GRUMPY OLD BASTARD HURRYING SLOWLY

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.

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

 

 

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PILGRIM WAY

The quotation, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, from the red letters in the NT that I quoted yesterday, stays with me. Pausing to think about it, I realize it has been in my head every day for a number of years. We have people who call themselves Christians ranting about taxes, demonstrating, attempting sedition from the inside, talking ignorance so blatant it embarrasses them, and they don't get it. It's not necessary to mention names; they're all over the headline-with-picture corporate news. I used to wonder in my youth why Jesus talked about love and compassion, yet the people in the church didn't even like each other, certainly not their neighbors. Love never came up as an issue. It is one of those issues you don't mention when you're a kid, because adults don't take kids seriously and you learn early, don't make adults think. How else can a warrior society adopt a message of love and peace to themselves and only adhere to OT you-better-not mind? Didn't Jesus say that old way of following rules is over? I already hear a particular voice, That's not how it is at my church. I say, Hooray. I'm not talking about any church but the churches of my experience. I would actually like to go to a particular church sometimes, but can't do it by my own inner guidance--I have to follow the rules. Told I'm expected to attend regularly, I never went back. And will not go back. I've had to clarify for a few preachers in the past that my life and my decisions are my own, whether or not he believes I have the right. I don't ask for permission to live my life as I see fit, nor do I accept guilt for not living by somebody else's opinion of something they know nothing about--another human being. They don't even know themselves.

It's a sight, looking back, how many people along the way have believed they knew better how I ought to live my life than I did. I heard so much in youth and younger adult years from people who believed they knew better than I do what's right for me, I confess to reaching a place of confusion such that I couldn't see a way out. Everybody was using their authority voice to show they know what they're talking about and I don't. By the time I was 30, I had not yet learned what was right for me, what direction to go in, what to believe and not believe. I have chosen for myself to call my path my Pilgrim Way. A solitary pilgrim who walks his own path and lets the group-think people go their own way. I used to be told by the group-think people that I'm unable to make an intelligent decision for myself without the guidance of the group. There was a time I believed that. Then I learned to my satisfaction that God indeed Is. No more group-think for me. I am so far removed from the fundamentalist churches of Kansas, it is like another lifetime, except I remember it. My mother is of group-think mind and cannot allow that I will make my own decisions. A few times I've had to jerk the illusion of reins out of her hands. She has serious control issues, the reason I live half a continent away, her control backed up by being a Christian. I'm reminded of a joke told by the VW Boys bluegrass band's guitar player, a stage joke. "My wife, she's an angel. She's always up in the air harping."

 She pushes the same issues without end, and one day I said I am never going to do any of these things she continues to ride my back about tirelessly. I removed my saddle and took it to the landfill. For years, it was: I wish you'd find a church. My answer: I know you do. There came a time, when I passed fifty, the year I found the freedom to say no, I woke up and said, I will not enter another church the rest of my life; all the church going in this lifetime is in the past. All of it. She cut it out. Now when we talk it's like she's holding her head under water unable to say the only thing she has to say. Choked. All I can say is I'm sorry she has control issues to such a degree. I've spent my adult life usurping control of my life by moving as far away as land allows. Since I won't go to church, I'm the same thing as an atheist, an atheist that doesn't take care of his responsibilities. Now that she has added Faux news to her faith, a greater divide is opening between us. She's given up on controlling my life and has no more interest in me. As I knew would be the case when I left for the coast all the many years ago. I knew then that who I am had nothing to do with anything--only the control mattered. Take away the control and nothing is left but sorrow she can't make me obey. It's been a big struggle along the way, much like dealing with a drunk, somebody drunk on an agenda, the one and only way, through Jesus Christ The Lord. Like Jehovah's Witnesses at the door pushing their agenda. I finally learned to open the door enough to say, I don't want it, and close the door. All they have on their minds is pushing their agenda. Take it someplace else. 

 

A friend I sometimes watch the races with said, "When I want to really be judged, I'll go to church." I had to say, Amen, brother. I don't care that my mother believes differently from how I believe. I don't even like to use that word, believe, because it's a long spiral like DNA. We both believe the same at the core, but she's bogged down in dogma until "the word" and the dogma are the same. I had to run for my life from the dogma where she stays mired down like a rock in mud. And wants me to do the same, to settle down, go to church, get married, have kids, buy a house. I tried to follow her demands to keep from disappointing her, making her feel bad. But it was not my path. My parents gave me such an horrendous example of a married relationship, I could not live my life in that kind of way, never saying what I mean, never admitting to anything but obeying. Punishment amounted to worshiping God, another word for Fear. Now that she's plugged into Faux tv, I'm not only the same as an atheist, but a liberal too. She says she prays for me. I say, Please do, I need plenty of it. But it's not going to buy me out of my intractable nature. She's a believer in duty, and, by example, taught me duty is not where it's at. She taught me marriage is not where it's at. She taught me church is not where it's at. She taught me group-think is not where it's at. She taught me controlling others is not where it's at. I cannot shut myself down far enough to live by her will. I cannot live my life a rock in a bog.

I tend to stay in place because my adventures are within. I don't need to climb a cliff with my fingertips to feel the thrill of living on the edge. I'm on the edge every day. Heart can stop, or not stop. I go with whichever happens. I don't like adrenalin rushes. I don't like fear. I see no point in taking chances with dying when I don't need to. My interpretation of the spiritual path is that it is one's own. My spiritual path is not about telling other people what to do. Mother's spiritual path is alienating by browbeating everyone around her about church and the Lord. A few years back, I wrote about the nature of my spiritual path. I thought she might be interested so I sent it to her. Her reaction was that I'm not afraid enough of Satan. I said, I'll leave Satan to you. As I see her recede the other side of a widening divide, I ask myself what I can do to narrow the divide. It's her divide. Now that she is married to a Limbaugh parrot plugged into Faux news, and his son is a preacher, she's gone away like a ship to sea. Bye, bye, Mommy. Her son left the fold, will not do his duty, is out of control, goes his own way in defiance of Satan. He doesn't know what to say to her anymore and she doesn't know what to say to him anymore. He can't even pretend to believe what she believes and brought him up to believe. Funny, slipping off into third person, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, separating myself from it. That's how I feel about it, third person, answering why I cannot allow myself to honor other people's expectations of my behavior where their belief systems are concerned. That's what I call group-think, and I can't go there, thanks to a lifetime of reasons why.

 

 

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FOCUSING ATTENTION

louise nevelson

 

Something big has changed inside me in the last week. I've seen it coming for quite awhile, without knowing that's what I was seeing. An understanding I've entertained for several years has finally soaked into my head until I got it. It came to me like a minor Eureka experience, maybe what is meant by a peak experience, a moment when multiple observations add up to understanding. Finally, I realized what I already know: our entire system of government from Whitehouse to county commission and town council does not consider the working people of the country or the county in even the breath of a thought except for manipulation by propaganda, marketing targets, and all possible ways to take our money to the Cayman Islands and keep it out of circulation, sinking us deeper every year in poverty quickly. We the working people of America are consciously being pushed into a poverty class of crime and killing each other. Population control. I don't even care to take it any further than that, when the problem is what has already been done, how deep we of the working class are into the process of our own undoing. Unions have been busted in a step by step process of denying us rights. The American working class does not even know itself as a working class, because those words are seldom unto never used in corporate media. Post WW2 the American working class has had its identity and its cohesion as a group force stripped away systematically by the corporate powers funneling the money of the working people up to their tax-free off-shore bank accounts.

louise nevelson

Finally, it has hit me that the ruling class regards the working class the enemy to be controlled by manipulation, by hate radio distracting the working people by inspiring us to hate one another. The right-wing hate machine is about population manipulation, and we fall for it, keep it going by believing it. I have a feeling the atmosphere was something like we have it now in the time before the Civil War. Conservative and Liberal, whatever they were called then, stirred unto hate by money interest of the Bank to manipulate the population to the Bank's will. Keeping the population focused on money as the highest ideal, by way of Manipulation Central, television, has the people of the working class working against themselves in every stitch of work they do. I realized that any attention I give to our political hacks is working against my own interest. My interest being my life. Any attention I give to that system of politics and economics works against my own interests. The Corporatocracy, the ones manipulating the people who work for a living, are bleeding us of our resources the same as they're doing with the surface of the earth. We are left in a slag heap when they're done with us and move on. Bristol Compressors in Sparta, one example of countless many. Moving factories from the South, the lowest paying region of the country, to Asian sweatshops put the South into an unacknowledged Depression.

louise nevelson

In pop culture we see the national popularity of vampires that drain us of our vital resource, blood, symbolizing our other vital resource, money. Zombies are the living dead, completely uninspired by a lifetime in front of television, manipulated without noticing, lullabied into the zone of hypnosis by explosions, gunshots, screaming, murder, killing, nudity, sex and displays of wealth, seductions to debt. Control. If you want to check these observations out by testing them, stop watching television for a year. If you can't do that, then simply pay attention to what is going into your unconsciousness by way of eyes and ears. Get your head out of that world of manipulation telling you to spend more money on things you neither want nor need. The message of television is that ignorance trumps knowledge. This has become the American belief system after two-thirds of a century. The less educated we are, the easier we are to manipulate, the more quickly we give up our resources by way of debt. I've known all this for years and years. The part that stopped my mind was realizing that anything I do that participates in this political / economic system goes against my own interest as a human being, as an American citizen who prefers Democracy, as a drop in the ocean of the working class, as one who mourns seeing cultures replaced by the television belief system that emptiness is fullness, that money is the only reason for being. Religion television sells the same belief system.

louise nevelson

What do I do? For one thing, the corporate web of dependency is so pervasive there is no way out of it. I say I won't want to support big corporations that are destroying our country and the world, but I have to deal in money. I need gas, groceries, shelter, etc. So I don't want my money going to Walmart for a host of reasons. I want to buy locally. I'm of the attitude if I can't get it in Sparta, or by mail, I don't want it. Corporate bookstores have shut down thousands and thousands of small bookstores all over the country. Amazon has the market on books. My spending is down to the minimum. About everything I spend money on is a corporate product. I can't help that. It's the nature of the society I live in, and I must perform at least that minimum for sheer existence. But I don't have to buy the belief system. I already have, to a great extent, but think of it as "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Then as now, Caesar, government, wants our money. Jesus' take on the matter was to let them have it. Money is worthless anyway. I don't need to buy the philosophy or the belief systems. I can give less attention to the serial comic strip called the News, give less attention to wanting new things, put my money, my energy, in the hands of small businesses in my community as much as possible. I will limit the focus of my attention on political machinations in DC and the breakdown of American life, and give more attention to my own world, my community, the people I know and care about. It's not a lot that I have to ask of myself, except just shifting attention from the toxic to the nontoxic.   

 

louise nevelson

 

 

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