Just remember when you go picking my apples that there's almost certainly a tree with lower fruit somewhere right around your yonder corner.
Uncategorized
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The nipples protruding through her otherwise unobstructed fishnet top are so, so obvious.
So I ask “Do you like fishing? What do like to catch? Besides men.”
“I like deep-sea fishing,” she replies.
“Does that mean you float atop the water and fish deep? Or dive deep and fish?”
She doesn’t reply, but simply flashes a smile while weighing the dichotomy.
“I’d like to hunt shark with a knife,” I lie.
No, this is not a short story. Just an unimagined conversation.
Or not.
But regardless.
Her eroticism is the game of the name.
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I set for myself the goal of running 26 miles this past week. I finished with 27.
I became determined this week to break out of my own pleasant little prison dream. A PLPD that my fantasies had fed, wherein, for the last several years, I’ve imagined more than I lived. I’m resolved now to live more than I ever imagined.
I’ve finally gotten back this week to commenting about on Xanga as a form of adventure. When I first came to blogging about four and a half years ago, discovering others “in the neighborhood” was the most incredible thing. Yet over the last couple of years, I’ve cheapened the experience for myself by, more often than not, pushing out posts unidirectionally. I gave. My faithful readers took. But damn it, I’m now on the take again! (Wait. Does that sound right?!)
I’m now filled with as much positivity as the bumbler bee that’s buzz-buzzing the garden I’m sitting in. The energy of life-affirming inquisitiveness justifies itself. The world is abloom. May no flower go unvisited.
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I’ve run 22 miles so far this week. And it seems like half of it has been in the rain, cold rain. I caught a cold in the rain on Wednesday, said fuck-it, and returned to run Thursday to shake the cold off. That’s the way to do it. If you can get away with it.
Before
running last night, a colleague of mine from work beseeched me to join
him at a party after work where there would be a good gathering of
co-workers. I usually steer clear of such celebrations, but told him if I was in the neighborhood that I’d stumble in.Well, after my run (seemingly neverending in the Land of Dreams), I 'ended up' in the neighborhood. Turns out it was a birthday celebration for C., a female co-employee I don’t know all that well, but whom everybody seems to love. She
was in roaring birthday form: vivacious, dancing with everyone, and
making quite a scene. And because it’s well known that I always carry
all my computer gear in my backpack with me all the time and my digital
cam is among my gear, I was called upon to take pictures of the
merriment. So snap away I did.Then someone suggested that I get my picture taken with C. I
reluctantly surrendered my camera to a buddy and then posed decently
next to C., side by side, looking straight into the camera. You know, like the picture that inspired Grant Wood to paint American Gothic (woman and farmer with a pitchfork).
That’s when C. suddenly grabbed my cap and sunglasses and put them on. And then just as suddenly grabbed me, whispering: “We can’t just pose—pretend we’re making out.” Before I could even respond…
Snap.
notforprophet Gothic?
Why do birthday girls always get to have it their own impulsive way anyway?
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I've never felt a need to explain myself here. Nor do I now. But I'll comment upon the post below just to give you an insight into how my mind works..
1) I might be a broken arrow, but I struck my target first.
As I was preparing to run in Dreamland (cemetery) today, I heard an ad for a movie on the radio in my truck . I didn't catch it all, but it sounded like one warrior was threatening another with a promise that "whoever dies here today, you will be among them." Now that got me thinking. So when I was done running, I pondered my own future epitaph. Actualize before demise. Yeah.
2) *sniffles*
I woke up with a slight cold this morning. It slowed me considerably while running. Still had it as I sat against a granite obelisk in the sun after running, writing my epitaph and drinking a beer. I do believe, however, that the running has suppressed its course.
3) —from a spot where dreams remain dreams.
Posting via cellular wireless from Dreamland cemetery. Many of the dreams of the dead there that were never actualized will forever remain just dreams. Got life? Actualize. Or donate you dreams to eternity.
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The Quagmire That Is Iraq
(and the quacks in the mire that keep us there)
According to Gen. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the insurgency in Iraq, as of yesterday, is "about where it was a year ago," in terms of attacks.
Have you ever played chess? Have you ever enjoyed a game of stalemate?
Yet he maintains: "Almost any indicator you look at, the trends are up. So we're definitely winning..."
Any indicator? How about the forementioned level of insurgency in terms of attacks?
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld with clarification to the rescue!
"We're focusing a reasonable portion of our efforts at the present time not on counterinsurgency at all," he said. "We're focusing it on training Iraqi security forces in increasing amounts. So you can make a case that, gee, if the level's about the same, then the insurgency must be down because we're paying less attention to it and encouraging Iraqi security forces to pay greater attention."
If it's the same, it must be down?! Gee!!! The secondary implication is that if it were 'up', it would be 'the same'! But then... by re-application of the primary logic, the secondary determination that it's 'the same', would mean it must be down!
O Secretary, shed more light:
"The United States and the coalition forces, in my personal view, will not be the thing that will defeat the insurgency....So therefore, winning or losing is not the issue for 'we', in my view, in the traditional, conventional context of using the word winning and losing in a war."
Winning or losing is not an issue for us??
Do you mind, O Secretary, explaining to those that have lost loved ones that winning is not and has never been the issue?
Could you, O Secretary, be so forthright as to advise new miliatry recruits before they sign their lives away that: "You will fight. You may die. But it's not about winning or losing." ???
Have you ever played chess? Have you ever really enjoyed a game of stalemate?
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Xanga is permutating again. Glitchy logins. A warning yesterday from my browser along these lines: "You've been redirected to a new website. The previous website has moved since you last accessed it. Do you still want to proceed?" And this from a simple SuperScan for "www.xanga.com":
+ 209.66.88.14
|___ 25 Simple Mail Transfer
|___ 80 World Wide Web HTTP
|___ HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily..Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 11:43:51 GMT..Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0..X-Powered-By: ASP.NET..X-AspNet
|___ 110 Post Office Protocol - Version 3
+ 209.66.88.13
|___ 25 Simple Mail Transfer
|___ 80 World Wide Web HTTP
|___ HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily..Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:21:45 GMT..Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0..X-Powered-By: ASP.NET..X-AspNet
|___ 110 Post Office Protocol - Version 3
I've been watching it over the last day: It's been moving a lot! The IP address keeps switching. hrm....
Ah, the Shadowlands of the Internet. Now my preoccupation.
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There are more bumblebees about the North Coast this spring than I’ve seen for many years. That’s a good omen! And already there are butterflies flitting about me as I run. Now that’s a little rush.
Of course, the fruit trees and other flowering trees bear their flower buds first. Even before most other trees produce their leaves. Hey, they need that cross-pollination now in order to be fecund later on. Leaves can wait. Flowering trees understand that April is for screwing.
To live right in the world is to love it. For me, Dreamland isn’t about death and demise. It’s all about life and the resolve to embrace it.
So on a day like today, I’ll linger near the dam until sunset. To watch the red fox ramble up from the stream, weave amidst the monuments, and scamper towards the highlands.
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It is so wonderful to be alive. And I feel like I’ve just awoken to a new age.
Just a bit ago—an hour to be exact, I was stoned lethargic in my office—driven on only by the drone of a un-firing brain.
The drugs that the intestinal flu beasties make were doing it. The lassitude was reinforced by an office routine especially lacking in excitement today.
Then something came over me. I got up, got out, and took a walk in the world.
There’s something about walking in spring sunshine that always empowers me.
And mixing in with a downtown crowd of strangers. Darkness in daylight.
And the gate to all mystery swung open again.
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My goal last Monday was to run 26 miles in Dreamland (cemetery) during the week. I fell 3 miles short, largely because (until Memorial Day) the cemetery locks up at 5:30 pm and I often don't get there until 4:30 pm. Not a lot of time to run. But today I finally found the "easy access" in and out of Dreamland over a low (4 foot high) gate that the girl in the pic in the post below uses for her nocturnal wanderings. Now if I park outside, I can come and go as I please. Even after the otherwise 20 foot high wrought-iron gates clang closed. Break-out: later-into-the-night and longer pre-summer runs. And: true solitude to write when so moved.
Some net-things out and about...
"The Browse3D web browser offers user a visual advantage making finding and using web information more productive. Using multiple browsing engines is made easier because each web page is represented by an image of that page not just a generic tab. For the first time Browse3D is offering a free version."
"SCIgen is a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations."
"Announcing a new platform for internet television and video. Anyone can broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost, using BitTorrent technology. Viewers get intuitive, elegant software to subscribe to channels, watch video, and organize their video library. The project is non-profit, open source, and built on open standards. Today we're announcing the project and releasing our current sourcecode. The software is launching in June." -
Is
much happening? Always. And if it doesn’t seem so, then
that probably means that one’s outlook has ossified to compartmentalize
all that’s happening into a strictly-budgeted routine or a limp of
reality.Beware if the world seems to you unchanging, for it ever is aprowl with surprises.
Take
weather, for instance. The stupidest statistic the weather forecasters
perpetrate is the ‘Normal’ high or low temperatures for any given day
in a particular locale. Such temperatures may be a mean average,
but they are far from conferring normalcy to anything at all.
Changes in climate that I’ve seen, even in such a short span as my own
lifetime, tell me there’s no ‘Normal’ nor will likely there ever
be. Some forecasts predict that the entire ice mass covering the
North Pole will melt away by the year 2070. I wonder if Santa
will invest much in any sense of normalcy upon that eventuality.I think that only change is normal.And although, unlike Heraclitus,
I do not believe that “All is in flux.” –always surrendering
identity. I do believe that flux underlies all things – pushing
them onward with an evolving identity toward some destiny.-reflection just after running 5 miles in Dreamland (the cemetery).
A
ceramic artist mounts one of her birdhouses in Dreamland. In
talking with her, she made me aware that she's, too, quite a 'regular'
in Dreamland, though she spends most of her time here nocturnally,
sneaking in and out over a low fence after sunset and long after all
gates are locked closed. -
3rd Personal Reflection Upon the Death of John Paul the Great
(yes, he was)
When John Paul II died, I was “on the road” and my daughter called me to inform me of the news. After doing so, she asked me: “Did you know this time, Daddy?”
“No, I didn’t this time,” I told her.
John Paul II lived a heroic life and, as far as I’m concerned, entirely owned his own death.
Not like the last two times in 1978 when, psychically-engaged, I experienced the impending deaths of both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I in real unmediated time.
The death angel/agent sent for Paul VI actually visited me first. It did—no matter how bizarre the existence of such a thing may seem. No matter how deranged it all may sound.
Upon that fateful day, the invisible though distinctly-locationed death angel/agent sent for Paul VI hovered above me as I was sleeping in my bed and startled me to terrified consciousness. “Are you the Pope?” Unspoken words: Its mere presence commanded an answer. I could hardly believe it: a fucking death angel. I hadn’t really believed before that moment that they existed, and yet there was one challenging me. Wasting no precious time, I distinctly projected upward in response with a life-affirming psychic vibe “I am not the Pope.”
Being at the time, a virgin psychic mystic of peerless intelligence for the most part living the life of a hermit, I sensed that the death angel/agent was confused: I could have almost been the pope—I had enough “popemarks” to confound it.
But as I clearly refuted the misidentification, the visiting death agent moved along, invisibly gliding above me as I lay motionless in my bed. And then away. I knew in that moment that had I actually been the pope, I would have sucked my last breath. And then Paul VI, halfway around the world, died shortly thereafter.
The death of Pope John Paul I? That’s even a more bizarre ‘involvement’ that shall await later explication.
But at least here, for the first time, I’ve begun to ‘unconsign to silence’ what I once merely hinted at before:
Just a little rhyme from my childhood to set a tone:
"It takes a dope... To kill a pope... But a dope who is true... To make fatal two. "
Actually, this little rhyme usually took the form of a taunt:
1st child (observing some stupidity on the part of 2nd child): "It takes a dope to kill a pope!"
2nd child (typical response): "Shut up!"
As a child, my invented riposte: "But it takes a real dope to kill two popes!"
Now what the heck does that mean? Possibly that the universe is basically predatorial--and only our typical culturally-consensualized perception of it seems ever so much to render matters comfortably, cognizantly numb. Moreover, that some important truths lie beyond our five senses as we experience them.
Beyond that, as Ludwig Wittgenstein, 20th century Austrian philosopher, once admonished: "Of that which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence."
Well... perhaps so... for a time being.
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Well, john has promised a solution and has already provided a workaround to the picture/image upgrade uproar.
You're furnished this by default...
But can modify the code easily enough to render a large version...
...or even a pic larger than this one AND still retain initial picture quality.
btw, my daughter took this shot of me last Friday afternoon. Ever woder what I'd look like leading mankind into battle?
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2nd Personal Reflection Upon the Death of John Paul the Great
(yes, he was)
At the moment of John Paul's funeral. out of nowhere, a tune took hold of me.
Yet I forced the words quite differently.
To the tune of O Come, O Come, Emmnauel, instead of the actual tune and chorus of
O come, O come Emmanuel,
And ransom captive
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Chorus:
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!
I merely sang the chorus:
Chorus:
Rejoice! Rejoice! O Creaturedom of Love!
From you shall come the savior of the Worlds.
Over…and over…and throughout my ride to work and stroll to and into the office..
And I’m not even sure what it means.
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1st Personal Reflection Upon the Death of John Paul the Great
(yes, he was)
What has become of the Earth?
After countless aeons of biological activity reinvesting itself…
It’s just a pile of shit. Just a heap of manure. Admit it.
Whether you admit it or not, the things you eat
(and you are what you eat)
mostly grow anymore from the compost pile.
Whether 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation or more,
You are becoming what has passed
with gas
before.
Don’t fight it. Don’t run away. Embrace what you are.
And realize that you’re never nearer to the Earth-while yet alive-
(unless, like me, you’re a mystic-psychic that communes ethereally
amongst the dreamland-contained compost piles of eternity)
than when you take a dump and feed the Great Mother.
And thus, when you do such, are you royalty upon the Throne.
Ashes to ashes, dump to dump.
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Before Xanga's new image system conversion (yesterday), I could upload this file at this size (500 px x 375px) with this quality uncompressed:
(note: the pic above showed as is on Xanga a couple of days ago, but I'm now serving it up from my own outside server because...)
When I now re-upload the very same pic (500 px x 375px) under the new image system regime, it is compressed to this mere Mini-Me (320px x 240px) - a whopping 2 1/2 times reduction, or 40% of the original size.
Yes, if you click on the Mini-Me above, it will open to the full-size (500px x 375px) pic it is.
(hint: go ahead and click on it).
And yes, if you compare the new image system's full-sized image quality with the full-sized pic at the top served-up from the outside server, you'll see that xanga's new image system quality IS noticeably superior.
However, if I now try to enlarge the newly-uploaded xanga image (directly above) to the original size it used to be on xanga (500 px x 375px) to see if it still looks as good as it used to look on xanga (top photo), this is what I get:
You be the judge.
Is the tradeoff (currently smaller, though better quality 'unclickeds' for the previous larger, not-too-bad quality 'unclickeds' - considering also that clicking the new smaller ones provides better quality full-sized ones) a good tradeoff for you?
How often do/will you click on pic to see a larger representation of it?
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It was a cool 80 degrees for my 4 mile Dreamland run today.And there were lots of couples strolling about appreciating the scenery.(I wonder: was I part of the scenery appreciated?!)
I busted my lungs a little more at the end of the run today than lately typical. I kind of like that busted feeling.Give it up, baby.Give it up.
I have a mere 5 minutes left until cemetery closing now to jot these notes.I think I’ll do what I did yesterday: head downtown to the docks on the river opening outwards to the Sweet Erie Sea.You know, that’s what the first discoverers of the Great Lakes called them—“Sweet Seas”—because they believed they were actually seas filled with non-salty ‘sweet’ water.
*lapse of 30 minutes*
Sweet water it is.Now the breeze is a bit cooler than yesterday.And the sky a bit milkier, too.Change is just barely discernible in the air with a swing back to a more typical Midwest Spring (temp: upper 50s) due for tomorrow.
My own self-conjured quote for the day:
“If I had my choice of living anywhere at all, I would.”
Today’s an absolutely gorgeous day on the North Coast shores of Lake. Erie.
It’s the first day ofdaffodils blooming noticeably.
It’s 74 degrees (if you wonder Fahrenheit or Celsius, you’re sick)with no crediblyinterspersing clouds in the sky.
I ran 3+ miles in Dreamland and nearly achieved orgasm as the summer-like heat tugged at me.
On the way out of Dreamland, I prevented an accident!A women driving directly behind down a hill didn’t notice that here exterior rack-mounted spare tire had swung open and to the right—making her SUV as wide as a bus about to give birth to buslets.So just before entering a narrowing traffic lane where her extended rack (no, I’m not talking about her chest) would have impacted a parked car, I stopped—stopping all traffic in both directions, flamboyantly emerged from my vehicle, and with booming vocalauthority and over-exaggerated gesticulations indicated of the impending, but avoidable, doom.Hey—that’s almost worthy of honorable mention for “the Wonder Dog Play of the Day”.
And now I’m perched on a wooden dock at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River’s opening to Erie, lit andSWI (sitting while intoxicated)…by the evermore-to-me-to-be-familiar transcending Sun of ours, by the sight of disappearing and re-appearing ducks diving for underwater feastie things in the river, and by a tomorrow that, even if it isn’t projected as a precise repeat of today, is, nevertheless, still much akin metabolically to the fire in the inspired belly of Crazy Horse proclaiming that “Today is a good day to die.”.
It was a cool 80 degrees for my 4 mile Dreamland run today.And there were lots of couples strolling about appreciating the scenery.(I wonder: was I part of the scenery appreciated?!)
I busted my lungs a little more at the end of the run today than lately typical. I kind of like that busted feeling.Give it up, baby.Give it up.
I have a mere 5 minutes left until cemetery closing now to jot these notes.I think I’ll do what I did yesterday: head downtown to the docks on the river opening outwards to the Sweet Erie Sea.You know, that’s what the first discoverers of the Great Lakes called them—“Sweet Seas”—because they believed they were actually seas filled with non-salty ‘sweet’ water.
*lapse of 30 minutes*
Sweet water it is.Now the breeze is a bit cooler than yesterday.And the sky a bit milkier, too.Change is just barely discernible in the air with a swing back to a more typical Midwest Spring (temp: upper 50s) due for tomorrow.
My own self-conjured quote for the day:
“If I had my choice of living anywhere at all, I would.”
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Today’s an absolutely gorgeous day on the North Coast shores of Lake. Erie.
It’s the first day ofdaffodils blooming noticeably.
It’s 74 degrees (if you wonder Fahrenheit or Celsius, you’re sick)with no crediblyinterspersing clouds in the sky.
I ran 3+ miles in Dreamland and nearly achieved orgasm as the summer-like heat tugged at me.
On the way out of Dreamland, I prevented an accident!A women driving directly behind down a hill didn’t notice that here exterior rack-mounted spare tire had swung open and to the right—making her SUV as wide as a bus about to give birth to buslets.So just before entering a narrowing traffic lane where her extended rack (no, I’m not talking about her chest) would have impacted a parked car, I stopped—stopping all traffic in both directions, flamboyantly emerged from my vehicle, and with booming vocalauthority and over-exaggerated gesticulations indicated of the impending, but avoidable, doom.Hey—that’s almost worthy of honorable mention for “the Wonder Dog Play of the Day”.
And now I’m perched on a wooden dock at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River’s opening to Erie, lit andSWI (sitting while intoxicated)…by the evermore-to-me-to-be-familiar transcending Sun of ours, by the sight of disappearing and re-appearing ducks diving for underwater feastie things in the river, and by a tomorrow that, even if it isn’t projected as a precise repeat of today, is, nevertheless, still much akin metabolically to the fire in the inspired belly of Crazy Horse proclaiming that “Today is a good day to die.”.
It was a cool 80 degrees for my 4 mile Dreamland run today.And there were lots of couples strolling about appreciating the scenery.(I wonder: was I part of the scenery appreciated?!)
I busted my lungs a little more at the end of the run today than lately typical. I kind of like that busted feeling.Give it up, baby.Give it up.
I have a mere 5 minutes left until cemetery closing now to jot these notes.I think I’ll do what I did yesterday: head downtown to the docks on the river opening outwards to the Sweet Erie Sea.You know, that’s what the first discoverers of the Great Lakes called them—“Sweet Seas”—because they believed they were actually seas filled with non-salty ‘sweet’ water.
*lapse of 30 minutes*
Sweet water it is.Now the breeze is a bit cooler than yesterday.And the sky a bit milkier, too.Change is just barely discernible in the air with a swing back to a more typical Midwest Spring (temp: upper 50s) due for tomorrow.
My own self-conjured quote for the day:
“If I had my choice of living anywhere at all, I would.”
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They say there's a new all-time season record snow fall in Cleveland as of yesterday...
But I don't recall if anyone was around to take measurements during the last period of glaciation.
Today was the onset of Daylight Saving Time. No 's'. Saving. It really doesn't save any daylight. But during some war years, legislators legislated it because they believed it saved energy.
I think it's the last snow of the season. I think.
shadow unto shadow
through the interregnum. -
There are endless ways to be. Myriad forms of self-expression. Ways to live. Ways to die. Ways to be amidst.
Most usually, we just go about being who “we are” and fitting into the ‘amidst’ presented to us.
Born-rebels, anarchists, revolutionaries preconditionally reject such an obvious path, however. They see it, at best, as pablum. At worst, as hemlock force-fed.
Personally, being strictly non-doctrinaire and vituperatively anti-ideological, I neither accept nor reject presumptively. Rather, I try different ‘me’s on always. As if, odd-sized, in the fitting room of a clothing store. As if in an ice cream parlor licking a taste of this and that off of different throw-away trial spoons. I sample myself. Ever in the realm of the imaginative potential.
But they say: “Sooner or later, you must choose. Own your course. Make your way.”
Must we? What if my course, my calling, my vocation is to sample? Peruse?
They ask me: “Who are you? What do you do?”
I should answer: “I’m a peruser. I’m an empath outside looking in. I’m the weighted concatenation of all influences roaming about, including you. And, in expression, I’m an ever-changing exfluence reflecting all that has been, is, and will be.”
So I imagine.
Am I morbid? Do I find comfort amidst desolation? There are other worlds that I’ve explored that would beg that question. But what does it mean to ‘beg a question’?
I was born in a cemetery. My father was a caretaker and I was to take after him. My mother a simple housekeeper. And I grew through childhood, and into adolescence and onto manhood playing, reflecting, and working amidst the graves of those who’d been.
I learned mathematics by calculating the age spans of interees: ‘born’ – ‘died’. I learned spelling by sounding out names no longer to be spoken. I learned architecture by observing the construction of mausoleums. I learned ecology by noting that only humans bury their dead, though some creatures bury themselves when near death by hiding away, or staying underground.
Oh, I blended with the living, from time to time. With those who came to grieve for loved ones passing/passed on. With my father whose hands were always dirty from digging graves. With my mother always perfectly silent and respectful at the dinner table.
But otherwise, I was a virtual Emily Dickinson in her hermit state, restricting myself to the bounds of my upbringing in my happy hunting grounds. Apart, estranged, obscure—but happy.
Then, one day, there interposed a maverick rent in my space-time continuum. A discontinuity, in other words. An unexpected interloper. Some motherfucker appeared in my Dreamland not to grieve, not to bury himself, but to seek exuberance, to do unthinkable things in this refuge of sacred mourning. Moreover, he appeared not merely once, but continually, almost daily and with excruciating predictably.
Did he leave flowers? Did he walk, as others did, forlornly amidst the graves?
No. He ran. And ran. And ran. Then drank beer. Even pissed behind bushes. And he took photos of everything. Every fucking thing, I tell you. Then he’d find some of the most scenic and serene places to posture and plant his ass on the ground, drink more beer, and drag a laptop out of a backpack he habitually hauled around.
And he’d write. Don’t ask me what he wrote. Who the fuck knows what he wrote?
I had the nerve once, while he tapped upon keyboard, to confront him about his outrageous behaviors, his ridiculous deportments. And you know what he replied? “I’m merely imagining. Allowing the flux of all-in-the-world to influence me. And this keyboard tapping, this exfluence, reflects upon all that has been, is, and will be”
Then, right there with me as a witness, he hooked his cell phone up to his laptop, dialed-up a relay that dialed-up a satellite, and sent his exfluence, referring to it as a “blog”, heavenwards.
And then a hawk streaked across the sky.
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Where is my wish list boast? My dream ship host? My making of the most?
Things were better when I lived in my childing imagination more. There, even if there wasn’t actuality, there was inspiration. There was poetry. For the envisaging, for the feeling, for the writing.
Here, in the land of the purported real and actual, there’s only desolation and the chance to encounter the ultimate bane of all existence.
Fine, perhaps. It’s the path I seem to have chosen. When, at the momentous instance of becoming in my youth, the Trickster asked me what I wanted to be, I replied “ a warrior poet”. But the Trickster cackled back at me: “You can only be one thing. And you said ‘warrior’ first And I’m allowed to make the rules. And that’s the rule I just made for you.”
And I didn’t protest at that moment with sufficient vociferousness.
So I’ve been battling that bastard Trickster ever since. For that’s what a warrior does: battle. Yet to defeat the Trickster would be to prove him wrong. To become that poet, too.
Now, being not only the damnedestly most intrepid warrior on nether-Earth, but cursed with a strange form of wilely intelligence nethertheless, I strive to regain my Trickster-dissed muse. Here in the land of the purported real and actual. I wish to become the bane of my own poetic desolation.
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I shared this vision here 4 years ago. At the onset of an adventure, is there not often enthusiasm and idealism?
Is blogging a new and emerging literary/graphical/(perhaps even audible) art form? Should it, will it rank among other genre of recognized expression such as the novel, the essay, the poem, the sketch? Will the “Art of Blogging” be a credited English course in tomorrow’s universities (surely, the kiss of death) ?
I dare to struggle and say: yes.
Though like a journal in having a timeline that flows like a river carrying fluid thoughts to the sea, the key to this art form (dare I say that?) is its performance: its interactivity. The best of posts, uncommented, remains the haunting one hand clapping in the forest—which is a rare and ethereal accomplishment: a pure essence of expression, standing by itself, pristine, an incontrovertible entity. But the highest form of blogging always invites response: the initial post is one hand posed awaiting the second hand, the comment, which issues the *clap* or sometimes the *smack* or sometimes a chaos of *slaps*, *hugs*, and *gawks*. So the timeline of expression invites a timeline of response—and thus the blog is woven as a form for all to see. Hence blogging distinguishes itself as a most genuine form of expression—and is utterly artistic at its height—when it creates community.
That being said, may I now add: let us all welcome ourselves to this expressive insurgency!
But 4 years later, I now realize this vision was flawed. Blogging is clearly just a social tool, not an artistic one. Though it can deliver artistic content, so too theoretically could a well-done mail-order catalog or a bottle on the sea carrying a poem scribed upon parchment inside. Blogging is the bottle. The internet's the ocean. I'm inside looking out.
I will give it this, though: Someday, a well-known and famous author will
admit that if it wasn't for blogging, that first novel would never have been written.
Hey, that author could be you. -
Easter 2005
- I got up pre-dawn to deliver my daughter’s basket to her room while she yet slept (photo in post below).
- Went to the office to play the role of ‘federal cyber-cop’ and installed a server intrusion detection sensor in
- Tested the sensor's agent by intruding. The agent detected me—it worked! Then remembered that I wasn’t exactly alone in cyberspace and that my intrusion was certainly showing up on others’ ‘radars’, too. So I called
- Went to Dreamland and ran 7 miles. Though cool by strolling standards, I was able to build up a sweat and fantasize a flux of summer warmth.
- Set upright a pot of Easter lilies that was imitating a corpse by assuming the horizontal position.
- Still in Dreamland, started this narrative. Not running, but leaning up against the granite obelisk (opposite side from the lilies) with a chill breeze from the east, it’s a little harder to fantasize a cockering warmth. Though the laptop battery expending itself on my lap feels oh-so good.
- What’s blogging in Dreamland without drinking a beer. So popping the top.
- Searching for that intensity. Needing more of that intensity. Off to seek intensity.
- I got up pre-dawn to deliver my daughter’s basket to her room while she yet slept (photo in post below).
-
My daughter made it clear to me the other night that she only wants an Easter basket from me until she's 50 years old. 29 more years: I'm nearly off the hook.
shhhh! She's still sleeping.
-
It gets even better (or worse): for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death (and even beyond extraordinary unpresidential-bush-failed intervention on behalf of his lackey brother-governor-bush's ideological vegetable interjection) us do part, so help me Egg.
note: the tower of Pres. Garfield's monument semi-looms thitherground.
-
woohoo - the vernal equinox is upon us! Time to balance...
My greatest weakness: I have a tremendous propensity to inject myself fully into my own fantasies.
My greatest strength: I have a tremendous propensity to extract myself fully from my own fantasies.
My greatest truth: I am nothing more than the aggregation of successive injection/extractions.
Current state: satori.
-
Oh, happy whatever it is.
I'm tottering on battered and abused legs but I'm going to run like a lost hermit in Dreamland again today. Because? Because I've nothing better to do other than drive my libido into numinous submission.
~not my writing~
(2-day old photo - this iceworld of the suppressed spring is now almost till next winter gone.)
-
I just realized that I'm the only one who's not 'the One'. You know: Neo, The Matrix. The One. You all saw the movie. You all felt at one with the One. Once upon that time.
But not me.
Instead, I'm just part of the ever-redefining elusive Flux. You know, the drunken photons dispatched from the Sun for improbable earth impact.
Wham.
Okay, so what? Somewhere on the shore of Never, I've been tethered forever.
*kiss* upon anyone who also lands on this rock.
-
I heard a weatherman this morning call it “anemic sunshine”. But I see it as crystal firelight—this growing incandescence in the northern mid-latitudes that nonetheless seems not to warm the air much (highs only in the 20s yesterday and today) due to deviant polar jet streams and
The sun was so bright yesterday that I can still visualize most every step of my entire run around Dreamland (7 times). How dark was my shadow crushing the ground. How uplifting the crystal firelight bouncing under foot.
Hey, I’m the shadowman again. And the Sun has my back. -
There's a psychic storm with a weirding potential underway. I'm beginning to believe.
I'm thirsty . Figure here that right after I post this I'll be making a trip to the supermarket to buy several gallons of assorted juices.
Oh. And I'm tired of drinking beer. Or drinking anything alcoholic for that matter. Actually, since my friend Mike left for a job in Arizona in the fall, I've not found another drinking buddy who makes good company. So maybe it's time to start hanging out at the wifi hotspot coffeshop more often.
Of course, I'm still running in Dreamland. I ran 5 miles earlier and felt great afterwards. On the way out of the cemetery, I came upon the 'blank tombstone' where people are actually encouraged to chalk an epitaph.
This made me feel especially good about my run. It's the kind of silly thing that may well stick in my head and inspire me to act to the very most contrary. After all, I don't need no stinkin' Love Machine.
-
Just another chilled-out moment here in life-love-land:
Ha! It's Thursday already. But what's Thursday? Thor's Day.
Mother-f-ing Thor.
Let's get matrixly brutal.
Let's godly romp and to tomorrow's tomorrow regally roll.Now. If I can only fulfill that vision.
But, without help, I can tell you I'll be wasted by noon on Saturn's
Day. And be baked liked pudding by time the day of the Sun sneaks
upon. -
Wow...I have this eerie sense of impending distancing and dissolution. I can't be more exact-just a sense of things floating or falling away. Is this just an echo of my own inner uncertainties? Uncertainties that, even though I try to pin down, I can't give a name to? Or like some wild animals that can sense an imminent earthquake just before the earth shakes, do I have a read on something real and beyond me? Precipice. Precipice is the word that hangs on the tip of my tongue. Why does this notion of cliff-hanging over a sheer abyss envelop my mind like a fog? Just so…even so…or, perhaps, especially so…I hear a whisper of caution, and then move on. Sink deeper into my instincts and still move on.
-
What's nanotechnology?
Imagine having an aerosol spray bottle filled with minute remotely-controllable webcams that you can spray anywhere or on anything and have them instantly start broadcasting to preconfigured websites or blogs. That's one of the wild promises of nanotechnology. Scary, huh?!
And what's this?
"Anonymous Internet access is now a thing of the past. A doctoral student at the University of California has conclusively fingerprinted computer hardware remotely, allowing it to be tracked wherever it is on the Internet."
Don't worry. Someone sooner or later, in response, is going to invent a cheap wireless broadband-empowered laptop that you can buy at a Conevenient store anonymously with cash and toss after a single use. And it will probably just be a nanotechnological 'core' that you slip into your fashion-fave multifunctional body-borne appliance anyway.
But, hey, I ran a quicker 5 miles in Dreamland yesterday! And there was no nano nothing about that.
-
Of course, I'm cynical about politics. Campaigns roll out blogs to portay their candidate as cyber-savvy and with the crowd. But what happens when the campaign ends?
If you're the winner, your blog, georgwbush.com/blog , now redirects to the main GOP portal page. No blog remains at all!
If you're the loser, your blog, blog.johnkerry.com , remains. But hasn't been updated since the day of doom.
***
Spring is here. Not a lot of warmth yet, but the days are stretching out - about 2 to 3 minutes longer succeedingly. I'm now alert to and looking for faces (flowers) floating out of the ground...
***
Whatever happened to the clout of cartoons? Once was, on Satruday mornings, every channel had cartoons. Granted, there were only a few channels, no cable, but cartoons had a monopoly. Kids totally ruled.
Nowadays, though there are entire channels dedicated to 24-7 cartooning, the Saturday morning monopoly's been broken. Seems that kids are just a part of the media market and not to be over-indulged. Ah well, to have been a part of something that was once in the life!
***
I got hold last week of an early (insider) release of uncirculated "Westward Journey" nickels.
And I've been handing one or two of them out to practically everybody I meet. Hey, I'm now the 'Nickel Guy'. I always knew some day that I'd have a claim to fame.
-
I’m pretty damn sure, right now in the whence and where, that I have a plethora of amazing insights to share. (Perhaps?) Or even a shit (shitload) to divvy up if insights are too refined for your world outlook. Problem is that I have practically no time, no presence to be at all, no temporally-reserved singularly devotable instance of cavalcading impregnable rhyme to fit into preformed slots of online existence, or even to nfp. (yes, I just made ‘nfp’ an intransitive verb—oh fuck, what does ‘intransitive’ imply anyway?)—if you know what I mean. . Anyway, if you have some spare time available and are willing to shush with me, I’ve got an over-ripe blogload ready to shunt with you..
If only I could write, and love, and disappear into the Blogosphere. But then…what of flesh and sustenance?
-
my first phoneblog - 2 years ago.
And you know what's sad? I can't remember my first (or even totally passionate last) kiss. But I can remember exactly where I was and even what I was looking at when I first phoneblogged home. I guess I have a blogger's memory: Here today and still here today.
-
I should probably be frightening the crap out of everyone today. The phrase “with extreme prejudice” resounds again and again—as if an order—in my head. Is that my prior military training flashing back or merely some pathology infecting my mind? Feeling unlackadaisical even though lost, I ‘m like a wandering renegade samurai with an unsheathed sword. It would seem like I should be able to render all insensate with a single swift swing. But I don’t know why I am not projecting this terror….
So I walk into a coffee shop and assume a place in line. While waiting, I notice a utility razor with a projecting blade sitting on a freshly opened stack of today’s newspapers. As the line peels away and I get my turn, the attendant asks me promptly what she can get for me. Deftly with a warrior’s acumen, I grab the utility knife, thrust it towards her—handle jutting first, cutting edge towards me—insisting “No,… what can I get you?”, my question building in a purposefully powerful crescendo. She giggles nervously, then graciously disarms me (disarmed by a woman again—is that my life’s story?). She still awaits my answer…*taps*… as I gaze around and then up to the daily bulletin board. It features a daily trivia question that gives 10 cents off your purchase for a correct response. Today’s question is: “What are the ashes made out of that are used on Ash Wednesday?” Without thought or emotion, I unblithely blurt out: “The teeth of pagans’ slain pet dragons.” The girl humors me, “You’re right!” But I add quickly, “Palm fronds, of course.” She nods once in acknowledgement, and follows-up laughingly, “I like your first answer better!”
Damn it, girl. I’m shoving knives at you, I’m speaking of dragon’s teeth without even smiling, I’m right on the edge of primal defilements--and your reception of me is so pleasantly cordial??? I give up! What’s the use! Smile back and say gently , “I’ll have a medium to go, dear.”
…the Beast next turns his attention to the deadly cream and sugar.
-
"What is in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"
[Romeo & Juliet, by W. Shakespeare]
But, perhaps a rose, without a name, under certain circumstances, would smell even sweeter. Does naming dampen the deepest of appreciations? Does the cognitive association of some “thing other than self” with a name prevent an unbounded realization of total essence?
It seems to me that in my most intense moments of past experience, namely lovemaking, psychoactive venturing, and reaction to life-or-death situations, names have played no part whatever in the pure experiential light-and-darkness-kissed chroma thus actualized.
Pure experience beyond names: that’s the essence of both animalistic and mystical (and animalistic-mystical) apprehension.
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