Jahfreeka's One BAD Blog

Jahfreeka's One BAD Blog http://www.jahfreeka.com/ jahfreeka's One BAD Life blog en-us Nucleus CMS v3.2 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.jahfreeka.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif Jahfreeka's One BAD Blog http://www.jahfreeka.com/ <![CDATA[Rhymes With Eight: Part Seis]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=116
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There was an article in the paper today. It was an opinion piece written by a well-known pundit. The title is "Subprime contagion: A crisis of faith spreads across credit markets". It contains this statement:

"...it's more than a subprime crisis; indeed, it's more than a housing crisis. It's a crisis of faith."

-----

I picked up a book last week and opened it to a random page (though neglecting the beginning and ending pages). This effort rewarded me with supreme wisdom about gratitude. I decided to follow the wisdom to see what might happen. It had told me to be consciously thankful for various aspects of my life as much as possible. It suggested developing a habit. But I don't go for that kind of pusher talk. My tendency is toward randomly applying whatever pearls of wisdom I try on for a spell.

As with all wisdom, I saw it as such because I already agreed with it on some level. The advice it offered echoed a thought that came to me one night about fourteen years ago. That thought was that deserving things had something to do with appreciating them.

Of course, it never hurts to be reminded.

After putting the book down, I began being thankful for stuff. I'm still doing it. As I look out the window and see big fast moving clouds racing across an awesome hue of blue sky, and I am warm and comfortable, utterly safe and free, I think to myself that I am thankful for these things.

The day I implemented the gratitude plan was also the day I shoveled a driveway. It needed to be done because the icy rain was coming and it would be a big help to someone else. So I set about to shoveling, being thankful that I was healthy enough to do so.

About halfway through, I began feeling sick waves of pain. I hadn't eaten much and now I was burning up calories galore. I was a bit faint, my stomach felt empty and ached, my muscles were beginning to cramp. So I felt thankful that I could choose to feel this way, when I know that such hunger is an inescapable fate faced by millions.

I kept pushing on, breathing hard and wondering if I might have a heart attack before finishing the job. A teenager rode by on a bicycle down the snow covered street. I knew he'd used a snow-blower on his driveway and that he'd saved forty-five minutes as a result. Seeing that he'd used his extra time to wander around aimlessly on his bike, I was reminded that the extra time we get from productivity gains is often used on mobility. It seems once we are no longer rooted to a place through work, we have a tendency to wander. And so, I offered thanks for the mobility that I'd enjoyed, and for its source - the dedicated efforts of my generally less mobile ancestors.

The next morning I awoke to sunshine and a sinus headache that verged on nastiness. I was psyched about getting things done that day and the weather was looking great for it. But I had a major sinus problem to deal with. I remembered I was supposed to be thankful and then noted how it was more difficult to be thankful when faced with illness. Nonetheless, I found things to be thankful for, including that I had the time to deal with my headache. Nothing I planned on doing needed to be done. Any number of things might have abated the pain under various circumstances, but this time I was afforded the luxury of rest.

On the third day of the Thanks-a-Lot Program, I encountered resistance from without. My efforts to put air in a tire turned into farce. At every turn I was met with setbacks that sometimes verged on ludicrous. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the goal was reached. Still, I noticed I wasn't feeling so full of thanks when my effort to reach my goal was being frustrated.

The experiment continues. There is little to report. Nothing dramatic has changed in my life. If I were to report that things have been going better as a result, a good realist would suspect that I noticed the good things more due to my increased effort to think of things to be thankful for. One thing I have noticed is that in the act of being thankful I don't feel any need for anything else. Also, the time I spent being thankful was time I could have spent thinking of how to get things done or learning new things. Thus, it is probable that gratitude should be handled with care. Too much of it could lead a person to be utterly devoid of ambition.

-----

Last night I watched two movies. One depicted the plights of the monks and natives of Tibet. The other showed the work of a photographer who specialized in pictures of manufactured landscapes, including scenes of refuse and environmental damage.

The monks and natives were depicted as relatively peaceful people with simple wants and deep gratitude for their existence. They were happy and colorful. They worked and played together. Their manufactured environment was a creative and artful addition to the stunning natural landscape.

All that has changed and continues to change. It is difficult for me to see how it will ever go back to what it was. What has replaced it is the same old thing. That is - us. But not us, as in the citizens of this or that nation. I'm talking about something much bigger and more important than any nationality. I'm talking about a worldwide culture comprised of individuals in the form of the modern urbanite.

The Chinese have been and are pouring into Tibet to develop and inhabit it. Scenes I saw of them in the movie reminded me of scenes of people from all over the world. The middle class of the world has a remarkable tendency to act similarly no matter where they live. City scenes in Tibet could easily have been city scenes in Indiana.

The Tibetans looked like aliens in that environment. Or rather, they looked like native Americans during the 1800's. They didn't fit in with the modern world at all. And the story of how they have been and are being eliminated is a terribly sad one.

The other movie was slow, but it had a lot of pictures and some interesting footage. Some of the footage was of workers in a huge assembly complex in China. When they showed a few of the workers up close, I thought I was watching a depiction of hell.

The work environment wasn't bad. It was relatively quiet, well lit, open and clean. The workers all had uniforms. But no one talked. There was no liveliness to the place. During a break, they gathered in teams to listen to their team leaders berate them. The assembly work was terrifically repetitive. I couldn't imagine having to do it for a living. It looked awful to me, though I knew that such jobs used to be valued in our nation as well. And I knew I was seeing one of the better places to work, since there was no other way the guy would have gotten permission to film there. Even so, it looked like a dreary way to spend so much time.

As the movie went on, its mounting impact combined synergistically with what I'd seen in the previous movie. Over and over the thought kept bubbling up. That is, humans are a really messed up lot. After four hours of being told of humanity's cruelty, greed, desperation, ignorance, indifference and dishonesty, complete with scenes of the devastation that grows from such characteristics, I began to question how one could feel thankful with this life at all.

Thus, I had inadvertently discovered another thankfulness killer - knowledge of and concern about the antics of the world at large. Of course, this gratitude assassin is easily repelled by looking at the suffering and being thankful that you aren't part of it. However, I find this to be a fairly depressing path to thankfulness. I might be thankful that I'm not suffering, but it makes me sad that others are.

As I watched the people assembling stuff we would buy, and other people subjecting themselves to toxic chemicals to salvage scrap material from stuff we discarded, I saw that those products, and that ease of disposal of used products, was a big part of what makes living here so darned easy. That ease of life is something that we all know we should be very thankful for. And we often are. Because we are so thankful, and proclaim it so loudly in myriad ways, the world is learning that the path to thankfulness lies in becoming just like us.

The Tibetan monks, who spent their lives staying out of the material fray, are now on the run. In this world of ours, as Mao once told the Dalai Lama, there is no such thing as spirit. Even if Mao was stepping beyond his knowledge when he said it, what happened in Tibet demonstrated clearly that in this world the material is firmly in control. Though the spirits of the Tibetans could not be crushed, their bodies could. Thus, China controls Tibet and it is the Chinese who are populating it and will continue to do so. Though their spirits aren't crushed, people for whom being thankful was a way of life are losing everything they ever had.

Is it any wonder that there are people - and I'm not speaking merely of terrifying fanatics - who are buoyed by the thought that someday they'll be free of this mess? Because it really is a mess. Not only in such gruesome ways as I saw depicted in those films, but in ways we all see everyday all around us.

But here I am, safe and sound, fed and clothed, free and in health, learning to be thankful for the fact that I am. Anything less would be a crisis of faith.
]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=116 Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:39:39 -0600 <![CDATA[BooK Tag! (Doing this for Shali)]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=115 1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your MySpace Blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people...

I'm not sure this is working out the way she planned....but here goes.

My four sentences are:

"When we use machines to achieve whatever it is we desire, we cannot have what we desire until we have finished with the machine, until we can rid ourselves of the mechanical means of reaching our intended outcome. The goal of technology is therefore to eliminate itself, to become silent, invisible, carefree.

We do not purchase an automobile, for example, merely to own some machinery. Indeed, it is not machinery we are buying at all, but what we can have by way of it: a means of rapidly carrying us from one location to another, an object of envy for others, protection from the weather."

Uh...yeah....sure thing. I buy cars because I like struggling to keep them running. So there!

]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=115 Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:55:00 -0600 <![CDATA[Nineteenth Mid-Life Crisis]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=114
I've been looking at lots of old pictures of moi these days. Moving pictures, no less. This is what I've been learning from the experience.

First of all, I did look better in the old days (which were actually the young days). Nonetheless, at no time in any period of my existence have I been convinced that I looked good. Given that I never started at good, I've simply gone from not-so-good to worse.

Meanwhile, even though I looked better when I was younger, I was more of an idiot. As such, I see images which clearly depict someone taking what little they had and squandering it through idiocy. This is actually a fairly normal process. It is well known that we all do things in youth which appear to us later as silly, immature or downright stupid. In fact, I'd either have been a young genius or am currently one of those sad aging people who haven't changed since high school for this not to be true.

What sets me apart from the norm, however, is my abysmal history of success (which could also be framed as my triumphant history of failure). Part of the idiocy of my youth lied in believing that because I didn't get caught up in all the macho competitiveness of life I wasn't as much of an asshole as those who did. Turns out I was wrong about that. The only difference is that I chose not bring my jerkiness into the open and therefore chose not to do what needed to be done to make money.

The typical pattern for the intelligent neurotic is to make a financial success of oneself while young and full of energy and then, as middle-age approaches and when the bank accounts are fat, re-evaluate life and become a poster child for the New Age by 'simplifying' and 'following my bliss', perhaps giving up a high-paying position in the corporate machinery for the life of a simple shop keeper. Those people who knew me as the uptight Type-A short-tempered perfectionist who, though a real jerk, got things done, would then marvel at my transformation. I'd reconnect with my estranged kids and my marriage to my second (or third) wife would be the kind that my first (or second) wife had long dreamed of.

If only I'd known...

Instead, I chose the path of not-choosing. In choosing that path I sought to live the illusion that I was this mellow, laid-back dude who was sensitive to the concerns and feelings of others. Nothing was further from the truth. I couldn't stand ineptitude that I had to depend on in any way. I sought perfection in everything I did. I was impatient when things didn't go my way. I was opinionated. I did better than average at most things I attempted and believed myself to be a better person because of it. There wasn't a single conceit that I did not share with successful jerks. Yet, I failed to become the successful variety of jerk because I failed to embrace my jerkness. By embracing an illusion, sought to disown it. The only thing I achieved was that I failed to embrace a much bigger pile of assets than what I now possess. I disowned myself and in the process disowned the only subject that could procure the booty.

Now I've got a collection of images to let me know how unremarkably jerky I was. And here I am with next to nothing confronting the exact same things as someone who was bumbling through a life of financial success. What difference does it make that I don't have a larger or more intense series of mishandled relationships in my past? I could be in the position now of dealing with an ex-wife and custody issues. I'd be grumbling about that, until I saw those old videos and began reassessing who I've been. At that point, I'd be exactly where I am right now, except that I'd have a lot more resources to put into my transformation.

This is all conjecture. And it's really just a matter of point of view. To say that this is the only way to look at my situation is to utter a falsehood. There are many different ways to assess this situation and I've got plenty of family and friends willing to tell me what those ways are. I'm not impervious to seeing them and acknowledging their validity. In fact, I do that quite often, especially now that I've got oodles of time to think about things. Still, just because the view presented here is a darker one, one that doesn't make my life feel so pretty, doesn't mean that it is invalid. Not useful, perhaps, but not invalid.

Sometimes it's good to hear how pretty other people think my life is. But when I don't FEEL my life is pretty, hearing how pretty others think it is doesn't make much difference. And the truth is, and it sucks to say it, but most us have a pretty good idea just how pretty we and our lives are when stacked up against all that we see. It's true that some see their reality in a better or worse light, but the lighting isn't the whole reality. Generally speaking, people - and especially kids - understand quite accurately how they measure up according to the standards of the day.

As I finish, let me describe another silly moment of synchronicity. The electro stream today is bringing me this ditty by Peter Martin called Distant Reflection. What's funny to me about that is that Pete Martin is a dude from my past who was always brimming with confidence. Though he wasn't quite as fancy of a drummer as me, or even as good, he was in a band long before I was. He could come off sometimes like a jerk, but no more so than me. He was, however, always considerably more successful when it came to earthly matters like women, friends and money. I always felt simultaneously jealous, better than and beneath him. Obviously, those were just manifestations of the competitiveness that I believed I was above. I haven't seen him in over 23 years. Funny how it is that just now, just as I'm writing all of this, and ending with that song, I finally realize we the same, but for one difference. Namely, he didn't buy into false illusions of who he was. In short, he was never afraid to be himself.

And why should he have been? He was perfectly normal.

]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=114 Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:52:00 -0600 <![CDATA[Wired For Reflection]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=113 Things were getting a little strange a bit earlier. I'm recording videos to DVD on the TV at the same time I'm reviewing those DVDs on the computer while inputting information about what I see into a database. And, as always, I've got music streaming off the computer into the stereo system. Just now I fired up this word processing program and, as you can plainly see, am typing while all this other crap is running right along.

I say things got weird earlier because I was reviewing a DVD that contained a conversation I taped at Burning Man and the audio on it was blending with the techno stream to create magically irreproducible moments of highly synchronized multi-media presentation. In the visual realm, scenes of Burning Man on my computer stood in the foreground while scenes of my train days played out on the television lurking in the distance.

Had to go away for a moment there. One of the DVDs had finished and I had to start up a new one. I find that speeding it up by 8 fold seems to work the best. It's kind of strange seeing recorded moments of my life flipping by 8 times faster than they really did. Somehow, it seems more real that way than if I were to watch them at normal speed.

Wow. It really goes fast at 8 times. No sooner did I finish that paragraph than I had to reload another DVD. Apparently I'm now immersed in the Sara Phase of One BAD Life. She's cavorting with her friends on my computer at 8 times the normal rate while simultaneously conversing with her German friend in real time on TV. But the music keeps on going, though it's been kind of train-wrecky for the last ten minutes or so.

I could really dig on this electronic stuff. I've always loved electronics and have always wanted more of them. Little could please me more than to have a big room full of equipment and wires conveying myriad pathways of sound and light in any direction I wished. And if I could surround myself with hanger-ons, they'd be people who were equally fascinated with these stimuli. My world would become a constantly evolving photo-aural kaleidescope of perpetually sampled, mixed and remixed moments, with new moments continually injected into the stream via the multitude of recording devices scattered all over my scene.

I'm back after a long absence. I watched an episode of Scrubs, then searched frantically for more quality TV. There was none, so I returned to old grind.

I went to see a theatrical performance with my parents today. It was the KSU Theater Peep's version of "Cabaret". The venue was a theater in the round, unless I'm using the term incorrectly. Still, you probably saw what I was saying, just like how in the play they wanted you to imagine huge portions of the scenery.

Anyhoo, it was a little disarming to be so close to the actors and actresses when they were doing their thing. Perhaps it was a little too intense for my delicate sensibilities.

This is not something I should admit: I felt rather weepy throughout much of the production. It started early and only got worse. Every time one of the performers did a solo I would feel weepy afterward. It didn't matter whether the plot called for weepiness or not. I tried my best to ignore it, to simply put it out of mind by virtue of its very ridiculousness. Nonetheless, it kept coming back more powerfully as the show went on and reached its apex when the leading lady sang her last song. It was a complex number which, while invoking the music and words of a festive cabaret song, was intended to reveal the tortured deadness emerging in the character's soul at that pivotal moment. I thought her performance was tremendous. It ended with her reaching the most powerful crescendo of the performance. I was again amazed by the talent and the passion to perfect that exists in our region of the universe.

When it was finished I was quivering with fear that a tear would escape. It did anyway. The next objective, one I believe I was successful in achieving, was to make sure no one saw it.

I puzzled over this last intense bit of weepiness. Perhaps I had identified with the character. The character reminded me of Sara and the actress's similarity in appearance to Sara reinforced that illusion. Still, the storyline wasn't much like our storyline. And it didn't explain why I felt weepy even when the plot didn't call for it. I suspected something deeper was at work. Eventually, I suspected that I was picking up on what the performers were feeling.

As we left the theater, I learned that we'd seen the final performance of that production. It was then that I imagined that I'd been feeling the performer's sadness as they said goodbye to each aspect of this thing they had been working so hard on for so long. I saw each performance as a farewell song to something they'd come to love and the weepiness as my reaction to picking up on the intensity of what was going on inside the performers in those moments.

It is, of course, even more ridiculous to assert this theory than it was to have shed that tear. Talk about having a Sensitive Pony Tail Guy Complex!

Naturally, the whole thing ended in weirdness. Near the end of the performance, swastika flags were unfurled around the theater and were still hanging there when we left. Given that the room already had a red and black motif, the overall effect was kind of surreal. The place looked ready for an actual Nazi party event.

I flashbacked at that moment to another party event. I saw myself bounding down the steep decline leading to the cave. In the back of the cave stands several figures adorned in black leather and basking in colorful light streaming in from lasers, stage lights and video screens. There is a DJ spinning choppy and disjointed house music. The figures are saying things. They might be Nazis. A Nazi flag hangs behind them. It appears as if I'm in a bizarre psychedelectro Nazi rally for the elite of the Party Peephole Clan. I feel uneasy. When they burn the Nazi flag I feel better. Not only is it something I hadn't seen before, but it reaffirms that I'm in the right place after all.

I tell no one of my flashback. They probably wouldn't understand.

Now it is very late. I've been shutting down the systems that surround me. Bed awaits. Goodnight.

]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=113 Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:50:00 -0600 <![CDATA[Crumbs]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=108 I was thinking about locomotives today while walking in the fen. Sometimes I'd hear them in the distance and would remember, rather wistfully, how they sounded from the inside. Later, as in just before I got here, I was reflecting on how odd it is that the most unusual and most easily procured job I've ever had also happens to have dealt with all my complaints regarding former positions. I've got no direct supervision, I'm appreciated for the work I do, it doesn't steal my brain for long periods of time, there is no set schedule with plenty of time off and it involves travel. Of course, it's not the scene I would have created for myself if dreaming was all I had to do to achieve it. For example, I'd have dreamed that it also afforded me a home. However, given that I put almost nothing into manifesting this destiny, it is remarkable how attentive to my stated desires it turned out to be.

Of course, it's also been attentive to my fears in as much as it has raised them and forced me to deal with them.

Woohoo.

So I'm hovering around in this indecisive state not knowing what to do next. I'm getting restless, especially when basking in the Seattle-like gloom of this portion of reality. The walk yielded some color and, as usual, I was a bit impressed by how much color one can find in the bleakest of scenes. Still, I'm missing those times when color, and the sun that spawns it, isn't so shy.

I figured out that the 'up' side to Dr. Phil and company is that they are constantly parading souls before us who are clearly not popular with the mob, and yet the mob can't do a damned thing about what those souls do! No sticks, no stones, no fires, no shackles - just words and groans. It's all televised daily to remind us of how free we are.

Here is something I heard a politician say on TV last night:

"We can't fight our challengers if we are divided!"

Actually, the more correct statement would have been that we can't fight them if we are united with them. I don't care how divided you are or with whom - as long as there is a division, there is room to fight.

Another politician said:

"As of tonight, we have thousands of links in this chain."

He wasn't clear what kind of chain he was talking about. I had visions of the kind that people prefer losing.

It's all a matter of perspective, of course. Those were probably very sensible and inspiring platitudes uttered by utterly unremarkable folks with a sincere desire to grab hold of reality and make it do things. My mockery indicates nothing other than the gloominess that destroys my objectivity. It's all spin, baby!

This coffee shop closes in fifteen minutes. I think I'll abstain from staying here until he throws me out, as I did last night. Actually, the dude was very friendly about it and I got another half an hour use out of this high speed vibration I'm tapping into. But tonight I'm hungry. I'd better wrap this up.

What a shame though. There's a real nice mix going on at AfterHoursDJs that I'm ripping right now. I'm only 35 minutes into it. I'd like to get a full hour. Perhaps I will.
]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=108 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:07:32 -0600 <![CDATA[POVing The Way]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=107 everyone is fighting the same infection
we all be groovin' on the same reflection
sole detectors detecting souls
in every direction

all we see is where we've been
til the fog comes drifting in
all we know is what we thought
til we learned the stove was hot

everyone is living the same illusion
we all reflectin' on the same confusion
sol collectors collecting doles
in every delusion

all we earn is what we've been
til the due comes drifting in
all we owe is what we bought
til we learned the goods were hot

everyone is drinking the same libations
we all confused by the same temptations
sol collectors detecting souls
in every persuasion

all we see is what's ahead
til at last we reach the end
all we owe is what we thought
til we learned the sun is hot

------

Why is it that the music streaming through my headphones just happens to start singing about someone being beautiful at the very moment that a beautiful woman comes walking into this coffee shop? I'm told by the massive interconnected network of informative wires that I am listening to DB Boulevard doing a little ditty called 'Point of View (Quivvers vocal mix)'. It says "can't you see, things are easier, from another point of view?"

She is now sitting in the only other seat I've ever occupied in this establishment. Funny. I know that point of view, as well as this one. I like them both.

Finally, the sinus pain is gone. I've been avoiding it all day. Truth is, I knew from the start what to do. Eat, drink liquids, pop some over-the-counter meds and get on with the day. And oh yeah, some caffeine. But instead, I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Several times. Until it was nearly dark.

It is dark and I am awake. Very awake. I feel as if I am emerging from a long deep slumber. While I was away the world was alive and moving. Now it is winding down. In a few more hours most will be near their slumber. But I will be alive and moving. It's a good thing that I'm no stranger to the night.

Of course, I love the sun. But there was no sun today. Just the low-hanging endless gray this area is so familiar with. If the sun isn't out, what point is there to being up and out during the day? None that I could see.

Me and my friend went for a night hike last night. We've been hiking a lot lately and the conversations have gotten deeper every time. We were getting to the gist of it last night. He's the one who hits me to let me know who he is. Of course, I know that's not who he really is and that it's all just a ruse to preserve the common illusion. Last night the truth prevailed and it became impossible to ignore that we were on exactly the same page. And yet, neither of us vanished!

Ego does not require conflict to endure. Yet, you'd hardly believe that when taking a good long look at history.

I've been looking at life through an epistemological point of view lately. Or maybe it's been existential. I'm not sure, it might not have been either of them. I'm not good with either words or concepts. But I was looking at life, that much is fer sher.

One concept I've been playing with lately is that, in spite of all scientific and religious assertions to the contrary, we have not yet moved beyond our animal natures. And whereas a number of hippy-dippy folks I know and am very fond of believe that the animals are actually on a level higher than humans, I believe that it is imperative that we attain a higher state than what our animal natures would direct us to do.

It is only in this way that we can be said to 'deserve' the freedom of will that we have in much greater abundance than the animals. For example, I can choose my mating patterns - an animal can't. Stuff like that.

In contemplating this, I saw that the story of history tells us that, much like the animals, we have long been facing many dangers in our environments. For the animal, a rustling in the bushes is an absolute danger - a threat to their very existence - until proven otherwise. As soon as the rustling occurs, the bristling emotions of fight or flight are justified to the eternal depths of the organism's soul.

Every person in every age has carried with them a set of fears and concerns regarding how and when something in their environment might come along and wreck everything. As humans, we have used our free wills in conjunction with our opposable thumbs to do everything we can think of to reduce those risks. And yet...

The truth is that I and everyone in my life have been living lives that have been utterly devoid of genuine danger of starvation or exposure to the elements. Nor have we faced any real dangers of attack from either humans or animals. True enough that our individual situations are never guaranteed, and there is no doubt that humanity promises many forms of cruelty (some call it justice) to those who fall out of favor with it. And yet, even those dangers are relatively minor compared with days of yore. Any rational look at the actuary tables will tell us that most of the terrible environmentally inflicted fates befalling others are extremely unlikely to happen to us.

Meanwhile, personal liberty is at an all time high. In a previous age, I would not have been afforded the opportunity to so easily choose my own spiritual path, let alone things like a career, who to marry, whether to have kids and so forth.

What I see is that we are living in a state of bliss that is historically rare. Various pockets of this have existed throughout all of time, but never before has it coalesced into massive systems involving hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people, of which I am (and everyone I know are) privileged to be part of. And yet...

All the old fears remain.

And why would it not be so? Evolution, religion and history tells us that the organisms which survive are those which are able to identify and either avoid or fend off those elements in their environments which will harm them or end their life. These categories of thought may disagree on what the dangers are, or are simply focused on different classes of dangers, but they all acknowledge that the danger is there and has been since the beginning of memory.

So what happens when beings that have been raised from the start to identify and avoid danger suddenly find themselves in an environment devoid of real danger?

That's the kind of stuff I've been thinking about. But it goes deeper still.

Every moment contains elements that can lead to discomfort or bliss. In some moments, it is easy to find the bliss. In other moments, it's easier to feel the discomfort. The mystics, it seems, have been telling us to find the bliss in every moment. As soon as they say that, though, most of us can think of a hundred moments where finding the bliss seems foolish and naive. How can I find the bliss if I'm being tortured? Well, I can't. But if I could...well, that would be something, wouldn't it?

Most of us aren't being tortured. In fact, we're not even close to being tortured. The closest thing to torture I've experienced in a very long time are these persistent sinus headaches. Most of us never experience anything worse than ailments and disappointment. And yet, everywhere I go the people all complain. There is always something that is wrong, that will be wrong, that will fail, that is failing and on and on. And every bit of it is steering its advocates away from the bliss of the moment.

Perhaps it really is all too beautiful. Maybe Matrix Freud was right. If placed in a matrix of heavenly delight, we wouldn't be able to handle it. Perhaps some aspect of the universal ego really does need conflict to survive. And let's face it, there just isn't much to fight against when it comes to bliss.

Well, unless of course my version of bliss is your version of a rustling in the bushes.
]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=107 Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:05:19 -0600 <![CDATA[Cruising Speed]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=106
What a whoosh it's been. How many days have passed since GTO?

Actually, things were moving real slow for four days, then picked up a little. That is, things being reality. When reality slows down, my brain takes over and starts busily filling in the blanks. It seems like much has happened, but really it's just been...

a ride in a box
men at work
in prison
i learn of james earl ray day
oh the irony
it's true!
i think

and on and on

a walk to the heart of the queen of the south
homelessness seeping in from the wrong side of the tracks
condos growing like shrooms
derelict spits up some spew
then proceeds with the conversation

i learn

the homeless have children
they don't wait for the perfect moment
never was one for me
why was that?
slow daze indeed
what is real?
lookit them sexy legs
halloweened yummies preparing for the drink
so long
party

work
ride
arrive
be a man
among men
and machines
all for the money
and the money for all
but the men
without
work

but

i don't need to worry about that
right now
and when i do
you'll know

just like christina
and the restless flow
and all the others
we talk of things
and ideas
as if they were things
and reality
it laughs
like a flirtful lady
peeking from behind a mask
emanating

elusive beauty elusive truth
elucidating the moments
you can remember
until you forget
what was it that you remembered
after all?

lest we forget

there is always the next thing
to be done to be going
to and from
within and withheld
all the worlds
a staging area
for reflections
smoke and mirrors
magic
it screams
magic it seems
drives the science
you just have to know
the form
of the derivative
of the error term
of the regression
to estimate
the probability
that really
you'll never know more
than now

you know?

Was it really like that? Well, no. Because whatever I've conveyed here is gibberish to everyone but me. And soon enough, I won't even know what I was saying. But what I can say clearly at this time is that I've been too busy to sit here typing up crap, though I'm always thinking of more crap to type, and that I gotta be rockin' on out of here in just one small quarter of a circle and so can't dish up the same ponderous blab I normally offer.

Let's just say that an estimation of the situation is, and always will be, called knowledge.

Oh yeah, and there's nothing new under the sun. But you already knew that.

]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=105 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:00:00 -0600 <![CDATA[GTO]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=104
That's how life has felt recently.

I called Tom early in the morning on the 24th, not too long after posting the last entry, and asked him to call me as soon as possible. When he called back at 11 am I asked him what the plan was. All I knew for sure before then was that I had to go to Charlotte the next day. He asked "what do you mean" and "what do you want to do?" I kept thinking I might be heading to Cleveland and that's where I thought I wanted to go. I still had dreams of seeing bright eastern fall colors. But his expertise took over and he asked "wouldn't we be saving the customer money if you returned the car to St. Louis?"

"Hmph." I thought.

But then I got up and starting making inquiries. It was hard to argue against saving $700 on the cost of the rental car. It occurred to me that, with his plan, I could head to the Vortex as well, thus saving us the hassle of what to do with a hotel bill that night and affording me the chance to visit with my friends. By noon, the plan was settled and all arrangements had been made. All that was left to do was pack - and get one last visual on the transformer, a project I knew would take another hour.

"Sigh." I thought when Tom asked me to go to the yard. And even more of a sigh because, though it'd be terrifically easy to lie and say I did it, knowing there was a 99% chance he'd never know the difference, I knew I'd do it anyway. He's the customer.

Packing took an hour. I bolted to the yard. Due to the many days of driving there and the various ways I'd done it, I'd finally found the perfect route to the yard. Even more importantly, I inadvertently discovered the perfect time of the day to traverse it. But then I had to deviate on the return trip, given that I was driving straight to the Vortex. By the time I was passing near my hotel again, an hour had passed, even though I'd been bolting everywhere the entire time.

The trip back to the Vortex went reasonably quickly. I arrived at 8:30 pm and went straight to the Bott compound. To my mild surprise, the Restless Flow was babysitting Max when I arrived. Max was deeply engrossed in TV, as he is known to be as times, but he still took a moment to look at me, smile and say "Hi Dude!"

After days of confinement and aloneness, I was the most restless soul in the house. I made my way downstairs in short order and got behind the drums. Some time later, perhaps up to an hour, the Restless Flow entered the room with Max. He immediately went to his microphone and joined in the jam.

Jeff showed up a short time later and soon after that Max was behind the drums playing them with his hands. He was alternating between the snare drum, which he hit with his left hand, and the floor tom, which he hit with his right. Eventually I joined him behind the drums, put him on my lap and gave him the sticks. He played with those for quite a while and I joined in on occasion. It'd been almost two years (1 y, 11 m, 3 d - to be precise, but that seems impossible - am I misremembering or does time really fly like that?) since I first put him behind the drums with me and gave him the sticks. He's improved quite a bit, especially given how little he practices!

Soon Linda was home. A big visit ensued. She went to bed much too late. Jeff and I sat in the living room and talked while the comfy couch seduced the Restless Flow into slumber. At one point Jeff took off to go do something and I sat 'alone' in the living room. I remembered sitting alone in the hotel. Now I was sitting in a real home, staring at a pile of colorful toys, and my friends were close at hand. I felt content.

I got to bed by 2 am and proceeded to fail to follow my plan, as I suspected I would. The plan was to sleep very little so that I could repack my luggage (to condense it for airline travel) while people were sleeping. I wanted to maximize visiting time.

I set my alarm for 7:41 am. At precisely 7:41 am, Tom called to see if I was still on track to get to Charlotte by the end of the day. I said I was, then went back to sleep. I got up at 8:45 and spent the rest of the morning bolting about, though I did stop and visit as much as I could. Before I left the bedroom for the first time, I heard Max asking Jeff "Is dude here?"

Max was exhuberant when he awoke and did his jumping in the crib routine for awhile before asking Jeff to take him out. He seemed to want to hang with me but I was too busy. I felt kind of bad about that and wished I'd have managed my time better.

I left the Vortex at 11:15 am, slightly less than 15 hours after I'd arrived. It was a whirlwind visit, but it was probably exactly what I needed just then. That little chance to hang with friends energized me, just as I hoped it might.

Of course, I then faced the ordeal of getting to Charlotte. My plane was scheduled to leave at 2:25 pm. The airport was 115 miles away, I hadn't eaten hardly anything the entire time I was in the Vortex and I needed to get gas before I returned the rental car. When I hit the Gateway and encountered an unfathomable amount of traffic (on a Wednesday afternoon, no less) the stress levels got bumped up. I had to remind myself that worrying was of no use and to instead visualize things working out just fine.

Everything went like clockwork, except for being 15 minutes behind 'schedule'. I gassed up the car, returned it to Avis and was standing at the shelter waiting for the shuttle bus by 1 pm. This was good because the line at the security checkpoint was long. It took fifteen to twenty minutes to get through. I had just enough time to eat a Whopper. When I arrived at my gate, the passengers were starting to board.

As I was packing myself into my seat, a young woman prepared to sit next to me. I'd noticed her in the airport but had been too preoccupied to think much about it. All I'd registered was that she was attractive and had a familiar look. However, once she turned to me and was near, and just as she was saying that she believed she knew me, I recognized her. She remembered my name but I didn't remember hers. It was on the tip of my brain but I didn't want to guess incorrectly and so just readily admitted that I didn't have the same astounding ability to remember names.

Her name is Laura. I met her nine or ten years ago, neither of us were sure when. She just got married and had been in the Vortex for over a month. The guy she married is French. I remembered knowing of him, hearing about him and thought that I had known her just before she met him over eight years ago. We couldn't figure out how we met or through whom. But we didn't spend too much time trying to dredge up hazy memories of long ago and instead spent our 50 minutes above the earth catching up on what's happening these days.

That was a happy coincidence that energized me as well. It was the second time I'd run into someone I knew on an airplane, but it was the first time the seating was assigned. I like it when that kind of stuff happens.

It was really neat seeing her again. Back in the day, I thought she was quite attractive in many ways and was a bit disappointed (by theoretical loss, of course) when I learned of her Frenchman. These days, nothing has changed but for the wealth of experience she's gained and worked for. And now, thanks to this medium I am transmitting on, we can keep in contact if we choose!

When we got to Chicago (where I'd been just 26 hours before), we parted ways with a hug. Then I rushed off to my connecting flight. The plane was running a bit late, but that didn't matter. Besides, thanks to the 190 knot wind at 35,000 feet, we made it up on the way to Charlotte. The flight was uneventful. I caught a forty-five minute nap and then drank a small Pepsi and stared out the window.

When the two-dimensional serpent that delivers luggage to the anxious returnees to earth started slithering again, I looked to the hole in the wall from which the serpent emerged and visualized my brown suitcase appearing first, before anyone else's. It did. However, I was too lazy, or too inept, to visualize the second piece as being mine as well. I had to wait like the others, though not as long as many.

Still, things had gone pretty smoothly and continued to do so. Though I missed one shuttle by twenty seconds, the other showed up pretty quickly and took off even more quickly. He dropped me off first and I was pleased to see they gave me another SUV. The trip to the hotel went quickly. I was in my room by 8:15, where I spent most of the night goofing off after eating steak at the Lone Star.

I went to bed at 1 am (I'll be lucky if I do so tonight) and set the alarm for 8:11. Two phone calls woke me up before the alarm could get to me. The first was from Tom, the other from Jerry (yeah, that's right - my life is part of the Tom and Jerry Show). I finally got up at 8:38 and drearily set about to getting on with the day.

While eating the sorta crappy free breakfast in the sorta crappy free breakfast eating area, I learned that tomorrow (today, to be more precise) is supposed to be cold and rainy. I resolved that I ought to get all the outside work done today. By 9 am I had my doubleshot in hand and was on my way to the plant.

Ten hours later, I was finally free. I did what I had set out to do, and then some. The caboose is now fueled, watered and changed. Plus I rearranged some things inside and picked up some supplies. I also started the engine on one end of the Schnabel car and learned that it wasn't starting very easily, as if the battery is worn down. When describing my day, it doesn't seem like I did that much. However, I was terribly busy the entire time. Only about an hour of it can be attributed to the buffoonery that ensued as I watered the caboose for the first time by myself, or at all.

By the time I got near the hotel, it was almost 7 pm. I needed to eat and so stopped at Kmart for milk and a couple of other things and then headed to the mall. I bought a slice of pepperoni pizza at Sbarro's and a big Frappacino at Starbucks. Then I headed back to the hotel. Since then, I've watched the Scrubs reruns, took a shower, talked on the phone, wrote this crap, looked at stuff on the Internet and then watched a Daily Show and Colbert Report I hadn't seen.

I have to get up at 8 am. That's in seven hours. I'm hoping that tomorrow will be as unburdened as I am hoping and as I worked so hard today to try to bring about. There isn't much left to do but be around for the inspection, pick one of the operators up from the airport, get groceries, pack my bags, return the rental car, help in the final preparations of the caboose, make some phone calls and, sometime tomorrow night, go get settled in on the caboose.

And with that, there's little more left to say but: Vroom!

(and too bad I'm not getting to bed until 2.....whoops!)

]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=104 Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:00:08 -0500 <![CDATA[If It Weren't For Slow Motion, I'd Have No Motion At All]]> http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=103 Reality will be shifting gears very soon. I didn't leave the hotel until 11:45 tonight. I was only out for 15 minutes to get three tacos. I have become utterly absorbed in aloneness, kept company only by two light-beaming boxes.

Last night I went out for food just after ten. Walgreen's was still open and I went in. The rotund white guy at the register was talking to a female co-worker.

I heard her say "One night when he was making a drop a guy came in and jumped over the counter and grabbed the money and ran off with it, and that's what made him cry."

The guy responded, "Well what me cry was that the guy shoved me."

Soon after, another voice chimed in, "If you really want something to cry about, try serving in Iraq."

As I was approaching the register to pay, the co-working woman, who was black and middle-aged, was expressing her views. She said America was too nice, that it gives to others and then just gets taken advantage of. To illustrate this conservative viewpoint, she offered Madonna as an example. She said, "Here these rich people are going overseas to adopt kids when we have kids right here in this country that need a good home."

Once again I was up until the very wee hours last night (or rather, yesterday morning at this point). I watched an HBO movie called "Bully". Later in the day, the first Simpson's rerun was from the first season. Bart and his grandpa team up with the other kids to take down a bully. It was considerably more light-hearted than HBO's offering. A couple of days ago I saw Theodore Roosevelt's picture in the paper. Seems that 'bully' is the reality-supplied theme of the moment.

Bully! That's all I have to say about that.

I checked out Shali's blog again today. Her stuff usually gets me thinking. It certainly did today. It was very timely in relation to things I've been thinking and writing about recently (the written stuff may make an appearance eventually). Perhaps I'm too involved to have an unbiased opinion about the utility of anything. THIS is where her blog is at, if you're interested.

I should be packing. Or sleeping. I know I'll have to drive tomorrow. There is hardly a shred of doubt about that. Left to my own devices, I've managed to slip into a sleep pattern completely at odds with what it now needs to be. Yay. But then, I'm not too worried. I've gotten so much rest lately that I'm pretty sure I can get through a day of activity on not much sleep. The shifting of reality's gears and the new scenes it brings will probably enliven me, especially in contrast to these many days of wakeful slumber confined almost exclusively to this room.

Juxtapositional happiness - where would I be without it?

]]> General http://www.jahfreeka.com/index.php?itemid=103 Fri, 27 Oct 2006 18:57:24 -0500