Getting on the right track Or The Choice is mine.
Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

I once encountered many blind alleys,
but today, as long as I have faith, my path is clear.
This has all been slow progress for me.
Like so many, I do not always surrender completely;
I allow the cares and worries of the day distort my thinking.
But as soon as I get back on the right track, I realize that I have everything I need.
Whatever problems confront me, large or small, they can be solved wisely.
Or they can be solved my way. The choice is mine.

Seinfeld on George Burns...

George Burns was a master of enjoying life, which as you grow I think you find is a very rare quality amongst the human species, that we kind of go through this experience and we struggle with various things and we often times fail to stop and go - you know what, this is pretty great, just on a basic level. And George Burns was one of those people who just appreciated “Hey, I’m in show business, life is great…” One thing I did kind of get from him is like, if I get a really good cup of coffee, I like to just go — you know what, just hang on a second. This is a fantastic cup of coffee. Isn’t this a great, and I’ll ask everyone, isn’t this great coffee? Cos you know, it’s not always great. This one is great, you know... And that is one of the things that I really did learn from him. And why I had such respect for him is that I will stop and make that moment. You know, you will enjoy life more if you do that. You know, you get a great parking spot, just go… Hold it a second, I mean look at that spot. I mean it’s--we could have been blocks away and we’re right here.


Hang on a second... just hold on for a moment. And take in the moment- suck it in with a deep breath and just...notice. Become aware. The packages don't need to get there on time. Even if they were sent on time, they might not have gotten there. You will not be forgotten entirely. The message that you love these people will still be received, will still be heard. Just -slow- down-for- a- moment. Realize what is here now. Realize what is here. The cup of coffee. The ice cream. The sunset. The evening. The crunch of snow underfoot. The warmth of stepping inside from the blustery evening, getting warm... et cetera, et cetera.

I dug this post. I will try to read it more often. From the Milkman's Sobriety MSN Group Bully.

when you begin to realize that you have options about the thoughts that you activate and entertain — then you will be the Deliberate Creator of your own experience. As long as you think you don't have a choice about what you think because you don't have a choice about the circumstances that surround you, then you are like a cork bobbing on a raging sea, going wherever it bounces you. But when you understand that you have options, choices in every moment, on every subject, then you begin to make those choices because of the way those choices feel as you make them.

And now, you are using the Guidance that comes forth from within you to guide you to the Well-Being; to the prosperity; to the love of self and others; to the experience that you knew you would have — the experience that is possible for all — to the experience that really is only experienced by those who come to understand the Art of Allowing.

So, it is good for you to reach for some thoughts that give you some relief from the discord or resistance that you have presently going on, for with each attempt at reaching for a thought that feels better, you release more resistance. And as you release more resistance, you fill back up with who-you-are, and your thriving resumes. And we want to really emphasize the word "resumes," because thriving is always the dominant part of your experience. But, we will acknowledge that some of you are going to have to croak before you resume thriving, (Fun!) because some of you have pinched it off pretty good. Some of you have developed some powerful habits of thought. Some of you have developed some strong enemies that you take great delight in every day pushing very hard against.

And some of you thrive on some subjects and suffer on others. You have different vibrational frequencies, depending upon the subject at hand that is activated. But we want you to know that you have access to Guidance that will lead you always in the direction of your thriving on all subjects. But you've got to figure out which direction is going toward your objective, and which direction is going away from your objective. And before you can do that, you've got to figure out what your objective is.

Today I am grateful for:

-medication
-taco & nacho bar from Romeo's for lunch
-green grapes
-art (contemporary)
-sunshine in the middle of winter frost
-naps
-my girlfriend's smiling picture to get me through the day
-well-written essays
-crossword puzzles

I'll be damned, I thought, and I saw Seamus' name in the paper, not for any charity, or award,

no accolade of any kind, not murder, not molestation, not yet. But a $100 fine and 9 months' probation for driving on a suspended license. Who knew what the penalty was for something like that. But I knew I was doing that back when we were 17. He may have done when we were in the same car. Suspended license. What the hell do you have to do to get a license suspended? Not that I have any room to judge. It's never happened to me but that doesn't mean it couldn't.

So I thought I'd check it out just to see what you really would have to do that and here it was:



-Accumulating too many points on your driving record
-Lying on a driver license application
-Driving with no proof of insurance
-Being convicted of driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs
-Leaving the scene of an accident
-Using your vehicle to flee from a law enforcement officer
-Refusing to pay a traffic ticket
-Failing to comply with court-ordered child support or alimony payments
-Violating the terms of Nebraska's graduated licensing system for teen drivers



It's a weird feeling, trying to piece together another person's life, or just know what still goes through their minds. It could be as simple as not paying a traffic ticket. And that's understandable for someone who rarely abided by the law, stiff upper lip toward the drudgery of authority. Even if it's speeding or wrong u-turn or failure to stop. Stuff that the average citizen will get stopped with. Driving is a privilege is that saying of the statement. From the time I turned sixteen years old, driving is a privilege. I don't make light of it, there's truth in that. I've driven with reckless abandon over the years, thinking that's just a quickest way from point A to B. Plus, I drove several different cars over the years, and haven't wrecked one for a long time, no big deals. I'm still sixteen, I'm still prone to trying to get there faster, to display some erratic driving. But for the most part, I drive within the lines. No reason to get real stupid out there. That's more of a truth than anything else.



Anyway, we all have our vices, I suppose. For Seamus, it's breaking the law, and God knows what else. I know it's at least his second time on probation. There's a guy running from himself, avoiding the consequences. Trying to just get away with it. Hopefully, it's nothing more than that. He'd be off probation by now. That was February. It's be his month. And he turns 33 tomorrow. That's a hard thought. Just coincidental how I found that. I am beginning to imagine that everything happens for a reason, that God puts us in people's paths to offer us opportunities for grace, for learning, to give us knowledge about what we are doing here.

Just like that it comes up and bites you in the throat, this corporate shit they sling your way
And I have had on several occasions thought to myself as I walked in the door...you're a lucky son of a bitch you think these guys still want you around. You could say that for just about anything I suppose. You're lucky these people even want you around, you say. But you go to the show anyway because it's where you are at. It's street cred, if nothing else. It doesn't make you who are, but it's something you know how to do. But then the boredom sets it, the discontent, the happiness that you have a place to go everyday. I ask myself often if this is living. It's not hell. Far from that. You've been to hell and you're trying not to go back... hell is a shattered state of the mind, the core of selfishness, where you are a shell. Anyway, it's not hell. Until you feel it wrap its tight talons around the base of your neck like it's been. Soft. Soft place in the heart of the concrete landscape... The quiet, nothing going on, you're biding time there. Trying to make things look like youre busy. They said that something like 250,000 lost their jobs last year. I mean, fine, the news is depressing, and to say so is not news. It's all yellow journalism. We read it, watch for confirmation. Or gratitude, depending on which side of the envelope you want to write. But looming in this environment we see that jobs are scarce, it's a bitch and not a bull market. Act like you're busy, act like its your purpose. The question is which percentage of those 250 thou were acting like they had a purpose, like they were producers. Those are the real tragedies. They went to work everyday to please somebody and something and it just wasn't enough. Or something had to be done. I'm not in that class. I still earn a paycheck because I didn't leave, decided I would stay until they made me, or until I just up and decided to make another move. I can't admit that entirely but every now and then it shows... not here for anything but plug the time that will wind up into my bank account. There for dollars. At one point it was different. In the beginning the light at the end of the tunnel was a train. I couldn't stand it because I never had my feet under me. I wasn't just passing time. I was trying not to drown. I tried to take a job at my last employer that would land me serious dollars. And it would have. If I had any skill at it. If I had had any inkling of how make it work for me. I would have cleared something like 40 thou. I was living in a shithole apartment in the city and with that money I could have probably rented or bought a house. But it wasn't right for me. It was a bitch deal when they needed me to be a bulldog out of the gate. So I flopped. Then I got this gig and training seemed like enough, until I hit the floor and then...then it was rough sailing...lots of shit to remember, lots of people to please, and if you didn't remember it, you were in trouble. But somewhere someway over about a year I felt things clicking. I wasn't dreading going to work in the morning. I was starting to like it... they gave me projects, assignments, responsibilities. I mastered a few things that were valuable. I was making it work. I fit in. For a short time, until I balked at the wrong assignment. I said, I'm not sure if I want to be doing this ALL the time. Not without a little extra incentive, what is my incentive? How will I be graded when this is part of someone else's job. All the little wormy things you say when you just really want to know the answer to the question, how am I gonna get mine?? Stockading, bivouacing. Waiting for the apocalypse. Summer break, what above my 401K wilt thou bequeath unto me. Selfish to the core. The slip from purgatory back into hell, greed.
Anyway, I'm entirely sick of this story. It's been my story the last couple years, until... I fell soft. I went back into the underbrush, trying to hide. And within the last couple weeks, a total meltdown. This shit is not that difficult really. Not at all. Unless you aren't paying attention, unless you are asleep at the wheel. Then, shit gets tough. You have to put out fires again, you've gotta surf instead of merely wade. You're running for your life so you don't join the ranks of the 250 thou. You can't afford that, you won't make rent. You won't be able to breathe and you will begin to panic. You'll look at banks in that special way, you'll be calculating bank vault volume. You'll need to have a gun which is the last thing anybody wants. It'd be like having a pack of cigarettes when you're trying to quit. You'll carry it with you everywhere. Just in case. Suddenly, you're putting out fires again. You're bargaining with your chips, you tell them anything just to get them off your back. You tell half-truths. You twist it in your favor. I told them today how I gave someone a chunky rate because that's all there was but someone else found something that saved $300...I said they okayed it. They didn't even put up a fight. They hadn't but I don't know where I got the price, how I got the price. Why, you'd practically have to be asleep at the wheel not to see that it was something fishy. I stuttered, stammered through it, I didn't know where it came from.

There are some that have been hurt by trusting another and this hurt is from within themselves and without bounds and takes their focus and they think and ruminate over and over making the hurt within then grow. The key is that this hurt is within them; the other has already gone and time passes and with the passing of time, all hurts begin to heal naturally provided we can get out of the way of that healing nature. I tell you that if we keep opening up the wound, we are wounded over and over. Fact is, and please get what I’m saying here… this hurt keeps some together even they shouldn’t be together and it tells us that we really do give some of our personal space to the other person that we love. This hurt warns us by giving us a feeling when we sense that our beloved is leaving; it is the early warning system of mate retention, and it can be wrong; it is just a warning. Yes warnings can be false alarms, like a car horn that is stuck on; that loud warning only means the horn is stuck on! So I say the hurt caused by breaks in trust are like car horns, they get our attention so we can make wise choices

The man holding on for dear life to what still remains is often as tethered to tragedy as the man who has everything to lose and is quite blinded from what he cannot see.

The reason being that the former will begin to see that he no longer has breathing room and will focus all his attention on the act of breathing, hoping that the berth will widen. His hope is gigantic and yet, he still finds himself believing that he has some sort of role in that widening.

But his insight may be that the least bit of error on his part could spell yet another setback, in a time where setbacks are not affordable.

The man who has everything to lose spends much of his time building ramparts around him as well, because he lives with the awareness that there is rope to burn, and he acts accordingly.

He changes at his leisure, burning bridges as he sees fit, without any regard for the wider consequences, occasionally to him making needed changes to his life and never truly assesses the damage. This man could later become a man who leads himself blindly into the fold. He may at some point become aware of the wreckage of his past and find the need for a freer life. Or he never changes at all and loses everything.

But so to the man looking for the rescue. But the closer to the bottom one becomes, swiping at all he has like an old man on his way home with his groceries, the more desparate with fear he realizes he now has become. The fear alone promotes failure. Once you've lost everything then the burden of keeping it all together is no longer there. No need to play defense, no need to toe the line. What a treacherous way to live it seems.

grateful for:



-PB & J at 12:30 in the morning

-that last few minutes before you have to get the hell out of bed

-dual car keys, one to start & heat up the car and the other to have to open other doors

-Grape juice (looove grape juice)

-a workout facility just a stone's throw from my apartment

-composition

-prayers for the highest power



Strap boots on. Walk 100 paces and begin workout. It's pretty uncanny since I never would have exercised in past times. Not entirely the truth, as I remember going to the Creighton gym by myself and asking to chevk out a basketball. Off and on since I left high school. I like exercising, staying somewhat focused on my physical well-being. My physical well-being is not always so well, I think. A fine line maintainence of the joints, tendons and yes even the limbs. It's all connected, I've been able to verify that for myself... mental, physical, spiritual and emotional--- which seems to belong in some rambunctious pot.

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE4B21JC20081203

I couldn't believe I remembered this one but I specifically remember her being on the PBS Blues special they had a couple years ago. Not sure which volume it was but it very well may have been the first diected by Martin Scorscese. He did a pretty faithful job of attempting to put all the folk and blues singers into their proper perspective. If you weren't terribly grounded in the blues, which I don't necessarily think I am, Odetta came off as a little strange-sounding. I remember she had this way of singing and then give a loud-WHOP sound from her mouth, deep lungs. Anyway, I can't say much about her because my knowledge is very limited, only that I know she was an influence to many. Dylan gives her props in this article as being highly influential as do a lot of civil rights activists and anyone who appreciates the maintaining of a strong musical base as means of preserving the culture and mores of a people. But that's a bit high-flown, I suppose.

Interesting take on Amsterdam. I try to keep in touch now that my relatives are getting older.
I like revisiting this because it shows up in my dreams. The only place I really have been
able to call the home of my family. Omaha, yes, but Amsterdam is where all the points
converge for us. It was pretty well calcified when I saw my whole family and their tombstones
lined up in the cemetery, one by one...

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.zillowblog.com/zillow_blog/images/sanfordcarpet.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.zillowblog.com/my-hometown-amsterdam-ny/2006/07/&usg=__YLQmbt4U8cdRuNthlVo9E8e_lMM=&h=320&w=505&sz=73&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=NVOg3SFJbZ_YWM:&tbnh=82&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Damsterdam%2Bny%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Someone brought up a point about the new Wal-MArt which opened up recently, which Brooke and I decided to go shopping at this weekend. The location is up on the hill on 72nd Street where the Ranch Bowl used to be. Of course, that's my frame of reference because the fact of the Ranch Bowl is as old as my any of my memories of Omaha. Then Angie makes a comment, God, I just don't know because we used to do so many things at the Ranch Bowl and now it's a Wal-Mart! Which was a point I hadn't even connected at all, but God, amazingly true...then immediately, I got to thinking about the various shows I was able to see at the Bowl... one hell of a bruiser of a place to see a gig...
It started back in 1991 with Pearl Jam for me. My first real concert ever. My parents let me go out on a Thursday night, school next day for the first time ever. And I had enough to go see this show. Went with Sigler in his parents' grocery getter to see Eddie Vedder and the boys. Tribe After Tribe opened. 311, a few times. Mudhoney, Frank Black, Mike Doughty, Blue October, Galactic, Koko Taylor, Clutch, Shannon Curfman, James McMurtry, Bob Mould, and of course, I can't remember any others for some odd reason... when a band came through there, without fail, the drumbeats would ripple through you and the guitar would wail through the air. Total bruiser bar with a hard concrete floor and chain link separating the bar from the main floor. I know it was during a couple of the 311 shows where the crowd was so thick, everybody so excited and moshing around I also got knocked over and stomped completely. You had to fight the tide through that, because it would skin you alive if you succumbed to it. Tickets to the Bowl were never more than 20 or 25 bucks and I guess that's maybe due to the hike in cost for tickets or something like that. Toward the end, when I saw Koko Taylor in what must have been 2001, they set up tables on the floor and put drapes over them, lit candles. That particular show was probably one of my first blues shows (not many since actually) where it was all class and the rest was blues. Totally different atmosphere than anything I could have hoped for. The back story of how I got in there, involving me picking up the guitarist and drummer from the airport, still kind of blows my mind.
I suppose a major reason why I can't remember a lot of shows was because the ones I mentioned already were the big ones. The Bowl was legendary for their local shows and I couldn't count how many bands I saw there. Crappy, thrashy, junky bands. Bands that so far as anyone knows went nowhere. But that was the beauty of the place... I know my friend Garrity said he saw Widespread Panic there a while back in its history and the show got called because neighbors had filed a complaint for the noise. Something like that was said to have happened for Bob Weir's Ratdog. I thought that was the point of having music in bars and not outside. Even so, the place would get packed so tight that it was like a sweat lodge in there. During the winter, the windows would fog up on the outside, and then people would be ducking outside real quick to have a smoke, freeze near death, then come back in and pick it up again.
The thing you could never truly forget was that there WAS in fact a bowling alley. My sister and her friends used to play there on weekends, for lack of anything better to do. It was a real deal bowling alley and rock joint. You could play volleyball on a team during the summer if that was your thing. Now it's a f*&%in Wal-Mart for all that's worth. In its last days, the place looked delapidated, its spirit crushed.

Accents. I hear them all day as anybody who plays on the phone all the day will... but I'm trying to tune the ear to that very thing... Texas will be difficult but they're generally a dead

Today I'm grateful for

Democracy
Barack Obama

Don't get me wrong. Looking back, I might have taken John McCain. Joe & Kari & I stood downstairs at the 48th St and shared our own visions. Mostly Joe and Kari, they're both very heated in their expressions of passion. Joe was saying how John McCain was actually a good man, a good politician who might have seen his better days pass him. He still has that special spark within him to try to make his country a btter place. But maybe his methods and his focus has wandered a little bit. It would be hard for him to keep up with it all. We needed someone younger, with the vitality needed to man up for the job every day for 365 x 4. Palin was a nail in his political coffin. Crazy bee-zo that she is. I guess now we're finding out just how crazy she really is. Just my opinion from what I'm being given. McCain might not have made it for years not because he was 72. There's Viagara for 72, but just out of the sheer volume of mess that he would have had to sludge through. That Obama will have to sludge through, God bless him. As Willard said in Apocalyse Now, "the shit piled up so fast here you needed wings to stay above it. " And that's the best you can say right now to this man, God bless him. I think this guy is a leader, a politican of a different kind. Sure, a politician but a guy who will try to help this country reclaim its true feathers. A true leader leads from his gut. That's the kind of guy I think we gave ourselves now. He'll make mistakes, sure, but he'll also try to make good. You could see it on the night of the 4th. Standing triumpant, arm raised high with a fist. This guy's here to roll up his sleeves and try to get to work. He got the Congress to do it to. He is starting to look like a leader, like he did in '04 at the Democratic Convention- a man on fire. I thought it was possible back then when I heard him speak. I sit here now, four years later, amazed. A meteoric rise. He was gone a couple years and then he was back with a vengenance. People have hope now. Never mind that "a little hope is a dangerous thing" like Red said in Shawshank. We don't want to think about that now. We're hoping we never have to look back.
And one thing is true, as Kari was saying now there's a crack in the foundation, and no matter what happens, they won't be able to fill that crack enough. It's too late for that. The door is opened. I reflected upon my recent education about Native Americans, wondering if a tribesman would ever make it all the way to the top like that. If the country will ever completely turn around that way, see land return to their lawful owners. Anybody with any sense would say hopefully it's not in my lifetime. The hell to be paid. Still, this is the beginning, this where democracy will spring forth, if it ever completely does. The way Obama ran his campaign from start to finish was the way it needed to be done. The way it gets done in the world of the forefathers. I could hear some saying that Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, all of them would likely be wiggling in their graves a little bit. Not Lincoln I imagine. No old Abe probably cracked a little bit of a smile from beyond the pale. They've been talking about King, Kennedy, Bobby and John, Malcolm, George Washington Carver, WEB Dubois. Frederick Douglass. You can't help but feel that warm feeling come over you if you think about it, how far back the legacy goes. The bricklayers for hope. The beginning of a new day.
The economy will be one thing. Iraq, Iran another. Foreign policy. I say to hell with foreign policy right now. Screw it. Economy is job number one. You get this baby flying again and those cats will be filing for green cards, they'll want to come over here, not wait for us to go over there. That'll be a whole new problem. This talk of working toward more efficient forms of energy, creating new jobs with a new enterprise all together is particularly interesting. The idea of getting scientists and physicists, engineers, architects together and make the approach toward developing new sources of energy as industry. It seems obvious now that the machine has been busy just grinding the gears, trying to make everyone happy by just whitewashing everything. What a bunch of clowns. What a bunch of infiltrators, intruders and magicians. Giving us the old bait and switch now for eight years. They watch us get bombed four times in one day, and then spent the next seven years tap-dancing so we would forget. What a bunch of jackasses.

Today I am grateful for:

sleep and naps or both
sense of humor
redemption
warm blankets
dogs
hugs, holding hands w/ someone you care about
food - spiritual food and leftovers
my cubicle which I've finally decorated
my family
college football on Saturday (no major allegiance)
the end of the World Series (looking toward next year)
the last remaining warm days of autumn
haircuts (badly needed ones)
fruit (healthy produce)
songs that are beautiful but don't get stuck in my head
the talking heads
the grateful dead (I'm grateful for the... get it?)

Grateful that slowly I can bounce back a little bit better from harder realities. But it's like this guy told us last night, trying to kick the drink again, "I just don't bounce back like I used to." And no doubt he doesn't. What the good doctor Evans once referred to as "resilience," why some of us are weak and others tend to have more visible fortitude. Even so, it seems important to just keep on with whatever one has in front of them.

I don't know why you thought I needed to hide

the night I let my father slip into the night

it was cold and rainy and I just wanted to cry

and there you stood, waiting by the bedside

waiting for the big demise, you knew it was coming

just a matter of how it all came out

Today I am grateful for:

-the clear, crisp coolness of the morning, reminiscent of autumn
-leaves on the linoleum, they make me want to clean, but I walked
into a building yesterday and it looked like they were part of the decor
-poems, with my feet kicked up on the ottoman
-curling up on the couch with a comfy blanket
-chinese food, with Brooke, waiting for the crab rangoon at the end
-the importance of pictures on the wall, throughout the day
-cranberry juice in the morning
-knowing I miss being in the right bed when the alarm goes off
-driving on tires that I feel safe with, when other people's tires spin on the wet pavement
-the alkaline smell of the wet pavement
-the measure of standing still, of staying the course (even if a Bush first said it)

Today I'm grateful for:

-laying on the bed and reading poetry
-freedom to not run anymore, standing still, sitting still
-having the chance to see Mississippi in the morning
-Halloween candy
-fog machines
-prayer chains
-silences for a long time, quiet

The older I get, the more I listen to people who don't have much to say.


Today I am grateful for-

-my father, plain & simple, that I have a relationship where I can open up to him

-that I can admit my faults to people who love me, and they still love me

-that this experience teaches me greater that unconditional love is possible

-that people close to me still try to teache me lessons

-for ham sandwiches waiting for me in the fridge

-redemption and the promise of resilience

-humor, that anything can seem funny after a vail of tears

-the right to vote

- the right to shrug off my heavy coats.



The heavy coat. Bearing down on yourself, don't know why I ever think that's going to be beneficial, maybe on a watch for the rudiments of pride. Can you really ever smash pride?

There's this other sense that you want to be somebody, stand up, be counted, have people

recognize your true worth. That, out in the real world, when your glad-handing your way through the day, it will amount to a steady progess. Trusting the process. That it is a process even if it just feels like a continuum.



After the weekend, with my father here for such a short period of time, I reflected on the several pictures that he showed me and Brooke before we ate dinner. I asked him at one point, seems like you have had occasion to see some pretty heavy things from other countries, other histories. Not in so many words, mind you, but that was the gist. He could tell about the different places of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, and their direct ties to past history, and let's say, recent times. He showed me St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, which had been ripped down one side by shrapnel by German bombs in World War II. Entire buildings which echo the haunting shadows of the past. The train lines which go south in one direction, or west, or else north, strecthing all the way to Siberia where prioners were taken for the gulags... We do and do not possess these kinds of tokens of a dark past. Only we do not recognize them as such always, we are not always to carry them with us. Not the daily reminders that the country we are continuing to become and the country we are really still very close to one another. Not like there. Not the reminder of sixty to a hundred years of history stacked on top of us... though I'm not so naive of that as to think of what happened South of here, or through the northeast, the midwest for the people who were here long before us. Enough of that soapbox.



Keeping it simple. My father mentioned that at my grandmother's funeral. How she managed to do that on many occasions, throughout the life that she knew of her. So it comes back to trying not to complicate things... give oneself the chance to settle down a little bit, settle down and keep it simple. But keeping it simple has a great deal to staying true to yourself again. Knowing where your place is in the world. I read an article about how to build resilience- which I've heard defined as "the ability to bounce back." That life gives you the punches sometimes and it's all how you beat it. Not look at it in terms of how it beats you down, how much its wearing on you. There's the Time that weighs you down, but then there's also keeping up with time, staying in the present moment. Knowing that this moment is right now/ not forever. It can be changed in the second moment if that is what is required.



I know I take things too seriously sometimes, maybe more than most people. But I don't know how it is for most other people. I just don't know what it's like for a tremendous amount of people. Onlya precious few. But those words keep coming back to my lips it seems, "life is short... life is short" and conversely, time flies. And forever may be a long time to contemplate, so it should and can be taken only one day at a time. At least for folks like me...

Gratitude... be grateful for afternoon naps, morning coffee, Brooke singing while she gets ready for work in the morning... memory, "I know something about you that you don't know," it had always been a mystery, but it was something I could guess, something I could look at it. I need to be reminded that I deserve to give myself a chance, a chance to really work something through to its completion, to get lost in the process for awhile, to stand with the winds of time and be swept

Just spent a few minutes viewing a google search on Hubble space telescope images for various parts of the galaxy. If you can say that the galaxy is the largest term that you can use. It seems, instaed, that what must be larger would be the universe... since you have to think of it in terms of Frank Zappa's notion that it is all one note... all one big loud sound in the echoing, burgeoing universe. And maybe that's just what I came away with today as I viewed the Christ-C nebula or even the Pleiades, hard, white, crisp stars -some brighter than others. But I often ask myself, as must the astronomers, viewing these entities from light years, literally hundreds upon thousands of light years away, where and how far and what must exist in that space? Why did we wind up here amid these galaxies of seeming lifelessness. It's not so much an extraterrestrial thing... but the billions of years which must have had to occur before the inevitability of human life began to stir in the marshes and the reeds of this planet. And then there's us, adapting making ourselves more in tune with being able to function in this world, with all its hazards, all its challenges, sometimes we make terrible errors which seem costly beyond our understanding. Other times, we simply hurt other people, seemingly without reason, but mostly because we are in conflict with someone and cannot bear a something, basically things aren't running our way. So we go through this whole song and dance with another human being, all the while forgetting that there are stars which may or may not have already burned out, whose light still reaches, whose light protrudes through the fabric of the universe. That we are not stars in the least, our light is quite comparatively short to the rest of the existant plain. But it is still a light, and greater light we seldom see, though we forget that that very thing is a light of sorts. So there are those stars and perhaps they are reminders of the formula, the greater design that seems to permeate all things. The Crab Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, all reflectant of other entities we find in our world. But it makes us feel small, insignificant on the one hand while on the other, it seems there is no limit to the power of a creator of such wild and terrific things. That that power must weild and have such great force for its creation, that it must have limitless intentions for a race like ours.

The hawk is hungry & other stories / D'Arcy McNickle ; edited by Birgit Hans

Third Floor

PS3525.A2844 H38 1992

They came here first : the epic of the American Indian / by D'Arcy McNickle
Third Floor
E58 .M18

"Not all music is meant to be beautiful." -Sam Riley in Control.

Quite the opposite actually, sometimes music, poetry, art is meant to convey the deepr, darker sides of human existence. To explore fear, paranoia, neurosis in an effort to express isolation, alienation, self-deprecation and why? Is it to serve as some selfish, burrowing need within a person to root out all the lingering traces of innate evil which so many philosophers and later, psychologists, exist within each and every person. But, to an extent, this sentiment would depend chiefly on the artist or the prime mover of the work. They may have their own particular intentions for bearing their soul to the solitude, at least temporary solitude of the page. But even so, there must be some sense of desparation that the author would feel toward warning the rest of humanity of the same dangers with which their soul has been affected. Think of The Plague by Camus which on one level, the surface level, deals with the plague and ensuing events of quarantine in the small town of Oran, Morrocco. Naturally, the events and occurrence make great press, as they still do in our times. Indeed, whether through truth of fiction, we could find this story rather entertaining in the same way that a horror novel or true crime writings would be. But we gain so much else from a novel like this one when reading between the lines, working the analysis and uncovering harrowing truths about the human condition.

the crow's feet follow you morning

after morning, you portray as being younger

still to those who seem to be around you,

but they're often party favors, with no room

for weak types, no room for angels,

but instead, the time to bolster needs has arisen,

when autumn sets in, the retaining wall flattened,

you hover beneath the crabapple tree looking

for a bite, the tart pulp smeared on your lips.

Rough Draft...

Standing by the wreck of the Missouri,
she and I were prehistoric, gazing upon the flight of birds,
they whorled up in patterns, let loose their wings,
and fell upon air pockets above the water,
the catfish flopped up on the rocks above the banks,
their fat bellies pulling them back down into the muddy deeps,
the otters on the far banks, burrowed farther into earth,
the autumn breezes beginning to send their signal,
the leadening weight of the season an echo to all passing creatures.

We dreamed for a moment of a life that never was,
but could have been, but might never be, unless we made it so,
the waters, untouched now by clipper, or man, and buoyant,
a tableau, millions of brushstrokes, thousands of thoughts to the wind.
Alone, the waters would pass as they always have, the southbound
current steady at five knots if there were a clock to measure it.
But with us, the river harkened itself, bearing down upon us
in the same way heaven can always be planted, here, now, now.

And in the hours that followed, the silence of that lilting river,
its slow plod, as we drive home in that same silence of which we shared,
fell into our rhythms for just awhile, in the quiet chir of the crickets
somwhere on shore, somewhere in the weeds, the grasshoppers
leaping around cornstalks, the long cut of the skyline, thick beds
of clouds, bordered by the dying sunlight, licking the heavens
a dull gold, a deepening sleeve of orange, the end of all wars,
that now would be the peace that we had promised each other,
that nothing need be said, in this prehistory, by the wreck of the Missouri.

http://www.geeksquad.com/tools/detail.aspx?id=339- Geek Squad Q&A page

I had a similar issue as well. I looked all over the net reading through all these forums and posts and called tech support to no avail. No matter how many times i changes my setting and reset stuff on both dekstop and laptop nothing worked. Finally, someone had an idea that worked like magic and was very simple! The problem was not with the computers, hardware, or the ip settings... the problem was actually with the linksys software. I know this sounds crazy, but what i was told to do was: uninstall the software, reboot, let your computer automatically detect the new hardware, the install wizard will pop upand ask you if you have the linksys cd, pop the cd into your laptop and only use it to install the drivers. just reboot again and you should be good to go! hope this helps...

http://192.168.100.1/-- cable modem's status page

Click on the Start button >>> go to RUN>> type in "services.msc" >>

click on OK- On the Services Local page double click on theoption "Wireless Zero configuration"- Here the Startup Type shouldbe "Automatic"

- Click on the "Start" button and "Apply" the settingsand OK.
Deleting Preferred Network Click on the Start button >>> Settings >>> Control Panel >>>NetworkConnections >>Here right click on the "Wireless Network Connection"icon and select Properties-

Click on the "Wireless Network" tab- Make sure that ""Use windows to configure my wireless network settings"" is checked- In the "Preferred Networks" box select each network name and click on "Remove" to make it empty- Click on OK.

**Click on the "Advanced" button(below the Preferred Networks) and makesure "Access point(infrastructure) networks only" is selected- Andalsomake sure that "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks"shouldbe unchecked >> click on "Close" and click on OK on main propertieswindow.

Connecting to Wireless Network (WLAN)

Click on the Start button >>> Control Panel >>> Network Connections-Right click on the "Wireless Network Connection" icon and select "ViewAvailable Wireless Networks"- If you see your wireless network in thelist, highlight it by 'single' clicking on it-

Now click onthe 'Connect' button below- If your wireless network is secured, it would ask you to provide the network key- Provide the wireless network key and confirm it again in the confirmation box andclick "Connect" & you should be able to go Online Wirelessly!!!

I've been wanting to go back to the priests lately. Open the spring action door, walk into the cloister, cross myself and kneel down on the long wood pew. I remember sometimes when you went face-to-face, which I often did, it felt awkward to go behind the screen, talking to a wall, thwen on the other side you'd have a proverbial sponge. Unless I confessed murdering someone, or worse. Then, they'd have a conscientious duty to either turn me in or convince me to turn myself in. And that could get dangerous. Muddy. But when you walk into that place, it can be suffocating. I used to think that was an entirely internal experience. Knowing that you were about to cough up your worst attributes, the things you'd done. How could you breathe? Like your body was going into that shock mode, like you were about to hyperventilate. But that wasn't it at all. You could say what you wanted. Lie if you felt you had to need to. But always and every time, God knew the truth. God knew what was in your heart. Just about every preist I ever came into contact with, whether liberal or conservative in his religious leanings, would tell you the same thing--- delight in the truth, for it will set you free. And depending how you want to respond to that statement on any given day, either the light that shines upon you is quite white or else it fades to dull grey.

The truth and the guilt was what sucked the air out of that room. How a priest could stand to cover himself in cloaks and stay in that room, not knowing how many people would come through there, not knowing what personal burdens would be laid upon them-- unfathomable. How you could muster up the courage to not sit in judgement for so many judgements which had been rolled out that way. If you were a priest. But I received sanctimony for everything that had come from my lips before. It's like the quiet stillness of a cold freezing room with so many spirits, so many demons, and there you are with all your black vows. Your great little deaths.

I am not, as she says, trying to trick myself into imagining

or fancying us together--- there is no trick in that:

either she is running parallel to me, or one of us

is lagging behind, out of spite, out of apathy, out of range,

ignoring the lingering within earshot, self-deafened,

imposed upon, or feeling bereft, afloat on a raft in a Martian sea.



Sometimes I try to trick the bogeymen, the white hooded

figures which lie somewhere in my occipital lobe, strangers

to flight, estranged by sleights of hands, bedeviled by mists,

or Bidwell's ghost, but with me as the spinner of a wheel,

looking out at the world, judging, reshaping, discarding

and ignoring the design, my hands shifting back & forth.



Often times, the bogeymen are like Stygian boatmen,

they stop to carry you through the darkness, sometimes quietly,

respectfully, and other times, speaking to you in low tones,

whispering the madness, in sheer, cold sentences, like steel staples.

But I've tried to look instead to my reflection, where the cold

black waters meet my face, knowing it as a mirage.



The workings of love, the love that acts, the kind you can kick

across the floor, wrestle with, stumble over on the dance floor---

force you forward, or they grind you down to a white-flag surrender.

Creating faith from uncertainty or despiar from doubt,

even so the person who shudders in its wake ultimately has

the upper hand, that no matter what the cost or how deep the scars,

there is still golden grace in the palm of the hand, once it is wished.



Sometimes love is knowing that you don't need to talk about it anymore.
To move on with the business of trying to love again.

List of things I need:

Safety or the feeling of safety, like people aren't out to screw with me, especially in the home,

esepecially with people I am trying to trust

This kind of runs chills down my spine. This poet was gifted with vision to say the least... he seems to be possessed of loneliness. I'm not sure why the lonely-hearted poets have always spoken to me so loudly. Maybe it's the same sense of being lonely in a world full of people you are so sure are unlike you, despite that delusion, despite how little that takes into account. Or maybe I just like some of the images here, the ideas. Glen Uig
by Richard Hugo
Believe in this couple this day who come to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired of giants and heroes and know they believe in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks. Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke played by those wise tiny creatures far from the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane. Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin, sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king. These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe, have lived through it all: the Viking occupation, clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War II bomber gone down, a fiery boom on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig. They remember the Viking who wandered off course, under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done. Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond, the monster is in it small as a wren. Believe the couple who have finished their picnic and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day you left home forever and the cold open way a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

Perscription.

Some yoga. Exercise. Ride a bike. Make it to the YMCA.

Eat healthier. Eat a salad instead of a cookie.

I don't need to eat every cookie I see. Blood sugar.

Cool down. Be cool. Like Troy said, "You're alright

I was reading about Gustavus Swift in the 1880's the first to begin using railway cars to ship frozen meat from one city to another- hence the beginiing of meat-shipping companies and refrigerated railcars-- I'm getting to be so saturated with useless but interesting knowledge...
But what if --and how are we to doubt that it didn't happen-- employees of the slaughterhouses falling into the meat-packing refineries... shipped off to other cities and placed on the grocery store shelves or in the coolers... then some pour soul happens upon the grainy remains of the sad worker who fell into the combine... I shudder to think of it. OKay, OKay, so that's a dark thought, but it came to me. I guess there's parts of history that sort of pull you in. Others that make you yawn-- wide.

bursting sparkles
of color above our eyes,
squinting sometimes,
fingers in my ears at
the loud explosions of light.


craning my neck backward,
the light sprayed over the field,
the soft grass under my ankles,
where are you I wonder,
are you in the night or just beyond me?

the dog plants his paws,
little nails on your arm,
you pause before the notes,
and your hands carress the dog,
a ball cradled in his jaw.

Thoughts on Reconstruction. 1865-1877.

The Civil War may have ended the fighting between the North and South on proper battlefields but the war never really ended in the South even after the Battle of Gettysburg, Antietam, etc.
The real battle continued to take place in establishing the Democratic party in the South and making sure that the Republicans were scared out of their seats and the elections lost. It has been noted, too, how African Americans were intimidated out of requesting any kinds of favor or funding except from Northern Republicans or even some Democratic leaders in the South. You can imagine them going to leaders who very well may have once been slave-owners. What hell- you think you've one a victory for your people whose greatest distinction is the color of their skin and their lack of education, then you have to beg some slave owner for a little help. No doubt, they were forced to scrape by on what could be given as a hand-out, a favor...

Also, new information and new concept about the time after the war. Blacks reaped the rewards of the post- Civil War legislation for only a short period of time, but that would likely have made it worse for them- the reason being that they would still have been served by restaurants, stores, bars, hotels, street cars during the 1880's. Then comes the 1890's and suddenly, you have a recommencement of "disenfranchisement" . So they won their freedoms for awhile, earned their comfort, only to have it snatched away from them once again. Think of the fear and anxiety, believing that once again they would slip away into a depraved and deformed state of being.

The Northern Republicans even gave up on the cause of Reconsturction and ensuring back rights were upheld. We're talking about 12 years, really. 12 years to work on, policing, enforcing and ensuring that African Americans get the same kind of treatment... it took four years and thousands upon thousands killed in the war, and they have a reconstruction and change ipso facto overturned after twelve years because they can't figure out a way to make the South do what they want it to... plus nobody really wants a big federal government.

He stood on the precipice above a valley of tornadoes.

His terror was complete, as he watched the whirling columns

extend into the sky, an ever-darkening field of purple madness.

The two of them had driven hard into the deep landscape

which threatened like a womb of torrents.

I felt like Buckner walking back into Shea... of course, that particular analogy doesn't entirely fit when you consider that he has already walked back into Fenway Park, this now only 22 years after the crime. However, there I was walking back into a local public high school, albeit as a substitute teacher but even so, it was a bit intimidating at the first because I found myself walking IN around the lunch room, not really sure if I should be parking in the staff lot or not, so I did the best I could to blend in with the locals. Children have not changed much since I last experienced them, this alone does not particularly surprise me because of the fact that times do change but the human essence remains intact. Like Anne Lamott said, we can't be too sure that Mary didn't want to whoop on Jesus every now and then too. Think of the story of Jesus in the Temple conversing with the scholars of Torah, and even then, he gave them some lip. SO it goes with the average high schooler. Trying to make their way into the big cruel high school world by being the biggest sassers on the block. And God forbid they don't establish themselves, excedpt in the small pack of kids who will hang out with them and will accept them for who they are... then they get really verbal, not just trying to mouth off to you, but trying to mouth off to everyone around them.... in that sense, I felt sheepish, I felt like I wasn't nipping their behavior in the bud enough...like I needed to really gop after a couple of them, chop their heads off and show it off to the rest of them... see what happens when you f**k with me & my mighty sword?? But it begs the question as to why teachers would want to simply ignore the problem and hope that it solves itself. Or skirt the issue in some way, shape or form. But they are smart enough or no doubt learn that with the students it has to be a wrestling match if you're going to complete your objectives. It's just that you're never really sure if that is what is currently slapping you in the face as it comes. You start talking and imparting imformation or spreading the seeds of knowledge and next thing you know, you got somebody talking right over you as you go, as if you are not even there in front of them... wrestling with your muscles pumped. You think that within the last few seconds, perhaps they forgot that I was just about to tell something to the whole class, you think that maybe they figured since you were talking that you wouldn't be able to notice the fact that they were now going to talk while you were. How very strange that such a thing should happen.
At any rate, I did it, after all, and made some small victories for myself in the process by adapting to a bit of a screwy schedule. Welcome to the Big Time that schedule shuffle seemed to be saying to me. and so I did. You got to accentuate your positives and most of all, I refused to fall into the Substitute trap of just going by the game plan. If they were going to be in the same room as me, I figured I might as well talk to them about a few things. And offer them a chance at maybe seeing the Big Picture. God knows I never did. Not in high school, sometime in college and only occasionally, in real life. Maybe it's gotten better, the jury's still out on that one, but at least I'm starting to see how educators build larger frames of the puzzle. And you can start to see how you make that puzzle come together, knowing that with it, students will hopefully be able to gather together some of that puzzle and learn how a story is put together, how to link together the narrative, so to speak.

Today would be an incredible nap day me thinks... yet another dull white, colorless sky

for us here in Omaha... the original proponent of naps I ran into this weekend. Laura

Heinemann or Weber not sure if she's taken on Chris' name yet. But the story goes for those who have not heard it yet that she and her roommate Holly had a loft in their dorm room

in college, a loft that they had borrowed or bought from people who had lived there before, on which someone had neatly written the phrase, "Naps are Nice," which was actually a mantra

for many of us back in those days. College is great for that because it often created that deep relaxed state, ingesting volumes and volumes of intellgence and knowledge for the self... then you would be right in the frame of mind for a long bout of deep sleep.

Naps are Nice. My favorite place to stop and take a nap would have been-hands-down- the Creighton library basement with their long cushioned couches, or even better take two cushioned chairs, push them together and off to bliss you go... the slight buzz from the weak florescent light, the ultra-silent library atmosphere and the cool temperature of the basement, surrounded by all those books, made for heavy dreaming. I found the poetry section in that library too, unrivaled so far by most book stores or other libraries that I've seen.

#2- my parents couch at their house in Florida. Now granted I have to travel 1500 miles and get a quiet moment to myself to get it, but man, the cool leather and the quietude of their living room, the combination leaves me waking up with drool on my lips EVERY time. The leather is soft and malleable to the skin and I know that I have a tendency to feel as if I am falling into the cushion. It's kind of like that scene in Trainspotting where the camera gives us the perception that Ewan MacGregor is falling down INTO the couch entirely.

Up on the hilltop below the Crescent Hotel, Stations of the Cross leading to the Crucifixion, outside of St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, afternoon.

link to St. Elizabeth Catholic Church if you are interested in history. I will have to take a look at this page myself... I went inside and said a little prayer for my friends and family.
http://www.eurekavacation.com/history/church.phtm

View from the Crescent Hotel, Observation Desk, We had a soda even though they did not have any lemonade. You could see the whole valley of that stretch of the Ozark Mountains, Arkansas.

This is going across the bridge from Beaver to Eureka Springs. Heavy rains and late winter flooding have brought the waters up very high against the bridge, but they keep it in operation. If a high tide going over the bridge makes you queasy then you better stay on your side of the river. You have to stop on either side of this bridge and check to make sure no one is crossing. It is a one lane bridge. Wha-hooo!

We ended up kayaking on this lake on the left side of the bridge, and in order to get this bridge, you would have had to jump onto another wooden bridge, older than this one, grab your kayak, flip it over to the other side and get back in on the other side...

From Main Street, Eureka Springs looking up at the Basin Park, from the main strip of Eureka Springs, the backs of those houses are misleading except for the fact that most houses and restaurants and shops are built into the geology of the hills on which they sit. The Basin Park hotel is a bit of a centerpiece to the town, sort of helping to create the aura of timelessness and long-standing status of the community... it's like a mining town that went in the direction of being a cultural haven for all the flagging spirits of the south and midwest.

http://www.basinpark.com/history.php

One good-looking woman with pretty eyes and an infectious smile next to an equally good-looking fella. (Brooke told me to say that about myself :)

How do you work creatively with the idea of trust. Primarily, trust that God is not trying to fool you by placing wonderous things in your life... I have this black cloud that comes over me when I'm at odds with the rest of the world and the people around me. People may say they want this in their life, they want that in their life. They can point to specifics- the location that they live, a hobby that they want to tackle, take on for themselves, people they want to meet, challenges they want to undertake, degrees to be gotten. I have seen that some of these accomplishments, and the pursuit thereof, will allow for a certain degree of self-esteem within each person and allow them to have a sense of individuality as time goes on, true enough- I have been there before, but I don't know how really, only that it was some sort of Jungian miracle of arranging particualr ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in such a way that I was able to overcome my self-will run riot long enough to smell the roses and take up my bed and walk again. Good riddance. But I'm still of the ilk that believes to myself, that more than anything I want that black cloud to disappear, so that every light-handed (or otherwise sleighting of my personality NOT be taken as a personal affront... that these things should NOT be cutting me to my entire being, because I am very capable of interpreting information processed by another person, who may NOT have all the facts regarding the case, and even so, may simply NOT be trying to undermine my ability to live as I would like to. This goes for No One. I simply want to learn a greater sense of resilience. So that hurt feelings become just that: feelings. Not a window to the larger reality, not a reflection of my place in the universe.
That is why I seek the removal of the black cloud, to regain my place in the lives of those around me as a person who can be trusted, loved, wanted, needed. A person who doesn't flounder around looking for people to acknowledge my feelings. Too much of my life wasted in that endeavor rather than spent in contributing to life.

The Artist Starving Merely By Virtue of his Slowdown in Writing.


Hey, it's the economic climate after all. That's where it began you see, when the economy started taking a dive. Into the tank. But it wasn't, it became less than expedient to write it seemed. What did the Artist really have to say that he hadn't said already. Noone wants to listen to the broken record, not the least of whom is the Artist himself. But in so doing, he knows he's depriving himself and his fans of his artifice. Which he is also trying to improve upon. Ecchh, you see it's a messy cycle and the artist himself abhors -- yes, it's the right word-- the development of the cycle. So he comes around full circle. Just because he does not want to get stuck in cycles, particularly ones where he finds his emotional being starving itself to death, he decides he has to take his pen and walk again. Stagger though he will, Use maybe week verbs, battle his inner critic, which is a staunch Torie supporter from the British Parliament, a man who wears wigs and a monocle. A real jerkoff if you'd ever meet him. He hangs out with the Fashion Police, The Committee of Mortal & Venial Sin Establishers, and of course, The Weight Control Nazis. His affiliations are with the Grammar Stiflers. At any rate, The Artist understands that from time to time he will have to confront and sometimes undermine this Inner Critic character. But some things cannot be avoided, should not be avoided at any cost. This isn't a message about talent in any way. The talent is there and has been there for years, but it's how it is used that is in question. Not a question. It needs to be used. Now he takes on another villain, that of the Publishing Department, should he make his thoughts publicly known or keep them within the realm of his own world of ideas. He knows why he likes to publish, because then it isn't something he should ever feel ashamed of, or ever doubt its validity. If he publishes, then he gives it up to the ether. For its own usage. Et cetera.

I find it somewhat non-coincidental that in the throes of therapy the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz came bubbling up through my therapist's lips. Granted, this is a famous book from what I understand and it seems to have a lasting effect on the people who read it. I remember my friend Tim was singing its praises one morning as he drank his morning coffee. The good news to me is I think I've begun to ask questions for better understanding. I personally like the question "What do you mean by that?" or "What did you mean by that?" This is not because the other person is being unclear by any stretch of the imagination, but rather that I simply don't always know what other people are trying to relay to me: be it humor, confusion, concern, or just flat information.

At any rate, I googled what I could remember of the doctor's words because it was bothering me... anything I could do to sort of solidfy things in my mind, I was ready to do. You need some codes to live by in order to find a foothold in the greater world of your own reality... I wonder how many people secretively or outwardly have a particular code or philosophy to live by, and then conversely, their personal feelings of success. Just to get that cross-section of people who live by spiritual principles. At any rate, I'm glad I found it because now my interest is piqued for that book which I picked up at Brooke's but never really got far within... I'll put these up as a reminder to myself and rue the fact that I'm such a self-help guru, but some things are necessary , if not would have been wiser to have engaged in all along. But now they're here should I want to return to them.

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you meant. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your work in the direction of truth and love.

DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won;t be the victim of needless suffering.

DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

Your best is going to change from moment to moment, it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstances, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.

Can I instead say something back to you about the old man
who plays xylophone at the pub at lunch on Wednesdays
How I knew him better when he played downtown
his quiet tones ringing through the joint, and when
he was done, he would quietly pick up the keys and the stand
and the long elegant mallets and place them into his hatchback,
our lives having several resurrections in various contexts,
how he was always a jazz gentleman, a zen kind of the under street,
Can I tell you instead about the time I spent on a summer evening,
sitting on a stool at the old Dazy Maze, lured in by the lights,
and an old bearded bluesman picking away at his electric guitar,
and making the flowers dance in their pots on the sill, and
I couldn't believe but that I had stumbled there, alone,
wanting the night to open up its throat and accept me,
but that some wind some pull yanked me in off the pavement,
and I sunk back away from the fire within me, it became cold, embers.
Can I tell you a story of being in the world, and how my fear
cut me off from so many chance encounters with a small bit of fate,
the kind which so many fail to see or wonder about, but on some
night when the wind fell quiet I could step into my skin,
and come out of the cold, walk up to any musician, and realize
that I just want to know how they do what they do, so I can
return the favor in some way, for the telling of the tale,
for the stretching of the fable, for the clearing of the mystery,
and maybe teach another lost soul how to jump the fence,
and reassume the leap, to quiet the fires, on an otherwise fallen day.

Start with Now.

How many times have you read this in the annals of self-help literature. Frankly, I do get somewhat burned out on recovery/self-help lit sometimes. The David Burnses, the Julia Camerons, the Dalai Lamas. I prefer the harsh, impersonal words of Richard Hugo, Chuck Chamberlain, Paul Auster, the guys who just say this is how it is: It's here if you want it, whatever "it" you happen to be after. But there was a book Poemcrazy that I just got to read a few pages from... start today start with now is what they say. And so you have to go there. Try to write down the way it may be right now. I made a mistake yesterday in that I wrote down some thoughts I had had in my mind, thoughts which disturbed me and which were causing me great pain because I could not account for their origin. I've been known to fabricate a veritiable funk before, so it didn't really surprise but I've known for some time that when you go into the whirlwind, I've just have to ride it out.

Start with Now.

Gratitude, this morning because there is grace. You make mistakes and you know that you are tempting fate, tempting the beast. One thing people may not understand about me is that I believe in going after the disease. Confronting the thing so I know it better, so I know how it works on me. It's like a virus though, changing forms (often) from time to time... Brooke always challenges my ideas about what it is the disease and what is just normal, omnipresent bouts of self-doubt, of insecurity and knowing that being a little off-center is a daily reality for me. Know thyself, the saying goes. Was it Augustine? Or Plato? Aristotle? One of those eastern Europeans. Sometimes I don't think it's worth the time, not when watching Paranormal State or Homicide on A & E offers me a different insight into a reality other my own. I was thinking yesterday that I may have a few more years before it would entirely be true but I have lived close to half my life... I spent a great deal of time getting this far, and a lot of self-examination had to ensue to survive, to not entirely give up & disappear out of the blue and into the black.

Draft of a poem

"he's seen the same things I've seen
and it's certainly made an impression on me."

what edges there are on the human heart,
this victim, this organ, this patriot of human history,
you absorb so many things into a human heart,
your parent's clothing, your friend's sense of style,
your hatred of what money makes you think and say,
you begin to think you are a vessel of divine inspiration
but you simultaneously hate that divine source,
because you just want 1987 back, right before you moved
from that town in Ohio, you had just found out who your friends
were, you learned the art of non-chalance, how to hold on to money,
because you could use it toward a game of miniature golf,
you could save it for an evening having pizza with your friends,
then suddenly, it was up to someone else, something bigger than you,
not you deciding again, time to pick up and go somewhere else,
or maybe you have rediscovered longing for 1991 again,
your grandfather still alive, but slipping away from you.
The human heart staggers in its cage sometimes, but you feel like
you want to get a harness on it, so it doesn't drag you so far
and wide on its wandering, on its sojourn, you want to be able to
squeeze your heart blindly, an drain the blood from it, so you
can fill it when you desire, when you're looking for another chance

She's been land-mined. Down the sinkhole through the airy tunnel.
And punched up with all kinds of demons. She can't speak with the weight
on her chest and who blames her for her quietness. She blinks down at me.
Nothing more needs to be said. Only that she's now a study in humility.
In keeping her mind open and her lips shut. She will have no retainder.
He's asking her not to fight. Not so that she is weak, but that she
can't afford it any longer. She's young, but it doesn't matter, when you've
got to stop fighting those who favor you rather than your opposition.

Recent memories--

Sigler. His house on Izard Street, the creaky floors, the coziness of it, he and I would get comfortable on the leather chairs and watch classic films- Eight Men Out, True Confessions, older & grainy on VHS from having been watched too many times on an aging VCR.

The Incarnation fair. 5th & 6th grade. You looked forward to the fair every year either in July or August, it was always pretty hot outside and dusty, but they had great food, cheeseburgers, fries, sno-cones, ice cream, a childhood dream. And Mahoney would have been there, we would have drank the sno-cones once we squeezed the juice out of them. We would have wandered far & wide in & out of booths which promised prizes, gifts, and fun experiences of games.

Spring in Omaha. 7th -9th grade, the dismal social years. My mother wanting me to get out of the house. My experimenting with basketball games with Doug, Laugh, and Jason from up the street. Those guys just had that air about them like a lot of other guys it seems at that age. Young guys are so awkward, so eager to prove themselves to every one else. They cut each other down, man, it always seemed like every man for themselves at that age. Even so, they probably just wanted to play ball with someone different, see what I was made of.

Brooke walked on the side of the road with me and it reminded me of playing basketball in the spring, the wind would pick up and sometimes it was a hinderance. You'd loft the ball up and the wind would catch it... wasn't it hard enough playing without the elements. But the gravel would collect on the side of the road, and I'd hear the crunch of the ball on the gravel, my tennis shoes crunching over the ground. Sometimes you'd stumble on it and kick the little pebbles all over.

"The idea of faith is a very large chunk to swallow when fear, doubt and anger abound in and around me. Sometimes just the idea of doing something different, something I am not accustomed to doing, can eventually become an act of faith if I do it regularly, and do it without debating whether it’s the right thing to do."

I couldn't help but feel my all-knowing, ever-present ego deflate a little but when I read this. That you have to just give up what you think you know, how you think things will or might end up for whatever will come down the chute. Or gristle and burn into view. I admit I am a person who begins to believe that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's a cliche to be sure. I've been thinking about how many people I knew who were granted the option of starting their lives over or just trying it again. They make the turnaround and then they have the new subset of events and challenges that are presented to them with that change.

I'm afraid of slipping through the cracks. That panicky feeling you get when you get off the phone with someone who's told you they'll call you back later. But you know how busy things get. How certain items on a daily list get longer and wider, and sometimes things just get bumped to the bottom of the list, reserved for tomorrow. And you want to shake your fist at that. You want to be sent to the front of the line. You want to be given special consideration, and treated like a distinguished guest. You want a special invite tot he party. Think about it: the stars don't need to ask to be in the party, they get so many phone calls, they have to hire publicists. An agent to comb their hair for them, practice their speeches with. Part of you wants that- maybe partly because someone more or less hinted at that possibility- when you finish up with your student teaching, the schools will be calling you, your phone will ring off the hook.

But see all of this is just rabid justification to feel as jaded as you have in the past... it's the white lie that makes you feel comforted on the harder nights when you feel like the fallen athlete with his bum knee or the writer who just froze up one day and never managed to put a sentence together again, the doctor who let someone die on their watch. It's never really your fault, but somehow you can't help but think that there might have been something that you could have done about it. That you didn't play your cards well, and you're fault is that you didn't know you were on the clock. It's forgetting that this isn't a dress rehearsal. Not that you get only one chance at the deal when you're so far up, but no doubt, that is what you're afraid of. And that should you be defeated, you're fear is that your down for the count. JUst think of guys like Gary Hart, Richrd Gephardt, Bob Dole. So close to the dance, always in the mix somewhere but it just really isn't in the cards no matter which way they cut it.

But in perspective. How many teaching jobs are there in the country, in the world. It's a profession. They're a dime a dozen- around every corner, lurking in how many bushes whereas the president is a one time deal, two if you're among an elite bunch. And I understand that it's no easy job. Even so, I'm hungry for some real work, roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty work. There's making money and establishing your ego and some folks are definitely cut out for that type of work. I don't think I ever will be, or so I've often told myself. I've been close enough to see the rat race and find that's there not many people who are truly happy with what they do throughout the day. Never the last man out of Mogadishu because they never leave their desk until the bell rings. Who am I to judge it? Except I don't think it's worth it in the end. And maybe you'd get one or two of them to tell the truth. Truth was always a grand prize when I was growing up. It seemed valiant to go after it. Honorable to move toward a point of entry with that on your tongue.
And it still does, if it's not entirely warped beyond its recognition. I'm hungry for more than just truth, folks. Not just truth but that sad, delapitated mess we like to point toward called the American Dream. Or the Dream of the Red Chamber. As Uncle Tupelo once said, "we're all looking for a life worth living." And that's a day-to-day testimony. I give myself any number of reasons why I think teaching is among the greatest, noble professions in this world, and I can't articulate how it has felt to be close to that dance, ready to engage and attempt to become a shaper, an adviser, an advocate, a marketer of whatever ideas we deem necessary to prepare children for this world. It's not like I'm breaking into heaven, even if I've at times felt like it might be the last door into that particular place... how dramatic. I can hear the squeaky door swinging to and fro...what a ruckus.

We walked out to the middle of the pond
It was 54 degrees, and the mecury rising,
but he had been there like a Christmas ornament
in March, an errant icon, keeping Americana
current. It was the old country left in him,
he said, how his ancestors had done it,
from Quinnipiac, then Stockholm before that.

He had spinners and lures, and the gaping wonder
of a hole, the waters dark as the eye of a fish,
I kept eying the shore, wondering if it would
disappear within minutes, hours, the wind felt
Atlantic on my skin, low eastern seaboard,
except you can't smell brine this far north,
not even in the first week of March.

I told him he had to be losing his mind,
he said years ago, he couldn't pinpoint the date,
and someday, you'll find yourself in the middle
of a lake, running from bears, tracking lightning bolts,
it's in your nature, and knock-kneed though you may be,
you've proven something to the universe, when
you're out hear with me, in March, the temperature
rising, with nothing but variable inches of ice
between you and your perishing. How else do
you expect to teach other men to fish? And
though I swore I heard the ice crack several
times before I reached land, I had to smile
at the old man, crazy and foolish as he was.

I don't know why I was pulled back there again after all thsi time.
I guess I know it's a stretch of time that in this life I will always feel attached to. The Dalai Lama has given me a lot to think about in the last couple days and in just 38 pages so it gives me cause to reflect. About attachment, about detachment and their various relationship with love and compassion. At any rate, this one is comes to me especially strong:
Waking up it was about 9 or 10 in the morning, we had been up late, making love,
cuddling, crying, comforting one another, swearing what we could and would do for one another... I felt like the Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...everything in disarray and suddenly face-to-face with destiny. Seeing that open window to leave and the other metaphorical window to stay. She looked it me with her big hazel eyes, and smiled wanly. She knew that time was up. All those letters up until that point reminding me that our time together was short. I'd fight back tears, that primal urge to rip my clothes and beat me breast as they did in old times. Going to God and begging, begging, saying if it be your will, whatever you would have me do. But I'm not Christ and this was not me dying for everyone else's sins. This was just me, human and all too earthly, deciding where my heart really wanted to be. Where my heart decides to be. Today, now, yeaterday, in a month, in a year... This was about making a decision. And my friends told me, the ones who I consider true friends saying, Even though you make a decision, there is always a decision after that. Nothing is final. Nothing has to be forever. If you decide you have made a mistake, try to correct it at once.
I stood in her living room and I was dumbstruck. I knew I loved her, she told me she loved me often times too. And I was leaving. It seemed like it would be forever that I would be gone. The tears started falling from my cheeks, I hugged her harder than I ever hugged anyone. My heart began tearing up, the burning. I looked her in the eyes and I couldn't help but say this: I'll come back, I'll be back... how could I say that? Why would I say something like that? I was preparing for only the second longest drive I had ever taken in my life...

Dalai Lama's
I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R L I F E -

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs:
Respect for self
Respect for others and
Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realise you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

I found myself wondering what it was that I liked about Omar throughout the series but by the end it was undeniable for me... he was not necessarily a good person... just a vigilante in my mind... the guy who took the law into his own hands and there is some valour in that. Obviously, this was his last stand at getting to Marlo Chris & Snoop and he over extended himself... every time I saw him limping around the streets like he was, I kept thinking he's out in broad daylight for anyone to see. He wasn't being none to smart but that was part of his character, the sort of raw pride of a gunslinger who thinks and knows he's above the law... The best was when he robbed the card game that Marlo was at, and he put his gun into Marlo's face and said "You musta mistook me for someone who listens"
I like how they built his character off his relationships with Jimmy and Bunk, how a guy like Omar sort of took care of some business they couldn't do themselves by being on the streets all the time.
Fact is, I think most people wanted Omar to get Marlo and Chris before the cops did. But that's likely not real life... Omar's legacy is that he's a fictitious Robin Hood of the streets and he did his part to buck the status quo from within ... and believe me, I let out a pretty loud "Ohh no way!!" when that kid--- I kept thinking maybe he won't die from it... but in a show shooting for a slice of reality, only Superman can dodge bullets... In a lot of ways, he does epitomize what is left of the American Dream, fighting to stay alive amid the wastelands of moral vagrancy.

I'm grateful for :

nature walks
Reese's pieces
watching Jake awkwardly through the mud, no leash
sunshine
blue sky with whisps of clouds smeared across it
when you know that someone else gets you
stone memorial markers
vistas of the great plain

First Day of Spring?

Not very likely, since it is still a month away but it was the first sign of spring... Brooke and I took Jake to the park and walked through on the path. At first, we walked through a slushier area, still walking on thoroughly snowy stretches of the path. Brooke laughed at how the ice sort of bubbled upward when you applied pressure to it. And that was how it was, the water seeming to flood certain areas since this winter's precipitation seems to be trapped in the frozen areas of ground. Most plant life is still in the winter mode, dead and dormant, and probably will be still for at least the next four to five weeks. But it's hopeful to see some of the snow melting around the grassy areas and the grass underneath is beginning to show color. No doubt the moisture will be crucial in providing ground upon which a healthy foliage will grow. I couldn't help but want to slow down if even just a little bit, to simply examine the ground and long enough to take in the scents of the ground, the freshness of the reeds that grow along the Chalco pond. You learn to enjoy days like that to the best of your ability, to try to shed off the troubles that you might be having, real or fancied within your own mind, and just live in the moment, that ultimately it must be a spirited moment, and if you can't bring the spirit to the moment, then search for the spirituality that might have been intended by it.
I went out a little later on, knowing that later in the week we be once again enshrouded in cold. I walked up into the Tiburon neighborhood with the half-million dollar houses, lining around the golf course , but mostly I was looking for the same sorts of signs from nature that spring might be on its way. Hard to truly see when snow still lies in the hedgerows of the cornfields. One thing about living out here in southwest Omaha is that you are really surrounded by miles and miles of earth.
I remember living on Turner Blvd closer into the city and longing just to out where I was raised where you could take a walk in more desolate areas where there was a LOT less concrete. In that sense, I love it out here. It makes me wish I could buy a slat of land, and till it, work long hours in the fields with nothing but my tractor and my back. Only if I had the strong back to live with that kind of work. I guess even Wendell Berry would shame me for saying that, I suppose it would never be too late to sell everything and buy some farmland. At any rate, no matter whether its my land or someone else's, it is always good for me to be close to the earth, to let it have its natural effect on me.