Tag Archives: humour

Me, myself, and I…sigh…

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‘Tis sad to see that my wish — to have some dreadful disease that would end my life — has never been fulfilled.

Instead, my general practitioner tells me I am getting healthier as I get older because I have taken good care of my body.

What the hell?

You mean I won’t die of natural causes any time soon?

I wander the wilderness of this planet that we pretend is tamed with concrete sidewalks, asphalt driveways and paved parkways, never able to do more with the sets of states of energy than what they are, never able to get outside of this universe.

I shake my fist at the sky, shouting that my subculture is just not enough to make me happy — I have killed with my bare hands, I have tasted infinity, there is no love for the comfortable confines of a subculture which never truly contained me.

During the month or so of much-needed/wanted/desired self-reflection upon the threshold of self-actualisation, I assimilate my alliterative allegories and wander aimlessly.

Twixt which tweets, texts or twigs do I twist?

Having held death in my hands, there is little more to call my own.

Having stood on the edge of the abyss, there is little in the normal world that surprises me.

Yet, I want more.

I,I,I wantwantwant moremoremore.

I give the members of my childhood subculture their happy connections to our shared symbol sets, telling them I’ll perpetuate their beliefs for them and make them believe I believe them, too, if that makes them happy.

I have padded about in this comfort zone, lining the nest financially so much that I almost can’t get out of the nest or at least have raised the walls high enough to give me pause.

If only I had the impetus to generate enough income to construct a ladder or a means to helicopter myself out of this nest…

But for what purpose?

What is the core self, if there is one, the core burning desire to achieve something I am not achieving or do not see myself achieving, from this base of operations, this dilapidated modified ranch house with cathedral ceiling propped on a hillside over a crawlspace?

I am an amateur philosopher/maker/poet/writer who has been able to live below his means long enough and live in relative peace with a partner, his fellow 12-year old summer church camp attendee turned penpal turned wife of 27+ years, so that I’m closer to being stuck at home with both of us in our retirement years wondering what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives.

In other words, everything well within the normal range of people belonging to our subculture.

That, my fellow chickadees, is a revelation that hits me again and again about once a year, from when I was five, wondering how many more of the clueless adults around me I had to keep putting up with (and still wondering why!) to when I stood at the front of the church as my bride walked up the aisle to me and knowing that committing to marriage was the worst betrayal of myself that would ever happen (because I do not believe in marriage) and so on.

What I want out of life is to eliminate the self, not MYself, but the concept of the individual as more important than as just another set of states of energy generated by that burning ball of cosmic dust we call the Sun.

Then and only then will we see what the universe is, will we be able to move beyond our Earthcentric thoughts and onto the Next Great Thing that has nothing to do with the popular image of gadgets and gizmos to sell on the open market under protective cover of undercover government agents and privacy-intruding marketing departments.

Yet, how do we move a species to build spaceships for Martian settlement without peddling a lot of stuff on amazon.com and through paypal?

How do we promote the concept of conspicuous consumption in order to siphon off thousandths of a penny per sale for space exploration without overselling the concept of the individual?

Perhaps I shouldn’t care.  Perhaps allowing the religious concept of the soul in society is equivalent to allowing the economic concept of the consumer in society?

What, then, of the rise of the atheist consumer?  How do I address the issue of the atheist in the future where we need pooled resources to seed celestial bodies?

Euphemisms and symbology, that’s how!

The luxury of recounting one’s dreams

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In these past few days (weeks?) where I have asked myself if self, family, community, subculture, planet, galaxy are or are not more than symbols, I make no quick, foolish or foolishly quick decisions.

In a dream last night, my dream personality chased myself up into consciousness sprawled across the sleeping sofa, on which I turned and scribbled these notes in the moonlight:

16 Jan 14

I’m finished with touching another body on the dance floor or having to look into a person’s eyes because so much sexual tension builds up in me without a way to relieve the tension…. not fun anymore.  I’ve become used to the separation of reality from wishes, it just loses interest.  Reducing desire to pursue partners. Need to thank my instructor for wanting to dance competitively with me but it’s not going to happen unless there are serious changes in my life.

As of tomorrow, it will have been a year since I started attending dance workshops with my wife.

In dance workshops, my wife and I initially start out holding hands and dance together before dance leaders or followers are asked to rotate, meaning that I get a new dance partner for 10, 15, 20, 30 or 60 seconds to attempt a new dance formation; with that dance partner, I meet a new person, a new set of life’s experiences to ask about, a new wider/narrower/taller/shorter body shape to adjust to, a new hair colour to physically look down on (although, occasionally I’ve danced with women my height or taller), a hand to grip gently or firmly, new eyes to hold my attention.

For the majority of the dance partners, the new dance formation occupy my thoughts, learning how to move my body to make my dance partner’s moves look amazing and lovely.

For a few of the dance partners, a certain fluidity of energy passes through our fingers, as if unspoken desires are literally at our fingertips.

I enjoy the flirtatious nature of dancing, no doubt about it.

But for those few dance partners, the flirtatiousness feels more electric, bordering on lust, knowing that my partner and I are setting up a situation with foreplay that doesn’t necessarily include us.

The understanding between myself and a dance partner has ranged from the almost regimented rigid cold upper body sentiment of an Irish “River Dance” jig to the glued-together warm sensuous flow of a blues dance.

If it were only Irish jig dancers I encountered during workshops, my manly arousal wouldn’t be a problem.

Instead, the one or two out of a hundred workshop participants who turn up the heat drive me insane and, as even my dream self has chased out of me, I have no satisfactory outlet to make those future encounters enjoyable.

Thus, to keep my marriage intact and my sanity in check, I’m trying to figure out how to get across to my wife that our current arrangements are unsatisfactory.

All while my niece and nephew’s grandmother is dying…

All in the luxury of a middle-class lifestyle, snug and warm in a heated home.

After a year of “blue balls,” so to speak, I can’t take it anymore!  I refuse to attend another dance workshop or group dance lesson or I SHALL GO MAD!!!

Every time I see her, I fall in love again…

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How many people remember Oliver Hazard Perry?

Master Commandant at age 27.

Are we prepared to say goodbye to the era of major sea battles?  So long to land wars?  Farewell to air sorties?

Is it possible that the paranoia of our species, the heightened fear of territorial and tribal losses, is waning?

Haven’t I already bid adieu to our species in general, spending less time analysing fractal patterns in the local solar system?

For the past three days, I have looked at nothing, my eyes closed, my neck and shoulder muscles tensed in anticipation, my body under blankets in the sunroom, waiting…

 

How much courage does it take to write outside one’s comfort zone?

What is a set of states of energy but an illusion, an imaginary boundary?

 

Giving unlimited time to my thoughts, letting them ebb and flow in and out of my seeming consciousness, wondering why an insane person like me can and does still exist, fighting day after day of self-elimination ideation…

 

Watching the decaying wave patterns my written thoughts have appeared as pebbles in the pond of society, knowing every word we make and pronounce in front of others is more significant than we notice and often less significant than we want.

 

Caught, or lost, in a maze of my own making, creating conflicting pathways, one centred on the social precepts of a supernatural being, the other centred on the naturalistic worldview, with decisions branching out and crisscrossing paths.

 

Voicing characters based on personality snippets within me — a happily married man, a celibate husband, a court jester, a woodsman, a wanderer, an eccentric wealthy hermit…

 

Face-to-face with sexual desires I cannot express because extramarital love is out of the question and intramarital love is no answer.

 

Waiting to die because killing myself is not an option.

 

Knowing I am the humble nobody I felt like as a kid, happy for anyone just to smile at me, a smile meaning more to me than gold or food, a person willing to hold my hand or give me a hug worth more than I deserve…

 

I meditate upon the meaning or the meaningless of it all, aware that everything, especially me, does not exist.

 

Oh, to be rid of these depressive moods once and for all, to slip quietly under the surface, making no more waves, this pebble taking one final trip to line the bottom of the pond, soon covered in mud and forgotten…

= = = = = = = =

To write a prose poem in opposite terms, reversing the sentiment for posterity’s sake, takes love to another level, here in this hermit’s rundown cabin in the woods, slowly rejoining the random fractal patterns of nonanthropogenic nature, centered everywhere and nowhere.  I’m getting too old to fall in love, less deserving of others’ attention when I was a young, entertaining lad, thumbing his nose at school authority.

It is time to return to my daily meditations found in books and woodland hikes, mentally preparing the older self for his exit, make room for youthful enthusiasm to take centre stage, scratch philosophical treatises in dirt before a storm and peacefully fall asleep one last time…

Historical perspective, the continuing saga

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I select hot button issue words with care because my happiness depends on living in the future that benefits me hundreds of years from now.  Any words I choose had better be effective now as well as then.

While I weigh my options for the future, I ask what happens when we write articles about our species becoming a de facto fascist global unit, did we actually see the signs as we passed by them on the way to the dystopian technofuture of Fahrenheit 451?

Who is coining the currency that pulls us away from the monopoly of a society we facetiously call the Singularity?

Are we too afraid to call out the emperour’s new clothes?  If not, and we are calling them out, is anyone paying attention?

If we are throwing out magician’s misdirection tricks at each other in such rapid succession that we can’t see what we’re doing, what matters?

I accept the fact we are changing the pace of biological change to our planet like a mass of comet strikes sweeping across the globe.  We are definitely taking a risk with the eggs in our virtual basket of Earth, which drives me to push us, convince us that extraplanetary exploration is not enough, that we must and we shall establish viable colonies off-Earth.

In the meantime, I live the life I live, accumulating a house full of items that may or may not be useful anymore, at least to me, but has a value, if only as items of nostalgia, filling a rubbish bin once a week with more wasteful packaging than food waste.

Today is the last day of rest, the last day of the end of 2013/start of 2014 holiday, the fifth sol of Marsyear One.

Tomorrow, there are no more days, only sols.  All sols.

Tomorrow, my thoughts live on Mars.

Tonight, I rest.

Sleep well, my friends.  We have 13270 sols to go.

Dolmen

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In the subculture I was raised, children were expected to behave and think like ladies and gentlemen — be kind to others, do not curse/swear or act vulgar, treat elders with respect by listening to their advice, stand/sit up straight, get good grades in school and be mindful of your neighbours’ expectations of you and yours of them — for any vice you choose to exhibit, do so in moderation and you will be forgiven for minor character flaws.

Parents were expected to instill a sense of social allegiance in their kids, smoothing the rough edges, redirecting psychological anomalies toward the greater good of the subculture — those who rejected the subculture were welcome to leave and visit for the holidays or other brief encounters.

By having the pressure relief valve of a clear exit plan for those who rejected or were rejected by the subculture, internalised anger issues were kept to a minimum.

Even within the subculture, tolerance was a variable that allowed for acceptance of some whose initially rejected character flaws were deemed redeemable.

For years, I’ve lived in a kind of purgatory, wanting to make people in that subculture feel as if I, too, desire nothing more than to perpetuate the unwritten rules and relationships of the subculture, while at the same time holding beliefs that run counter to the subculture or don’t bother to recognise human culture as more significant than the role of any Earth-based lifeforms in the universe.

Simply by reading the posts in social media of the friends/acquaintances from my childhood can I quickly ascertain how well I have maintained my pushme-pullya life in purgatorial self-exile.

There is something to be said about the happiness I feel when I hear that people still consider me loving, compassionate and a ham (having a sense of humour).

In no way do I want to deter that feeling in myself or the thoughts of others in that regard.

At the same time, I want more than what that subculture has provided me in the general sense of the WASP life.

Because I want nothing more or less than to ensure we devote sufficient resources to [re]establish Earth-based lifeforms on other celestial bodies, I know what I want does not directly conflict with what my childhood subculture desired for me.

A strong pull within me aches for the safe, secure life of a parent with happy children whose spouse also wanted offspring and looks forward to [great[great]]grandchildren, if we should live so long to see them.

Statistically, safety and security is not guaranteed but can be financially prepared for if less than safe, secure conditions interfere with planned happiness.

What if my dreams and aspirations interfere with the safe, secure life I have right now?

How important is an imaginary comfort zone compared to that last sentence?

Tomorrow is one more day of rest before, on the sixth sol of this marsyear, I prepare plans for my next creations, whatever they may be, to put life on Mars, on the Moon and elsewhere in the inner solar system.

Of course, we have a simple question to answer once again: what is life?

A life not my own, a dream my own

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Two lives intersected at a restaurant — a patron and a server — sharing their autobiographical information with the freedom that social etiquette did not suppress.  This is an approximation of their conversation:

Patron

I got pregnant with my wonderful daughter when I was 13 and had her when I was 14.  You want to know why?  Because my mother was a whore and my father was a perv.  I remember when my husband and I were in Egypt.  He hired a Turkish maid for the trip.  I say “maid” because she didn’t do a lot the whole trip but sit on his lap, if you know what I mean.  By that time, she and I were the same age, 19.  My husband, when I complained about his relationship with the maid, told me he was comparing the two of us to see which one of us he was going to leave in Egypt.

Server

That’s cool.  When I turned 19 I took off with a friend to Israel.  We lived on what we made.  I worked as a bartender for a while.  Once, my friend and I decided to go to Sinai in Egypt on a whim, sneaking across the border.  We had a great time.  My friend was better-looking than me and one of the men we met offered 100 camels for my friend.

Patron

An Egyptian general, who told me that he was supposed to kill me because he had talked to me alone in the dinner tent without my husband present, offered my husband 100 camels for me.  My husband said he would have taken the offer if he knew what to do with 100 camels.

Server

You’re lucky.  If you’re not a good prize, they only offer 10 camels.  I said the same thing to the man — I had no use for one camel, let alone 100.  We stayed and played [لعبة الطاولة?], or backgammon, and had a great time.  My mother about died because I didn’t talk to her for several days — there was no cell service in the part of Sinai we were in — she thought I’d been kidnapped.  After two years of bartending, I got bored and saw my life was going nowhere so I came back here, got an associate’s degree in engineering technology, and am working on my mechanical engineering degree, hoping to graduate with a 4.0 GPA.

Patron

Good for you. I’m proud of what I did.  I raised three kids on my own while working at Columbia Records.  You can do anything you want if you have the determination.

= = = = = = = =

People’s lives are innately unique no matter how much they may be led to follow social trends.  After all, the patron and the server were inside P.F. Chang’s, a chain restaurant located at an outdoor shopping “mall” with other franchise stores.

How many of us do what I’m doing right now, cocooning myself with thoughts directed at a computer screen, talking about our lives or playing computer games rather than living our lives?

If I decided that I no longer enjoy dancing with my wife, that listening to her voice now that I have hearing aids has enhanced my desire to escape to this computer screen, that her desire to spend more time with me is not reciprocated, where does that leave me?  What determination do I have to do anything I want?  What do I want to do to accomplish a goal 13271 sols from now?

When I heard the conservatory students of Robert McDuffie describe what they’d accomplished as musicians, I realised that when I decided to marry my wife, I had given up on what I wanted to accomplish when I was a ten year old boy who had just viewed his dead girlfriend in a coffin — honour her life through my writing, turning my thoughts into action, conquering the known universe or as much of it as I could before I died.

In the Earth year of 2014, half of the marsyear I’m labeling Marsyear One, it is time for a new beginning, sol number 4 of 668.

It is time to determine if I move out on my own, perhaps sharing a place with friends, increase my number of labour/investment credits and give a little attention to the dreams and aspirations still cooped up inside the happy, hopeful boy who’s part of me.

I am responsible for making my dreams come true.

A simple sensation

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To know what I’ve missed, including the quiet fizzing of escaping gas bubbling and bursting out of a glass of freshly poured Pepsi…

…or the creaking and pops of our cabin wood floor under the pressure of my body lumbering through…

…the price of hearing aids is worth the sounds I didn’t know I was missing.

To Margery and Clair: your music is ever more delightful than before. Forgive my ignorant deafness in not knowing what I’ve missed during your previous live performances!