it was like someone hit a bell and the clarity and simplicity of its sound keeps reverberating in my head.
experience is unconditional. how simple: that which happens to us happens.
what, then, are the mechanisms that condition our experience?
i've been thinking about this in the context, of say poking fun at Sarah Palin (she doesn't seem to realize Africa is a continent).
Is it dismissive or disdainful when I label 59 million people who voted (a second time) for bush as stupid?
i wonder how our reactions to those of others might condition experience and the ensuing interactions among us. what am i filtering out that makes it near impossible for me to understand teaching creationism as science? it isn't so much that i mind another view point, but come on. it is religion. not science. or is it?
I signed up to write this week's "writing in the raw" segment because it is the week before the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
While thinking about this topic, one thought kept recurring - the idea of anger. What is anger? How does it come about? What do we do with it? How does anger become resolved? And what purpose does anger serve? This diary will be totally subjective, exploring my own feelings as I'm no scholar on the issue. I've read a little about anger in Buddhist texts, but I'm relying mostly on my own personal feelings and development here.
Anger has been a constant companion throughout my life, always there, like a loyal dog following me about. Sometimes it may be sleeping, not making a big commotion, but sooner or later it wakens and anger and I become like the proverbial dog chasing its own tail, round and round we go. Sometimes the anger has lept ahead, dragging me along at the end of the leash, with little or no control over where the dog will take me.
Some say it begins with trauma. Others swear that it's as spontaneous and pure as two hundred Danish virgins. Still more insist that it's born of malignant ego or raging id. A smug few are convinced, and cannot be swayed, from the position that it's only deity-bestowed. They are all correct in small, insignificant ways, but for the most part they are hopelessly Wrong. It begins because it begins, a perfect storm of the above plus that one, fatal spark of initiation, that desperate, naked retaliatory impulse to emulate with extreme prejudice, to hack and slice and tear one's own permanent space of posterity into the great void of nothingness that each of us is banished to upon the inversely fortuitous day of our birth.
hey! a quick update and reminder for the next three months of writing in the raw
June 5th: Rusty1776
June 12th: Alma
June 19th: geomoo
June 26th: keirdubois
July 3rd: Rusty1776
July 10th: tahoebasha3
July 17th: dharmasyd
July 24th: 73rd virgin (maybe she'll tell us what that means?)
July 31st: dharmasyd
August 7th: Rusty1776
August 14th: RiaDarlin'
August 20th: ek hornbeck
August 28th: srkp23
i'd like to prevail upon undercovercalico, Victory Coffee, RiaD, and Shaharazade for September. ucc said she needs to see her work schedule before committing to date. so if the others could commit without a definite date until i know ucc's avail, that would be great.
9/11 falls on a thursday this year... so perhaps srkpy, as a new yorker, would like that spot.
if you are on the schedule, let me know you've read this and are still available.
i really didn't have time to write much. but i didn't want anybody else to take this evening either. it is the last writing in the raw i'll do from the states for a while, so even with a sparse essay, i think i'll keep it for myself.
actually, it's after 10pm as i start writing this. so it will be brief.
i'm packed. ready to go. exhausted. i'll definitely blog from the airport tomorrow. i usually pay to get into the business lounge... for $45, you get fruit, cheese, coffee/tea, cookies, alcohol, tv, internet and a little desk from which you blog, and a comfy, quiet place to zone out for a few hours. premium wine/alcohol will cost you... hey Mu, might be one of the tips for your travel space.
okay. so that's it.
well, and i'll explain the title. just a bit.
getting on that plane tomorrow is amazing. there have been difficult times and yet, somehow, ej and i managed to hold onto to each other. over the phone. one-line e-mails. packages filled with small fetish items. a sense of humor. and well, we just get along. whenever i'm with him, by heart rate slows (unless you know...), i become very at ease. i smile a lot. i'm actually funny when i'm relaxed and not thinking about George Bush et al.
i sleep really well when i sleep with him. and when we get up, he has this funny little fresh face, squinty eyes and he's smiling. maybe he looks a little like a baby bird or something. but it touches my heart. and it inspires me to get up and make coffee and cook breakfast.
we hold hands. we like the way each other smells. we think it's funny when strangers fall down or break something in a store (but we don't really want anybody to be really hurt). we love to go to museums. or find secret gardens. we like to wander in cities and towns. oh. and we both love madly medieval cathedrals and churches.
he likes to cook. i like to eat. he likes to complain. i like to sit, cross-legged, and listen and laugh at him and how he, in a very animated fashion, counts off each absurdity with his fingers.
i tell him everything has a shelf life. if we're lucky, we'll just die together, around 99 years old, in a plane crash or car accident. because i always see us together, old and beautiful. and i just know i'll love him even more then... the two of us always walking, looking at the world together, my hand in the pocket of his old jacket.
i'm moving to The Netherlands on May 30 and won't be around as much... due to a six hour time difference and settling into my new life.
next Thursday will likely be my last writing in the raw for a while. however, I intend to keep posting the Friday Pony Parties at 6ish... well, i will resume posting the ponies. i've been a bit distracted and out of any reasonable routine these last weeks.
so. nine months or thereabouts. absorbed in, with, about Docudharma. i have to tell you, i was shocked when buhdy asked me to join Docudharma as a contributing editor. i'm still not sure what prompted the invitation... but it has been the very best place for me over these many months. and it feels like i've known so many of you for years now... i love how the energy of friendship has surpassed time and space and 3d to find its way to me.
it has been thrilling to be immersed in your talents, encouraged by your brave hearts, sheltered by your kindness, and kept alive laughing by some of the wittiest, funniest people i've had the pleasure to know and love. And I am mostly kept sane absorbing the simple and honorable commitment of so many to do right by this living planet of ours.
i just thought you guys should know. how important you are. to me.
(isn't that the title!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - promoted by pfiore8)
But regardless of that, I do believe in exclamation marks...and always have. They exist, I've seen them. And I've used them on many occasions! Even when they're completely unwarranted!
See?!
More inappropriate punctuation, a dozen or so YouTube clips, and completely disjointed and non-sensical 'semi-goodbye' ramblings and thoughts from a complete fool who was drunk during the writing of a good part of this "thing" continue down below the "fold", "jump", or whatever you want to call it...
I bring the funk below, and depending on how fast you read; probably a bit more than 5 minutes -
It's a roller coaster ride. A tumbling act. We let words loose to persuade, describe, exclaim, defame, refute, convince, lie, confuse, or clarify.
We take stands, have platforms, craft mission statements and credos, construct constitutions, and write theses and treatises. We're busy alright. Conquering worlds with words... and sometimes the horizons explode. Sometimes all light is lost.......
It's all about having something to do, really. About how you keep your creative brain churning when it's already spent the entire workday creating for other people. About how you can make music by yourself when the guys in the band have all moved away so gigs & rehearsals are rare and special. About being selfish. About lying your fucking head off. About writing what you know, with deliberate mistakes. About lots of things that won't be crammed into a riffy list. Abou...yeah, well, you know.
The backstory is not important. It will only get in the way and make readers guess at motivation when they should just enjoy the story. Because hey, even amateurs and dilettantes never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? That's right, buddy. The rules are likewise less than important. Oh really? Fuck yes. Maybe not made to be broken, but made to be bent. Bent to your will. Bent to what suits the story. Third person not honest enough? Ditch it for first-person narrative. Why trust those narrators, anyway? What have they ever done to earn that? Point A to B to C plots too boring? Duh. Okay then, how about some medeas res, dude? Eh, okay, I guess, but what else you got? Split narratives, man. Split narratives and alternating tenses? Damn, give me a goddam headache, whydoncha.
I am busy finalizing things for my move tomorrow. So I thought 73rd might get a kick out of the essay I wrote at dKos last April...
The nephews are both on little league teams and their seasons opened today. This is the second time I've done the little league thing: about 15 years ago with stepchildren and now with my sister's kids. and i swear to god, it was like I had stepped into a time warp, like I had left everything the way it was all those years ago.
(without further ado... i give you militarytracy, raw... - promoted by pfiore8)
I'm always at choice. It's the only rule I can count on and I have come to accept with 42 years of reluctance. At this point in my life I choose to ponder Iraq daily or even hourly because the country that I have been born into has done things to Iraq that deeply conflict with the laws that my soul knows and understands. All aboard the Iraq War train. I wish I was standing on the platform though like a citizen of France maybe or a citizen of any other country that didn't invade Iraq in my lifetime, and just taking all this in from that distance. I wish that lightening had not struck my train.
On my walk to the train early Tuesday morning, I realized that my apartment building has a new resident. Or at least the property does...
He sleeps wrapped up in a blanket in the 18 inches or so between our building's far northwestern corner and the bush that runs along the edge of the sidewalk. At first glance, it's easy to mistake the man for an abandoned pile of clothing. I'm sure that's by design, and frankly I doubt even I would have noticed him at all if I hadn't dropped my keys in my early morning stupor.
And now that I've gotten my personal matters straightened out again; and I will finally leave this miserable neighborhood for good in 6 weeks to single-handedly multiply the Coolness Factor of SE Hawthorne by a factor of 10...I wonder where this man will go from here? Will he stay out this way for long? Will anybody else "catch him"? Does he even care? Does he have anything to lose?
I wonder about this man's life...but I'm never going to wake him. Does anybody ever think about him? Now, or in the recent past? Besides me, of course...
A wife? Kids? Parents, brothers, sisters...nieces, nephews?
Does he know that somebody's writing about him right now?
For rusty1776 in gratitude for his
"Writing in the Raw: Valentine Confessions"
I remember when you brought me hyacinths
We walked the path under pepper trees
Laughed our way to the beach
To play in the surf like yearling seals
And when you kissed me, your salt wet curls
Dripped ocean on my face
I was a virgin then, and you a married man
In a country with strange taboos
Empowerment.
The big, new-century term. I hate it.
Almost as much as i hate that last century throwback, political correctness.
Two ideas that both disable and imprison people. IMO.
Ideas like these are what make us like our pet dogs: in a perpetual state of puppy hood... needing to be fed, cared for, and looked after throughout our lives.
It's time to toughen up. And it all starts with the way we think:::::: about ourselves.
((promoted by Turing Test! 10ish) - promoted by Turing Test)
Some light streams in through the cracks between the blinds that cover my sliding balcony door. The Winco is a 24-hour store, and the soft yellow lights of the parking lot mesmerize me at times. I like the way the puddles catch the reflections, and send them off at odd angles on their way back up. I've lost a couple hours watching this more than once...with a beer, sitting out on the balcony. Every once in a while an occassional tire, shopping cart or shoe passes through those puddles and adds even more variables to the equation as I look on from my 2nd story vantage point, roughly 12 feet up and 10 yards out.
It's 3:25 AM on a random weekday morning as I type this 'intro'...and I find myself wide awake as usual at this time. I've got work in a few hours, but if I can't sleep anyway I might as well do something productive with the time. I enjoy the night...the silence, and the lights off...I even see better this way.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
