Two nods to Tennessee, the Volunteer State:
Tonight, while watching a film full of people singspeaking their lines to one another, I grew a bit wiser.
Are we ever so self-assured that we see the changes in our parents when they lose their parents while raising us at the same time?
If I think “…if only my father was here right now to answer a question or make an observation or be available as an example of what [not] to be,” then didn’t my father and doesn’t my mother feel/think the same way?
I sit here in the comfort of a friend’s home — five bedrooms, six baths, game room, swimming pool, resident coyote in the neighbourhood, my feet warmed by a gas fire — and I wonder.
I am a spoiled man.
I do not sing or create lamenting ballads about loved ones lost in recent wars over the right to govern ourselves in our own subcultural image.
I am neither a troubadour nor a trooper, neither court reporter nor mass media journalist.
Tonight, I remember once again those who saved me from drunken stupors as a stupid drunk, preventing me from drowning in my vomitous sorrows — sister, friends and wife.
I am here now because of them, despite former wishes to the contrary in my darkest moments.
As far as I know, I rule the universe from this blog. Either that or God and I are telling each other a lifelong joke at the expense of my life.
As Kermit the frog said, “It’s not that easy being green,” and Stormin’ Norman “The Bear” Schwarzkopf is dead, the Memphis Blues is 100 years old and I drove on the W.C. Handy highway earlier today.
My father has featured in some of my dreams lately, showing me that should we find ourselves on the other side of the life/death dividing line, we’ll discover we’ve carried our physical/mental influences with us — the forgotten memories of Alzheimer’s disease are still forgotten but physical ailments are just/simply/merely memories in that dreamlike state, too, as important as we want them to be in comparison to our new states of being.
My thoughts drift in eddies of momentary sorrows, embracing the pain of sadness and loss like hugging my father for love and comfort when I was a child innocent of adult thoughts of worldly responsibilities.
What does my wife think now that all her nuclear family members are gone?
Who does she want to be now that she has no one from her formative years to answer to?
In a solar system where one form of sets of states of energy ism coalescing into a group ready to explore and settle other celestial spheres, where do I fit in?
Am I a Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield Jean Valjean or Javert?
F3LKJ reminded me in this morning’s status meeting that her team had already invented a an audiovisual sensor array that resembles rosacea and is easily installed on faces with no adverse effects.
Using skin pores as multipixel sites, capturing high-resolution images, combined with stereo sound and an experimental smell sensor, F3LKJ’s team invention can turn one of our field agents into a complete cybernetic wunderkind.
After our meeting, I met F3LKJ at our meditation centre.
Here is audio portion of our conversation.
[sound of lighting candle]
“Ummmm…”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes, F3LKJ?”
“Are you meditating?”
“No. Why?”
“You were saying, ‘Ommmm…'”
“No, I was talking out loud to myself and was temporarily at a loss for words.”
“I see. Well…”
“Ummmm…”
“If you need to finish the conversation with yourself, I can leave.”
“No, I was just clearing my throat.”
“Okay. Anyway…”
“Ummmm…”
“Look. I’ll be glad to come back!”
“No. Stay. I can talk to myself and listen to you at the same time.”
“Very well. See, there’s a problem with the sensor array. It’s…well…”
“Ummmm….”
“Would you stop that?!”
“Umm…what did you say?”
“That sound you make is annoying.”
“Sound? Sorry, I was deep in meditation for a moment there. I hear a whisper of sounds of your voice in my thoughts. A sensor array problem, you said?”
“Yes. And please stop meditating right now. Look, I’ll make it quick. The sensor array has, for lack of a better word, developed a synergy all its own, forming a symbiotic relationship with our test subjects, widening their consciousness, so to speak…”
“…As if they’re in a permanent meditative trance?”
“Precisely!”
“Good. It’s just as I thought. I had one of your techs embed one of the sensor arrays in me last night after you’d left the lab. I feel like I’m at one with the universe all the time now.”
[sound of dancing feet]
“But, sir, what if there are any negative side effects?”
“A leader must take calculated risks and, because your team performs flawlessly all the time, I felt it was a risk worth taking.”
[more dancing feet sounds]
“Sir, your dancing is distracting.”
“Dancing?”
“Yes. Or at least I assume your flailing around is what you’d call dancing. Why didn’t you inform me of your plans?”
“I didn’t want to bias the results with you spending extra care on my installation. By the way, did you know there’s an undercurrent of electricity that pulses through you when you’re trying to control your behaviour. Quite subtle!”
“Sir! You make me feel exposed!”
“F3LKJ, you are the first female on our team who I feel the least attracted to, despite your perfectly acceptable, socially well-defined, physical features.”
“Thank you, sir. My parents were sticklers for details and managed every step of my DNA sequencing, from gestation through my formative years, up until the moment I was handed over to the State for public indoctrination training.”
“A shame about that last part, isn’t it? What if you had been freed to develop away from conforming to the least common denominator amongst your peers?”
“No, sir. It was a freeing experience, letting me know that my specialness was highly unique. I rarely conformed to any normative baselines.”
“Very well. Any other concerns?”
“Yes, sir. I am worried about the Committee’s proclamation that one a day will be killed until this current crisis is solved. Aren’t we advancing away from death threats as a means of self-actualising the whole population?”
“Ummm…I feel myself a part of the universe, where words like violence are without meaning…we are just the intersection of sets of states of energy in motion…death is reformation…life is…ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”
“Sir? Sir?”
[Sounds of dancing. Sounds of candles kicked over. Sounds of fabric catching on fire. Sounds of running.]
= = = = =
NOTE: The new firesafe Meditation Centre is under construction. Please use the library annex for meditation purposes until further notice. Also, wax candles have been banned from the library but you may bring an electronic LED flicker candle to simulate meditation focus points, if you like.
A look back, once beyond, or something like that.
The right rhythm for the topical tune.
Thanks to Bruce T for the link.
When I walked into the sunlight to eat a banana as part of my daily ritual to get outside of the house at least once a day, the construction workers next door tended a small bonfire to burn scraps leftover from remodeling, mainly short pieces of wood.
A goldfinch in winter plumage hopped onto the tree limb near me and chirped away, expecting me to scoop up some birdseed and fill the feeder in the backyard.
The blue reflection of the sky domed me in, sunlight warming my pants and then my legs but not enough to take away the chill of freezing air around me.
When did I become this old man whose sympathy neurons were so overdeveloped from years of having to be on my toes, reacting to my father’s whims, his bursts of pent-up anger that seemed to come out of nowhere, that I don’t want to mingle with others because I have a bad habit of reading their movements in an attempt to gauge their thoughts in case they, too, would physically release their passive-aggressive volcano of internalised emotion-based thoughts or attack verbally?
I am a mischievous peacemaker, the devil’s advocate, whose raison d’être was to be constantly on the lookout for information to keep my father at bay, entertaining him while he was with me, paying attention to the conversations around us to steer people away from setting off my father.
I loved my father but to be with him, he who was the product of his parents’ and grandparents’ personality quirks, was to suppress my personality quirks that tended to set him off.
I look at myself and wonder how many of us are like me.
How many of us naturally respond to the behaviours of others just to avoid controversy?
I want to feel special, thinking I am the one and only me, but I know my set of states of energy is made of the same stuff as everybody else’s, sharing a large portion of subcultural as well as genetic traits with subsets, most especially those nearest me.
I am the two, three, four, x, y, z-dimensional intersection of subsets known and unknown.
My reaction to others is to immediately suppress my personality and figure out which subsets we have in common; then see if I can mentally predict the behaviours of the people around me not only in our conversation but also in events past and future.
The mischievous side of me sees what I’m doing, or what I know someone will do, and tries to stop it with a humourous interlude.
So many people take life too darn seriously when we know we’re all going to die.
I have grown into the old man in the cabin in the woods because I am now my father.
I ended up adopting his nonassertiveness when it comes to handling emotional responses to contradictory information from which I cannot pick or decide to choose a behaviour to exhibit in my repressed personality mode.
The most successful people, children AND adults, have spent many, many hours in training, learning from their mistakes and building upon their lessons.
Success itself is a rutted road, or the belief that one will keep one’s momentum pointed down the path of success, in whatever venture one seeks.
Habits, in other words.
My habits from early childhood were developed in response to my father, a man willing to use a belt or the back of his hand to serve justice immediately, with rarely a delay (my mother used the phrase “wait until your father gets home” sparingly).
When I was younger, I asked myself, “When do I get to be me?,” as if there was another person inside me wanting to get out.
At my workplace over the years, I attended a couple of assertiveness and anger management classes to get a better understanding of who people like me are.
I turned my assertiveness training into developing myself as a lead engineer, supervisor and then manager.
I learned that if I wanted to assert myself and was willing to face the consequences of my actions, no one would stop me because…you can guess where this is going…most of us are responding to others and repressing our personalities for the sake of the common good.
The secret to success is there is no secret to success.
All of us have habits that benefit some more than others, that’s all.
When I was an engineering manager, I wanted to hire an engineer who made more money than me. My boss and the human resources manager told me that the system doesn’t work that way. Either they had to increase my salary above that of the potential new hire or we couldn’t offer her a job unless it was at a lower salary.
Being a good midlevel manager not wanting to rock the boat, I extended a lower salary offer to the engineer and she declined after we couldn’t find any other negotiating points like a shorter workweek and/or flexible workday to make her hourly rate equivalent to what she was already making.
At that point in my career, I realised that I was on the wrong career track or perhaps working for the wrong company.
I never was a socioeconomic hierarchy climber.
I simply had my personal way of reading and reacting to the behaviour of others that made them feel good about themselves in the same way I treated my father, habits established in my formative years and refined as I got older.
I spent my whole life reacting, reacting, reacting and decided that if my only reward for reacting to others was to be given higher salaries and more people to manage, then I needed to stop reacting and become proactive, whatever that meant.
The only way to do that was to remove myself from social situations and place myself here in front of this electronic input device.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Money buys me stuff but it never bought me prestige, it lifted me out of poverty and gave me enough luxury to satisfy my wants as well as my needs.
As we get older, our tastes change in relation to our age, societal status, family needs and reactions to a world full of overstimulating mass marketing.
At my age, the illusions now propagated by the Internet are as much a part of my life as physical realities.
My needs and wants are largely met by the reflected and beamed light of an LCD panel just as the needs and wants of the previous generation were largely met by the reflected and beamed light of a television tube, interrupted by paper-based books/magazines, breaking the monotony with retail shopping/eating therapy.
What will the next generation spend time doing in their old age after they’ve spent their youth and young adult years saying they aren’t like their parents but becoming them anyway?
How did your formative years train you for the success you’re experiencing right now?
How will your influence upon your children’s formative years feed their success?
How does this translate to subcultures, cultures, the global economy and civilisations over thousands of years?
That’s all for today — time to listen to the wind and see what its “personality” tells me will happen next in our society in some fuzzy way that comes out comically on these blog pages.
Putting aside a belief in supreme being(s), if possible, do you hold dear a feeling of sacredness about something?
A building?
A cave, a mountain, the sky, the ground, the rain, the sea?
A person?
An object?
What, or whom, above all else do you meditate upon?
I am here, alone, a solitary figure seated before an illuminated panel, the icons are the ikons and vice versa, thinking the same thoughts as many before me who have translated thought into pictographical facsimile.
Many of my activities throughout the day are devout, religious homages to the sense of wonder of the presence of a self seeking absence in a mysterious substance we call the universe.
Much is explainable but a lot is not.
The formality of language, costumes (our external coverings we designate for specific functions), and body movement account for the way the self defines fluid movement through the universal substance(s).
I create an everchanging universe for my sake, the fight-or-flight, survival-of-the-fittest, order-and-chaos, self-preserving labeled interchanges of sets of states of energy I call moments and memorable events that constitute segments of time.
Otherwise, the past and the present do not exist.
Formality is a formality.
We choose belief systems handed to us by our ancestors and/or our peers or we don’t — judging one better than the other is a matter of judgement in relation to one’s comfortable subcultural practices, one’s habits, that is.
Adaptable.
Malleable.
Accepting one’s family and friends for who they are and/or want to be.
Comfort zones are acceptable.
When a comfort zone has easily-recognisable borders, life is simpler.
Complex borders make for complex actions/reactions.
I was raised to believe the sanctuary of a church was a quiet place of meditation punctuated by both peaceful music and contemplative sermons / ceremonies, where one dressed accordingly (formally).
The sanctuaries of today are not my sanctuaries, with display of song lyrics, sans musical notes, on projector screens; loud music; light shows; applause; casual clothing and other means for more tight social integration of church life with pop culture.
Thus, I have turned to this place, this keyboard and notebook computer screen, for sanctuary, redemptive meditation and uplifting comfort.
The social aspects of a church have little meaning for a childless husband who is surrounded by screaming kids, happy parents and proud grandparents parading up and down the halls of their place of worship.
That is also why I sit here, alone in my thoughts, just a few clicks away from the physical manifestations of others with similar thoughts.
Socially, I am a simple man with simple needs who has enough internal triggers for delusions of grandeur when the need arises to not need or want to reach out to society at large for self reaffirmation on a stage, playing field or conference room.
When I mentally “woke up” at age five, it was with the realisation that I could die at any time, having fulfilled the meaning of my life just by the basic act of reaching a state of mental alertness.
Every moment of being awake is a blessing.
Every dream is a blessing.
Every breath.
Every pain and ache.
Even the constant whistle/whine of tinnitus.
Does it matter if I publicly profess allegiance to a religion, a country, a cause or nothing at all?
It might matter to you but simply having been alive is sufficient to me.
To have no idea, at this time, what life is, except an apparent miraculous mystery waiting to be revealed…isn’t that exciting?!
Sets of states of energy, from a mound of colourless clay to the cheetah racing toward its prey…
Wow!
We pick and choose how we want the intersection of our sets of states of energy to occur.
Your choice is the right choice for you, and if it makes you happy in this life where survival and reproduction of our sets of states of energy are primary (i.e., happiness is a byproduct), then I’m happy for you in whatever mode and method you hold your belief set(s) dear.
Now, on to the future, where we push certain subgroups to accomplish tasks for us that they would never do consciously or willingly without our subliminal nudges.
As it has been and always will be.
Business. Science. Competition.
With a dash of sarcasm and humour to keep us honest.
In this orchestral symphony I call life, it’s time to cue a few instruments in mainstream culture — the current state of development of near-Earth commercial/personal space travel.
The latest meeting of the Megabillionaires Club discussed the questions above as agenda items.
As usual, the answers depended on which billionaires were keen on reconquering old geographical territories and dominating marketplace positions here on Earth.
The visionaries amongst us admitted Earth was a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there forever.
We’ll update you on our progress.
If you have a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, we can accommodate your desire to get as far away from the surface of the planet as your money will take you.
If you have a few billion dollars, we’re combining resources to build a bridge out of the inner solar system altogether.
Kathryn and Lee looked into each other’s eyes.
He widen his eyelids, taking in her eyebrows, nose, cheeks, hair and her lips, the lower lip turned out slightly, just short of a frown.
She waited.
Her warm hand clasped in his, he took a small sideways step, his heel striking the ground.
As he raised his foot for the next step, Neill called out.
“No! No! No! Land on your toes! Or, if you’re going to land on your heel, which you always seem to do, turn your foot around so it appears you landed on your toes and spun around.”
Kathryn smiled, shrugged her shoulders and waited for Lee to begin again.
One, two, three, one footfall after another landed perfectly with the triplet.
“Very good!”
Lee nodded at Neill in thanks.
Kathryn opened her mouth to speak, her eyebrows raised in anticipation of saying something and then stopped. She dropped her shoulders and relaxed her right hand in Lee’s left.
Lee, feeling the change in Kathryn’s grip, led Kathryn back to the starting position.
She looked at him in a way that made Lee feel he was completely in charge, a physical surrendering like an infant that’s completely comfortable bouncing in a babushka tied around a mother’s neck as she runs down the street to meet her husband coming back from the battlefront.
The two dancers held their heads high and repeated the first triplet, Lee holding Kathryn’s hand such that, with their elbows bent, they formed a small “W” in the air.
Kathryn looked down at their position.
“I need your body closer to mine, like this.” She pulled Lee’s left hand down by her right side and slightly behind her.
Lee’s bearded chin almost bumped Kathryn’s forehead.
“Exactly.” She smiled at his throat and then looked up at him.
Lee swallowed. “Okay.”
Kathryn’s innocent look revealed her true desire, to get Lee to learn how to dance.
More than anything, she wanted him in control of his partner on the dance floor, their motions in sync, their moves as one, in the same way that Shannon, an interpretive dancer, used a shawl and ballet moves to imply the simple peasant Mary one moment and, leaping into the air, falling into a crouch with a twist of the cloth, the Virgin Mother Mary holding a babe in swaddling clothes the next moment.
“Let’s try it again.”
Lee took one step sideways, his body rotating, pulling Kathryn closer as he took the second and third steps until he held her pressed close to him.
Neill clapped his hands. “Wonderful! We’re ready for the next set of steps. Lee, now that you’re facing your partner, I want you to complete a ‘walk-walk-walk.'”
As Lee completed the moves in slow motion, left toes tucked behind right heel three times in a row, Kathryn held her gaze, as if she was willing Lee to become a strong-willed man.
All Lee had to do was let go.
Drop the nervousness.
Accept his rightful place as heir to an imaginary throne.
He performed the steps awkwardly, his left arm strong when it should have been loose and his right hand held slightly loose under Kathryn’s armpit, careful not to squeeze too tightly.
As if reading his thoughts, Kathryn smiled and, with a tiny raising of her left shoulder, indicated to Lee that he should hold her closer with his left hand on her back.
“I want to try it one more time.”
Neill nodded.
Lee and Kathryn returned to their original dance position and completed the maneuvers flawlessly, Lee absolutely relaxed, his gaze into Kathryn’s eyes removing the foggy illusion of Kathryn as “Kathryn the dance instructor/partner” and opening Lee up to a view of her as someone else.
Was Lee removing one of his masks or peeling back one of hers?
Kathryn kept looking at him, her lips together, her thoughts invisible to Lee.
For the next three or four repetitions, Lee was lost in his thoughts.
He looked at Kathryn’s jawline, the colour of her skin, her hair, her dress, her dancer’s stance.
He tried to imagine the once heavier woman before him, what she was like 75 pounds ago.
Was she shy? A nerd? Silly? Self-deprecating? Funny? Sad?
She’s certainly smart, or so she seemed. He had carried on no deep, meaningful conversation with her about Fermat’s last theorem or the largest known irrational number but he believed her when she said she was a mathematician in training to become a horse breeder.
Lee knew he was gullible about a lot of things.
His employees had told him many times over that he accepted every excuse they gave him about coming in to work late but they never noticed that he always got them to complete their assignments ahead of time.
Gullibility as a ploy has its pluses, just like women who feign ignorance to boost men’s fragile egos.
Neill patted Lee’s shoulder. “Great job tonight! That’s all for now. Why don’t you practice what you learned and we’ll go on to the next set of steps later?”
Lee bowed his head toward Kathryn and dropped his right arm.
She curtsied and let go of his left hand, turning to another instructor to talk about an upcoming holiday dance party at the Flying Monkey Arts Centre.
We have two ways to handle the situation but who’s counting?
Most importantly, you can choose to make your future or react to the past.
I choose the former.
Just like, right now, Monkeynaut chooses to ferment in my belly and tickle my tummy…
…making my ears ring hours after listening to the bells, chorus, Celtic band, organ and orchestra at an annual musical spectacle of a local worship centre called the Living Christmas Tree at First Baptist Church.
I could write a few hundred character sketches based on the people I show at tonight’s show but I won’t. I’m enjoying too much the aftereffects, the buzz, of a few gospel tunes, Celtic airs and choral harmonies…
Christmas music and beer — some traditions are just too difficult to overcome.
That’s why I long ago taught myself not to condemn others for their lifestyles.
Who’m I to judge what’s going through your thoughts as you struggle to live your life the best way you know how?
Old-fashioned or newfangled, we are who we are and mostly who we want to be.
I have some mischievous stories in my thoughts that I better not write while I’ve had a few to drink.
I know better than to regret later being the real me behind the layers of masks that masquerade for this show we call a universe within a blog.
Well, all right, if you insist…what’s one teensy, tiny story amongst friends, right?
Let’s listen in to the characters who are already in your future but you don’t know it yet…
Tools are also weapons.
Just like rockets.
I first send my congratulations to the engineering/scientific team that designed, built and launched a multistage rocket from North Korea.
It is no easy feat, despite more and more groups launching hobby rockets from their backyards.
I have launched more than one multistage rocket but putting Estes model rocket tubes back to back is not the same as launching a satellite into low-Earth orbit.
We have come a long way from fireworks displays.
We certainly don’t need another atomic bomb dropped on a large population of humans.
Scud missiles are never a good idea as a weapon against the desire for freedom from tyranny.
Dare we go into the political ramifications of a hereditary dictatorship owning multistage missiles with nuclear warheads?
Can we feel the pulse of the finger on the trigger?
Why is China happy with having North Korea as a buffer zone between it and the capitalist/democratic country of South Korea?
Why are we using sanctions as a means of keeping North Korea in the socioeconomic past?
If Syria falls, what does that mean about relationships of North Korea and Iran with the rest of the world?
When Chavez is no longer in control of Venezuela, then what?
What is a repressive regime these days?
Who in charge of the economic and military might of a subculture has the right to protect that might against the desire of others to take their turn as King of the Hill?
How much can we trust an entertainer like PSY that previous anti-American views are no longer valid now that the entertainer is making money off the American people as a mainstream pop culture figure?
What does it take to forgive and forget?
My father hated Jane Fonda to the end of his life. Should I?
treetrunkdings 