Good Morning, Planet Earth...

It doesn't happen often, not as often as it should. Most generally I've found mornings to be rather grim time, you know, the day plotted and planned looming on the horizon. Adulthood and all that jazz.

But this morning I had the distinct treat of waking up and not really knowing, or caring, what time it was. That in itself is unusual, five days a week reveille is 0530 with the race on to put the young one on the school bus at 0730 dressed for public with something in his belly. Today though? A slow easy rise out of the fog to a curiosity: who, what... why am I hearing music from the movie South Pacific? And at this volume?

Yup, I woke up to hear Bali Ha'i calling me into the day. Bloody Mary at about 85db. I climbed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and shuffled into the living room to find the little guy perched on a bar stool he'd centered at the perfect focal point of the stereo, rocking with the music and grinning. Turns out the young one, who to the world is officially deaf, had found the disc and pestered his momma into putting it on the big system. As it further turns out Omega loves that particular show and put the big system to work for what it's worth. Deaf? I'm really, really starting to doubt that. In any case our neighbors here in this little micro-beehive of an apartment were getting a serious dose of culture before lunch.

Like I said, it don't happen often, but it do happen. It happens just often enough to keep me believing that hope is not a fools errand.  Hope your world treats you to something similar here in the near future. We all need the hope, and we all need those little events that keep hope worth having around. Via con dios, and enjoy the day.

Concealed Carry in the Public Schools...

===Originally posted 11/29/2012=======

Sent to the top of the pile of such brain droppings as a consequence of once again dealing with the (s.i.c.) public indoctri... er, education system...

========================

OMG, what are we talking here?  Gangsta's armed to the teeth?  Guardian angels packing major artillery in answer?  Sig and Beretta vrs Colt and Ruger?  No name Saturday night specials and airline invisible plastic zip guns?  No.  Not even.   We're talking... may the Saints protect us... cough drops.  Freaking fragging farking cough drops.  What in the slam fucking hell is WRONG with the people who run the schools? 

I took the kid to the doctor the other day.  She'd awakened with a racking dry cough, fever floating a couple of degrees over normal run ranges, kind of bleary pale and disconnected.  The kid has the bug.  No surprise, it had been making the rounds.  You know, the classic public school grundge bug proto bronchitis.  The doc looked her over, took a good listen, said yup, that's what's in play.  If she's still coughing in five days don't bother bringing her in, just give me a call and I'll call her in a script for some antibiotics.  And then he wrote her a couple of notes, one to validate that she'd been in to see him, and another advising he'd essentially prescribed an over the counter antiseptic cough drop, just to keep the hacking down to something reasonable.  And even with a confirmed physicians' note the fucking public schools demanded she surrender the cough drops at the office (where the congestion in the halls and the short passing period between classes effectively puts them out of reach) and threatened her with suspension for carrying them into the school.  Cough drops.

The fucking idiots treat the kids like prisoners and then wonder why they turn into criminals. The goddamn fools.  No wonder the kids are all into zombies and vampires.  They're being educated by them.

May the Gods of Google carry my words to them, that they know their lunacy is known.  It's time to go political on them, shit can the traitors and start over with sane human beings instead of brain dead soulless digidrones tasked with converting living children into more of their own kind.  At this point it's a matter of national security when you get right down to the bottom line.

I hate to admit it...

I was watching television today for the first time in quite some time. Was watching the big Macy's parade in New York City. That it was riding a UTube live feed didn't matter, it was network programming of the sort we all grew up on.

Anyway, the parade was on the TV for Beam to enjoy, I was just glancing up every now and then resting my eyes from a VB programming project I took on for a friend (20 years rusty... the dent in my forehead may be back before I finish the thing). Anyhow, it was kind of nostalgic neat to watch the balloons and the marching bands, it settled into the background quite comfortably.

My TV has been seeing a lot of heavy service playing monitor for Omega's notebook computer (HDMI ports are a fine, fine addition to technology... most convenient). Since she's currently working as social media manager for a web crew specializing in matters meta-physical (tarot, astrology, chakra therapy and the like) I've spent a fair amount of time sitting at my desk, working my various projects from the  mundane realms of reality, while listening to all manner of strange things.

I'll not say everything I've heard sounds like a serious contagion vector of Communicable Californication, I've heard some fine advice ride out, albeit to the prompting of a Tarot card (an interesting thing, Tarot, considered from the statistics of the matter, the statistics and the psychology associated to the semantics used by the creator of the various decks, but that's another subject for another time). On the other hand, however, I've equally heard some things that made me seriously wonder if the escape went down while the duty nurse was pulling a choo-choo  for all five aids leaving only the poor janitor to watch the front door.

They use words that have no real meaning, use them with great solemnity. The words don't seem to appear in any common context, venue to venue, very vague, very interchangeable. But apparently they take them seriously.

It gets annoying, filtering out the tonalities of their terribly sincere babble while I'm trying to actually concentrate. About like trying to actually think while incarcerated in some hell fire and brimstone tent revival (the closest comparison available, even though the tent revival paints a much less savory picture of the great beyond than they do). It's Omega's domain (she's a serious student of meta-physics at the PhD level where theology runs head on into sociology, the legends and the symbolism, the traditions and the associated societies, the motivations and the mannerisms) so I just grin and only snark and snipe with a best effort at possibly pertinent sarcasm.

This state of affairs has been going on now for give or take four months as a pretty standard routine. All of which explains why the Macy's parade settled in like an old friend come to visit. But, it wasn't until the network feed cut away to commercials that I actually noticed just how comfortable it really was. When the (yea, I'll go ahead and plug them, they've fed me a time or two) Applebee's commercial came on and I didn't by total reflex throw a mental raspberry riding an Arabic curse at the television (as had been my consistent habit back in the day), when  it  felt comfortable, reliable, when a commercial felt  normal  I  had to admit to myself just what a difference there is between where I came from and where I'm living now.

To dare you to date yourself by recognizing another, and quite unrelated, bit of TV trivia? My current life is definitely a case of you've come a long way, baby. Question is, does anyone know where this road is going?

Button button who has the button... a discussion of Bluetooth Ben-wa balls and the finer points of Polyamory...

N - It sounded like a good idea back in the day, but now it seems, um, silly going on techno-kinky. The whole Dayglow thing, that is.

O - I like the Idea of Dayglow. It feels like a fun, way to daydream up a seriously hot nocturnal dream.

N - *chuckle* It isn’t the shared fantasy I’d grin at, it would be the co-authors trying like all hell to pass each other on the street and not grin at what they’d shared in the past chapter or two. Secrets, don’t you know… you can’t tell theirs or they MIGHT tell yours…

A Night in the Life of a Knight Erring... or...

....it Was A Hot Buttered Frozen Strawberry Banana Whisky Sour; kind of affair.

 (NSFW)

Nos: Omega picked the title.

Omega: Not even gonna tell you how this thing got the title. Everyone might blush.

Nos: If they didn’t blush I’d have to assume they already knew the recipe.

Omega: Back to the topic at hand.

Nos: Which was?

Lot's Despair

In this day and age would it be worth even trying

 to find ten righteous men?  Sometimes I do wonder.

Semi-Psycho-Eco-Idiocy

We'll put turbines In our teapots
That the tempests
Might turn 'ems,
Let torque from our tears
Save the air
From the fume'ms.

===originally published 12/7/2010===

Barefootin... or, 24 Days to Go

I've done something this year I haven't done in a long, long time. I am taking summer vacation along with the kids. This wasn't entirely my idea, in point of fact it sets more at the feet of me youngest buddy. Call him Beam, just for a convenient handle. Beam is only eight, so of course summer vacation is part of his year, the school system sees to that. He's also one of the most interesting humans I've ever gotten to know.

Beam is Omega's boy, and he's officially deaf, and officially mid-deep in the autistic spectrum. That's the official story, but after living with him for several months now the evidence is mounting those definitions might not be totally accurate. I truly do not have a handle on his abilities. Every now and then, not every day but maybe once a week, he'll renounce his mach three hyper active house destroying behavior to position himself at the focal point of the stereo speakers and sit quietly in a chair for several hours for all the world as if he were listening to the music. The story goes he lost his hearing to an infection as an infant, which does leave open the possibility those nerves were not killed but were so toxin stunned as to take years to recover. Stranger things have happened. But  talk about a strange thing for me buddy to deal with at his age! I do what I can, he seems to have a distinct preference for the music of Chopin and Beethoven. Classics are fine by me, particularly if they help him re-tune the ears.

When I met Beam five years ago he was totally aloof, according to Omega I was perhaps the third or forth person he'd ever acknowledged as another human being. In those days I was "Uncle French Fry" in honor of how we'd met: sitting in the back corner sharing a basket of fries at the diner while Momma was waiting tables and growing ever more annoyed at Daddy for being late to pick up the kid. Daddy was habitually late so it got to be kind of an afternoon thing, two or three days a week it would be him in his little people's chair and me kicked back across from him, sharing fries and chatting with Omega until Daddy arrived to take him home.

That was then, but now I have been awarded a new name in ASL (american sign language, a language I'm picking up on as a consequence of hanging with Beam). I am now officially "Old Bear", or "Grumpy Old Bear" according to Beam. Of course I returned the favor, he gets addressed as Mowgli when the mischief level is in the tolerable ranges. It really does fit, as often as not I'm playing Baloo to his Mowgli.

It is, to say the very least, a very educational relationship. According to Omega he fully re-hooked and re-engaged with reality perhaps 18 months to two years ago. That factoid totally explains a great deal about my buddy: a person's emotions can't really mature until they've engaged with reality, which explains why I pretty well had to take the summer off from my normal pursuits to fly chase on Beam's trajectory... no one adult can really keep up with him. He's running two of us up against the limits. His motivations are a fully classic case of the terrible two's, but supported by eight years of experience and an IQ likely somewhere north of the 150 range. To say he's a handful is the understatement of the year.

Anyway, it is now 24 days until school takes up again, and oh yea, they're getting counted down big time. Once school starts the grown ups will have forty hours a week without trying to keep up with a kid who is two parts Muad' Dib and three parts Dennis the Menace. Twenty four days and counting down to the return of adulthood... yup. Summer vacation, barefootin it just because what the whale... how are you supposed to properly enjoy sculpting a mud puddle lake with the Tonka toys if you have your shoes on?

Catch ya'll later.

Collision Analysis: Manifesting Loneliness...

 *a tangential extension of the post “When Theories Collide...”*

It's the face always behind you that you never see...

=== originally published July 15, 2014 ===

Author's note:  heard an interesting tidbit today (11/21/15) of serious significance to this thought... the doctors are now considering 38 to 40 weeks a full term infant these days.  Hmmmm.... that does all kinds of interesting things to the bell curve.

===   ===   ===

Sometimes I really miss my chiropractor, most usually when I've given myself a stiff neck from  shaking my head for entirely to long.  I don’t mean to, but I do do it to myself from time to time.  The longer I look at the world I find myself living in the more it seems to happen.  Now, chiropractor’s are getting to be kind of scarce, tend to be seen as obsolete, and maybe they are.  But there are several groups of folks who are stepping up to take the same job, offer the same skills, you know, massage therapists and the like.  The hands on healers.  Noble work, and for folks like me who shake their head just way to much it really is a godsend having them around, they earn every penny of their fees. 

Ok, I’m sure you correctly suspect I’m not writing a blog post to plug my favorite masseuse, even though she  does deserve one, she deserves a lot more praise for that gentle strength of hers than what she gets most of the time.  Before I’m done dealing with this post I may have to give her a call and while she’s untying the knots for me make it a point to tell her just that, put as warm and gentle a touch on her heart as she’s using on my neck.  She does deserve one.

Among the most neck oscillating things I've encountered here in the last few years is an idea so toxic it could have escaped someone’s psychiatric institution like a virus from a broken test tube and proved out to be a fully contagious form of insanity... the idea that perception -is - reality, the idea that what an individual perceives creates the external reality rather than perception echoing what exists externally into an image held internally.  From this beginning it then jumps to presenting the idea that since reality is created  by perception reality is then open to being manipulated by what ultimately resolves as nothing more than someone’s imagination devoid of any other active mechanism.  Such a manipulation of reality is referred to as  “manifesting” and it would seem there are few if any limits placed on the thought.

There is a working theory from the realms of sociology that plays in this picture, a theory called “socially constructed reality” dealing with the binding force of the paradigms a “society” prescribes as a proof of membership, a proof of loyalty.  I’m pegging it to the corkboard to come into play later, but it is not the same thought, not really.  That theory (to my understanding) is a fine discernment of the defense mechanisms a, any, collective entity might employ to maintain its’ host base, but doesn't address the reasons and rationales for installing any given paradigm.  I’m mentioning it now just to make it clear that I’m aware of it, and no, that’s not what I’m trying to reinvent. Anyhow, onwards and inwards...

When you troubleshoot a sophisticated system displaying a superficially random range of symptoms any point in common (between the various sub-systems showing instability) becomes of instant interest.  The belief in a “compliant reality,” to coin a name, is just such a point in that most subtle system which is the human condition, a system that by anyone’s standards is currently running ragged as a Monday morning hangover.   It’s time to fire up the diagnostic simulation routines (think Scotty, Jordy, Star Trek) and put a most critical eye on this idea to try to discern just how, and how wide a frequency range, of things might be being set unstable by such a thought.  

What made this oddity of interest to me in the first place is the demographic of those who've presented this thought to me.  Without exception they've all been people diverged from the standard templates, folks from the alternative lifestyles, those confused and conflicted about damn near to anything under the sun from the ethical content of groceries to identifying their own gender, people whose lives are immersed in  any number of superstitions, people who think you should only share sex with no less than a baker’s dozen of your closest friends, people who think a cat o’ nine tails is a primitive sex toy.  The diversity of how they structure their leisure time if not their lives pretty well covers the full spectrum of reasons for someone being called alternative in the first place.  As a matter of fact the idea currently in focus is one of only a very few thing they commonly seem to share in common beyond the fact that they also seem, taken as a group, to be of above average intelligence and sensitivity. 

I say such folks are diverged (from the standard orbits of humanity) just for a descriptive and politically neutral handle, and to stay in that analogy it must follow that to be called diverged, now, then at some point they had to have been part of the mainstream.   Since people, like the planets in their orbits, tend to stay in those orbits unless acted on by some force it would seem to me a good first step to search for when that force might have first impacted on their lives, which is where this post crosses up with the ideas presented in “When Theories Collide...” 

Since anyone who’s ever dead-stick docked a jump buggy at Miss Mollies Palace of Orbiting Delights knows the earlier in the trajectory some thrust occurs the less thrust is needed I propose to set the way back machine a long way back indeed, all the way back to the dawn of someone’s ability to mount an abstract thought set into memory.  Contemplate an infant just passing out of the format and configure stage of development.  The bond and channel to Momma is still there, still active, but not needed nearly so often.  In many ways the little one is doing great, some facets almost full month ahead of schedule (and when you’re all of six weeks dry that is saying a lot ).  A little tummy runs empty, squeezes down, waaah.  Hungry.  Again.  But this time, perhaps for the first time, it is more than just the physical sensation and an instinctive response, this time there is a true thought associated, a memory brought back by the will set as an image, a desire.  Hungry. Breast. Now.  Of course instinct knows this as well, but instinct is still in loop with Momma via the formatting channel, instinct is just the physical, it doesn’t write to memory.  It’s that advanced status that has prematurely created (and set into deepest memory) a conscious thought reinforcing the instinctive call riding the channel to Momma.  Momma is a good momma, very sensitive to her child, and the sudden increase in volume makes her jump a little on the inside, her jump rides back to be felt by her baby as she makes haste to make the situation right, and since it happened so quickly the thought hasn’t faded yet, and her response gets written to memory as well.   

Do you see the potentials?  The little one’s first recorded imagining was a demand on the universe, and the universe complied.  Of course Momma would have brought food anyway, and probably just as quickly, but without that first imagining (such a... strange  thing to the baby, brand new, never known before) and the response (equally brand new and even stranger ) that arrived via the channel with Momma it would have been just one more event identical to a thousand such events and of no note whatsoever.  But... that isn’t how it went down, and our rather precocious little one remembers the... strangeness.  When I... imagine it... and I feel... strangeness... then what I imagine comes to pass. 

Now, I’m not saying this is, in and of itself, of any stupendous great significance.  IF there is any truth to the theory of Momma and Baby cohabitating in some form of telepathic bond for the first few weeks so Momma can help bring a brand new brain properly on line then most likely something similar happens a lot, and never really makes much impact at all.  Soon enough there’s plenty of examples in the little one’s memory of when imagining something didn’t make it happen, the bond fades and the little one is off to the races just like everyone else.  Again, that IF, and then Ok, so what?  That’s how it’s been for a very long time now.  So what?

The so what of the whole affair is what if there is equally some truth to the idea that the modern world is, in one way or another, driving an expansion, an extension, of the mechanisms that provides that initial linkage with Momma?  From straight up and down numerical logic the longer that bond endures beyond its’ legitimate functions the more evidence will accrue in the little one’s memory of imagining something that then comes to pass.  After all, the little one has the advantage in this, Momma is host and home to so very many emotional  things the little one might be manipulating totally without intent, indeed, in total ignorance.  Emotions such as those are years into the future, totally beyond the little one’s understanding.  But the results of manipulating them are not, the results are seen very quickly, and quickly is how the little folk learn.  Let such memories be created across the threshold of recollection by the adult and what you’ll have is someone who genuinely does have reason to fully believe they can manipulate reality simply by imagination.  How long is entirely to long?  Not a clue.  But such a boundary must exist.

Of course they didn't really manipulate reality, what they influenced was Momma into changing reality for them.  It was Momma, not their imagination, that made it happen.  But should that fact never be set as counterbalance opposite the other equally valid facts of the matter?  Then to the little one’s perspective there’s no clue available as to the truth of the matter.  With no clue available the evidence they do have becomes an influence on their ongoing emotional evolution, that bit of asymmetrical thrust that given twenty years to work can make such a major difference in the ultimate form of their adult personality.  Perhaps they can foggily remember the evidence, or perhaps not, but in any case they still believe, and that believing becomes such a potent factor.

For the vast majority their influence will fade (probably as often as not to the arrival of a younger sibling) into impotence.  But between when it fades and when the child quits trying to use that influence many, many attitudes are formed.  It is those attitudes which do as much as anything to maintain superstition in the modern world, and equally, define those who from earliest childhood would be prone to join the ranks of the alternative lifestyles.  Put yourself in the position to hear the internal dialog of such an individual’s inner child as that inner child gains access to adult concepts and the reasons for the alternative lifestyles become painfully obvious. 

...it used to work, I know it did... what went wrong that it no longer works?  Did I eat the wrong thing?  ...it used to work... is all my thinking just entirely all wrong? ...is it this whole growing up business that is wrong and that’s why it doesn't work anymore? ...phooey on growing up, I want it to work again ...it used to work, I know it did, did daddy and mommy do something wrong making me and that’s why it doesn't work anymore? ...it used to work, maybe if I do it right then it will work again... but I can’t do it like mommy and daddy did when they made me because the way they made me is when they did it wrong and that’s why it doesn't work anymore...

You get the picture, and a sad picture it is. Endless doubt, endless searching for a reason, the real reason so hard to accept because accepting the truth would mean denying and discrediting the deepest foundation memories of the self that in point of fact were created as part and parcel of a mother’s love.  Not a good situation, in point of fact a terribly conflicted situation induced by just a little bit of an asymmetry in their earliest development, an asymmetry that in time might well prove out to have been a most subtle form of child abuse inflicted not by any one human but rather by the sum of humanities impact on the environment.

Ok, it’s all based in theory.  It’s all just a “what if” run down a line of causal reasoning that collapses if there’s no truth to the foundation theory.  You don’t need to remind me of that, I’m well aware of it.  But as I think on those who presented the whole idea of “manifesting” something into reality I’m ever more ready to think this theory needs, really needs, a full scientific study, because if there is any truth to the collision of the two theories (momma/child telepathic bond AND an incipient mutation in the human genome enhancing telepathy as a function even no further than into early childhood just beyond infancy) then this represents a function that really, really needs understood for the sake of the survival of society itself. 

Why? Because of that work of sociology mentioned in the beginning of this post, the whole “socially constructed reality” idea that really does make sense in many regards.  Let the consequences of the mechanism described above become ingrained into the mainstream of humanity rather than seem limited to the prescribed reality of the alternative lifestyles as it is now and what you have is... superstition as a socially prescribed factor of reality and a bloody fucking mess, most literally.  And that’s before you even take into a account what happens starting from that mechanism if there is no extinguishment of that mechanism for some individuals, those who grow up to discover they can manipulate anyone with any degree of sensitivity just like they used to manipulate Momma.  That throws you solidly back into the Bible and the whole bit about “...suffer not a witch to live among you...” that’s already caused so much blood and misery across the scope of history.  This one really needs to get checked out to the nth degree for everyone’s sake.

A Postcard from Altitude...

The altitude mentioned in the title? To be specific, give or take 7500 feet above sea level. The San Luis valley of Colorado is several things: the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, the highest farmland in the nation, and for the time being the place I'm calling home.

A post or two back I spoke of the run hauling my stuff up the mountain in a U-Haul truck. Not the first time I'd made such a run, but I free admit it had been a long, long time since the last such adventure. End and all was that the wind eventually moderated, the road ran smooth, the noble beast of burden who had battled the wind for me pulled the mountain pass into the valley without incident. The truck was unloaded and with a sincere thank you returned to rest with twenty of its' brothers awaiting someone desiring to make a load going the other way. I and the contents of my life arrived safely.

Where did I arrive? After getting settled in and taking the time to truly feel the place the best description I can offer is that I arrived  in a place where it feels as if thirty years fell away crossing the mountains, years known to they who live in the lowlands but unknown to this place.

The total population of this region is best described as sparse, at most maybe fifty thousand souls spread across a region comparable to the size of Los Angeles. It took some getting used to, but the longer I'm here the more I value the quietness of this place. The roar of humanity is all but absent, blocked away by the majestic mountains that completely ring the valley.  This is a good place to think.

There is a reason the population is sparse. The land itself is high desert, harsh and demanding. Where the people and the culture remind me of my childhood home in southern Idaho the land itself reminds me more of the Mojave desert than anywhere else. Those native to this place, those who adapt well to this place? These must be some of the last home to that indescribable spirit which is the essential American. Many of those native to this place are of Hispanic descent, and yet they and the Anglo seem to share that same sense of restrained pride that allows them to coexist in harmony.

How long will I stay here? I don't really know. What I do know is that while I'm here I'm going to be  working with my editor (who lives here, the original reason I came up the mountain) to take my fiction to market. After taking the measure of the place for a couple of months I've realized this place provides a unique opportunity to take advantage of the quiet and the comparisons to add to my thoughts on the Third Reality of Man.

In the original scheme of things (now grown and mutated, of course) the intent was for the writings to provide a smidgen of operating capital to begin the establishment of an intentional community dedicated to the needs of the ever enlarging population of adult autistic who will be outliving the parents who oversaw their lives.  To speak to those plans is a bit beyond the scope of this little postcard, that would be an extended tour of solar powered green house agriculture (where many willing hands can earn a living tending plants, herbs and spices, that grow in other parts of the world). Such specialty food stocks have the potential to generate the kind of revenue needed to alleviate the crushing financial burden of providing the needed care. The ambition to devise a way for them to live a dignified existence remains very much an ongoing cause, but more on that later. For now it is one step at a time: get the writings to market and trust providence will favor the intent with a degree public support for the cause.

That said? Well, with that said what's left to say? That life is sweet and challenging and it feels good again? Yea, that's about it.

Catch ya'll later, I've got fifteen characters hanging in editorial limbo and it's time to go back to work.

Thirty Seconds Over San Francisco...

I have a favorite blog I follow, kind of a tabloid offering really: pretty girls harvested from across the web who don't suffer from any excess of modesty, and appearing alongside the pretty girls a variety of other articles and essays, offerings from the digital domain on a wide range of topics, things to think about.  Like I said, a tabloid. 

Several weeks ago I followed a link to a commentary on an essay  that kicked off a quite a discussion in some circles.  The work is the observations and musings of a woman who left New York to go to San Francisco with the specific purpose of observing a bdsm porn operation producing some of the most disgusting content available on the web.  I'm not going to speak to her descriptions of the porn, what she describes is solidly in the category of death-eater grade depravity and despair.

Nor am I going to speak to the thoughts the several commentators presented in the debate her essay inspired, specifically a discussion of the morality of presenting for profit sexuality degraded to bestial levels of brutality where the producers attempt to defend their right to contaminate the common reality on no more than the consent-to-abuse of those who participated in the production.  I'll leave those subjects to those who've already engaged with them.  No, I’m going a bit deeper into the reasons for such obscenities.  There is a  reason, and until some effort is made to expose that reason it isn’t likely much will be accomplished by way of attenuating the obscenities, much less any enduring healing.

Perhaps at this point you’re thinking something along the lines of  “isn’t it rather presumptuous of you to proceed from such assumptions?  And anyway, what makes you think you, who are not any part or portion of those people’s world, what makes you think you’re qualified to say anything at all about how they earn their living?”  A fair challenge, one I’ll answer in the following manner.

Life Locked in a U-Haul...

It wasn’t  until the first time I bought fuel the thought really connected. Yea, connected, like a solid jab by a practiced boxer. I walked out of the truck stop convenience store into the 50 mph gusts of a quartering headwind with a fresh cup of java for the next couple of hundred miles and suddenly realized my entire life was riding rubber into the teeth of a serious windstorm. One overpowering gust, one swerve, and half a lifetime’s accumulation could be scattered into history. Not to mention blood and bones on the pavement. Talk about a cold chill!

I wasn’t quite seven the last time I’d felt such a fear. We’d  rolled back into Los Angeles with everything the family owned in a dual axle U-Haul trailer behind a 1956 Buick Roadmaster.  I remember being terrified of  the huge clunky clamp-on trailer hitch coming loose, the one riding the solid steel back bumper on that three ton tank of a land yacht that hauled us around so many years. If it broke we had nothing. The idea was pretty scary, for a six year old. Walking back to the truck I realized that present, same as past, it was unnerving to think of what could happen if something critical failed with everything depending on it.

That thought kind of hung with me, what might happen if something failed. On that particular day it was a valid thought. Highway 64 west of Alva, Oklahoma turned into an… interesting… drive. I spent several hours fighting lane changing gusts listening to a big V10 engine hammering it out to hold 45, 50 miles an hour up and down the hills against a 100 mph live wind load. The idea of fuel economy was kind of absent, the only consideration was brute torque up around 4000 rpm where polite goes away to make room for power. It was a case of kid, either park it or sit up and drive this thing. It pretty well took total concentration, on the surface levels anyway.

But beneath the focus of keeping things between the lines and out of the oncoming lane the original realization of having the material consequences of my life along for the ride lingered and kind of bred into the fear of something failing, be that failure my judgment or something to do with the rented beast of burden laboring beneath my throttle foot.

That rather grueling stretch of road is a week deep in history at this point. What returns when thinking back on the whole affair isn’t what you might expect, the fatigue and tension and ringing ears, no, that’s not comes back. What returns is how scary it is to realize in a full and visceral way that it is you and only you who has absolute and total responsibility for your life regardless of if your life is locked in a U-Haul truck or locked within the walls of some mansion. It’s your life, and the winds of fate and fortune are always going to be blowing. 

Your choices are accept you must  either park your life along with your dreams or accept you must sit up and drive the thing if you want to get to where those dreams have a chance of coming true.  Scary or not though that’s just the way it is: park it or drive it, kid. It’s your choice. 

Bucket Definition: Generation Gap

This post is a comment I offered to Anne of Carversville on one of her posts, but the thought is universal and might be of value beyond the audience originally written for, so I'm reposting it here as well.

Dear Anne…

This is a very pertinent post concerning a dynamic of life that will repeat both in the personal and in the socio-political, there's a key thought here that feminism must address if ceFeminist is to remain a viable force.  As a feminist you speak for the women of the world, which includes the mothers of the world.  As a consequence of speaking for the mothers of the world feminism must acknowledge the art of parenting, the nurture and education of the young into functioning adults of self will and self determination.  Parenting is an art of deep subtlety and nuance that applies every bit as much within social movements as it does between the literal mother and child.

To understand the attitude the younger women bring to the subject of being a woman one must address the question from the perspective of how those younger women were (socially) parented.  I'm not speaking just of how they were parented by the women who gave birth to their body but equally what they acquired from the women who parented the evolution of their attitudes and assumptions.  To deal with the things in your post what’s needed is an empirical understanding concerning the bucket definition "generation gap," because bottom line is that's what your post is dealing with.

Consider the child.  The child does not understand the world it lives in.   The child does not have the depth of experience to provide the lines of causal connection for the intellect to ponder, all the child has are disconnected and seemingly random events.  The child is capable of observation, but totally dependent on the parent for understanding.  The child is more than capable of observation, the child is compelled to observation, and what does the child observe the most?  The parent, of course. 

As the child ages events begin to fall into patterns, the child begins assigning causes to events building the framework of a rational existence.  In many if not most cases the events crossing the child's perception are a consequence of the parent's focus on the event.  The events associated to the parents’ focus are the largest single source of the unexplained, the behavior of the parent in regards to such events the first understanding the child will seek.  But the events are not the only unexplained thing crossing the child’s perception, the emotions inspired by those events are equally on the stage.  This is a most important fact to hold in focus, for this is where a great deal more than simply the "generation gap" begins.   

The child is busy assigning reasons to things, granted working with an immature and incomplete understanding, but totally engrossed in the task.  Errors are to be expected.  Errors concerning matters of fact have a way of self correcting, the evidence of reality doesn’t support the error, sooner or later it is revealed to the intellect.  But the errors in assigning emotions as the result of events are much more enduring and play a much, much larger role than the intellect in driving both the attitudes and the actions of a life. 

Once again consider the child, but this time focus on how those emotional associations are formed.  Consider how the spectrum of the parent’s focus impacts on the child.  Obviously the wider the parent’s spectrum the more choices become available to the child, and with the increase in choices the greater the child’s chances of making correct, or nearly correct, associations between the emotion and the event occupying the same point in time.  When the parent presents a limited, or singular, focus on life the child is all but compelled to assume whatever that focus might be is playing a major role in every event and every emotion tagged to the same time as that event.  The error count is going to go sky high, so high the child come into adulthood is very likely to recognize the commonality and reject everything associated as an error in the attempt to bring their own life to balance. 

Is it any wonder that the daughters of the most dedicated of the feminists have the attitudes they do?  Their mothers totally dedicated their lives to breaking over the momentum of an entire culture’s attitudes about womanhood, how could those daughters have grown into anything else?  The lesson ceFeminist must understand to complete her work is the concept of balance between the passion of her calling and the diversity of the emotional needs of her children as they grow, the balance her children will need if they are to mature into individuals who will support her calling into the future.

I Have Now Eaten Sea-Weed Salad…

 A vaguely Klingon dish I would judge. I might acquire a taste for it. Maybe. And yes, you guessed it, I’ve had occasion to eat seaweed salad because she’s back. Omega, that is, in the flesh. As always she’s a challenge and a delight and yes, occasionally a bit of a heartbreak. But the years have shifted us, grown us, the heartbreak no longer bitter, the poignancy of the changes a sweetness to savor.

Gentle reader, I must trust you’ve the depth of soul to understand how this is for me. This is a story book kind of thing, one of those Indy French movie kind of things, and it is happening in my life in real time. She’s half my age, we’ve been acting like we’re half her age, and the dreams shared are most definitely the dreams of hot blooded youth facing a demanding future.

The intent, and the initiating event, of our affair is our alliance in the cause of building, establishing, an intentional community of the sort that is going to be desperately needed in the years to come. There is an ever growing number of individuals who are challenged in finding a place in conventional society. A great many of them fall within what is called the autistic spectrum. So often these individuals are heavily dependent on their parents, often totally dependent on them. Parents, however, are not immortal and as the years continue to run there will be an ever growing number who, having outlived their parents, will be unable to fend for themselves in the macroscopic society. They will need somewhere to live, a means of dignified survival. It is our intention, Omega’s and mine, to establish such a place for these people.

The alliance to create such a place is the foundation of the love affair  we’ve come to share. In spite of our years, or perhaps in defiance of them (she’s done as much living in her years as I have In mine) we hold the passions of the physical to a simple standard: they must justify themselves  in the understandings they enable, the understanding of self, the understanding of other, the understanding of the full scope and scale of what bringing such a dream into reality entails. It is a strange parenthood we propose to undertake, strange indeed, but parenthood is the only comparison found to the scope of this dream. And so after nearly seven years of platonic friendship we’ve allowed it sound wisdom to incorporate  an affair of the flesh into our relationship, by design that affair set as it is found in nature: a source of emotional sanctuary and deep nurture provided one parent to the other to sustain them in the larger work undertaken.

So yes, you’re reading me right. Love has returned to my life, and no, I’ll not apologize. It feels good to have a purpose, a noble purpose, it feels good to have a good woman who shares that purpose, it feels good to share love with that woman. It feels very good to fully and truly live as a man again. I had almost forgotten what that feels like.  

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p.s. In posts to come I’ll be speaking of how we plan to pull this off, we do have a plan. The next few weeks are going to be busy, I’ll catch you later when things have settled down after the move.