STOP! Don't click anything! If you've clicked a link to this page that references an anchor farther on down, please wait. It takes a while for it to work. I know this page is way too big. I'm sorry. It got out of hand and before I knew it . . . I'm going to break it into monthly files as soon as I can get around to it. Meanwhile, if you don't have the patience to wait for it to download, I understand. Please don't leave this site for this reason. Go back to the menu and choose a newer page. You'll find plenty of other reasons, I'm sure, to want to leave this site, if you'll just look for them.

by j-a

[main menu] [thoughthistory menu]

2001

1-22-01

Becoming

I never wanted to be a man. No one ever told me to grow up to be "a man." (Somebody should have, but it's a foreign value system, to me, because no one did. I'm grateful to whomever failed. My father, and...) I wouldn't have listened anyway, or even understood what they meant: I would become a man, or I wouldn't. Whatever I was/am, I was/am. I don't chase women because I am not a man. I don't kill things, because I am.

1-26-01

The Hope of the Fish God

The house reeks of fish from the empty tuna can I forgot to wash out and throw away yesterday.

Every time I walk past the aquariums, the goldfish rush to the side of the largest one, expecting to be fed.

They worship me. I adore the adoration. But the larger koi in the smaller aquarium by himself stands off.

He is the most beautiful of fish and he doesn't care if I come to feed him. He remains aloof.

I think, I will stop feeding him for a few days, and he will be more grateful and attentive to me.

I am not a cruel god. Why should he ignore me? I dream about fish all the time, never feeding them.

They exist in untended aquariums, but for some reason, they do not die. They thrive, without attention.

In a pet store, in the fish section, with wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling tanks, the owner has just gotten in a strange huge fish from the Amazon. This fish, he tells me, is to be paired with a delicate smaller fish, half its size, an odd pair. (I don't know why. He doesn't tell me why. Maybe they are compatible tank mates.) But he doesn't have the other fish in yet. The fish he has is ugly, the kind of fish no one except the mother fish could love. But it's a docile fish. It lets the owner put his hand into the tank and touch it on its side, not darting away as any normal fish would. He tells me to go ahead and try it, so I do. It's a strange feeling.

The contents of my mind/soul, like fish, do not elude me. I am in control, of what I think/feel.

I can touch the material of which I am made, inside and out, as if I were myself an aquarium.

I have a fantasy, not about fish, but about God.

If there is a heaven, which I doubt, when I go there, God will take me up in front of all the stupid people I have known and He will say:

"Look. This is how you should have learned to live your life. This is what life's for: learning how to live sanely in that insane aquarium I made."

But then again, maybe God won't do that, because the people he would tell that to wouldn't be in heaven in the first place. I hope.

1-29-01

I don't want to do anything other than what I'm doing. I love what I'm doing. This is what I want to do. This is what I've always wanted to do. This is how I lived before I decided (logically, "intelligently") that I had to become "sociable" in order to survive and prosper. I had to sacrifice a lot in order to get to where I am now, and if I have to now sacrifice certain things, such as human companionship (not a real big deal for me) or a "normal" life with the love a good woman (somewhat of a big deal), if I have to live on a minimal amount of money, saving every dime to make this lifestyle go on as long as possible, then that's what I'll do. I'll do whatever I have to to remain as I am now, which is the way I should have been all along, because this is the way I am. I'm not a businessman, I'm not a psychologist, I'm a writer/artist/mystic. And this is what I wish to remain. This is what I want, to be. If this becomes impractical because I can't afford it, that will be devastating, to my ego, and to my self.

2-16-01

640, on the street out front: I am walking out in front of the house. I have a book listing descriptions of "perfect" employees. Each entry is six lines long, each line perfectly formed, i.e., of an exact length. The entries are "boxed" in that way that a "perfect" poem might be, each line being of exactly equal length. When an employee does something that indicates that she is less than perfect, her entry is removed from the book (I don't know how; the entry just disappears), and when she redeems herself, the entry is reinstated. Carolyn Kern has just been removed from the book because she will not work overtime.

rai: When I spoke to Carolyn about this, at first she was resistant to the idea, but over time, as she realized that it would impact her pay, not getting raises, etc., she began to respond, and then, she became one of the better employees in this regard.

assoc: But she was always tentative about her employment, always looking for a boyfriend as a potential way out. Eventually, Tex took her back home to Texan with him and married her. Tex told Rita, when he was first interested in finding a girlfriend, that the choice was down to two women, Carol and Clarisse. He wanted Rita's advice as to which one he should choose. Rita told him Carol, of course. It was the one decision with which I could agree with her wholeheartedly. There was no comparison. Carol was a wholesome, innocent girl, and Clarisse was an opportunistic slut who required that anyone who would take her out first buy her an expensive article of clothing to wear on their date.

assoc: When the company decided that it was going to make mandatory the direct deposit of paychecks, which had been an experimental project for over a year, Cecilia resisted the idea. She told me that electronic processing of employees' pay was one of the signs of the Beast's coming, that the next thing would be that we would be imprinted with numbers which would be used to control us. I didn't pursue the conversation further, because although I didn't quite believe in the theory, I had heard of it (Worldwide Church of God) and I understood. I agreed with her, to the extent that I believed her analysis to be symbolically representative of the state of the world. I couldn't say that she was any more or less right on the point than anyone was re any religious belief. I explained Ceil's situation to Roger, who was insisting that I make sure everyone who worked for me sign up for the program "voluntarily." He said he would talk to her, and several days later, he reported that Ceil had signed up for the program.

This was typical of the way in which the company insinuated itself into people's personal lives. Other incidents indicative of this: Joe Mastandrea, when accused by fellow employees of having a social disease, being sent by the company for medical tests; new employee Sarah's change of name to Sally (or vice versa, I can't remember which) in order to eliminate any possible confusion with another employee of the same name. (Changing an employee's name, even simply giving them a nickname, especially when the only purpose is for business efficiency, is needlessly playing around directly with a person's identity. Even when the person "willingly" goes along with it, it's a shaky proposition. Do they really like the idea, or are they just trying to be "co-operative," which in business jargon really means "compliant"?)

I jog around the neighborhood, one huge lap out around the country club and down the highway and back home for each perfect employee in my book, dedicating the effort to each of them as if I ran for some charity, getting money for each lap, except that it is they who get the money, higher pay for being perfect. (I never actually run anywhere, or even leave the area in front of the house, but that idea is in my mind.) On the street in front of the house I meet a neighbor. [At first this is Steve, but he turns into that blond, broad faced, Irish-American actor Charles Hallahan (Going In Style).] He expresses an interest in a book I have, a large yellow binder (analogous to the employee book). I explain to him that it's filled with technical data about products from work, stuff that suppliers send us to help evaluate their products. assoc: This was my main selling point when I first got the job, that I could (did, in my previous job) assemble product info for evaluation and incorporate new ideas/technology into the manufacturing process.

2-20-01

How come the most important thing to be done is never something I am doing at the time? Obviously because I'm not properly scheduling my priorities. Or if I am, I'm not following the schedule. But following a schedule is so boring. The purpose of a schedule, for me, is to get it down on paper so that I keep it from interfering with the present operations of my mind. When my mind is bogged down with what I should be doing, I'm not free to live a creative life. When I schedule the things I have to do, then I can choose to do the schedule, or not. Usually, not. Rarely is anything so important that it can't be left for later. Rarely is it ever so necessary to follow a schedule. And when it is, I do. Otherwise, I can use the first sentence in this paragraph as an aid to determining priorities. What I do with that information is another thing entirely.

3-11-01

I like to engage people in e-mail conversations, to watch the interaction of personalities, to see how far people will go in their attempts to communicate the essence of the selves that seldom get expressed except in this more private and relatively anonymous medium, to examine the point where they will break off the interchange, because they feel then too exposed, or because I have taken a step too far and overly exposed my own asocial soul, which will never otherwise become revealed, not even often to my own self. I see my more obscure self in this way.

3-13-01

Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now.

Bob Dylan

In high school, I thought the kids were all immature, in the way they acted, socially, back-biting, making fun of others, assassinating characters...

Then, when I matured myself, I realized that I felt the same way about adults, because I hadn't known until then that immaturity was universal.

Then, I became embroiled in a social world I had hitherto ignored, caught up in the emotion I had managed through my childhood to repress.

It took me a long while to learn to control what had flooded forth, the feeling I had always managed to feel, but only inside, never out in public.

I didn't understand I was so much more mature when I was young, but had given it up in the name of adaptation. It was a mistake, to try to fit in.

3-13-01

I don't like most movies. But there's always some small part of most movies, even the worst ones, that I do like. When I write, this is what I'm writing, these scenes from my life that aren't the boring parts. This is what interests me, about my life. When I set about to document it in a more conventional way, when I write in order to "tell a story," I become bored, with the development of plot points, and especially with resolutions. Resolutions are artificial. Life is more like a soap opera than a Hollywood film. Except for death, there are no final resolutions in our ordinary lives. This is why I consider my work to be postmodern: I can't be bothered with modernism's developmental approach to life and art, even with the verité movement of "realism." Stories contained within a formal structure bore me. I like my reality piecemeal, like it really is.

The difference between knowing and feeling right and wrong, good and evil: you can know the difference, and you can even do the right thing, but unless you feel it, not the fear of consequences, but the actual emotion of wanting to do good, it's not a matter of moral choice. Morality is not merely the avoidance of negative effects. How many people behave well only because they know they must, or because they fear the consequences of behaving badly? Most conservatives, I would think. These are not moral people, but well-behaved monkeys. But then, being a radical, I'm prejudiced.

3-17-01

Colonel Matson stopped by yesterday. He came to pick up a copy of my new book, because he found out (from my big-mouthed brother, whom I told not to tell him, because I wanted to tell him myself) that he was mentioned in it in one of the stories (the last one). I hadn't seen him in years, and before that brief encounter, for many more years. I was happy to see him as we remembered old times, and he related even more bizarre tales from his life as a mature adult than we had had when we were young. (When I knew him he was a lieutenant, and we were little more than kids, shavetails.) He was always a source of much chagrin as he created toxic situations and then deftly escaped from them, leaving the consequences for others. A sort of Gonzo character.

There are lots tales that I could include here, from our days as young adults. But I'll forgo them and leave them for another time, if ever. Or I'll leave them for him to relate. He says he intends, in fact has already begun, in an episodic manner, to write an account of his exploits, but he doubts that anyone would believe that it all was true. No doubt. I hardly believe it myself, but then, knowing Matson, I'm certain that it is, even if it's colored by his personal agenda. In any case, it's a book I'd really like to read.

3-18-01

Uni-/Bi-Polar

The work procedure, again:

[There is never enough time, and so we set priorities.

I hate it.

I want to do everything.

Now.

No. I don't.

I want to do nothing, but have everything done.

I'd like to direct someone else to do it all.

I'm a born supervisor.

(This is what I used to do, until I burned myself out.)]

the actual work. [Purists (like me) believe that this is the only important aspect.]
the "business" of work [Business "purists" (I realize this is a contradiction in terms) insist that this is the only important aspect, that sales, PR, customer relations, etc. is the whole point. (Some business purists "believe" that it's the quality of the product that drives the business, and that all of the other business aspects are dependent upon this quality, but this is mostly a non-functional belief, a stance that businesspersons will take because it is good PR, to be "in-tune" with the PC attitudes of the day. The real "only important aspect" is money.)
maintenance procedures. [Maintenance practitioners know that work cannot be done and businesses cannot prosper without their services. Work and business purists are dependent upon functional operations and processes.] (This refers to all aspects of maintenance, hardware, software, people, systems...)

What's the point?

I am a one-person business.

I don't want to do maintenance.

I don't even want to do personal maintenance.

Sometimes, when I'm working at a progressive pace, I don't even take a shower for three or four days straight, only working, eating, sleeping, getting motivated out of dreams, going straight back to work again, even not caring if I watch any movies, or the news. (I know. This amazes me too.)

And I certainly don't want to do business. I hate it, trying to get people to consume my product. I wish they would pay for it, but I don't even want to expend the effort to convince them to take it for free.

I want to work, and that's all.

Or else I want to lay around and do nothing.

Sometimes, I don't even want to watch tv.

Life is on and off with me.

3-21-01

Microsoft is in the news again. It's "problems" would be a joke if it weren't so serious a situation, a classic example of how too much money-grabbing gets in the way of your ability to serve your customers. Instead of worrying about how to beat their competition into the ground, they should have been focusing on producing a better product, something that the customers prefer to use, not something that they are locked into because the market has been cornered. When you engage in competitive practices for their own sake, you abandon the best interests of your customers. A quality product is your best salesman. Microsoft Windows is a joke. And it gets worse instead of improving with each new version. Bells and whistles are added, but basic function is more or less ignored. But why should they strive to improve it? They've got everybody else locked out.

3-22-01

This is an idle complaint, more of the same, not worth documenting, especially since it's been documented in my journals so many times before, but I want to do it, it's a motive I have, and it's therapeutic to do so, I've got to get it out of my system, once again: I'm experiencing a conflict between wanting to do many things, all of which are important to me, my work (i.e., my writing work, a lot of other things lately have become my "work"), my computer (maintenance, which I love, and program and music downloads, which I love, and online touring in general, and e-mail, especially e-mail, I love it, the absent communication), and films (which I never seem to get to any more, as they piles up, because I'm still recording them), and even going out, outside I mean, to work on the house, to see my neighbors, even if many of them are a bit obtuse or conventional.

I have this problem: I can't get it all done, all of the things I want to do. (So what else is new? Why should I be different than anybody else? Because I am. For one thing, I don't go out to a job every day, so I should have all kinds of free time, shouldn't I? That's what everybody thinks. But I do just as much at home as others do at work, maybe more considering how some people work. And I have great plans, lists and lists of them, things I will get to eventually, if I didn't feel I had to do everything else first. I have this solution: firewalls. I need to block the work I have/want to do into sectors, hours for this, other hours or that, each aspect of the work separate from the rest, even to the point of proposing separate days for different kinds of work. The problem here is that there are not enough hours in the day, or days in the week. If I stuck strictly to any schedule I made (which is another problem altogether), I would only be getting to do certain things I want to do either for a few minutes each day, or for a day each month or so. But anyway, for the record, here's the list of day tasks:

a computer maintenance and back-up day
a download day
a program set-up and analysis day
a writing day
a website construction and maintenance day
a shopping day and socializing day
an e-mail day (reading, responding, following up, etc.)
a movie day (a whole day to lie around watching films!)
a finance and business day
a visual arts day
a fantasy day (I like this one best)
and probably a whole lot more I just can't think of now.

I don't tell people about my websites because I want to see if they will discover them by themselves. I like to examine the way in which rumors/information about me spreads. I watch as the news about my book spreads from nothing more than having given two people copies of it. I like this aspect of culture, that it reveals what you are up to, of it's own accord, without you having to go out of your way to do it. The people who go out of their way are the Slick Rick's who slime their way through life, playing games with their karma. I like to wait, and watch, and if nothing even comes of it, so much the better. [The real reason I don't tell people I know is because I write a lot of stuff about them, and I'm not too sure I want them to read it, or to read stuff that I write about myself. I don't want them to know me that well.]

3-23-01

Bush is beginning his dismantling of the moderate agenda, and investors hate it. They won't tell you they hate it. A lot of them can't admit, even to themselves, that the cause of the downturn is Bush's hard-core positioning, but they intuit it, and their actions verify their unconscious beliefs. Clinton economics is dying, having the life squeezed out of it, and Bush is to blame. But, of course, the conservative media is never going to see it that way, which means that the general population will not see it that way either. Everyone's going to be saying, "Oh, it's the aftermath of the Clinton administration." How easily they forget. And the liberal media, which will see it that way, will be ridiculed to the point of disbelief. The good times are over, folks. Tighten your belts. It's not going to affect me, though. I tightened my belt a long time ago, during the man's father's reign. Doesn't anyone have a mind? Can't they put one and one together? One plus one equals two, but one times one equals...one. The same one, all over again. Huh?

3-24-01

1. Brethern, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
  2. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
  3. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
  4. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.
  5. For every man shall bear his own burden.

Galatians, Ch. 6

I'd like to help people, advise them, comfort them, but:

1) I always feel like I'm interfering, and

2) they always take advantage of the help, wanting to defer their problems onto me, have me take care of them, bear their burden, while they go on about their merry way, relieved.

So I always end up saying, "Fuck them."

I know the solution to this dilemma is somewhere in between these two extremes: help people to a point, then let them go, and, especially, point out to them the error they make when they dump and run. But I always tend toward the extreme. It's a part of my psychology.

It's hard for me to adopt the professional psychologist's attitude/demeanor when I am in an introverted (withdrawn) mode. It's all but impossible to rouse myself out of myself, to convey the complex message of how people will set about to sabotage a dynamic relationship with a one-sided withdrawal. (When I withdraw, it is always of a dual nature. I don't leave others with my problems, I take them back with me when I leave, if I ever had given them out in the first place, which is highly unlikely.) Yes, I am a psychologist, but only when I am in an outgoing mode. (But some people, by working at me long enough, can bring me out when I am in an inner mode. But this is not professional, and this is why I am not a professional psychologist: I too often want to be out of it, on my own.)

I know I could help people. I have helped people, but always at my expense. Unless I am able to "solve" the problem I have of taking on others' mental burdens, reacting empathetically and then not being able to turn it off after they leave, it's best that I stay well away. The best tool a therapist has is an empathetic reaction, but not to be able to turn it off is disturbing, being saddled with the necessity of working at the problem as if it were your own, of figuring out all of its complexities, all of its twists and turns, sitting for hour after hour writing it all out, only to discover (in my case, as a non-professional thinking about myself) that it was someone else's problem all along. I could help people, but I choose not to, out of a sense of self-defense, withdrawing in order that I may remain more intact, my own self, less influenced, less controlled, less manipulated by others' psyches when they dump their burdens onto me.

3-27-01

I find myself avoiding posting journal entries to the Internet solely because they involve my internal reactions to people who are close to me. I'm afraid of how they'll react when they see their foibles depicted. (Or is it my foible?) It's not their lives I write of, but my reactions to them. And yet, knowing this, I still hesitate. (I am, often, critical of their lives, but they should understand that this is only me, expressing myself, and probably projecting anyway--but you have to have something to hang projections on.) I do not want to offend them, but I must write out what I feel. I seem to want to inhibit my expression to appease them. This is wrong. I can't allow myself to compromise my art in this way.

Here I go again, out into the winter cold. Why, when I have been adamantly opposed to the theory of going out in winter more than is absolutely necessary? Because my brother got a DUI and has had his license revoked for two months. This is a perfect example of how others' lives affect yours, even when you go to great lengths to be so good, and to avoid the pitfalls they encounter. Because when you are close to others who lead a less than guarded life, they drag you into their foibles. I have to go out into the cold, violating my pre-established pattern because my brother's been a foolish person.

I am torn, often, between wanting to help people and leaving them alone to their own self-created fates, recognizing that in most cases people are the causes of their own trouble and discomfort. But my brother is my brother. It's shame that I can't recognize in people other than my family a larger brotherhood. (It's easier to recognize a sisterhood.) I don't mind so much going out to help him out, but I'm beginning to feel the stress building up (I have a history of chronic stress), and I'm remembering what it's like to have to get up in the morning and go out to work in the cold every day. I'm finding myself sleeping longer hours, in compensation, and because the artificial arbitrary sleep schedule is not conforming to my errant non-diurnal biorhythms.

3-29-01

I've been going out a lot lately, getting up earlier in the morning (as opposed to later or in the afternoon--or evening) to go out to help my brother with his work, because he got a DUI a year ago and the litigation and paperwork has just caught up with him and he's lost his license for two months, so I have to drive him around, and since, he said, I'm going to be driving him anyway, I might as well work for him and earn a little bit of money, which I appreciate, because I would have driven him for free--but I never told him that, because I like working for him, I like the work, I'd do it myself, if I thought I needed to work for a living. Anyway, that's all over now. He got his license back this week.

So, Joyce, his wife, calls me this morning, about an hour after I've gone to bed after having been up all night. I half-awaken to hear the phone message: "Joe. It's Joyce. You there?" [Standard message. The same every time.] (very short pause, as if she expects me not to answer, which I don't.) "Okay. Do me a favor. Uh. I'm at work. When you get up, call me. It's kind of important."

But I'm worn out. I ignore her message and go back to sleep. I need sleep. It's still winter, despite the season; it's cold, and cold always takes the energy right out of me, even when I stay mostly inside, but especially when I'm out a lot. When I used to work for a living, at an actual job (nightmare of nightmares--for so, so many years), I wore myself out--but that's another story altogether.

Awakening now (I always write as soon as I wake up, at whatever time of day or night, until I run out of motive, which is always a far, far shorter time in winter), lying in bed, thinking about the phone message, disabling the (inappropriate) guilt I'm beginning to feel for not having gotten out of bed to return Joyce's call, I construct a five item hierarchy of importance.

1. emergency
2. important
3. kind of important
4. not important
5. bullshit

respond immediately
respond soon
respond whenever
respond if you feel like it
don't respond

Of course, the person who classifies the request is not necessarily the right person to do so. My emergency may be your bullshit. But since Joyce classified her own request as "kind of important," she herself is to blame for me not responding as fast as I otherwise might have.

This is all entirely rationalization, another attempt to cast off the guilt I feel for not having jumped right to it and returned her call. Another rationalization: I was worn out, and I deserve the uninterrupted rest.

A possible solution: turn the ringer off on the phone. That way I won't have to know who's calling, and I can't feel guilty if I don't know about it. But what if there really is an emergency? Besides, I always forget to turn it back on, and when, after two or three days, undisturbed by phone calls, I begin to wonder why I am so peacefully co-existing with the world, I find the phone turned off and solve the mystery.

I get out of bed and call Joyce at work, but there's no answer, which is strange because she's a nurse in an intensive care unit. (Maybe there was an event that required the attention of all available personnel.) I work for about an hour, and then I call her again, just so I can say I tried. (I already planned to tell her I tried several times, but got no answer.) The second time I call, I'm informed that she's already left for the day. I call her at home. My nephew answers. She's not there. I'm relatively relieved that I don't have to talk to her. I tell my nephew to tell his mother I'm returning her call, knowing he'll forget, maybe forever, or maybe for, at least, a few hours. I may be free for a while, until she gets back to me, which she will, if it's really kind of important, and I am saddled with some social task that requires me to go out again into the cold.

I wait for warmer weather. Life is going to get better then.

Life is always going to get better, sometime in the future.

And it does, but only for very short periods of time.

But it's not life that gets better or worse. It's only me.

4-9-01

Waiting, as the pain increases, for the next twelve hour period beginning with the painkiller that wears off as the day wears on, meals, short naps, offering some small relief in between. And music! I get high hearing loud songs on the headphones, stimulating endorphins, killing pain.

Even though I know what's coming in the early spring, managing in these later years to remember it is coming, the pain, with the change of seasons, still, I am always amazed at how deep I have sunken into the abyss of winter when I'm pulled up out of it by warming weather and morning birdsong.

Waiting through the winter for a glimpse of spring, of someone walking just because it's nice outside. Waiting, always, for someone to walk by, which they will do, but certain someones, or anyone, I don't care, anyone, which is so rare in winter, when everything freezes, even a supposed soul.

4-10-01

In a sense, the persona I present on my site is like a character in a novel: I create an impression out of bits and pieces of my life. This is not me. But then, we are each a fiction; even in "real" life, we never appear to be what we really are, because that would be a devastating condition, if not for ourselves, if we're that thick-skinned, then for those who encounter us. It would be like Marlon Brando: when he talks, he punctuates his words with enigmatic expressions, as if he were schizophrenic. He doesn't take time to explain missing operations of his internal logic. He's tired, of us. He's said it all so many times before. I can empathize. I don't find him mysterious at all. I'm tired too. I always have been. And I'm getting fat. I've gained ten pounds over the winter, which is unusual for me. Maybe I'm becoming like Marlon, expressing myself in an enigmatic manner, hoping to further disguise myself from within, the character that I am, applying layers to my physique and psychology in order to hide away.

4-21-01

I get up in the morning (or afternoon, or evening, or night) and I begin my work, first thing--after a half-cup of coffee; yes, it's come to this; I can only have a half a cup. [I learned in school that you either wrote "a half-cup" or "half a cup," but I saw on Headline News the other day a caption that read "a half a" something-or-other, so it must be right now, it's on the television. In any case, rules change. Postmodernism rules. Everything is all right. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and relax. Think of nothing...] So, I start to work, if you can call what I do work. I do. I work, sometimes even for three or four hours, and then I'm lost for the rest of the day, emptied, demotivated. I've taken to sleeping three or fours hours (night and day), thereby on a good day getting in two work sessions, which during peak periods, the best of months, I devote entirely to my work, rather than to downloading stuff or surfing the Internet, which I'm starting to think is also my work. (I love to do what I love to do, so my definition of work tends to change to accommodate my thinking. Convenient, huh? Yay!)

4-26-01

I heard on the news yesterday that anxiety among kids is a major concern. Teenagers, and even younger kids, are being treated with drugs to alleviate their anxiety in social situations. This pissed me off when I heard it. Not that I think the kids don't deserve it, but that such detection and treatment was not available to me when I was younger. I suffered from severe social anxiety, the effects of which still haunt me to this day.

Through years of self-therapy (mostly of the contingency management type, but more recently of a more profound variety), the conscious development of social skills, and a lifestyle that avoids escalating stress, I have pretty much overcome my childhood legacy. But I must be on constant guard against it. I could, I guess, find a doctor who would prescribe modern miracle drugs--Prozac, et al., but I would rather not. I would rather continue on the way I'm going, living a modest, relatively carefree life apart from the social mainstream. It's a valid therapy, I think, to remain aloof.

Some might say I obviate the problem by avoiding life itself, but I would disagree. Although I remain separate, I am very much alive, having over the years grown "in touch" in a way I could never have become were I more normal. I tune into experiences that others do not bother to attend to. I am more conscious, I believe, because I am more reserved. Because I am more separate, I feel more socially unified. (A schizoid orientation.)

Until fairly recently, when I have been able to more totally retreat, stress had been a standard way of life with me. It goes as far back as I can remember. When I was a kid, I didn't notice the stress so much, both because I was far less conscious (although, it seemed and still seems to me that I was still more conscious than anyone else I knew) and because I was young and vigorous and able to withstand the physical toll it was taking. The constant state of wariness when I was out among people, mid-section muscles permanently tensed, holding myself in, maintaining my physique in a perpetually wiry and toned state, was only alleviated when I could be alone, rarely during the day, but deliciously at night in my bed, which was a safe and welcome place for me. I have learned to cherish dreams and even nightmares as remnants of the happiest and safest times of my life.

Now, muscles totally relaxed most of the time, recovered from the stress of a life of employment which almost killed me, cortisol reserves replenished after years of chronic depletion, physiological damage repaired or minimized, I live a life of ease, alone. No one knows of this aspect of my personal history, this past anxiety and stress. No one even suspects it. I have been that good at holding my real self in, naturally, since that is the nature of the "dis-ease." But there are additional stressors.

As successful as I have been at solving the problem of social anxiety and/or as removed as I am able to maintain myself, away from the stressful anxiety that social situations will still create in me somewhat, I am burdened with two other problems which will tax my life force. I have a back problem that has been developing since childhood, perhaps as a direct result of social anxiety, but maybe not. And then there is my personal reaction to cold weather. No one has ever understood how I have been affected by the cold. I've tried to tell others how it has affected me, but no one ever really understood what I was saying. Even now, I don't think I can explain it adequately. But I'll try, again.

When I get cold, my entire body withdraws into itself, pulling my mind in with it. I internalize myself even more than I am already internalized. Cold assails the outer reaches of my body/soul, distancing the me I really am into deeper recesses, until I feel almost foreign to what had formerly been myself. This process begins in fall and continues on into late spring when I begin to become again my "normal" self. Only in the height of summer (when, perhaps not just coincidentally, I was born) do I feel I'm how I am supposed to be. This could be as much a function of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) as of cold per se.

In combination with cold weather, my back problem adds stress to my otherwise idyllic life. Whereas I have known about the effects of cold since childhood, the effects of the back pain, as it has come on gradually, has only gradually entered my awareness. Now, looking back, I can see how it has affected me, how much of a stressor it has been. In my ever-increasing quest to kill the pain [first, early on, in conventional ways, such as with abnormal amounts of coffee and caffeine products and aspirin, then later, with alcohol and marijuana, (which, sadly, along with caffeine, I can no longer use, because my back problem causes pressure to be applied to the nerve packet to my heart and any further stimulation, such as that of alcohol, recreational drugs, spices, etc. causes an irregular heartbeat, which scares the hell out of me, so to speak), and most recently with meditation and naproxen], I had successfully repressed and ignored the stress it has been creating. Even when pain is "killed," its stressful effects continue to function, taking their toll, usually unnoticed. This stress, I see now, has caused me to lose jobs (fortunately, I have always been smart enough to save and accumulate and wisely invest most of the money I have earned), friends, and what otherwise might have been a good reputation. (Well, maybe not.)

But that, as they say, is all water under the bridge. The jobs weren't that good to begin with, being modern equivalents of sweatshops (psychological sweat). The friends weren't really friends, were they? And the reputation--well, what can I say. A person is not what his worst actions indicate, especially when they are driven by extremes of stress. A person is always better than the worst thing that he's done.1 And anyway, fuck you, if you think I have a bad reputation. Who the hell are you to judge me?

This is the result, you see, of not being treated for social anxiety when I was young. So, you people, those of you like the ones I saw on the news yesterday who criticize the practice of giving potent psychoactive drugs to kids, should realize that if kids are not treated early on for their anxiety problems, they will end up just like me. And while I think that this may not be such a bad thing if they can adapt as I have, maybe they will not be so capable of making the compromises with social life as I have and, resentful of their incapacity, go on to gun down people in a MacDonald's or bilk senior citizens out of their retirement money. Think things through. Protect the children from the negative effects of stress and anxiety. They're our children. They're all we really have. Everything else is bullshit.

1. "Everyone is always better than the worst thing they ever did."
--Liz McDermot, Tim McVeigh's next door neighbor

4-28-01

Big Brother is alive and well and throwing his weight around on the Internet. Tales of the FBI bullying web artists are tame by comparison to the insidious news that recording industry representatives, aided by government officials, are threatening to sue researchers if they reveal encryption technology "secrets" in scientific papers. (They're not really secrets if researchers can figure them out.) This is money interests threatening academia--and it's working. Scientists are backing down. After all, they have their jobs to protect; they work for corporations that susceptible to pecuniary pressure. (Yes, universities are corporations, if not in name, certainly in spirit.) The Internet is closing in, as laws are enacted and standards (read conformity) are set. The newest wild frontier is being tamed. Pretty soon, we will have to give way to the mediocrity of ubiquitous banal advertising. Freedom is once again threatened. I'm just glad I still have a mind into which I can retreat from conventional society when I need to, to communicate in an unfettered manner that is as of yet undetected by commercial interests (in the same way that I used to retreat before I discovered, a decade ago, that you could actually communicate in a real and meaningful way, unencumbered by corporate and government oversight, on the Internet.) Now, it's often the Internet that I'm retreating from. At least "they" haven't figured out yet how to commercialize my mind. Or have they? They certainly have threatened it. Hmmm.

5-7-01

My computers are set up in my dining room, and it's a small dining room. I started out, years ago, in the back room behind the living room, but I felt too isolated there. I like to know what's going on out in the street, I like to look out the windows as I work. In the back room, I felt enclosed, like I was working at a job all day, instead of being home. As the years passed, technology became more sophisticated, and additional computers and peripheral devices were added, the equipment gradually took over the entire small room. When no one else is around to share your living space, you tend to arrange your environment more for convenience instead of according to social expectations.

Yesterday, I began to rearrange the room for efficiency, at the same time cleaning up the years of dust and dirt accumulated around and behind things. What a mess--an all day and night job, but now I have an efficient workspace, with all the printers together in one place, nicely lined up next to the scanner, two screens side by side, shelves to my right, the desk behind me. I am closed off as if in an alcove, which is half the room, a significant savings of space so that I actually have an area to live in, if I ever decide to do any living apart from writing and computing.

As I drew out the plans for the new space (I actually spent several hours first sketching it all out, to scale, with a ruler and a tape measure, so that I would be certain to get it exactly right before I started unwiring things and moving furniture), I began experiencing my usual springtime pangs of socially-motivated doubt. Why do I live like a nerd, with my egg-headedness displayed right out front, in the most obvious place in my house? Why can't I be happy with a normal dining room with a table (I don't even have a dining room table), chairs, a china closet instead of double glass-enclosed bookcases? (I could use the bookcases to store china--if I had any.) [Most of the free space in the dining room had been taken up with stacks of books, which are now piled in the living room, awaiting transport to their final destination, if I ever decide where that will be. They won't fit in the studio (my old computer room behind the living room, which is lined on two sides with floor-to-ceiling shelving stacked to overflowing with books), and so, I guess, they'll end up like everything other project I start, lying around for several years before being finished. I get around to everything I plan, eventually. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, I'll have enough time to complete everything I've planned thus far in my life. But what about the stuff I'll plan from here on in? This is a good reason to stop planning altogether.]

I'm surprised at how I planned the moving job, then set about to do it, immediately. I'm surprised I finished it. This is very unlike me. And the long bout I've just been through of living life without the usual doubt is also uncharacteristic of me. Its recurrence yesterday in full force was disconcerting. Why should I live like my parents did? Why should I live a normal life? I've been over this so many times before in my journals that, as I begin to write of it again, I think, "Why bother? You've already adequately resolved the issue." I'm beyond it. So why then doubt? I guess there is something buried deep within me that wants to sit down at a table in a clean and uncluttered dining room and have a simple cup of coffee. (But I can't drink coffee any more. It further accelerates my rapid-prone heartbeat.)

I guess, it being spring, I'm feeling a desire to be outside, which necessitates a certain amount of normalcy--well, not necessarily. There are lots of weirdoes running around. But, for me, being outside means acting a bit more normal. I feel like, while under the ever-watchful eyes of the citizenry, I must be on my best behavior. No one who knows me well would think this of me, since they have seen me act in all kinds of what they call asocial ways (but which I define as merely "selfish"; same thing, really), but it's really true that I perk up and pay attention when I go out. I don't want people to think (too) ill of me. This is another thing that people who know me wouldn't believe. They think I could care less what anyone thinks of me, but that is far from the truth. Despite how I feel, I may become determined to be who I am, act in the way I want to act, do exactly what I want to do, but I do feel as if I should be on my best behavior. It's a programmed thing, the entity my parents tried to make me into before I got old enough to know better (or worse.)

I think of this now while reviewing an incident from the other day: new neighbors moved in next door over the winter, and although I've seen them coming and going as I've been looking out the window when I should have been working (there's that "should" again; I should be doing whatever I want to do), I'd never actually met them, which wouldn't have bothered me at all, say, ten years ago. I've gone for years without ever speaking to new neighbors who've moved in. But for some reason recently, I've felt that I should introduce myself to newcomers, intimidating though the practice may be to me. So, looking out the side window on a warm spring afternoon a few days ago, I saw the lady out between the houses pulling down an old wild grape vine that had gotten out of hand over the years and was starting to crawl up over her roof. I thought "I should go out and introduce myself," but then I said aloud, "Nah," and I let the idea go. But a little while later, as I saw her again, now down at ground level, bent over and tearing at the weeds between the porches, I realized an opportunity for a valid social topic. (One of the reasons that I avoid social conversation, certainly not one of the most important ones, which tend to be more of a deeper psychological nature, is that I hate small talk; if people can't start right off talking about what's really on their minds, and mine, then fuck them, which attitude makes me a bit abrupt, a trait of mine that is disturbing to most "sociable" people.) I hurried out to tell my new neighbor about the poison ivy that was growing where she was weeding. And then, as a by-the-way, I told her my name. She offered me her hand, which felt odd, partly because she hesitated after she had offered it (or maybe it was I who hesitated), and I shook it as she said that it was too late now, if there was any poison ivy there, she was already through it. We looked around for it as she said she had no idea what it looked like. I said I didn't see any, maybe it's not up yet. She began to talk about her family, and the talk kept coming, and coming. I managed to respond a few times, but soon gave it up as futile as she poured out her back story: the names of her husband and two teenaged daughters, why they moved from where they had lived before (because it was "getting bad"), how she loved to plant things, how she got free plants from the senior center (where she implied, or I assumed, she worked), how they were always out at work and otherwise kept pretty much to themselves (she seemed to be apologizing), how her neighbors on the other side had been giving them a hard time about property lines and how to cut the grass, where to stop cutting it, to which I managed to express surprise before she continued on with how her husband had met the guy from across the street, how it seemed like a nice neighborhood, which I confirmed before she continued on with how they'll never be having big parties or making any trouble because they tend to keep to themselves, which she'd already said and would say several times again, until I found myself, without wanting to, slowly edging my way back away from the property line into the narrow heart of my side yard. But she didn't pick up on my unintended signal like I did, she kept right on going, even as her daughter came out onto the porch to ask her a question and she introduced her to me and told her she'd be in in a minute. As she continued to talk, I began to get the idea that she was warning me away. She said something about the most noise they ever make was her husband leaving for work in the mornings in the summer when he rides his bike instead of taking his truck. She talked a lot about her husband, and I began to wonder why they really left where they had lived, if there had been some incident. Of course, there was no reason for me to think this at all, unless the reason was unconsciously intuitive. Then she began to turn away, continuing to talk nonetheless, as she said that it was nice to have met me, and I responded in kind, and then she was gone around the corner of her house and I was walking back toward mine, feeling a bit overwhelmed, because the whole conversation couldn't have lasted more than two minutes and I felt like I had known her for two years.

What had just happened? Was this her way of avoiding me, by trying to drive me away with a lot of chatter? For a family who kept to itself, she sure went a long way out of her way to talk about it. She seemed awfully sociable to me. But then I began to wonder if it was merely nervous chatter, and I concluded that it was. Maybe she didn't really appreciate me approaching her. Or maybe she was acting as a buffer for another segment of the family. (But her daughters, from the little I've seen of them coming and going, seem pretty normal.) Or maybe she thought that I was coming on to her? I began to get the idea that this was it. Could I have been unconsciously acting out a sexual agenda? No, I decided. I didn't really even want to go out to meet her at all, except that I felt it was the "sociable" thing to do, it was what society expected of its "normal" citizens, to welcome newcomers to your neighborhood. Maybe, after all, I was trying too hard to be normal. Maybe I should remain my less than perfect, isolated self. Balance has always been a difficult trait for me.

This is a pattern in my life: approach/avoidance. (Actually, it's a pattern in everyone's life; I shouldn't make so much of it.) In the past, people have always wanted to approach me, and I have always wanted to keep them at a distance, at least until I've gotten to know them very well. As a child, I was severely withdrawn into my own idiosyncratic world. I've gone a long way out of my way to try to correct this problem (as I have been wont to see it. It's not really a problem, but a mere orientation, a preset genetic pattern. It's only society that makes it a problem, as its more gregarious members try via expectation to impose their outwardly-directed orientation onto everyone, which they more or less successfully manage to do, because they can, being already outwardly-directed and thus more easily able to influence public opinion. It's a catch-22.) I've gone to classes and seminars on developing social skills, done deep therapy, and practiced, practiced, practiced, until I practiced (read stressed) myself right out of the ballgame and had to retire from it all, whereupon, after years of introspection, I decided that I was better off alone, out of it, taking life as it came rather than trying to make it happen for myself. Now, people tend to avoid me. Whatever they saw in me when I was younger which attracted them to me...well, it's not gone, because I still catch glimpses of it from time to time, but people are more wary of me now, as wary as I used to be of them, and still am, but less so because I have learned better how to take people--or not to take them. So, maybe it's just that they read my reticence to engage them and act appropriately. But that can't be the answer, because I've always been this way, even more so in the past. So, what it is? Why, when I am at the height of approachability, do people want to now avoid me? Maybe they sense that I will get too close--because I will, if they will let me, over time, slowly. Or maybe --oh, hell. I don't know. Maybe I think too much.

The whole point is that I am not any different than anyone else in this regard. I have this reputation for being a loner, because I stay off by myself a lot. "Well?" you say? "What do you expect?" Yes. I know. But consider this. I stay by myself a lot because I don't feel so alone. I feel very much a part of everyone, often too much, and I have to get away. I don't know how to shut people out when I'm among them. Well, no. That's not true either. I do. I can be among people and act as if I am totally alone. But, it's like this: they get through to me anyway. Maybe not immediately (sometimes immediately), but always very profoundly, as I reflect later on what they said and did. They get into me, without me knowing it, and it often hurts, because people live with a lot of pain that they have become immured in and adapted to so that they don't feel it any more so much as pain, but more as simply the way they are, a psychological process akin to physiological adaptation. And they are always more than willing to dump the pain on you if you will unwittingly allow it, and I unwittingly allow it, even when, or especially when, I am seeming to remain aloof. I exist apart because I do not censor input so well. I consciously turn myself off, but unconsciously I absorb others' unconscious agendas like a sponge, which is pretty much a normal process, at least for some people, but then I turn around and later remember it, unrepressing it when I have the time and isolation, and all of the tragedy and pathos comes crashing down on me, in me, because I make others and their problems a part of my own psyche, often without realizing I'm doing it, thinking the problems are my own, which I work out, because I always go out of my way to work out my problems, whereupon I usually discover that, in large part, they are not so much my own as those of someone else. And I have worked them out for them, and maybe they will get the message, not directly, because I know enough not to offer advice to someone who is dumping on me, but indirectly, via unconscious and preconscious exchanges when we meet, or even when we don't. The more I go out, the more this dynamic occurs. So I tend to stay at home, especially when I am feeling psychologically weak. It's so nice to live alone where you can deal with what you know to be, at best, merely psychic connections. But that's a whole other story.

5-9-01

You see it all the time in photoplay stereotypes, a newer couple exchanging ideas about their lifestyles by asking revealing but ultimately superficial questions of each other: Do you like to sleep with the window open or closed? Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom or the middle? Etc. There is only one real question to be asked, which concept they always seem to avoid, in art and in real life: How tolerant are you of people who think and act differently from you? The real measure of a successful relationship is the level of acceptance each person has for the other. If both do not have a moderate tolerance level for difference, then one must have an extraordinary amount in order for the relationship to "work." (It's not really working in this case, unless you happen to believe that dependency/victimization is a legitimate form of relationship, which, of course, I do not.) When two people engage in this exchange of superficial information, they are avoiding the real issue: Are you really in love, or are you just temporarily infatuated? True love is mutual acceptance, and anything short of that is just some kind of game--a game that the "arts" want to convince us is a basis of reality in modern (or postmodern) relationships. This is one of the less attractive aspects of postmodernism, that it will settle on the superficial and fail to investigate the deeper significance of life issues. It doesn't have to be this way. We can still probe the depths and be genuine postmodern artists. We can still be erratic, even scatterbrained, without being superficial. It's a fine line to walk, but we can do it. Alicia Silverstone does.

5-11-01

I am a massive consumer of pop art. I absorb music, movies, and images at an alarming rate. I've always done this, but it has become my major preoccupation over the past several years as my consumption has steadily increased with my non-necessity to have to go out to otherwise waste my time working at a thankless job. As a result of this increased rate of consumption, and in conjunction with my increased use of the Internet, I am suffering from a serious case of information overload. Actually, it's not so much of a problem, so long as you don't take it too seriously. But I have this propensity to want to consciously incorporate everything into my art, or at least into the (less than ideal) organization of my computer files, which more and more I am considering to be an aspect of my art. I have to continually correct my thinking or else I will be overwhelmed with my inability to consciously assimilate everything I read, watch, and experience.

Although I completely disagree with their bigotry and militant tactics, I find myself in agreement with the militia movement on at least one count: they got it right about the conspiratorial nature of the United States government and the way it suppresses individuality and freedom. You are free in this country (and in other countries even less so than in this one) as long as you are mainstream. That is, you are free to be an individual so long as you do not express your individuality in a way that is different from the American way--which is no real expression of individuality at all. You can be free as long as you wish to remain the same as everybody else. Auden's poem, "The Unknown Citizen," comes to mind. [You are actually free to be anything you want, but exercise that freedom and see where it gets you.]

And government officials, in tandem with "good American citizens" (i.e., conservatives), act, directly in many cases and indirectly via influence and manipulation always, to assure that the "American way of life" is preserved, at all costs.

It's not really the American way of life, it's the way of life of a very select, but powerful minority. And it's not really an American problem, it's a universal problem: everyone around the world experiences the same difficulty when it comes to freedom, least of all Americans. Human nature being what it is, people will always seek power, and certain psychological types will always get more of it than other less aggressive types. It's interesting that high among the former types are the militiamen. Under other circumstances, they would be the ones who were doing the oppressing. (Yes, there is oppression even in America; it's a far more subtle form than that which is found in less developed countries, but it is oppression nonetheless.) If the impossible were to happen and the government of the United States were overthrown by a militia coalition, the official intolerance would radically escalate. But this will never happen, not only because the official mainstream forces are too well-equipped and entrenched, but more importantly because the militiamen occupy the lower strata of the authoritarian type-class for a reason: they are the ones who couldn't cut it within the society/culture, whatever the cause, whether it be socio-economic disenfranchisement, levels of intelligence too low to make the big leagues, or any other number of social or personal shortcomings. The guys (and, increasingly, the ladies) in charge are the cream, unfortunately. (This is not to say that there is not a cream flowing elsewhere than midstream that is not every bit as qualified; the "people in charge" must have the additional disturbing quality of being overtly subservient to their own authority. True, they are "in charge," but they must always watch their backs, because each of them is always out to get the others.)

It's too bad that as a species we must be dominated by this type of psychology, but this is the way it is. We must face facts. We (of the "different" psychological type) can't stop human nature from being what it is. We can influence all of the legislation we are capable of, but if the powerful want to get around those laws, they will. The best that we can hope for is a redress of grievances. Call the abusers to task after the fact. We have learned from our years of experience that punishment doesn't go very far to deter criminal or socially manipulative minds, but at least in this country we can have the satisfaction of knowing that we can correct instances of individual injustice, once in a while. It's not much satisfaction, but it's better than most places in the world.

For myself, I'd rather let it go. Life's too short to make it a cause. I meditate instead. It may not solve any social problems, but it makes me feel better. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Otherwise, why worry about individuality at all? It is only through feeling that we come to know individuality. (It is only through feeling that we come to know anything; thought is a specialized form of feeling.) Feeling is the culprit, not the cure. Transcendence is the ultimate solution. Anything short of it is participation. We participate when we strive to negate the oppression, or even when we merely seek redress of grievances. By playing the roles of pawns, we enable the battles of kings. It's better not to even play the game.

I've never really been a strong proponent of this culture.

I prefer my own private version of reality.

5-13-01

Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." In the same way, the only thing new in your mind is the psychology you don't know, which is an even more profound statement, because human psychology determines history. All of psychology has been around since the beginning of man. Nothing has changed since then. It's only the application of the discipline of science to it that is new, and that is maybe not so much of an improvement in that science narrows the scope of reality to an understandable, but fictive, pattern. Nothing is new, except that we don't know it. But there is so much more that is unknown than we can ever know.

5-21-01

Last night, about three in the morning, in the midst of my work, as I was about to do a load of laundry to utilize some free time while I waited for a program to do some processing, the water line to the sprayer on the kitchen faucet burst, soaking the inside of the cabinet beneath the sink. This is not the first time this has happened. A few weeks ago, the fitting to the sprayer loosened and came off, with the same results. Then, I had forced it back on, crimping it a little bit to help keep it more tightly in place. I guess I must have crimped the hose too, because that's where it broke, right at the fitting.

I have had continuing water problems since I moved into this place so many years ago. Faucets never work right. Something is always going wrong, and rather than going to the trouble of fixing it, I work around the problem, because no matter how much I try to fix the problems, there always seems to be a leak. I'm not that good at plumbing, but even when I hire a plumber, something seems to go wrong, usually too long after he has done the work to call him to fix it at his expense.

But this time, rather than put up with the inconvenience, I decide I must do the work immediately, because my clothes are sitting in the undrained washer (it's a small apartment machine that attaches to the kitchen faucet) and I'd stopped using the bathroom sink last December when the leak it developed two years earlier began to get worse, causing me to have to reroute the dripping water into a bowl via a towel tied around the pipes below the sink and empty the bowl at increasingly more frequent intervals. The kitchen and the bathroom are immediate adjacent, so that it's been easy for me to wash in the kitchen sink. But now, being down to only the tub as a source of water, I think back to the time when I was actually going out to a daily job and the plumbing for the tub went bad, causing me to have to shower in the basement, which is not heated and which can only be gotten to by going outside. Couple that with the fact that the basement is not so clean and it was the middle of the winter at the time and you have a situation that was not so comfortable. For a week, while I assembled all of the parts for and did the repairs after coming home from long ten to twelve hour work days, I went out into the cold every morning to go down to the basement, braved a less than ideal ambient temperature to shower, and exited the basement into the cold with wet hair to get back upstairs.

So now, I decide to replace the entire kitchen faucet rather than to simply install a new sprayer line, because the line I put in is only about six months old and already it is non-functional, and anyway, the hot water faucet hasn't worked properly for five years, ever since, three months after I installed it, the cartridge became distorted and would not shut the water off all the way. While it was hot, it worked fine, but as it cooled, it contracted and leaked, and no matter what I did, I could not fix it. So for the last five years I've been using the shut-off under the sink to turn the hot water on and off. In addition to that, the knob had been broken because of the stress of having to turn the damaged cartridge, which when the water got hot, bound up and became hard to turn. After having replaced the knob twice, I "temporarily" used vice grips as a substitute for the knob. And it stayed that way for five years, because it worked. More or less inconveniently, but it worked.

I bought new faucets for the kitchen and the bathroom and installed them, not without difficulties, of course. It took me forever, curled up under the kitchen sink with various odd protrusions jabbing into my neck, back, and buttocks as I worked the lock-downs loose and edged them off over the corroded faucet stems, a quarter turn at a time with the handles of a pair of pliers because that was the only tool with large enough "jaws" that would fit up into the narrow space between the sink basin and the wall. And then, of course, after the faucet was installed, there was the inevitable task of finessing the connections to stop the water trickles. The washers between the water supply lines and the faucets stems were worn, so I went back out to buy news one, but of course, I couldn't find the right size, so I gave up and used the old ones. They worked, finally, after about two hours of twisting pipes and cranking down the lock-downs just a little bit more, when I thought that each previous time I had done this, they could not possibly be turned any farther.

The bathroom faucet went a lot better, mostly because of the easier access to the plumbing and because there was no corrosion, although there was the same leak-stopping ritual. Now, it's all done. I have full water service again, and I'm hoping it will hold for at least another five years--and without the difficulties that I will not to want to fix. Overall, the entire set of repairs took me only five hours, including the trips to Home Depot. Not bad. If I'd have known it would have gone that well, I'd have done it a lot sooner. Well, maybe not. Five hours repair work is five hours not spent writing about it, or about some other inane aspect of my unconventional life. If I had any sense, I'd sell this place and move into an apartment. Just think, no cutting grass or trimming weeds and hedges. No worrying about whether the leaky roof and foundation will cause irremediable damage. This is another recurring problem I put off doing something about, because every time I try to fix it, the repairs only last for, at best, a year. I've even had an entire new roof put on--not the shingling, but the wood and all, but its integrity lasted only fifteen years. That's what I get for trying to save money by hiring a friend. And he's not even my friend any more--and not because of the roof. But that's another story.

I like the way The Gus renders his daily life in a kind of post-performance art. He incorporates a clean and clear modern writing style into a postmodern format as he tells his ongoing story. I envy him his matter-of-fact style, as he avoids "philosophy" and psychology in favor of a straightforward lifestory line. I wish I could be happy doing this, I wish this method said for me what it is I want to say. But my motive is to render not so much what happens to me and what I do as what I think and feel and dream. It defies the modern verité tradition. I am more like Samuel Beckett than Gus' Ernest Hemingway.

6-12-01

Yesterday was a baaad day. First of all, I get an e-mail notice telling me that my website host (not this one) is cutting back its free service. The bastards. But I guess it had to happen eventually. Then, I keep losing my ISP connection. (Last week, they announced that they're merging with another top provider to become the second largest ISP. I wonder if this has anything to do with the poor service.) Then...wait a minute. I'm thinking. I guess there wasn't anything else. I guess it wasn't so bad as I thought. (It's been hot and muggy for two days now. Maybe this is the beginning of my summer lethargy/discontent--which is not so bad as in the winter and is more like just being lazy.) Oh, well. How the hell am I supposed to rail at God, the world, and the devil if they don't throw a lot of misfortune my way? This brings me neatly around to a topic I've been thinking about for a while and began to make paper notes on last night:

I've had a good life. I've had a lot of experience, which has washed away the naiveté of youth, and yet I've managed to avoid the worst negative effects of those experiences. I had a good and sane upbringing, and yet I've seen bad upbringings and what they can do to people, how they can leave them handicapped for life, incapable of making rational and moral choices, thus limiting their potential if not out-and-out ruining their lives. I have come to understand the street, and yet have been able to avoid, for the most part, staying off of it. I understand through first-hand experience what drugs are all about, and yet I have managed to avoid their most serious of ill-effects. Despite my waywardness and tendency to wander, I have managed to get a good education, which I have translated into the continuing desire and practice of self-education. And I have, through my own initiative and perhaps more coincidentally via fortuitous circumstance (or maybe it was, after all, fore-ordained), gained much spiritual experience, which has taught me how to view life relatively objectively, avoiding the mythology and superstition of religion. I was trained as a scientist, from early on, even before high school and college, as the natural course of my life unfolded, so that I almost think there is a destiny involved. So, all in all, although I have made some serious mistakes, my life has been a happy one, as I have lived in perhaps the best place on earth in perhaps the best of times, affording me a life of ease. But this has not been all due to circumstance. My own drive toward sanity and security has pointed me in the right direction. Others, even those who have been close to me, so that they would, if I were a different person, have negatively influenced me, have had it not so good, even as they lived amid the opulence that should have been theirs. Yes, I have been somewhat lucky. But I have also been smart, and I have acted on an innate wisdom to bring me to this point in my life where I can say I've had a good life. [But it's not over, lest anyone think this is a self-eulogy, which as I reread it, it sounds a bit like.]

6-12-1c

I'm getting really sick of the media's popularization of web material, jumping onto "hot" topics on "news" spots near the end of the news. It almost makes me want to chuck the whole deal and move to Montana or some other desolate place again and try to deny the existence of the postmodern world. Wouldn't it be nice? I miss the good old days living in the woods.

6-14-01

I spent a lot of time yesterday, off and on, thinking about how I could write online like Gus. This is what I'd like to do. He's my hero, man. But I've finally decided, after a good night's sleep has relieved the obsession, that he is not me, or I am not him, or whatever. I'd like to delineate my life along a timeline, telling my unfolding story. But the best part of my work is episodic and my journal is plagued with long bouts of boring ennui--mostly because my life is pretty much the same, since I don't go out into the world every day any more, but stay at home, avoiding the debility of stress-related illness. And so I decide, once again, that my websites represent what I truly am--or an important part of it. I get this way, from time to time, obsessed with an artform that I think is cool as I begin to imitate it, only to return to what I was doing before the obsession occurred. This, of course, is how a style is developed in the first place. But I would have thought, had I thought about it correctly in the first place, that I would have been settled into a style by now and not still be metaphorically running after every fancy that I encounter, trying to make it my own. Maybe I am still naive, after all. Maybe no one ever does grow up in this sense. Wait a minute. Of course they do. People grow old and rigid. I see it all the time. Oh, God. Please don't let me become like them. Please keep my mind, at least, young and agile and chasing after new creative trends and information.

Since I am, everyone, anyway, when veils of illusion lift,

I may as well continue, to suffer, personality diffusion, as I

incorporate the confusion, which is the world, into my art,

while my mind whiles itself away, believing, it is asserting

itself as itself, when in truth, we are all one, living deception.

Shirley MacLaine, in Postcards From The Edge, says "I don't mind getting old. I just mind looking old." Well, I don't mind getting old, I just mind sounding as if I am old fogey who's become set in his ways and unable to appreciate the life force as it progresses through the changing universe.

6-17-01

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.

--Scott Adams

What is art? An expression of self that reflects the world you live in. You take in your environment (input), you process it in that black box they call your brain, or mind, or soul, and you spit it all back out, and the best of it (assuming you have good judgment and a keen sense of self-image) you save to show to others.

I get my input from people, dreams, books, films, news, and the Internet.
I am a computer. I process the input via logging and sorting tapes and notes I make into my computer, organizing and maintaining word, image, and music files (and the computer system as a whole), and by doing office procedures which monitor and maintain my ability to keep on working as I do, free of the encroaching effects of a society that would like nothing better than to see me fail (I know that's not really true; mostly, it could care less, which is an even bigger problem.)
My output takes the form of dreams (which feed back as input), fantasy (ditto), art, writing, and websites, especially as they allow me to create characters and personas that I present to the world.

Degas did his self-portrait again and again, always with the same depressed look and feel. He was an easily-discouraged man, full of self-doubt. He constantly worried. Artistically, he was split in two directions: the traditional "larger-than-life" studies that were the mainstay of his times, and the renderings of common modern life (the stuff of impressionism.) Sound like anyone you know? This is I. I am he, all over again. Much of my work is not much more than my own rendered self, perhaps a bit more fragmented, since I do not paint images on canvas, but portray more of an inner self in words, rendering more psychological than physical states of existence. But maybe this is not so true, maybe I am more similar than I think, since Degas' self-portraits depict much of his inner state and my work often uses concrete imagery to suggest a lot of my own inner self:

I am easily discouraged, though you wouldn't know it, because I work through it, having a stubborn streak that won't allow me to quit when I face obstacles, but rather plod along, beating my head against the wall, all the while feeling like a failure, negatively motivated, not wanting it to be true, determined not to allow the truth to take too firm a hold on me; I am frequently filled with self-doubt. Many times, it prevents me from showing my work, and yet it never prevents me from working [I am prevented more by physical depression (i.e., SAD), than by doubt.] I work, when I am doubtful of my worth, for my own self, because I have no bigger fan than myself. If no one ever reads what I have written, I am a success--in my own mind.1 This is not self-doubt, you say? Oh, but it is, if I would but present my work to be considered by others. It is then that I doubt that what I am doing is worthwhile;

and I worry a lot. A few years ago I would say that I worried constantly, but that was a residue of long-term stress and depleted cortisol reserves. Lately, I have been much better. I almost feel that I am well again. I have always had much self-doubt and worry, but it has mostly been unconscious. And can we say that it is doubt and worry really, if it is unconscious? Aren't those affects most valid (apart from the study of deep psychology) when we are aware of them? And I am split in two directions: conventional prose, or the desire to be conventionally published, and postmodern exposition, or the desire to be different, unique.

Comparing myself to an artist like Degas is empowering: it makes me feel validated. Knowing that artists experience self-doubt makes me feel more like an artist. I always know I am a valid artist, but often I do not feel it. Comparisons make me feel better about myself. This is why I study art, hardly at all for the art as for the artists who render it, which is the same thing, really. Art is that which artists produce. An artist is one who produces art. This definition is circular because the content cannot be separated out, art from artist. The form is different, person v. medium, but the content is the same.

1. "Success doesn't mean that you feel good, or that you are healthy, or that you are well-rested." --Victoria Principle (on The Larry King Show), by which she meant that successful people have just as many physical, mental, and emotional problems as everyone else. If I am a success, socially or independently (i.e., by my own definition), it is irrelevant to what's important to me in life. What's important is my health and well-being, and self-doubt is an indicator of poor mental health.
[P.S. I have an old issue of Playboy with pictures of Victoria in it.]

6-24-01

Paul Rubens is making a new PeeWee Herman flick. Great. I was sorry when he decided to drop the character. I never really liked PeeWee Herman--until after Paul's arrest. Then, suddenly, as he was going out of fashion, I found a new admiration for him. I was amazed by the general consensus that Reubens couldn't do PeeWee anymore after his arrest. I never saw any inconsistency between PeeWee and the bust. They seemed to me to fit together perfectly. I guess I saw something in the character that others didn't--or else I saw right through it. Anyway, welcome back, PeeWee.

6-29-01

Once you start compromising your thoughts,
you're a candidate for mediocrity.
Neil Simon,
Biloxi Blues

I fight an ongoing battle with the forces of evil disguised in the form of self-censorship. Gus says that he didn't tell his housemate John about his online journal because he didn't want it to influence his art. [My interpretation. I think this is what he meant. If not, it's what I mean, now.]

A continuing debate runs within my brain: to reveal who and what I really am [I don't mean anything dramatic; I mean, I'm not a closet gay (I don't think; but then, if it were unconscious, how would I know?), or an axe murderer, or anything; I just mean: to reveal my real self] v. to present a self-censored, fictionalized, or sanitized version of myself for public consumption.

In a certain sense, we all do this, more or less, every time we open our mouths and/or present our personas to the public. How true can we be to our own content/form when we don't know the entire truth about our own inner (and sometimes even outer) selves? But sometimes we (I) go out of our (my) way to misrepresent the facts, because we (I) would rather look more heroic than actual, more someone else than our(my)selves(f), more any one specific thing than any specific other.

So, do I continue to hide (a part of) my real self away, or do I reveal it all, or as much of it as I can as I address any particular aspect of my life? I want to say the latter, and I often act to this end. But I will backtrack later, as I discover my reaction against the revelation, that certain inner backlash that says: "No. You're allowing yourself to look too naive, too stupid, too whatever."

It has nothing to do, really, with looking any particular way at all. It has to do with some kind of pathology I do not want to look at, an inner mode of being I do not want to face: the schizoid tendency to want to be both private and public without one affecting the other. Of course they are going to affect one another. But I do not want it to be true. I want to be able to hide away and be revealed at the same time. This is old stuff.

7-1-01

I have a feeling that fulfilling my potential
would really cut into my sitting around time.

Maria Bamford

You just can't go take a nap every time you're tired.

a friend

I've been tired a lot lately. I find myself taking a nap in the middle of the day. I've always done this, even when I was working, coming home to take a short nap in the afternoon. But now, the naps are longer, sometimes even extending to three or four hours. It's very energizing, and after I awaken, I get a whole lot done that otherwise I would have struggled with, pushing myself to accomplish a lot less. At these times, when I'm just struggling to get by, I begin to feel guilty. I'm not getting enough done. The quality of my work is suffering. At these times, I have to correct my thinking. It's more important to be rested than to be productive. The way I feel now, when I will not get caught up in the doubt and worry syndrome, is the way I am supposed to be. I go along from day to day, more or less worry and stress-free, relaxed, happy with myself, never at all experiencing the anxiety that used to be a constant part of my life. Slowly over the years the anxiety has abated, and not only because I have become wiser and more self-insightful, although that's a big part of it. But a bigger part is that I no longer have to face the daily world of business and civilization. I am separated out from it, and I feel as relaxed as I used to feel when I was a kid and not required to interface with the world, when I could be off in my own world, in the woods or in my bed at night, filled with fantasies and dreams, unthreatened by the impingement of society. Yes, I was far more anxious as a child, but I was far more able to cope with the anxiety, able to better relieve it via escape. As I grew older and more insightful, I became consciously aware of the anxiety, and it made me more even introverted, until I had to decide to deal with it, and I did, relatively successfully for the most part, but at the cost of my relaxation and ability to escape. It's easy to escape from a world you do not like or agree with. It's a far more difficult thing to escape from yourself. I internalized the world's ability to impinge itself on me. I began to impinge upon myself. I made myself productive. I became an authoritarian personality, which I never was when I was young. Far from it. I was totally carefree--when I could get away from a world that wanted me to care. You can't live carefree as an adult in a world that demands that you produce in order to survive. So I had to "secure" my place in the world, which I did, at the expense of relaxation. Now, having jumped the last (I hope) hurdle, I am free to live the way I know is sane. I am living as I should now, feeling like I did when I was kid, but more consciously. Except when I have these twangs of guilt: I am not doing enough. I am not working productively. I am wasting time. I am not wasting time. I am using it, to relax. I am living sanely. I am attending to my own health and well-being, mental as well as physical. Why would I want to do otherwise? Do I want to work myself to an early death? That's what would have happened had I gone on the way I had been going, as an "adult." We have too many "adults" in the world. We need a lot more grown up kids. Maturity is not entering the work-force and becoming an adult. Maturity is settling down, not pushing so hard, relaxing, and realizing that the world is a crazy place to live and to be "out of it" for long periods of time is actually a developmental goal of life. We advance by slowing down and becoming meditative. The world, at least the capitalist world, will never understand this---because it's crazy. It operates by indoctrinating its subjects into a crazed mindset so that they run around acting in all kinds of demented ways, thinking they are sane and doing what is right and righteous. I know. I used to be one of them. But now I'm not. I'm cured. Tentatively. I could always backslide. I find myself starting to do it all the time. But I have a natural correction now. I get tired. And when I do, there's no one around any more except that little voice inside my head to tell me to push on despite fatigue. And so I go and take a nap, because that voice inside my head gets smaller and smaller as each year passes. I am slowly healing. When I am completely healed, I will leave this world entirely, because you can't live here when you're completely sane.

7-5-01

I gotta go shopping soon for some silverfish poison. Their population seems to be increasing with the warm weather. I hate them slimy little muthafuckas. It's been two years now since I got rid of the carpenter ants. That had been an ongoing plague until I discovered Terro^TM. It took a while to fully work, all of two months, but it was fun watching them swarm to it and suck up the sticky liquid in an apparent ecstasy of non-movement. About a week ago, I killed an ant in the bedroom in front of the television set, and I left the carcass laying there, to remind me to set out the poison again to head off any further infestation. I'd seen a single lone ant on two previous occasions, which I'd failed to get to and squash before it scurried away. (Or maybe it was that same ant, lost and unable to find its way home. I doubt it.) For some reason (maybe it's my housekeeping, or rather the lack of it) my abode seems particularly receptive to insect invasion. House spiders exhibit a continual presence, but I'm not so quick to kill them since they eat the other bugs. But if I see them in the bedroom, look out. I go after them with a vengeance, because I don't want no kinda bug crawling over me when I'm asleep. I got to get more serious with bug control, though. I'd set off a bug bomb, but I always worry about where and how the stuff settles, onto dishes, clothing, etc. They say all you have to do is cover up the stuff that's not in cupboards, but I'm not sure that I believe that.
Bug Update #1
Bug Update #2
Bug Update #3

I've noticed that when I eat Jello^TM, I squish it around in my mouth and force it through my teeth until it's liquefied. I wonder if others do that too. I suspect that they do, and if so, what's the point of making it? It could be that we like the gelatinous feeling, and if so, that has to be the whole reason that we eat it, because otherwise we could just drink the dissolved liquid when it's first made and not have to endure the four hour wait for it to gel. I'm going to consider this subject, and if I decide that it is a proper course of behavior, then next I'm going to consider consuming simple Kool-Aid^TM instead, because it's far cheaper (or is it?) I'll have to check that out. [My mind is wandering today.]

This next topic has been developing for quite some time:
I've been searching for a long while, mostly unknown to my conscious mind, for a means to penetrate the mysterious phenomenon(a?) of the zeitgeist. This is an aspect of mental life that has intrigued me since I first learned of it when I was just entering high school. Then, I thought that what was meant by the term was some sort of ethereal force, something more tangible than mere thought, something more like electromagnetic energy. [And maybe it is. Who knows what science will discover over the next century or millennium? I once developed a "theory" (actually more like a fantasy, except that it could be true, you never know) that some "substance," like maybe neutrinos, which pass through us and continue on to pass through others, could be carrying "encoded" information picked up on its journey, instantly conveying it from one person to another, thus accounting for ESP phenomena. But seriously, folks...] Now, I have a more "scientific" view. (Isn't it a shame that we become so adult?) Anyway, back to the zeitgeist:

I've stumbled across what may be a literary method for determining (some small part of) the zeitgeist's nature: find writers who publish daily (e.g., on the net) with whom you are simpatico (kindred spirits responding similarly to the cultural attachments of the day) and collect excerpts of their writing that correspond with ideas you have had that you have thought were your own, i.e., that you derived without conscious reference to other sources. Then, maybe, for this collection, you can put together a framework for how you have been led to believe what you believe, not from some personal genius or idiosyncratic thought process, but from simply having existed in the timeframe/culture that you do. I know it's a lame methodology, but it's still in its infancy. And anyway, it's better than sitting around believing that you're the center of the universe isn't it? Maybe not. [My personal correlate is Gus. I'm continually amazed to find my ideas popping up in his online journal. It's almost as if I am writing it myself, except for the particular details of his Southern California life. (I've always felt that I should be living in the sunny Southwest. I am a coastal and/or desert person at heart. But that's another story.)

7-6-01

A Theory of Accumulation

How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.

If you never get done what you want, or need, or plan to do, that's one thing. But never even starting to do it is another thing altogether. Often, having started, you keep going. The impetus carries you forward. But even if you don't finish, even if all you do is a token of activity, enough tokens add up to the whole thing, or a big enough part of it that you realize a substantial gain. You work, minute by minute, day by day, unmotivated except for the plan to do a token amount of work until that one day when motivation ambles along and you find yourself finishing a formidable task that you had been putting off for ages. It all starts and ends with one small step.

[This is my feeble attempt to motivate myself, to get things done, like cutting the grass and trimming the hedges, which I tend to let go until they are so far gone that I have to mount a major expedition into the wilderness of my yard in order to return it to some semblance of civilization. All I want to do when I am "motivated" (if it can be called that) is sit at my computer and work, and when I'm not motivated, I don't want to do anything, and even watching the tv is boring.]

7-7-01

I Sold My Soul for Rock & Roll

When I lived on Oahu, I saw Black Sabbath in concert at the University of Hawaii. It was okay. Kinda short. And the audience was kinda vacant, but whattaya expect at an Ozzy concert. But just seeing the group and participating in the mindless experience made it worthwhile. I did that a lot back in those days. (Guess I wasn't all that much different than the rest of the audience.) And I'm still doing it:

This morning, I spent six hours online going through all the CDs available on HMV.com, trying to use up my free certificates earned at garageband.com [no longer online] before they expired. [They no longer give out certificates to HMV. The promotion is over. Now, the free CDs you get are of unknown bands, but that's okay too. I may even like unknown bands more. But it's a lot harder to know who's good when DJs and record promoters aren't telling you what to like. (That's sarcasm, in case you missed it.)] [Garageband is back online again several months later, but now they're not giving out any more free CDs.]

The free CDs I ended up getting from HMV were:

We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll - Black Sabbath
Super Hits - WillieNelson
Ballads - Dexter Gordon
Rite of Spring & The Firebird - Igor Stravinsky

I think I may be getting old.
And yet, this is the kind of thing kids do, waste their time online pursuing dreams.

7-11-01

Yesterday, my neighbor across the street comes home from work ranting and raving. I am vaguely aware of a ruckus going on outside as I work at my computer, but I don't pay any attention to it until it escalates into unbridled shouting. I look out the window and the guy is unloading yard refuse (tree branches, lawn clippings, et al.; he's a landscaper) from the back of his pickup as he screams at the top of his voice at his wife, who stands nearby crying and trying to explain her position, because it seems he is screaming at her, for "pressuring" him or something, from his point of view--warped by having been out in the hot sun all day working, losing valuable electrolytes via perspiration, and succumbing to his seasonal "losing-it" demeanor. She gives up and goes back into the house, still crying. He follows her and his shouting from inside the house echoes through the neighborhood. This goes on for about fifteen minutes. Then he leaves. Apparently, she says something after him about drinking and driving, because he yells to her that he doesn't care. Let them arrest him. (These occasional summer shouting bouts of his always occur when he's been drinking.)

After the neighborhood quiets down, I begin to think about verbal abuse. I think what he has been doing to his wife certainly qualifies as abuse. He may never hit her, but psychologically, he batters her severely. Then, I think about what she may have done to deserve it. Nothing, of course. No one deserves to be the recipient of that kind of behavior. So, I should say, what has she done to provoke it? Again, nothing, in her case, because even if she has been engaging in the kinds of behavior women will engage in when they "pressure" a man to conform to what they think (rightly or wrongly) should be the way things are supposed to be, he is responsible for his own behavior. No matter what. It's called emotional maturity, and it's a hard lesson I myself had to learn. Several times in my life I have found myself in the position of feeling I had no recourse but to shout my way out of my mental difficulties. Always, it has been the result of chronic stress, peaked by an acute episode that put me over the edge. So, despite my disgust at my neighbor's behavior, I have to understand. Things can get out of hand, when you are pushed too far. But then, the same can be said of physical abuse. Or murder. There is, really, no excuse.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Abuse has always been rampant in the world. And this nation, as advanced as it is supposed to be, has not gone very far in remedying this most serious of problems. So, if we can't even deal with this overt behavior, how can we be expected to deal with the more subtle forms of abuse, such as that which my neighbor, apparently, accuses his wife of. Overt abusers become the scapegoats of more subtle (more intelligent?) abusers who have a more ingratiating style that permits them to get away with it, because they do it below the surface, subliminally, where it cannot be easily detected. Nevertheless, it is almost always felt. When I was young, I often didn't feel it. I was that detached. And this is why, perhaps, people thought I was someone special, gifted, because they couldn't get to me with their games. If only I could have preserved that aspect of my behavior, but... I should never have grown up. Growing up is what has caused all of the difficulties in my life, mainly because I failed to grow completely...until now, I hope. I can observe the world through my front window and act the wise sage, but being out in it daily, facing the stresses and pressures, is a whole other thing. I'm grateful I don't have to do it any more. I wonder if I could handle it better now. Maybe. But I don't really want to test it. Finally, I happy where I am. I used to be a wanderer, a detached soul, settling temporarily where I was. Then I became a mainstream element in a vast and impersonal machine. [Despite attempts to "postmodernize" by adding "human resources" departments to businesses, etc., business is always about money, no matter how "human" you try to make it.] Now, I've become a physically fixed entity, I hope so that I may allow my mind to continue to develop after years of stasis as the result of immersion in a business environment. My withdrawal from the "world" has calmed me in the way that marijuana used to. (I can't smoke it any more. It makes my heart race, and I'm prone toward fibrillation, a scary ordeal. But I sure do miss it.) I always felt that I would have been a ranting, raving lunatic if it hadn't been for grass. It literally, I believe, saved my sanity, and maybe even my life. It is no coincidence that I gave it up when I had to perform complicated linear-thinking tasks at work. You can't allow your mind to wander when you're working for a living in a highly "responsible" position. This was conscious thought at the time. Man, was I ever brainwashed. How did I deteriorate so far in the course of so few years? No wonder I succumbed to chronic stress.

Now, after physically wandering as a youth and spiritually wandering (in a good way) as a young adult, I am settled down to wander no more. How sad. But at least I don't shout in the street.

I worry that my neighbors will one day find out about the existence of this journal. I wonder what their reaction would be. Would they understand? Probably not. But if they don't want me to write about their exploits, they should take care not to behave badly in public.

7-12-01

Last night on "Politically Incorrect," Sandra Bernhard said that women are more spiritually developed than men, to which Bill Maher, adopting a defensive posture, took exception. He was so caught up in his view that women (of the liberated variety) are belittling and demeaning men with their postmodern agendas that he couldn't understand that his position was not at odds with Sandra's. Men and women exist along a spectrum, women grouped toward one end and men grouped toward the other. (Duh!) [Don't get defensive, libbers. I know that there are many women who tend toward the men's end and men who tend toward the women's, but generally, this is true.] And this is what Bill was trying to say, that when situations occur that require aggressive or assertive tactics, women defer to men, even to the extreme of cowering and hiding behind them as they do their thing at their end of the spectrum. Michael Moore then adds his opinions, which seem also to conflict, but do not, that men have for so long dominated the world, that it is not women who start wars, shoot people in schools, etc. He sides with Sandra in an ineffectual attempt to defer, demonstrating Bill's point that, in order to keep the peace, men agree with women and allow themselves to be told how to act and think, even to the point of fiction. (This conversation started as the result of Bill proposing that the recent spate of aggressive female characterizations in film and on tv is a fiction, that real life isn't that way. Another duh, as the panel asks "What do you expect? It is fiction. It's art, not life."

Throughout the program an undercurrent of debate continued, but it was all based on misperception. No one was saying too much of anything contradictory, although they thought they were. They were missing the piece of the puzzle that could bring them all into agreement: yes, women are more spiritual, and men are more rational. [Now, I know, once again, the libbers (and I use that term with as much affection as I can muster, because I love libbers, generally) are bristling. But wait. Everyone, as the program proves, is quick to rush to conclusions without really listening to what the others are saying. Wait for my explanation, consider it, and then, after sincerely concluding that it is untrue, or worse, offensive, berate me for it.] If Bill Maher had made that statement, that men are more rational than women, apart from what Sandra had said, she too might have become defensive. But when you consider the context that women tend toward the spiritual side of a spectrum and men tend toward the rational side, maybe it begins to make some sense. Personally, I would have chosen different labels for the extremes. But since Sandra began with "spiritual," I propose "rational" as the polar alternative. My preferred choices are "intuitional" and "intellectual," [to which I can imagine radical libbers to respond negatively, because they believe, and in some cases maybe correctly, that they are both intellectual and intuitional. But we have to consider this "theory" in terms of ordinary people over the general population. Yes, there are some women, and even some men, who possess copious amounts of both "male" and "female" traits. But these are the exceptional people, the geniuses (genii?), if you will. Most men and women tend toward one or the other extreme, and most of them according to their gender.]

Analogous to (or maybe it's a literal distinction) the physical differentiation of developing fetuses (feti?) that either specialize the genitals into penuses (peni?) and testicles or generalize them into vaginas [this is not radical theory, although the terminology may be somewhat controversial], a psychological differentiation takes place early on in life, the result of which is that men become specialized into "thought-machines" whereas women remain more closely attached to the global perceptions of early life, thus affording them a better insight into spiritual phenomena (for lack of a better phrase) and intuitional prowess. [Intuition is a process whereby the brain/mind assembles facts without or with little input from the reasoning faculties, thus allowing the brain to jump ahead to conclusions that are not readily foreseen by the slower but more detailed reason. Thus, people who are highly skilled in this ability tend to be thought of as "psychic," when all they are doing is engaging in a normal, unobservable, mental process. Women, because they are more prone to global thought than men, are better at this.]

Men, if they are less than deeply perceptive (and/or stupid), could make a big deal out of their specialization (many of them do), arguing that they are the more advanced sex, since they have become highly evolved "thinkers" while women are content to sit back (as is their "nature") and "feel out" their environments. [You hear all the time men saying that women are incapable of clear-thinking, because they let their emotions get in the way, because they don't consider the details of the thought process... whatever. (There is a downside to intuition. Imagination can act in conjunction with intuition, resulting in the arrival at conclusions that are imaginative, but wrong. It's a creative process, and the best use of it is achieved when the results are filtered through a selective process of reason. Thus, both "male" and "female" traits are required for the most advanced mental processing. Reason's downside is that it can render a cold judgment devoid of human consideration.) There are a lot of rational arguments men can make, none of which, in light of this proposal, make much sense.] And women believe that "spirituality" (or love, or feeling, or whatever) is the greater good, and that being more closely in touch with this more general side of life makes them more advanced. [In fact. It's all the same thing, with different foci: reason is specialized thought; thought is specialized feeling.]

If we can step back away from our gender-specific arguments for a moment, we can look at the whole picture to see that both positions are required if we are to remain a viable species. Yes, Bill is right when he says that women defer to men when acts of aggression need to be dealt with. And Sandra is right when she says that women are the coaches or advisors [the exact terminology she used escapes me, which is too bad, because it was perfect] men need to be more whole. In fact, each gender needs the other to be completely human. So very few of us fully embody the traits of the other sex (those of us who do tend be somewhat schizoid) or sit balanced exactly at the fulcrum of the spectrum. [And even if we do sit exactly at its center, the mean is so bland and boring. It's a great ideal to be a guru sitting in a mountain hermitage contemplating the nature of the universe, but who would want to do it? Even the Dahli Lama--although probably not by choice, although I wonder--roams the opulent cities of the "free" world (it isn't really free; it costs a lot of money), stays in expensive hotels, and hangs out with celebrities like Richard Gere, though most people would say that it's the other way around. Ah, isn't postmodernism wonderful?]

7-14-01

You build a "career" by doing things that call attention to yourself so that you construct a network of associates as you develop and sharpen the skills that are necessary to do what it is you do.

The present point in your career is the apex of everything you've done. Your past, as evidenced by your results, is not your career, but has merely been you're proving ground. Your history is filled with a lot of failures, false starts, and dubious achievements. You leave a lot residue behind (especially wasted time) as you develop your body of work.

The completed version of what you have done, the official version, your resume or curriculum vitae, is the best rendition of this history, but it is never the career itself. Your career exists in the present as your potential. It is not that which you have actualized thus far, but is that which you are capable of doing, because of what you have done.

But your career is not, thus, an idle whim. It is the potential that is based upon the reality you've created, the network of people who know you or know of you and your level of developed talent. And, as important, it is based upon the system you've established for handling the detail and routine of your work, the all but automatic processing of your work that takes place due to the processes, hardware, and software that you've put into place and by thus having done so, can put into place again, if need be, all of which allows you to rise to that next higher level.

This is what I do not want to be: a marketable product whose potential is a defined and evolving thing. The evolution part is okay, but the definition is absurd. Yes, I am all of the things I've defined above. I have a (stalled) career. [But the longer a stalled car sits, the less likely it is that it will start again.] But that career, even defined in its broadest terms, falls far short of what I want to do with my life, because it insists on defining my life in terms of skills acquired in specific categories, instead of experience [I'm thinking mostly spiritually here] not "gained," but "experienced"; you don't "gain" through meditation, but neither do you lose; it's an ephemeral presence you tune into, or do not, never consciously missing it.

An inability to define and quantify a career based on this type of experience frustrates me and turns me off to the whole business/career concept. "Psychologist" just doesn't quite get it right. I never really wanted to be a psychologist, but only to learn (my) psychology. "Theologian"--ugh! The very idea turns me off, reeking of dogma. "Guru" Now there's an idea. But, no. Dripping with too much ego. "Experiencer." That's more like it. Anyone need a good experiencer? If you're running a large corporation or a government concern, my fees will be pretty steep, but if you're operating a small business, I can work for a modest rate. And, under certain specific circumstances, I'd even consider working pro bono. I am very good at what I do. I have excellent credentials, but they're not observable to anyone but the most experienced interviewer, and if you're that good, what would you need me for?

Dreams, at their most basic level, clear the boards by processing the previous day's data in the same way that I clear the boards with my daily start-up procedure when I begin to work, logging and assessing the previous day's data and establishing a revised schedule and set of expectations.

A woman writer (I forget who) recently interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-Span, said that she gets up in the morning and writes for half-an-hour. Then she makes coffee and settles into her daily routine. I've always held this up as an ideal, to write as soon as you get up, before settling into a routine and executing your procedures. I thought I never did this myself, but only aspired to it. But today, as I awaken, I think about this, and I realize that I do this before I even get up. The first thing I do upon awakening every day (or night) is lie there and think about what is most predominant in my mind, usually that which I have dreamed of, which creates associations, which I always want to follow up on in detail.

This is a natural process. This is one of the main functions of dreams, to stimulate the mind to consider old life topics, scripts, etc., so that they may be developed in new directions, after it has dreamed away the extraneous debris from the previous day and wiped the mindslate fresh again. It's like rebooting a computer running windows when it gets bogged down with files it did not completely close.

Sometimes I make taped or written notes of this new-day material, but usually I try to hold this early thinking in my mind until I get to the computer to log it. Thus far, I haven't been considering this early thinking work. I've been thinking of it as work preliminaries, at best, and sometimes as idle thought (no thought is idle, really), but in light of this writer's comments, maybe I should. Maybe it is my most important work, the generation of ideas. After all, where would I be without them? She didn't say it, but it was obvious that this first work was her most important. (I have heard this said before by other writers.) She pours out her fresh thoughts before she falls into the daily work routine.

If I didn't worry so much about saving money for my dubious future,

if I were more financially free, I would buy a new portable recorder,

and I would take this goddamned piece of shit out behind the house

and throw it full force against the concrete block wall and watch it as

its electronic guts shoot out of it and spill themselves over the lawn.

Both the power adapter cord and the pause button cause it to short as

I try to transfer notes from tape to computer. I am constantly fiddling

with it to get or keep it running as I start and stop it in between typings.

7-16-01

Bug Update: I saw a lone carpenter ant in my bathtub today. Immediately I went and got the poison I set out in the bedroom two weeks ago and laid it on the side of the tub. Then I tried to redirect the ant toward it. It took a long while. Ants are very dumb--or smart. Finally, I got it to where I wanted it, but it didn't bite (or suck.) Oh well. Maybe it'll come back with a lot of its friends.

7-17-01

Kohut thought that there are types of dreams (of which the experience of flying is an example) that represent threats to the ego, "highly threatening representations of the grandiose self, the danger being the disintegration which he equates with the appearance of a psychosis." (Thomä, 1987, p151)

So, according to Kohut, if I interpret this correctly, ego transcendence is not, as Jung or Maslow might have believed, a developmental goal, but rather a psychotic threat. And my desire for transcendence is a psychotic tendency or, at best, a narcissistic one, a grandiose attempt at ego expansion.

It may be the latter, and from a limited point of view, it may even be somewhat the former [ala Laing, when he writes about going to the polar extremes of insanity in order to arrive at the mean of the sane (i.e., to be healed)], but I reject the general principle (as does Thomä) that certain types of "self-state dreams" are inherently threatening. The dissolution of the ego is not always a negative experience. Some people search willingly for this state of being. It is only a threat if it comes upon one unexpectedly, and even then, the threat may be due to its unexpected nature, and not to the state in and of itself.

And it is only psychosis if it is seen as a state from which one cannot voluntarily return--and even then, this may not be what the experiencer desires. (There are states I've entered, particularly some of those I've experienced under the influence of LSD, that I would have liked to never have returned from. Was this temporary psychosis? If it was, I say, yay.)

7-18-01

All he wants to do is, all he wants to do is dance.

All I want to do is write. Sometimes, even eating is a distraction.

Nothing else interests me. My grass hasn't been cut in a month.

I have to force myself to go out an hour a day to work in the yard.

I call it "civilizing," beginning at the front street and working my way toward the back, a section at a time, cutting grass, trimming hedges and weeds, raking, conforming the grounds to social compliance. Then I begin to clean the inside of the house, but I rarely get beyond the entrance before it's time again to go outside. And in the winter, who cares? An hour a day is a fair amount of time, I want to think, to devote to keeping my place acceptable, up to social standards. Now, if only I could manage to do that every single day, in the same way I will adhere to my writing schedule. All I want to do is write. It's even often an effort to play video games or check my e-mail. My systems back up with data I fail to file away as it accumulates in holding files and folders. I have a single-minded purpose, which is good, but I should be more practical. I should be a lot of things, and am, within my mind.

Here's the difficulty: as I was searching through recent past notes for something to write into this journal, I came across this note: "It doesn't matter what else you do, surf the net, log into files, download, etc., as long as you advance your post-performance art at least one notch per day." I program myself to be the single-minded way I am by the thoughts I think and sometimes save to be recorded, and then I wonder why motivation suffers, why I will want to get other things done, but will never seem to want to find the time. I believe myself, into being, motivationally impaired. I have always felt a penchant toward waiting until later to do things, preferring to do them instead in my mind, relegating them to "do" lists to be ignored while I do other things in their place. So, it appears, I do not program myself, my other self programs me, I don't do things because I write them down in notes, thinking I am programming myself to get them done (if I did, I'd get all kinds of things done, because I set all kinds of goals that I never complete), I write things down because I already am that way, a writer, or a thinker who writes, which activity prompts the ideas in the first place. I wait (this is me demonstrating this process once again), for motivation, never wanting to work without it, loathing being expected, even by my own self, to produce, on schedule, when I do not feel like it, when, if only I would set about to do it, I would produce, albeit feebly and with a lower quality, until the motivation found itself and I began to find my way. Which method is better, waiting for the motivation to naturally occur, or going looking for it, working procedurally until the motivation will be coaxed into coming, meanwhile producing a mediocre product that I will have to sort out later? I don't know. The former, probably. But I do the latter, but only when I write. Everything else, I have to force myself to do, beyond procedure, when it gets to be near an "emergency" situation, when things must be done, or else. Working without motivation reminds me of working for an employer, which I always hated, because I was never "up" at the times I was expected to be (not to mention the way I felt because I was not the person they wanted me to be and so pretended to the personality in order to keep my phony-baloney jobs.) I will push myself, sometimes, like I am my own employer, demanding production. And it is never as productive, or as fun (in fact at these times, it is never fun) as when I am self-motivated. (My employer-self is an asshole, just like every other employer.)

7-19-01

If I didn't have cable tv, I could spent more of my free time:

-listening to and downloading mp3s from the Internet

-watching old tapes and becoming proficient at old film trivia

-web surfing

-getting my news from news websites

-making digital mini-films and exporting them to tape

-reducing dependence on "periodic" task-making, such as incorporating tv movie schedules into my daily schedule system and feeling that it was a necessary procedure that I had to get done, obsessionally, or else suffer the consequences of missing a single show that I might otherwise be able to enjoy (or not). I create backlogs of scheduled tasks that rarely get done but "weigh on" me, because I have defined their "necessity." Without cable tv, this list would be diminished. I am a little bit more freed from my dependence each time I decide that things like tv, cleaning the house, taking a shower every day, etc. are non-essential to my health and well-being, that, in fact, I have been, most of my life, too attached to things and systems and even people. (Now if I could only figure out some way to add cutting the grass and trimming the hedges to this list of non-essentials.)

7-21-01

Scheduling by Naggery.

The particular procedure I'm using right now to schedule my work and life, I call "nag scheduling," complicated long lists of short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals, with a brief daily set-up that I do first thing, creating a daily schedule transferring specific goals to a daily "short list." I do not, generally, too closely follow the schedule I set up. I catch the important highlights, maybe, if I'm in a particularly organized and productive mood, but I'm not exhaustive--not like I used to be. I used to be a great anal fool, but I've learned to loosen up. I still feel the motive, to want to do it all, schedule everything "important" and then set about to get it all done, checking item after item off the list, at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something, but worn completely out. Life's too short any more. Now, I schedule it and let it go. If it gets done, it gets done. If not... But over time, as the same items appear day after day on the schedule, they begin to irritate me, until I do them, just to get them off the list.

Somewhere in this great nation (I didn't catch exactly where; somewhere out west, I think) a woman is being persecuted by her neighbors for gardening in her bikini. They tried to take her to court to force her to dress "properly." I am shocked [Not really. That's hyperbole. Nothing shocks me any more.] to think that there are still people in this day and age who are offended by scantily clad women. But then, on a later news show, I got the real story. It seems that she runs a topless maid service. Ah ha. It's not about the bikini gardening. They're out to get her because she has the audacity to confront her neighbors' "morals." [I know this is not really a moral issue--or not a real moral issue. I'm just adopting the consensual definition of the term, the one the masses use. You know. Those people who...oh, never mind.]

I realize these people, these "neighbors," are concerned for the welfare of their children, etc., wanting to bring them up with good Christian values, but they should understand that, by their actions, they are violating the very values they would have their children learn. Or, maybe not. Wake up, people. These aren't true Christian values. Jesus taught tolerance and acceptance. Live and let live. Love your neighbor. This latter day Christianity is a hybrid form, perverted, perverting the message that Jesus taught. You are Christianity's worst enemy when you twist the message like you do. You, in fact, are the symbolic representation of the Anti-Christ. I know you can't believe this. I know you must remain self-deluded, teaching your kids to hate instead of love, thinking you are properly educating them, then wondering how this country got so fucked up. Oh, well.

Thus far, this has not been so good a year, affect-wise. Each successive year, it seems like "winter" lasts longer, which makes me appreciate the summer even more. But the period of appreciation gets shorter each year as the "winter" lingers on, despite the weather.

Everything is all right now, though. It's been great for about two weeks. My work is going smoothly and I'm at the height of my summer ecstasy. But why did it take so abnormally long this year to get here? This worries me. It's as if, affectively, there were no spring this year.

I usually enjoy the warming weather, with its promise of a future of hot, hot days. I love the heat. I should have been born in the desert. I'm in my element now. It's a shame that it can't last. This is the saddest thing about life, that it is cyclical, given to ebb and flow.

7-23-01

It's just occurring to me that in some small way this computer is my art. My personal files, organized, or not, so much, are my life's work, my oeuvre, my raison d'etre.

a personal note

An idea I've been playing around with that I can't seem to get a handle on to come to any conclusions: a website allows me the kind of flexibility that books do not, specifically, the grouping together of a lot of disparate pieces. The development of my pastiche style was an attempt to do this, and a successful one, except that it involves a lot of work that I'm not always willing to do, because doing it takes me away from how I want to exhaustively deal with all of the entries in my journal and unless I make this my first priority, it will not get done, and if I make it my first priority, nothing else gets done. I like the pastiches, but... I have to develop them over time, as the material presents itself. I can't devote my daily work routine to them. But the websites allow me to parcel out journal entries as I deal with them in rewrite, thus enabling a collection to develop ala my original idea (when I started writing so long ago) of creating one large work cross-referenced in multiple ways according to theme and outlined with various structural schemata where individual pieces fit in differently, depending on which sub-category they are in.

I realize this sounds a bit obtuse. Maybe you have to see the conceptualization on paper to understand it. Imagine this: A huge work comprised of maybe ten thousand pages, all bound in one big book, or maybe, more practically, within a number of different bound volumes, where the first volume is the contents, a collection itself of a number of schemata, each a proposed structure for the material in the remaining volumes. In one schemata, the material might be arranged according to date; in another, according to a specific theme, in a specific structure reflective of or appropriate to that theme; in another (and another, and another), a different theme/structure. The actual material itself, then, might be arranged by some arbitrary system, by journal entry date would seem to be convenient. When anyone wanted to read a specific "sub-work" (i.e., that which is represented by one of the schemata), one would locate the entries via the schema outline and read them accordingly, in the specified order. Any given entry could be a part of several, or many, schemata. And, of course, the order would be determined, not by date, but by the schemata structure, each of which itself is a sub-division of a meta-schema structure, which can be arranged in several/many ways, so that there are any number of meta-schemata comprising a supra-meta schema set (at which point this becomes impractical, if it could ever have been achieved at all, being far too much work for any one individual, even if he works full time at it, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week--which I certainly do not.)

Okay. Enough of the fantasy already. I actually had, a long time ago, a beginning to this system: a series of binders (this was when I wrote longhand, before I got my first computer), a few (3") of which contained my earliest writings, all arranged by date, going back to my childhood, many (1"), which contained my more recent journals, each binder containing one year's work, and a few more (1/2 & 3/4"), which contained procedural outlines and the outlines arranging (some of) the entries into "works," some of which eventually became my novels, but many of which never "materialized" in published/printed form. Those binders still exist, in large part not transferred to the digital medium. This (meta)system was the original idea for my websites. It has been minimally implemented. The whole thing, all of it [binders, computer (including files beyond the scope of writing--visual art, music, various forms of data, etc.), websites], is a vast meta-symbol for my brain/mind, as is the original idea in the first place, that is, the vision of a huge self-integrated work collecting all my material together in one great book.

If only I could express myself, the reality behind this symbol/metaphor, in my daily life in this universal way, but without a medium, directly relating to the universe without first having to translate my being into words, or pictures. Then I would not need to write, or paint, or in fact do anything at all. I would be complete, an expressive/responsive entity, in immediate touch with my environment/species, not separated from it at all. This is why we create artistic products, because we feel separate and attempt to bridge a gap that in reality doesn't exist. It is only in our minds that we create the gap in the first place. We create art, a secondary product, a derivative, to attempt to do what we otherwise cannot figure out how to do. It is only through stopping the secondary production that we will ever touch the primary process. Some of us do this naturally, but of course, no one notices these few among us who have the natural ability to express their true selves directly, because they don't produce a product as evidence that they have been here. We encounter them, they pass us by, and we forget them usually. It is only a very few of them who ever make it into wide recognition, the Mother Theresa's of the world. Let's face it, as great an artist as, for example, Steven Spielberg is, as much as he has done for the world, especially by via works like Schlindler's List, he'll never be a Mother Theresa. In fact, he'll never even be as great as one of those people existing in the everyday world who express themselves directly, healing themselves and each of us they touch in the immediacy of their humble daily lives. And my greatest (though thoroughly repressed, implicit) fear is: neither will I.

This piece has drifted far away from the point I started out from (I always do this, as if something, some force, leads me to what is most important, when I myself am trying to express a more mundane preoccupation): A website can be structured like a (postmodern) novel, or a (postmodern) novel can be structured like a website. I'd like to experiment with this idea, but I don't know how. I can't get a handle on it. More to follow, as a development of this idea occurs.

7-28-01

If I write one small, but good piece daily, especially if I post it to the Net, it doesn't matter if I do anything else. There's always something else to do. You never get everything done. But it's all right, as long as you do something worthwhile. And for me, writing is the most worthwhile thing I do. None of this other supposedly important stuff has any real significance for me. Having a clean house and yard is nice, but it's not important. Having a lot of spare money so that I can buy nice things is more trouble than it's worth. Only writing something that expresses how I truly think or feel has the kind of significance for me that is permanent. Everything else is transitory. I transit toward old age, leaving behind nothing of significance except a permanent record.

I'm always trying to be, this perfect thing, which handicaps me, because I can never be it. But I see how people can, if they are smart enough, see through the facade of perfection I create. I am as flawed as everyone else, and if I didn't try so hard, to be, so perfect, vesting so much sense of identity in that facade, I would not be so wary of revealing my flawed nature. Because I try, to be, so perfect, I must then pretend to it; otherwise I feel I am a failure. If I didn't try so hard in this respect, I would be more of a success. And if I actually allowed myself to be, seen, as imperfect, I'd be even more successful. No one really likes perfection. They shun it.

I remember the days when my life used to happen to me, out of control. Now, I happen to it. Oh, sometimes it still happens, as when I stay out too long, or when I don't guard myself too well, or when I allow myself the luxury, to be, too much. I used to be, way out, too long, especially in summer when the nights are long with light, and warm, and people populate the days like a metaphor.

7-29-01

Lack of respect for authority is a reaction against the father-object and, as such, it's a signal of adulthood. But without a resolution of the rebellion (i.e., if it goes on throughout adulthood), true maturity is never reached. Why? Because "adulthood," often characterized, at least among alpha males, as a competition much resembling adolescent rebellion and mutual lack of respect for each other as authority figures, is only the first, most basic stage of maturity. Real maturity is not having graduated to a competitive (Erickson's hero-worship developmental level) social role (seen in modern society as "mature" business rivalry), but going beyond competition to a more benign sense of an adaptive self, where authority is not vested in individuals who represent father-objects (priests, judges, presidents, kings, gods), but is dispersed throughout the universe as a kind of "natural law." Thus, Zen represents a higher form of spirituality than Judaism or even than its more "mature" offshoot, Christianity [a higher form by virtue of a more benign, genuinely mature "Jesus," but not as the faith is represented by a Protestant ethos of fundamentalism, which is the worst of paternalistic Judaism without any of its sensibility and intelligence]. Thus, Christianity despises Zen, because it represents the unknown scientific truth of the universe, a more mature form of self that threatens Christian mythology by exposing it for the superstition that it is.

7-30-01

Bug Update: It took nearly a month, but I've enticed the carpenter ants to the bait (Terro^TM), after I'd seen them, one at a time, scouting the area. They're not swarming to it in the numbers that they did last year (presumably because their population has been decimated), but they're coming. Apparently, since I see them disappear behind the tub surround, their "hive" is in the wall behind the tub. About ten years ago, when I installed that tub surround, I tore out the old Formica^TM wall and discovered a horrible sight. It was in the middle of winter, so the ants that blanketed the insulation hardly moved as I scraped them off into the tub and scalded them with hot water, washing them down the drain. I mean, there were thousands and thousands of them, an inch thick wall of ants, about four feet high and three feet wide. Since they were so lethargic, it was a pleasure to dispatch them so readily, but imagine if I had found them in the summer when they would have scurried all over the place into every nook and cranny of the house. After I hosed them all away and doused the area thoroughly with bug spray, I installed the new wall. But they're back. Sometimes I think I'd be doing myself and the world, or at least the neighborhood, a favor if I torched this place and disappeared for parts unknown.

8-7-01

Jim Dunn is across the street visiting Steve again. It irritates me that he hasn't yet returned my chain saw. I gave it to him over a year ago to get it repaired. Should I confront him again? Of course I should. But I don't want to. All I'll get is another empty promise. He's a pleasant enough guy, ingratiating, young, good looking, blond, sort of reminds you of Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, the kind of person you'd want for a friend, if you judged people by their appearance.

The last time I asked him about the saw, I headed him off as he was leaving Steve's house. He said he'd have it to me the following week. That was several months ago. It begins to piss me off every time I think about it, but I don't allow the affect, knowing that it is relatively unimportant. But it's not my saw, it's my brother's, and although it didn't work when I borrowed it, still, I don't want him ever coming to ask me for it and me having to tell him I ain't got it.

I'm surprised though, that I can avoid getting pissed off at Dunn. Is it only because he's such a pleasant guy? I think so. This is a good lesson. Being nice goes a long way in this world. I knew this intuitively when I was a kid, but as an adult, under the extremes of stress, I forgot it for a long while. You can get away with a lot when you're nice to people. It also doesn't hurt to look good. I've used these tactics myself, mostly unconsciously (as Jim seems to do.) I see myself in him, a classic underachiever, and so I am hesitant to criticize him. I'd only be projecting.

8-11-01

I'm thinking about needy people, one of which I used to be, so very long ago. People who need each other criticize those who don't, because they say they lack feeling (which they don't, necessarily) or fail to show it [which they may not (fail to)]; the subtlety may not be seen, which points to a denied and projected inadequacy of the criticizers, as they hang the projection onto an apparent hook that is not really true.) [So, there can be hooks that are not real !!] People who need say that those who don't (appear to) need are less advanced than they who demonstrate a mutual affection, when the case may be the exact opposite. (They criticize themselves by proxy.) Need (i.e., being needy) is an inferior state, which people who need want to make superior.

8-14-01

Some (young) members of a species survive, some don't. Many get eaten off. The same is true of humans, but our eating off takes the form of assignment to a low socio-economic class that suffers greater afflictions caused by hunger, diseases, and the inability to relocate away from high-risk areas. The fittest survive, in any species, even human.

I have managed to survive to this "ripe old age." My future seems secure. (There is no real security in this sense, for anyone.) And I have the skills and intelligence so as to re-initiate, if need be, an active social life, to provide a living/income. Meanwhile, I am free to live my life the way I want to live it. Therefore, I am among the fittest of my species. True, there are fitter people, rich people, for example, and people earning high incomes. But there are a lot more people who are far worse off than I. Many have already passed away before their natural prime. Many more are in dire straits. I am alive and well and my time is my own. I am a species success story. Never mind my "social" problems. I am adapted to life. I am a survivor. In this sense, social "skills" are less important to my condition. And anyway, my social skills, being what they are, less than ideal, are what has gotten me to this point in my life (for both good and not so good, i.e., they have gotten me to where I am, but they have also limited my potential.)

Some people, those in less fortuitous circumstances, rely on social skills to survive, relating gregariously so that they may be afforded a (more marginal) survival when, existing less socially, i.e., in a more isolated manner, they might otherwise have already died off. For me, social skills have not been so necessary. I rely, and have relied, on other skills: intelligence, analysis, organization (the ability to save and invest money, etc.) I'm a winner, despite being less socially able. This makes me stand out even more. It makes my survival even more significant. Or, maybe the sociable people are less able to survive, being a part of the herd, being more likely to be preyed upon (by the less sociable, who are only ostensibly more sociable, i.e., they are more pathologically antisocial.) Maybe those who stand apart are better suited to survival, tending to be more the preying than the prey. Or maybe not. Maybe it's a wash. It's not social or individual skills alone, but the particular mix in a given environment that's important. Yes. That's it.

Bug Update: There are two ants slowly writhing on the bathroom floor. I've been monitoring their condition now for 48 hours. Each time I check them out when they appear to have ceased to move, as I disturb them, they begin to slowly writhe again. I should put them out of their misery, but the scientist in me wants to observe the poison's process. I imagine that there are hundreds or thousands more of them inside the walls, suffering immensely. Tiny pinpoints of pain; a colony full of insect tragedy. I almost enjoy this as I think of it. The little bastards. They aren't so arrogantly predominant now, are they?

8-24-01

Periodically, probably usually, or typically, in the late summer and/or early fall, I slip into a mood, occasioned perhaps by the waning daylight, or by some other subtle signal, wherein I become slightly fearful, possibly as a manifestation of the DWAFP syndrome, and I begin to think, especially upon awakening out of sleep, when the (unconscious) fear affect is closest to the surface, that I am making a mistake, or acting in a less than sane manner, when I eschew society. Can all those people really be so wrong? No, of course not.

But neither can I, when I attempt to be, who it is I am. I hold out against a better way of life, almost an ideal, except that I can't so much put it into words as feel it: there is a place for me, and it is not here in this society. Or maybe there is no place for me at all. Maybe I am wrong about this. A world where I am not accepted, for exactly who I am, is a world I do not want to live in. But I do want to live. So I invent my own world, where, it seems, no one else will ever want to be. Am I wrong? The fear always passes, especially as I write about it.

I automatically assume that if people want me to talk (or write) to them, they will talk (or write) to me first, so that I will respond. (This accounts for my hesitancy to show what I create (or vice versa.) If people will hope that I will talk to them, but are too shy (or whatever) to approach me, then in acting out their unconscious agenda, they inhibit me also, when I will respond empathetically to their nature. I do not always (in fact, any more, I seldom) immediately respond empathetically in the opposite direction, i.e., when they will approach me openly and readily. It seems I have honed the wariness I had as a child to a fine edge. But eventually, if people will persist, I will respond, unless they are complete assholes--which some of them are. How do you know the difference, how can you determine whether I think you are a complete asshole, or more generally, someone I do not wish to know, as opposed to being someone I just haven't quite warmed up to yet? You can't. That's the whole point. This is a fine line you must walk in order to get to know me. I don't become a friend to just anyone, you know. It takes a super person to become my friend. And lest you think this is very elitist of me, it's not. It's very elitist of you. Think about it.

8-27-01

After having rained heavily all night, the weather turns nice again today. I decide to make it a long overdue afternoon of shopping. First I go to the bank to deposit a check I got from cashing in a CD in an out-of state bank. Then I go to the local grocery store to catch a few of their advertised specials. Then I head out into the boonies, to Community Market at the edge of Plum Township. They always have great grocery bargains there. Next, I start back in via a side trip to Monroeville. I drive up Unity Trestle Road. The place is far less countrified since I'd last been here. A lot of commercial concerns have sprung up like weeds along the roadside. But it's such a pleasant day, I hardly notice them. I'm remembering the times we used to drive through the countryside every summer on our way to camping sites in the center of the state. I miss those times. I miss the driving, heading out to anywhere you feel like going, taking any turn that interests you, checking out towns with interesting names, like Brick Church, Moscow, or Daisytown.

...itchin' for that wonderful feel,
rollin' in an automobile.

I'm heading toward my most favorite store in the world, Entenmann's Bakery Outlet, where you can buy old loaves of Brownberry Oven bread, stuff that retails fresh for as much as $2.79, for as low as $0.69 each. And in addition to that, when you fill up a punch card ($25 worth of purchases), you get two more loaves free. (I always choose the more expensive stuff to get for free, of course.)

On the way to the Bakery Outlet, I encounter some road construction on Rte 380, so rather than take the chance of being held up, I detour up through Boyce Park. I haven't been out much this summer, so I welcome the peaceful atmosphere of the faux-country setting. Then, planning ahead, rather than heading directly into Monroeville and having to wait in midday traffic at the supersection (the multiple intersection where all the roads in the world come together: Rtes 76, 22, 48, innumerable county and state secondary roads, and the PA turnpike), I head out Old Frankstown Road into the heart of Plum Township to Rte 286, where I scoot over to Rte 22 west of Murrysville, cross it, and head up Northern Pike, thus by-passing the heart of Monroeville.

All this while, I am playing a ZZ Top CD that I burned from the best of the Top mp3s I downloaded from Napster when it was in its hey-day. The volume is loud and heads turn as I pass. I'm wearing my mirror sunglasses. My left elbow rests on the open window. I'm laid back in the seat. My long ponytail (which I have been resisting cutting for more than a year now) blows in the wind. I'm cool. I'm bad. I'm nationwide.

At the Bakery Outlet, I get ten loaves of bread, total price $6.90. You can't even buy gummy white bread that cheaply. (I freeze the bread so that it lasts a long time, as it takes me at least several weeks for me to consume that much.) The woman who runs the store looks like some biker's old lady. She's thin, and I imagine tattoos on the shoulders beneath her uniform shirt. She has bleach blond hair, a face that has seen better days, obvious robbed of vital tissue from a protein-poor diet and/or years of booze and/or hard drugs from which use she has reformed in order to survive as a forlorn clerk in one person bread outlet. But she looks good. Healthy. Happy. And she actually talks to me, which many clerks in stores will not do, probably because of the way I look. Maybe she thinks I am simpatico. She asks me if I have a punch card. I tell her I do, but it's about to expire. She says that it doesn't matter, they don't pay any attention to that. So I give her my punch card and, after she rings up and bags the bread and processes my credit card, she punches the card and gives it back to me, repeating that the expiration date doesn't matter. I tell her I'm glad she told me that. We make good eye contact. I look forward to going back there again.

With ZZ Top cranked up high, I drive toward home through the supersection into the heart of Monroeville down the long main drag past restaurants, stores, superstores, the Miracle Mile, mini-malls (at least six of them), and the Monroeville Mall (the biggest thing to hit this area since the Parkway East was constructed.) At the Mall, the flat highland begins to give way to a more hilly terrain, but the restaurants, stores and superstores persist: Boston Chicken, Bob Evans, Toys R Us, Food For Less, Sam's Club, auto dealerships, Home Depot, Circuit City, Pep Boys, Sears, and the movie complex, of course, with eight features every day. I wait at the light in front of the theaters, every fiber of my body pulsing to the "Tube Snake Boogie." People in the cars around me sit and stare. I pull out from the light slowly. Cars out ahead of me and in the left lane speed away. As I progress over the next hill, I fail to see ahead on Rte 22 what every other driver has apparently seen ahead of time. I wonder why everyone is driving in the left lane until I see the accident. A Churchill Borough cop car sits with its light bar flashing down in the valley at the intersection with lower Rodi Road. I slow almost to a stop with my left turn signal blinking, waiting without looking back for someone to give me a break and let me in, using only the side mirror to monitor traffic. But no one will cut me a break. So I decide to take matters into my own hands and I speed up, sync my velocity with the slightly slower traffic until I spot a driver who maintains a larger than normal gap in front of him. There's always at least one of these drivers in a line of traffic, usually younger guys in fancy cars who want to protect their investment. I have misspent a lot of my life considering just the sort of tactics like cutting into a long line of cars. I've traveled the parkway daily through the Squirrel Hill tunnels at rush hour, both ways. If you don't want to spend an hour traveling just ten miles worth of roadway, you learn to analyze traffic patterns and driver psychology. You definitely do not want to cut in front of older women who are ignorant enough to not give a fuck if they damage the car their husband paid for and anyone else's either--or else they're too senile to understand the danger they put themselves in by following too closely. I cut in front of a guy in a red Trans Am with a red leather bra.

I resist turning down The Top as I pass the cop, who stands in the middle of the highway next to his car pretending to direct traffic. I don't know if Churchill has volume laws as does Edgewood, a few miles down the highway. I tell myself that I don't care, but I see by my reaction that I do. My defiance, my resistance toward wanting to lower the volume is revealing. Fuck you, cop, I think as I pass by, refusing to look in his direction. (If I were a real rebel, I catch his gaze and stare at him.) A hundred feet up the road, a fat old man examines his car. At least I think it's his car; he looks too old and fat to have been driving the panel truck that had been blocking my view of the car until I got past it. I pass by too quickly get the full effect of the damage, but I notice enough to know that the car is severely smashed. (I saw no damage to the truck.) I think that the old man couldn't have been driving the car. It's smashed in on all sides. How could he be out and walking around if he were in that car. But the guy examines the car as if it is his.

About 500 yards up the road, too far to have been in the accident, I think, another car is stopped. It appears to have minor damage. Again, I am now moving way too fast to notice details. As I approach the intersection, an EMS van turns the corner onto the highway approaching the scene of the accident. Maybe someone was trapped in that first car. I turn the corner onto upper Rodi Road, the last leg of my journey home. I think I should be more careful, drive with more awareness, use my seat belts, not go out even as seldom as I do. This could be an omen. But, then again, so could everything else you see. Traffic backs up, preventing me from getting home too soon. "Blue Jeans Blues" come on, slowing everything around me down. By the time I am arriving back home, I am sobered.

Still though, this has been, thus far, a perfect day. I got everything I went shopping for, which is unusual. Typically, stuff will be sold out. And the accident, although it may have been a tragedy, didn't happen to me. The day should end right now, before something really fucked-up happens.

A Fine Nostalgia

"I had to move to New York for health reasons. I'm extremely paranoid and New York is the only place my fears are justified."

Anita Wise

Logic is the beginning of wisdom...not the end.

Spock, Star Trek VI

It's the middle of the night, one o'clock.

I fell asleep at eight fifteen and missed "Ally McBeal."

Shit.

I dreamed I awoke at five in the morning, having been sleeping in the lower bedroom where the bed used to be, except the head of the bed faced east instead of south. I had been sleeping with db--same old dream motive: she's returned, but only out of some necessity in her life, not because she wants to be with me necessarily. But the mood of this dream is different somehow. db is more settled in, less temporary, more acceptant of the fact that she is here to stay. Brian is up in the kitchen. He has made plans to move all of his furniture into the house. db is talking to him, as if she shouts to him through the house, but she's talking in a normal voice. She's questioning him about what he's going to do, about where he's going to put the bed. (There is absolutely no room to put it anywhere. It's a small house, filled with furniture.) At the same time she's questioning him, she's questioning me also, with the same words. I tell her he can put it wherever he wants, if he can find a place. But I empathize with her concern, not wanting him to disrupt our finely honed sense of furnishing and organization. They also talk about the marijuana he's bringing with him, pounds of it. db is concerned that he will be dealing out of the house. I begin to remember the good old days. I tell her to tell him not to be keeping all that pot here. The old paranoia begins to seep in. I'd forgotten all about that attitude, that at any moment you could be busted and sent away for fifteen years. I remember the grass that db brought with her (as if she brought it in a past dream, as if I had dreamed of it before, but I didn't), about half a pound of it. She didn't smoke it any more and only took it because it was valuable and because she thought it would be a good gift for me. But I don't smoke it any more either, nor do I associate any more with anyone who would want to buy it. It'd been sitting around for six months, going bad. (This is an interesting example of a "dreamed memory," something that is not a memory from waking life, nor is it from a past dream.) Brian says he will "cut" the grass (i.e., divide it up into ounces) in his car before he gets here (he's talking here, now, not about the several pounds he's bringing, but about an ongoing enterprise) and he will store it in the shed out back. I am hesitant to allow this. I tell db to make sure he's not going to get us into trouble. The paranoia is escalating, and I remember (within the dream) how it used to be a way of life with us (or with me.) I'm happy that I no longer have to feel that way. [Yesterday, the "threat" of the car accident aftermath that I witnessed was this paranoia prefigured. I missed the affect then. It was a barren symbol, pointing to an unconscious event. Now I feel it full blown. But it's different. It's not my usual paranoia. It's like a "past event," a memory. It's an artifact I experience. I don't want to feel it, and yet I "appreciate" it, as a "realistic" appraisal of the current situation: I would be paranoid, if a different set of circumstances existed, if, for example, I were dealing drugs, or if I were going out into the world every day and having to deal with the "normal" stresses of life.] All through this episode, as db is talking to Brian, I am lying close to her with my lips nearly touching her neck. She gets up and leaves the room, and I want to follow after her, to keep my lips close to her neck. I want to tell her about the paranoia. I want to reveal my feeling of helplessness and vulnerability to her, but I don't want to do it in any place where Brian might overhear. I want her to go out onto the porch where I can follow her. I don't want to get up, but I want to stay with her. I know that I have to get up in an hour to go to work, so since I am awake, I might as well get up an hour early. But I recognize that I don't work any more--and yet, still, I am getting up for work, with nowhere to go. I can stay at home. I get up and put on my Levis. Someone comes to the door. It's the old man who used to live next door. db talks to him and his new woman as they stand on the front steps. I wonder what he's doing here. I don't want him here. I never liked him. He was such a manipulated old wuss. [Projection? I'm the manipulated wussy? If so, I put up a good front.] As I walk into the front room, I see them leaving, as if I am driving them away, as if they don't want to be here when I am here. [The "old man" is me. I drive away the realization that I am getting old. I'm becoming sedate(d). I've been tamed, by social forces that have invested a lot of time and resources trying to slow me down. Throughout the dream, I understand that I am now one of the "old men" I always made fun of or criticized for their intransigence and fear of life. But when I was out in the world when I was younger, acting boldly and provocatively, I was just as (not unrealistically) fearful--of what "they" could do to me if I overly provoked "them." Now, I expect proper respect and due process. And since I never do anything illegal any more, I expect to live a free and non-hassled existence. Thus, the paranoia is inappropriate. If it exists in me, it can only be pathological, which it always was anyway. The "real world fear" was just a series of events onto which I could project the paranoia I carried with me as an integral part of my psychological make-up.

The new younger woman with the old man is an echo of db [db is twelve years younger than I am.]; she is my "new woman," i.e., a prefigure of the woman I would have now, if I would have one, if I would decide to find a "new woman." (I always fantasize that it would be a younger one, ala the postmodern penchant of older businessmen, the token younger woman syndrome. I hate it that I discover that fantasy within myself.)

There is a hypnagogic transition between dreaming and thinking after having awakened that is so gradual across several dimensions that I am unable to distinguish the separation. The work/stay at home division is one such dimension, the paranoia another, the age/youth a third.

When I fully awaken, for a long time I am unable to distinguish between having awoken in the dream and the real awakening. That is, as I think about them, I experience the dream awakening and the real awakening as the same event. In the dream I awoke at five in the morning, but in real life, I awoke at twelve fifteen at night, and the two times which represent the same moment in my perception confuse me so that I have to lie immobile pondering the mystery for a long while until the solution comes to me. It is only after several minutes of thinking about the dream material that I realize the two awakenings are separate events. The older I get, the more I feel like I am increasingly unable to immediately comprehend what would otherwise be mysteries, except that eventually I am able to comprehend them. When I was younger I never experienced any such problem. I was always way too sharp for my own good. I always pushed the limits of mystery, giving up much of the mysterious affect in order to understand. I fail to comprehend a lot more now, but only temporarily, within the small gap of time that it takes me to fully apprise myself of the "reality" of situations. The loss, even now, is great. In order to know the world, I have to remand a lot of it to an unconscious state and settle for a more or less rational or logical mental (as opposed to real) construction.

Just like in the dream, I am both old and young together. Just like in the dream, I am paranoid and healed. Just like in the dream, I don't want to get up, I want to sleep all night. But I am awake now, so I might as well get up and go and do something. I lie in bed formulating this journal entry and listening to the late summer cricket hum through the open bedroom window. It's warm outside. The idea of low blood sugar pops into my mind. I wonder if the paranoia is (has always been) caused by hypoglycemia. I've had occasion to wonder in the past whether I might be hypoglycemic, but I never before correlated it with paranoia. I consider the pond life of the local area, how we all exist in this vast hobbit-like extended suburban neighborhood ecology, interconnected by streets like tree-covered lanes. It's a friendly world--at one in the morning. Actually, it's a friendly world at any time, if you choose to take it that way, only punctuated by caustic incidents that make you wonder about the nature of evil. Of course, I live in America. If I lived in Israel, for example, I might feel differently. I might be more than occasionally paranoid. I could move there, to "solve" any pathological inklings I might have, but this is the kind illusion we grow in wisdom to dispel. Freedom from the terrors that haunt us from within is not effected by projecting those terrors onto the world. In fact, objectifying the terror may even make it worse.

[It occurs to me that it's only via the media that we learn of most of the incidents of horror, war, and terror. If we lived in our own local hobbit communities without any news of the big bad world, we might feel all that more secure. When people long for the good old days, this is what they long for, but don't know it. They think they want freedom from the horrors of modern warfare, terroristic threats, horrific accidents, cataclysmic natural events, etc., but what they really want is freedom from a panoply of postmodern propagandistic news. Television, not the big bad world, is our worst nightmare. The world is essentially no different than it ever was. Sure, it's more technological, but it's not the technology that threatens us, but the uses to which we humans put it. People, not technological systems, threaten the world, as when executives make decisions to dump pollutants into rivers or release them into the atmosphere. These are not technological nightmares, but very human ones, initiated by bad or very misguided people. The world is, as it always has been, filled with a lot of less than noble people who work to the same evil motives of power and greed that tyrants, despots, and sycophants have worked to throughout the history of the human race.]

When I was younger, at the age of twenty-two, I moved to New York City. I wonder if I went there to avoid the perception that I was paranoid. I hadn't yet then come across the idea of a mental pathology of paranoia. It seems that we construct our lives to maximize avoidance of the inner workings of the mind. We want, many of us, above all else, the peace of the hobbits.

I live in a dream world now. My sense of reality has become detached. I often don't know where the real world leaves off and my own personal world begins. But then again, maybe I never did. Maybe no one does. Maybe I know the divide better now that I ever have. Maybe having so very gradually become aware that there is any difference at all is a development I am cultivating. Maybe by the time I am ready to die, I will be capable of fully experiencing the truth, that there is no difference, really, that we exist in two worlds only because we think we do, but in reality, we exist within a continuous field with no divisions, that accidents that happen on the highway also happen simultaneously within us, that paranoia within a person is the same paranoia within society, that dreams are real and reality is dreams, both. There is no difference, except that we want to believe there is. I reconstruct my system of beliefs every time I reawaken. But it gets harder and harder to do it as each warm summer passes. I abandon more and more myths as each year goes by. Eventually, I will awaken one day to the realization that I can no longer believe in any of the mythologies I have been conditioned into. Then I will be ready for the next step, the transcendence, or the asylum.

8-28-01

Coincidences abound. These experiences sometimes almost frighten me. This is scary stuff. As long as the experience is limited to tv programs echoing my prescient notice of them or elements within them in my dreams/imagination/daily thoughts, I can attribute it to coincidence. For example, when I think of a line from a film that is particularly poignant to me and relevant to a current situation I am in only to find that film being aired the following day, like Keith Gordon in Christine, I can say "Okay. Show me." And it never seems to go any further than that. [Watch. Tomorrow or the next day Christine will be aired on tv, and I'll be thinking this whole thing all over again.] There is no god or demon waiting around just for the open moment when you will request it to prove its existence to you. But when I'm working on a serious self-psychology, doubting my adaptation, wondering whether I am relating properly with a world that I only think is crazy and I take a break and turn on the tv, for no reason at all change the channel to a network (Christian programming) I never watch and happen to find the one interesting program it has ever broadcast, a show about a New York monastery profiling several monks who had given up on "society" (they haven't, really; they just create their own) and retreated into a life of prayer and contemplation, I have to be a little bit more believing. Maybe it's no different than the first example, but the subject matter is more profound, imparting to me an affect I do not normally encounter in the wide world of television programming.

What is coincidence, really? Two events occurring together, without reference to causality. That doesn't mean there is no causality present, it simply means that if causality exists, it exists as an additional layer, over and above the coincidence. Huh? There's no way to know, really. It's more a state of mind than actual cause and effect. Events are causal if you believe they are. Science is a vast system of beliefs intertwined into an established pattern. We could, had circumstances been different early on, ended up with a whole different set of consensual scientific expectations, resulting in a science, and a world, far different than the one we now live in. Expectation programs experience. We want to think--to believe-- that we fine-tune science over long periods of time, honing our human experience into a planetary truth-seeking mechanism. And maybe we do. But maybe we don't. Maybe we are so far off base we will never get back to the point where we went off on a tangent and got it wrong. Or maybe we will get back to that point. Maybe the cosmology of the 21st century is leading us to a place where we are beginning to see errors in our conditioned thought patterns. Matter is not what we think it is, the universe is mostly incapable of being perceived by humans, stardust is only the very smallest part of what exists, there is no coincidence, but rather an entire universe composed of intricately intermingled causal relationships independent of time and space that we tap into consciously only during the rarest moments of our most profound experiences. Maybe. It's a theory.

8-29-01

Always remember, you're unique,
just like everybody else.

I haven't exhaustively checked my websites in Netscape for quite a while now. It's getting so that I don't even care any more. I'm assured by a post in a newsletter I subscribe to that as high as 87% of people on the net use the IE browser. I hope that's true. I was never a fan of the Microsoft monopoly, but in this case it works in my favor. I'm so tired of non-standard practices re computing and the Net, even as I worship the concept in every other aspect of life on this planet. Our differences are what make us, as a species, great, not to mention the fact that they have probably insured our survival countless times over eons as evolution twisted through its subtle turns, weaving species around natural catastrophes. I have severe mixed feelings about centralization, globalization, The New World Order, NAFTA, the IMF, et al., in short, any motive that organizes the complexification of life into a more efficient organic whole while disconsidering, ignoring, or out-and-out intentionally disregarding the disenfranchised and marginalized masses. On one hand, the motives are so unjust, but on the other, it's an inevitable efficiency if we are to become one great global brain. [I know some of you don't like this motive, but it's going to happen anyway, no matter what you wish might otherwise happen; the only consolation is, it (probably) won't happen in your lifetime. But who knows? The way things are going, the apocalypse may be closer than we think. (Now I'm starting to sound like one of those end-of-the-worlders. I better shut up.)] Non-standardized browsers are one of the very smallest instigators of this dichotomy in my affective relationship with the complexification (ala Teilhard de Chardin) motive. It would be an insignificant detail if such small items did not ultimately add up to the whole of the problem. We are all the same, and we are all different--at the same time. When the different among us are excluded, we are all excluded. It's a koan. Don't try to understand it. You have to experience it, Grasshopper.

8-30-01

It's occurring to me that the reason I have such a profound ambivalence toward the postmodern corporate culture is because I am able to live the modest, unassuming lifestyle that I do, not despite that culture, but because of it. I do not for the most part participate in the culture on a paying basis, but I take financial and cultural advantage of its common effects: I worked at a high paying job for a large number of years, living minimally and saving the greater portion of my salary, so that I could later continue to live minimally without a job; I benefit from mass production and distribution, buying the few things I need at cheap prices, foregoing manufacturer brand names in favor of their generic counterparts; I put less than 3000 miles a year on a seventeen year old car that's still in good shape, using it only for short trips to the grocery store and to nearby friends' and relatives' homes; I take advantage of free Internet services; I tape movies from network tv and free cable promotions to watch later at my leisure; in short, I take advantage of every free or minimally priced commodity provided by a culture that would have me pay top dollar by roping me in with their free enticements and evaluations. I couldn't live this way if it were not for that culture. If goods were not mass-produced, I would have to walk to a local grocery store (because I couldn't afford a car, which would be far more expensive) and pay higher prices for locally grown food. I couldn't buy books for five cents on the dollar (closeouts) and would have to forego reading, or resort to the local library, an hour's walk away. It would be far more inconvenient to live this way, assuming I could have set it up in the first place, because I may not have had such a high paying job to begin with, or, having been required to work more years to get where I am today, I may have already been dead from stress-related illness (assuming, of course, that such a less productive society would have resulted in the same stress-related problems I now have.) So, although I believe that there is a lot wrong with the society we live in, I wouldn't exchange it for a less technological, more "humane" one, because I couldn't then have followed Abby Hoffman's advice that I took to heart so many years ago: "Steal This Book." I don't steal any more, but I borrow heavily on the corporate motive that would entice me to pay huge sums for the privilege of being a customer. Ain't life grand.

I live for moments of "clear sight" and, short of that, of intellectual understanding. Only eating and sleeping are as important. When I find these moments, I don't feel for a while after that I must, subsequently, strive to achieve anything. I can relax and be myself, lay back and enjoy my life. When I don't find these moments, I increase my search activity, which is comprised of a whole lot of diverse mechanisms that have one thing in common: they each have worked in the past to get me to a point where I want to be, free of a motive to express myself. This doesn't mean they will work again. Often, I have to struggle with them, shuffle between them, until I find the one that works for me on a particular day under a particular set of circumstances. Writing is one such mechanism. Art is another. Engaging in control fantasies is a third. I have a whole list of them. When I am not so well integrated, the list becomes unmanageable. When I am well integrated, it is unnecessary. This piece is one such understanding arrived at via writing. Now I don't have to do anything for a short while. My lawn needs to be cut. My house needs to be cleaned. It doesn't matter. I have understood and expressed what I have to say. All of that which would otherwise bother me is irrelevant. [My yard may be unkempt, but it is functional. My house may look disorganized to you, but I guarantee you that I know where everything is. That is the epitomé of organization. Appearances are deceiving, except for the dust and dirt. That part's real.]

I've decided to take a short long-weekend vacation and begin a tape-watching marathon. I'll put in a very brief work session in the morning, writing and posting, then for the rest of the day and night I'll split my time between reading out on the front porch and watching video tapes inside. Starz is having a free preview next weekend, and I have only three eight hour blank tapes left--and I refuse to buy any more, since I have over 200 already, each with three or four films on them, many of which I haven't yet seen. So I've got to free up some recording space. I tape movies so that I can be free to interrupt them midstream to go and do whatever I'm motivated to do at the time, and so that I can save any that I'm interested in enough to watch several more times or to study, if their quality warrants it. But, usually, I would rather write or paint than watch films, especially in the summer, so the films accumulate.

9-2-01

When thinking begins to become difficult and I seek relief, a reprieve from the stress of thought, I watch sports. While I'm watching sports, I can pretend I am one of the masses with no mind at all.

9-3-01

Waiting. Putting in the time. Looking for a direction.

But all I'm finding is less than significant mini-directions.

On the other hand, this is all I've ever been doing.

Why do I complain? This is my life, waiting for direction.

I should have been an actor. Then it would make sense.

Some Effects of Waiting

Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

--The Gospel Of Thomas

Waiting is.
--Robert Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land

I keep forgetting. I do have a direction, a very definitive one.

But sometimes I don't want to know it.

I have my therapy, which is going very well.

I have my meditation, which I forget about a lot. Shame.

When I take the time to sit outside (in summer) on the deck out front, or on the patio in the courtyard out back, or (in winter) in my favorite chair next to my computer area with a view out the side window of the sky and woods behind the house, to meditate, but more importantly, to think about my "problems" (which are seldom very serious at all, usually being only ponderous states of mind), everything goes well. The fact is that simply slowing down to consider where I am will lead me to an understanding of where I am going. Simple. I always forget how important it is to take that time everyday.

And best of all, I have my art, especially my journal work.

This, more than anything, is what I want to do: leave a record.

And secondarily, to contact people in the profound way that I will, from time to time. I wait for these episodes of life. Waiting is a great way to spend your time. Knowing you're waiting, you don't have to feel you have to be so damned productive. And it's especially satisfying if you don't know what you're waiting for, because then that which you are waiting for may arrive at any moment. The problem with not knowing, though, is that you might miss it as it slips past unnoticed. But then again, what you're waiting for is always slipping past, so that there are plenty of opportunities each day to find what you wait for, if you will only recognize them. When we get the things we do, it's because we know what we are waiting for. Some things may take longer to get because they're very specifically defined and therefore less likely to arrive than more generalized anticipations, but they will come, because we create the expectation for them and recognize approximations as they pass. But when we are not so specific, then almost any arrival may suffice, or at least present itself for our considered approval.

This is waiting, in general.

Not only is waiting a great philosophy and mechanism for social action, it's also a great meditation. It's a relatively easy thing to wait, in a meditative state of now, tuned into your environment for something to happen, or not (to you, or in your vicinity), but it's a more difficult thing to continue that meditative state when that something actually happens or arrives, as for example when a person walks up to you and starts to talk to you. You can "participate" in the conversation, adding your two dollars worth [inflation (catch the double meaning: ego inflation)], or you can wait, to respond to what they say when (it is) they (who) determine that it's your turn to speak. In this way, not only can you maintain your meditative state and have a better chance of not saying the stupid or inappropriate things that you otherwise might (like I always, eventually, seem to manage to do), but you allow them to determine the direction of the conversation, thus providing you (if you are observant) with keys to their personalities and agendas so that you know better how to avoid any machinations they may be trying to throw your way. And, as a bonus, they may think a lot better of you because you allow them to project their beliefs onto you, as they will assume that you believe as they do, if you will not assert yourself to provide a summary of your own beliefs. But be careful: some of them may start to project their denials, especially if you are not so cordial and/or (unconsciously) choose to take a less than friendly (or even a hostile) stance. Their transference will only remain positive if you are genuine in your intent to remain meditative, waiting upon them to establish the agenda, which you may observe and accept or reject without rejecting them. If you yourself are harboring an unconscious agenda, they will pick up on it and project onto it, if you do not state countering beliefs in a specific manner. They will not necessarily do this in an obvious manner. (Nor will you.) More likely, they'll execute it behind your back (literally or metaphorically). Yet, if kept on a congenial, meditative level, you can be thought of, at the worst, as a great listener, and at best, as some kind of guru, or guardian angel, or even a god. Chauncey Gardener comes to mind. (Watch the ego here. The best saints and prophets have used this method, but so have the worst of evil people.) [There is no evil, only people who act badly.]

9-4-01

I've been feeling a great antipathy toward writing or toward posting anything online. I should analyze this feeling to see what it is that's causing it, but I don't want to, which is an integral part of the problem.

I'm cultivating a new aesthetic for my immediate outdoor environment--the wild look: long grasses, weeds (especially above the concrete block wall that defines the back patio, and in the old garden beds that I haven't planted in years--actually, I could say I have a crop of organic indigenous plants.) My best accomplishment so far is the wild grape vines, one that grows to the south of the patio that I grew as a privacy hedge, and one to the north, up to and along in both directions the ten gauge electrical wire that I stretched between the house and the first, smaller utility shed--and the poison ivy that's been growing for three years now up its main woody stem.

I like to think of this new look as that of an old Italian villa, the kind that you can rent for the summer. Those kinds of places are always badly gardened--and, as a matter of fact, the buildings are poorly maintained as well, which fits right in. Yes. This is my Italian estate, in need of war reparations to restore it to its former splendor. The war is over and things are slowly getting back to normal, except that I no longer have the innocence or desire to make this place look the way it used to, with its nicely coiffed lawn like some marine just out of boot camp, its tended gardens gently and lovingly cared for like some summer maiden unexpecting deflowering in the fall, its painted walls like some...I don't know what. I've run out of similes.

I'm tired. I can no longer maintain the illusions. I need new, less demanding ones. Or maybe I need to dispel illusion altogether. Of course.

9-7-01

There are many advantages to working at home, not the least of which is that I can work naked when it gets so goddamned hot.

9-25-01

What's the difference between my life and that of, say, Tom Clancey? Talent? Yeah, Sure. The ability to create a marketable product that people can be convinced into believing that they want to buy? Of course. The amount of money we each make? Is that so important, then? Are we, as a society, still so superficial? I guess so. This is what it all ultimately comes down to. More so than ever, in fact. Money. The amount of exposure he gets that I do not? This is a function of the amount of money he can make for a publisher.

I am not so ambitious, not even when it comes to the prospect of having lots of money. In fact, I am hardly ambitious at all, in any case. (Besides, humility and obscurity is a spiritual exercise. A great rationalization.) The key here is promotion. If you want to "make it," you must promote yourself, and I do not want to do this, with vehemence. It is the least pleasant thing for me, to put myself out in front of an audience, even one as distant as a writer's audience can be. This is the difference, not the art, not the money, not the exposure per se, but the self-assertion. It goes against my principles, against my very nature.

To make it as an artist, especially as a visual artist, you must pursue an unrelenting course of self-promotion, which I am always loath to do. I hold an unrealistic ideal that I will either make it or not on the merit of my work. But there are many, many, many artists whose work is at least as meritorious as mine. Like it or not, the world of art is one of shameless self-promotion.

9-27-01

I've been so lethargic lately, wanting to do nothing else but lie in bed and watch tv, read, or fantasize. (At least I'm reading.) Maybe it's the WTC catastrophe that's throwing me into a funk and affecting my lebenszeil. At least, that's an excuse I'm using, in a lame sort of way, like I know it's not true, but it's a good excuse not to do anything. Or maybe it is true and I'm repressing the fact that I can be so affected by events far beyond me. Maybe the answer is in one of the dreams I've had recently. I don't really want even to go to the trouble of writing these out, but I want them to have been written out. [I don't see of what value they could be, my life is filled with creations that I fail to attend to any further, but then, what if I never did another thing with any journal entry except to write them in the first place, that is, what if they stood as they were, without editing, without incorporation into the greater schemes I would never have created? Would that be such wasted time? And even if it is, isn't the alternative, doing nothing, even a greater waste of time?]:

1. Deborah Jane Drive: The place is barren, without furnishings, as if it were the apartment Jim and I painted last year, except it's on the second floor and that one was on the first. A table-like box sits in front of the closet (a first-floor closet, i.e., below the steps instead of above them as on the second floor). The box prevents me from getting fully into the closet. I pull the door open partially to see that it is a small closet like the one downstairs is instead of the larger kind normally found on the second floors. [When Jim and I painted the apartment, I told him, realizing as we were working, that the apartment was just like the one I used to live in on Deborah Jane, except that the closet was smaller and my apartment was on the second floor. He said something like, "Well, then, it's not the same, is it?"] I open the box. It's filled with bones, some human, almost a full skeleton, except it is dismantled so that it can't be known if it is complete. [The skeleton is me. I'm fragmented, dismantled, incomplete.] Also, there are some animal bones, in particular, a small skull, as if it were a rabbit. [When we were raising and butchering rabbits for food, Brian (my nephew-in-law) took one of the carcasses and spent over an hour cleaning and bleaching it, so that he could have the bare skeleton. I remember the skull. It looked exactly the same as this one. (I think of Brian every time I see the film The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, wherein a girl, as a school science project, strips all of the meat, etc., off a dead cat in order to obtain the skeleton. I also think of Jeffrey Dahmer, who did a similar thing to animals when he was a teenager.] I cross the room and go through the kitchen toward the bedroom, which Karen Phillips comes out of. I am so happy to see her. As I stand in the bathroom doorway, but as if I am both in the kitchen and in a closet, she comes up to me. I take her face in my hands. Her brown skin is very prominent, as if the rest of the dream is in black and white [except, I realize now, the bones were a "bone-tone."] I realize how much I feel for her, the affect is tremendous, almost overwhelming. I realize, i.e., I experience first-hand, how powerful her face is as I hold it in my hands.

2. 640: standing in the kitchen opening my mail. I've gotten an envelope from someone at atc. At first, I believe that it's from Rita, but later I conclude that it's from Eileen. It contains old notes I'd written in shorthand on variously sized pieces of paper. And it contains a Xerox copy of two photos of a group of people sitting at a table in a bar, one of whom, at first, is me, but a whole lot younger, younger than I would have been when I worked there. I study the picture for a few minutes, until I decide that it is not me at all, but some young kid who looks like me when I was young. [assoc: Bernie, a guy I worked with at atc, looked very much like me when I was young.] I feel like someone (Rita? Eileen?) is trying to contact me. I awaken, and the phone rings. This happens often. The phone rings just after I awaken. I've examined these "coincidences" carefully to make sure that it isn't actually the phone ringing that awakens me, and it is not. (But maybe there are subtle precursors to a ringing phone that occur below the level of perception, changes in an electrical charge in the air, or whatever. ??) I feel, awakened, that whoever is calling is someone I just dreamed about, motivated by a psychic contact made in the dream to try to get in touch with me. Of course, I do not answer the phone. (If I did that could verify a psychic experience, but it could also eliminate it as a possibility.)

3. 640, in driveway: I own a Jeep, which is idling in the driveway, pointing toward the road. As another guy and I stand on the street, the Jeep takes off. A girl has been sitting in it behind the wheel, but she does not cause it to lurch away, but is a victim of its action. The Jeep darts across the road, then turns and travels through the yards parallel to the road, heading toward the intersection. We start after it, but I stop, realizing that we can't catch it. The guy I am with gives me a questioning look. I tell him that the girl is in it. She'll stop it. The driver turns into Elmer. He handles the runaway Jeep with apparent difficulty. It comes too near to the embankment and threatens to go over the steep drop-off into the lots behind the businesses on the road below. We watch as it eventually does just that. We take off toward the place where it disappeared. When we get there, Elmer is above on the embankment and the Jeep is down below. It doesn't seem damaged. A part of me wants to get mad at Elmer, but a part of me "understands" that he couldn't control what happened. We watch from above as two guys get into the Jeep and drive it away. I am heartbroken. The Jeep was brand new. As we walk back toward the house, I begin to go through Elmer's jacket pockets. I find the large sum of money in a bank envelope that I had hidden beneath the driver's seat. I knew Elmer knew about this cash. I grab him by the throat and threaten him, trying to get him to tell me the whole story. [c.f., Bill O. grabbing Elmer with a choke hold at Wayne's wedding.] We take him back to the house and sit him down in the living room. There are two other guys with me, and several girls hover around. We question him roughly and in a threatening manner until he admits that friends of his were waiting below to get the Jeep when he "delivered" it.

fai: We force him to tell us where they live. Then we tie him to the chair and give (a tough, voluptuous, street-wise version of) db a gun, telling her to keep him here until we get back. We tell Elmer that if we do not get the Jeep back before it is stripped, we'll be back to take care of him. We go to the place where Elmer said the guys would be, and we find them preparing to strip the Jeep. One of the guys stands beside it with a cutting torch. I shoot him, and the others try to escape. We shoot each of them, and take the Jeep back.

4. I get on a bus somewhere up around the shopping center. I feel all alone and wish I were not. I want to get somewhere, but it's not clear exactly where. I imagine several destinations, one of them being 6023, and I know I can take the bus to the top of Verona Rd., but that's a long way to walk from there. (I could get a different bus, but for some reason that seems to be something I don't want to do. Alan Peters gets on the bus, and I'm glad to see him. He goes to the back. (I had been sitting near the back, but I'd moved closer to the front.) I'm glad Alan is with me, even though he hardly acknowledges me. But before the bus leaves the shopping center, he gets off again. It's as if I'm sleeping (but I'm not), so that he doesn't say good-bye, not wanting to awaken me. [Is this the way it is with all my former friends? Do they not want to "bother" (with) me any more because I appear to be "asleep?"] The bus goes down Jefferson(?) Rd. and weaves its way through the Churchill plan (illogical). I think I will have to take the bus around the whole of Penn Hills before I get to whatever place I'm going. But the bus comes out of the plan (Stoneridge, now logical) and turns left, so I decide I will get off at Hoover and go home. At Hoover, everything is different. The gas station is closed down, like it used to be before I moved in, I think. [This is not true. It's only true within the dream.] The small intersection is barren, hardly any traffic and far fewer buildings than now. The restaurant is still the old transmission shop it used to be. I walk up Tulip. It's very dark. I notice that the streetlight at the bottom of Homewood is out. Someone is maybe sitting beside the road in the weeds, maybe several kids, but it's too dark to see if they're really there. As I walk up Homewood, I ponder what year it is. [Apparently, the bus was some sort of time machine taking me back into the past.] I can't decide if it's a past before I moved into the neighborhood or not. Just before my house comes into view, I realize that whether or not the house is painted white will give me a clue. If it's white, it could be before I moved in. When I get up near the end of Homewood, as the house comes into view, I see that it is brown, so that I know it is after I moved in. I'm home. Instead of walking to the front door, I walk up alongside the house and look in the dining room window. There are a lot of people there, Brian, as a young kid, is in the dining room; several other kids, who could be Jim's kids, or even Brian's brothers, but I don't recognize them, are in various places in the house; db is in the kitchen; and Dad is in the entryway, preparing to go out. I realize that my long hair is inappropriate to the time, i.e., I didn't have hair this long back then, so I gather it up into my hand to try to hide it as I walk around to the front door with my arm up on my shoulder as Dad exits. He smiles strangely at me, as a greeting, and continues on. As I enter the house, everyone smiles at me, almost as if their smiles are inappropriate, except for db, who is genuinely glad to see me. I work my way to the bathroom trying to hide my hair, telling db as I pass her that I need to talk to her in private. I'm going to reveal to her that I am from the future, because I need her to help me cut my hair, but when we get into the bathroom, Jim is in there working at the baseboard, installing wall tile or something. I wait for him to leave, and then I decide that I won't tell db, but cut the hair myself, in secret. I tell her I'll tell her later, and she leaves me alone in the bathroom.

[message to my super-ego: Okay. There. I've done some work. I've written out the dreams. Now leave me the fuck alone for a while.]

9-30-01

You can be obsessive about something without having it dominate your life. The trick is to obsess during a fixed and definite period of time. I'm obsessive about taking care of my teeth, but I'm only obsessive for the five or so minutes a day that I devote to it. I'm obsessive about a lot of things, but only in their allotted time slots. By allotting a specific period of time for each obsession, you can make the disorder work for you instead of against you.

10-2-01

The Fiction of the Work Ethic

Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow
nor reap, yet your heavenly father feeds them.

--one of them there gospels

I'd like to forego the method I've been using for some seven years now (since my "retirement") of the daily recording of the time I spend each day in "productive" activity (both artistically and domestically.) This is a remnant of my many years in a production environment, managing the activities of workers--and myself. I've tried to break this mindset several times over the past seven years, only to be confronted with my own frail self-perception, doubting that I am doing what it is that I should do, working up to my potential, assuring myself that I am not slacking off. I seem to need this self-reassurance. I shouldn't, but I do. I am too superego driven.

I record the number hours I work, the number of pages I write, the hours I sleep [I've done this since I was a teenager, at first to see how much time I actually spent in sleep, and later, after it became a habit, to assure myself that I was not wasting too much of my life. As it is, I sleep less, on the average, than the token eight hours a day. My lifetime average since I began to record the numbers, has been somewhere around seven and a half hours a day], the number of pages I read (but I've been relaxing this figure over the past several years, using it only as a conversion factor to estimate hours I've read instead when keeping track of the actual time proves to be difficult, such as when I'm both reading and watching TV), and several other measures that I record, which are too personal or mundane to document.

I don't want to give up all of this methodology (or should I call it an obsession?), only that which documents my "production." I still want to know how many hours I sleep, so that I can "justify" my "existence," so that I may assure fictive (superego) others (or even real ones, if the occasion of their censure should occur), that no matter how much time I may waste, at least I'm not sleeping my life away. But I don't want to feel that I must be obliged to "put in" any given number of hours per day, and especially, I don't want to feel guilty when I do not. I am a living being, in a now state of existence, despite the many ploys I use to pretend that I exist along a past-future continuum. I've got to break the back of this insistent perception once and for all--but I don't know how to do it. Or rather, I do know how, but I'm too afraid to do it. Trust in the nature of my eternal being is something that comes to me begrudgingly. I fight it daily, year after years, especially during the changing of the seasons. Life is a passage made too brief by the worry that we will one day not be here, and so we make the "best" of it by becoming "productive," and it turns out that we (most of us) become less conscious of our immediate natures--if ever we had become conscious of them in the first place; childhood is the time for the immediacy that we leave behind to become "adults," but we don't appreciate it, because we are not yet conscious enough to know that it will pass. But it doesn't have to pass. It only passes because we program ourselves to ignore it. It is always there, the immediacy that we choose to ignore. I am an immediate being, made temporary by the knowledge that one day I will die and leave relatively little to show for having been alive. It's sad.

I've thought of listing out my accomplishments instead of recording the amount of time I spend trying to accomplish them. But that is just another form of the same thing, really. And anyway, the system is too complicated and too demanding, when you have to maintain an ongoing list or later sit down and try to remember what it is you accomplished each and every day--and it is also too preoccupative. It's easier just to record the hours spent--and it's more forgiving. I'd rather be an hourly than a salaried worker. I wish I could have come to this realization earlier in life. Maybe I could have avoided a lot of the stress and heartache of having worked in management, which is a thankless occupation. I wish I had remained the rebel I started out as. Actually, I did, but I went underground, putting up a false front for uncaring companies. But I wish I hadn't done that. But too late. It's already done. And it's continuing, despite my subsequent escape. I carry on the mindset, by keeping track of hours. I am trapped, still, within the modern business perspective, and looking for an honorable way out.

10-5-01

When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead, when the rain comes.

--The Beatles

Today has been a particularly frustrating day. (This week has been a frustrating week; in fact, this month...) I went food shopping early this afternoon, despite the fact that I definitely did not want to go. But rain was predicted for the weekend and I wanted get out and back in ahead of it. After I got out of my neighborhood and up to the top of the hill, an atypical traffic pattern held me up. At the shopping center, a lady had pulled out across two lanes of traffic and, since cars were backed up at the light, she blocked both lanes. As traffic edged forward, I edged my way through a narrow opening before it could close and scurried up the open lane to the intersection to make a right turn. But, as I speeded through the intersection to avoid a changing light, I realized that I was responding reactively, assimilating the agendas of the other drivers/ cosmic atmosphere, and so I resolved to slow down and "go with the flow," an activity bordering on the edge of exasperation (because, after all, if the flow is that of exasperation, what else can you do?) as I waited in long lines of traffic at lights that were green until the cars began to move and then turned red again before I got to them.

At the first grocery store I went to, all of the weirdoes were out. An old lady, hardly able to move along, entered the store ahead me, trailing a long line of patrons. I waited patiently (not really, but I exhibited all the outward signs of patience as, internally, I was beginning to seethe; years ago, acting from a "proactive" motivation, I would have pushed my way past the long line of more patient people, elbowing my way into the store).

When we were finally inside and the line dispersed, somehow the old lady remained, now, directly in front of me as we both got shopping carts. Then, she turned sideways in the main aisle at the front of the store and blocked traffic in both directions. People who were coming from the checkouts couldn't get out, and I couldn't get in. The way she was bent over, her legs stretched out backwards, her arms forward, supported by the cart that extended across the aisle, she took up the whole aisle width. And she didn't move. She appeared to be frozen in spacetime, caught up in the throes of a senior moment. I waited for a few of these moments for her to decide to act, and when she didn't, since there was slightly more space ahead of her than behind, I moved in that direction, figuring I'd worm my way past her. But at the moment I began to move, she moved also, perhaps spurred by the activity she saw in me. You know how some activity requires an impetus to get started? Coaches of sports teams capitalize on this fact of nature by pacing up and down along sidelines or in locker rooms as they spur on the slower, less performing or responding athletes. You may think it's the verbal harangue that motivates the team, but it is as much the coach's activity and demeanor as anything he says. The old frozen woman, seeing me move, sensed activity and neurons that were failing to fire suddenly burst into activity, and she started up toward an empty register aisle, cutting me off. I thought, then, to pass behind her, but customers exiting the store already blocked that egress.

The fact that the woman moved, though, made hardly any difference, she moved so slowly. I stopped and waited, reaffirming my earlier decision to slow down, even to a stop, to wait out the impasse. Finally, she was out of the way, and I continued on into the store. I soon learned that it was a mistake to have attempted to try to go shopping. I should have paid closer attention to my intuitive state when I felt it was the wrong thing to do. No one told me it was Old Folks Day. They should announce these outings ahead of time so that those of us who are among the faster, slightly more agile of the species can plan accordingly. Senior citizens were all over the place, in every aisle. An old fat couple with two carts got ahead of me and blocked the wide aisle at the back of the store while they pondered over whether they should buy hot dogs or frozen pizza. And the people they blocked, being seniors themselves, were perfectly content to stand their ground and wait, as happy looking at the shelves immediately in front of them as heading off toward wherever they were going before they forgot where it was they had wanted to get to. I turned around and headed back in the other direction, hoping to find better conditions elsewhere. But it was pretty much the same all over the store.

When I finally got out of the store, conditions did not improve. The lot was in disarray from cars that were badly parked. And a tall and slender Indian woman wearing what appeared to be a hybrid form of a sari, a western-style dress that flowed down to her tiny-slippered feet, half-backed out of a parking space and sat there holding up traffic. As I walked by her, I saw that she was going through her purse and at the same time, examining her sales receipt, as if she had been cheated by the bar-codes and expected to find the solution to the mystery inside her purse. I knew how she was dressed because I remembered seeing her inside the store blocking one of the aisles, acting as if she were confused by the something on the counter in the baking section. After I got into my car and headed out of the parking lot, I found myself behind her at the exit as she waitied for traffic to pass. She missed several opportunities to pull out, then cut in front of a huge, four-door construction pick-up so that the guy had to slam on his brakes as she headed off down the road, two wheels on the apron. The guy in the pick-up looked surprisingly calm. I felt a sort of camaraderie. I thought he was practicing his patience also.

Things continued on this way all the way to the next store and back again. But finally, I hit upon an idea I should have had as soon as I had left the house. I started letting people out in front of me. As I waited in long lines of traffic, I let everyone out into the line that I possibly could, and all of a sudden traffic began to flow smoothly. Lights turned green as I approached. I saw others letting others out. I wanted to think that I had initiated this pattern, that because I acted to slow things down even more by contributing to the traffic on the road, I sparked a reverse-pattern, but more probably, everyone was beginning to respond to a change in the psychic weather. By the time I got back home, everything was flowing smoothly and peace had settled into my valley, the same peace I had left to venture out into the world. I know, at least in part, but maybe in big part, I help to create this peace, by being who I am, refusing to be confronted, disallowing discord within my own neighborhood. When it threatens, I turn inside, ignoring it, and it quickly goes away. Now, if only I could do that in the larger world. But I can. I only need to remember and practice the anti-agenda when I go out. The world is, after all, merely one big neighborhood.

10-17-01

Welcome to my Nightmare

I would like my website (and/or, more generally, my life's work, my oeuvre) to be a more direct reflection of my life. As it is, it is just okay, probably a lot better--a lot more accurate--than I want to believe, adequate in a way I would rather it not be, but in any case, okay. But I want it to be a definitive step-by-step account of the course of my life, like Gus, e.g., or at least a more spontaneous account, ala, e.g., Jack Kerourac. Instead, it is an eclectic mix of false starts and meanderings, which in fact is an accurate rendering of who I am. There is an overall purpose to the mix of self and world depictions that appear on my website(s) and in my journals and the random works of art that I have managed to abstract out of them, but the purpose is obscure to everyone but me--because it is too complex to state, or even too fully rationally understand. I know it intuitively very well. I have lived with it throughout most of my life. It dominates my being so profoundly that I hardly ever consciously think of it as it guides me in directions I do not even know I'm going. It is stated, in fact, in so many words, maybe not so clearly, but exhaustively, if one would but page through all of the material I have thus far created in order to abstract and weave the threads of it back together into a replica of what is happening daily unconsciously in my mind. As for myself, I have no need to do this kind of reviewing. (It would, I admit, be a lot of work.) What was it I started out to say? Oh, never mind.

10-21-01

I'm in hog heaven. Ally McBeal is in syndication on FX and different episodes run twice a day.

All of my life up until seven and a half years ago I had been continually dissatisfied as I had had to interact with society on so intensive a basis that I hardly had the time to attend to the activities of my own mind in the thorough way I had been able to do as a kid and have been trying to get back to ever since. But now, I am free again. Society is an interesting and varied place to be, but my mind is far more so, to me. I knew this in my childhood, but I forgot it as I went out into the world, to assure my survival and prosperity.

Because I have always adopted the appearance of being so laid-back, convincing even my own self, it's taken me a long time to realize that I have been a lifelong victim of ADHD. The laid-back attitude and demeanor is a defense against an onslaught of physical and psychological input. I cannot possible deal with all that I encounter and perceive and, therefore, I try to tune it out, always unsuccessfully, by adopting a lifestyle that I try to convince myself is not so rattled.

Now that I look back, I can see how my work life had been disturbed by my belief that I had to attend to every detail (and there were millions of them). In my real life, I could allow myself to be laid-back, but this was my work, for Christ sake. I had to do it "right." The perception that no one else did it as "right" as I did only served to make me feel superior and spurred me on to try to do even more. I started out as a workplace genius and ended up as an overworked prima donna.

And now that I look back on childhood, I see that the infinity of perceptions and a physiology that kept me going, physically or in my mind, day and night, was in fact, ADHD. I had subsequently, in early adulthood, convinced myself, based upon my defensive laid-back posture, that I was the exact opposite of an ADHD personality. At the worst, I was ADD (if in those few lucid moments I came across I would have to almost admit it to myself), but certainly not hyperactive. I ignored all of the signs: continually involved in sports that required extended practice and execution, like track and field and cross country running (a 4.5 mile course in college); never wanting to settle down and be peaceful, except when I was alone and could let my mind run on without interruption; very poor reading and verbal skills (which I made up for on the college boards and in life in general with advanced math skills and) which, when I became an adult, I developed to a point well beyond the norm via my self-discovered need to write; never wanting to go to sleep at night, preferring instead to run long and vivid elaborated fantasy scripts; a thin, wiry body that never gained weight (until recently; the only detriment of effective therapy); sitting among people with my knee rapidly bouncing up and down, irritating the more sedate, but easily-annoyed members of the group. (Had they, also, conditioned themselves into a laid-back demeanor and, when they saw that I exhibited signs of hyperactivity, projected their own repression onto me? Probably.) I was a disguised hyperactive kid. And no one ever knew it. I've always been very good at hiding away my real feelings and intentions.

10-24-01

The truth is a blinding light.

A friend of mine says that, while I don't actually lie, I exaggerate the truth to the extent that I might as well. She thinks I should "report" on my life on my websites with as accurate a method as possible, as if I were leaving a record of it for posterity, because maybe I am. I tell her that's not my purpose, that I'm expressing myself in the moment [and if I rewrite, I am reforming those moments, more accurately trying to report inner states, a different kind of "truth," mixing those past states with the present state at the time I am rewriting], in words or images, and if that expression isn't exactly the "truth," or if it incorporates elements of wishful thinking, fantasy, and other inner states, well, that's every bit as much a valid form of expression as "literal" reporting is. Anyway, no matter how hard we try, we can never report the real truth.

First of all, we can never even know the entire truth, so the best we can report are partial truths, spattered with a lot of misperceptions, misconceptions, ignorance, and manipulations as we mislead people and ourselves into thinking we are something we are not, that we are more grandiose than we really are [the "best" of us, those who we generally agree are recognized as the best, are the best because they are experts at manipulating the fictions that comprise our lives--the leaders in every field, the actors, the politicians, the diplomats, the statesmen, the famous, the celebrities], because this is what we (all) so want to be that over the years we have created small fictions, aspiring to be better selves, until we forget what the real truth was (assuming we even knew it when we started out and were not then even more ignorant in other ways), having assembled elaborate personas built upon mountains of seemingly insignificant little fictions. In more academic circles, this process is called developing personality and character.

George Washington maintained that character was something you imitated until you acquired it. This is what we all do, imitate other people. We start the process when we're kids, and we contnue it, more or less, for the rest of our lives. We selectively hide ourselves away from others behind fictions that we call character and personality, which we twist and distort in order to manipulate others, so that we may get whatever it is we want. We do this so naturally that we never see ourselves doing it. Neither can we escape doing it, no matter how hard we try, no matter how conscious we manage to make our behavior. We can never make ourselves fully self-conscious, at least not in a practical everyday world.

So, if you want the "whole" truth, forget about art. Reflecting the world in artistic production is not a truth-seeking mechanism, despite statements to the contrary (which are usually made by artists with self-interests). Art is a barrier you hide behind that is additional to that of character and personality. When we create art we remain a step removed from those whom we would have know us, even as we pretend to create in order to communicate. At best, those of us (true artists) who are so far removed that we exist in a world apart use art to attempt to cross an all but impenetrable gap. In this sense, art is a stage to be passed through between a nearly complete state of non-communion and the more perfect immediacy on the other side of the artistic process. At some point, we must abandon art in order to communicate more perfectly, i.e., to commune. Somewhere within this gap are the psychological machinations we use to twist others and ourselves around.

And people don't want to know the truth anyway. When confronted with it, they deny it. They project it away from them onto other things and people, manipulating people with fictions in order to prevent them from knowing it and to avoid it themselves. I manipulate people in this same way. Just because I know the truth about this process doesn't put me above it. I only see this operation when I sit down and carefully study any given situation. The rest of the time, when I'm operating day-to-day, minute-to-minute, I am as blind as everybody else.

So, when my friend tells me that I exaggerate the truth, all I can do is admit to it. I know, but what can I do? What can anyone do? We could try to be as "objective" as we possibly can. But why? We can never be perfectly objective. We will always introduce unconscious subjectivity. So why even try? We may as well just go along mixing small amount of truth with fact and fiction to create replicas of our own internal world in places where people can see them and hopefully buy into them. This is living art.

Why do I do it, then? If I know that there's a better way to live, a more immediately way, then why do I spend most of my time in useless self-expression? It's what I do. Maybe I should be more advanced by now. Is this the "truth" behind my friend's criticism? That I am wasting my time creating fictions and personas when I could be pursuing a more immediate truth? Am I a Zen phony? Could be. But the problem as I see it is that any truth that I might find (and I have found a lot of them over the years), is exactly that, a more immediate truth. But it is never the truth, the one and only. We live in a relative world. And within that world, I must do something (other than sit around and meditate--which I do; but you can't meditate all the time.) [You see. This last statement is me trying to make myself look good, by exaggerating the fact that I meditate a lot, because although I do, a lot of that meditation time is actually mere fantasy (I can't help it; I become distracted) and even a light sleep. What's a mother to do?]

11-4-01

David Christian is an anachronistic macho Vietnam Vet who used to flush the Viet Cong out of caves. In an interview on Fox News in response to a question about whether or not we would have to resort to nuclear weapons when the U.S. would otherwise be unable to flush the Islamic militants out of their caves in Afghanistan, he said that using "nucular" weapons would stir up the "freeze-dried" hippies from the sixties. [Now, lessee if I got this right. If we don't believe that nuclear weapons should be used, we're some kind of remnant peaceniks who should be ridiculed. Well, fuck you, too, you cretinous warmonger.]

11-9-01

A Family Fight

My brother calls me in response to a question I asked his wife concerning Thanksgiving dinner. I want to travel with his family to my sister's house (rather than stay at home; I had no intention of driving 600 miles myself and, of course, flying is out of the question.) At the end of our conversation, my brother adds a short parenthetical remark, something about how we are all going to have a pleasant Thanksgiving and no one is going to fight. Right, I say, in agreement.

But after I get off the phone, I think to ask myself if he was directing the comment at me. I think he thinks that the last time we went to my sister's together, I began a fight. In fact, I'm sure he thinks it. It makes me sad to realize this. The incident in question was a few remarks I made about how he was treating (actually, physically abusing) his kids. My statement couldn't have lasted more than ten or fifteen seconds and was intentionally said in as low a tone of voice as possible, not only to try to prevent upsetting him, but to keep his kids in the bedroom loft just above us from overhearing. But his reaction was angry and vociferous. He stormed out of the house to go and sit in his van and he fumed for nearly an hour. And no further words from either one of us for the rest of our week together could be construed as fighting. So, how is it that I was fighting? Because I disapproved of something he did and felt the obligation to express it, that's fighting? When I have something to say that I think is important, I should keep my mouth shut at all costs if it's likely to provoke an incident, for the sake of family harmony? Maybe, in many cases. But not in this one. Something had to be said. I had been noticing that his drinking problem, which had been out of hand for quite some time, had been causing an increasing violent attitude toward his wife and kids. I didn't want to feel, after something serious will have occurred, that I might have said something to prevent it. I didn't want to find myself in some future situation thinking back to a time when I should have used my influence when it might have done some good to help correct a problem before it escalated out of control. [To be fair, I thought this after I made the comments, as a justification for having made the remarks. And although I did make them quietly, I have to admit that I was quite upset, and this feeling was very definitely transferred to him. Nevertheless, as I am responsible for my own attitude/behavior, so is he. He's the one who got angry and stormed out of the house.]

I wasn't fighting. I don't fight. But the fact that he thinks I was is disconcerting. It may indicate that he isn't (still yet, after he has "solved" his problem) accepting the problem as his own, but instead is trying to project it away from him onto some convenient object---me. My simple, quiet (albeit powerful) statement constitutes in his mind a fight. [If what I said wasn't true, his reaction should not have been so vehement. People don't react so viscerally to untrue statements. At some deep point I'd hit a nerve.]

Should I not have said what I said? Sometimes, when I think back on this incident, I think so. But usually I do not. Most often I avoid stating aloud what I think is the truth for fear of upsetting people, but occasionally something must be said, despite the consequences, or because of consequences that might occur if I would not have said it. [Usually, this "decision" is an automatic reaction, as if some internal "wisdom" dictates it, independent of my conscious will, which would probably have concluded that I keep my mouth shut. After all, this is what I seem to have consciously decided to do most often, keep quiet. But when I speak, "automatically," I can most often look back and see the greater benefit of having spoken, even if the words initiate a backash against me that seems not to be in my best interest. (What is best in any given situation, is not necessarily what is best for me at any particular time.) I call this reaction "The Avenging Angel Syndrome," not out of a motive to flatter myself, but because it seems to come from outside me and acts to a better result than that which I myself could consciously provide.] It's possible that the few words I had to say to my brother positively influenced the events of the following year, leading to his eventual treatment. In any case, I can't see how it negatively influenced them. At worst, it was a draw.

Imagined conversation between me and my brother after some relatively harsh words (a typical occurrence) between my brother and his wife in the front seat of the van on the way to my sister's place:

"I thought you said we weren't going to fight?"

"I'm not fighting."

"That's not fighting?"

"No."

"Oh. Okay. Then I guess I don't have anything to worry about. By that definition, I never fight."

This is what I should have said to him the last time I traveled with them, but I didn't. Maybe I'm learning a lesson here.

11-11-01

Richard Harris needed some serious persuasion to play Prof. Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movie. "It wasn't because I didn't like the material or the people involved," says Harris. "I just didn't like the idea that if you said 'yes' and you did it, then you were committed if they did seven." Twice divorced, Harris adds: "That's why my marriages broke up. I hate commitment."

--CNN QuickNews

That's the way it is with planning to do something. You make plans when you feel like doing it, but when the time comes to do it, you feel differently about it. Plans inhibit spontaneity, but the world is built on plans. Commitment is the glue that holds society together. Rogue males, like Harris (and myself), avoid commitment like the plague. I'm not saying this is an admirable trait. (I admire it, but I'm not saying that I should.) I'm only pointing out that making too many plans kills immediacy of life. We should be a little freer, I think. We are, all, too well planned out.

I made plans a week or so ago, to go to my sister's for Thanksgiving. Now, I'm beginning to have doubts about whether I want to go. At the time, I was excited about seeing her. Now, I'm remembering the turmoil to my system that vacationing creates, when I will be extracted from the things that make my life seem worthwhile, the routine that allows me to be creative by tying me down to a definite work schedule. Talk about commitment. Talk about plans. I lack the spontaneity to even want to give up my routine for a few days, because when I do, it's so hard to get it back.

But mine is an anti-routine. I have to settle in with the idea that I am going to be productive, by applying myself in a ritual way, but the ritual is anything but repetitive. I never do the same thing every day, except in a very superficial way. I always make a daily plan, first thing, but I never complete it. In fact, I all but abandon it. And I certainly never do anything at the same time every day, most especially including sleep. And yet, I work on a ritual procedure, nonetheless, or I try to. I start out that way, for the first half-hour or so. Then, my motivation, or my commitment, deteriorates.

11-16-01

Symptomatology

...I'd rather be a dysfunctional soul than a well-adjusted robot.

--Thomas Moore, The Reenchantment of Everyday Life

0. Reviewing

Going back through my journal entries, I realize this has been coming on for over a week.

1. Headaches

For the most part, I have been headache-free all summer and fall. But for the past week or so I've been feeling headaches coming on, which I have headed off with exercise and aspirin or naproxen. I've been attributing this phenomenon to the change in the weather, and probably this is true. But I'm suspecting (inklings of paranoia?) something more profound.

2. Sinus Drainage

At about 8 pm yesterday I begin to experience my usual daily sinus drainage, but it doesn't stop after a few sneezes. Instead, it continues on, so that I have to keep Kleenex immediately available to prevent the irritating itch that will inevitably result from an unattended runny nose. When this malady persists for half an hour, I begin to wonder if I'm catching a cold. (I almost never get colds any more, and when I do, they're simply colds--gone in a day or two. When I was working at a job, I had graduated to skipping the cold phase of illness altogether when I got sick and went straight to flu-like symptoms with bronchial problems bordering on pneumonia. It took several years to get over that phase after I "retired.")

3. Avoidance

I have a lot of social things I could be doing, but I'm avoiding them. I theorize that in my current mental state, I am not prepared to face society. Yet, overcoming avoidance is an empowering activity. To set about doing that which one is avoiding, to just go out and get it done, makes one feel sort of complete, as if one were actually competent at interfacing with people. (This is sarcasm. Of course I'm competent. It's just that, a lot of time, I'd rather not be. It's a self-image thing.)

I "have to" make a phone call to the customer service department of my ISP. I've been delaying doing this for days, weeks even. I feel the minimal twinge of anxiety each time I think of making the call. Nothing drastic. Just a twinge. This is typical stuff. No biggie. I know that the best way to overcome this is to just go ahead and do it, bumble through it, after which I will feel completely in control again.

4. Irritable Behavior

Finally, I decide I will no longer put it off, and I make the call---at four in the morning. The first time through the multiple-option voice menus, after I finally get to the point where a customer service representative is supposed to answer, I hear one ring and then nothing. I wait, hoping that it is a mere holding pattern. After two minutes I give up, hang up, and dial again. But this time I have the menu memorized and so I disregard the instructions to listen to all the options before making my choice. When I finally get a customer service rep, Carrie, on the line, I do not put my best foot (or voice) forward, rather more or less mumbling my questions to her, half-reading them from my notes. I'm going through the motions, but I'm not using the best of my social skills. When I get to my question about the lost Internet access during the Sep/Oct fiasco, she informs me that she cannot give me credit for it because I didn't ask for it at the time. This seems unfair to me, and I tell her so. But my plea has no effect. I'm beginning to become a little bit upset. I mention that I would have had no reason to think about receiving credit at the time because I'm prepaid for the year. She repeats her previous statement, obviously a pre-prepared company policy. This irritates me, that she's treating me in a routine way. I tell her that maybe I'll start looking for a new ISP. She asks me if I want her to discontinue my account. That does it. She called my bluff. But I save face by telling her no, not now, I still have a month of prepaid time left. I tell her I'll call her a month from now. She says okay and tells me to have a nice day, cutting me off as I mention that, yes, I will be looking for a new ISP.

I already know that I will not be looking for a new ISP. I know I'm not likely to find one as cheap as this one. What really irritated me was that I was not catered to in the same way that I was when I became a paying customer. At that time, they would have done practically anything to prevent me from downgrading to their limited free service after my trial period had expired. Now, at the prospect of losing a paying customer, they seem not to care. I can attribute this change of attitude to only two things:

1) Economic times have changed. They can't afford to lose even the smallest bit of revenue, per policy. No more catering. No more discounts. Every customer service rep must toe the policy line. No more empowerment of individual reps to handle problems in a way that will assure customer satisfaction. (I will be the first to admit that I have taken maximal advantage of this trend in customer relations, not only with my ISP, but with businesses in general. When you know that reps are willing to bend over backwards to appease you, you have an ability to manipulate them. Those times, I guess, are over.)

2) Carrie was in a bad mood, aggravated by my bland, unappealing approach. After I got off the phone, I wondered how I might have irritated her, so that she might have been then unwilling to appease me. I thought that I should have been more personable. I should have tried to charm her. And in taking that approach, I might have headed off my own negative reaction.

But then, I began to think I felt some transference at work. Maybe my reaction was really hers. Maybe she really was in a bad mood and managed to successfully transfer her own negativity to me so that she could be relieved of it and thus have been able to tell me with that syrupy voice full of artificial sweetness to have a nice day. (To which I automatically replied, "Uh-huh," a final highlight to an otherwise negative experience, because the comment could either be interpreted as: I was not actually pissed, but was only pretending to be in order to achieve a desired effect, or I was being sarcastic, neither of which was true. It was an auto-response to her automated closing statement.

5. Blue Funk

No empowerment resulted from this activity. I did not get the expected results. I think that the cards of fate (or personal psychology) may have been stacked against me, that I probably should have waited to call another time. When you don't feel like doing something, there's a reason for it. It's that old "must" v. "want to" argument. Motivation, to be most effective, must play into the latter feeling. I could have cut off my own foot---by not putting the best one forward. Or, if I had put the best one forward, I could have had that one cut off instead. In other words, maybe there was nothing I could have done, no matter what I did. Maybe this was the cause of the anger I felt, the inevitability of the response.

I settled into a mood. I felt sad. I wanted to feel angry, but I knew it would be a derivative emotion, born of a past repressed hurt. You can't keep ignoring the original emotion if you want to act correctly---and this was the issue here. I questioned myself: Had I acted correctly? Had I been wrong in the way I went about it? In that I got angry (although it was very brief and was hardly expressed at all, except perhaps intuitively and/or via transference), I was wrong. But other than that, I was perfectly within my right to make the requests I did. I keep fighting the idea that I should not attempt to assert my ideas and try to maximize my position in the social world, that I should just take things as they come and remain the pawn that corporations and more powerful (i.e., more manipulative, influential, "sociable") people want me to be. This is an old, old issue. This is the way I grew up. This is the behavior I have fought against all my life as I have had to develop social skills and learn to assert myself. I don't want to assert myself, still, and maybe I "should" not, but rather be myself, but I have the right to do it, I have nothing to feel guilty for in this regard. [hurt, repressed > anger, repressed > guilt, repressed > depression] The guilt is the result of my attempt to repress the anger, which was a result of my attempt to repress the hurt I felt at being "rejected" by Carrie. So it is a transference, my transference (at least, but maybe hers too; probably hers too. Transference is a two way street. But I'll deal with my own, and she can deal with hers. This is, after all, not an intimate relationship.) She rejects me and I am hurt. I feel it, so as not to allow it to escalate into something else.

A further reaction occurs as I prepare to go to bed: I feel like I am expressing too much on my website, putting my deeper psychology out for public view. I want to edit the website down to less personal content. This is a further "guilt" reaction. I am not worthy to express myself as I do. I am not "right" in what I say. But I have this right of self-expression, no matter what, even if I am wrong, I have the right.

Ultimately, this is all no big deal. The phone incident is the littlest of concerns. The value involved is only, at the most ten, and possibly only even three dollars. The big deal, however, is my reaction, especially considering the coming vacation, where this same dynamic could all be played out again.

6. Round Two

This same sadness, this past hurt, is keyed by thoughts of the coming trip to Boston. I don't want to go and am sorry I committed to it. Just as I feel I might have been wrong (which I think I've concluded I was not) re the phone call incident [even if I were wrong re the very brief anger, hardly expressed but certainly felt, I'm human and allowed the same flaws as anybody else], I feel also that I may be wrong in my assessment of the "fight." But what's wrong with saying what you believe is right? My brother says a lot of fucked up things himself, often times to me. I ignore them. He has referred to me in front of my face as Jesus Christ. (And he didn't mean it in a flattering way.) He has criticized my opinions on numerous occasions, each time "hurting" me in the process. But I have kept my mouth shut about it, because I know how he is. My only defense to these kinds of incidents is to feel sad about them. The problem is that often I "automatically" react, especially when I'm under stress. I "defend" myself with a good offense. Even if I am entirely wrong (which I am not), in everything I say and do, I still have the right to be who I am, and to express myself in that regard. And yet, the better way to act is to feel sad. I realize now that this is what I did when I was a kid, before I learned how to assert myself. When I was criticized or put down in some way, I'd go off and be sad about it (as a "public" stance, not appearing to be sad, but rather withdrawn; and as a private stance, not feeling sad, but rather apart.) This is the most correct way to be in these circumstances. I was better as a kid than I am as an adult. (Well, of course.)

7. Denial of Appeal

Today I get up late, feeling the same sadness I went to bed with early this morning. Immediately after I got off the phone yesterday (i.e., early this morning while it was still dark), I sent an e-mail appealing the decision. It was a mistake, I think. Since a customer service supervisor answered it, he probably had direct contact with Carrie. I should have waited until the next day when different personnel were on duty. But even then, the answer may have been the same, if it were a policy decision.

Affective life has taken a downturn. After months and months of living on an emotionally even keel, the turmoil has begun again. Is this simply a symptom of the coming winter, or is a more immediate causal event involved? It's probably the season. I've been spoiled by the summer, once again. But the winter symptoms should not arrive this early. Yet, a certain sadness fills the air (between my ears.)

How do I head off the escalation into the depths of the syndrome?:

1) Light therapy: this is a lot of trouble, but it's probably worth it, except that you never realize it until after you stop it for a while; it doesn't make you feel "good," it just makes you feel "normal"--whatever that is.);

2) Rest, sleep: as it is, I've only been getting 6 to 7 hours sleep a night (or day), but then, I'm never tired.

3) Pharmaceuticals and/or supplements: L-Phenylalanine, Coenzyme Q-10, Vitamins A & C, St. John's Wort, MDMA, Valium, Prozac, Lithium. Do these substances really work? Or is it just my imagination? What's the difference? Certainly, the latter ones in the list are effective, albeit perhaps with a withdrawal backlash. (I arranged them in order of increasing effectiveness.) But I don't really want to artificially induce a state of "well being." I'd rather just be myself, and live the life I am "meant" to live.

4) Acceptance: feeling sad when events (or your own physiology and psychology) make you sad, being on guard not to allow the state to repress itself into derivative emotions, while taking care to protect yourself against the effects of stress. This is a winter regimen. Acceptance is effortless in the summertime when the livin' is easy.

I am at my best in summer. And it occurs to me that others often are not. In summer, I can sit and observe overly stressed people fighting, vital nutrients washed away by excess perspiration, without my being the least bit affected by it. Often, I can even be a peacemaker. (I'm talking about when I am not stressed. This did not apply when I was working in the summer.) But when I am not acting as this guru-like being, when I am affected, I see now that I am being normal. It is this other me, this peaceable me, who is not normal. Feeling bad or sad sometimes, getting angry at stupid things, making inappropriate remarks, being callous or even cruel, feeling sorry for yourself or sorry for what you've done, feeling regret, etc.---these are all normal human traits. I have been trying, maybe, too hard to avoid them---because I don't want to be normal. But I guess, sometimes, I am. This is the hardest thing for me to accept about myself, that I might, after all, be just another normal person.

addendum

Usually, in fact, previously always, writing this kind of stuff out has alleviated the symptoms if not the problems, and made me feel much better. But this time this is not working, so that I can only conclude that this is some physical/ physiological state I am experiencing that I am projecting these psychological concerns onto.

11-17-01

I switched from a night to a day schedule (I had been going to bed early in the morning and getting up in the early afternoon) by managing, in a state of pre-determined tiredness (despite not feeling tired, I decided that I must have been becoming run-down), to fall asleep at one A.M. (not unusual; I'll often sleep for an hour or two or three at odd times during the day or night) and staying asleep until six (very unusual, to sleep for five hours after I had slept until two-thirty yesterday afternoon). And now, the affect I wrote of above is gone. I wonder. I can think of the two incidents that "provoked" it without feeling the characteristic sadness/regret/ anxiety. [As I've written, this may be the other way around; the incidents may have been provoked by the physiology/psychology, or at least projected onto.] Is this a (more or less) permanent change (i.e., not to be seen again for weeks or months), or is it only a temporary reprieve (a few hours or days)? Only time will tell. If the former, I have discovered an additional mechanism to add to the "action list" of section 7 (list item#3) above. If the latter, well, then nothing's really changed and all goes on as reported--except that I feel fine right now. Alive. [Actually, I did take a healthy dose of vitamins A & C and four aspirin yesterday. That may have also had an influence. It's so hard to determine exactly what causes what, especially when it comes to one's psychology and physiology. There are so many genetic and environmental factors to consider and very few of us, even the hard-core scientists, can apply a strict scientific method to our own ongoing lifestyle.]

11-20-01

Pilgrims' Progress
Thanksgiving, 2001

When did I begin to react in kind instead of stonewalling people (as I had in my youth and into early adulthood?) Probably about the same time I began to seriously work for a living. But it's just the wrong way. I'd become caught in a trap, out of which I have still not entirely escaped.

On my way to my brother's house to pick up my sister-in-law (to drive her to her last class before the holidays, Psychiatric Nursing, where we will pick her up an hour and a half later to begin the long vacation drive to my sister's place in Kingston, MA), I encountered a less than happy motorist at an intersection. He was turning into the street I was pulling out of, and I had pulled about a foot beyond the stop sign in order better to see down the road. This action, done just as he was making his turn, was apparently not this liking---he must have thought I was going to pull out in front of him---so he slowed almost to a stop and made a double open-handed gesture, as if to say "What the fuck are you doing?" But it was the look on his face, not the gesture, that set me off. I said, in mime, "Fuck you," with scowl and vinegar on my own face---an automatic reaction. His momentum carried him a few feet past me, where he stopped, apparently looking back. I watched him in my side mirror, resisting the urge to open my door and look back, to challenge him further, to see what he would do. So, since I had on mirror sunglasses and he couldn't see me looking back, I guess he must have thought that I thought he'd passed on by.

Although I did resist the urge to get out of the car, I felt badly that I had reacted the way I did, not because I'd necessarily acted inappropriately, the guy was an asshole, but because I'd reacted automatically, without thinking. Normally, i.e., previous to my total social indoctrination into society many years ago, I'd have completely ignored the incident, I'd have gone on my way, never having responded, at best only having stared at him. In short, I'd have stonewalled him, in just the same way I would have stonewalled almost anyone who had anything to say to me, unpleasant or otherwise.

But now, as a residue of too much stress over too long a period of time and too little anxiety (which used to keep me well in social check, if not checkmate), I will automatically respond in kind to people who will insist upon antagonizing me. (I will also respond to them in kind when they are pleasant, but not necessarily so readily.)

This is an ominous beginning to a trip that I have been more than a bit worried about re a stress-related history of my family. Will the increasing pressure as we spend too close quarters together set me off in exactly this same way, when all I want to do is endure the suffering in peace and contentment? This is to be seen.

We spent the night at a Hampton Inn in an industrial park next to a Keebler factory somewhere near Allentown, PA. Don't know where exactly. Wasn't paying attention. Dreamed of Elves making cookies in a tree that was also a parking garage. I awaken next to my elfish youngest nephew, Danny, who is sprawled across the entire fold-away double bed, forcing me to the very edge of the mattress.

11-21-01

Traveling rather pleasantly along in the comfortable middle section, left plush bucket seat of my brother's personal example of American affluence, a Chevy van. Napping and listening on a CD player, for the first time, to the lyrics (as opposed to the music, which I've listened to a lot) of 'Tidal' (Fiona Apple), and 'Tragic Kingdom' and 'Return of Saturn' (No Doubt). I've had these CDs for a long time, but I've never taken the time to completely and thoroughly listen to them. Gwen Stephani is not so profound as I originally thought, but Fiona is far more talented than I ever realized.

Typical reunion with my sister. Awkward hugs and ordinary chit-chat.

11-22-01

Had a big breakfast of some kind of baked eggs, bread, and cheese casserole prepared ahead of time by my sister, refrigerated, and reheated. Pretty good.

While she and her husband Frank remained at home and cooked, my brother and his family and I went down to Plymouth to see the historic rock. Unimpressed. (I've seen it before---and I wasn't impressed then either.)

I'd been feeling very out-of-place among the tourists and among Thanksgiving celebrators in general. (I'm not a celebrator, of anything, except life in general, and that's a daily practice.) But the gods of psychology smiled on me and we ran across the annual Native American protest. We had no idea this would be occurring and stumbled right into the middle of it before we knew what it was. Suddenly, I felt that I belonged. All of my estrangement from the holiday festivities dissolved away. Standing in front of the temporary stage, we listened to the Native American speakers air their well-known grievances. My brother says "It feels like we're back in the seventies." "I know," I said. "I feel like this is where I belong." Most of the people in the crowd and all of the participants have long hair and are dressed alternatively. I fit right in and I feel good about it. I could have stayed there all day. But Joyce left, and my brother dutifully followed, at a distance. When we caught up with her, she mouthed some cliché like "If they don't like it here, they can always leave." My brother, probably more out of a need to contradict her than from true democratic zeal, picking up on my comments that the great thing about America was that they could express their discontent, said that she should be more tolerant. She didn't respond.

We left my youngest nephew on the hill above the rock, looking out across the land and seascape through the binocular telescopes that you pay a quarter to use, as the four of us (older nephew included) walked down the long steep steps to the main drag. I kept looking back up the hill and even commented to Joyce about how Danny would not have known where we had gone, but she said he'd find us and she kept moving on. But apparently, I was more sensitive to the kid's feelings than even his own mother, and I hung back and waited for him. Sure enough, when the time on the binoculars ran out, he looked around, couldn't find us, and began to scan the crowds far below him. I imagined what he might be feeling. I'd felt that way myself when I was a kid, lost. (In fact, repressed, I probably still feel that way, and so I can readily project it onto him. Here is a positive use for projection: empathy.) I intuit what he's feeling, abandoned, on his own in a sea of strangers. I yell to him, across the distance, up the hill, "Dan!" But he can't hear me. His mother, farther on, responding to my call, yells, "Danny!" But he doesn't hear her either. He continues to scan the crowds as his mother turns away and moves on. Then, he sees me and scurries down the steep hillside toward us. I feel relieved. He may not have felt any anxiety at all. But I did.

We visited the Indian exhibit set up by the Wampanoag inside a huge tent. A number of exhibits were selling small trinkets and memorabilia. It occurred to me that Indians in this day and age aren't all that much different from the race descended from their former "oppressors." They're out to make money, just like everyone else. Idealism may be alive up on the hilltop, but down here next to water, commercialism prevails. Jim bought Danny an arrowhead and a drum. I didn't buy anything.

I was happy and in my elements walking around among the Indians, gays, lesbians, and others exhibiting their alternative lifestyles. I may not be so radical, but I feel far more comfortable among radicals that I do among the mainstream population. I find that I actually like fitting in. This is a little bit disturbing to me. I've always felt I had to be different, to assert myself in some way that caused me to stand out, even if standing out meant that I would be ridiculed and even harassed (or maybe because of it; maybe I exhibit an unconscious need to be victimized.) But here I am, happy to be a part of a diverse whole. And this, I think, is the key. I fit in among people who are individually different, while the masses exert their social need by feeling they must all look and act the same. And then, there's the idea that I want to call attention to myself. But I'll leave that for another time.

11-23-01

As a counterpoint to yesterday's activities in Plymouth, we went shopping at the Independence Mall. Because it was such a balmy day, I'd left my sunglasses in my heavy coat at my sister's house, so we went into a bargain store and I bought two pair, and also two pair of reading glasses, for a buck each. What a deal! If all stores were like this one (Dollar Bargain), I could get into consumerism.

Went back home and "had another Thanksgiving dinner that could be beat, fell asleep, and didn't wake up until...
11-24-01

the next morning when we all had to go to..." The Plimoth (no, it's not misspelled) Plantation. I really wasn't into going, but once again, the gods surprised me. If you have to visit tourist traps, this is the one to see. I loved the role-play of the exhibitors acting as if they were the original pilgrims. Next, then, we went down to see the Mayflower II. I'd been on it before, and so that was more boring for me.

We rented two tapes from Blockbuster, The Godson (we all agreed it was absolutely the worst movie we've ever seen, although Danny got into it big time) and What Planet Are You From? (which the others thought was a little bit better, but I thought it was great. I think they missed the subtleties, and I wasn't in the mood to point them out.)

11-25-01

We left for home this morning at 6:45. After about an hour, the trip seemed to be going well and Jim commented on how well the long, long weekend went. But he spoke too soon. Just before the Tappan Zee Bridge, the van began to shimmy and was hard to control. On the other side of the bridge, at the Nyack exit, a loud noise began to issue from beneath the vehicle. We thought it was the transmission, but it turned out to be a shredded tire (left rear.) The spare was all but impossible to get to, and no one knew quite how to lower it down from beneath the undercarriage, but we finally figured it out. It turned out that the spare (one of those mini-tires) was flat, but we had a can of Fix-A-Flat, which put enough air in it to get us off the exit after putting on the tire while traffic whipped by at seventy miles an hour. We found a Sears store less than five miles away (one of the major advantages of the consumer society) at The Nanuet Mall, where we had a new tire mounted. While Jim waited at the tire center (glad to be free of the kids and his wife for a while), the rest of us went into the mall, where Joyce did Christmas shopping. Jay and Danny were misbehaving, teasing and taunting each other, and for the most part, Joyce was ignoring them. Jay found a small pin and began sticking Dan with it. After a few minutes of this, I asked for the pin, and he gave it to me, so that ended that particular torture. But kids are creative. They would not stay in sight and several times we had to look for them. When I found Danny the last time, I tried to get him to imagine how he'd feel if he was lost in this mall and didn't know where we were. But he wouldn't play the what-if game. I should have brought up the incident on the hill in Plymouth and tried to make him feel a little bit of what he might have then felt, but I didn't think of it.

Total time lost: three hours.

And things continued not to go our way. We ran into a weather front and the windshield wipers worked only erratically. We had to stop several times to make fine-tuning adjustments to them with a screwdriver. As the atmosphere of stress increased, so did my brother's poor reaction to it as well as toward the kid's bad behavior. They began to taunt each other, which eventually led to kicks, pinches, etc. This continued into the night through the worst traffic jam I have ever been in (route 78 in PA where it merges with Rte 81, four lanes merging into two, which were under construction). After several hours, we made it to an exit where we took Rte 22 toward Harrisburg, getting back on 81 beyond the problem. Then, the fog set in, so thick that we had to travel at forty miles per hour. The stress finally started getting to my brother big time, and he began to verbally abuse the kids, who, in my opinion, deserved it, although it can be said that they were responding in their own way to the stress. Long ago I realized that, short of physical abuse, there was no way I would ever be able to control them. But then, if I were their father, I would have had to find a solution long before this, or I wouldn't have survived. I couldn't have endured the stress. I guess that my (conscious) decision not to have had children was based on an unconscious wisdom.

11-26-01

Spent the day recovering from the stress of the trip and thinking about the purpose of life. Life has no purpose, except to keep moving forward, advancing. Or, if there is a purpose, it is well beyond the human level. At our level of life, we make up our purposes. We superimpose them onto our lives, usually in the form of belief systems. [Doctors saving lives or technologists and engineers making life better (truly, as opposed to in a token manner) may have a purpose consistent with that of the overall real purpose, i.e., extending life---but maybe not. After all, life goes on, no matter which individual examples of it die.

My purpose now (it may be something different tomorrow) is to document my life, and additionally, my thoughts. Why? I don't know. It's something to do. You have to do something. Or do you?

Beginning with the new year (Dec 21st), [and beginning now (Nov 11th), as a preliminary exercise] my first journal entry of (each and) every day will be a summary of the activities of the day before, or of the current day, if I am writing late. In the absence of significant actions (my usual mode of being lately), this will be a summary of (some of) the more significant things I thought.

Next, I hope to add other entries that are similar summaries of past events in my life. These I may abstract to other (online) journals, or to projects that may be anti-journalistic in nature, in which case I may not date the entries, although I may include the writing date (as is my usual practice) in a comment line in the html. I'll try to arrange these entries chronologically, as they occurred, but the format of all my other online documents vary and this may not always be possible.

11-27-01

I'm just treading water, nothing more. I'm flowing with the current, heading toward the dam. Well, I guess not. My life is not that dramatic. There is no dam. Only small eddies where the water from the river empties into the ocean. But enough of metaphor. Every time I return from a social outing that is of more than only the briefest length, I can't seem to get back to my regular work pattern---not for weeks. It's as if I've been contaminated, with the world---no, not with the world, because I'm continually contaminated with the world via television and the Internet. With other people, in particular, with their psychologies and transferences. There is so much running around inside my head, I don't know what to do, how to react to the input. I am overwhelmed. This is an accurate statement of my present existence: I am so overwhelmed, I don't know where to begin again. And so, I do nothing. I sleep a lot. I watch TV, but half-heartedly, not caring what I watch. This is how I'm spending my time now, wasting it, more than usual---because, life has no purpose except what you decide that it is, and I don't want to decide.

I think I keep my hair long now because when I was young, I got so much criticism and pressure to keep it cut. If people (society) had let me alone back then, if I had been allowed to grow my hair to the length I wanted it to be (which I did, occasionally, but always succumbed to the pressure to cut it just as often), I might be content today to conform to the norm (whatever that is, a buzz cut or a more conventional military or business haircut, I suppose.) This is the way rebellion is unwittingly encouraged, through trying to discourage it. If you want to quell rebellion, give it its free reign. No one who rebels wants to be allowed to do it. If you want to spread the rebellion, try to put it down. (Or even better, adopt the mannerisms of the rebellious.)

11-28-01

I'm all right.
Don't nobody worry 'bout me.

--Kenny Loggins

National governments are dropping bombs on people halfway around the world and I'm fucked up because I want to stay in the house and not participate in this great social experiment? At my sister's over Thanksgiving, on Saturday, in the van as we arrived home after a shopping trip, my brother and his wife announced that they were going back out, to the mall to do some more shopping. Danny, their youngest son asked if he could go, and Joyce said no, so I figured they wanted some time to themselves. But inside the house, in the kitchen, Jim asked me if I wanted to go along, and since, in the van, I had wanted to, but thought they didn't want me, I said, "Yeah, sure," appreciating the invitation, which Jim must have picked up on because he asked me what was wrong with me. He said he never saw me so sociable. I shrugged it off, even though I felt that his comment was an insult. He never saw me so sociable because he doesn't really know me that well, although he thinks he does. A long time ago he decided who I was, and he has maintained that opinion ever since, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Yes, at times I do not want to be with people. But so does he not. (So does everyone not, at times.) Maybe I don't want to be around people more than many people do not, but I am not exclusively exclusive. There are times when I am perfectly happy socializing. Yet I am stereotyped conversely.

A few examples of my stereotyped persona:

1) I am not so clean a person, because I wore the same pair of pants for the entire Thanksgiving weekend. In fact, it could very easily have been the case that I have three or four pairs of the same style of pants. (Actually, I had two, but they were nylon and not easily soiled. If they had been, I would have changed them. As it were, I rotated them, but no one wants to entertain that kind of consideration, preferring instead to classify the situation in the simplest (and most demeaning) way possible.

2) I agitate my brother's kids, because when I was a kid, I agitated my brother and sister and then retreated to let them take the punishment. (Even this childhood situation was not so clear-cut as my brother and sister want to make it out to be. They played a not so innocent role in the agitation. But, based on this past stereotype, I am accused of agitating the kids in the back of the van, when they are quite capable of agitating each other without me and, in fact, I would have put a definite stop to their co-agitation if I felt I could have done it. They irritated me as much as they did their father.

3) There's another example somewhere in the Thanksgiving text, I think, but I can't find it now.

Now, I'm sitting in my home alone again, wondering about why people will decide who you are and then act to verify that opinion. The answer, of course, is that it's typical human psychological behavior. People judge others and the situations they are in and decide, often in a fixed way, who you are and what they can expect from you and the situation(s) you/they engender. This is often not a fair process, but it's a fact of life. People ignore a whole side of me, because they have decided, based on my predominant side, that I am a loner and actually want to be alone. And so I am, whether in any particular moment I am or not.

(This is not so disturbing to me as I want to make it out to be.)

Today, after nearly a week of being with people, I am alone again. And I don't mind it. This is the problem, which I see as a solution.

I haven't been doing anything, really, all day long. I haven't been doing anything since I returned from my sister's. (Of course, I didn't do anything up there either, really. But that was a vacation. Doing nothing is okay when you're on vacation.) I sit around pretending to watch television while mulling over the events of the past week. Extended stays away from routine daily life, especially when I am among people, affect me in this way. I acquire a lot of input and I must absorb it. My brother has been responsible for a lot of the input this vacation session. He criticizes everything; he's a super-critical person, especially when he's under stress. He criticizes other drivers' poor driving habits while doing exactly the same things himself. He talks about people behind their backs all the time, so much so that it is obvious that he must also criticize me when I am not around. It's easy to recognize his projections in his criticisms, more so than in most people (maybe because I'm closer to him than to others, socially and psychologically.) He criticizes himself. [This is why I don't like to criticize people. All criticism is self-criticism. But I'm criticizing him now, so... The conclusion is inevitable.]

It makes me sad to recognize the symptoms of extreme stress in my brother. When we left to go to my sister's, I thought he might have started drinking again, but I put the idea out of my head, but now, it returns. This evening I get a call from my nephew. He's trying to fix their computer and he wants my help. Apparently, he had been complaining to his father and was told to fix it himself, or something along those lines. I can't help him over the phone, and since he needs a CD-RW to back up his files, I decide to take him one and see if I can continue my analysis of the computer's problems onsite. I had downloaded from the Internet two .dll files that we thought might be corrupted, so I copied them to disks and headed out on my service call. I didn't mind the interruption to my (anti-)routine because this was a month-old item on my list of things to do---if ever I got around to it. So it was like an opportunity arising to complete a "schedule" item.

When I got to my brother's house, he was conspicuously absent. Usually, he's there in the evenings unless one of the kids has a sports' event, but all of the kids were home. As I worked on the computer, I overheard Joyce say, in response to one of the kids who said their father was over at the fire hall, that she called him and he wasn't there. (She was checking up on him?) Where was he? Out drinking? I hate to think this about him, especially if it isn't true. But I hate to think I am not intuitive enough not to know what's going on either. All night at my brother's there is a tension in the air (or in Joyce), which I noticed as soon as I walked in. Joyce, after I am there a while, begins to lighten up. She has to respond to my presence. Does this mean I am a positive influence? Maybe.

11-29-01

Today, I begin to reorganize the house. I always do this for a while after I've visited someone who maintains a nice home. My home is cluttered, with books piled in the living room, half-done projects abandoned here and there, which I am idly hoping to get back to, floors unswept for months, shelves and furniture undusted. I put all the books in the living room onto shelves in the back room by reorganizing stuff there to make room for them. I don't mind the way I live, but when I see how others live, for a while, I feel a little bit envious.

[I'd like to seek out the comfort of living with a woman in a well-kept home. But it's not a big priority with me, and it conflicts with others goals in my life now, especially that of money expenditure and working at a job. And anyway, I never felt that lying in the arms of a woman was an escape from the cares of the world. In fact, I've always felt, with all the women I've ever been with, that I was their escape, that I had to comfort and protect them, when I really wanted the reverse. Probably, I'll never get that kind of comfort (I stopped looking for it early on) because I never (or not often enough?) got it from my mother. We search for what we never got in childhood, but we never really get it. That's why we keep searching, until we, if ever, develop the conviction that we don't really need it. This is what is meant by maturation: we escape from the deficit programmed in childhood.]

Yes, I'd like to live like others do, in a nice home with a nice woman, in an uncluttered clean home that smells of house perfume and feels warm, cozy, and inviting in cold weather, but...I can't invest that much of my resources in that kind of lifestyle. It costs too much, monetarily and psychologically. And I don't like to do repetitive work, and cleaning is the most repetitive work of all. Once it's done, properly, you have to start all over again. The way I live now is my compensation, but at least I don't engage in self-destructive behavior.

Joyce reads romance novels to escape (Four in six days over Thanksgiving vacation.) My brother criticizes her for it, telling her that if she'd get her nose out of her book for a few minutes, she'd know what's going on. As I see it, she knows exactly what's going on. That's why she has her nose in the book in the first place, because she doesn't like what's going on, preferring instead to know what's going on in the books she reads. Who can blame her? Jim feels threatened by her "absence" and additionally, by the fact that she's using reading as an escape. He doesn't like to read, not being very good at it. Her continuing education and anything that connotes it generally, threaten him. He doesn't recognize the reading material as "trash." To him, all reading is "educational."

I can't criticize Joyce for reading relatively worthless content. It's a "safe" escape; it's not self-destructive behavior, like drinking is. She's handling her stress in a positive way, escaping into fantasy. I do the same thing, but my fantasies are self-created. Fantasy, without the aid of books, is a better escape for me. When I don't do anything for long periods of time, it's because I'm fantasizing, a practice that, eventually, feeds into the creations of stories and novels, which, unfortunately, seldom get completed. Once the fantasy is done, the motivation to finish the fiction is too low.