by j-a
May, 2002
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Yesterday afternoon, I looked out the window and across the street I saw Steve and my next door neighbor, Donna, talking. I actually hurried to put on my jeans to go out, hoping to catch the two of them while they were still talking, but she started to walk away before I even got out the door. As I walked down the steps, Steve shouted hello, and he said that they were just talking about me. "Oh-oh," I joked, and he quickly assured me that it was nothing bad. They had been talking about the wood he had stacked up at the curb, and he'd mentioned to her that I had a wood stove and he was going to give the wood to me if I wanted it. I said, sure. I'm always happy to get free heating fuel. Donna hung around nearby, but we didn't get a chance to talk or even to acknowledge each other's presence because Steve dominated my attention as Donna dug up the flower bed in front of her house, getting it ready for summer. And then she went inside. Although, now that I think about it, we did acknowledge each other's presence, in a way, that is, we were aware of each other's presence. [Later, I will make more out of this feeling than I did at the time.] I think that she probably used my approach as an excuse to get away from Steve, because as I talked to him and he went on and on, never letting up, I had this idea that I had saved her from having become entrapped in a conversation with him while she was out in front of her house digging up her flower bed--not that talking to Steve is an unpleasant experience, it's not, but he does go on and on. As we stood in front of my house, he told me that his landlord, Joe, had stopped over because water had been leaking into his kitchen from the bathroom above, and his lighting had shorted out in a huge, bright flash, and when Joe came over, he told Steve that someone had complained about all the junk (the wood being among it) stacked up in front of his house, which Steve justified by saying that his place does get a little junky in the spring when he's getting all his tools and everything together for his work (landscaping). I thought, his place looks junky all year round--not that I mind, because it makes my feeble place look good by comparison. I wondered who had complained. I didn't really care, but I wanted him to know that I wasn't the culprit. He said he didn't know and didn't care, that he gave up worrying about that kind of stuff years ago. I mentioned that I saw the cops down the street the other day, planning on suggesting to him that maybe they saw the stuff and issued a complaint, but he cut me off again, saying that they were there about an old car that needed to be towed away, and he began to relate the story about the guy who lived there, how the guy who owned the place wanted him out, because he wasn't paying any rent and was eating all his food, that he didn't mind him as a friend, but he didn't want him living with him under those circumstances, and as he talked, the guy (I wasn't sure which one, the one who was wanted to leave or the one doing the wanting) came walking along outside his house and shouted to Steve something about him saying he'd be right back and never showed up, and Steve said to him something about getting sidetracked and he'd be right over, and he started away down the street, still talking to me as I headed back inside, saving me from Steve in the same way that I had saved my next door neighbor from him, not that I minded so much talking to him, but I had other stuff to do. After I got back inside, I thought that maybe no one had complained at all, that maybe it was Joe who didn't like the junk piled up in front of the place and just pretended he'd had a complaint to avoid having to so directly confront Steve. Maybe. But who cares, anyway. I gave up worrying about that kind of stuff years ago.
I've changed my mind about assisted suicide. I'm not against suicide itself, but I've come to believe that no one should be helping you if you want to do it, especially doctors, who are supposed to save lives. Kill yourself, you weak-willed wuss, or else suffer with your problems. Stop asking others to assume what is your own responsibility.
The heating pad I use in bed to keep me warm in the winter stopped working. I almost rushed out to buy another one, because the one in the office that I use to keep my feet warm when I'm working went bad last week. But, initially as a temporary solution, I filled an empty gallon milk jug with hot water. (I have a tankless water heater that, at its lowest possible setting, heats water to about 150 degrees, a potentially dangerous temperature, if you're not careful when using the hot water.) I was surprised at how much better than the heating pad the milk bottle heated the bed. Far better. While I'm watching tv before I fall asleep, I put the jug down near my feet, balanced between them so that it won't fall over, because I'm a little bit afraid that it'll leak. And then, when I'm ready to sleep, I pull it up to me and snuggle it. I'm amazed at how long the heat lasts, literally all night. Maybe I'll go out and buy a hot water bottle instead of a heating pad. I used to have one, but I can't find it. My ex must have taken it with her when she left. But water bottles are smaller and probably won't hold the heat as long. But at least there's less likelihood that they'll leak. And they're flat. And I don't need the heat all night long anyway. I only snuggle the bottle because it's there. I don't really need it all night long. Once the bed is warm, it stays warm. Most of its residual heat left in the bottle in the morning is probably absorbed from my body heat anyway. I'll probably wake up one morning and find myself soaking wet and snuggling an empty milk bottle. [Later: I've discovered that a two liter Pepsi bottle works better, because it can be set on its side without so much danger of leaking.]
For quite a while now there's been a big hubbub about the practice of a local school district sending letters home to parents of students who are overweight, warning them of the health risks to their children. A lot of parents complained that their kids are being damaged in terms of their self-esteem, etc. Get real. Your kids are fat little fuckers, people. Get with it. The district is only trying to improve your kids. That's what they're there for. (Ten years from now, the parents or their kids will be suing the school district for not having done anything when they were aware of the problem.) Parents (probably fat big fuckers) don't want their faults to be pointed out to them, neither the faults of their kids, nor the faults of their parenting, nor the fault of their bad example, if that is the case. (It really is a parental problem and it's rampant in America, Home of the Free and Land of the Fat.) So parents have to counterattack by blaming the school district for trying to do what they cannot, because, when it comes right down to it, their competence as parenting is being called into question, which is nothing more than a logic extension of calling into question their competence as people. If you're fat (I mean grossly fat here) you're a weak-willed waste of a human being. Forget about blaming your metabolism or your thyroid for it. In 999 cases out of 1000, it's not true. And you're not the exception. You're the reason why the human race isn't farther along than it is. You're one of the wastlings that hold us back as a species. [Are you getting the idea yet that I'm prejudiced against fat people?] Do something. About your problems. About the dis-eased psychology that keeps you fat. About your lack of fortitude. Put yourself out of your misery if you can't cope with life. At the least, stop blaming other people for your own inadequacies. Your kids are fat! Deal with it! It's not the school district's fault. And it's not the district's fault if your kids suffer from low self-esteem, either. If they do, don't you think it just might be because they're fat? Put away the Hoho's, turn off the tv and the computer, and go out and get some exercise.
I think I wrote about this before, but I can't find it: I have to be careful that, in executing my "old journals project, I don't begin to sound like one of those people who sit around dwelling on the past and avoiding their present life. But, in documenting my life, if that's what I turn out to be, then that's what I am. And anyway, what am I supposed to do if that's where my dreams lead me? Should I ignore my dreams and live in a fictive present?
Spent all afternoon trying to make my Website menu an SSI, but failed. Very frustrated now. I have to find a server or server-simulator that I can run on my computer that will show me the results before I post them to the site. Every server I've downloaded so far will not support this function. Anyone knowing of one (freeware, of course), please e-mail me.
What else? Nothing. I'm entering my period of summer mania. I want to do everything. I'm trying to forget about this afternoon, but ideas keep running through my brain, which I document (the ideas, not my brain--well, my brain too, I guess, or a very small part of it) on my small (5x8) clipboard binder that I transport between the office and the bedroom, along with my mini-recorder.
Watched movies all evening, trying to forget about how much I want to do but don't have the energy for. (I've been up and working since seven this morning.) I'm going to bed now. 'Night.
Sat outside on the back patio this afternoon, soaking up the sun, letting it burn into me, to purge my soul of the residue of winter rigidity. This is what it's all about, these moments in the sun. Sun worship. This big star right up there above us, this local fragment of the cosmos, is the sole source of life on our world, a little bit of the brightness of the universe burning brilliantly, like a glowing gas shooting stark shards in a sixties' acid trip, if you could look at it straight on, which, of course, you can't, and so you relegate its magnificence to some far off corner of your mind and disregard how central it is to all our lives. Without it, we are all dead. Even in its relative absence in winter, when our earth tilts away from it a few small degrees, we suffer. But when we tilt back toward it--that's when we prosper. Now my time begins. I've waited out the winter weather one more year. Now it's my turn to command the universe, in communion with my local god. The cold dark force of winter Mordor can step his bleak ass back one pace and wait his turn again.
Looks like the nice weather is going to last for one whole day in a row. I was just getting into looking forward to sitting outside everyday and reading, and now I see on the weather channel that it's going to be raining for the next couple of days. But, then again, who knows? They never get it right beyond the next twenty-four hours.
But things are heating up on the domestic front. Yesterday, I saw Eva, the girl who lives next door, sitting across the street on Steve's porch talking to Terry. Since she doesn't normally socialize with them, I went out to see what was up, using the arrival of the mail as an excuse. As I walked back from the mailbox, Steve called me over. He'd been drinking. He informed me that someone broke into the house next door to me and trashed the place--broken doors, windows, furniture, etc. This is the second time this has happened.
Steve says that he has a baseball bat that he keeps to protect himself against any intruders, but he doesn't guess that it'd do much good these days against kids with guns.
Yeah, I say. I keep a bat next to my bed too, but I guess it wouldn't be much good unless you happened to catch someone sneaking in a window or something and could surprise them.
I turned us away from Eva so that she couldn't hear and I said that someone they know must have done the break-in. The only two such incidents ever to occur in this neighborhood just happen to occur at their house, and recently?
Steve agrees. He makes a point of saying several times that he's got work to do, and he has an interview to go to, that he just came home to have lunch and a beer (or several, I think), and now he's just sticking around until Donna (Eva's mother) arrives home. They called her at work.
As we speak, Steve's sister drives up the street. She stops and Steve talks to her. I feel awkward standing around, so I go back inside. I watch from the front window as a police car arrives. I figure that if the cop is the one I happen to know, I'll go back out. But he isn't among them. The cop goes into the house and a detective arrives. A little bit later, another cop car pulls up with a kid in the back seat. As they're all about to leave, Donna approaches the car with the kid in it and yells at him. I can't hear everything she says, but it's something about hoping they hang him. I'd never seen her pissed before. She's awesome. She's a skinny, biker-looking babe with long, stringy hair, a recessed chin at the bottom of a thin, hard face--not bad looking, but no beauty. But I like her looks. And now, I like her attitude. But I guess I've always known she could be that way. I intuited it. And yet, when you talk to her, she's quite personable. I should get to know the family better, but...
Apparently, the kid in the cop car is a friend of one of the teenage girls who live next door. I imagine a situation: he's jealous because he's in love, or some such thing, and the affection is not returned. Yep. That'll do it.
I think I'm getting to the point where I should consider most, if not all, things I do on the Net as a part of my work (since most of the surfing I do is now blogged on my Website. This is a major development, increasing my daily "work" hours from somewhere between three and six (seven days a week) to over eight. (But it's only work if you hate doing it.)
This the fourth day in a row that I've slept eight or more hours and gotten up at or near dawn. What's happening? Am I turning normal?
Joyce called for the fourth straight day in a row about her paper. Now she's trying to get me to write the ending for her. At first, she kept dropping hints, like "I'm getting really sick of this paper" and "I'm getting really fed up with this" and when I wouldn't respond, she went straight to, not asking, but actually telling me to write the last section. I tried in several polite (indirect) ways to tell her to write it herself before I just out and out told her (after she'd stated in so many words what it was she wanted me to write) that she should write those ideas out and I'd correct them for her. She finally got the idea that she was going to have to settle down and finish it herself.
The other day she'd asked me if I wanted to go to her college graduation since they had an extra ticket since Jimmie was going to be away for the weekend. I told her I wasn't sure and that I'd get back to her. I asked her if I could wear jeans. (I never go anywhere any more if I can't wear jeans.) She said she didn't see why not. But that was only an excuse on my part. I didn't really know if I wanted to go. But then, overnight, I thought that it might be nice to get out among "polite" society for a bit. So today I told her, yes, I'd go. And immediately after I got off the phone, I started to wonder if I really did want to go after all. But it's too late. I've made the commitment.
This is the real problem, not the idea of socializing, but the idea of making a commitment. I'd socialize a lot more if I didn't have to make plans to do it ahead of time. You never know how you're going to feel when the day and hour comes. But I always honor my commitments. And so...I hesitate to make them. Because, in my mind, once a commitment is made, there's no backing out.
So the event is scheduled. Saturday, June 8th. Now I've got to make her a graduation card. (I'll put it on a floppy. My printer's broken. And I've decided, actually only yesterday, that I'm never going to buy greeting cards again. They're just another way for some corporation to make a buck by playing on your feelings of sentimentality or guilt. And now that the means of production is available to the independent slob, why not take advantage and free myself one more small bit from corporate domination?)
I finally got outside to begin trimming the hedges and weeds. Actually, I don't hate doing it so much as I hate motivating myself to go and do it. Once I get going, I kind of like it. What I hate most of all is that while I'm doing it, I can't do other things, like sit at my computer working or surfing the Net. And I hate to have to do things that'll have to be done again in a few weeks or months. While I was at it, I also cleaned the driveway of the residue of dead leaves and pine needles left over from months of winter neglect. Today, I am a model of domestic efficiency.
Joyce stopped by on her way home from work and we made all of the corrections on the final draft of her paper. It turned out to be twenty pages--started and finished in four days. Not bad. And it turned out to be pretty good too. It was a paper on alcoholism for an advanced independent study sociology course. Now I can get back to my more serious work.
I have to correct an impression I left in one of my news articles that Bush was humorless. What I really meant was that Hillary was humorless. I have to admit that Bush has a great sense of humor. (I know it's a result of good speechwriters, but he has to have something going for him to pull it off so well.) It's a good thing Gore isn't in there. I'm a super-liberal, but I've always said that I liked Bush, the person. It's his politics that I can't stand. And I do despise Gore, despite his politics. He's such a...jerk.
I sat out back in the sun this afternoon, reading for awhile, but I fell asleep for a few minutes. So that's where I'm at, huh? Sleeping in the sun like some old man in his twilight years.
I didn't want to, but I forced myself awake and read an article about Nixon and his advisors that I found in an old Atlantic monthly that was in the small crate in which I ferry my books.
Then, despite my desire not to interrupt my daylight schedule, mostly because tomorrow is Joyce's graduation, I went inside and slept for two and a half hours and awoke still tired.
I got up anyway, because I wanted to be able to sleep tonight so that I'm not sleepy tomorrow during the ceremonies. I didn't want to work this morning, and I still don't want to work.
I feel like I'm on a holiday. This is the feeling I search for all the time, but seldom seem to find. And it's a shame, because more than most, I have access to it. I try too hard, I think.
Went to Joyce's Carlow College graduation ceremony. Got all dressed up, despite telling Joyce I wasn't going to. That is, I wore black instead of blue Levis. And I wore a black cotton shirt, one of those canvasy kind that's supposed to be worn out, but I tucked it in because I didn't like the way it looked out. I didn't like the cut, how it hung from my shoulders, and I didn't like the long short sleeves, so I rolled them up. I paid a lot of attention to my appearance for a change, and it paid off. I felt so good about myself, how I looked, how I felt. I felt in control. [I remember (and I still fear) that old feeling of extreme and, later, chronic stress that made me feel out of control all the time. I never want to have to go back to that point again. I'd rather starve or freeze to death.]
Jim and Joyce were fighting, as usual. This time it was Joyce who was being unreasonable, burdened as she was by the excitement (stress) of the occasion. But Jim's response wasn't so good either. At times like this, he could make the problem entirely Joyce's if he'd just learn to back away and let her have her head instead of responding by exploding at her. I know. This is a hard lesson I myself had to learn.
The ceremonies were held at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, an impressive granite building that stands like a big rock in the heart of the University of Pittsbugh campus. We had to sit in the balcony because there wasn't enough seats all in a row to accommodate the five of us. But as it turned out, we had a better view from there, if not of the stage, certainly of the seating down below, which turned out to be far more interesting to me.
I managed to pay attention to the speakers through the invocation and into the opening remarks of the main speaker, a former alumnus, a doctor from George Washington University, who had a husband, a son, and a daughter who were also doctors. But as she droned on about the usual self-serving and college-serving babble, I turned my attention to the crowd below.
After a while, a pattern began to develop that was almost like a gestalt, one half of which was the seats with their collection of individual mortarboarded heads of women and the few men graduates, and the other half of which was a pattern out of which emerged a three dimensional vision that seemed to rise up a few feet above the seated participants and hover there like a hologram. I abstracted a larger whole from the scene, something more than a collection of individual human beings, almost a kind of physical meta-entity. Either that or it was a personal visual pattern that had nothing to do with any reality at all, but was merely symbolic of understanding that I gained (cf. next entry).
During a lull in the activities, I asked Jim why Jay was getting home schooling again, and he related the events of the past several months about how, when Jay's therapy was stopped and he was taken off his medication at the orders of his psychologist, his former symptoms returned and he stopped going to school again.
After a series of meetings with local school board flunkies, Jim and Joyce finally decided to hire a local attorney from Edgar Snyder's offices to handle the case, to sue the school district for negligence. (The original incident that started all of this was Jay having fallen off his chair backwards in class and hitting his head and suffering a mild concussion.) The attorney handling the case called the school district every day for a month, leaving instructions to have the call returned. But no one ever called back.
Next, the district said they were going to charge Jim and Joyce for not getting their son to school. The guy who told them this, Jay's counselor, did it in an underhanded way. He came to the house and told them that they could be charged, as if he were warning them, as a favor. They told him they realized this and were working to remedy the situation by getting Jay into home schooling, which they couldn't do until a doctor approved it. Later, they found out that the guy had already ordered the charges to be filed that morning, before he came to visit. Joyce called him and told him that because he had lied to them, she would never deal with him again in this matter and would talk to someone else when she had occasion to contact the school district. When it finally came, the decision to allow Jay to be home schooled forestalled any charges being filed.
All in all, it was a good day, sunny, so that I could wear my black shades outside after the event as we awaited Joyce's exit. I knew I looked cool all in black as parades of young girls, whom I imagined were admiring me, passed by. (A few of them indicated that they actually were admiring me, further bolstering my ego.)
I arrived home about five in the afternoon, listening to "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'" by the Stones on the radio, wanting to remain out longer. But rain was threatening, so I settled in and burned a CD, "Sticky Fingers" and as many additional Stones' songs that I could fit on one 80 min. CD-R. Slowly, I'm whittling down the number of mp3s I have that are using up my hard disk space--at a faster rate than I'm downloading them now. Pretty soon I'll have enough burned that I'll be able to offload the mp3s onto a data disk and delete them from my hard drive--before I use up all the excess space.
Awoke out of a dream that was a full-fledged nightmare: 6023, basement. Static electricity as a blue-white light, as if it were on a device invented by Tesla, runs along the water pipes on the ceiling between the rafters and parallel alongside them and in a kind of pattern perpendicular to them, shooting out to the sides and then back to them again, as if as a sort of inductive field. This phenomenon is controllable by (my) thought, that is, I can make it stop, change directions, expand to one side or the other of a pipe, or run along it. I propose an experiment to see what will happen when opposite directions are given to it by different people. [This phenomenon is very affective and I feel it's importance like a premonition of things to come.]
We--a teenager, a woman, and I--go outside and walk around the back of the house, watching static travel through the grass ahead of and around us, as I explain to the kid what's happening. We walk to the front of the house and back through the garage into the basement as I explain that the phenomenon is too subtle to be observed and known by the minds of kids. You only start to notice it when you become an adult.
The house is like a college. A thin young black guy, college aged, very studious and professional looking, is visiting and is somehow family related. I say, good. We need another vote. I tell him he should move into the neighborhood so that he can side with us in political matters. He announces, via warning us, that he's a conservative. Then he introduces his sister, who is white--very white, Scandinavian, sunless white, and very thin. I remark that it's kind of amazing that he's a conservative and has such a white sister. I'm very attracted to her, and vice versa. I say he should move into the neighborhood anyway because I need his vote re the static electricity. And I begin to explain the phenomenon to him. Even if his political vote is opposite to mine, I don't really care about politics all that much. It's the static that I want the support with, because some people say that it's one thing and some people say that it's another, and I want my opinion to win out. The white sister notices how much "headspace" there is in the basement. And then, I say, "Hey, yeah. That's right. What's going on here?" as I notice it for the first time myself. The basement ceiling is nearly two floors above, which is impossible since the first floor is directly above us. We start to check it out by heading toward the stairs, intending to climb them. But as we pass the door to the garage, someone slams it from the outside and locks it. As we go up the stairs, the upper door is slammed and locked. I push hard on it, so hard that the bottom gives way a bit, but the door at the handle remains firmly in place. I come back downstairs. Everyone is frightened. I go back up the stairs and give the door a good strong kick and the frame shatters and splinters and the door opens.
The static is my "power" (a less effective kind of power than, for example, alternating current, which could have been a powerful symbol for social interaction)--related to thoughts of political power and my "power" yesterday at the graduation ceremonies, which was not so much one of interaction as of observation. This is the power I fear when I begin to get paranoid, except that I get paranoid of a more "real" power; this is only a hint of it, a precusor. (I'm paranoid of my own self, my own "potential energy.") "Static" could also mean argument, resistance, defiance, etc., that which I get from society and that which I give to it, the hard time that is given and received, the stress.
Jim is jealous of Joyce getting a degree. And he's worried that she will no longer need him now. (He's giving Joyce static all the time.) On the way to the ceremonies yesterday, Jimmie was questioning the formalities of degrees, wanting to know how they worked, what getting a Masters requires, etc. I explained it to him. [I incorporated this explanation motif into the dream, explaining the static to the teenager.] Jimmie told his mother that now she can go on to get her Masters, and Jim immediately said, "Oh no she can't." (If I were her, that statement alone would have been enough to cause me to decide that I was going to go and get it.) A small voice in the back of my head at one point yesterday told me to be threatened by the fact that Joyce got a degree and is now my academic equal. But I quickly rejected the idea. She will never be my equal, in the same way that I was not so educated when I graduated. In college, you learn a lot of facts, but it takes the rest of your life to apply them and to put them together into a comprehensive and meaningful whole. Formal education is only the beginning of your educational process and your journey toward wisdom, if you decide to continue it. Even if Joyce managed to get her Masters, she would never be my equal. But even if she'd manage to become my intellectual superior, that would be okay with me. I'm not threatened by intellectual superiority. On the few occasions when I encounter it (not because it seldom exists--it does; but because my circle of acquaintances is so small), I recognize it and honor it, and even emulate it, trying to appropriate it for my own use. But I am threatened by authority. Authority is not intellectual. It's a physical threat, or an implied physical threat, the threat of a loss of freedom, perhaps, which is a physical domain [as in the slamming and locking of the doors in the dream].
Graduation ceremonies are an expression of people's perception of their weakness, insignificance, and need to band together to aggrandize themselves into something bigger than they are. People want to reassure themselves that what they have accomplished is of importance. They come together to make their effort and accomplishment into a bigger thing, a social instead of a merely personal achievement. Static electricity is this power running through society. I feel this power without needing to feel a part of society. I jealously guard it. I don't want to share it with others. I see how they don't so readily see it and so must come together to more easily appreciate it and to feel, as a larger whole, its "electricity." [The "emergent vision" that I saw yesterday was like a kind of electricity, a power of individual humans acting in a group, in the same way that intelligence is an emergent property of a colony of ants or a hive of bees. If this is true, then what is this property? Psychic ability.] Its not really my power, but I identify with it--and yet, I'm afraid of it. But I control it and use it nevertheless. People band together in order to use it, and at the same time to feel safe from it. I can access it more or less directly, but I fear it nonetheless. That's what the fear in the basement was, a fear of social power. I fear the social part of myself, and when I participate with much success, I come away feeling that the power I represent, while it is admired in me, is also feared, and that others may come to resent me for it. And there's another aspect of it. If I more willingly participated in society, I'd fear my own social role. Imagine being so bold as to raise a family and use my power to procreate and sustain lives other than my own. Now that's scary. In this sense, the static may be simply libido.
My life is coming more together all the time and it's all focused on my website. All the disparate things that I do and am interested in, I "justify" as my work because I'm beginning to report them on the website. Therefore, I don't have to think of such things like fantasy or watching films or downloading mp3s or programs to "play" with, as frivolous activities. I can see them as a fundamental part of my Work, my Art. And therefore, almost everything I do is my work, so that I almost don't have to keep track of the hours any more, because the hours that I work are turning into my whole day. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting close.
Went back to bed after a few hours being up and had another dream of shelves falling--this time massive amounts of shelves and contents. (My belief structure?) I conclude that this is a good thing, these shelves falling. These are rigid archaic structures crumbling. Good is rising out of all this collapse. Something is being released, some spontaneity.
Writing, getting a whole lot done. Thunderstorms. Lightning. Power goes out. Lost a whole paragraph. I rail at God, calling It a bastard and telling It to "go ahead and strike me dead, you Prick." Lightning flashes, but it doesn't strike me. Conclusion? God is ineffectual, except when It's trying to cause me to lose data. (It knows this would be more devastating to me than my death.)
Power back on after about an hour. I reconstruct the paragraph I lost and work for two more hours. Just after I finish up and am playing a computer card game, the power fails again. I go and take a late afternoon nap--one and a half hours. Awaken out of dream about traveling across ice fields along the south side of the parkway at Thompson Run Rd. with Deepak Chopra as a teenager and Candace Bergen when she was young, around the time of Soldier Blue. We manage to cross a frozen stream as it's beginning to melt and we get to the top of a twenty foot ice cliff over which water is beginning to run, making the ice slushy as we climb. Then we're relaxing, reviewing our situation when "Blackjack Pershing" (who looks more like Sullie in Commando shows up. We all wave to him and act toward him as if he's a war hero (we're in some kind of war), but as he approaches me, he draws a .22 pistol and shoots me six times in the chest and stomach. The guy with him kills Deepak. We were camped next to a large blue van on top of this ice cliff. [I used to own a large blue Dodge van; this image may represent my young adulthood.] I resolve not to go away [not to grow old, rigid, and closed-minded?] , despite the fact that I'm dead, until I get my revenge [against society?] My spirit hovers near my body and I try to think of ways that I can avenge myself with only my spirit, without a physical existence. Blackjack walks up to my body to examine it, and when he gets close enough, I reanimate my body and reach up at him and grab him by the throat in a death grip. Then, with my other hand, I pull his other pistol and fire three bullets into his head. As the other guy grabs Candace and drags her into the van through the side door, trying to use her as a shield, I fire three bullets past her into his head. I am dead, but I am still effective.
I awaken to thoughts that some day I will have to quit this (pre)occupation I have of documenting my life and dreams. I feel a little bit guilty that I'm doing this, and a little bit put upon that I'm tied into it so thoroughly that it dominates my life. Some day I will change my mind about what it is that my life means and how I go about executing it. Meanwhile...
When I awaken and start my day, my artistic vision is completely clear. By the time I go back to bed, it has become muddled and confused. I become doubtful throughout the day as to whether or not I'm doing the right thing, with my art and with my life. My artistic vision:
- the completed lifetime Website project (everything logged, up to date)
- my life on the Net: as it is, in this sense, the vision is ongoing
A few days ago I participated in a chat discussion about prostitution. We all know what prostitution is in its most obvious form. But someone suggested that the concept should be extended to people online, specifically, women who charge a monthly fee to be seen naked on Webcams. Of course, then, someone else said, that would make pornography itself prostitution. I said that, in this same sense, anyone could be a prostitute, if they sold anything about themselves that they considered sacred, for example, their time. I was a prostitute in this sense for many years. And a relatively high priced one, at that. (If you have to be a prostitute, it's best that you make a good living at it.) This would make me a worse (or better) prostitute than any streetwalker, because my time was far more valuable to me than their bodies are to them. (But maybe I'm not the one to make that judgment.) I had other, more important things to do, and I well knew it, but because I sold myself, I never had the time or energy to do them. I'm no longer a prostitute. I devote my time entirely to myself now.
Ah, it's that time of year again. The ants are out. This time, it's those little ones, the brown ones that look like crawling coffee grounds. I immediately got out the Terro® and set it out on pieces of cardboard on the counter top. I came back an hour later and, sure enough, they were sucking it up. Maybe I've actually discovered a weapon that's effective in my perennial war on bugs. At least I'm getting different species each year. I haven't seen any recurrence of the carpenter ant infestation.
When the late afternoon sun shines through the closed curtains of the bedroom--that's the best time to sleep. There's something about the warm color of filtered sunlight combined with the physical state of low blood sugar that creates an ideal sleeping environment. Today, I fight that attitude, after having gotten up late after only six hours sleep and worked outside cutting hedges this afternoon, and I force myself to sit down at the computer and do some work. But, oh, how much I would rather just go in and take a nap. I work for an hour, and then I go and take a five-hour nap.
Got up late again today after staying up most of the night. Hurried up and did what little I could first thing so that I could get outside before I lost the sun. At about three o'clock, the sun moves behind the trees--or rather, the Earth moves the trees in front of the sun. I stayed outside after the sun became veiled in green lace and I wrote out this dream, which I wasn't going to bother to write out, because it didn't seem to be so significant, that is, it didn't feel significant. I let a lot of my dreams go by unrecorded for this reason. But I'm glad I wrote this one out. I have no clue as to what it means.
In an office in NYC somewhere between 50th and 60th Street between 5th and 6th Ave., I am a new employee, working at the lowest level in a profession that has something to do with PR or marketing in some vague way. We don't actually do anything, we just sit around and have ideas that, if we dare to express them, better be good, or else. We have to be very careful as to what we say and do re our work. One guy, a rung above me on the corporate ladder, expresses the wrong idea and he is immediately fired, albeit in a congenial manner, which he himself accepts and takes in stride, without much affect. He's immediately replaced by a guy from my level who has been around for a while and has shown himself to be clever and resourceful. Near the end of the workday, I have occasion to go into a mid-level supervisor's office. She is there when I enter, but she has to leave for a minute. Without her telling me, I know that it's okay to eat snacks that are sitting on her desk--cubes of cheese and pieces of chocolate. Back in the outer office, there are a lot more of these snacks, boxed and available for anyone who wants them. This is a kind of reward, from both the management and from clients. This stuff is so plentiful that no one wants any of it. They're probably long since sated. But I desire to gobble it all up. But I restrain myself and have only a few pieces. Paradoxically, although it's the end of the day, I go to lunch. I walk downtown. At about 25th St., I turn and head west. Then I decide that I better get back, so I head back uptown. But I'm on the other side of Broadway and there is some kind of disconnect where the streets are no longer running parallel, as if I'm in a different city, a smaller one, in an ethnic neighborhood, a Puerto Rican one. [Cf. PR above. Public relation. Puerto Rican. A connection?] I'm still following the street numbers as they get higher. I cross into the high 20s, but the Avenues are screwed up, and there are a few hills that streets wind around. I see a lot of kids--teenagers--getting out of school up ahead. At first, I feel threatened. But when I get close, I see they're just ordinary middle class Puerto Rican kids. In the fifties, I begin to climb up over roofs to try to get where I have to go. I have to move east, but the buildings won't allow it and there are no streets going in that direction. fai: I awaken, but remain in a heavy trance-like state. I decide to phone the office to get directions back and I am told "You can't get here from there. You have to go back the way you came." [I'm going to have to do some deep probing to find out what cheese is the symbol for. I've been dreaming a lot about it lately. Let's see. Cheese is one of my favorite foods . . .]
Clothing is a funny thing. I dreamed about clothing, how people were putting their clothes in my closet at 6023, taking up all the space and preventing me from finding my own clothes. It's funny how, when you get new clothes, you keep them aside, reserving wearing them for special occasions, and then, as they get older, they become your everyday clothes. And it used to be that the next step, after they became even too bad for everyday wear, was that they became the clothes that you worked on the car or in the garden in. But now, with the advent of grunge, I find myself reserving my oldest clothes for special occasions--my torn jeans and tattered sweatshirts and flannels, etc. I especially appreciate this twist in the fashion trend. Now, if only old torn polyester print shirts would come into style. Hey, maybe I could establish the trend. But I guess not. I'm not young enough. Everyone would think I'm becoming a dotty old man. Maybe I could get my nephews to give it a try. But they'd never do it. They're too caught up in the style of the times. Anyway, it takes someone nearly famous, an up and coming celebrity, to establish a trend. On second thought, maybe that is me. (I can fantasize, can't I?)
Spent the whole afternoon, over six hours, setting up Macro Angel, a program that lets you write macros for Windows. I had to do it; that is, I have to do something. I'm getting progressively more insecure about my shaky backup system. I keep going over and over it in my mind, trying to come up with a foolproof strategy, but the only thing I keep coming back to is backing the files up, one by one, to floppies or burning them to CD-Rs and creating a lot of archives that'll become more and more outdated as time goes by. But I'll keep plugging away at it. There's got to be a good, easy method, and I'm determined to find it. I only hope I do find it before a disaster strikes.
As I add apps and utilities to my computing arsenal and incorporate them into my daily work procedure, I'm finding that I'm using up most of my system's resources, again. I solved this problem once by adding 256MB of RAM, raising my total RAM to 320. But now I'm thinking that I'm going to have to go all the way to 512 (my system's max.). Less than three years old and my computer, I'm thinking, needs to be replaced after two upgrades. Isn't technology wonderful?
Watched Movies all night. Five of them: Six Degrees of Separation, Shanghai Noon, Sleep with Me, The Ice Storm, and Manny and Lo. All good films in their own way. I was tired when I started watching the first film, but once I got started, I couldn't stop. It's like they say about a good book: Once you start reading it, you can't put it down. Well, that's not true for me about books. Reading makes me sleepy, as do bad films. But good films energize me. And once I see a good one, I want to see another good one. And another. As long as the films are good, I want to keep going. If a bad one comes along, I fall asleep. But this kind of intensity of input takes its toll. I finally went to sleep at seven this morning, filled with all kinds of motivation, but too tired to do anything about it, and got up at twelve, still tired, but wanting to get to work. I know I had a dream that incorporated aspects of at least four of the five films (Shanghai Noon wasn't all that good, but I like Jackie Chan), and it's probably a good thing that I can't remember the dream, because I have a feeling that I'd have been writing all day trying to capture its profundity, and I had a lot of others things I had to get done. I actually spent a few hours out of the house today, shopping, etc.
This is exactly the kind of situation I always want to avoid: My nephew Jay's birthday is tomorrow and I've been looking for a card for him on the Internet for almost a week now without being able to find one. (The cards I send, and the presents I give, on the very few occasions I engage in this kind of activity, must not only be completely appropriate, but they must be indicative of my personality as well.) But because I sent Jimmie and Jim cards for their birthdays last month, now I feel obligated to send Jay one, in order to prevent slighting him in any way and causing him to feel hurt. Life is so much easier when I avoid obligation altogether.
Finally found a card for Jay today, after a two-hour search of the Net. Great feeling of relief. Now that that's over with...
Forced myself to go out and cut the grass in front of the house today, even though I didn't want to do it. And, as usual, once I began, I continued on to do the rest of the lawn. Usually, I plan to cut all of the grass on two consecutive days, thereby making the job a little bit easier. But usually I end up cutting it all at once, to get it over with and be done with it for another week or two. But pushing myself to get it done takes its toll. It's not so bad when it's not too warm, but any temperature above seventy causes me to get short of breath if I go at it too long. And my back begins to ache. It's not a problem at all if I limit my work sessions to less than half an hour. So, I'm coming to a conclusion that I don't want to come to and have been avoiding now for nearly a year: I am disabled, if moderately. I fight this mindset even as I conclude that it is true. Cognitive dissonance rages in me. I've been defining myself as perfectly healthy, because I want it to be true. I don't want to be seen in anyway as disabled. I've adjusted my lifestyle to compensate for any disability that I might have. But if I had to work at a job, if I had to keep "normal" hours without getting the rest I needed when I would need it, without taking short naps here and there, I'd be back to where I was before when I was working full time, taking painkillers and heart medicine that really didn't work all that well and suffering from chronic stress and mysterious stress-related illnesses and continual exhaustion. And, maybe, I'd be even worse off by now. But, under the current circumstances of my self-defined life, I am not disabled. That's the definition I create for myself, because that's the way I want to be, that's how I want to be seen, that's who I am, a perfectly healthy person, given the circumstances of my life, which I arrange to enable the definition.
Maybe I've been taking Joan Rivers and her daughter too seriously when I say that they're terrible fashion gurus who defy their own precepts by looking like cat-dragged cross-dressers. Maybe it's all an act, a satiric put-on, and they're duping the public with an obsequious send-up of the fashion industry. This has to be the explanation. They can't be serious.
Movies all night again. I like it when I do this, especially now that I have an outlet for the results of the activity: film reviews. I used to feel guilty about wasting so much of my time [and then I'd go ahead and waste it anyway, in some other, less productive way (but even those other ways can be rationalized, if I will only set my mind to it and ruminate about it enough)], but I'm starting to get the hang of this "retirement" thing. [My friends insist that it's only retirement if I'm at least 62. If so, I've got a long way to go. Maybe this is a part of the source of the guilt--my friends. If so, maybe it's time to get new friends.] I'm slowly loosening up to it. It won't be long now until I can do anything I want to do without keeping production records or justifying my time in any way. Then, I will be free--to do what I really want to do. I wonder what that will be.
I've started reading again, after a break of more than a year. I forgot how much I enjoy it. I don't know why I stop doing things I like to do. Probably, I thought that other things were more important and fell into a different habit.
Well, the neo-Nazis are at it again. I'm not talking about those sick fucks who run around with shaved heads roughing people up trying to prove they're not subject to traditional authority. I'm talking about those equally sick fucks who run around with buzz cuts intimidating people trying to prove that they are the authority. I'm talking about the FBI. (Yes, there are some good FBI agents, just as there are some good Taliban and Al Qa'ida.)
I got onto this item a little bit late and didn't download the file right away, before the spooks began their strong-arm tactics while pretending to the innocent ploy of "just asking people nicely." But it didn't take me more than half-an-hour to locate a copy and download it. I'm talking about the Daniel Pearl murder tape.
And after I downloaded it, I really didn't want to watch it. I wanted the right to watch it. I didn't want an agency of the federal government telling me what I could and couldn't watch. I wish that every one who feels that I shouldn't have this right should die a slow and painful death.
Wake up, people. You don't have to go halfway around the world to find your enemy. They're right here, hidden among the employees working out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. Government employees who feel they have the right to ride herd over the American public in the name of morals and public decency should all go to hell.
James Carvel
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What possible objection could people have toward me protecting my mental and physical health? Yet they will criticize me when I withdraw and isolate myself, when all I am really doing is acting out of an instinct to ensure my continued survival. Maybe, when seen in this light, my odd behavior will seem more understandable.
I've started to get some minor heart palpitations again, if such a thing can ever be minor. Not many, not nearly so many as before, maybe occurring on the average only once a week or so for only a few seconds, but any at all is an indication that all is not so well. I've been eating a lot of pepper on my food (I like it on red meat, which I've been eating a lot more of recently, to keep myself slim and trim) and my back has been acting up. I can feel a pressure exerted on the nerve bundles to my heart. I've got to be careful and take things slow and easy. The heat of summer, no matter how much I appreciate it, can be a dangerous phenomenon.
So, if you think I'm lazy or anti-social, fuck you. You'd rather, maybe, I'd be dead? (Probably. Well, then, fuck you, again.)
Saint-Exupery
The Gospel of Thomas
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Some typical criticisms and their projections:
- Men who are critical of long hair on other men fear their own feminine natures.
- Homophobes fear their latent homosexuality.
I'm making this the last "mandatory" entry in my thoughthistory journal. It was a good experiment that lasted over six months, but a lot of times it was kind of forced. I'd keep it going (and I may start it up again on a daily basis), but for now, there's just not that much to write about that I don't want to include elsewhere. If I were going out everyday like I used to, I'd have a lot of events and activities to report on, but as it is, my activity now is mostly mental and tends to be attuned to specific projects. I'm sure I'll find a lot of things to post to this journal, social events, neighborhood activities, and random "thoughts" that do not get classified elsewhere, but I'm doing away with the demand that I post something here everyday. Maybe I'll begin to post links here to my other work--but, no. That's what the "thoughtcurrent" log is for. I'm going to devote the thoughthistory journal to its original purpose, my "auto-bio." [I should have reserved that title for a journal written in a car. Hey! That's a good idea! I could be the next Kerouac or Cassidy--if I ever start going anywhere again. It's funny. I used to be known for being footloose and traveling anywhere for any flippant reason on the spur of the moment. If I were still like that, I'd have an automatic text-generating device. Now, I'm a mind-traveler. I guess that's what I've wanted to be all along, but never knew how to settle down and do it until now, while previously, I never had the mechanism to publish immediately everything I wrote.]
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