pontormo
I've decided today to call my desk my corporate office. If corporations are people, it works the other way, too, people are corporations. I call it my corporate office meaning it is my own personal space. A buffalo is a chicken: buffalo wings. I refuse to concern myself about the Supremes driving a stake through Democracy's heart in the coffin. But being aware of what it means, and how predictable it was, I see nothing left but to lower the coffin and throw in the dirt. I don't even like to think anymore about American "foreign policy" in Latin America, such that the Spanish and Portuguese speaking people have divorced themselves from the OAS controlled by the USA, and created their own organization leaving out USA. A cancer has spread through America that has a possibility of proving fatal. Too many people jump up and down for my comfort, won't it be great without government. Yeah, about like New Orleans in the first week after Hurricane Katrina, but without end. Gangs become militias, become armies and we have a land of warlords and armies terrorizing the poor, killing the homeless. It will be real great. Military is already poised and training. It won't be to serve and protect, unless you mean Wall Street. I don't want to pay attention to the systematic erasing of democracy by corporate police state. I have paid too much attention in the past.
pontormo
I believed it important to know what's going on. It is not. My friends who don't even know the name Cheney are free of the agitation machine filling their minds with visions of a totally false world created by propaganda. They live in the world of each other, families and friends, have no idea what's going on with the news. I'm glad for them they pay it no mind. I don't say I'm glad because I don't want them to. I don't care if they do or don't. They choose to give the fake news no attention, which makes me glad for them, happy for their lives that they are living directly face to face with everyone in their lives. Their responses and reactions are directly related to what is happening immediately in their lives; husbands, kids, wives, parents, grandma, grandpa, people at work. I inhibit interest in what's-wrong thinking by not talking about it. It makes them refreshing people to be around. They work on cars, shoot arrows, hunt, go to tournaments, keep a studio photography business going, take kids to school and daycare, full-time jobs, interact with the kids and pay attention to what they say, enjoy their kids, and they do, indeed, enjoy their kids. They're good people. I'm glad for the sake of the quality of their lives they have not connected their minds to that sewage pipe of corporate news. The Reagan Revolution has succeeded. That's all I care to know. I know what's next, don't want to see it, and suppose I will. I am happy for my friends oblivious to what I see of this time in the flow of history. The only times I ever talk to them about "current events," this week's propaganda, is when I see something that will directly change their lives in a few years and they won't know where it's coming from, or to anticipate it.
I have talked to Justin enough to say the economy is not going to get better. It's only getting worse for the working people and will go on getting worse. A year or so ago he expressed regret he did not get to go to college, and would like to go to college yet, wanting to work in forestry as a ranger who protects the natural world. I told him this is not the time for college. It is a time for knowing how to do things. I said, You know how to do things. You know what happens when water goes down a drain, and you know how to fix whatever goes wrong in the system from the well to the septic tank. I told him people of the middle class all around us will be needing help, because they went to college, they don't do fix-it, with exceptions. Their toolbox amounts to a hammer and a screwdriver in a kitchen drawer. College makes you lazy. You will be taking care of the people around you who can't take care of themselves in practical matters that matter, old people, even teaching young people how to get by. You know how to work a garden. You're good at hunting. You have skills. You'll be teaching your skills to your kids, nieces and nephews like you do anyway. You'll be helping plow gardens. Even when economy goes bust, you'll be able to trade services. If we can't afford gas anymore, you know how to work horses and how to take care of them. You're going to be all right. May not be able to drive a new truck. I made it clear that this is just projection from the way things look now. The unexpected is around every corner.
The way things look right now, Western Civ is about to implode, self-destruct by its own ignorance the cancer. That's how it's been all my life. The propaganda of fear. I added I didn't want him to get a pessimistic attitude, because it will be then just like now. Your neighbors are your neighbors, the people you care about will be here. Circumstances will not be as they are now, but you'll be closer together, because you'll be working together and assisting each other, pulling together. People making their own music may take up again, guitars come out from under beds, fiddles come down from closet shelves, people start knowing each other again. There will be big social problems in cities, but the country people take care of one another. It may be the happiest period of your life. And it probably won't be that way at all, just a possibility going by an interpretation of the way things look now. Next week it may be entirely different. Maybe aliens will arrive and teach us how to live with ourselves. Don't hold your breath for that one. Most likely is that some time in your lifetime "The Lord Will Come Again," however that manifests. Nobody will get what it is when it happens but a few. The manifestation may take a couple centuries to fully manifest. Don't worry ~ Be happy. Hard times always come to an end. Ralph Stanley has a great banjo tune called Hard Times. My guess is we have about six more years of this cycle. May not be much left at the end of it. Next cycle may have to spend its first energy cleaning up the mess of the last cycle. A cartoon I saw at the beginning of Obama's term, him in the doorway of the Whitehouse, a black man with a push broom sweeping beer cans and assorted party trash out the front door.
I said I believe you will see at least the beginning of the turn-around after the tide tears down the sand castle, clearing the way for a new sand castle to live until next tide from the ocean of love. I emphasized my reservation that I have learned from a lifetime of experience that my projections of the future never turn out to be the case. I never count on my interpretations of anything to be the case. I do interpret because that's how the mind works, filling in the space between the dots to solve the Rorschach puzzle of the week. That's all I'm doing. I mean for what I say to have no more credibility than something a republican in Congress says. It's just one person's point of view who lives in one place in one time with one set of experiences. Limited. Just saying this is how I interpret the dots I see. Another planet with any other star in our galaxy would have different constellations from the ones we see. It's the same from individual to individual. And it's all the same galaxy. I like to think of us in the surf at the beach, drops of the ocean of love flying through the air individuated for a time, to return to the ocean of love and remember: Oh, I really was not separate, just believed I was. We are 7 billion drops of the ocean of love flying through the air along an extended beach, believing our own individuation module is separate from all the others. I have sat all day on a rock in Waterfalls Creek and watched the continuous dance of constantly changing bubbles where the water flows over a rock to the next level. I saw that dance of the bubbles the mind, constantly changing, constantly in motion, bubbles pop as soon as they form. It became as restful to watch as flames in a fireplace. I'd think of how many multiple millions of years water has run through this creekbed between two ridges. The thousandth-of-a-second arrangement of the bubbles in a photograph has never happened before and will never happen again. I sat on the rock and watched, reminding myself this is how every moment is, the ongoing Now, the dance of Shiva.
pontormo
I have talked to Justin enough to say the economy is not going to get better. It's only getting worse for the working people and will go on getting worse. A year or so ago he expressed regret he did not get to go to college, and would like to go to college yet, wanting to work in forestry as a ranger who protects the natural world. I told him this is not the time for college. It is a time for knowing how to do things. I said, You know how to do things. You know what happens when water goes down a drain, and you know how to fix whatever goes wrong in the system from the well to the septic tank. I told him people of the middle class all around us will be needing help, because they went to college, they don't do fix-it, with exceptions. Their toolbox amounts to a hammer and a screwdriver in a kitchen drawer. College makes you lazy. You will be taking care of the people around you who can't take care of themselves in practical matters that matter, old people, even teaching young people how to get by. You know how to work a garden. You're good at hunting. You have skills. You'll be teaching your skills to your kids, nieces and nephews like you do anyway. You'll be helping plow gardens. Even when economy goes bust, you'll be able to trade services. If we can't afford gas anymore, you know how to work horses and how to take care of them. You're going to be all right. May not be able to drive a new truck. I made it clear that this is just projection from the way things look now. The unexpected is around every corner.
pontormo
The way things look right now, Western Civ is about to implode, self-destruct by its own ignorance the cancer. That's how it's been all my life. The propaganda of fear. I added I didn't want him to get a pessimistic attitude, because it will be then just like now. Your neighbors are your neighbors, the people you care about will be here. Circumstances will not be as they are now, but you'll be closer together, because you'll be working together and assisting each other, pulling together. People making their own music may take up again, guitars come out from under beds, fiddles come down from closet shelves, people start knowing each other again. There will be big social problems in cities, but the country people take care of one another. It may be the happiest period of your life. And it probably won't be that way at all, just a possibility going by an interpretation of the way things look now. Next week it may be entirely different. Maybe aliens will arrive and teach us how to live with ourselves. Don't hold your breath for that one. Most likely is that some time in your lifetime "The Lord Will Come Again," however that manifests. Nobody will get what it is when it happens but a few. The manifestation may take a couple centuries to fully manifest. Don't worry ~ Be happy. Hard times always come to an end. Ralph Stanley has a great banjo tune called Hard Times. My guess is we have about six more years of this cycle. May not be much left at the end of it. Next cycle may have to spend its first energy cleaning up the mess of the last cycle. A cartoon I saw at the beginning of Obama's term, him in the doorway of the Whitehouse, a black man with a push broom sweeping beer cans and assorted party trash out the front door.
pontormo
I said I believe you will see at least the beginning of the turn-around after the tide tears down the sand castle, clearing the way for a new sand castle to live until next tide from the ocean of love. I emphasized my reservation that I have learned from a lifetime of experience that my projections of the future never turn out to be the case. I never count on my interpretations of anything to be the case. I do interpret because that's how the mind works, filling in the space between the dots to solve the Rorschach puzzle of the week. That's all I'm doing. I mean for what I say to have no more credibility than something a republican in Congress says. It's just one person's point of view who lives in one place in one time with one set of experiences. Limited. Just saying this is how I interpret the dots I see. Another planet with any other star in our galaxy would have different constellations from the ones we see. It's the same from individual to individual. And it's all the same galaxy. I like to think of us in the surf at the beach, drops of the ocean of love flying through the air individuated for a time, to return to the ocean of love and remember: Oh, I really was not separate, just believed I was. We are 7 billion drops of the ocean of love flying through the air along an extended beach, believing our own individuation module is separate from all the others. I have sat all day on a rock in Waterfalls Creek and watched the continuous dance of constantly changing bubbles where the water flows over a rock to the next level. I saw that dance of the bubbles the mind, constantly changing, constantly in motion, bubbles pop as soon as they form. It became as restful to watch as flames in a fireplace. I'd think of how many multiple millions of years water has run through this creekbed between two ridges. The thousandth-of-a-second arrangement of the bubbles in a photograph has never happened before and will never happen again. I sat on the rock and watched, reminding myself this is how every moment is, the ongoing Now, the dance of Shiva.
pontormo
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