❧
This post was originally an e-mail that I sent to a discussion group moments ago, so if you belong to that group you've already read it. It's Saturday and a little bit warmer than it's been for weeks, and that makes me lazy like spring fever even though it's not Spring.
I suspect I don't have a standard way to interpret a natal chart and horary charts get even weirder for some people who have a more formal approach. In the past, prior to my setting all my ephemerides and interpretation books on a black rock at some National Park in southern Utah where they have a canyon full of whodoos, and walking away never to draw another chart. Not because there was anything wrong with the system. It's the lingo that got me off-track and unappreciated by people who meant me no harm. They just didn't and still don't do nothing to cross Jesus and their worship of the Bible.
I learned astrology by creating natal charts of specific people and then interpreting their chart in their presence to gather feedback as to what might or might not seem true between the two of us. Some woman from up in Boston told me I should make a thousand charts and do readings on my own work to figure out what's wot according to the conversations I had with real people and not other people's graven images. My own graven images is what she told me was important, and I pretty much went along for the ride. So, as usuall, I drew at least two thousand natal charts and used other systems for horary data.
I began astrology after I had traveled around the country with this dude who taught me the tarots layouts every night after work for months on end. Both strung out on white crosses. Chronic fatigue and study seem to go hand and hand with my shoddy accomplishments in this regard. I ended up with this crazy living with this crazy woman in Key West, and had started using palm reading instead of tarot, when I became aware that astrology is the mother of all occult "sciences". I needed to know astrology to do better palm readings. I began holding hands with people while interpreting their natal charts. Who doesn't like holding hands?
It was palm reading that discouraged me from drawing charts after twenty years or so. I could be breezing along saying what i saw in some other's palm when my use of the astrology lingo interfered with people trusting me because of what they had been taught by some church. It really interfered with my flow for them to be suspicious. I was born in the Year of the Rabbit. We don't do confrontation with power, but provoke and retreat. Provoke and retreat. Movement and rest, movement and rest. First this, then that. First this, then that. Neti-neti.
When I use the term "perseverance", the me-and-thee-ing of it derives straight from the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching. The lingo in this classical Chinese book (one of the five) ruffles no feathers. Unless I bring it up myself, nobody suspects I'm using a system, although I might throw in a biblical phrase or two if they're obviously of a Christian upbringing. The GoT makes that more fun. They know, but they don't gnow, and confusion is the first step of hypnosis.
I talk out of my head, but from real time images that are like drifting thoughts I capture with words. Some mine, others... well, they could come from anywhere or originate in anybody present or past, but I treat what drifts in as if it's from the other whether it actually is or not. Nobody knows.
Saturn could be represented by anything "in the other person" in real ti-me. Why would I use historical data from dead prophets when the whole point is that I'm holding the hand of a living one. I only talk to hypnotize and suggest they are secretly their own prophet, and they need to tell me what they'll only remember as something I sayid, but in actuality wasn't me, but them.
Granted, Saturn in my natal is in 22° Aries in it's Fall, and in weak conjunction with my sun in 0° 2" Taurus that is in close conjunction with the Descendent. I let their credentials (they don't know they have, yet) overwhelm me and my perceivable weakness elicits the strength of how Saturn makes them walk the line.
I may frame it in feminine or masculine terms according to wot they sot before me. Sometime I force them to use their strength to rescue me from myself in order for me to continue to astound them with their own unkn-own discipline. It's better for both of us that way. I really have nothing to lose. I have great recuperative powers with Mars exalted in Capricorn, and the Moon exalted in Taurus, and Venus exalted in Pisces conjoined to Jupiter the old co-ruler of Pisces, both trine to Pluto. It's actually fun to let people get over on me while all the ti-me knowing nothing at All is lost by their gain.
One aspect of Saturn and Capricorn and Aquarius that continues to intrigue me (although I've obviously put astrology on the back burner) is the Roman god Janus (Janu... worry) and the fact that Saturn is one of the seven planets that can be perceived with the naked eye consciously, and your anus (if you have any couth or never mind at all) is unseen, yet Mercury is exalted in Aquarius. Mercury represents the mind, and the taint is the wholiest spot in one's physical (earth) body. Is that why some people can fly by the seat of their pants or why Jack keeps saying I pull all my rude statements from out of my ass? Okay, I do. So what? Sha-men gnow sha-me mo' bettah than yo' average bear. '-)
❦
Saturday, January 15, 2011
One Sweet Morning
❧
This wireless thing is killing me again. I know that I wrote before that if humans are wireless since the umbilical cord was cut, then each of knows everything there is to know about wireless technology, but I have one problem. Knowing what question to ask to get the universal mind to be specific with it's answers on what means wot?
In my own assessment of my personal needs, visualization plays a huge part. I have other ways of finding satisfaction with what's wot, but visual is the one modality that has always had legs for me. I hate going blind, but that's nothing compared to what's coming up. Maybe one sensory reception system after the other. I'm already legally deaf and have cataracts so cloudy I don't see well on a clear day.
I can't see what I need to know to know where to look to solve my problems. The problem is never in my mind or my visionary process, but has roots in the real world if I just knew where to look. To know where to look I have to ask my nebulous sources the correct question. They indubitably gnow the answer.
Learning to ask the right question is the most powerful lesson I feel like I learned from using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching daily for over thirty years. It was a simple deal that wasn't hidden in the slightest. If I asked the oracle the real question that acted as impetus to my seeking it's wisdom, then the results I got finished the deal.
If I didn't ask the question that truly resided in my heart, then the oracle's response was non-sensible gibberish. I couldn't make heads nor tails of it's omens (pun intended).
There are admonitions throughout the Yellow Book (The I Ching, The Emperor's Yellow Book, The Book of Changes) warning that repeated questions indicating doubt of it's original pronouncements would be repudiated, and no answer would be given.
This is about like Percival leaving the Grail Castle after failing the Grail King's test, and the drawbridge it crossed to leave jumped up at the last second causing his horse to stumble, and a voice was heard that indignantly guffawed "Bumpkin!"
The question to the oracle has to be the sa-me question that your heart wants answered. How the Book of Changes knows when you've been naughty or nice isn't so clear to me. I mean, I know, but I don't yet gnow what I know. I am is me.
One Sweet Morning
Day after day, night after night,
I sit in awesome wonder,
and behold the thoughts I thought before,
that set my life asunder.
The controlling power of bygone years,
has lived within innately.
I've lived my life along with tears.
Some times the sun shines brightly.
I know not the reason for your mourning,
but I understand that you must cry.
The world is turning rather slowly,
while your heart is in the sky.
I feel the pulse within a'pounding,
as you slowly walk away.
Your melancholy is contagious,
the blue of clearness returns to gray.
But, soon within you'll find the answer.
Soon within the tide will flood.
The light will then break through the darkness.
The rainbow's red will turn to love.
The thought of changing will not frighten.
The past is lost in yesterday.
Then, one sweet morning I'll come a'calling,
when you have found the other way.
fmp
October, 1973
Edited: Today
❦
This wireless thing is killing me again. I know that I wrote before that if humans are wireless since the umbilical cord was cut, then each of knows everything there is to know about wireless technology, but I have one problem. Knowing what question to ask to get the universal mind to be specific with it's answers on what means wot?
In my own assessment of my personal needs, visualization plays a huge part. I have other ways of finding satisfaction with what's wot, but visual is the one modality that has always had legs for me. I hate going blind, but that's nothing compared to what's coming up. Maybe one sensory reception system after the other. I'm already legally deaf and have cataracts so cloudy I don't see well on a clear day.
I can't see what I need to know to know where to look to solve my problems. The problem is never in my mind or my visionary process, but has roots in the real world if I just knew where to look. To know where to look I have to ask my nebulous sources the correct question. They indubitably gnow the answer.
Learning to ask the right question is the most powerful lesson I feel like I learned from using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching daily for over thirty years. It was a simple deal that wasn't hidden in the slightest. If I asked the oracle the real question that acted as impetus to my seeking it's wisdom, then the results I got finished the deal.
If I didn't ask the question that truly resided in my heart, then the oracle's response was non-sensible gibberish. I couldn't make heads nor tails of it's omens (pun intended).
There are admonitions throughout the Yellow Book (The I Ching, The Emperor's Yellow Book, The Book of Changes) warning that repeated questions indicating doubt of it's original pronouncements would be repudiated, and no answer would be given.
This is about like Percival leaving the Grail Castle after failing the Grail King's test, and the drawbridge it crossed to leave jumped up at the last second causing his horse to stumble, and a voice was heard that indignantly guffawed "Bumpkin!"
The question to the oracle has to be the sa-me question that your heart wants answered. How the Book of Changes knows when you've been naughty or nice isn't so clear to me. I mean, I know, but I don't yet gnow what I know. I am is me.
One Sweet Morning
Day after day, night after night,
I sit in awesome wonder,
and behold the thoughts I thought before,
that set my life asunder.
The controlling power of bygone years,
has lived within innately.
I've lived my life along with tears.
Some times the sun shines brightly.
I know not the reason for your mourning,
but I understand that you must cry.
The world is turning rather slowly,
while your heart is in the sky.
I feel the pulse within a'pounding,
as you slowly walk away.
Your melancholy is contagious,
the blue of clearness returns to gray.
But, soon within you'll find the answer.
Soon within the tide will flood.
The light will then break through the darkness.
The rainbow's red will turn to love.
The thought of changing will not frighten.
The past is lost in yesterday.
Then, one sweet morning I'll come a'calling,
when you have found the other way.
fmp
October, 1973
Edited: Today
❦
Thursday, January 13, 2011
A Red And Yellow Basket
❧
What makes me who I am? Who makes me what I am? I can only know abstractly by the imaginative constructions I create from curiosity. At times I disbelief they are my own constructions, but already exist by their own right. Like the term "cornucopia". I didn't invent this term, but rather adopted it from an existing group of terms that somehow find a way of fitting themselves into my lexicon.
I found myself out of body nearing some "place". It was displaced from the abstract dimension associated with the sensory domain. Yet it was/is more real than what I dream up to comfort myself when I'm afraid no thing has more me-and-thee-ing than any thing else.
That's what meaning is to me. Whatever it takes to make a you that my me can try to find agreement with. As in "where there are two or more together, there am I" or more mundanely, "It takes two to tango." Maybe communication is the only-est thing that does need two to tango. That's why I use my poetic license to foolishly claim that meaning requires a me and a thee. Meanding. I wonder what happened to the "d"?
My obsession with me in the first person singular got replaced at so-me point in my life by an intrigue with the-more-of-me-than-you-can-see obsession. The more of me than anyone can see started including what I saw of myself in others. Freaked me out. Contrary to my presumed academic goal of individuation.
I like to have gone crazy trying to stop that process. Eventually there was nothing much left of me in the first person singular to fight for or about. That's how I began to understand that there ain't but one me, and each of us think we're that One me, and we are. That's the way I got it figured, but your milage may vary.
If I had real psychic power I would cause the huge Army helicopters hovering endlessly over my house to find some other place to practice their war games. Instead, they're coming here more frequently and staying longer.
I am helpless as an individual against the United States Army. It's not a joke. I seem convinced that if I complained again the Army's invasion of my privacy I would get a visit from Homeland Security. Maybe they would just threaten me or I might never be heard of again.
Apparently every person who lives in this area is just as helpless as me to do anything about it. Instead of protecting us against war the Army has declared war upon the very citizens it's sworn to protect. Sorta like my immune system has. During the first part of my life my immune system protected me. Now, in my dotage, my immune system has reversed roles and is now hell-bent on killing me.
The value of a human life is altogether personal. The only aspect of another person that any witness cares about is what they see of themselves in that other person's behavior. If the observed person gets killed, it's like a part of ourself as witness of their existence gets killed also.
If enough significant others in any one person's life get killed or naturally die close enough in time together, then the living have nothing of themselves left to live for, unless they stop investing in others as themselves, and bring it on home to the whole me.
❦
What makes me who I am? Who makes me what I am? I can only know abstractly by the imaginative constructions I create from curiosity. At times I disbelief they are my own constructions, but already exist by their own right. Like the term "cornucopia". I didn't invent this term, but rather adopted it from an existing group of terms that somehow find a way of fitting themselves into my lexicon.
I found myself out of body nearing some "place". It was displaced from the abstract dimension associated with the sensory domain. Yet it was/is more real than what I dream up to comfort myself when I'm afraid no thing has more me-and-thee-ing than any thing else.
That's what meaning is to me. Whatever it takes to make a you that my me can try to find agreement with. As in "where there are two or more together, there am I" or more mundanely, "It takes two to tango." Maybe communication is the only-est thing that does need two to tango. That's why I use my poetic license to foolishly claim that meaning requires a me and a thee. Meanding. I wonder what happened to the "d"?
My obsession with me in the first person singular got replaced at so-me point in my life by an intrigue with the-more-of-me-than-you-can-see obsession. The more of me than anyone can see started including what I saw of myself in others. Freaked me out. Contrary to my presumed academic goal of individuation.
I like to have gone crazy trying to stop that process. Eventually there was nothing much left of me in the first person singular to fight for or about. That's how I began to understand that there ain't but one me, and each of us think we're that One me, and we are. That's the way I got it figured, but your milage may vary.
If I had real psychic power I would cause the huge Army helicopters hovering endlessly over my house to find some other place to practice their war games. Instead, they're coming here more frequently and staying longer.
I am helpless as an individual against the United States Army. It's not a joke. I seem convinced that if I complained again the Army's invasion of my privacy I would get a visit from Homeland Security. Maybe they would just threaten me or I might never be heard of again.
Apparently every person who lives in this area is just as helpless as me to do anything about it. Instead of protecting us against war the Army has declared war upon the very citizens it's sworn to protect. Sorta like my immune system has. During the first part of my life my immune system protected me. Now, in my dotage, my immune system has reversed roles and is now hell-bent on killing me.
The value of a human life is altogether personal. The only aspect of another person that any witness cares about is what they see of themselves in that other person's behavior. If the observed person gets killed, it's like a part of ourself as witness of their existence gets killed also.
If enough significant others in any one person's life get killed or naturally die close enough in time together, then the living have nothing of themselves left to live for, unless they stop investing in others as themselves, and bring it on home to the whole me.
❦
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Snow And Rain
❧
One of the significant aspects of my dotage is that I do know who has been naughty or nice. People tell me what they're up to all the time. They just don't know they're betraying themselves by accusing other people of being the way they are. Candidly, it's not that interesting to know the intimate facts of life that other people reveal through self-betrayal.
It is not beyond me to blackmail people a little by reminding them that I was listening when they accused somebody else of doing what they regularly do. The blackmailing I do is not very rewarding. Mostly I use the information people betray about themselves to keep them off my back.
I don't want other people to use me as the object of their betrayal. I don't want them to use me as the mirror they use to project their own idea of themselves without knowing it. Ignorantly. To punish them I point out what they're ignoring. It doesn't have to be that way, and usually ain't unless they get pushy.
If they do, I just tell them they are like what they accused other people of being like. I can't possibly go wrong. I get the information straight from their own conversations without bothering to rearrange the very words they chose to address their own issues.
Most people don't remember what they said themselves five minutes ago. I learned that from studying hypnosis and NLP. One of the ways the training seminars in NLP helped me was having to practice remembering what people said, in order to repeat it to them five minutes later.
Doing that is what it seems to take for me to institute a conscious practice situation about anything I find myself interested in. Part of my learning process is that when I become aware that some point of understanding goes beyond the scope of where I usually take it, I have to make that awareness a part of my conscious operation in order to be on the lookout for incidences and events that sort of prove that understanding might be useable.
Setting up a conscious practice routine for doing or biding my time seems important to my process for being a human at this time. It's not like I've never been human before "this time". I suspect, because I've told stories with this moral, that I haven't been without a human body for millennia or more.
Over the last four or five years I've been involved in teaching myself to play the major and minor scales on my pretty nice Yamaha Grand Portable Digital Piano. Despite the painful bouts of rheumatoid arthritis I've experienced during this period of time, I think I'm doing pretty good.
I might miss a day or two now and then, but I consistently work at doing it daily. It's not like I'm trying to get ready to play a concert in Carnegie Hall, or at all. It's not like I like being persevering, I just need to be persevering because I got no talent for it.
I have to keep on keeping on for reasons I only sometime fathom. When I do seem to be possessed by lucidity it's hard to hold on to and to make it a part of my long-term memory. For me, that's why I have to create or generate a practice routine. To get to the same place people with a gift or a talent for doing it get to automagically.
There ain't no time table for when I feel proficient at playing the scales that I practice most days. All I know is that it is up to me to recognize when what's wot. By that, I mean to say that the practice I've been following through on has revealed a fatal flaw.
The system I'm practicing itself seems prone to informing me that no matter how much more energy I put into this particular project, the results will never be really favorable. No 'Atta boys' or calls for "Encore! ... Encore!", even if I keep it up for a thousand years.
Contrarily, if I ignore the omens to cease and desist, my valiant efforts may end in shame and humiliation. Who could possibly know that is true more than me? That's the fatal flaw a native born with the planet Mercury passing through the astrology sign Aries has to deal with.
In my natal chart this configuration has a weak trine to the Midheaven in Leo as it's only aspect. There are no negative aspects to Mercury, so I can't imagine what life would be like for somebody with Mercury in Aries that was conflicted. Aries is the home of the Greek and Roman god of war. They will boldly go where no man has been before. Not usually with the results that Einstein had. It's not the sort of astrological layout that aids and abets a cozy domestic lifestyle.
❦
One of the significant aspects of my dotage is that I do know who has been naughty or nice. People tell me what they're up to all the time. They just don't know they're betraying themselves by accusing other people of being the way they are. Candidly, it's not that interesting to know the intimate facts of life that other people reveal through self-betrayal.
It is not beyond me to blackmail people a little by reminding them that I was listening when they accused somebody else of doing what they regularly do. The blackmailing I do is not very rewarding. Mostly I use the information people betray about themselves to keep them off my back.
I don't want other people to use me as the object of their betrayal. I don't want them to use me as the mirror they use to project their own idea of themselves without knowing it. Ignorantly. To punish them I point out what they're ignoring. It doesn't have to be that way, and usually ain't unless they get pushy.
If they do, I just tell them they are like what they accused other people of being like. I can't possibly go wrong. I get the information straight from their own conversations without bothering to rearrange the very words they chose to address their own issues.
Most people don't remember what they said themselves five minutes ago. I learned that from studying hypnosis and NLP. One of the ways the training seminars in NLP helped me was having to practice remembering what people said, in order to repeat it to them five minutes later.
Doing that is what it seems to take for me to institute a conscious practice situation about anything I find myself interested in. Part of my learning process is that when I become aware that some point of understanding goes beyond the scope of where I usually take it, I have to make that awareness a part of my conscious operation in order to be on the lookout for incidences and events that sort of prove that understanding might be useable.
Setting up a conscious practice routine for doing or biding my time seems important to my process for being a human at this time. It's not like I've never been human before "this time". I suspect, because I've told stories with this moral, that I haven't been without a human body for millennia or more.
Over the last four or five years I've been involved in teaching myself to play the major and minor scales on my pretty nice Yamaha Grand Portable Digital Piano. Despite the painful bouts of rheumatoid arthritis I've experienced during this period of time, I think I'm doing pretty good.
I might miss a day or two now and then, but I consistently work at doing it daily. It's not like I'm trying to get ready to play a concert in Carnegie Hall, or at all. It's not like I like being persevering, I just need to be persevering because I got no talent for it.
I have to keep on keeping on for reasons I only sometime fathom. When I do seem to be possessed by lucidity it's hard to hold on to and to make it a part of my long-term memory. For me, that's why I have to create or generate a practice routine. To get to the same place people with a gift or a talent for doing it get to automagically.
There ain't no time table for when I feel proficient at playing the scales that I practice most days. All I know is that it is up to me to recognize when what's wot. By that, I mean to say that the practice I've been following through on has revealed a fatal flaw.
The system I'm practicing itself seems prone to informing me that no matter how much more energy I put into this particular project, the results will never be really favorable. No 'Atta boys' or calls for "Encore! ... Encore!", even if I keep it up for a thousand years.
Contrarily, if I ignore the omens to cease and desist, my valiant efforts may end in shame and humiliation. Who could possibly know that is true more than me? That's the fatal flaw a native born with the planet Mercury passing through the astrology sign Aries has to deal with.
In my natal chart this configuration has a weak trine to the Midheaven in Leo as it's only aspect. There are no negative aspects to Mercury, so I can't imagine what life would be like for somebody with Mercury in Aries that was conflicted. Aries is the home of the Greek and Roman god of war. They will boldly go where no man has been before. Not usually with the results that Einstein had. It's not the sort of astrological layout that aids and abets a cozy domestic lifestyle.
❦
Monday, October 19, 2009
High School Reunions Are Weird
I got plenty of help making a fool of myself today at the reunion luncheon. The class president and the secretary both gave a little speech and I was the only person either one of them called by name. They each had a little story of what I did or said previous to the luncheon. I was set up to say something stupid to get attention. I said something equivalent to the notion that the only reason I came to the luncheon was to find out who had died since the last reunion, and then promised all the remaining high school class members that i was going to live longer than any of them. They tittered nervously. I guess I wasn't supposed to say something like that, but me an the one person I said it for might have been the only ones who noticed.
Several times I turned my head only to find some one staring at me with a pleasant look on their face. They seemed genuinely amused by my histrionics. Somehow I got the impression that the reason I was getting positive feedback from my classmates was because of the changes I've gone through in my life quest. Getting feedback on my own relationship with myself from this group that thought they knew me during my pubescent years seems fairly important to me. It might be hateful to say, but seeing that they got old too is rewarding.
There was this one woman I talked to for longer than I'd ever talked to her in my life. We had this fifteen minute conversation about her and how she had met her husband in college and knew right away she could build the kind of life she wanted with him. Her story was plausible, but not truly convincing.
I asked her what her astrology sign was, and she hedged of course to show that she was an educated church-going woman who never believed in the occult. But, when she told me she was an Aries and hinted that she was a conservative Republican I couldn't stop myself from encouraging her to tell me more, and then more.
The fact that she seemed so willing to tell me her life story proved to me once again that I was still living in a bubble of piteous lies I told myself to justify my teen-aged angst. I thought she was a different kind of person altogether, and was reticent to tell me what she was really like. I was totally wrong. This woman was sure of her own place in the world. Why am I always the last to know?
Another female classmate who was the class beauty queen was very friendly and came up to speak to me several times, and then sought me out before she left to say goodbye. She seemed happier than the last time I saw her. She told me about how she had maybe six grandchildren and her current husband has nine, in Scotland of all places, and she's having the time of her life commuting to Scotland and back and being a grandmother. Whatta woman. She was more convincing than ever before.
I got another perspective of this guy who became a veterinarian. The last reunion he talked to me (at me) for a good long time. He seemed to be trying to convince me of the positive influence my father had on him when we were in high school together. This is an old, old story with me. There must have been ten people say something to me to honor my father through me. It took a long time for me to let them do that and feel good about it.
I hadn't been able to understand the nature of the veterinarian for years during and after high school. It seems painful for him to seek my company out at these affairs. It's as though he has to express his gratitude for the interest my father took him, and he seems to be telling me I should have treated my father with the respect he had offered.
Today, however, something happened that brought some clarity into the nature of his character. The class president called on him to offer a prayer before we ate lunch, and the manner in which he was called upon for saying the blessing and his choice of rhetoric for saying the enchantment told me everything I needed to know to let him be.
This other guy that brought his memory of my father into the conversation I went outta my way to start with him, but he regretted it as soon as he realized the slight of tongue that betrayed his secret admiration.
He had been the star sportsman in our class. He was a really fast runner, and he could knock a baseball over the fence with some predictable regularity. He got scholarship offers in two sports. Just to make conversation I asked him if he had continue to teach school after he stopped coaching.
He did keep teaching, he said, and when I asked him what he majored in during his college career he told me he had majored in biology. I was a little surprised. I never realized he was a nerd.
He leaned back in his seat real confident-like, and said that my father had been the strongest influence on his choice of a major for college. Then, he realized what he said and corrected himself to say the biology teacher, a Mister Parsons, was his strongest influence.
For some reason, I suspect that his little slip-up was the first time he was consciously aware of how powerfully my father influenced him despite his refusal to take his classes in high school. He told some people he didn't take agriculture, even though he lived on a farm, because he didn't wanna end up being a hick.
Sometime I think people treat me as if I were my father instead of me being myself. I don't think they know it. Maybe it's not true. But, they talk about their relationship with my father as if I'm supposed to understand their need for me to play that role FOR them. It's not possible. My father was an honorable man. I can't even act that way, much less BE that way.
I think my talking about dead classmates was supposed to prove to them that I'm not my father. He was a Libra. He would never have been so crude or rude. I think they forgave me immediately because for some reason they need me to be my father for them. They also eat in blue plate special restaurants that serve heated can food like the school lunch programs to remind them of neverneverland. Life in a small town is just weird.
The one thing that pleases me at these sort of functions is that my mother didn't graduate from college and get her "A" teaching certificate until she was 48 years old, which was after I got out of high school. If she had taught at the same school I attended like my father did, then these reunions would require me to play the roles of both my father and mother simultaneously. As talented as I am is, it's not worthy.
Several times I turned my head only to find some one staring at me with a pleasant look on their face. They seemed genuinely amused by my histrionics. Somehow I got the impression that the reason I was getting positive feedback from my classmates was because of the changes I've gone through in my life quest. Getting feedback on my own relationship with myself from this group that thought they knew me during my pubescent years seems fairly important to me. It might be hateful to say, but seeing that they got old too is rewarding.
There was this one woman I talked to for longer than I'd ever talked to her in my life. We had this fifteen minute conversation about her and how she had met her husband in college and knew right away she could build the kind of life she wanted with him. Her story was plausible, but not truly convincing.
I asked her what her astrology sign was, and she hedged of course to show that she was an educated church-going woman who never believed in the occult. But, when she told me she was an Aries and hinted that she was a conservative Republican I couldn't stop myself from encouraging her to tell me more, and then more.
The fact that she seemed so willing to tell me her life story proved to me once again that I was still living in a bubble of piteous lies I told myself to justify my teen-aged angst. I thought she was a different kind of person altogether, and was reticent to tell me what she was really like. I was totally wrong. This woman was sure of her own place in the world. Why am I always the last to know?
Another female classmate who was the class beauty queen was very friendly and came up to speak to me several times, and then sought me out before she left to say goodbye. She seemed happier than the last time I saw her. She told me about how she had maybe six grandchildren and her current husband has nine, in Scotland of all places, and she's having the time of her life commuting to Scotland and back and being a grandmother. Whatta woman. She was more convincing than ever before.
I got another perspective of this guy who became a veterinarian. The last reunion he talked to me (at me) for a good long time. He seemed to be trying to convince me of the positive influence my father had on him when we were in high school together. This is an old, old story with me. There must have been ten people say something to me to honor my father through me. It took a long time for me to let them do that and feel good about it.
I hadn't been able to understand the nature of the veterinarian for years during and after high school. It seems painful for him to seek my company out at these affairs. It's as though he has to express his gratitude for the interest my father took him, and he seems to be telling me I should have treated my father with the respect he had offered.
Today, however, something happened that brought some clarity into the nature of his character. The class president called on him to offer a prayer before we ate lunch, and the manner in which he was called upon for saying the blessing and his choice of rhetoric for saying the enchantment told me everything I needed to know to let him be.
This other guy that brought his memory of my father into the conversation I went outta my way to start with him, but he regretted it as soon as he realized the slight of tongue that betrayed his secret admiration.
He had been the star sportsman in our class. He was a really fast runner, and he could knock a baseball over the fence with some predictable regularity. He got scholarship offers in two sports. Just to make conversation I asked him if he had continue to teach school after he stopped coaching.
He did keep teaching, he said, and when I asked him what he majored in during his college career he told me he had majored in biology. I was a little surprised. I never realized he was a nerd.
He leaned back in his seat real confident-like, and said that my father had been the strongest influence on his choice of a major for college. Then, he realized what he said and corrected himself to say the biology teacher, a Mister Parsons, was his strongest influence.
For some reason, I suspect that his little slip-up was the first time he was consciously aware of how powerfully my father influenced him despite his refusal to take his classes in high school. He told some people he didn't take agriculture, even though he lived on a farm, because he didn't wanna end up being a hick.
Sometime I think people treat me as if I were my father instead of me being myself. I don't think they know it. Maybe it's not true. But, they talk about their relationship with my father as if I'm supposed to understand their need for me to play that role FOR them. It's not possible. My father was an honorable man. I can't even act that way, much less BE that way.
I think my talking about dead classmates was supposed to prove to them that I'm not my father. He was a Libra. He would never have been so crude or rude. I think they forgave me immediately because for some reason they need me to be my father for them. They also eat in blue plate special restaurants that serve heated can food like the school lunch programs to remind them of neverneverland. Life in a small town is just weird.
The one thing that pleases me at these sort of functions is that my mother didn't graduate from college and get her "A" teaching certificate until she was 48 years old, which was after I got out of high school. If she had taught at the same school I attended like my father did, then these reunions would require me to play the roles of both my father and mother simultaneously. As talented as I am is, it's not worthy.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Woodworking
It seems silly to say how much I'm anticipating how the repairs to these two stringed instruments are going to work out. The repairs to the mandolin didn't amount to much more than cleaning up the old glue spots, and then re-gluing them and then using wood clamps to hold it correctly aligned until the glue sets.
Like the guitar, the mandolin is not a high dollar item to begin with. I don't remember my motivation for buying it, but I don't think it had anything to do with bluegrass or old-time music. At the time that I bought it I doubt if I'd ever seen that many people play a mandolin close up.
Thangs have changed in that regard. My friend Rainey started playing a mandolin when a friend of his insisted he borrow his mandolin to see if Rainey might enjoy playing it. He did, and I sort of gained an interest by osmosis. I didn't think my interest was so great I'd buy another mandolin, but finding the one I forgot opens the door for me to at least explore playing it.
The guitar interests me because I played it like it was for a good long time. As a matter of fact, when I thought about the guitar I had in the attic I truly thought it was a different guitar. An acoustic jazz guitar that had an accident.
The jazz guitar had other qualities than being broke that made me unenthusiastic about hauling it out and repairing it. It was a heavy, cumbersome guitar that didn't have much reach to it. The fret board was bowed so much that there was no practical way to straighten out again.
I can't say I was delighted when I opened the case and saw which guitar it was. I am glad it wasn't the klutzy old jazz guitar. I'm pretty sure that if it had been I would have just put it on my trash pile and burnt it with a little prayer about ashes to ashes and all good thangs must come to an end.
There is some things I do get delighted about, and that's lighting up stuff I don't want around me any more rather than giving it away or taking it to the trash dump. Some things, when I'm done with them, I don't want nobody else to have them and possibly go through the same disappointment I did. I burn them figuratively at the stake.
I burn old clothes that I've worn because I don't want nobody else to wear them. Sometime even if they're brand-new and I get a bad feeling. I wish I could say that I'm a careful shopper and look for clothes with a little class at a good price, but according to how many clothes I don't wear but once or twice before I burn them to a crisp, I suspect most of my shopping is thoughtless impulse buying, and it's my shame about indulging in that kind of stupidity that causes me to burn the evidence.
When I win the lottery I'm gonna have all my shoes tailor-made just to see what that might feel like. I do know how store-bought shoes feel. No two pair are alike even if I buy the same brand. I suspect this might be true for other people too. Maybe even people who only buy tailor-made shoes. Part of that probably has to do with how my feet themselves change from time to time.
I have a bunch of carving tools I've never used much. I don't have much of a knack for sharpening them. That seems to be a craft all by itself. I first became aware of that while I was in the Navy. There I became aware of seaman's knives. The kind that have marlin spikes on them for dealing with ropes and knots. Some of the guys could sharpen them keen enough to shave the hair off their arms, and others, like me, were lucky to get them sharp enough to cut butter.
Often enough these days I am getting the feeling that I've lost years of my life exploring and participating what goes on with the internet. I knew when I started writing on my blogs that might cause me to lose interest in the e-mail discussion groups I participated in for around fifteen years. What I found out doing that, however, is that what I really enjoy doing is trying to capture drifting thoughts with words. I like wool-gathering to get the raw materials I need to weave my tunic of one-thread.
Like the guitar, the mandolin is not a high dollar item to begin with. I don't remember my motivation for buying it, but I don't think it had anything to do with bluegrass or old-time music. At the time that I bought it I doubt if I'd ever seen that many people play a mandolin close up.
Thangs have changed in that regard. My friend Rainey started playing a mandolin when a friend of his insisted he borrow his mandolin to see if Rainey might enjoy playing it. He did, and I sort of gained an interest by osmosis. I didn't think my interest was so great I'd buy another mandolin, but finding the one I forgot opens the door for me to at least explore playing it.
The guitar interests me because I played it like it was for a good long time. As a matter of fact, when I thought about the guitar I had in the attic I truly thought it was a different guitar. An acoustic jazz guitar that had an accident.
The jazz guitar had other qualities than being broke that made me unenthusiastic about hauling it out and repairing it. It was a heavy, cumbersome guitar that didn't have much reach to it. The fret board was bowed so much that there was no practical way to straighten out again.
I can't say I was delighted when I opened the case and saw which guitar it was. I am glad it wasn't the klutzy old jazz guitar. I'm pretty sure that if it had been I would have just put it on my trash pile and burnt it with a little prayer about ashes to ashes and all good thangs must come to an end.
There is some things I do get delighted about, and that's lighting up stuff I don't want around me any more rather than giving it away or taking it to the trash dump. Some things, when I'm done with them, I don't want nobody else to have them and possibly go through the same disappointment I did. I burn them figuratively at the stake.
I burn old clothes that I've worn because I don't want nobody else to wear them. Sometime even if they're brand-new and I get a bad feeling. I wish I could say that I'm a careful shopper and look for clothes with a little class at a good price, but according to how many clothes I don't wear but once or twice before I burn them to a crisp, I suspect most of my shopping is thoughtless impulse buying, and it's my shame about indulging in that kind of stupidity that causes me to burn the evidence.
When I win the lottery I'm gonna have all my shoes tailor-made just to see what that might feel like. I do know how store-bought shoes feel. No two pair are alike even if I buy the same brand. I suspect this might be true for other people too. Maybe even people who only buy tailor-made shoes. Part of that probably has to do with how my feet themselves change from time to time.
I have a bunch of carving tools I've never used much. I don't have much of a knack for sharpening them. That seems to be a craft all by itself. I first became aware of that while I was in the Navy. There I became aware of seaman's knives. The kind that have marlin spikes on them for dealing with ropes and knots. Some of the guys could sharpen them keen enough to shave the hair off their arms, and others, like me, were lucky to get them sharp enough to cut butter.
Often enough these days I am getting the feeling that I've lost years of my life exploring and participating what goes on with the internet. I knew when I started writing on my blogs that might cause me to lose interest in the e-mail discussion groups I participated in for around fifteen years. What I found out doing that, however, is that what I really enjoy doing is trying to capture drifting thoughts with words. I like wool-gathering to get the raw materials I need to weave my tunic of one-thread.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Old Title/Same Tune
New blog. I couldn't let the title of my old e-mail discussion group go after all these years, so I created this blog as it's namesake. I've been thinking about deleting the Yahoo group for a while now. I found out pretty fast that I'm not the sort of person who can manage an e-mail discussion group. I don't know why. Most of the time I'm too inside of that dynamic to fathom why because I can't observe me as a stranger while I'm busy being the observer. Tunnel vision.
That's not really a joke. I get so single-minded about some stuff that the world literally goes away. Worse, or maybe better, I have pretty much rearranged my life to let it be so.
Maybe that's why I became fascinated with Jean Paul Sartre's book Being and Nothingness. He wrote about topics and subjects that drew my attention before I read him in a powerful way. The way I read his material indicated that being and nothingness were intimately related in a way I deeply understood. I'm relatively sure I projected my opinion upon what he was writing, but on the other hand, it kept seeming that he meant to write the same stuff I was projecting upon the stuff he wrote. By the time I finished reading the entire 800 pages of his translated work I actually had the gall to conclude that I understood what both of us meant.
The odd part of it is that I still do think I understand what Sartre intended to communicate, and it wasn't exactly about philosophy. Wittgenstein might agree. I've never read that much of Wittgenstein and probably won't. I've read various pundit's comments and reviews of his stuff, and concluded that he was right to say there's no such thing as philosophy. I keep returning to solipsism. I don't like to. I keep getting the feeling from people that they think it's a copout, and that's bad.
I don't think it's bad. To me that's just the nature of the abstract worlds we all create as a way of feeling important. A way of giving ourselves false hope that what we put our faith in will save us from the terror. The horrible thing is that we know deep down through repetitive, redundant eternal experience that our defense against the terror won't succeed. Paradoxically, and simultaneously, it's not even supposed to.
Any extemporaneous attitude I conjure as a coping device that carries a torch for some imagined salvation, appears simultaneously to push my perpetual lust for safety from the terror even further away. That's what solipsism means to me. The strategies I employ as a defense against the terror points to the futility of using nothingness as the ground for being. If I stop denying that the perceived world is not me, I lose consciousness and fall back into the cosmic soup.
Cosmic soup? Not exactly. There is another metaphor I use as a descriptor for non-being. It's probably the result of being raised in the Bible Belt. It's the metaphor of an innocent babe in swaddling clothes. It's not really a place as much as a state of being. It's not a conscious state of being, because anything I could say about it is not of the experience itself, but a retrospective consideration. What I experience in real time as that innocent child-like entity wrapped in a grey softness that's sort of like lamb's wool. That's the "swaddling clothes" reference. That's being inside the terror and not seeing it as such.
It's when I'm not inside the terror that it scares me deeply and persistently. No rest for the weary. Whatever it is that I am be-leaves itself acorn to oak to be when it's not inside the cosmic soup, that IS the terror.
I'm really trying to describe something here, but I'm not real happy that I'm portraying the thing-in-itself as an essence that can't be contaminated by exposure to the assumptions upon it's careactor, but it don't consciously know that except by abstracting the apparent reasons of their presupposed model of behavior without possessing any reasons of their own.
The hypothetical "reason" I can't describe what I want to is that any description I offer is unnecessary for anyone soul that has consciously been aware of themselves as that innocence (inner sense). It's too unadorned to offer a construction of something that only is what it is when there is nothing else to turn it into as a source for re-member-ing. It's a meme. A me-me. A doppelganger and it's shadowy friend. It's a temporary product of me and thee. When two or more of us are together and we're me-and-thee-ing like crazy.
That's why the Gospel of Thomas saying indicates by it's brevity the humorous wisdom of "Be passerby." In another wisdom book by the Chinese culture, "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped." This is the condition of the innocent child in swaddling clothes inside the terror. It holds on to no thing. It's in between cumming and going. It only has me-mores to re-me with. The me-mores are the "swaddling clothes" and require a living body to twist and weave them into a one-thread shroud that's a metaphor inside a metaphor.
Or maybe not. How the hell would I know? I do like the last paragraph though. I never have understood why such pride is taken in weaving a one-thread garment, but it's held in high regard in several cultures. What it actually means could be subjective and whatever the individual shape-shifter insists upon. Sometime I appear to be convinced I am is evolved itself from one of ten billion zillion pearl-like creatures that roam the universe and perpetually make ourselves into things outta whatever we find about us at any one ti-me or the other.
I don't think the pearls roam the universe as if vagabonds out looking for a good time. I think they're all running helter skelter from a terror they can only cope with from the inside out, and when they're on the inside they forget the terror is waiting for them to re-me.
That's not really a joke. I get so single-minded about some stuff that the world literally goes away. Worse, or maybe better, I have pretty much rearranged my life to let it be so.
Maybe that's why I became fascinated with Jean Paul Sartre's book Being and Nothingness. He wrote about topics and subjects that drew my attention before I read him in a powerful way. The way I read his material indicated that being and nothingness were intimately related in a way I deeply understood. I'm relatively sure I projected my opinion upon what he was writing, but on the other hand, it kept seeming that he meant to write the same stuff I was projecting upon the stuff he wrote. By the time I finished reading the entire 800 pages of his translated work I actually had the gall to conclude that I understood what both of us meant.
The odd part of it is that I still do think I understand what Sartre intended to communicate, and it wasn't exactly about philosophy. Wittgenstein might agree. I've never read that much of Wittgenstein and probably won't. I've read various pundit's comments and reviews of his stuff, and concluded that he was right to say there's no such thing as philosophy. I keep returning to solipsism. I don't like to. I keep getting the feeling from people that they think it's a copout, and that's bad.
I don't think it's bad. To me that's just the nature of the abstract worlds we all create as a way of feeling important. A way of giving ourselves false hope that what we put our faith in will save us from the terror. The horrible thing is that we know deep down through repetitive, redundant eternal experience that our defense against the terror won't succeed. Paradoxically, and simultaneously, it's not even supposed to.
Any extemporaneous attitude I conjure as a coping device that carries a torch for some imagined salvation, appears simultaneously to push my perpetual lust for safety from the terror even further away. That's what solipsism means to me. The strategies I employ as a defense against the terror points to the futility of using nothingness as the ground for being. If I stop denying that the perceived world is not me, I lose consciousness and fall back into the cosmic soup.
Cosmic soup? Not exactly. There is another metaphor I use as a descriptor for non-being. It's probably the result of being raised in the Bible Belt. It's the metaphor of an innocent babe in swaddling clothes. It's not really a place as much as a state of being. It's not a conscious state of being, because anything I could say about it is not of the experience itself, but a retrospective consideration. What I experience in real time as that innocent child-like entity wrapped in a grey softness that's sort of like lamb's wool. That's the "swaddling clothes" reference. That's being inside the terror and not seeing it as such.
It's when I'm not inside the terror that it scares me deeply and persistently. No rest for the weary. Whatever it is that I am be-leaves itself acorn to oak to be when it's not inside the cosmic soup, that IS the terror.
I'm really trying to describe something here, but I'm not real happy that I'm portraying the thing-in-itself as an essence that can't be contaminated by exposure to the assumptions upon it's careactor, but it don't consciously know that except by abstracting the apparent reasons of their presupposed model of behavior without possessing any reasons of their own.
The hypothetical "reason" I can't describe what I want to is that any description I offer is unnecessary for anyone soul that has consciously been aware of themselves as that innocence (inner sense). It's too unadorned to offer a construction of something that only is what it is when there is nothing else to turn it into as a source for re-member-ing. It's a meme. A me-me. A doppelganger and it's shadowy friend. It's a temporary product of me and thee. When two or more of us are together and we're me-and-thee-ing like crazy.
That's why the Gospel of Thomas saying indicates by it's brevity the humorous wisdom of "Be passerby." In another wisdom book by the Chinese culture, "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped." This is the condition of the innocent child in swaddling clothes inside the terror. It holds on to no thing. It's in between cumming and going. It only has me-mores to re-me with. The me-mores are the "swaddling clothes" and require a living body to twist and weave them into a one-thread shroud that's a metaphor inside a metaphor.
Or maybe not. How the hell would I know? I do like the last paragraph though. I never have understood why such pride is taken in weaving a one-thread garment, but it's held in high regard in several cultures. What it actually means could be subjective and whatever the individual shape-shifter insists upon. Sometime I appear to be convinced I am is evolved itself from one of ten billion zillion pearl-like creatures that roam the universe and perpetually make ourselves into things outta whatever we find about us at any one ti-me or the other.
I don't think the pearls roam the universe as if vagabonds out looking for a good time. I think they're all running helter skelter from a terror they can only cope with from the inside out, and when they're on the inside they forget the terror is waiting for them to re-me.
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