bluets
In a minor swivet today, attempting to make some progress on some art projects I have around the house in different phases of development, waiting for paint to dry that will take weeks. I like oil paint, and don't care that it takes a long time to dry. It's part of my hurry slowly ethic. I don't want to allow myself to fall into needing everything to be right now. It hasn't been many years, if it can be measured in years, that I've found my flow and fell in tune with it. The reason I never saw it before is my flow is slow. I only feel engaged with my flow when my body and mind are in slow gear. It took slowing way, way down to find it. I couldn't believe how slow it seemed. Mind in this time is set on racing speed. It was called the rat race in the Fifties. Today, it's expected. I went from being something of a fishing boat with an outboard motor to a sailboat. I like it much better. I prefer the sound of water slapping the hull to a gasoline motor spewing pollution. It was a surprise to find my flow is so slow. It was also not a surprise. I hadn't thought of the rate of the flow, how fast or slow it goes. A moment's thought tells me the flow is slow. The money flow is fast. When I separate myself from the money flow, I slow way down, slow down so much that I meet my flow like using sails instead of the internal combustion engine with the gas, the oil, the breakdowns, the noise, the unreliability, the indifference to the flow of air or water. I want to be in tune with the flow of the weather, the air, the flow of the donkeys, ants, of the trees. When my flow is slow I feel a rapport with the natural world around me, with the crows, the donkeys, the trees, the ground, the air, the ferns that are uncurled to full leaf, the water flowing over and around rocks in the creek.
It was a day of the phone ringing over and over. Nielsen tv ratings, 800 service, mostly. And people I knew called. I don't recall a day of the phone ringing so many times. With Caller ID it's easy to just let the phone ring. It's been happening so much lately, I click TALK, then click END immediately to stop the phone from ringing. I don't care what it does at the other end. I'm thinking about picking it up next time and telling whatever college student is working a shit job for next to no pay to stop calling this number. Haven't done it yet because I doubt it will do any good. It's nothing personal at their end. It's only personal at my end. I'm on the no-call list, like it matters. I despise these invasions of my life at home so much that I look for ways to be a nuisance in return. I can't blow a whistle into the phone or cuss whoever it is at the other end. It's a sucker college student taking the last job he or she can find that pays anything. They're not my problem. Management is my problem, the decision-makers who find disturbing me in my home at meal times is good marketing. When corporate junk mail sends a return envelope pre-paid, I'll put some paper I'd otherwise throw away, junk mail from another source, back to them on their own cut-rate first class postage. I don't make them nasty because the only person who will ever see the contents is the one assigned to opening the mail from the corporation's own envelopes, somebody being paid nearly nothing. I do it to add a few cents to their operating expenses. It's nothing to the corporate accountants, but it's personal to me. The international corporations buy legislation to make it legal to trample my individual freedoms and I have no recourse. Sending junk mail back to them is my recourse. It is little in cost with negligible nuisance factor at their end, but it satisfies me, junk mail for junk mail. You trample my right to a peaceable life at home engaged in my own flow, I trample yours. A rule of thumb I live by is to never buy anything advertised on television, except by necessity. I stay out of Walmart, except for necessity, which is rare.
I've never felt right supporting the Death Star with my taxes. Two-thirds of what I pay in taxes goes to the Pentagon. I cannot, in conscience, have so much income I pay multiple thousands a year into the machine to kill and destroy the lives of poor people in defenseless countries and put black people in prison at home. I cannot support the war on the poor around the globe and at home. It's been my philosophy since as far back as I can remember in my working life, to live on the least income possible and pay the least into that which I am coerced against my will to support. I laugh at the teabaggers waving AKs in the air, snorting about not wanting to pay taxes. I think: Dude, you're taxed for what you want. Want less, you pay less taxes. Want nothing, you pay no taxes. You rant about being a Christian. Didn't Jesus say, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to get it that he's talking about paying your taxes. You want peace of mind, pay your taxes. You don't want peace of mind, do what you gotta do. I wouldn't hold them to Jesus' teaching if they didn't make a public issue of supposed adherence to Southern Baptistism. They holler Bible and Constitution and don't know either one, nor American History. They embarrass themselves and everyone else in Christendom by wrapping themselves in the word Christian. Maybe ten years ago I was talking with some people from Pennsylvania, pleasantly, and then, Are you a Christian? I thought: Ruin a good conversation. My right front tire went flat, pulled me into the wall; had to get out of this conversation now. I said, Christian is a political party and I'm not a member. Of course, that's not what they meant. Was I saved? I felt even more distant from them. I could only think, It's none of your damn business. Do you have your underwear on today? All I said was yes. From then on my air was leave me alone. We didn't waste each other's time much longer. I'm too easily bored by robots and parrots to have a successful social life.
Best place for me is at home. I've become paranoid about driving on the highway. The new generation of highway patrol is zero tolerance zealous as per training. In the state of North Carolina, to see the flashing blue light in the rearview mirror costs $200 on sight. Like it costs at least a hundred dollars to step across a doctor's threshold. They're pulling people for everything now. I take the parkway and back roads, going on the highways only when necessary and five miles under the speed limit. Now I know why old people drive so slow. It's been a give-a-shit last couple days. I told Carole on the phone this morning that today I say to the universe I am ready to go, any time is ok from here on. I will not ask for a stay. I'm down to there is nothing I want but to get by. The expenses of just getting by are outrageous. Getting by isn't even fun anymore. So much anger and hate swirl about in the air between people now. Sunday in the car with Nevlim and Nitsuj, two Parsi guys visiting from Mumbai, Nitsuj driving, Nitsuj had to pull off the road in a hurry. A guy in a black pickup went by and shot him the bird. I thought: Wrong thing to do, Mr Big. You better be careful about doing that to people you don't know. Nitsuj went after him, went right up to his bumper, then turned onto the road we were to turn onto. He told me, If you and Nivlem had not been with me, I'd have run him off the road. I can do it. Easy. I don't care. I just didn't want to scare you and Nivlem. He wasn't talking big, either. Might have been a little exaggeration in there for drama, but he would have done something. One of those things I don't do that could lead to a gunfight really fast. A lot of other people would jump at the chance. I'm content to stay at home and let other people fight out their frustrations from feeling helpless in a low-bid world that honors only privilege. I want to stay home and look out the windows at donkeys, squirrels, birds, rhododendron, ferns, wild violets, jewelweed. I have my own library for reading and music. For art projects, I have given myself a control: no buying anything but the minimum necessary, like tubes of white paint. I won't use any paint I don't already have. Canvases, boards, surfaces to paint on, brushes, objects to make things from, will be found in my inventory of found things I've picked up over time; wood, rock, metal, plastic, paper. It's time to collage all the found objects I've picked up over time.
woody allen
It was a day of the phone ringing over and over. Nielsen tv ratings, 800 service, mostly. And people I knew called. I don't recall a day of the phone ringing so many times. With Caller ID it's easy to just let the phone ring. It's been happening so much lately, I click TALK, then click END immediately to stop the phone from ringing. I don't care what it does at the other end. I'm thinking about picking it up next time and telling whatever college student is working a shit job for next to no pay to stop calling this number. Haven't done it yet because I doubt it will do any good. It's nothing personal at their end. It's only personal at my end. I'm on the no-call list, like it matters. I despise these invasions of my life at home so much that I look for ways to be a nuisance in return. I can't blow a whistle into the phone or cuss whoever it is at the other end. It's a sucker college student taking the last job he or she can find that pays anything. They're not my problem. Management is my problem, the decision-makers who find disturbing me in my home at meal times is good marketing. When corporate junk mail sends a return envelope pre-paid, I'll put some paper I'd otherwise throw away, junk mail from another source, back to them on their own cut-rate first class postage. I don't make them nasty because the only person who will ever see the contents is the one assigned to opening the mail from the corporation's own envelopes, somebody being paid nearly nothing. I do it to add a few cents to their operating expenses. It's nothing to the corporate accountants, but it's personal to me. The international corporations buy legislation to make it legal to trample my individual freedoms and I have no recourse. Sending junk mail back to them is my recourse. It is little in cost with negligible nuisance factor at their end, but it satisfies me, junk mail for junk mail. You trample my right to a peaceable life at home engaged in my own flow, I trample yours. A rule of thumb I live by is to never buy anything advertised on television, except by necessity. I stay out of Walmart, except for necessity, which is rare.
the restaurant at the edge of the universe
I've never felt right supporting the Death Star with my taxes. Two-thirds of what I pay in taxes goes to the Pentagon. I cannot, in conscience, have so much income I pay multiple thousands a year into the machine to kill and destroy the lives of poor people in defenseless countries and put black people in prison at home. I cannot support the war on the poor around the globe and at home. It's been my philosophy since as far back as I can remember in my working life, to live on the least income possible and pay the least into that which I am coerced against my will to support. I laugh at the teabaggers waving AKs in the air, snorting about not wanting to pay taxes. I think: Dude, you're taxed for what you want. Want less, you pay less taxes. Want nothing, you pay no taxes. You rant about being a Christian. Didn't Jesus say, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to get it that he's talking about paying your taxes. You want peace of mind, pay your taxes. You don't want peace of mind, do what you gotta do. I wouldn't hold them to Jesus' teaching if they didn't make a public issue of supposed adherence to Southern Baptistism. They holler Bible and Constitution and don't know either one, nor American History. They embarrass themselves and everyone else in Christendom by wrapping themselves in the word Christian. Maybe ten years ago I was talking with some people from Pennsylvania, pleasantly, and then, Are you a Christian? I thought: Ruin a good conversation. My right front tire went flat, pulled me into the wall; had to get out of this conversation now. I said, Christian is a political party and I'm not a member. Of course, that's not what they meant. Was I saved? I felt even more distant from them. I could only think, It's none of your damn business. Do you have your underwear on today? All I said was yes. From then on my air was leave me alone. We didn't waste each other's time much longer. I'm too easily bored by robots and parrots to have a successful social life.
fencepost ruin
Best place for me is at home. I've become paranoid about driving on the highway. The new generation of highway patrol is zero tolerance zealous as per training. In the state of North Carolina, to see the flashing blue light in the rearview mirror costs $200 on sight. Like it costs at least a hundred dollars to step across a doctor's threshold. They're pulling people for everything now. I take the parkway and back roads, going on the highways only when necessary and five miles under the speed limit. Now I know why old people drive so slow. It's been a give-a-shit last couple days. I told Carole on the phone this morning that today I say to the universe I am ready to go, any time is ok from here on. I will not ask for a stay. I'm down to there is nothing I want but to get by. The expenses of just getting by are outrageous. Getting by isn't even fun anymore. So much anger and hate swirl about in the air between people now. Sunday in the car with Nevlim and Nitsuj, two Parsi guys visiting from Mumbai, Nitsuj driving, Nitsuj had to pull off the road in a hurry. A guy in a black pickup went by and shot him the bird. I thought: Wrong thing to do, Mr Big. You better be careful about doing that to people you don't know. Nitsuj went after him, went right up to his bumper, then turned onto the road we were to turn onto. He told me, If you and Nivlem had not been with me, I'd have run him off the road. I can do it. Easy. I don't care. I just didn't want to scare you and Nivlem. He wasn't talking big, either. Might have been a little exaggeration in there for drama, but he would have done something. One of those things I don't do that could lead to a gunfight really fast. A lot of other people would jump at the chance. I'm content to stay at home and let other people fight out their frustrations from feeling helpless in a low-bid world that honors only privilege. I want to stay home and look out the windows at donkeys, squirrels, birds, rhododendron, ferns, wild violets, jewelweed. I have my own library for reading and music. For art projects, I have given myself a control: no buying anything but the minimum necessary, like tubes of white paint. I won't use any paint I don't already have. Canvases, boards, surfaces to paint on, brushes, objects to make things from, will be found in my inventory of found things I've picked up over time; wood, rock, metal, plastic, paper. It's time to collage all the found objects I've picked up over time.
deceased black pine
*
Wow Tj...quite a diatribe going on here this morning..guess it is not really a diatribe but certainly is a dialog...I know how you feel about phone calls, prejudice, driving and police and needing less...I have all the same feelings...it must be something that happens as we age.... I too want to stay home and look out the windows at donkeys, squirrels, birds, rhododendron, ferns, wild violets, jewelweed.I don't have all of those things to look at but most...then on the other hand I want to move where I can walk on a sidewalk through a vibrant neighborhood to the local markets and art venues, mix and converse with intelligent people who can speak of things other than whether my trees block their view for getting off a side street to another road...dang...if they would stop, look and proceed it would be fine but they want to hesitate at the stop and then go...I guess I want the best of both worlds...That is the libra in me and I know there is no "best." there will always be the unpleasant side of everything, everyplace and every one...and I could go on and on but will say thank you for the morning read...enjoyed and it got me to thinking...
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