THE GHOST PARAGRAPH AND THE CIRCLE

sofia and cat toy

 

This the final day of Thanksgiving weekend, a thankful attitude has been with me for four days, looking at the world that is my life, noting gratitude unto overwhelmed. It is seeing in a new light, though not altogether new, in a light that has joy in it. I look out the window, see Jenny eating Jack's grain and laugh within. A few minutes ago Jack was standing at his grain pile eating, Jenny standing behind him after she'd finished her grain, like waiting in line. She eats faster than Jack. She will eat three carrots while he eats one. Jack was aware she was standing behind him and knew what came next. He could have easily popped her on the chin and chose not to. She was anxious, shifting her weight on her feet, watching Jack. After waiting long enough she walked around to Jack's right side, nonchalantly turned her rear end to him and stepped backwards, placing her back knees under his belly threatening. He stepped aside and let her have the last of his grain. She could not have taken his grain soon after I poured it without a fight.

 

 

 

The first day of thinking about thankfulness because we're s'posed-to was Thanksgiving day. Tapped into facebook, it's impossible not to think about it. First thing I came up with was just about everything. I woke from a nap a little bit ago, during which I composed in a dream the first paragraph for a subject I thought I'd write about today. It happened in half dream state and half slightly awake, though the awareness of being awake may have been part of the dream. I wrote it out, sentence by sentence, thinking I'll get up and write down this paragraph composed in sleep. Waking, I sat up on the side of the bed, slipped feet into shoes, Sophia jumped onto my lap. I looked at the dream for the paragraph and the first sentence was gone, then it was all gone, then I forgot what it was about. In subconscious mind, while writing the paragraph, it came to me I am grateful for each one, individually, of my readers. The reader completes the circle of the writing, like a band and the audience. One needs the other to complete the circle.

 

 

 

I'm especially grateful for the people I've met through the writing, the Daily Creative Practitioners among them. This is the best part of every day for me. I enjoy writing to you more than watching a good movie, even. Some years ago, I wrote a weekly column for the local paper. In conversation with the editor one day I mentioned that the time of writing was my favorite time of the week. He said, Really? I said, Yeah. He said, You need a life. I heard his remark as the stupidest assessment I'd ever been offered about myself. He had a passion for changing my punctuation. One day I told him I'd like him to stop messing up my punctuation. He said, What? I told him it changes the meaning and the rhythm when he changes a comma to a period. He said, The rhythm? You're strange. I couldn't hold back. I said, Remember this: I am the strangest individual you will ever meet in  your life. I felt it a safe prophecy as he had the most limited mind of anyone I know.

 

 

 

I especially like about writing in a blog the absence of an editor. Everyone I have talked with who wrote a newspaper column for a period of time said they left it over an impossible editor who could not refrain from making disruptive changes. I left after being censored the third time. I was told at the beginning my column is in my name, independent of the paper. That didn't last long. The final one was in the time of Abu Ghraib prison torture in the headlines and photographs of Geneva Convention atrocities. I was saying this is an embarrassment to all that America stands for around the globe. He said, We are not a political paper. I said, This is not politics; it's history. He said, We can't run it without changes. I said, Then you'll not run it. He said, What should I put in its place? I said, I don't care; you're the editor, figure it out. I wrote a farewell piece to my readers for the following week and was done with it. Five years was enough. Time to pass it on to somebody else. Writing daily is fulfilling. Not in a big external way like appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, but in a big way within. I use it as a psychoanalyst's couch, to see more clearly.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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THANKSGIVING THANKFULNESS

vincent van gogh

I did Thanksgiving twice yesterday. It serves as a measure of the thankfulness in my mind over the last few days thinking about the importance of giving thanks, gratitude, appreciation. It is a social day of seeing friends and family all over the land, for some a happy day, for some an unhappy day, according to the individual's experience from birth on. I used to think it an unhappy time, many years ago. My later years are so much better than the early years, I hardly ever think about the early years. Dwelling on them for even a short time brings me down. They were years of depression without recourse, something on the order of hands cuffed behind my back, being assaulted by a cop and charged with resisting arrest. Like when you're up against a cop in court, you lose, nobody believes a child and children are property. What a long, drawn-out time of the long years of childhood, waiting to grow up and take charge of my own destiny, for better or worse. In the teens I would lie in bed at night and fantasize hitchhiking to the West Coast, get a job on a merchant ship going to Asia, leave the ship, walk to Tibet and never return. These were the years Tibetans were leaving the homeland for India to escape the Chinese invasion. The kid was unaware of news of the day outside looking at Time magazine for History class, current events. The rest of the world amounted to a fantasy in my head after movies and television. By the time I saw Rome, I'd seen some Fellini films. The whole time there, I was looking for it to be like a Fellini film and it was not. He was showing movie stars. What I saw was regular people like we see everywhere. Rome did not have the aura of sophistication Fellini films suggested in my mind. I wondered how he got La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 out of Rome. 

vincent van gogh

Walking on sidewalks among Italians, cars and scooters in a free-style race on the streets, Rome fell from its place as idyllic city in the clouds and crashed into everyday life. Scenes were not framed, but went all the way around. The streets in Fellini's Rome were mostly empty of motorized transportation. Rome of everyday life had so many cars and such frenzied traffic the dream cloud Rome went poof. I'd heard the English were friendly and polite. That one went poof in London. It's like meeting a writer whose work I really love. Suddenly, he or she turns into everyday life and the glitter of my projection falls to the floor. It's a similar feeling with times like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. So much supposed-to is around all of them that anything short of supposed-to, like everyday life, drains the glory out of the day. I noticed yesterday when the dinner was over, it was like Thanksgiving is over, similar to Christmas being over when the last present is opened. From then on it's waiting for the day to be over; daddy's home from work, hunker down and stay out of sight as much as possible. The kid had a happy nature, wanted to be laughing and having fun, but a light hearted attitude made the kid a target. Depressed and shut down, the kid was safe. Through the high school years on Christmas vacation from school, I'd come down with flu first day and recover last day, feeling cheated out of my vacation, but sick in bed the kid was safe. I really don't want to drag you into that place. It created an attitude toward life, hand-in-hand with Fundamentalism in its most absurd extreme, I could not live with out in the world among other people. I've spent my adult life adjusting my attitude toward life, raising it from anger and depression a step at a time, understanding by understanding, insight by insight. My sanity I knew lurked hidden way down deep within locked away for safe keeping. My Hope diamond in the safe deposit box. Uncovering it became the purpose of my adult life. 

vincent van gogh

Essentially, I had shut down my heart that became so wounded I withdrew it from further disappointment. I was told once I was like a cactus, don't get too close. I suppose it was a defensive attitude and possibly a charm to some who would be challenged by someone they can't reach emotionally. The only thing I knew for sure when I went out on my own was I could not and would not live the rest of my life like parents lived. I would not live bitching at a partner, nor being bitched at. I carry this today. When somebody starts bitching at me, that's it. If I were one to believe hitting solved problems, a few people in the past would have been knocked to the ground. Having learned to internalize my anger instead of expressing it, I get mad, then depressed and never want to see so-and-so again. And don't. I don't disrespect anybody and do not tolerate being disrespected. This goes back to early conversations with self, "I'll never take this shit the rest of my life," sealed with determination in the heart. I've walked away from four jobs, that I can think of, over disrespect. At the moment. Didn't wait two weeks. The first time I said, "I took this shit all through my childhood. I don't take it anymore." The other times I failed to explain. Once it's done, it's done. There's no going back. No matter who it is. And I don't have a problem with it. I'm glad I think enough of myself to weed my immediate environment of people who believe they have a right to disrespect me. I remind self, "I don't go back for seconds." An employer who uses his right to fire me as a threat, forgets, or never thought of it, that I have a right to fire him. Rights run both ways in my adult life, or not at all. I came to the mountains to retreat into semi-solitude and live my life in peace. I am devoid of time for people who believe they have rights I don't have or power over.

vincent van gogh

This explicates why I am not a success in business or anything else that pays. If gulping down disrespect is good for making money, I don't want the money. Money is not worth that much. I sometimes think, in certain parts of big cities you can be killed for disrespect. I don't give disrespect, consciously. I can't say I don't because I don't know. Consciously, I cannot allow myself to be disrespectful, but unconsciously, I can't say. I have a way of saying something unconsciously to somebody I meet the first time, something I really should not have said. I've come to see it is a way of saying I'm not somebody you want to know. I've trimmed my social time down to the people I care about who care about me. In this time of the life, I have neither time nor space for superficial acquaintances. Which brings me to Thanksgiving dinners. I had two. In both cases people I care about who care about me. First one, 2 to 7, was friends here from somewhere else,  comfortable company, great food. The second, 7:45 to 12:30, was my friends from here, my hillbilly half, equally comfortable, equally great food. All day long I was thinking how wonderful this is, a Thanksgiving dinner in each of my worlds. I embraced it as such, enjoyed each gathering in the moment every moment. When I say people I care about who care about me, it feels like I mean a flow of empathy both ways. We feel safe in each other's company. Safe unto rescue in a time of need. Good vibrations flowing. Frequently, I'd pause within to take a look at the moment and think, I'm thankful for this. It was representatives from my two worlds that I'm like a bridge between, except nobody uses the bridge to go one way or the other. I felt thankful that I've learned to be equally comfortable in these very different cultures. It was about twenty-five years crossing the bridge between the two. I felt continually thankful to see self at home in both my worlds, that I have wonderful human beings for my friends. 

vincent van gogh by himself

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TURKEY DAY

orange tractor

It's Thanksgiving without Jr this year. Several of them over the last 7 years I've spent with Jr, making nothing of it, a Thursday with not much traffic on the highway. Today I had dinner with the Whitehead Richardsons, Dean and his sisters and their families. It was at Wilma's. Several of them put together a tremendous amount of traditional Thanksgiving cooking. I only knew about half the people there. Now I know them all. It was good food and good company. Dallas scored 2 touchdowns against Oakland while I was there. I saw one. It was made by a slick runner.

Couldn't visit TarBaby today. Last visit I took him some dry food from here and he liked it. I'll take him twice as much tomorrow. It seemed like a kind of dead day. No momentum. In many ways, just another day. In many other ways an important day for my culture, white American, a day set aside as America's sacred day. Mothers day and Father's day were created by greeting card corps, while Thanksgiving goes back to our origin, the original white people who suffered the disease-ridden voyages by sailing ship to face New England winters without chainsaws.

I don't know what it would take to get a shipload of people to leave England and go to a place Western Civilization had not touched. To start with, all they had was wood to build fires with. Forest everywhere and the wild animals to go with it and some people they believed in their belief system to be savages, who turned out to be curious and helpful, to their own peril. The beginnings of the prophecy by White Buffalo Calf Woman that the white people will push the red people out of their homeland. The first landing of a ship bringing the white wave that covered Turtle Island, the North American Continent, from shore to shore in a relatively short time.

Like I said, it's my culture's holy day, not for the people already living here in tribal systems. They don't think much of it. White Buffalo Calf Woman told them if they don't stop warring with each other, a white horde will sweep them away. I don't understand why such a remarkable human being as Sitting Bull was guiding the Lakota on the run. He was something like Robert E Lee, on the losing end from before the start of the Indian Wars as Lee was the Civil War. The industrial North where the money and war machinery was made could not be beat with arrows and spears. The rule of thumb in war has been the one with the most advanced technology wins.

It was the distress of the Indians that created Sitting Bull's tribal power, and the distress of the South created Robert E Lee's greatness. Both of them had to live with the humiliation of surrender after all or nothing wars. Sitting Bull ended up a dancing monkey in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show that toured in Europe. He sold autographs for .50, quite a lot of money then. And he gave it to beggar children in NY and the European cities they visited. He's known to have said something like this, you white people don't even take care of your own. He was struck by all the poor people he saw begging, esp the children. Robert E Lee's plantation was made into a cemetery. How humiliating is that?

I wonder what kind of people would pay for a voyage on a one way trip to an uncharted continent, chance determining where they landed, unless someone had been there before. This is probably all told in at least one book where someone has researched the lives of everyone who crossed on the Mayflower. And then to have lineage that goes back to the Mayflower is American hot diggity dog real breeding. I'd venture the men, at least, on that ship had an adventuring spirit, perhaps the equivalent in our time of someone who climbs Himalayan mountains or courier riders in London on dirt bikes weaving through the traffic.

If they weren't rugged men when they landed, they were soon after. Then more came and more and more. They built a nation from that one spot where the ship landed. What a curious bunch of people we Americans came to be, as broad a range as the whole world. East and West is interwoven here where we have names like Suzy Wong. The whole world is woven together here. Learning to get along is the American dilemma. The way will come. We do a pretty good job of getting along now.

The thing about us Americans is we commonly believe the problems we have today will be ironed out in the future. It seems to work out that way too if you don't get in too big a hurry wanting to see it come to fruition before your eyes. It's slow, but it does seem to me we're creeping along toward democracy for all, the American ideal. We're all taught it in school all the way along. It's what we believe. In a way, it's what we demand. It's what we will have. Of course it's imperfect. But it gets fine tuned over time. The pendulum swings this way for awhile, that way for awhile, stair steps upward through time.