NOBODY GOING NOWHERE

vada by cheyanne

I don't know if the answer is ignorance, or if it is far-seeing foresight, or if it is trained into us over centuries and millennia, or if it is from feeling powerless without a voice, or maybe from collective experience, but the question is why do we lay about and hope a benevolent force will come to us from outside to rescue us from ourselves? The hope that flying saucers would rescue us from hard-edged absence of caring has been with us since the Fifties. A website, paoweb, has "updates by Sheldon Niddle," purportedly channeled from galactic federation wise counsel. I've looked at it occasionally over the last several years to find over and over that "first contact," when a mass landing will announce we are being watched over by beings more intelligent than we; they're just around the corner, any day now, soon now, coming to set us up in an ideal society under the galactic federation. Whatever. A few years ago, a definite date was announced. The date came and went. Oh, well, no problem. Some things were not in place they thought were in place and it turned out the timing wasn't right. Sounds like Fundamentalists announcing the end of the world and then it doesn't happen. There was a bunch in southern California some years ago who poisoned themselves because a comet was passing by and it was here to collect their souls. Sometimes I need some input like this to remind self that our inept government is not the only dysfunction going around. It galls me to think the people in DC actually represent us. They do not represent our interests, but they do represent the greed, the I'd-rather-be-watching-tv mind, readiness to lie to get what we want, the way we look up the ladder not down, our style of looking the other way when we see somebody down and out, our self-centered focus that says all for me, screw everybody else. In that way, they are a mirror to American motivations.

 

vada by cheyanne

 

Sparta has been down and out since the year 2000. It was limping along before, but since 2000, businesses go away, new businesses start up and go away. For awhile the talk was tourism, get people to come in here from other places to save us because we can't save ourselves. And factories. Maybe a factory will come here and save us. How much of that mind that we cannot save ourselves comes from religion, a totally different kind of "salvation?" An old joke came to mind. A man fell overboard from a cruise ship. He's in the water praying to God to save him. Somebody threw him a floating ring, but he wouldn't touch it, God's going to save him. He drowned and went to heaven. He asked God why God didn't save him when he was calling for help. God said, I threw you a floating ring and you wouldn't have it. I take it to mean an element of self-help and accepting help is part of the deal. Seems like if we take care of ourselves, the desperate prayer to God to fix us may not have to be so desperate. I like to live my belief that God's counsel, scriptures, are here to help me make my own decisions more in line with the reality of the moment and not feel the need for the Unknown to hurry up and save me from the results of my own dim-witted decisions. I believe that in this time, historically in the evolution of consciousness, the mental exercise of making decisions is important in the soul's growth and the brain's development. I never learned about decision making until I was away from parents who permitted no decision making. I came out of the experience dreading, afraid of making decisions, not having experience. Right away I made some disastrous decisions for myself because I did not know how to decide, how to be impartial. Up to age 23 I was ruled from outside myself; parents, marriage, military. The next 5 years after leaving parents were taken up by forces outside myself making my decisions. I gave myself to them. By the time I left the Navy and marriage at the same time, I was suddenly able to start thinking about making my own decisions, and became jealous of making my decisions. Nobody makes my decisions without my permission. Anyway, that was the dream. In this time of the life, looking back, I was then, and am able now, to hang on to original purpose.   

vada by cheyanne

I can't say I've always made the best decisions or even rational decisions, even sensible decisions, but somehow I've made it to today. I started college on my own, making decisions for myself. I was not aware in that time of the importance of decision making. This is hindsight talking about the importance of decisions. Then, I dreaded having to make any decision. Didn't know what to do. I was on my own first time like a dog that had lived on a chain since a puppy set free. The dog runs heedlessly in any direction chosen at random. It just runs. Inevitably, like a bird that escapes a cage does not know defensive flying and gets nailed by a hawk first day, the dog runs across the road in front of a car first day. I was determined not to be heedless with my freedom, which allows me to be sitting here today writing about it; otherwise, I'd have gone the way of the bird and the dog. Made some decisions I would not make today, explaining why I have a little bit of peace of mind in this time of the life. For one thing, I tried to learn how to be social, how to be charming at a cocktail party, how to be seen with the right set, shit like that. It never took. Never found comfort in a cocktail party. Then, I knew people I would totally stay away from now. Also, the other side of the coin, found a handful of the best friends of my life unto death do us part. Knew some wonderful people, too, people I recollect with warm feeling in the heart. It doesn't do to get in touch with people I have not seen since that time. They've gone to careers, families and new cars, bought the package. I've gone hillbilly, live on a back road with a cat, two donkeys, and drive a twenty year old car with rust places. I'm really at an ideal place in the life. I've lived the ideal that I don't want to impress anybody. I'm there. Nobody going nowhere. I don't impress anybody who lives by the way of "the world," the human mind. I need the freedom to let go and let God, as they say, let things around me happen their own natural way with the least of my interference. It may not be good husbandry, but it is how I'm comfortable.

vada by cheyanne

I have, I actually have held as a guiding light for self, to be somebody who does not impress anybody. I don't want people looking at me with the I'm-impressed look, or sucking up to me because I have power and influence, or wanting to rub elbows because I have more money than they do, or introducing me to people I don't want to meet, a great big expanse of expectations I don't want to pretend to live up to. I want the world of commerce and whatever else they do out there, that whole system of taking other people's money legally, I want them not even to know my name. I want them to see me the way they saw old man Sherman Scott who drove to town on his red-belly Ford tractor and wore his bib overalls and work boots to church. Just an old nuisance nobody much knows, he sees just a few people and stays to hisself, not looking for nothing but to live in harmony with neighbors, friends and the people he knows. Articulating it like this, in retrospect, I've made it. I spend my own time studying, learning, not in a structured, academic way. Like, for some reason I start wondering what is going on in China. What news we get about China is propaganda. So I start at zero. I know nothing about China. I found some contemporary Chinese films through netflix, found Chinese fiction and poetry through amazon, then wanted to read a history of China. Came upon the time of Genghis Khan. Two pages. All I knew about him was cliché stuff. He seemed awfully interesting in those two pages. I put the marker in the Chinese history and found a biography, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Found him much like King David; genocidal warlord, brilliant mind, a heart as big as Mongolia, became the Founding Father of the nation that formerly had been continually warring tribes. He really was a great man. This was a man who could jump on a wild horse and ride, only rode wild horses. This is how my study is done my way. A little bit at a time over several years, I'm familiar now with how people live in China. This just one of many veins I follow with no purpose but the guiding light of curiosity.  

cheyanne selfie

 

*

 

GETTING OLD

        joan miro, 1925, siesta


I skipped going to Woodlawn tonight for whatever music was playing. It was a quiet day at home with Caterpillar and no problems. Watched a Spanish film, THE GRANDFATHER. Quite a story. Looked like it might have come from a novel. The story amounts to the old man who took care of a lot of people in the community along the way, helped the church out with big money, was generous with the people around him. In his old age, they become the vultures wanting to shut him up in a monastery, a nursing home for the wealthy, because they wanted his money too. His sorrow in his old age was seeing everyone he had helped along the way position themselves for his leavings. The story amounted to the various people in the film finding opportunities tell every one of them in no uncertain terms they are ethically without any foundation. His daughter-in-law tood the chance to tell him off, he told her off. The tellings off alienated some and drew others to him. He was like a grumpy old character, but he was also not. He'd been abused and had undeniable right to say what he said, which was always more understated than overstated.


His story was an example in a life story of one of the reasons I never wanted wealth. I did not want my friends to be the sort that abandon me when I'm down and out. Hail far, I've been down and out all the way along, so nobody I know as a friend has an eye on my status or money. My friends take me for who I am, as I take them for who they are. Nobody gets any status points for knowing me. That's for sure. It's more like anti-status points you get for knowing me. You don't tell people you know that curmudgeon old crackpot on the mountain without a disclaimer. I love the freedom in having no money beyond skeletal necessity. Nobody rubbing up on me with a cheshire cat grin wanting whatever they perceive in their imaginations could rub off on them. I really love that. Relatives aren't sucking up to me, gathering around like buzzards around a dying buffalo waiting for it to quit breathing. I have no power anyone else would want close to. I've found when I make my own decisions everything flows smoothly, more or less. When I let other people make my decisions, they're never right, what comes of them never has anything to do with where I am on my path. It's the same when I make somebody else's decision.


By this time in my life, I don't let other people make my decisions. It irritates the hell out of some, and that's ok. Whatever it takes. Nobody has a right to make other people's decisions unless for someone in their care who is unable to decide for self. Somebody comes along I've recently met and in a little bit start telling me what I'm going to do, and then I have to tell that what I'm not going to do is what, alas, they intend for me to do. Every time somebody comes along determined to make my decisions, I have to make it clear according to context that I make my own decisons, too bad if you don't like it. I watched very closely while taking care of Jr that I allow him to make all decisions he was able to. I was his servant. I was there to allow him to live by his own power, even when it's so dim as to be no more than the ability to decide whether or not he felt like eating when it was time. Clock time and body time are not always the same. I was never there to rule him for a moment, only to serve. Jr only had one or two buzzards and they went their way after finding no hidden money.


The old boy in the movie, The Grandfather, showed me what a blessing it was for Jr to have a caregiver who was there to help him live by his own decision making as long as he was able. When he became unable, I knew him well enough to anticipate his decisions so I could continue with his flow. I would like to have seen Dean before he went out, but he was in serious hospital in Boone on the verge for quite awhile. I'd been thinking about calling to see if he was home so I could stop by and visit. That was when I saw the yellow Cadillac in the procession. It didn't seem right. It never seems right. Dean is one of the people we need more of on this earth, not less of. So was Jr. So it is with a lot of people. Since I've lived in these mountains I've known some mighty wonderful people, people who don't laugh at basic human values, people who want to be real by their own definition of reality. Sincerity and authenticity matter to the people of the mountains. Dean and Jr were of the generation that is the hair on the tip of the fox's tail, the very end of mountain culture is going away with them.


They are not the end of mountain culture. When someone I know dies, it used to seem a major loss to have a whole lifetime of experience come to nothing in dying. I'm seeing now the soul is having our experiences, the soul is where they register in who we are, individually. It's true to say we are our experiences. If the soul, then, is the repository of our expriences, we carry them with us when the soul leaves the body, or anyway the impressions of our experiences. Like maybe if one dies in a car wreck, he might be somebody next lifetime who refuses to learn to drive a car. That's a conjecture, not putting it down as a rule or guideline. Thinking "out loud," thinking through my fingertips.


I want to read some more Surrealist poetry by people like Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos, Jacques Prevert, Louis Aragon. Somewhere in the house is an anothology of 20th Century French poetry I will find soon and read some amazing poetry. One I like quite a lot that I'm looking through now is a 1955 edition from Grove Press, edited by Wallace Fowlie. Loaded with poetry so far off the wall it's out in the middle of the room. In my way of seeing, the French and the Americans ruled the world in 20th Century poetry, in very different ways. The French are the heirs of Rimbaud. We are the heirs of Walt Whitman. That Prevert poem I uploaded yesterday woke up that facet of my interest. French poetry has that je ne sait quois that sets French cuisine apart, that je ne sait quois that is French and French alone.        


*