A Reaffirmation that I am not the Messiah.

no one's ever taken pictures of me
that I've ever truly been proud of
and deep in the heart, there's a hint
I've given to myself that I've never
done anything of which of a picture would be deserving,
all these near-misses, these second guesses,
thirty-three years and I'm reminded
of this man they call messiah, wonderer, god-hero,
who broke on the scene like the rolling stones,
chanting sermons and weaving strange tales
that made the magistrates wonder about their
foothold on the social order, all in a matter
of years, so the book says, eloquently,
and their fear of the cracks it spread
among the poor & the wounded had them
guessing the only way to shut off this flow
was to kll him somehow, maybe nail him to a board
on a hill, outside the skirts of a town,
while others watched, as a lesson to anyone
who was looking to raise the dead or flagging spirits.
To go forth gently into that mad science, you would
have to be a lunatic or convinced of your power,
not yielding to the cost, to the humiliation beset you,
not cowering in the wake of personal misery, this trudging
in the midst of possible failure, admirable
but seemingly stupid, & yet calling to mind something like envy.
They never knew about the permanence of a photograph,
a visual log that there was anyone here like you,
of you smiling or staring into the face of your persecutors,
I fought you, that picture says, and maybe you won,
but your victory is a spoil of the war raging
between humans, for the spirit of standing up,
that he could say I fought you, but I lived still as I did,
among you, in spite of you while I did. I withstood
the revolution of the heart, and there was nothing
to capture me in a magazine, doing remarkable things,
nothing like the nightly news, or a muffled cry
from behind a lens, urging on your ancestors from
a mystic void, hidden in a strange dark cavern
the only shelter from a desert of exile.
Sometimes this wilderness seems like something you seek,
but if you play it right, you're never in the wilderness,
or maybe it's just that I've not fought for this,
and I'm nothing like that man, who they say fought
his demons for forty days, because I'd not shown any
sign of staging coupe from any point, I'm not the photograph,
nowhere near possessed of the cannonball locked in my heart,
not even straining one moment to sling any arrows
except the arrows that already pierce the heart,
the age of our years should matter little, but what
we do with failure before it encompasses us with doubt,
over the question of how we've lived, wither its impact,
wither we've justified the hours spent in sun,
or that our skin was touched by humilty or dignity,
wther we contributed to a celebration of what happens
when we at last take on the glory of living in this skin.

It is the right call for rest when the scorpion wields its stinger. Mania inevitably leads to depression. I push the edges of my happiness and find myself burned out on the very things that give me strength and the song "Pushit" by Tool came to mind. The only realization I have there, as strong a connection as I have to what that song seems to be really about, there is no one pushing me in any one direction....it just feels like people yank me in a certain direction when in reality, I only need to go where I really want to go...and yet, that's the struggle. You sort of test waters in certain arenas , and people within that arena are enthusiastic about your arrival. They say that they want you to come out with them and be part of their scene when in reality, you like to keep your distance because you think it affords you the benfit of judgement. Being objective, able to read a situation at its fullest zenith. Able to be accurate about your movements. And then there is alaso the element of freedom to back away or back out entirely.... but the battle is between the ears... you don't know what other people are thinking, you can't pretend to know what their thinking at all... but it is the very thing that consumes almost on a regular basis...

Inside Looking Out. For Once & NOW.

You suddenly realize you are surrounded by this fellowship. Called so because they are brothers & sisters and they combine to make one big unit. Surrounded at the meeting today by some new acquaintances. People come to you for guidance, for support. You're like Red. You're a man who can get things. Now I've been trained by the universe to communicate with these people, to send them in the right direction. To tell them where to go, how to find what they are looking for. But for the same usual reasons, i can't manage these two who walk off in other directions. I don't lie. I tell the truth but there's always people who think you're ignorant, you don't know what you're talking about. I am the teacher, in this circumstance,, I have a job to do, and my job is not to be right all the time, but to not lead anyone too far astray. Avoid the satisfaction of being right, of needing to be right for pride sake. That is pride, and is short-lived. What purpose does it served. For every single thing I am correct about, there are thousands of other things, I would not know the answer to. But there seems to be a gain that can be had just from trying to live in the truth. It seems to eminate from itself. We don't know everything, I don't have the answers to everything, but I am making suggestions. My siggestions don't always pan out entirely. On the positive side of things, I am delighted to have Sylvester & Claudia learning along with me. They are very eager students, much like Josh & Mike were. And Rob. And Andrea & And Sam & Lisa & and the other two. They just wanted to exceed , do well, learn the lingo.
Let me be not bigger than who I am, let my mind not balloon farther than my body's limitations... let me not take for granted what has been granted me. Let me not belittle what talents I have, nor cast aside the good people & friends that have been shown to me through the grace of God. Let me be even eyed with the world so I can meet every challenge that is cast into my path...

It came down to a long shot in the ninth to put me back on top and put my team in the win column. Hard to believe really. We had built up a giant lead and it looked like we could coast on that lead for most of the night. We settled back talked shop, I was working on some property and north Texas, JD was working at a homeless shelter in his off time putting in his hours with kids. So we rambled on & on for the first couple innings...

So it would go something like that remarkable. I try to imagine what it's like to play ball day in and day out the highs and lows of a game which really has at its core, entertainment and big business. Tonight, I'm exploring new blogs which Rob Owens pointed out to me and boy am I glad that he did. Listening to a song right now by a group called Alcoholic Faith Mission. The thing is that I'll remember some bands by name, I'll remember some by their songs and others' will completely drop away. I dig these guys, they have a good name and solid beat and syncopation and of course, the lyrics are strong in the same way that Cloud Cult lead is, but yet they have a reverb on the vocals. Makes it so that it's not as strong but still strong enough to be unlike every other indie band that I've heard. Again, the names go a long way with me. Makes me think of life in another place, lived through another's eyes.

Today, I found my way into the UNO English graduate department through the front door. It looks like the best I can do for now is going to be take the sociolinguistics class from Dr. Mordaunt and then the Intro to Literary Research which as I understand will include a whopper right out of the gate. Maybe it is time for me to network within the ranks. I certainly want to get into this community a little bit though you realize the fear is always going to be that it's only temporary. Enjoy the company of those who like to think about what you think about while it lasts, because it certainly isn't forever is it. But it is a start, even if only a humble one at best.

Watching "It Might Get Loud" a documentary featuring Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page has earned his right to royalty. Screw Paul Mccartney. Page deserves at the very least knighthood. Perhaps I never really appreciated the magnitude and dynamic quality of the Edge's guitar playing, but when you zero in on his riffs from songs like "Walk Away" and "Streets Have No Name" you really see how original the sounds are. Jack White, in my mind, is a dynamo supreme with the ability to create or re-create for himself and those who love music the power of the blues. The documentary itself was well put together because it touches both on the musical influences as well as some of the social backdrops of these musicians and where they come from.

The truth is I'm not sure I care enough about the welfare of students. I found myself employing the Socratic method with trainees since I really feel that the stronger students need to learn to think for themselves. As far as other strategies I'm not sure I have many names for them or would even begin to know what they actually did in terms of allowing people to learn more easily than what is already out there. Basically, if people are going to really master a network of thinking where they are in contact with many people, they need to learn to ask better questions, of the people they are servicing, of themselves. Then there is the whole trial and error method. But I guess it's a harsh self-indictment to say I don't care at all, and probably not true. But you learn the value of detachment quite quickly, of detaching from someone who maybe might not be grasping a particular subject matter. You can learn so much from the way that people react to their own mistakes, their own swirling feelings of helplessness in the process of trying to force the benefits of repetition upon themselves.
What seems more uncomfortable rather may simply be the growing pains of having to watch emotionally those people who are not quick to apply new knowledge quickly. Like watching those cute little mice in a maze going down the same path thinking that they will find the same reward even though they have already had that reward removed from them on other occasions. There is that internal battle that I go through frequently imagining that I am at the root of their demise. I didn't point out the correct information or place the proper tools in their way for learning to occur. If I had been clearer, perhaps they wouldn't be so confused, etc. So you try to find other methods, separate approaches that might stimulate their ability to see what is already there. Plato/Socrates believed that the answers are innate, that they are already apparent to the student, so that it remains the burden of both the student & teacher to illuminate the truth within. No matter how philosophical we get with it. All this mention of learning disability throws a knuckle-curve into the Platonic model simply because sometimes people fall victim to the delusion that they have blocks to learning that cannot be removed, and that they have to work around them, and if they can't it's because they are predisposed to not gaining any understanding. Hence, learned helplessness.
But I am not even remotely that far in that process for anything like that to be conclusive. Not even close, they have the entire industry being blown into their faces successively and they are expected to swallow the entire basket of tricks within weeks. It didn't happen for me like that and I seriously didn't think I would be employed there nearly as long as I was. Sometimes, I still begin to think that it is an entire miracle I was ever passed into the next phase of development but they kept seeing to it that I show up on their doorsteps, ready to work through another day.
The fact of the matter it always seems that when I ask people why they don't like to learn they say they just don't have the time nor patience. It seems patience is the one virtue on which people are short, that and resilience. Ask anybody if they play chess and they will likely tell you it's too hard or that they don't understand the rules. SO it stands to reason that if they don't understand the rules, and can't get beyond the reality that there are rules at all, they will seldom even attempt to play the game.

I met a guy the other day who collects rubies. And opals. Just goes out to various rock quarry sites and finds larger gemstones-- he says-- and stashes them unto himself. I was taken aback by the fact that he brought them in to show me. You always wonder if someone is fibbing you or if you're talking to a guy sitting on a well, ruby mine... I mean if he's got these stones in his possession but hasn't done anything with them, then how wise is he. Even so, I thought of it differently, though my discriminating mind was still wrapped in cynical laughter. I turned the entire thing on its side, and imagined to myself, that here is a guy for whom these stones, ruby or otherwise, were precious to him. Maybe he's looking at the value of such a thing as a stone in terms of the weight of it, market value. It's the value that a given society and industry has attached to it... what you can get for precious stones.... but maybe he just enjoys going to look for him. The idea of hidden treasure or found treasure etc. It is this idea of the diamond in the rough that seems to drive us to gather beautiful things to ourselves, because of its worth to us and what it will afford us.

So this just keeps going on this hypermania I have thinking that the quicksand is eventually going to pull me under. But I don't feel it strong this evening. There's a minor sense of purpose, but I often wonder why it is that experiences that I think will be incredible turn into nightmares. Looming overhead. Why do I even think that? You know that you fit in somewhere in the grand microcosm. You just don't know where... the movie Hurlybuly seems to always come to mind,- Eddie (in a cocaine induced pre-comatose state) played by Sean Penn practically baying at the moon that this universe doesn't care one speck of our lives... I don't want to lose my faith like that, she loves me, I just don't feel it. At any rate, I'm thinking that the priorities I have in line are possibly to finish this training class or whatever you want to call it. Look at a possible school. I'll do it. I'll look at that. I have to let go of the woman on Friday. It's done, and if by some act of wild providence we cross paths again, we'd know what to do. You think it's strange but occasionally there is an attraction that is returned and given back... in the end, it's search for the between. Heidegger, Husserl, Nishida, Watsuji. All those philosophers who examine that closeness between two people, the intimacy between two people you crave... You were out living life. You were trying to and that was when you went off the reservation. Maybe not the smartest of ideas looking back on it now, but you can't hold back anyway. It's killing you. The looking back is killing you. I'd like to find a working a strategy for now. Something other than ducking and hiding whenever presented with a crack in the fissure.

So there is-- and has been since the debacle now 9 years ago in the spring of 2001 when the fit appropriately hit the fan--been the question of energy, personal energy and how to expend and conserve that energy so as to be more productive. Some people have great energy, and I believe I am one of those people but I have always has had difficulty harnessing that energy in such a way that I'm not flopping and floundering about as if I was a fish out of water. I have to look at what is going on in my life, the current trend being several competing goals which are colliding and at times, erasing each other. I should be quizzical about what happens in my life.
I took on this business training new hires, with just 6 weeks of in-class experience how to do my job, which let's face it, I have grown to occasionally contempt, and which I feel is tedious & needlessly stressful. But this is so much like teaching or at least my experience of teaching it is strangely funny. Why I get stressed out during such experiences, the constant dwelling on the idea that some of the "students are not "getting it" which seemingly some are not. They are just plain not where they need to be. But that percentage is small, miniscule really. 2 out of 7 but my perception is that #1 there are not enough resources offered by management to really support this large of an opeartion, i.e. they didn't really think through the whole picture of bring people into the mix. My thought has always been that the powers that be don't know what it takes to really, trully train someone on how to do this particular job. The main function being that of customer service rather than merely filling the shoes of someone who can or cannot work that position.
But my mental position has been one of absolute bewilderment at the fact that I cannot seem to simply deal with the constant barrage of questions, problems and concerns of each of them as they go throughout the day, mainly those of the technical variety. Basically I find myself thinking I have overextended myself and I won't be able to get through it without compleyely engaging in a tirade of epic proportions. But as yet, I've been able to monitor my progress. Someone (CR) suggested that my ability to manage the situation may determine to the corporate world how I stack up as a manager. The thing is you never want to take on the title of manager in any capacity unless are 1) getting paid to perform the fulfilled requirements of a manager and 2) have the backing involved that you might need to perform the duties of a manager. But it begs the question, why do I always feel like these operations would all work if the environment suited me? I want to adapt but I feel like I'm always at the mercy of someone else's "say-so" .

Taking Stock at 12:42 AM. All my life I feel I've been tossed by the winds. It's not to say that the winds themselves have been doing the tossing, but in fact, you have control over what you put in your mind.. Over the information you can discard, in what you keep. It's no use beating myself up for what I've done. One of my heroes in the baseball world, Alex Rodriguez, was a guy who seemed to torment himself time & time again over the fact that he could hit home runs like nobody's business, set records right and left for players his age at his time, yet he couldn't win a championship, and couldn't come up with the clutch play or hit when the time mattered. You may think it a mundane example but at some point, those things that hound you, you need to stop listening to them. Just put them down and walk straight somehow. Too much has been made for me by the fact that I seem to be between planes. Maybe I am. Maybe I'm stuck am on a branch like I feel I am. Like the cartoon character who has someone stepping on his shirt and he's trying to run away or run after something, and he's swishing and falling over his feet.
To say I no longer want to live that way would be nothing but me being impervious to the truth that I know that I may continue in that fashion.

What do I really take seriously? What little property I have, a search for the ideal companion, the fitting job where you make a difference, comraderie, an exchange of ideas. All seemingly intangible things, when they are not in your grasp. In short I'm on the verge of a great discovery or else, another complete and utter breakdown. Going at life hard while chewing on an improbable bullet will do that to you. People tell me to calm down, to relax, just deal with where you are at, but sometimes where you are at is simply unbearable, unacceptable for what it is. I just want to get out, to be free of keeping one foot hovering over the break in case of the dreaded accident. Playing it safe, being calculated about the whole ordeal. So what happened today cannot be reduced to nothing. I made searches, queries, into starting a life somewhere else, made inquiries about what is possible in the immediate future. It's difficult to do without money in my pocket, but it was something I had to do nevertheless. I looked at teaching jons in other states. Weighed the options. I want to get out of Nebraska so badly I'm popping at the seams. That is a fact. Another winter, forget winter. Hope for spring. Be glad with spring.

Conventional wisdom- as it would have it, avoid then the deliberate manufacture of misery. I was sort of knocked on my ass again by a guy 60 days sober talking about the wisdom he seeks from the groups. Where it comes from.... I call it a matter of IQ points. In this case, it may be that the IQ points are extremely high as is. All you have to do is listen to these guys talk before the meeting. Guys who worked in the upper offices of the railroad, bankers, teachers, social workers. Guys who have put in time with the systems, have worked out their lives, corrected their lives and can talk about the world we live in today fluently.

The latest of what I heard this 60 days sober guy was rehashing an image of a man in a rocking chair, patiently simply waiting to say that lightning bolt phrase out of the blue that you need to hear. Problem is, you have to be awake for that statement, you have to be awake and ready for anything, you almost won't even notice this guy but then he'll give you what you need to hear at the opportune moment. The other part of it was Tom, the union bricklayer, who's made his way into the business management side of the industry, told the story of a guy who made a crash landing in a field, and struck with the approaching prospect of catastrophe on an epic scale, namely the prospect of certain death, his skill set entirely kicked in-- and he knew what gears to mainpulate, what levels to push, intuitvely he applied all his knowledge of airplanes in an instant in order to guide the ship to safety. That that is what we come to rely on in sobriety. Those sudden moments where we intuitively know how to handle the situation and guide ourselves to safety. How we elude sudden disaster and are saved. With prayer, with experience, with an out-network if sorts. And get through it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123065247

NPR- story about man with transplanted heart

Probing the Question

My good professor friend once posed the question,

Would you lie for the sake of the poem?

I replied what good would be in that, the word is mighty powerful.

He asked, What is that guys like you and me are after? What do you think
we're putting in our time for, what is it that we are trying to do?

I hesitated and muttered sheepishly To tell the truth, word for word,
and tell the tale no else has heard.

To that he said, That's a fine & good answer, what's been fed to you to spit back.
But if that's all there is then details really don't matter. Go and be a philosopher.

Because there's a thousand people who've heard a thousand stories
just as many as you can tell. And yet, the poem will survive no matter which
way you tell it, whatever its spin.

That's why we have copy printers & zip disks, so no matter what you come up with, there will always be a spare.

But the font will shift when you're not looking, when it's restless & irritable,
It will scoff at you like the lover who outclasses you,
it will ask to see other people so it can experience other avenues &
give you you the age old line, if you love me you'll set me free & I might come back to you.

It will tire of your moralizing, your rigidity, your thinking in the box,
it will imagines vistas for itself, possibilities
that you have failed to see from lack of discipline.

Then, with the desparation of losing your grip on it forever,
you will begin to make up new names for it, you will teach it foreign tongues,
you will dress up with flowery speeches , cover its cheeks with thick rouge,

And prop dark glasses over the lines of its face.
& then, my friend you will LIE for the sake of the poem,
lie for the SAKE of the poem, and whether it kills you to see it live without you,

whether you scream through the doors it keeps opening for you,
or you take up the bottle again, promise it a villa in the Greek isles but

that thing will live without you, and will find life after you & for THAT, you will lie for the sake of poem,
because the lie is the sacrifice, because someone did it for you, & others may need to hear that lie,

More than you need to hear what you've always known was true.

writ.

It should be noted that the poem
came before the poet,
somewhere in the public registry.
They should place asterisks, write
in felt-tipped pens, or exchange fiction
for bold-faced, or italicized facts
in encyclopedias, not only to be streamlined
into the philosopher’s endless jabber,
but plain wisdom, like the sand bars,
or the egret or the daffodil, the stalagmite
maybe or your grandmother’s canned
beets, swirling in a sour sauce.

The message, likely, has been in stones,
predating the hieroglyph or the rune,
it has been reinvented with each set sun,
or eroded with the brine & granite.
It has staggered down the cobblestone rows,
black blood scabbed on its lips,
while the maggot preserved it through
the straights of plague, avarice
& brides undeserving of its love, & still
besmirched by the jewels which
might have stained it to gold worth
less than the leather of a pauper.

You that own its veins, never ask
to cauterie your wounds: your blood holds firm,
and you should be awake when
your messenger arrives with the mail,
you should startle at the code of the letters
In its address, the sound of it slipping through
the slot; you should hold all incoming calls.
Draw the blinds, wrap a drape around your bones,
and beat eggs & butter in celebration of its arrival.

Don’t be afraid to wander outside the city walls,
buy horses, the prize, thrifty ones, born to flight,
or a gondola with demons to its bow, a pack of dogs,
Don’t even be afraid to take the tarp to the inlet
off the mainland, forgo the pallbearers,
your disappearance may go unnoticed for weeks,
Maybe you will not need the ferryman,
or warm clothes, sweaters & mysterious cloaks:
go where the message drags you— if you’re lucky
enough you will find her naked & amnesiac,
her breast swelled out for the torso.
Her lips longing for medicine, her wrists
poised for the wrench of your bloodletting.

You will know it as a throng, a hum
through your nerves, like the scorpio unmooned,
Like a sting through your heart,
It will not relent: it will remain with you
through your molting, through the cancer of seasons;
It is rising through you, even as her loins may offend,
You have chosen to love her nonetheless,
because you are greedier than the hotel bill
might suggest, more savage than when the maids
come to clean, when you’ve broken her hips
because she asked you to, you will grab her hair
and huddle between her thighs until the lights
go out from the tone of her passion.
It is like that when you have reached her hemisphere.
It is even unlike the sexy mysteries of the moon.

Somehow, you should have known that the message
was speaking to you coming out of the womb,
stretching your mother’s loins, hungry
for the basting of light, the sterling sound of the world,
The angry or curious voices colliding
with the novelty of anything but your own heartbeat;
your message was first heard in that heartbeat,
The same sounds as your body coming into itself,
It was the persuasion that you move into the electricity
of all that breathes, joining the conversation
of so many other voices, as whales, as the sea,
as the lightning, and moons, all dreaming with you,
amid the ceremonies for the dead, the script
of scrolls which will edge you through the nightmare.
The physical terror of walking on your feet,
The stark horror that the mortician will clean the blood
from the flesh of your extinguished skin.
After the rage of your extinguished skin.

There is a theme in the incredible message
that the poem came before the poet is a relief,
like the jolt of an airline, the ambuscade of winter,
like the air raid of sleep, the burn of holy wine,
Like the angle of a swan dive, the first cut & scar,
That we overlap with the race of the poem to its death,
that we are the skin & stink of this incredible message,
It is an exchange of breath with that unutterable thing.