Curious day that I don't understand, but do, and don't know what to make of it. Maybe I learned more than I needed to know or made something of nothing, suspecting the latter. I was at lunch with a group of people I have lunch with every month, also a meeting for our charity group. Half the people there were involved in local music all their lives. I took the cd sleeve of a new cd from Field Recorders Collective, Old Time Fiddle Music of Alleghany County, NC, put together by Lucas Pasley. All were interested in old-time music. I passed it around for them to see this new, wonderful recording of the old-time musicians they knew, who had been dead a long time. Three different ones asked me how they could get one. With each one, before I could get started with the answer, they wilfully distracted their attention elsewhere. I stopped talking. Nobody noticed. I've seen this for some time. One will ask me a question, then distract themselves somewhere else when I start to answer, I stop talking and nobody notices. I've learned not to talk at all. It's annoying when they ask me a question, because I know in advance I won't finish the first sentence, but feel compelled to start because asked. It's so consistent, I came to attribute it to unconsciousness.
The guy that sat next to me never listens to anything I say. Not that he's unfriendly. He's not a listener. As long as he's talking, all is good, I speak and his attention is distracted away immediately. I stop talking and he never notices. Today he spoke to me, asked me how to find the cd and when I answered, distracted his attention elsewhere. I think I'm getting it. I don't belong among them. What they want me around for, I don't know. I used to have the radio show of regional music and the music store for regional music, none of them ever came into, and they wanted me to be in their group. I don't do the radio show any more and the store has been closed eight years. I've moved on in my life, pursued my own interests, of which old-time music still has a place, but I'm on my own path. Today was such a repeat of how they all distract themselves when I speak, I think it's time for me to get it. I must take into consideration they're all talkers, none of them listeners. That's where I think it really is. Just plain old everyday life unconsciousness. I know it's not because they look at this blog. I can say with assurance not one of them has seen it one time. This was one of the days I wonder what I'm doing among them. One thing about it, I have at least one good lunch in a month, which I pay for, the only way I'd do it. I'm not going to get dramatic about it. I'll just keep my mouth shut as I've learned from much experience. I'm the only one that doesn't watch television. I had to remind self our minds are wired very differently.
I was laughing within because I've been aware of unconsciousness in self recently, then I sit at a table of unconsciousness for an hour. That's all it was, unconsciousness. It's always the same, like church. And they're all church people. I'm hyper-sensitive to unconsciousness because I've been looking at it in self, awed. It wasn't like it was any different today from another time. I've been looking at television's influence on the unconsciousness going around, and don't think it's there. No question the tv lulls one into unconsciousness, but we humans have never been awake. We have awakenings that wake us out of our sleep. Doing the same thing over and over, year after year, is unconsciousness. That I'm expected there is my only reason for going. There I am, giving in to the expected. And why is it I'm expected? Do they need somebody to ignore? It's not that I need the attention. It's that many years ago I realized my number one pet peeve is somebody asking me a question and when I start to answer, turn and walk away. There was a time I did not forgive this behavior, and it wasn't long ago.
I sat there thinking today, there was a time you would not have tolerated this. It's not rejection they're doing so much as we're comfortable as family among each other and everybody acts and talks like among family, unconscious. I like what we do as a group and I like all the people involved, they're some of my favorite people. I'm honored to be among them. I'm not going to separate myself from them because nobody listens to me. I don't want to talk anyway. I'm comfortable sitting, saying nothing. It's how I'm most comfortable. And my distress is the same as in the family, feathers ruffled, get over it and go on. Writing about it has helped settle mind about it. When I started, I didn't know what to make of today. I don't watch Fake news and don't listen to hate radio, so I don't click with the men. One has a donkey, and we talk donkeys. Two make music and we talk music. I find the women infinitely more interesting to talk with. The men value obedience and supposed to. The women do too, but there is a lot more to the women. It was a good pie slice of the warrior society Alleghany County is and always has been. Lotsa Marines. The guy sitting next to me was a Marine. I accept them as themselves. The people around the table are my people, people I receive as they are, not as I would project onto them. I've come to a place where I laugh seeing all the unconscious people around the table, self a link in the chain, laugh with uncertainty, it's such an unspoken taboo to disturb unconsciousness.
photos by tj worthington
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