by j-a

Jan, 2002


1-1-02

At 12:30 this afternoon I got a call from Joyce. She said "Happy New Year," asked me if I was coming over for dinner, and then asked me if I could do her a favor. She told me (warned me ahead of time so that I was prepared for it) that she was writing a one page tribute to her eldest son to be included in the hockey yearbook and she wanted me to proofread it when I got there.

Jim was over at the fire hall when I arrived. When he came home a few minutes later, he began, earlier in the day than usual, to accuse Joyce of being in a nasty mood. He said this several times, at various intervals. I hadn't noticed this behavior in her, so I began to pay attention. It seemed to me that Jim was the only one who was in a nasty mood.

After I read Joyce's tribute (which was pretty sappy, but grammatically competent), Jim and I sat in the living room and watched What Lies Beneath on cable. It was a slow starter and I wasn't much interested in it at first, but just as it was beginning to get good, my sister called. Jim went to talk to her while I remained watching the movie. Then Jim came back and I filled him in on what happened, the beginning of the gothic part of the tale. But, inevitably, my sister wanted to talk to me just as the movie was getting into the meat of the plot.

I talked to her for about half an hour, mostly rehashing stuff we'd been over before several times. She and her husband Frank were both on the phone, and they talked to each other more than they talked to me. When I got back to the film, I was lost. I couldn't make sense of it, despite (or maybe because of) my brother's terse explanation.

Thankfully, the rest of the film was interrupted by dinner, during which my brother continued to harangue Joyce. He swore that he would never eat another dinner she cooked (because of something she allegedly did--or did not do--while preparing the dinner. I didn't catch what it was; I came to the table after the incident was over.) Jim was in a foul mood during the entire meal, and Joyce was obviously hurt and had finally succumbed to the harassment, closing up, remaining pensive, and not eating. The kids, however, were agitated and restless, and beginning to joke around with each other in that way they will do when their parents are fighting. It's obvious how the family stress plays out in them. I expected a big abuse session to begin. I figured that their father would finally have had enough of their antics and start in on them. But things settled down, mostly because Jim kept quiet.

I wondered, as I ate my meal in silence, why I come here. Because I am invited, obviously, because this is the only family I have close by. But when, every time I visit (and it must go on continually when I am not there also), I have to steel myself against this dysfunction, lest I get caught up in it, why do I choose to keep coming? Other than this, that is, at other moments than these, the atmosphere is perfectly fine and I enjoy myself.

After dinner, Jim and I watched Miss Congeniality with Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, et al. When it first came on, Jim said he already saw it, but he left it on anyway, because I hadn't seen it. I appreciated that. As it turned out, he hadn't seen that much of it, which I figured ahead of time, because he seldom sits through an entire movie. And he didn't sit through this one either. He was in and out of the room the entire time.

During the movie, Jay and Danny went over to the fire hall. When the film was over, Jim put on his coat as he asked me if I were staying. I told him that I wasn't. As he exited the house he explained that he was going over to the fire hall to get the kids. In other words, since I said I was leaving, he was going to stay over there a while. Joyce had already gone to bed. It was about eight o'clock. Nice beginning to a New Year. I'm glad my new year started twelve days ago when, in my own home, the atmosphere was far more congenial. I am almost always good company to myself. I have no better friends and family than me.

1-2-02

Made an appointment to get the car inspected, finally. I've been putting it off for two months. For some reason, this is a task I abhor. Maybe it's because I have to deal with mechanics. I have a well-trained analytical mind. I almost graduated in Physics before I switched to psychology. And generally, I conclude that mechanics are mechanics because they didn't have the brainpower to go to college and become engineers or physicists. Either they tend to think they know more than they do about physical processes or they think they know more than their customers do (which is probably usually true.) But I hate it when they talk down to me about what's wrong with my car, especially when I know what's wrong, and very especially when it's obvious that they don't really know, but are bullshitting me (which I never call them on, being the humble, self-effacing dude I am).

On the other hand, this could be all one big projection. After all, I didn't finish college in Physics. It could be said that I'm one of those people who didn't have the brainpower. But I feel that I could have finished. I just got to a point where I felt it wasn't so relevant to life as I had originally thought. I discovered that there was more to life than logically understanding how the physical world worked. Now, looking back, I'm not so sure. I'm glad I became a psychologist, but I'm not so sure that the human mind is any different than the inside of an atom. Both are (un)determined by the uncertainty principle. [That was far more than I planned to write about getting my car inspected.]

Also, I finally began cutting wood and firing up the wood stove. I have to burn up all of the paper and cardboard that I've collected all summer and fall. Either that or I have to throw it out. (I am a great collector, to a fault.) I have far more paper products than I could ever use for kindling, especially given the minimal amount of wood I have this year. Paper is a great source of heat, if you keep a hot bed of coals to completely incinerate the ashes. Otherwise, you don't get much heat and the system becomes clogged with unburned ash. Today I managed to incinerate most of the excess paper products. Tomorrow, I'll organize the area around the woodstove and get back to a more normal (uncluttered) way of life.

1-3-02

Woke up this morning thinking about the strange nature of friendship. This proceeded directly from a dream:

I awaken [within the dream] in the front bedroom of 1728. I've slept in and am late for school (college). I'd been awake earlier when my brother and sister had gotten up, but I went back to sleep. I look at the bed (either the bed beside mine, or the space beside me in the same bed), wanting to ask whoever is sleeping there why they didn't awaken me, but there is no one there; there is only a depression where someone had been lying. I got upset because I'd been allowed to sleep in, because no one woke me. I think, "Mom used to wake me every day and make sure I was up, but no one does that for me any more." [front bedroom (my parents bedroom) = I'm an adult now. I have to take care of myself. I can't rely on others to do it for me. (And there is no one lying in bed beside, either, any more.) When I awoke, for real, not within the dream, I felt guilty that I had slept in (nine hours total for the night). I felt that I should be up and doing things. The holidays are over and I have no excuse for not doing all of the things I've been putting off for the last two weeks.] As I begin to get ready for school, I can't find a pair of jeans to wear. Finally, I find several clean pairs in a drawer. I'm glad to have them. I'm happy to see that I am at least that prepared. [In my 'real' life, I am always clothes-prepared. My clothes are well organized.] I think back, within the dream, to an earlier [actual] dream (which is real life as far as I am concerned in the dream): At Poketa Rd. and Third St., I realize I don't have any clean pants to wear. I have to put on dirty ones to go to school (Community College). [Back at 1728], I see that it's only 8:45, so I'm not so late as I thought. I thought that it was 11 or later. [When I awaken, in real life, it's 11:45.] I'm still going to be few minutes late, but not as late as I thought. Before I realized that I was not so late, I worried about what the professors were going to think of me, how irresponsible I was, and I worried about what would become of me if I did not finish school. [I never worried in this way when I was in college. It was something that was entirely foreign to my thinking. The future was all but irrelevant. Maybe this is a repression from back then. Or maybe it's a current one, developed since then.] I have a hard time getting into the jeans from the drawer. They seem to be too small [as if they are from a former period in my life]. But once I get them on, they fit okay. [Regression?] I go into the bathroom. There are no clean washcloths. I don't know how I'm going to wash my face. David Mosack is in the bathroom along with someone else. (Jim?) David and I begin to wash out used washcloths with soap so that we can use them. I think they will still be not clean enough to use, but I guess that they'll be okay. I plan to hang mine up beside my dresser in the bedroom to keep for myself only.

I awaken, for real, thinking about the nature of friendship. David Mosack was someone I knew in grade school, a clean, neat, good-looking, well-dressed kid, but not at all a nerd. He was very "adult," and thus he appears to be a symbol for what I am supposed to be now. But I still feel now, as I did then, that he was above me, more advanced, more mature. Near the end of the eighth grade school year, we had a short conversation, very adult and congenial, unlike any conversation I'd ever had with any of the other kids. Other than that one time, I don't think I ever associated with him. Greg Seraphine, on the other hand, was my best friend in grade school. He was an outgoing kid who in high school became a low-class hood. I didn't associate with him after the ninth grade, because he seemed to not want to, having become wilder than he thought I was, at least in my opinion. Cyril Marney was a guy halfway between these other two. He came over to my house one rainy Saturday and, between the showers, we went outside, up on the back hill, and made dams of mud to redirect the rivulets of water than ran down the hillside. But we never got together after that, and we didn't really become good friends. I puzzle now over how these friendships get made and why. And why the ones that do not work out, don't. Some kind of chemistry, I suppose. Later, as adults, we don't (at least, I don't) seem to be so readily able to form friendships as close as early ones were. We're more wary. When we're kids, we're more open, less cautious of what people will, mostly unintentionally, do to us as we interrelate, or think of us, when we reveal our more inner selves to them. The older I get, the more I realize that personal interaction is a delicate and potentially life-stirring practice. And a commitment of friendship is a powerful and serious affair, not at all the casual thing we want to think it is. I've always felt this way, but, apparently, none of my friends ever did. But it is only as an adult that I recognize it for what it is. When I was a kid, I either made others my best friends, or I tended to stay away from them all together, all done entirely on a feeling basis, without thinking about it. As an adult, I just mostly stay away from people. But I miss the (true) friendships. All my former friends have drifted away. And I've pushed away those people who would be my friends if it were up to them, but whom I've recognized were not so good for me. I haven't been so smart in choosing friends in my adult life. Maybe this insight will open a new era for me.

1-4-02

Got the car inspected today. Minimal charge. Nothing wrong. Yea! Ed was there, a guy I graduated from high school with who owns his own shop now. It seems he's retired early too and is spending all his time at his shop now. He loves it. He asked how I liked being home all day, and I told him it's great. I said that I worked a lot of twelve-hour day, six-day weeks to be able to do this now. It seems we have this in common. He said it's nice not to have to run around like crazy every day trying to do more than you're capable of. I agreed. A meeting of the minds.

Usually, I have to deal with Ron, one of Ed's flunkies. And I always miss not dealing directly with Ed. He's a very personable guy. (I don't want to put Ron down. He's a pretty nice guy too.) Ed said that I might need a new gas tank filler and gas line connections next inspection. Oh, well. Things don't last forever. (Somehow though, if Ron had told me that, I might have suspected that it wasn't true. I have no basis for this suspicion at all. It's just my perception of the differences in their personalities that provokes it.) My car is an '83 Toyota, and has only 44,000 miles on it. I only put about 500 miles a year on it, and I keep it in a garage, so I expect it to last until the year 2050, if I can prevent rust-away and if I live that long.

I was thinking today, after seeing a piece on tv highlighting people (most of them women) who are over a hundred, that my goal of living until I'm 100 may be kind of conservative. I may be selling myself short. These people all looked good, better than some seventy-year-olds I know. And they were incredibly coherent. I think I'll decide to live to 125. No sense in going to an early grave just because I unwittingly created a self-fulfilling prophecy. My father predicted he'd die at the same age as my grandfather, 77. And sure enough, though afflicted with severe Rheumatoid arthritis to the point of being bedridden and plagued with complications, he managed to hold out until the age of 77, when he died, right on schedule.

So, I'm going to outdo old dad. I was never very much like him anyway, so let's say I'm going to live to exceed the combined ages of my father and my grandfather. That's 154. I can live with that. That way I can witness the Jane Roberts' prediction of Armageddon in 2057.

When I got home from picking up the car, I didn't want to work. (I always feel that I deserve time off after I've completed something I didn't want to do, no matter how little I had to work to do it.) I began to think about the mail person, a nice looking woman who combines in her appearance two of my ideals, Helena Bonham Carter and Tracy Ulman (sp?) [with a hint of the twisted lips of Judy Davis]. She's a bit rough looking, more handsome, I would say, than pretty (that's the Tracy Ulman part), but this also plays into my ideal. I don't so much like pretty women--because they always remind me of the film Pretty Woman, I guess. (That's sarcasm, in case you missed it.)

As I was walking down the road to pick up the car, the odd thought struck me that, since it was near time for the mail to arrive, I should have left the house just a little bit later so that I might encounter the mail person as she drove up the road. And then I dismissed the act as being too forward, too manipulative, too "pushy." But then, as I continued walking, I looked up to see the mail truck heading up the road. I relished the anticipation of seeing the woman up close, as I considered the "coincidence" of wanting to see her and having it happen. Now, I would have to walk right by her. At other times when I've been out on the road when she's driven by, it's seemed to me that she intentionally would not look at me. Still though, being close enough to see her more closely was worth it, even if she did not, or would not, see me back.

But she did. As I looked her way as I passed her truck, she looked right up at me, and I felt happy to see her look. She looked like she wanted to smile, but she did not, not quite. And I felt that I looked the same way. I thought that she acknowledged my presence, my attention, in the same way that I acknowledged hers, as if we both said, "Hi. I know you, and I appreciate you looking at me," because she looked at me too long to have been just a passing glance. So, I believe this is what we briefly communicated as we passed on by. Or else, I am once again caught up in fantasy.

Anyway, when I returned home, I thought about a passage in my last book where I outlined a repetitive exchange between me and my ex-wife (a dedicated libber) when I would label any woman I saw working as a mail person as a "female mailman." I thought that I would like this mail person to read that book. I fantasized giving her a copy and asking her to read it and let me know what she thought of it. Then, since I didn't want to start working anyway, I picked up a copy of the book and began to read sections of it. Each time I do this, I am always struck by the quality of the prose. I don't so much write that well any more--because I no longer take the time to polish every sentence and paragraph, nor do I attempt to structure for story or thematic unity. A lot of the time, when I think about the book, I imagine that people don't like it [because no one's buying it--which is erroneous thought, because how can they not like it if they haven't read it. The real reason no one buys it is because I don't promote it, hating business, even the business of writing, the way I do]. But as I read large sections of a number of the chapters, I found that I actually (still, more than a year later) like what I had written. This made me feel good. I felt so good that I went and took a nap, because I have a(nother) theory: artists create out of a need, a pressure, to justify themselves to the world. If you are content, you cannot be an artist. It's a dangerous thing to actually like too much what you have created in the past. It could make you stop creating altogether.

1-5-02

The bowl of memory was suddenly stirred. Old Han Su closed his aged brown eyes halfway and said rapidly, "A woman's arm was buried under the wall over there. I saw it with my own eyes. Blood drips from the eaves. The fireball always stops at the window frame. Who's planning a murder? Just look, the fireball is on the branch! Be careful about your eyeballs! I find centipedes and spiders in my food. I have an antibody for poison. You can test me on the spot! Dust is falling these days. Many good things fell in the past . . ." While rattling on, he opened his eyes and was startled that nobody was listening. It was all a dream. But how can dreams come during the day? He remembered several such experiences lately. Sometimes in the sun, sometimes on the night stool. Dreams came wherever they felt like it. Then he always talked, always talked . . .

 
Can Xue, Yellow Mud Street
Today, I dreamed all day, awake--and napping, and sometimes in a state of reverie. Dreams, often, dominate my life. Dream states bleed into my waking awareness, not only out of previous sleep states, remembered, but in present time as well. I slip into dreams easily in brief catnaps and while trying to meditate while tired. My imagination feeds on a continual undercurrent. I dream (as does everyone, I assume) unconsciously all day long as my waking mind occupies itself with its superficial exercises. The older I get, the more I understand the liquidity (for lack of a better word) of the human soul. Consciousness is like a boat that floats upon a lake of dreaming. Beneath the surface, complex words and images spontaneously form and disintegrate, and only the simplest of these constructions float to the surface to be netted by the conscious mind to form creative thought that can be incorporated into concrete forms. The rest of this anti-mass can only be experienced as a vague sort of prescience, or as a complexity of dream symbols whose waking correlates are impoverished by comparison. Art is never as profound as that which provokes it.

1-6-02

Work work work. I'm wondering why these productive moods will strike me. What provokes them and how do I remain in this mode? But I'm having fun. It's not work, really, when you enjoy doing it. I can see the path(s) laid out clearly before me, filled with ingenuity and productivity. If only I could stay in this present frame of mind. There are so many things to do, so many projects to be realized. But the daily grind of making them materialize causes me to lose the vision and I become scattered and unproductive. I guess it takes both modes of being to be an artist, but I don't like the latter; it's boring and ponderous. [I sound like a spoiled brat.][I am.]

1-7-02

Things are going so, so well. I'm in the groove. I'm in the zone. I'm back in the saddle again. I wish holidays had never been invented. My real holidays are now. Accomplishing things makes me feel so energetic and relaxed. Or maybe that's the other way around.

Six inches and it's still snowing. Neighbors are out in the morning cold digging out their cars, trying to get to work. Ha! Suffer, mothafuckas. Ha! I'm going to bed to take a long, warm nap.



Slept all day. Got up and shoveled the front steps and a path out to the mailbox. Invigorating.



Society has forgotten what long hair meant to us. Baby boomers should know better. Or maybe they haven't forgotten so much as they've given up the vision in favor of commercial enterprise, a symbol of which is the shorthaired businessman/yuppie.

I want to cut my hair, for no other reason than to make it easy to take a shower, but I don't want to look like the rest of the world. I don't want to look corporate. It's a dilemma. I find myself thinking about it all the time lately. But I know that as soon as I cut it, I'll regret it. So I leave it alone.



Rereading and posting last month's journal, I realize (this is a tentative
theory that I've earlier formulated, but forgot) that eating carbohydrates is what makes me sluggish, lethargic and tending toward a depressive state.

1-8-02

More of the same. I find myself happy and determined not to go out until the weather improves. But I may have to relent and go food shopping. Some good sales this week. Sleeping days and working nights.

1-9-02

Settling into a routine makes it difficult to write anything significant about my life on a daily basis. I find myself having to rethink the purpose of this journal. If my (active) life, except episodically, is so boring, why write about it? Why not just write about those infrequent episodes instead? Or why not go back to writing about what's in my "mind" instead of what's in my "life?" I mean, after all, my mind has always been the biggest part of my life anyway. I'll have to ponder an answer to this entry.

1-10-02

I went to shopping today. Didn't really want to go, but there's been a break in the weather and I needed some stuff. (It's amazing what you can do without when you don't want to go out into the cold.) Foodland had fruit and veggies on sale for ten cents each. While I was bagging apples, a woman walked past me. I noticed her shoes first, since I was looking toward the floor: white running shoes, very small, maybe size three or four. At first, I thought she was a young girl, but when I looked up, I saw she was an older woman, maybe about thirty-five. I liked her face and the fact that she was short and small. She wore an engagement and a wedding ring. She didn't see me looking at her. But a few minutes later when I was a few counters away bagging peppers, I looked up to see her looking straight at me, deep into my eyes. I don't know if she had been looking at me when I looked up or if we just both happened to look at each other at the same time, but once we made eye contact, I couldn't look away, and neither could she. She looked like she wanted to say something, and I felt the same way, but we were just too far away to speak. We stared at each other, eyes locked, for too long. I thought that she might think that I might think I knew her, and I got the idea that this was telepathy, that what I was thinking were not my thoughts, but hers. But the whole incident caught me by surprise. I wasn't ready for it. I hadn't even wanted to go out, let alone to actually contact someone so intimately. I looked down briefly, which is usually a cue to a woman to look away, but when I looked back up, she was still looking straight into my eyes. Then, she looked down, and I turned away and continued shopping.

At the checkout, I found myself in the aisle beside her. I noticed that when I looked at her, she wasn't looking at me, and when I wasn't looking at her, I could see in my periphery that she was.

I left the store first. In the parking lot as I was loading my groceries into the car, she came out of the store. I watched her walk to her SUV. When I pulled out of the lot, she was in front of me, I followed her to Shenandoah Dr., where she turned off.

For the rest of the day, the encounter haunted me. Who was she? Why was she so open with me? I feel like she was searching for something and she found it briefly in my eyes. Or else, that's what I found.

I remembered another girl, one who worked in that store, who used to do that same thing, look into my eyes too long. In her case, she wanted me to say something to her, to approach her. And I assumed that this was the case with this woman too. But maybe not. Maybe she was the same deer caught in the headlights as I was. Maybe we are living parallel lives. Maybe she is not the usual woman who expects relationships to go the usual instinctual way. Something about her made her look non-ordinary. Maybe it was her hair, stringy and unwashed, dark brown streaked with a lighter color, sort of a reddish-blond. Or maybe it was her clothes, a bit frumpy, as if she had just left the house unprepared, a spur-of-the-moment thing, rushing up to take advantage of the fruit and vegetable sale. She wore a heavy brown coat and heavy clothes beneath it, and I got the idea that maybe, beneath it all, she was not so small, like maybe she was a little bit fat and the clothing was not so bulky as it appeared to be. But that was okay. I didn't mind. And I would have minded this in any other woman. But I remember that, at the checkout, she was looking through the women's magazines. That's not a good sign. Maybe I'm making too much out of this. Maybe she is ordinary after all. But I'm not making too much out of the contact. That was real.

1-11-02

a phone call is an invitation to speak
...not an obligation to speak.
 
ana, 1-11-02
Some days the phone rings all day long. I no longer have a sense of who's calling. I used to be certain that it was a friend of mine with whom I'd had a falling out over the conditions of employment at my last job, but that was a long time ago, and I'm no longer certain that she still calls me. I guess it could just be people trying to sell me things, but it rings so often, and with such regularity, once every two hours, once an hour even on some days. And it feels like it's the same person trying to get through to me.

My answering machine message is simple: "Hello. This is a machine. Leave a message after the beep." It used to be: "This is a machine. Leave a message." [I have this desire to make it as short as possible, even having considered just: "Leave a message," or "Machine. Message."] But people, when they're not told to wait, will call and start talking before the beep, so that I only get half a message. I guess you have to encode social interaction for the least common (stupidest) denominator (person).

Some people, when they hear the message, slam the receiver down. I assume they're the same people who have been trying to get a hold of me over and over again and have become frustrated by their failed attempts. Good. It makes me feel happy that people get angry because they can't reach me. Who do they think they are, anyway? Some people are so "sociable" that they assume they have the right to talk to anyone they want whenever and wherever it's convenient for them. I know the type. I worked with them for years. My old boss used to believe that he had the right to call me up at home and talk to me about business, sometimes for over an hour, sometimes for several days in a row. I would sit and listen to him with the phone extended away from my ear, pissed that he couldn't find the time during the work day to talk to me--usually because I did everything I could to avoid him, because when he got you into a meeting, he'd talk forever, about a few selected items that he'd keep repeating in as many variations as he could come up with, keeping you away from the work he expected you to be doing, while he talked to others who interrupted the meeting continually because it was the only way they could get to talk to him because he always talked too long to other people and, anyway, the best time to talk to him was in a meeting with someone else so that you had an excuse to get away because, after all, it wasn't your meeting. I'd done that same thing myself many times. Hearing someone slam down a receiver is my means of revenge against my old boss and all of those people in the world like him who feel they have the right to dominate my time.


Drafts of answering machine messages I'm considering:

This is a machine. You know what to do.
=====
If you don't leave a message, I can't call you back. If you do leave a message, I may not call you back anyway.
=====
Hello. I'm probably here right now, but I'm never going to answer the phone unless you leave a message, and even then I may not answer or call you back.
===== If you want me to answer, leave a message. If I want to talk to you, I'll pick up.
=====
Hello. This is Joe. I'm probably home right now. I just use this answering machine to avoid certain people I don't want to talk to. Wait for the beep and leave your message. If I don't answer or call you back, you may be one of those people.
=====
It must be obvious by now to frequent callers that I'm never going to answer the phone unless you leave a message. Leave your message after the beep, or stop calling. You're wasting both our time, and you're irritating me by interrupting my work unnecessarily.
=====

[I have a computer program that simulates a human voice, in that deadpan way that's obvious that it's not human, lacking inflection and human "warmth," but I can't get it to record onto my answering machine. And it's strange, because I can record it onto a portable recorder, but I can't get the recorder to record it onto the machine either. It must be something in the timbre of the sound that the machine can't pick up. The voice sounds like Stephen Hawking.]

[In a simulated computer-voice] Hello. You have reached the residence of Joe Jackson. Joe may be here right now, or he may not. This is his computer speaking. Joe has instructed me to tell you that he never answers the phone without first knowing who it is. If you're serious about talking to him, wait for the beep and leave a message identifying yourself. If he is here and he wants to talk to you, he'll answer. If he is not here, he may or may not call you back, but there is no possibility of ever contacting him by telephone without leaving a message first. Thank you for listening. I am a Compaq 7-4-7-0, with 320 megs of RAM and 20 megs of storage on two hard disks. Question: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: None. That's a hardware problem! Ha-ha. That's a joke.
=====
[In a simulated computer-voice] Hello. Welcome to Joe's Computer's joke line. Since Joe rarely ever uses his telephone, and it is being paid for anyway, I've decided to take it over, for my own purposes. Now for the joke:
Terrorists take over a conference room at a Miami Hotel, where the American Bar Association is holding its annual Convention. More than a hundred lawyers are taken as hostages. The terrorist leader announces that unless their demands are met, they will release one lawyer every hour. Ha ha. Thank you for listening. If you absolutely must contact Joe, leave a message at the beep, and maybe he will answer or call you back.
=====
    The following is my phone answering policy. Please listen carefully:
  1. I'm never going to answer the phone unless I first know who it is.
  2. The only chance you have of talking to me is to leave a message.
  3. If you don't leave a message, all you're doing is wasting your time.
  4. If you do leave a message, I might answer or call you back, but don't hold your breath.
  5. Wait for the beep. I'm amazed at how many airheads start talking right away and cut off the beginning of the message.


Top Ten Actual Answering Machine Messages Verified by the World Famous International Institute of Answering Machine Messages:

10. My wife and I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name and number, we'll get back to you as soon as we're finished.

9. Hello, you are talking to a machine. I am capable of receiving messages. My owners do not need siding, windows or a hot tub, and their carpets are clean. They give to charity at the office and don't need their picture taken. If you're still with me, leave your name and home phone number and they will get back to you.

8. This is not an answering machine - this is a telepathic thought-recording device. After the tone, think about your name, your number, and your reason for calling.... and I'll think about returning your call.

7. Hi! John's answering machine is broken. This is his refrigerator. Please speak very slowly, and I'll stick your message to myself with one of these magnets.

6. Hi. This is John: If you are the phone company, I already sent the money. If you are my parents, please send money. If you are my bank, you didn't lend me enough money. If you are my friends, you owe me money. If you are a female, don't worry, I have lots of money.

5. A is for academics, B is for beer. One of those reasons is why we're not here. So, leave a message.

4. Hello! If you leave a message, I'll call you soon. If you leave a "sexy" message, I'll call sooner.

3. Hi. Now you say something.

2. Hi. I'm probably home, I'm just avoiding someone I don't like. Leave me a message, and if I don't call back, it's you.

1. Hello, you've reached Jim and Sonya. We can't pick up the phone right now, because we're doing something we really enjoy. Sonya likes doing it up and down, and I like doing it left to right... real slowly. So leave a message, and when we're done brushing our teeth, we'll call you back.



I'm still thinking about the girl in the store yesterday. (She wasn't a "girl," really, but that's the way she looked, petite. That's the way I seem to be thinking of her, as a girl instead of as a married woman.) I dreamed about her last night, but I can't remember the dream. She wasn't herself in the dream. She was someone else, but I knew who it was. Did she want me to approach her and talk to her--in the store? Did she expect that? A look is an invitation, not an obligation. But I think she knew that. That was the other girl's agenda, not hers.



It doesn't rain but it pours. Ideas are flowing faster than... (My mind is moving so fast, I can't think of a metaphor.) I have so many things to write about, I can't get to them all. But first, the news. All of a sudden, after being dry for weeks and weeks, the news is filled with innuendo. (Or I am.) Gun battles rage in Afghanistan. The Palestinians try unsuccessfully to import a shipload of heavy arms. Israel continues to destroy blocks of Palestinian homes and it tears up the runways and main terminal of The Palestinian International Airport. India's army chief says that India is "ready for war." Based on allegations of a plot (by four men with Arab names) to blow up Jeb Bush with a truck filled with explosives, an investigation is launched. U.S. "advisors" are in Indonesia. (That's way too close to Vietnam for me.) The Philippines is considering an offer of more U.S. Troops. Everybody and his brother are recusing himself in the Enron investigation. (Somehow, that feels to me like it's tied in with the rest of the escalation toward WWIII. Maybe it's not, but if it turns out that Bush is involved, or if key members of his administration are, then there will be an increased pressure for the President to look more favorable in the public eye, and what better way to accomplish that feat than to bomb somebody else in the name of American patriotism. After all, it's worked so far. But Bush may have been led down a path of no return, being acclimated to the success of warmongery, and he's no Clinton. Can he handle that kind of pressure? Can he play hardball politics, or will he resort to the "easy" way out, as he has thus far?)



Slept all day after having been up all night on the net again.
Awoke at six and meditated until 7:30. Wow. Power Trip.
1. Eye/"light" orientation transitions into body > being > general sensory mode > body becomes a sensory organ > total synesthesia > body unbecomes, leaving nothing still perceiving.

2. directing prana to each vertebra in succession > incredible sense of well being and healing.

*) total meditation time: three hours

*) yet again, left with the inability to describe the fundamental experience.

1-12-02

You absorb the environment you are in.
And then you reflect it. This is your art.
In living the way she does, she is an artist.
 
ludi, hope
I try to live like Nicholas Cage in the film City of Angels, i.e., kindly and perfectly calmly, yet intensely, living every moment fully, knowing peace and hoping that my behavior communicates all of this. But trying is not succeeding. But then again, I'm no angel.

1-13-02

My purpose in life seems to be to advance and develop via reading, studying, and writing. But why? I think about this now and then, when I am plodding along, making "progress." I'm continually learning, while everyone else I know seems to have stopped. Why? At a certain point in their lives most people seem to settle for what they know, until they come face to face with the inevitability of death, and then they begin to worry that they have been not so good or so smart, that they have wasted their lives when they should have been striving to further develop, and so they begin to pray and go to church more often and watch religious television.

Occasionally, I think I may be wasting my own life. But then I look at others, even those who seem to be utilizing every single moment efficiently, and I have to think that I am far better off than most of them. They're making a lot of money (which they believe to be a valid and fulfilling life), or they're raising kids (a noble effort, and yet many of the kids are being psychologically abused as a result of the stress their parents experience), or they're...what? When it comes right down to it, they're not doing too much more than I am. And they don't meditate. They go to church and pray on Sunday. Does that count? Ineffectual, stereotyped prayers in ritualized services? Or is it, at best, superstition?

[I should be careful here. I shouldn't judge how people pray? I just don't know what they experience when they are alone in their minds. Anyway, I'm sure there are others who might think my meditation is a waste of time.]

To get back to the point: What was it now? Oh, yeah. My purpose in life. Hell, I don't know. Isn't that, after all, for a higher power to judge?

1-14-02

I haven't been outside, even to get my mail, since last Thursday. I've been, each day, working, then taking a hot bath (to warm up; I'm always cold in winter, despite the indoor temperature), then watching tv or tapes, then sleeping--a perfectly abnormal schedule beginning in the later afternoon and progressing until late morning. I've been getting a lot done, in a kind of regular, piecemeal way, but I'm starting to get bored. I think this may be because I've been phasing carbs back into my diet. I losing my energetic edge now that I've got my weight down to my first plateau. I'll have to make note of my energy level, to see if it picks up again, when I start the second phase, to lose the final five pounds.

1-15-02

My feeling about the things I have chosen to do over time, it's always been about the writing first, and the writers that have made any sense have been writers that have been beating themselves up in a vacuum, surrounded by a sort of societal plague of comfort addiction.
 
Sean Penn
I am definitely losing my edge again. I don't want to do anything. Motivation comes briefly and then departs. Life is cyclical. I'll never get used to this back and forth nature no matter how long I live. Fantasy takes over and I end up spending long hours half-asleep,
between two worlds.

I guess I've been beating myself up most of my life, and I certainly exist "in a vacuum surrounded by a sort of societal plague of comfort addiction." So, according to Sean's definition, I must be making some kind of sense. [I know it's bad logic.]

This afternoon, I watched She's So Lovely with Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn. Wow! I had no idea it was that kind of film. I'm still reeling. Powerful stuff. Powerful acting. Travolta was great too, but I didn't like his caustic character.

1-16-02

Sometimes, when I'm very tired, before getting up, or more rarely, before falling asleep, since my bedroom windows have very heavy curtains that I keep drawn always, or when I am confused by dreams or altered states, I don't know what time of day it is. Even looking at the clock doesn't always help, because it could be morning or evening, afternoon or the middle of the night. Sometimes I shut off the light, if it happens to be on, to see if there is residual daylight seeping through the curtains that will give me a clue---if it's afternoon or night, but not if it's morning or evening because the light looks the same at those times and I don't want to wait so long to see if it's waxing or waning to make the determination, but would rather struggle to bring the conclusion into consciousness. But usually I just wait, foregoing the struggle, because this is the best way to do anything. The time of day or night will come to me, gradually, as will anything else I desire, if I will just wait long enough. The problem is, life is so much shorter than waiting is.

But waiting is, the perfect way. Should I, then, when I (think I) want something, wait for it---or should I go out and get it? It's usually a relatively easy decision. It depends on what "it" is. If it's good for me, or neutral, I might go and get it--if it's not so far out of the way and if I have consolidated wishes to make the trip efficient (such as for shopping trips) and if I have waited long enough already to have satisfied my spartan soul. (Some things are not really needed, and waiting long enough makes their lack of necessity obvious.)

But what about that great gray area between these two modes of being, that area wherein you pretend to wait while all the while you are secretly going out to get what you want, but in a clever disguise. Sometimes I even fool myself, when I will go out (or stay in) to arrange the conditions for things to happen, thinking nevertheless that I am waiting out the dry period between occurring opportunities.

A life well lived is a life that comes to you, where you respond to circumstance instead of creating it. (In creating circumstance, you create karma, and so you had better act perfectly correctly, lest you build up negative credits (debits). But in reacting to circumstance, you allow karma to act, thereby burning up bad karma and balancing the books.)

Don't go chasing after tornados or eventually you're going to get blown away. Should I, then, enable circumstance? Or should I take things entirely as they come? (I already know I should not overtly go chasing after my desire, which always will remain elusively out ahead of me, a carrot on a stick.) Throughout my life I have been a great stager of circumstances, insinuating myself into situations where (it appears that) others bring to me the things I (seem not to, so much) want. But this isn't The Way---because I do want them. I orchestrate circumstances, and I get (sometimes) what I want. And I suffer the more for it. It's definitely a better strategy not to have a strategy, but to take the events of life as they come to you, not even waiting for them so much as simply acting in the moment. [But strategy is strategy, by whatever name--a very human trait.]

Waiting itself is a difficult concept. Waiting implies expecting, which is a form of orchestration at the subconscious level. If you're going to "wait" for specific (planned) things to happen, you might as well overtly orchestrate them. (Well, maybe not, so much.) Unwaiting is a better way: imagine what you want (because, being human, you will always want, no matter how hard you try not to; in fact, trying is wanting), maybe even plan it out (which you may consider a moment of weakness, an indulgence), and then let it go. The planning exercise can be a step in the letting-go process, a catharsis similar to fantasy--except that with fantasy you indulge yourself to a point where you may actually program an expectation if you're not careful. So it's better to reserve fantasy for fantastic situations, ones that you are certain can never come true. Next, after planning and letting go, unwait. The plans, all but abandoned, will serve you when opportunities (circumstances) come around, from which you may then pick and choose, according to the wisdom you have developed over time--which is the real filter, after all. Unwaiting and circumstance are merely the tests. Wise choice is the critical component. And as to the question "Should I enable circumstance?" No. Not if I want to be perfectly correct. And I do want to be perfectly correct, which is a problem, because I want it. (But do I really? Maybe not. Maybe not quite yet. Maybe I can continue to orchestrate a bit longer. There is still time to be correct--on my deathbed.)

1-17-02

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
 
Henry Kissinger
Apparently, I am somewhat better known than I give myself credit for--not for my art, but for my personality. I am told that I am famous (or infamous) for being reclusive, for being psychologically opinionated (a non-professional view of what I am), and for being overly-educated and under-employed. A lot of people know me or know of me, and a number of my friends, most of whom I don't see very much any more, are known for having known me. I'm trying to get a handle on this "local fame." When I go out, people, too shy to speak to me, acknowledge my presence with eye contact. Previously, I haven't thought too much of this, but now, after what I have recently been told, I realize that there are people who would like to speak to me but just don't know how to go about it. (I keep people away with my stoic, quiet attitude.) I have a growing reputation, a widening circle of people with whom I have made a casual contact, people who know me by sight, who talk of me, wondering about me--but in that way that people wonder, more definitively, as they try to classify me according to perceptions and rumors, which always get the definitions slightly wrong and always enable individual perceptions so that every person thinks I am something slightly different. Meanwhile, I walk around having convinced myself that I exist in a world alone. No one knows me now, I think. And in a sense, they don't. Not really. But they know of me and they each think they know who it is I am. I can't be these thousand different things. But it's my own fault that I am seen in these ways, because I no longer assert my right to define myself through social interaction.

1-18-02

Joyce calls and asks, "What are you doing?" I tell her, "Nothing." So she asks me if I can pick up Jay at school in ten or fifteen minutes. (I wonder what she would have said if I said I had been doing something?) At the school, I have to go inside to get him. It's the first time I've been in the high school in many years. The place is like a prison now. I have to be greeted by an armed guard (a local policeman), sign in, and walk through a metal detector. At the office, I have to sign the pass that Jay needs to get out of the building. I'm glad I went to high school when I did, before 1984. I was already paranoid enough in high school as it were. I think the atmosphere I experienced today would have sent me over the top, although that was before I'd started smoking pot, so who knows?

1-19-02

Saturday morning used to mean something. I remember, as a child, awakening to a certain excitement at not having to go to school. I remember sunny mornings transitioning slowly into lazy afternoons. I guess there's not so much difference between the weekdays and weekends now. Now, it pretty much seems all the same anomalous mass of time, each day the same, working and watching tv, punctuated by the occasion holiday or outing to do some socially defined task. (Winter ennui is really beginning to set in now.)

1-20-02

A gunman who opened fire Wednesday at a law school in southwestern Virginia, leaving three people dead and three others wounded, was described as "a time bomb" by a local doctor who recently treated him for stress.
 
Wired News, 1-17-2
I've started posting my most difficult (and most personal) novel online, (re)constructing it as I post it. It's (metaphorically) about several jobs I'd had where I became so increasingly chronically stressed that I became a different person and existed in two states of mind, one as a conservative business type, the other as a rebellious anti-authoritarian radical. (This is a consequence of having to adopt the policies and procedures of a company in order to keep your job.) I've been resisting the task of posting this work for a long time, not because it would be so hard so much as because it's seemed so...I don't know...so unconventional, I guess (I don't know why I should, at this late date, be worried about being unconventional since I've been this same way all my life) and so potentially revealing. It's nine in the morning and I've been writing and posting since five. I think I'll go and have a steak for breakfast.



Some days crawl along uneventfully; some days are filled with excitement. Today was one of the latter.

Early this morning I went shopping. Ames was having a sale on bed sheets, which I desperately need, having only two sets, which I rotate, making laundry more of a necessity than it should be. But, as usual, when I got to the store, there were no sheets left. I'm wondering if they get sold out in the first few hours of the sale every time I go there or if they just never keep that many in stock. I'll have to take a look one day when they're not having a sale to see if the shelves are full.

At Giant Eagle, I got a great deal on fat-reduced peanut butter, $1/jar. (I bought six jars.) And on cereal, $1/box. (I bought eight boxes.) Stocking up on the non-perishable carbs. The peanut butter is my treat for having lost three more pounds. (Two to go.) Usually, when I buy peanut butter (always in quantity, because I always wait for deep sales), I end up eating nothing but peanut butter toast for several weeks until it's all gone. Either I have a deficiency in some essential nutrient that is contained in peanut butter, or I have a serious addiction. Probably the latter. But this time, I just know I'm going to apportion the stuff out, using it as a reward for losing and maintaining weight. I feel empowered by my new sense of control. Knowing you can actually lose weight relatively painlessly (i.e., without starving yourself) makes you want to maintain control.

Back at home, faced with a choice as to how to spend my time, not feeling tired since I had a full night's sleep for a change, I decide to cart down to the basement some of the stuff that's been sitting by the front door for weeks, waiting for me to become motivated enough to leave the house. (My basement has no access from the house. You have to go outside to get to into it.) Some of the stuff that needed to be taken downstairs was twenty bottles of various types of alcoholic beverages that I got from my mother's house when she died. I didn't want to take it, since I no longer drink--at all. But my sister made me, so that my brother wouldn't be tempted to finish it off. The booze had been sitting for years under a table beside my washing machine, and I decided to clean it out to make room for all the extra boxes of cereal so that the tabletop wouldn't look cluttered.

The day has been fraught with the kind of false starts that often seem to demotivate me, but today the false starts seem to be false fronts. First the sheets, now the booze. The bottles will not stand upright on the shelves I intended to put them on, a set of heavy-duty shelving that my ex-wife was throwing out when she was remodeling her convenience store shortly after our divorce. In an uncharacteristic fit of production [I never seem to want to do anything any more if I run into obstacles; I leave the stubborn project until another day when, I theorize, the "stars" will be more propitious. I never used to be this way; in fact, I used to be quite the opposite, obstinately banging my head against the proverbial wall until I made happen what I wanted to happen, in one way or another. But either I am maturing, or I am being defeated by life's motives. (Maybe they're both the same thing.)], I set about to lower the top shelve two notches to accommodate the bottles. This will be no easy task. The shelves are bolted in place, with the braces on the back bolted on in exactly the same place where I want to rebolt the shelves, so that I'd have to bolt the braces to the shelves as well as to the uprights. And the shelving unit I want to work on is bolted to the unit next to it, a narrower unit, so that the narrower shelf is bolted to the wider one at its center. And, of course, I remove only the absolute bare minimum of shelved contents from the shelves. No sense in doing any extra work.

The bolts were stubborn, and my ratchet was acting up, not wanting to engage fully. But, playing with it, I managed, with a bit of stubborn effort, to loosen all of the bolts. Slowly, corner by corner, I managed to lower the shelves about two inches and reinstall the bolts. Several times, the contents (old fishing gear) threatened to come crashing to the floor, but through sheer physical effort, I managed to keep everything in place, holding the shelf up with my shoulder as I continued reinstalling bolts. When I was done, I shelved the booze neatly and began to put away the tools. (Every time I finish a project, I put away a few more tools and supplies than I used, hoping one day to finally have everything organized. But I've been doing this for years and I don't seem to be making any progress.)

Then, as I'm about to go upstairs, I hear Steve, my neighbor across the street, screaming out in front of his house. I'm about to go outside to see what's up, when I think better of it and peek out the basement window instead. (My basement is at street level and the house is up above.) Steve is halfway into his wife's car, shouting at his next door neighbor and best friend, Terry. He's screaming at the top of his voice something about Terry having abandoned him on a job in Shadyside. Steve is very obviously drunk. His speech is seriously slurred. Terry keeps repeating that he didn't abandon him, that he went back to try to find him and Steve keeps repeating that he had to walk all the way from Shadyside. The story unfolds as a repetition of this same theme, each rendition imparting a bit more information.

It seems that Steve, probably drunk on the job (he's an independent landscaper), told Terry to leave if he wanted to leave, whereupon Terry, apparently after a number of repetitions of this same message, decided to unload some tools and go ahead and leave. Steve accuses Terry of causing him to lose a $10,000 per year contract. (Reading between the lines, I assume that, if a contract was lost, it was Steve's drinking that caused it. I don't know if this is true, but it feels right. I recognize a parallel between Steve and my brother here, but that's another story.) Steve continues on, revealing that he had to walk twenty miles with two shovels on his shoulders. (It's really only about ten miles.) This "conversation" goes on, the same things repeated over and over again, with an occasional punctuation from Steve's wife from their front door, which Steve answers by screaming at the top of his voice, "Shut up, you bitch!"

Steve accuses Terry of not being his friend, originally voiced because Terry stood in the way of the car when Steve first tried to pull out of the parking space, to prevent him from driving while drunk. Meanwhile, apparently, Marsha, Steve's wife (or someone, one of the neighbors, this part isn't too clear) goes to call the cops. I can't see Marsha from the basement, I can only hear her voice, and I wish I were upstairs so that I could have a better field of view. But I'm not about to walk out now and risk becoming involved in the fracas, because Steve has gotten out of the car and is making threats that he's going to "kill" Terry. He pushes him violently several times by forcing his hands against Terry's chest, knocking him backward across the street with several rushes at him.

Now they stand almost in my driveway. I think that I might have to go outside and intervene, and I regret the possibility, but Terry doesn't react. He remains his same passive, mature self. He calmly talks to Steve as Steve continues to push at him. When Steve sees that his attempts to start a fight are not working, he changes his tactics and turns to verbal abuse, continuing his repetitious tirade with even more vehemence. Through it all, the one shouted phrase predominates: "I had to walk all the way from Shadyside."

Occasionally, voices are lowered as Terry tries to console Steve by telling him he cares about him, which only prompts Steve to start up again, to attempt to prove him wrong. Then, Steve eventually goes down onto the porch and, as Terry is pulling the car back into the parking space, finally [ta da], the cops arrive. Actually, only one cop. Terry tries to explain what has happened to the cop. Steve returns to the street. His entire demeanor has changed as he talks to the cop. He admits that he was the one causing the disturbance. Apparently, since the cop saw Terry in the car, he assumed that Terry was the perpetrator.

They both talk to the cop for a few minutes, convincing him that everything is okay. I try to see who the cop is. I think that, if it is the one local cop whom I know well, I will go outside. But I can't see his face from my (disad)vantage point. Then, Terry and Steve go inside and the cop leaves, and I scurry out and back upstairs before they can come back out again. I avoid these kinds of domestic situations as much as I can. It's enough that I have to see this kind of occasional behavior in my brother, although, to be fair, I've never seen him this bad. (Although I know he has been. I have heard the stories.)

I turn on the tv. Ghandi is on AMC. I sit down to watch the end of it. I can't help but draw parallels with Terry, how he faced up to Steve, did not back away, took his abuse without reacting, behaving as a true friend in the face of Steve's rejection and projected accusations. Steve is the "time bomb" ticking, ready to go off, but no one knows what time the mechanism is set for. And Terry is the Bomb Disposal Expert. I wish I were as patient, understanding, and self-effacing as he is. I tend to react in kind, so I have to try to stay away from these kinds of situations in order to avoid acting out someone else's aggressions as they evoke a similar response in me.

This is the reason, I am told, why my former boss thought I would end up one day being one of those guys who show up at work armed with an arsenal of rifles and handguns and start blowing people away, bosses in particular. I was hurt when I heard that, that he could have had that opinion of me. I react in kind, not precipitously. Maybe, if someone were going to blow me away, I'd proact, to try to get him first. Maybe. But I could never start it. My boss was incapable of seeing how it was that others set me off with their (often hidden) hostile reactions. And especially, he didn't see his own hostility, so severely repressed that it turned him into a milquetoast. But that's all in the distant past, now. Or I hope it is. I am so much more in control of my emotions now, now that the stress of that terrible workplace is behind me. (I'll bet, though, that he's still an inveterate milquetoast, denying his unconscious nature and projecting it onto his employees.)

The turmoil over, I spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up my kitchen. It's nice to have it back in some semblance of order. This is the first time it's been uncluttered since the reorganization when some of the stuff from the dining room got put there. See? See how much in control I am? I cleaned up my entire kitchen.

1-21-02

Monday morning. Six A.M. Snowing heavily. Marsha's car has not been in front of the house across the street since four, when I got up. I wonder if she left Steve. If I were her, I would have, especially after he'd called me a bitch in a violent tone of voice so many times for the whole neighborhood to hear. It's too bad if she has left. I'll miss her. A lot. I look forward to seeing her leaving for work every morning. I should have become a friend to her, but I didn't want to become involved in that domestic arrangement. I've been there before. Besides, she smokes, and I can't afford that kind of stimulation. It affects my all-but-irregular heartbeat and I don't want to have to go back to taking medicine again to control it.



I've noticed that when you're working to
production standards, keeping records of time spent in various tasks, and you are ahead of your set goals, you breeze along, striving only to stay ahead, without too much concern for how much work you're doing, while remaining happy at your work. But when you fall behind, the production goals are a burden and a source of guilt, and you don't seem to want to work any more. This is why production goals are bad, because they demotivate you. Sure, they seem great when you are ahead of them, but even then you don't work to your full potential, knowing you are ahead. ("Work expands to fill the time necessary for it's completion.") And when you are behind, they're demoralizing. I'm very far ahead of my goals right now, and so I am content. But when I am behind, look out. The real motivation is to stay ahead (and not to revise the goals upward in an attempt to get even more done. This is real culprit--greed).



Eleven A.M. Marsha's car is back. They must have been out somewhere (at four A.M.?) I forgot that today was a holiday, so she doesn't have to go to work.

1-22-02

New research indicates that even short term stress causes brain damage.
Recent research indicates that brain and heart can repair themselves.
I'm doing so much better each and every year since my "retirement."
Conclusion: I'm healing. The bad effects of severe stress are in the past.
I've all but forgotten about how I used to feel, exhausted all the time.
I feel just fine now, relaxed, non-anxious, even in the middle of winter.

1-23-02

So This Is The Way It's Going To Happen

I remember my mother when she was dying. She looked all shrunked up and gray. I asked her if she was afraid. She just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothing beautiful or uplifting about her going back to God. I heard people talking about immortality, but I ain't seen it. I wondered how it'd be when I died, what it'd be like to know that this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw. I just hope I can meet it the same way she did, with the same calm, cause that's where it's hidden, the immortality I hadn't seen.
 
from The Thin Red Line
What a miserable couple of days it's been, weather-wise. But at least it's been a little bit warmer. And although it's raining, the roof isn't leaking--yet. Maybe I finally got it fixed.

I'm thinking about the cold, about how I've been tolerating it much better this winter. I'm thinking about winter in general. This one's not so bad, even though it's not really been any different than all the other ones. Not as much snow, but who cares about snow when you stay inside most of the time. In fact, snow can be quite nice when you're inside a warm house looking out. It must be me, my personal reaction, that's determining my perception of the winter. Well, of course it is. Whose would it be? I think I programmed myself ahead of time this year. I decided last fall that winter was a time to accept the fact that it would get cold and that I would be cold, so I shouldn't fight it, but allow myself to be cold and wait it out. I'm still waiting. I even decided to keep the house temperature (most of the time) abnormally low. I do this every fall, refusing to turn on the heat until well past the time I should have, not so much to conserve energy/money as to keep in touch with "nature," to feel more profoundly the seasonal change. But this year I left the heat off past Nov 1st. And then, I kept it low most of the time, 65 or lower, especially when I'm in bed at night. (I have a heating pad that heats my bed.) I've relented a bit as the winter has deepened, turning up the heat to 68 or 70 when I'm up and working, but I've been conditioned, I think, by that early season exercise. Slightly cold seems not so cold now.



Having watched (only) the beginning (on tape; I fell asleep) of The Thin Red Line, I'm thinking now about death. I've come to the conclusion that it's not so bad really. I'm not afraid to die. (I say that now, while I'm alive and well.) But I'm incredibly saddened by the knowledge that one day I will have to die. You see, not believing in life after death is a freeing experience. There's nothing to be afraid of--except the present world (and that is more than enough for me). On the other hand, if you do believe in life after death, then you must fear what might happen to you then. And it takes even more faith to believe (maybe erroneously) that you are "saved" to overcome the fear. But, if you know there's nothing "out there" except more of the same old stuff you already know (of), then you want to live on so as not to be annihilated. It's sad, to think, you might at some future point not exist. This is the problem, thinking. Animals live and die without the sadness.

[People who believe, or who have an intuitive sense, usually since very early in life, that there is nothing more, are much more careful, timid people. They understand, at least unconsciously, that this is the only life they will ever have and so they act to take care of it and to live it as fully in the moment as they are capable of. People who go willingly to war, for example, or who place themselves in dangerous situations, are those who believe or intuit that they are acting toward a higher purpose that will be rewarded in another life. Society uses delusion (because whether it's true or not, no one really knows, and so it's delusional thinking to believe in an afterlife--or, at best, it's faith, which is another word for the same thing) to "convince" (influence, manipulate, delude) people into carrying out a social agenda while minimizing concern for their own personal safety.]

The sadness I've been feeling that I want to attribute to my coming (a long time from now, I hope) death is, really, the winter affect, nothing more. It's here, and it's deepening. But I have a good handle on it this year. Of course, the early spring is yet to come, and that's the worst time of the year for me, affect-wise. I'll just have to wait and see if there has been any semi-permanent change this year.

I don't know which choice I believe, life or no life after death. I believe both, at different times, and sometimes at the same time. (And sometimes, I don't believe either. It's such a difficult subject that a lot of the time I refuse to believe anything. I try to reserve belief for subjects that I have at least an inkling into.) One answer to this riddle is in the text of The Thin Red Line, at the beginning, in the voice-over of the guy who is contemplating death. But I wasn't paying close enough attention. I'll have to rewind it and copy it down and include it as an epigraph to this entry. [Okay. That's done. See the epigraph.]

A few days before I saw the film or even knew what it was about [I knew it was about war and about the psychological crossing over into a state of uncaring about living or dying; but that was all I knew], I wrote this line, which I find now in my notes: "So this is the way it's going to happen." I didn't include it in my journal because I had no context for it. It just popped into my head, along with the brief fantasy that one day I might be involved in an incident that will result in my death, even in a mere deathbed incident, and this is what I will say: "So this is the way it's going to happen." Nothing more. (Hopefully, by that time, I will have said it all already, through my writing. If not, that will have been a tragedy.)

This could be mere coincidence, but this same sort of "psychic" thing has been happening a lot lately. [I go through periods of this kind of stuff, and then through dry periods where I never notice it at all. But probably, the dry periods are just me not paying attention. Probably it's either happening continually or it's nothing but coincidence.] I'll think of a movie, and it'll be on tv within the next few days. Or I'll think of a subject, and it'll come up in conversation, or on a news program. For example, I thought of Max Headroom yesterday while writing 'max' on my schedule to indicate that the run time of a movie I wanted to record was not it's actual length, but a maximum possible figure, and today I get an e-mail that mentions Max Headroom. This could be all coincidence, but when it happens, in spurts, it sometimes gets a little bit scary, like I'm predicting (or feeling) the future. Presque vu.

I've noticed that when you awaken out of sleep and immediately begin to meditate, it's very easy to disappear into a world of simple being, your environment, if you don't fall back into sleep (but even if you do, that's disappearing too.) When you awaken, you awaken to self, which quickly disintegrates into ego. But if you catch it soon enough, in meditation, you can stay there for awhile, complete. Could this be what death is like? Oh, I hope so.



I've been cleaning stuff up in my apartment and I really wish
I could find my camera so I could document all the stupid stuff
I have found. Bit by bit it's sort of funny, but put together
it forms a very convincing body of evidence that I should be in
some sort of institution where people cook for me and I can
concentrate on important things like staring at the wall all day.
I totally am not cut out for living, here are examples:

I bought shot glasses from all over the country about
9 years ago, which I have never ever used.

I have a box sitting on my floor right now which contains
mail that I've received in the past 5 years. ATM receipts,
white paper and matching envelopes (dust covered) and
every ID I ever owned.

I am sure I had more stuff to add here, but it's probably pretty
embarassing and I really have to get this done and I am all sort
of out of it from sneezing at the dust that's all over and
blah blah blah.
 
The Jokemaster, Joke-Of-The Day newsletter

Ditto. Me too. I guess single men are the same all over the world.
My father used to collect shot glasses; I collected other stuff.
And the institution, and the box of papers and IDs, and the dust.
All of that is stuff I understand. But this really is just a coincidence.
There's room for all kinds of philosophies in this complex world.

1-24-02

Getting lots of things done. Sleeping nights and working days, as if I were a normal person. Taking melatonin to maintain this schedule. (But it always backfires if I take it for too long, causing me to become non-productive as I violate my biorhythms. At least, that's my theory for what happens.

The roof leaked a little bit this afternoon. Not much. A few minor drips. But enough to let me know that it needs a lot of attention. My attitude seems to rise and fall according to whether or not I've managed to successfully patch the roof. Or rather, that's one of the controlling factors. There are probably a lot of them. I should isolate them and strive to keep them under control, but that would be so much work, and anyway, it's too anal a way for me to live.

1-25-02

Bright and sunny this morning, for a change. Brilliant blue sky in the east. I wonder what the west looks like. I can't see it from this vantage point, which is on the east end of the house, unless I sit on the other side of the house, away from the computers, and look out the picture window toward the back, an (in)activity that I used to like to do a lot, when I was still recovering from the effects of chronic stress. I haven't done it in years.

My attitude in recent weeks (since the holidays) leads me to wonder how I managed to get through the preceding month of ennui. I am so productive, so "up" now. I'm falling back into habits that I'd forgotten for so long, like getting things done, organizing, even pulling my thoughts, plans, and goals back together into an organized, divided binder. This is the way I am (supposed to be). I feel so...good. I'm guessing it's all the protein I'm eating that's responsible for this change of attitude. We're told that eating too much red meat is bad for the digestion and might even cause cancer. Well, maybe so. But not eating it may cause an even worse fate--feeling depressed. [I guess that's what it is, depression, though I don't feel depressed, i.e., sad. But I would, if I had to participate in a(n overly) full social schedule for very long.] I guess I could eat alternate forms of protein, but how much chicken, cheese, and tofu could I tolerate? (Actually, I could eat cheese three times a day, year after year, but that's not supposed to be good for you either.) I should experiment with alternate proteins, though--to see if it's the red meat that's causing this reversal of affect. It could be the higher levels of B-vitamins in the red meat that're responsible.

1-26-02

Another bright and sunny morning. But this time, I've been up since four after only four hours of sleep. (Didn't take the melatonin last night.) I've been on the net the whole time. As soon as I log off, the phone rings. I take great pleasure at not answering, when whoever is calling just has to know I'm home.



Well, so much for the "normal" sleep cycle. I slept from five this afternoon until ten-thirty and am now wide-awake (but physically tired.) It's definitely a combination of lack of protein and an irregular sleep schedule that causes me to become unproductive. When I've had a full night's sleep and get up in the morning, I feel like working. Of course, there's a lot to be said for the odd-hour method too. I get a lot of insights that I wouldn't get if I were a completely regular person. And I get to catch up on my Internet work too, as I feel "freed" from a regular schedule that ranks the Internet too low on the list to be gotten to soon enough to get anything substantial done.

1-27-02

This is the third year in a row we've had summer in January. And this is the second time this month. I want to sit here and get some work in before the Steeler game. (I very seldom watch sports, especially football, but today's the play-off for the Superbowl. For some reason I just can't resist the occasion. I'd say I was a fair-weather fan, but I'm not that enthusiastic.) But, not only do I feel like working, I also want to get out of my lounging clothes and go outside and sit in the warm sun. This is the dilemma I face all summer long. I need a laptop.

This morning I dreamed a huge tree falling through the roof of my house awakened me. If I hadn't been napping instead of sitting at my computer working, I'd have been crushed. The wood fell into the dining room and kitchen in the form of huge cut and seasoned logs, only cracking the roof and windows, so that it seemed impossible that they could have gotten in. But they did. The people (professionals) who cut the giant tree down two houses away came to the house to try to negotiate with me, to reduce their liability. At the same time, I'm trying to figure out how I can get them to pay for the roof damage that already existed before they felled the tree. This dream means something important (don't they all?), but I feel this strong urge not to try to interpret it.

1-28-02

Yet another bright, warm, sunny summer morning.
In January! I feel like I'm living in Australia.

I fully realized for the first time this morning that I'm no longer drinking coffee. It's a fact that I've had to repress for fear of desiring it too much. For a long time I was severely addicted to it, and I'm still in love with the idea of drinking it. I want that rush I no longer feel, and haven't felt for quite a number of years now. For several years, I had only been chipping it (one half teaspoon per day boiled in half a cup of water with half a cup of skim milk added; only a token homage to former times providing too little caffeine to even catch a minor buzz), but when I learned that caffeine inhibited weight loss on a protein diet, I stopped drinking coffee altogether. Previously, because of my heart problem, I'd stopped ingesting all other products and foodstuffs containing caffeine. The daily coffee wake-up was the last residue of a multiple drug habit (some legal, some not) extending way back to adolescence. One by one, I have been stripping away years of accumulated bad habits, as I become aware of how they have been affecting my physiology/psychology. We spend our teenage and young adult years acquiring bad habits, and the rest of our lives, if we're smart, getting rid of them. Meditation and contemplation has been a major aid in helping me locate these substances/practices. In a meditative state, I can (begin to) reverse the effects, and in a contemplative state, I can trace and come to know how they affect me. As a consequence of this (heretofore mostly unintentional) program, I have been slowly limiting the kinds of substances I ingest, and the kinds of activities I engage in.

A partial list of rejected substances/activities:

  • marijuana (makes my heart race, which I can't afford any more, being prone to atrial fibrillation)
  • alcohol (ditto)
  • any form of speed, such as meth, coke, bennies, etc. (ditto, of course)
  • all caffeine products
  • all products containing theobromine (a vasodilator found in chocolate, etc.)
  • network news
  • caustic social interactions
  • dishonest relationships (which, as each sequential relationship progresses, seem to indicate to me that they all are)
  • stress, of almost any kind
  • commitment, of almost any kind (I've not completely concluded this, but I'm tentatively working on the assumption that all commitment, to anything, is bad for you.)
  • [more to follow, as I think of them]
My lifestyle choices are being very slowly narrowed down. Pretty soon, I'll be eating gruel and living in a one room shanty with activity limited to reading, writing, surfing the net, and looking out the windows. Actually, I'm not too far from that lifestyle now. {I have television, but I've long since concluded that this is a serious detriment to my mental health. I've been considering for years phasing it out altogether. I've broken the bad sitcom/drama/sports propensity [I was never much into (watching)
sports], but I can't quite seem to break the news/movies addiction.}

1-29-02

Nothing happening again. Life proceeds, slowly. Back to sleeping days. I can't resist it. It's so...peaceful and relaxing, so decadent. Dreamed I traveled down to my old workplace in the city to see an old girlfriend. I met her, and she was as attractive and mysterious as ever. But, unencumbered by my former obsession, I saw her more for what she really was. Everyone was just getting out of work, and they all took off, leaving me in the parking lot with only a few cars remaining, none of which was mine. I looked around, but I couldn't find it. I felt stranded. I was stranded. I began to walk around, thinking, almost lucidly, that I could take any car that suited me. I think of taking a few expensive sports cars--long, sleek, two-seater jobs. But I don't.[¥] This is a recurring dream. The details change, but the impact, that of being stranded in the city with no way to get home, and to a lesser extent, of stealing a car, remains the same. I think it means that I'm lost, and that I must appropriate someone else's sense of direction. But I don't feel lost. I've never felt so found. Maybe, though, that feeling like I have a sense of direction is really an overwhelming concept. When I feel most "found," I feel most desperate to express myself, most backed-up with ideas and projects never to be expressed or completed. This is a schizoid state, lost/found. Jean Cocteau, in Le Testement D'Orphée, said, "Having to wait so long, we become waiting rooms." Well, having been in and out of this state so often for so long, I become a lost and found department. I've developed an expertise in the art of this schizoid state. Living life, some of us eventually become expert at it, and then no one wants to know what we have to say, not because we are not getting wiser as we age, but because they are not. If we listen to our elders, we must, by definition, be unwise. And who wants to prove that, especially to oneself.

1-30-02

I can't believe how much I'm getting done! I'm working ten to twelve hours a day. Where does all this motivation come from? The only problem is, no matter how much I get done, I want to do more. I have to force myself to eat and go to bed. As it is, I'm only sleeping five to six hours a night, sometimes less. I got all these ideas I want to work on, but there's not enough time. And all these downloads I want to get and try out. This is the manic phase, I guess, of a bipolar adaptation. It just has to be more than mere protein that's responsible. (I could channel it better if I could just get some more sleep. Even melatonin won't keep me out for very long, not even the time-release stuff. All it does is keep me groggy longer after I get up.

1-31-02

My nephew called this afternoon and asked me to help him try to fix his computer. We spent an hour and a half on the phone trying various things that I had gleaned from previous postings I'd made to technical newsletters, until I concluded that nothing more could be done. (He wanted to press on, desperate for information, but I had nothing more to offer.) The re-installation of Windows that he'd made a month ago had eventually failed and their computer was back to doing the same thing it had been doing previously. When this kind of thing happens, I feel like such a failure. We made no progress at all. I really want to help him out, but I don't know what more to do. If it were my computer, I would eventually figure out the problem by sitting down at it for hour upon hour, trying this and that, eliminating options, until eventually I'd hit upon a solution. But I can't do it over the phone, and I can't do it at their house either, because every time I go over there, I become lost amid their multiple personalities, as the household shenanigans (what a perfect word) plays on my nerves. Even over the phone, I felt the same effect, as I overheard Joyce yelling at Jay to give up one of the phone lines (we were on the phone and the Internet at the same time) so that she could make a call--a reasonable request, except that when she got on the other line, I could hear her irritating voice, as Jay kept saying to her, "Mom. Lower your voice!" and his disturbance at her filtered into my psychology. Add to that, Danny, wanting to call his friend, intentionally interrupting us by picking up an extention and acting as if it were an accident, and Jimmie kibitzing, and we have a sample of what it's like to work in a very distracting environment. I'd say I'm getting old and unable to tolerate disruption to my thought processes, but I've been like this for a very long time. When I was young, I could shut it all out, but I lost that ability early in adulthood when I had to begin considering the world as a valid form of input.