Shift right, merge left

So as I was on the bus yesterday I was doing what I frequently do, study, also I frequently have to look up and out when, because of the construction, we just sit on the bridge over the highway.

I’ve always had to do this. Similarly I used to hitchhike out to the airport just to hang around, and watch the planes take off and land.

When I use to go to bad kid’s school way out in the country, I would often skip the school bus because as the second pickup I would be on it for about an hour and a half. So I would hitchhike there instead, which often meant walking part way. So there I was, standing on the overpass over 23, just in a trance. Watching the traffic and getting all the little flashes off the hundreds of people going by.
All of a sudden the cool hippie teacher pulls up and hollers at me “ get in the car”
It was like being snapped back to reality when my consciousness had been flying out on hundreds of different tangential lines. I could literally feel and see the lines contract back into me.

It turns out that one of the other teachers had seen me and freaked, thinking I was going to jump. So they sent “hippie” Rick to fetch me and “talk me down”.
I think I made it pretty clear that that was not at all what was happening, and he seemed to get me right away when I tried to explain what it was really about.
We had worked at the crisis counseling center together so we knew what was up.
Anyway so there I was yesterday and felt that same odd feeling, like I could feel the people down there and I just started moving outwards from my center. But simultaneously I was having a massive anxiety attack watching the people merging. What a crazy and delicate dance that is. I can’t believe people just take it so for granted. You guys should see it from up there where it’s a lot more apparent how narrow all the margins are.

I did it once because my Dad made me, when I was learning to drive (at age 26).
I can hardly remember it because it was such a huge tangle of fear, adrenaline, sheer panic and determination. How the hell do you people do it all day everyday?

So that’s all, just an odd moment I had. Of how sometimes you’re just in the midst of the most banal activities and the veil just shifts a little sideways and the perspective changes.

Be careful what you wish for....

I wish I could have surreptitiously photographed the woman on the bus sitting all the way at the back with a huge, huge mass of hair in tiny braids pulled down over her face, text messaging on her phone.

I wish I had just turned around and photographed the incredible purple flowers out in front of the school while I was photographing the clouds. Why didn’t I just take a few more? I couldn’t really have felt that self-conscious, could I?

I wish I had cleaned the lens before snapping.

I wish I had known more precisely how much I want to know when I was younger, so I could have gotten a little more rounded education then. The streets were a good classroom and laboratory but were not, by any means, well rounded.

I wish more of that cabal would get indicted, and investigated instead of sworn in.

I wish ice cream was on the bottom of the food pyramid.

I wish most days were as beautiful as today.

Heart attack and vine

I am so annoyed with the word chipotle’. It’s become a potato grater on my ear.

I’m enjoying a batch of nice homemade popcorn, real butter, real salt, real slow death in a bowl. It’s my reward for getting my Shirley Jackson presentation together for tomorrow.
Now, last time I seemed to have jinxed myself, so I don’t want to go to far with any self congratulatory crap, BUT I have started to creep upon catching up in math and bio, the getting of the homework scheduled in and accomplished.
The beginning to grasp the immensity and the sheer stupidity of taking 6 classes.

This weekend is possibly my last grasp at a social life, tis the season to make strudel at Strudelqueen’s house. That’s Saturday after work. Then Sunday I agreed to make Karl La Fong beef wellington for his birthday dinner. I’m so screwed. But I quizzed Uncle Bunny at length before he left for his fabulous trip to Hawaii, and I bought the best puff pastry to be found. What? You thought I would make the pastry? I believe I’ve ranted about my lack of pastry skill before.
But my pate’ is to die for, so - fingers crossed, asparagus steamed, maybe it will all come out ok.

OPERATION EDEN

I added another link, again I’m justifying linkage because it is a photo documentary of Katrina’s wake. It’s by a photographer named Siege and it’s just a wonderment.
You can also send him money, which since Warren Ellis vouched for him, I did. It seems like especially if you’re like me and don’t have much to give, giving it directly so no bureaucratic paper shuffler gets his cut off the top, or so no politician stashes it in their basement is a better way to go, fuck a tax write off or whatever, I can live without that one.

Mmm fresh hearts

God, I pray for all of you that you may be free from the suffering of schizophrenia. For you or anyone you care about. That is just one heartless bitch.

My partner, my lover, my best friend suffers from it. It is relentless and terrifying.
And I am completely humbled in the face of it. The idea that it can be talked through is nowhere and right now it is just one long tightrope of trying not to say the wrong thing and therefore become an enemy.

This idea that one of the coolest people I have ever known could just be twisted and turned at the whim of some fucking organic cycling syndrome and be almost completely at its mercy, (thank god he has one of the most profound stubborn streaks known to man, or it could be worse). It’s just heartrending.
And that it should have reemerged and resurfaced right now, at one of the worst possible times for us, when I’m trying really hard to accomplish something to help us get out of this fucking poverty cycle, well, it almost makes me believe in the conspiracy.
So, while I AM 99% sure it is an organic issue, if I ever WAS to find out that certain people were doing psychological experimentation of that nature through use of ELF or whatever, I would find you, and rip your fucking hearts out and crush them under my boot, still beating.

Je veux duper les mites

The days they are just a roller coaster. There seems to be no end in sight. The old saying/curse may you live in interesting times seems never so apropos as now.
I had to work yesterday morning. Then as soon as that was done start getting ready for the block party. I made up a new recipe which was pasta salad with a tomato, ricotta, parmesan dressing. Apparently it’s pretty good as out of a huge bowl there is only a medium carton left. I had to pick up the donations, set up the sound and help get and set up the crazy giant grill.
Then we did our set which was really pretty good. Then the jamming starts and nobody can sing apparently so they keep asking me to. I manage to grab some food and such but then I had to start putting together a million glo- necklaces and bracelets for the little kids parade.
Blah blah blah, then take it all down again.

Get home, and again with the, the minute I get done with one immense task the people are just laying the heaviest of heavy shit on me. Just heart wrenching and really problematic stuff.
So I just try to be an effective listener until the yawns just can’t be hid or contained any more. Beg off and go to bed, to immediately go into a coma with the computer still on and the unfinished mala still in my hand.

People wonder why I still miss stimulants. There are just not enough hours in the day some days. And in this political and economic climate more problems and issues and lives falling apart than ever it seems.

I would almost go so far as to say this sucks. I was thinking about Chinese labourers for some reason yesterday. And the idea that life has been reduced to just working 15 hours a day in some factory just to support your family and some crappy apartment makes me wonder what the hell IS the point for so many people. Why are they subjected to such a hellish existence, why am I so fortunate as to have gotten one so fraught with meaning and learning?
And really in spite of the fact that compared to most people around this area we are poor, in the big schema, we’re quite wealthy.
And how is it that so many people who are existing in almost the equivalant of God realms are so ignorant and selfish and full of a sense of entitlement?
Don’t they have even the vaguest inkling that that’s just luck and luck runs out?
What am I saying? Of course they don’t have a fucking clue or they would at least try, to behave differently.
Better to try to put a camel through the eye of a needle than to try to get the flaming, bloody, psycho pathetic (typo, but it stays) wealth mongers shoved into any real awakenings.

Yeah, whatever, I've got one day to catch up all my homework, you probably won’t be hearing from me for awhile then.

If not for forever, at least for today-

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

“And if your whistles weak, yell, Jiminy Cricket”

So the dogsitting is done for now. One real advantage was getting me off my fat ass to to walk in the evenings. The cicadas have given over to the crickets and with the last weeks full harvest moon it was just lovely, just frickin lovely, every single night. Then it was capped by a fantastic thunderstorm last night and now its just all cool and breezy fall.
This is one of my most favoured and evocative times of years. One would think that as a longtime smoker I would have no sense of smell left. Well I do, so there's another myth busted.
I just love the smell of fall, the crisp scent of the brown leaves, the bright orange and rain smell of the coloured ones. And when people start putting out the hay bales and pumpkins I get rabbit nose, all twitchy and shit.
You know how if you put too long of a candle in your jack’o’lantern and the top gets scorched? I LOVE the smell of burnt pumpkin.
Then there are the colours... the obvious, foliage. But there's also these purple asters that start showing up everywhere, and while I’m not much of a blue girl, when you mix chicory blue with grass green I could stare at that for an hour.
So around here we get these fields of gold, orange, green, red, blue and purple that will just knock you on your ass while you’re just doing your thing and driving around.
It’s just a really exciting time for all the senses, that is until you can start to smell the snow in the air then it gets mixed with a little trepidation. But that’s a month or six weeks from now so, what me worry?

Jaggery, Joggery, a vast dearth of bloggery

So supposedly jaggery is some form of sugar in British colloquialism. I wonder what it’s relationship to goor is? Goor being an Indian (I think) colloquialism for an unrefined very molasses-y sugar. I have a lump of goor on the shelf which I use when making chai.
Which, had I known you were all going to stop by today I would have offered you a little something. Now I feel like a bad hostess. Sorry. I’m just about 50 pages behind each in math and biology both. It’s just being one of those weeks I guess.

I am writing in between songs even now , and during the instrumentals too. Talk about your multitasking, oops gotta sing...

Ok, back. Some tunes I can write during the instrumentals, some I have to count. This one I can handle, it’s long and by feel, not numbers, for me anyway. I wish you guys could hear this stuff though.... now that we’ve got the great and wonderful M-box it shouldn’t be too long.
I seem to be in particularly good vocal form tonight also. Nice.

So, it’s just a quick note to apologize for no tay and biccies before. I should probably give the fella’s some attention now.

Don't f**k with me, I have a yeast infection

Ok I know this is just upset bitchiness but- everybody just slammed me today without so much as a by your leave.
I suspicioned it was going to be one of those days when some twat walks up to me and says “excuse me ma’am, but this is a no smoking campus”. Instead of telling her to go fuck herself, I politely replied “Um, incorrect, not until Jan. 1st.”
She then tried to argue the point. She wouldn’t shut up, I ended up walking away. Smoking.
Um excuse ME, but don’t you think as a 30 year smoker I am SO ACUTELY aware of when the policy goes into effect?

Then there was a tense moment when I was getting my dole of bus tokens when I asked for my receipt, and the same woman who always hands me my receipt, said “we don’t give receipts”. I thought to myself “so, it’s just going to be one of those kinds of days is it?”

But I thought maybe I had been incorrect, as the three remaining classes seemed relatively innocuous and I was even foolish enough to get a little jazzed at a higher than expected score on the bio test.
Then I was stupid enough to be caught by surprise by the next 2 1/2 hours which were just really tense. And just so nobody reading this thinks it’s just them, there were three of you who just dumped your stuff on me one after the other and didn’t even ask me whether I had the time or energy for it. Well, I really didn’t.
But because I love you, I did anyway. Now I have to go write a paper which is due at 11 am tomorrow.

Incidentally, I just had to make the spellcheck learn twat, that’s kind of cheering.

The Beautiful Grandmother circa 1925

Here’s the problem with this computer. No, it’s not a mac vs pc thing. We’re strictly mac here. It’s a self discipline versus the amount of cool stuff out there. I have successfully self disciplined myself about so many things, (yeah I know, but I didn’t say tobacco did I?). But because the net is still in some ways a newer thing for me, I think I went online in 2001, I still don’t have the discipline systems in place. And unlike TV I can’t justify it because I can’t do 2 or 3 other things simultaneously. Well at least not during the writing and reading parts. During the secret vice parts I can accomplish a few other things. And no, I’m not going off into some masturbatory weirdness there, I’m talking about games.
So I AM going to stop now and come back later tonight because I simply must get 50 pages of math done by Wednesday and write a paper and read a couple chapters of Bio.
I AM I AM I AM I AM....

Bone Soup

Guess what I’m doing this weekend?
We took a little ride out to the country to Maggie's organic farm.
We picked a bunch of stuff, - a bunch, a bunch of stuff. 2 tubs of stuff.
Overripe tomatoes, green tomatoes, plum tomatoes
Arugala
Peppers, sweet, hot, and deadly
Cucumbers
Plums
Parsley
Dill
Basil
So now it’s all about cooking. Tomatoes, tomato juice, spaghetti sauce, fresh salsa. Plum cake, also chicken soup, (my chicken soup is reputed to heal). So in general it’s about processing all this food down to where I can fit it in the fridge and freezer.
As well as, Woodwindswoman has promised to teach me the mysteries of something allegedly fabulous, called green tomato mince meat. Huh? Don’t ask me. I’ll find out when I find out.
I suppose, as long as I’m at it, I should make yoghurt also.
So I get a little extra caffeine, a little stay up a little later, and a little of the soul soothing task of making vast tons of food which is stressful and relaxing simultaneously. I’m really glad the weather has shifted and I can put the pots back on the stove again.

I picked up the dogs for another approx. 5 days too. This information is being withheld from the cat until it’s absolutely necessary for her to know.

Relationships seem to be the watchword of late, all kinds, romantic. familial, professional. It is so odd to see how some people want them, some people seem to hate them, how sometimes they are fallen into without effort, how they slip away while one is not watching, how some are determined to have them and don’t. The desperate struggles to maintain them, to groom them, to rid themselves of them, to control them.
I don’t know, it’s all really the domain of pop music. Right now I am in relationship to the pots and pans there’s enough tension there to satisfy me.

All right, all right I guess watching Coronation Street isn’t really getting anything accomplished, and I’ve got the Jamsters coming over at noon or something and the ablutions have to occur prior to that, so I really need to stop watching British soap operas don't I?

Coolio Daddy-o

So I suppose that technically cuz it’s Friday and theoretically because I’m off work I should be posting something scathingly brilliant. But Friday is also catch up day. So, all day I’ve been doing paperwork, making phone calls, checking in with people, writing overdue letters and just generally TCB-ing.
The cats pukey and people are having issues and tissues and illnesses.
But I took refuge in looking at the school calendar and savouring the idea of Thanksgiving and semester break. I can’t believe I get over 3 weeks off. All to myself, except a little work. If only I can remain un-hospitalized or whatever it should be perfectly wonderful.

Last night was fabulous, it was Dali’s Birthday and he, DoubleN, Radiolady, Psyche and I all went to the Earle for dinner, which was just a huge, huge treat for me.
I used to take myself once or twice a week for happy hour, (not to drink but to eat for 20% off). I would just sit and eat soup, salad and bread all by myself and have a good feed. I really miss that, but since I (A) don’t work downtown anymore, (B) have something resembling a family to support, I haven’t had the time or really the money, to go anymore.
I had the most amazing scallops in mushroom cream sauce, thanks to Dali steering me in that direction.
(I was heading for the salmon or the beef with roquefort.)
I got to drink champagne with no regrets, and stuff myself. Whoo-hoo!
Unfortunately, it then made me sooo sleepy.

If you look at archives at all they may change a little as I’m taking the Raymond Carver like liberty of doing a little post editing. My big brother, Mr. Science advised that adding these spaces at some points would make the things far more readable, so little by little between tasks I’m going to try going back over some stuff and sort it out a little better.

So it’s band practice time, (we are going to play out again, soon-ish, I promise) and then I suppose homework, so I should runaway.

BTW this is my Dad, (pix), my Dad is very cool......

Suspect Device

I am in the process of attempting to add a link. Regular readers will already be familiar with my lack of technical savvy. This is one small piece of why I don’t have links, the other primary reason is that it (Linkage) has, to me, an unsavoury feeling of having to decide who to invite to your seventh grade party. Feelings are just bound to get hurt and I’d rather not do that spuriously, only if there is some Damn good reason for it.
But this link is a really important link. This person has important stuff to say about the whole New Orleans fiasco as well as the outlying areas. He’s there in it, he has an emergency preparedness background and he knows his shit.
http://suspect-device.blogspot.com/
He also happens to be an A2 ex-pat which is how I know him. He was in one of the best named bands around back in the day- The Voodoo Lawnmowers.
He is a pretty brilliant guy. Oh, and he also has a pretty good comic strip too.
But there is his URL in the meantime until I get my shit right.

Cat-ass-trophy

Ahh the perfect nap. You’re dozy, you’re reading, you’re drifting. Then you go out for like 5 minutes and awaken really alert and refreshed.

So now I can attempt to get a few things done that have been hanging fire, like cleaning, like writing something other than papers, like folding my laundry, like listening to our demo’s-demo to see if it’s going to fly.
Living on pizza the last couple days, that makes one a little tired too, but some evenings I am just not cooking. Lucky for us we’ve got Anthony’s Chicago stuffed. Yum.
But I do have a good organic salad in the fridge, later I’ll attempt adding some veggies to the system. I’m sure that will only improve life.

I’m not holding my breath on my test results, after adding the 2 scores for the 2 practice tests I came out to 75%. I’m really sure I did not do that well on the actual test. especially as there were at least 12 questions on the part I studied least - cell components. Feh. I wish we’d get to the human body systems part I know LOTS about that.

Ya know how sometimes your cat will just stick their butt right in front of your face as if it was just the best thing ever?

I'll just ace attendance instead

Im all like, do I have time to write an entry? The answer is no. So wish me luck on this Muther%*#^%&*$# biology exam which covers three chapters of both cellular and molecular.

Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news

First test in math, A-. First test in piano, 105 out of a hundred, (5 extra credit).
First English paper seems to have gone over well, second one is printed and ready to turn in tomorrow and then there’s Biology, which sucks my butt. I am so screwed.
Geez I fell asleep in the middle of trying to write this! I think I was doing spell check and then I remember looking at the blank page where I must’ve leaned on the scroll and then I just went out, sigh....

Have you danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?

Between the homework and the company, the dog sitting and the food prep, the trying to take advantage of the last days of summer (which means lake), the rehearsal for our little jam at the neighborhood block party, the housework, the work and the general exhaustion of yesterday, I’d like to say something that I hope isn’t too parasitic about the realms of the possible and the impossible.

When my friend called me and said that a plane had just smashed the Pentagon and that people were saying that the twin towers were on fire, I told him that was impossible and that while something weird might be happening he had to take people’s hysteria and rumour mongering with a grain of salt. I then turned on the TV and spent the rest of the day in shock.
When I saw the footage of the people dying in the whateverdomeconventioncenter, I said to myself that's ridiculous, of course there’s going to be National Guard at any moment. Three days later I was not seeing that “of course” happen.

Last night I was watching the movies “Hole’s” based on the Louis Sacher book.
What a great book, what a great movie. The idea being that there is such a crazy twist of fate running through everything, that anything is possible. That one can really fuck up and fate WILL offer the chance to redeem the fuckup.

I really, really hope that somehow we can start moving towards redemption now that it’s all becoming so very clear how we’ve really, really fucked this whole schmear up.

Attack of the crawlers

Sorry folks but the crawlers have me on their net and I’ve had to add evasive spam elimination modes for the comments. Hope it doesn’t squelch anyone’s flow.

Celebrating the year of the birth of conciousness

So I’ve been having out of town company this week. Once a year occasionally twice, Ersyla comes to town to see her Mom. When she does she usually stays here.

We met the first day of 8th grade, (that’s 1976 in case you’re wondering). She asked me if I wanted to play checkers, which I don’t really know how to play to this day. But for some reason I was winning and she called me a witch. Which at the time was one of the best epithets she could have used so instead of fighting we ended up friends.
That was a crazy year, highlights of which include my friends and I eating and rubbing on ourselves so much Jimpson Weed we were perpetually green. It’s a damn good thing we didn’t know it’s the root that does it, or we would all be dead. I keep hearing stories about groups of dead and fucked over children down south because of it.
Another crazy story is me and Jeff and Mikey, stoned on our asses, decide to make something called “tripping wax”. So we put a pan of wax on the stove, which of course catches fire, I, stoned and clueless, throw a huge bowl of dirty water from the sink onto it, Mikey’s holding the pan, and va-whoosh the whole thing explodes in a fire ball. We spend the next 3 hours standing on chairs to mop the ceiling, scraping wax off the floor, and feeding Mikey codeine from Jeff’s Dads medicine chest.
Then there was the time, (I was just thinking about this the other day,) that Jeff, Robbie and I sparked up in the back of the public bus. The driver a very big, very wrathful, black woman came down on us like Melnijor. Scared the shit out of us and sent us running for our lives.

That was also the year I dosed for the first time, that was with Ersyla. I don’t remember so much about the whole but I do remember towards dawn we ended up at the lake by the skinny dipping hole. We climbed out onto the old dead branch to just finally sit and rest after the long, long night. The sun was coming up and the fog was rising from the lake.
In the fog I could see the naiads forms drifting upwards from the darkness of the water to eventually be rendered invisible in light. I sat in this place outside of time watching these beautiful male and female entities rise and disperse. There is a female one that I can see in my minds eye, as clear and real as at that very moment, immutable, immortal.

Earlier that year, Ersyla and I, walking the track at the edge of the woods in the sunlight. We are walking along a 10 foot high hedge covered in yellow flowers. I remember the green grass on the track, the brown, gray and black trunks of the trees on the left. The sun beating down making everything shine and sparkly. Intensifying the yellow of the flowers in the hedge. Then we begin to focus on, that fact that the whole hedge is being tended by fairies. We stopped and stood and watched and watched and watched. Another small eternity outside of time. Finally we just walked away.

After high school Ersyla moved to San Francisco. For years and years, every now and then, my phone would ring or I’d find myself calling and the question was; “You remember right? It’s really true isn’t it?” And the answer is always yes.

Giving me pause

Busses, and more busses. I’ve been looking at faces again. I mean, I looked at a lot of faces at the market but now I’m seeing a much broader range. And with that comes the heightening of this weird little other sense I have of either projection or perception. I’ll never really know which.
I look at folk and feel like I can see some things about them. Feel some stuff inside them. And read some of their history.
It comes to me in odd little stories. And also in comparisons. Such as “oh that’s feeling similar to how so and so felt to me when he was trying to get clean” or “Oh yeah, that’s the kind of schitzy energy I got from blah blah right before he killed himself”
Maybe it’s just the pattern seeking mind in it’s ceaseless quest to categorize. But I think that that is a part of what brings intuition, that odd little, evolutionary, frontal lobe quink we’ve been developing for so very long. Of projecting outward beyond “just the facts ma’am”.
And also the intuitive walking exercise, today it took me in a way I did not want to go. I went anyway, and nothing really happened. Which makes me wonder what it steered me away from. Maybe nothing, maybe my death, who knows.
But now I’m home safe and sound and having that second cup of tea, wondering if I’ll revive enough to do homework and stay lucid during class. But not stay up all night either. If you see me posting in the middle of the night you’ll know why.

Memo to self

Ahh, my buddies the dogs !!!! There is nothing like a little puppy love to start your day. I love dog sitting. What raptures was I greeted with.Thanks Lizardbreath for the oppportunity to hang with my sweet friends Mem and Rodie again

Dreaming about Math?!

Not nice not fair not nice not fair not nice not fair nit fice fot nair

Hate me ever after

Today while discussing fiction in Lit class a woman said she always wants to know what happens and she wants the conclusion, the strings tied up, the neat wrapping.
I wanted to shout “Me too” . I want to know if they lived ever after or if there was a messy divorce and how many kids and what were their names. Even though I know it’s cheating. I know its not right and its not fair and the story ends and that's that.

I also want to know this in life, who did you marry, what do your kids do, what are their talents, what happened to your mothers lover.
But I don't see this in many other people. They just say goodbye and that's that.
I am shocked my old lovers and friends don't seek me out, or if I find them they don't want to talk. I think “how could you not still care, how can you not love me?” Because I remember them and I still love them if ever I did.
If ever I have loved someone I still love them, despite the broken ribs or noses despite the rape, despite the drunken atrocities screamed in my face, despite boredom, indifference, infidelity, disgust or just confusion paired with walking shoes.
I want to know the rest, I want to know the time you smelled me and felt tinged.
I want to tell you what I missed about you when I missed you.
But none seem to share that, none seem to miss me with the ache I feel for them. They are obeying well the rules of fiction. I break rules.

Fresh smoothies and a clean(er) fridge later......

Well back to the grind, due to my clever manipulation of my schedule I ended up on a 4 day weekend if you don’t count rehearsal Fri. and having to work Sat.
This will be the case for all those Monday holidays. Very cool.
The solution yesterday was cleaning not cooking. 3 rooms and one bathroom later and I felt a lot better. I also attacked the basement for awhile after I came back from the lake, which, a fresh little wind, staring at fish and sun dapples and listening to just the noise of water was helpful also.
But I really feel it was the cleaning that staved off the feelings of imminent collapse of the continuum. There is really something about it, that while it sucks and I hate it, it is so very good to ground you and make you feel worthy of the air your breathing and to get the monkey of guilt and oppression off your back.
I don’t know about the rest of you but any time I can accomplish that are good times.
All right, I’m off to turn in my first paper. I explained to her previously that I haven’t been to school since 7th grade and that I had no idea how to write a paper, she said she’d help....... we’ll just see how THAT goes.

Hiss anxiety

You know when you can just tell it’s going to be one of those days? I woke up and started reading “ Everything Is Illuminated” and while it’s really entertaining the first thing I really think is “I’ll never be able to be a writer, look how good this guy is and apparently he’s quite young. I’ll never be that inventive.”
Then I abandon the book because it’s very humour is depressing me as a result.
I turn on TV and everything on is either depressing or banal.
I start rubbing the heels of my hands together and there’s anxiety in my chest.
Then I light a cigarette and smoke and then put it out long and then pick it up and re-light it a few minutes later.
Then I start thinking about the line from Snib’s unwritten song, or maybe it did end up being performed by his later band “All You Can Eat”. The line is “rub your hands, your face, with ointment, everything is disappointment”
A stupid Snib like line really but it is unforgettable for me. It has kept popping up time after time for years and years and years.
So I have to just get up and start doing something, cooking is good, it’s a form of creating and it requires imagination and it offers a good result. The problem is that I didn’t prepare by getting enough groceries. I’ll have to make something up.
Yesterday I cleaned out the fridge, it was a bit desperate. I hate throwing all that stuff out, it makes me crazy, but with all the schedule shifting and the heat I was not cooking like usual. I would buy what normally would be necessary but then not have the time or withal to make it.
But now we’re really poor and there has to be no more American style waste. Also thinking of people starving to death in great quantities in football arenas makes it horrendous to be throwing out the leftover baked beans.
There is a good thing, which is I was able to make an offering to a monk yesterday. It was odd. As I looked out my window, I saw what I thought was a Krishna and an old black man talking in front of my house. Then I realized it was a monk and one of my Sangha members. I went out to interject myself as I always have a fascination with monks.
It was very odd as the monk had the 8 auspicious symbols tattooed on his arms and I said ” That’s so strange, I was going to have those very tattoos' on my arms as part of my sleeves before I got too sick to be tattooed.” We gave each other that look of shared strangeness.
I had a key to the house he was staying at, which he had left his behind so I let him in.
Then I was looking in the fridge while making dinner and thought “let me make an offering of my ferociously awesome homemade yoghurt” so I did.
I was once able to make an offering of my yoghurt to (I believe) Bardo Tulku.
That was a fantastic opportunity. See now just thinking about that makes me feel better. So, I see how generosity has it’s results on many levels.
My typing is sure getting faster.

"I am a TV savage"

I had to stop watching the news for awhile. If I watch too much TV news I just want to stick a fork in my forehead. I read the paper because I can scan the headlines and intuit the news. If I really want details I can read more. With the paper I can take it at my own pace.
I have had depression for so long, I have had to develop these strategies for coping and not allowing too much negative information in. Unfortunately I have a bad internet habit now, which really demands some new coping techniques. I find myself getting really wound in to things on the net that I probably shouldn’t.
My first experience of this was joining my first discussion group ever right after 9/11. God, that was awful. I was completely freaked at the nationalistic, jingoistic and sometimes just really stupid stuff I was watching. I became obsessed with attempting to become the voice of reason and rationality. Foolish, foolish mortal.
I became hysterical at the horrible things I was hearing people saying.
So here’s what I have learned about depression, and other mental illnesses for that matter. I went to therapist’s for years thinking I was going to get cured. I’m not likely to get cured.
What I finally realized, was that I had to release old coping skills that had arisen out of pure self preservation and become a conscious co-creator of all my coping strategies. That all that I really could hope for. To develop and continue to develop coping skills. There is not a cure. At least not yet.
I know it’s really uncool but I love TV. I leave it on all the time. I don’t actually watch much, I just have it on while I write, read, clean, play on the computer, whatever. (but not song writing) Occasionally if I’m sorting through something on discs or tapes I’ll even listen to music at the same time, but only if I’m not actually listening. Surprise, it’s on right now.
When I can I try to add a third activity. Talking on the phone is a good one. Lately I’m going through another “I hate the phone” phase though. But I love having a ton of stimuli for some reason.
I think I got this when I was a little kid. Sometimes I’d be up in the middle of the night and if I could have the TV on, chattering away in the corner it help stave off the feelings of isolation, alienation, and dissociation that came with being out in the burb’s with all the sounds of life really far away on the highway.
This may also be why I now love living next door to the tracks and hearing the train in the middle of the night. Also living downtown and hearing the stuff happening all night.
My parents had a bit of a weird TV thing. (I’m sure that’s shocking after hearing the food thing.) We had a TV room that was not the living room. They would only have one TV in the house for the longest time. An old black and white. I remember pretty clearly when we finally got colour. I remember seeing the NBC peacock when it used to spread its tail “in living colour”, for the first time.
I remember being allowed to stay up late for the moon walk for that matter.
When we moved to Ann Arbor either we got a second TV or they kept the TV in the basement I’m not sure which. But I remember being down there watching monster movies on Saturday afternoons.
I love old monster movies and Roger Corman and Hammer House of Horror. Japanese Monsters, especially Gammorah and Mothra.
I love James Bond, Our Man Flynt, and the Avengers.
Cartoons, The old Max Fleischers, his Superman is so very cool. I think Tim Burton must have watched those. The old Merrie Melodies are great. I never liked the 60’s versions of them, the Warner Brothers stuff. I liked Bugs when he would bounce all over on his head like a complete freak, so would Daffy.
When the depression became so very severe around 5th and 6th grade, I would sleep 14 hours a day, most of it in front of a turned on TV. It would make my dreams into crazy movies. For years I had a great difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality, from TV, from fantasy. Later psychedelics only increased that.
As well as I think everyone in my family used/uses voracious reading as a form of escapism also.
But to this day I will seek out good cartoons and the old favourite monsters. There is nothing that pleases more than just curling up with real popcorn with real butter and real salt watching poor old Lon Chaney fighting to not give in to the transformation, or misunderstood Boris trying to become human. Or old drug addled Bela trying not to get screwed by the Hollywood machine.

Some redeeming features

I appreciate what biology did for me yesterday, as it got me away from the news and into the woods on a required walk.
It was an amazingly gorgeous day, here, anyway.

Infuriated AGAIN

It is insane to be hearing a reporter on TV telling you that 25,000 people are dying of dehydration, and starvation and lack of medical care in a fucking sports arena. It is outrageous to hear George Bush say he didn’t go because he didn’t want to get in the way.
I know I said I wasn’t going to talk politics, but how about morality? There is a very deep pit in hell reserved for people of the ilk of our current administration. (They are REALLY lucky that in my tradition it’s not permanent), These people who deal death (and slavery) in almost every possible permutation.
I know their professed beliefs are lies because they clearly have no concern for even their own souls or their own karma. If only they could repair our infrastructure at the galloping rate that they are lengthening their personal roads to redemption.
I told people years ago that HE was the Antichrist, or that someone in that cabal is. Doesn’t it become more apparent every single day?
And that is not even my religion, but the intensity of their stupid, dualistic religious battle is affecting the entire planet and destroying millions.
I have spent years and years of my life trying so hard to stop thinking of it as us and them, the Erosians and the Thanotosers. I constantly struggle to let go of the dualistic thinking in my own heart and mind. The current state of affairs makes it really, really, really, really, hard to not hate.
I’m not there, and I despair that I ever will be able to be.

I'm frightened Auntie Em

So here’s the thing, “The Stand “ is really up on my screen lately. I’m not a huge King fan but “The Stand’ is a truly frightening book.
First I was completely creeped out by a letter I’d seen written to a sex columnist from an abstinence pledged girl.
She described some things she WOULD do for her boyfriend and didn’t enjoy. She was asking how to enjoy what sex she was having, while preserving her pledged virginity.
It was so very creepy to me as it reminded me of the part in “The Stand” where Nadine says to Harold Lauder something to the effect of, “You can’t have that, that’s promised to someone else, but there are lot’s of other fun things we can do”. I had written about this to markmaynard during a discussion of “Abstinence only programs.
Then I spent some time on a website today where it seemed like someone with some kind of military or similar training had established a refuge in New Orleans. He was web casting in various ways, posting pictures of looters, describing horrific scenes and occurrences and pleading with the government to send troops to control the mayhem.
It was the descriptions that were reminding me of the first parts of the Stand. The looting, the killing, the bodies piling up and the madness that arose as soon as the very, very thin veneer of civilization was washed away.
Because it is such a very thin veneer. Do you remember the post where I talked about manners and civility? This is a piece of the veneer. It is so very thin, fragile and antiquated. Yesterday in math lab we all had to listen to an argument a young woman was having on the cell phone with several other people, one after the other, on the other end.
You all know I’m not shy to say fuck, but she was saying it over and over and over really loudly, in the math lab. I was shocked. Not at the word itself but that someone had no qualms, not one, about yelling it over and over in a public place.
It started feeling surreal, like a performance art piece.
Except that she was crying and it was deadly serious.
What will happen when we all feel perfectly justified to “do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law?”
It feels like it’s inexorably edging up, by degrees, like entropy.
My response was to attempt to be even more polite to every single person I had occasion to interact with for the rest of yesterday and all today. I will attempt to keep this up as long as I can.
I’m now going to go write some overdue thank you notes.