

Alone, free, and radical, I find it’s now time for the Sun to set.  Orange rays, long shadows are cast.  Birds hush.  The night prepares to awaken.  Home, in the cemetary, at last.

Sometimes a glance back instucts the future.  I needed that.

Happy Aphelion Day.

I am Cog.  In the Machine.  Disengaged.  Hence, utterly alone.  But I am Cog.  The Great Cog.

Do you believe in Fate?  Perhaps, you know it by its cousin, Kismet?

I think we all believe in Fate.  And we all don’t.

Something about it…that’s undeniable.  Yet something about it…that’s indeterminable.

The problem is that Fate as a monastic entity, i.e, as a monad, or existing alone in and of itself, seems too entirely obsessive to constitute an aspect of genuine human existence.

But what if Fate existed only as Fate₁ or Fate₂ or Fate_n—any number of fates but Fate Itself, The Great Fate.  And, instead of Fate (the Great) flinging you like a rag-doll to an unavoidable predestination, there were several, or even a great number of fates—Fates!—competing to guide you to a final well-defined destination?

Thus the looseness of doom, the fuzziness of choice, remains:  Many Fates are competing for you.  Yet until you open the door and allow free passage to the Fate that happens to be at hand, only life becomes you, as miraculously inventive as the pattern of a  wave’s wash upon ever-shifting sand.