The Waves of Hazy Expectations

Shelter Life

“When the brain becomes too tired, the mind stops decrypting the perceptions in our mental world and surrenders willingly to the unguarded moments of life. For some time, the safeguards of our thinking pattern weaken and discontinue the decoding of the chips of daily reality. The mind picks the instants which are above suspicion, pure and innocent.”  ~  Erik Pevernagie 

“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.”  ~  Bruce Lee

“If we make a fly-on-the-wall review of our history and connect the significant scenarios from our memory, we can develop a comprehensive pattern of our identity that throws a whirl of light on the secreted framework of our life.”  ~  Erik Pevernagie

Lingering in the moment, trying to determine which particular ‘today’ it is. I mean, it’s 2 AM, so I am not really certain that “today'”  even applies yet; at least not for another couple of hours, and by then, who knows, and what does it matter; I’ll be a different person by then, and by necessity, ’cause I gotta go into town, to my day job. 

“The perpetual movement of the water, rolling from and to unknown destinations, the voices of the sea shield us from the raging furies and shrieking sounds of dystopian surroundings, creating an unwinding veil for stilled happiness, acquainting us with the gentle, cosmic rhythms of an extraneous world. They are a soothing relief and let us listen to the voices of our inner world.”  ~  Erik Pevernagie

I remember sitting on a boulder of fossilized coral, looking out over the still ocean, over the mud flats, rising up on Prozac; the Florida Straits out beyond the shallows, just beginning to glisten, as the Sun gets up there into the sky. It was day 10 on a new regimen of daily Prozac. It was working, and on that particular morning the effects were kicking fully into gear. Washed in tears, I was experiencing one of the most profound feelings of Oneness I have known. An episode of deep unfathomable Darkness was in the recent past, and in facing it head-on, through seeking help, then listening, and by following the guidance, I had come to be sitting on that boulder. I don’t think the docs intended Cosmic Unity as a desired effect of treatment. You can’t push your way into a state of Grace, ya gotta be pulled in. But Doctor Baur, and Doctor Pruitt, had helped me open up a door that would no longer budge. But then it did. Dr. P wrote out the prescription for the SSRI drug because Dr. Baur’s doctorate was in Human Growth and Development. She was my therapist. Dr. Pruitt, my general practitioner. They got on the phone and yakked and came up with a plan. Father Edward, of the Key Largo Parish, also helped. Friggin Shadow had closed in on me most unexpectedly. See, I’d been following a woman, and she led me down the Shadow’s path. Cher was the sexiest woman I have ever met. Sweet Atlanta-tinged Southern accent as well. And boy howdy she was highly intelligent to boot. Long story short, I fell, in several ways, and ended up in that pit of Darkness. I likely I never would have done it without Cher’s help.  Cher, Dr. Baur, Dr. Daryl . . . it all just kinda fell together. Then I ended up in Dr. Bauer’s office, and she came to compare me to a former patient of her’s who happened to have once been Chief of his tribe. Dr. Bauer explained, the Chief and I were living on an archetypal level. Did I mention that Dr. Baur’s Doctorate thesis was on “Flow State”? Anyway, it all had flowed together, and I ended up sitting on that boulder. At the moment I think I’ll step away from the computer and go outside for a few minutes. There’s a storm coming so maybe it will snow. Fresh snow on the west slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is pretty much as good as the Florida Straits when it comes to getting all cozy and stuff with just Being. It’s the dark time of the year. A state of rest within the natural cycle of the year, within the season, can also be a state of play. That’s what I’m sayin’.

“People live on the flow of the daily reality and they surge on the waves of hazy expectations. They can experience pleasant junctures and try to catch and enjoy each special moment that is offered to them. Until life takes them by surprise.”  ~  Erik Pevernagie 

The wind is beginning to pick up now. I have my hopes up. I’ll admit to that. Snow. Bring it on. There is more that I desire from the day, but how the heck do I know that some chance may arise to fulfill those hazy desires. I expect too much. So I let the desires flow on up to the next level, to flow on up into the airy realms of Longing. After work today I have the whole weekend off. They say it might snow. Regardless, it is hibernation season. And I have some Ulner nerve issues goin’ on. Gotta keep my right arm kinda still for the next coupla days. It friggin hurts! But there has been a lot of seemingly Karmic stuff going on for me so I can use the pain to keep me grounded while I begin to process. That and snow will suit me just fine. It’s a State of Play.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

A few Drags Before Bed

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”  ~  Mark Twain

“Waking consciousness is dreaming – but dreaming constrained by external reality”  ~  Oliver Sacks

“The left hemisphere is more sophisticated and specialized, a very late outgrowth of the primate, and especially the hominid, brain. On the other hand, it is the right hemisphere which controls the crucial powers of recognizing reality which every living creature must have in order to survive.”  ~  Oliver Sacks

How cool is it that Mark Twain loved cats? Way cool, dude. Hey, while I am at it with Twain and stuff, I wonder if Huckleberry Finn is required reading in Mississippi public schools. Just sayin. Have you read it yet? I mean, it is maybe the American Classic, but don’t read it for that reason. Listen, Twain was downright surgical in regards to reckoning with the innards of our perceptions, especially where prejudice and hatred are concerned. This is, of course, a timely concept for this present point and place in history and in time. But what is time, right? Let me just say it is perhaps a tad more curly than you might imagine; or more than you have been led to believe. Whatever. It curls back on itself at times. Am I having a deja vu here? Yeh, buddy. You know that ain’t wrong.

The sky is quite clear this morning, and it is the stars that tell me so. Up the road to the north a lone dog is barking, quite adamant at times. Sounds like a big fella. Could be a yotee (trans: coyote) out there, passing by, or lingering as an affront designed to just plain piss off that doggy. Or it could just be some nitwit wandering around out there in the cold. 16º? I mean dude, really? Nah, prob’ly a yotee. I feel a bit of a plucky streak in me today. That’s a good thing; I’ll run with it. One point of courage and determination is to chill out already with my tendency toward intellect. It’s not like I want to explain things better, or to scout around for clever allusions. It’s not only fun, it is also where I go when the dark spaces come rollin’ in, making no kind of sense at all. One easy way to remedy, or at least to palliate, irrationality is to be rational – if you can. You’ll have to work at it, I reckon. That irrationality, in the clinical sense, was installed in that particular place in your soul for a very good reason. Society calls it ‘mental illness’, and we need that term, at least as a place-saver until we find something better. See, as “ill” folks, our brains don’t work anywhere near societal norms. Nor do they have to. Nor are they ever going to. Alas, these are just the musings of some proto-scribe who has to get his assets into the shower for a quickie, cause it is a workday, and the past two days off have been at least 50 years long, all told. That’s the innards of my perceptions talking. Processing, processing. Just this – I am usually pretty depressed on days off. Don’t try to friggin analyze that, k? Sometimes seriously so. By the time the night before a workday comes I am loopy from the beating that irrationality so easily delivers. Many writers have written about depression and/or PTSD, in order to engage the beast. Last night I did not feel beaten down like a pie crust still on the cutting board (I love that metaphor!). I can only call it a state of grace. Or maybe a state of play might be more accurate. No, we don’t always play nice with ourselves. Last night I was able to simply look around and feel the spaciousness around me. Nothing was wrong, and I felt no denial. I ain’t friggin gonna break down and say the great god “it is what it is” had anything to do with it. I was too busy breathing to think about stuff like that. No, I wasn’t ‘doing’ mindfulness. That requires ‘not doing’. I was simply having a few drags off a cigarette before bed. Ya jest never know when it’s a gonna hit ya.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

The Pelican and the Mother-in-Law

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”  ~  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”  ~  John Quincey Adams

“No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the realm of science. You do have the attitude of the dreamer about you. For that reason, I haven’t the heart to argue anymore about this – it is a hopeless talk. And for a simple factory man like me, an effort must be abandoned once its hopelessness is exposed. Only the artist perseveres in such circumstances.”  ~  David Wroblewski 

The joy of coffee is upon me today. Yesterday, not so much. Fact is I didn’t have any yesterday. No coffee? It boggles the mind, which, of course, was boggled to begin with. Confusion, revulsion, disappointment, feckless longing, fear, hope, hollowed-out courage, diversion, keen manipulation, always by others, the slow-drip erosion of honesty, and a whole lot of other forms of all that happy horseshit that contains without mercy the burgeoning tendencies of creativity, in both hard-copy daily life and the rarer, seemingly more evanescent realms of creativity. And no, I didn’t forget to buy coffee. Apparently I simply neglected to make any. See, Sunday mornings are hopeless times for me. I don’t see that in a sad or despondent way. Not at all. I’ve had this Sunday Gloomy Gus thing going on for years. Back, down, whatever, in the islands Sunday didn’t matter so much simply because it didn’t seem to matter what day it was. The seabirds would tell me that: dude, like chill, it ain’t tomorrow yet. No worries. Everything cool, mon. And pelicans in particular. Sometimes, as I crossed the bridge over Whale Harbor Channel on my bicycle, one of them good buddies would come to fly alongside. Or maybe glide is a better word. No more than six feet off my right shoulder, skimming along top of curl of wind. Eye contact with one of them beasties was always a joy. The darned thins knew what they were doing, keeping pace with the dude on the bicycle. Playing. Testing the wind as if they knew what they were doing. It seemed they both knew what they were doing and didn’t know at all. At times like that ya just gotta flow. Which beats the hell outta banging around through life like a pinball. The pelican and I, sharing a concrete bridge rail. Like brothers. And no, that is not a sexist statement. It was always a male bird. Every time. I can’t explain it. And I had best not try. The coffee I am drinking this morning is brewed just right, like my ex-wife taught me to do. Strong, dark, and bitter. And that means she is on my mind. And that means I sure as shootin’ woulda come up against her snarly feminism just because the bird was always a male. Her mother woulda been even worse. Her outlook on masculinity was more like ‘how dare you ride your bicycle alone, without a woman, without supervision’. And oh man was she ever plucky about it.

I had no intention of writing about pelicans this morning. Nor about my ex-wife. And especially not about the mother-in-law. That woman once gave me some lessons in rudimentary astrology. We did up my chart, then she went through each planetary aspect in the chart, interpreting what each one meant in the scheme of things. When she came to one aspect in particular she refused to say anything at all about it, except to say that it was too dark and scary to even discuss. Like, listen man, you have one serious flaw there. She didn’t say ‘keep away from my daughter’ . . . but that’s how it turned out. No, I never found out what she found so sinister in me. I’ve studied the aspect that scared her so much, and I don’t think it means what she thought it means. Now, back to the coffee. Starbucks. Morning Joe. Just to fill in the blanks here, my Gloomy Gus Sunday phenomenon was highly tempered by reading the Sunday Boston Globe, back when I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts. Those were good days, and I almost felt good sometimes. My world was still clouded from head trauma, 3-4 years after the fact. My depressive tendencies were undergoing, without my knowledge, a transformation that was triggered by the blow to the head. A coupla years later, back in the islands, that transformation came to a head. Full-blown depression set in. And I went full Gloomy Gus on Sundays. But enough of that, lest I be seen as wagging my finger at all y’all, preaching negatively, defending feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. I deal, I cope, I wiggle around some, when those feelings get too strong. Truth is things ain’t that bad at all. I know that. But those feelings? Likely clinical, so they stay around until they are good and ready to go. And Sundays? The Gloomy Gus thing has developed quite a  bit of charm. Melancholy is not depression. Now it is every Sunday. Every one. By chance or by perseverance, I have found something cute and charming in those darkest days of the week. And I now have a medical cannabis card. Wisely dosed, Indica makes listening to Mozart on Sunday morning totally voluntary. It is said that listening to Mozart is good for the brain and mind. Wisely dosed, it could be even Bartok or Philip Glass. But my choice is always, these days, acoustic Celtic music. Soul music. Yet the day is sometimes just plain downright dark. Yesterday was one of those days; so dark that I forgot to make any coffee. Now, it’s time to pour my second cup of the morning, and to stop this friggin, ramblin’. Tally ho.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Dreams in Realtime

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough ~ REM

“When he looks back at me, his eyes travel around my face the way fingers dart through the bottom of a drawer, searching for batteries in a blackout.”  ~ Holly Schindler

“Courage is being the only only one who knows how terrified you are.”  Tom Clancy

Dreams may come at any time, anywhere. The question of ‘when’ comes up, and the only answer is ‘you will find out’. Just chill, k? Not everything happens for a reason. I may just be rambling here but I am thinking of a virtual particle . . .”

The best way to approach this concept, I believe, is to forget you ever saw the word “particle” in the term. A virtual particle is not a particle at all. It refers precisely to a disturbance in a field that is not a particle. A particle is a nice, regular ripple in a field, one that can travel smoothly and effortlessly through space, like a clear tone of a bell moving through the air.  A “virtual particle”, generally, is a disturbance in a field that will never be found on its own, but instead is something that is caused by the presence of other particles, often of other fields.” ~ Matt Strassler

Makes total sense, right? Not so much. Not yet, anyway. I love physics; coulda gone there myself; coulda gone all theoretical and stuff. Pop science can be sketchy but it is fun as all get out. What I am, I think, getting at is that you may strive for something, visualize it, spark up the Law of Attraction, and think positively 24/7. And when and if your dream comes true you still have no friggin way of knowing for sure that your efforts were the cause of the dream in realtime unfolding . There’s a chance that the dream just happened, and that the Universe knows something that you don’t. Capiche? A dream come true comes along and you say . . . no, wait, I’m starting to sound kinda arrogant here, aren’t I? I’m a Chaos kind of guy. I like to see how things unfold. The nature of their coming in to existence is what I like to watch, to see how it all moves. Suppose you are looking for ‘Miss Right’. Someone nice comes along. You can see her presentation. She . . oh, never mind. What I am saying dude, without so many words, dude, is to watch how she moves, and not like some ogler, dude. Well, that’s me today. No, I am not looking for Miss Right again, I am simply looking for movement. But I am too tired, weary, whatever  – and achy too – to run around looking. Today I am into standing still –  metaphorically speaking, of course

“Your feet are going to be on the ground
Your head is there to move you around
If wishes were trees, the trees would be falling
Listen to reason, season is calling”  ~  REM

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Let It Shine

“Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit–some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures.”  ~ Loren Eiseley

“People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.”  ~ Anthony de Mello

“The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.” ~ Stephen Batchelor 

Should I talk about gratitude? Yeh, I suppose. Thank you all for reading here. It is my hope that something of value will come to you, on occasion, from reading my words, and whatever it is I do with them. It is usually fun to write a daily post. Today, not so much. Got some of them lowdown holiday blues goin’ on, don’tcha know. Many people do this time of year. More than I’d like to think of, I’m sure. One of the things I am grateful for today is that there is growing awareness of mental illness in this country. I mean look at the president. He displays it every single friggin day. It should be a lesson for us all. Seek treatment. Just do it. Or encourage (gently, gently, tiptoe if necessary) encourage anyone you know who needs it, or may need it, to seek a professional evaluation, and to accept treatment as needed. These professionals know what they are doing. Listen to them. I did. And I do. I am not arrogant enough to say that it can be beaten and exiled from one’s life. That’s just me. I’m sure that there are people who apply positive thinking and put an end to the illness for good – ya know, like heal and stuff. Maybe it can, I don’t know. Maybe it can be beaten. Boy howdy I reckon I would be right obliged to be able to say bueno bye to the demons that haunt me and smack me around. Someday I may. Who can say. But enough of that. I’ve learned to manage the beast. That sometimes means ya gotta jest step back and let it roll. Think of it as weather rolling through – to allude to a Rodney Crowell lyric. Take a walk. Something. So what if you have a droopy sad look on your face and a stoop in your gait for a while. Like me. I have to go to the store to get coffee, because nitwit here got all freaked out and stuff by the holiday crowd yesterday and forgot to buy the damn coffee! That’s a sin, ya know. And I may get freaked out again. Lots of folks have a serious jagged edge during the holidays. Those people, in high concentration, poke and tear at your aura. Just be careful, manage it, and go anyway. That’s me talking to myself. Whatcha got here, ummmm . . . agoraphobia, paranoia, free-floating anxiety? The list of labels goes on. My advice? Avoid shame, blame, and guilt. Drink lots of water. Don’t try to buck up and take it like a man. As for gratitude, I am grateful to have something to share, to comment on. I coulda just fluttered downhill for the past 34 years. And then what? But I worked hard to learn what I could. These demons ain’t so good at handling the Light, so aspire to let it shine. That’s what I’m sayin’.

There’s a place in the world
For a gambler
There’s a burden that only
He can bear
There’s a place in the world
For a gambler,
And he sees
Oh, yes he sees
And he sees
Oh, yes he sees
There’s a song in the heart
Of a woman
That only the truest of loves
Can release.
There’s a song in the heart
Of a woman.
Set it free
Oh, set it free
Set it free
Oh, set it free
Set it free
Oh, set it free.
There’s a light in the depths
Of your darkness
There’s a calm at the eye
Of every storm.
There’s a light in the depths
Of your darkness.
Let is shine
Oh, let it shine
Let is shine
Oh, let it shine
Let is shine
Oh, let it shine.
Let it Shine ~ Dan Fogelberg

A Matter of Planning or Desire

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”  ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

This is a fine morning indeed, but I am not sure why. No worries, right? I guess. And I feel a tad shaky. What about that, hmmmm? Feeling kinda sorta silly as well. As I first stepped outside this morning the Full Beaver Moon was poised, ever so elegantly, perhaps 5º above the top of the hill. Nice one, that. Seeing this scene reminded me that it is all about magic these days. I suspect that that bruja is witchin’ me again, silly girl. Whatever flame drives her I must remind myself to not feed the flame. Do not engage! Easier said than done. My inclination is to go high, on the sage advice of Michelle Obama. Thank, sister. Alas, this is also easier said than done. So . . . let me get this straight . . . if I take it easy . . . I’ll get this done with? Nah, that’s is just silly. Going with the Flow, the Tao, is not a matter of planning or desire. You don’t take it easy, you take what is coming. It’s all good, right? Yeh, actually, it is. Whether you see the dark side of the goddess or her light side, it’s all her and it’s all good; as I was just saying.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Burgers and Beer

“There are only a few things that are more entertaining than watching a cat trying to run across a freshly waxed wood floor after a ball.”  ~ David C. Holley

“Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.”  ~ Alexandre Dumas

“I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?”  ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

We now interrupt a video clip from Morning Joe on MSNBC so this writer can get his assets in gear and write this friggin blog post. That stuff can be addictive, but it is the power of diversion that is likely the biggest problem. Don’t think about that too much. Not that I should be telling you what to do. Whatever. Facebook is even worse in this respect. Hypnotic scrolling. I, embarrassed, admit to a coupla times finding myself scrolling mindlessly, and when I get a grip and stop scrolling I’m like all ‘OMG where have I been all this time?’. Not recommended. Anyway . . . it’s 23º, at 5:12 AM, two days short of Thanksgiving Day. I’ll be having dinner with friends. Small gathering of four, all of us intelligent. That’s important. I look forward to some intellectual conversation; it’s good to stretch. That stuff don’t go over so well out in the marketplace, where I happen to work, and I get so danged frustrated. Poor me, right? This morning, I seem to be of the mind to remind myself throughout the day that nothing is wrong. It all works out. Kinda like that ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ stuff. You can avoid scary things in life, but what if one of those things you successfully avoid is the actual place where First Light will be most edifying, most excellent? Hmmm, what then? You thought you were so smart dude. “Let go an let God”, “Go with the Flow”, “All things happen for a reason” – why do we find this stuff to be so friggin difficult? People bin yakkin ’bout it from way back.

It may be best not wander off into philosophy at this time. Yesterday and today I am having one of those all too rare spells of smiling a lot at things, and people – seemingly mindless, yet fully mindful. I must look like a duffus. No harm in that, I suppose. Yesterday, numerous times, I felt awash in the perfusion of the miraculous in our world, and here we are struggling through, and failing to see something that is right in front of our face, at most any given time. Now, what kind of sense does that make? So . . . I’m off to the races. Holiday traffic in the store is fun to work with. I love it, then go home and bless my lucky stars that it is over. As a closing note . . . regular readers will know that I on occasion invite Taylor Swift to lunch. But I’ve waited long enough, so I’m switching to Jennifer Lawrence for a while. So howsa bout it, Jen? You in? Burgers and beer and copious laughter. I haven’t been to the Ale House yet. Sounds like the perfect place. You in, Jen? I know that you accepting my invitation would be miraculous . . . . . . but isn’t everything? You can PM me on Facebook, k?

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

A Couple of Tipping Points

“You can’t reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.”  ~ Mark Twain

“As he was about to climb yet another dune, his heart whispered, “Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That’s where I am, and thats where your treasure is.”  ~ Paulo Coelho

“Perhaps it is how we are made; perhaps words of truth reach us best through the heart, and stories and songs are the language of the heart”  ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

Me, sitting here, and I reach down to stroke the cat. She’s on my lap, but a faint tremor of restlessness sparks within her body, simply because she does not like me reaching over and around her to type. She never does, she never has. As my fingertips connect within fur I find myself saying, out loud, out of the blue, “the cat requires ultimate reverence”. Whatever that means. And I’m not so sure it’s wrong. Finally my motions annoy her to the point of no return, and the tipping point having been reached, she launches. Scared the shit outta me! I mean come on. Anyway, the point here is the stuff that comes out of my mouth sometimes. My theory is that this emergence of spontaneous quips is an indicator of my rich inner life, and the creative fire within. I thought of one of those quips, perhaps the all-time best, yesterday. I was still with the ex back then. We were awakened by some truly odd and alien sounds. I woke first, heard the strange voices outside, and kinda snapped upright; hypervigilence, don’tcha know. Sometimes my ears even twitch upward, as if I was an animal of some kind, which of course I am. So, the sound . . . it was clearly a conversation of some sort; even a dialog maybe. I’d never heard anything like it, and could imagine no other animal sounds that might be like it, except maybe parrots on shrooms, and even that’s a stretch. But it was canine. There are a lot of coyotes out there on the mesa. To them our house was merely another features of the desert landscape. Canis latrans (‘barking dog’, in English) was our culprit. So, to my left I hear her come awake. Momentarily: “what is that sound?”. And what pops outta my mouth? “It’s the Beavis and Butthead of the coyote world”. We laughed to tears over that one. Where do I get this stuff?

The morning is almost quiet, save for one neighbor dog who won’t be quiet. Could be coyotes, on the prowl, who know; the dog sounds angry. Cold, 23º. I heard a fox, in the dark side of the morning yesterday. Quite nearby. And I’m pretty sure there’s a bobcat around here. Could be a cougar too. I love that there are some really really cool animals living so close. As for the moment . . . most of the second cup of coffee remains in the cup for me to sip at as I mildly struggle to keep a focus to write. It’s feeling pretty good. I’m surprised. The thing is I could easily go back to sleep. In part this is because I only got 6 hours last night. I got wrapped up in a little binge-watching of the series “Haven”, which is in reruns on Netflix, having been originally aired on the SciFi Channel. I like it for multiple reasons; mostly for it’s ‘zone factor’; I can easily suspend reality (and still actually know what I am doing, unlike the president) to get out of my own head for a spell. Do not doubt that TV is spell-work in that it utilizes parts of the mind usually dedicated to dreaming, both sleeping dreams and those that hide behind our waking consciousness, waiting to pounce, for better or for worse. We consciously open up to let the TV people in. Be careful with that, k? Anyway, “Haven”. It is based on a novella by Stephen King. I reckon y’all get a fair idea about the story just from reading the man’s name. It takes place in the fictional town of Haven, Maine, though it was actually filmed in Novas Scotia. The characters are likable, in fact they kinda give me that family feeling that my mother pointed out to me in regards to watching Star Trek NextGen. She and I, in our separate houses – me on Windley Key and she in Key Largo – weekly, watched the fresh episode, then we would talk on the phone about it. Later on in life it was The X-Files. That we would watch together, then afterwards we would watch the evening news, usually in great hilarity, because it all sounded so silly in contrast to The X-files. We had entered a surreal state of mind. That kind of shakes off given time. But yeh, mom was cool.

So I must go. It’s that morning where my tendency toward my barefoot island hippie boy persona reaches the tipping point and I have to break down and groom. Truth be told, I usually get pretty shaggy before the tipping point unfolds from the plenum. Maybe 20 years ago a six-year-old Native boy would call me Shaggy, each time he saw me. His mom was a striking young woman, a ‘true blood’ Native from the Pueblo. She was one (she has since passed away) I would like to have known much better, but we loved each other, platonically speaking – oh, and spiritually as well. One day I asked her why her son called me Shaggy. She smile slyly and said, “Like Shaggy from Scooby Doo”. And that, my friends, is high praise, especially coming from a six-year-old.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Glimpses of Nirvana

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”  ~ J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”  ~ Ken Kesey

“If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.”  ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves.”  ~ John Green, Paper Towns

“At a time like this, which exists maybe only for me, but is nonetheless real, if I can communicate, and in the telling and the bearing of my soul anything is gained, even though the words which I use are pretentious and make you cringe with embarrassment, let me remind you of the pilgrim who asked for an audience with the Dalai Lama.

He was told he must first spend five years in contemplation. After the five years, he was ushered into the Dalai Lama’s presence, who said, ‘Well, my son, what do you wish to know? ‘ So the pilgrim said, ‘i wish to know the meaning of life, father. ‘

And the Dalai Lama smiled and said, ‘Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn’t it?”    ~   Procol Harum, from “Glimpses of Nirvana”,  lyrics by Keith Reid

     Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Managing the Monster

“Burnout is nature’s way of telling you, you’ve been going through the motions your soul has departed; you’re a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.”  ~ Sam Keen

“It is human nature to invent reasons for why the mind shatters, hope plummets, or the will to live dies. Scientific explanations are complicated and, for many, less humanly satisfying than visionary or religious ones. ~  Kay Redfield Jamison

“So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress.”  ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Once in a while I like to write about depression, which is something I kinda wrestle with most every day. Sometimes it does like steroids or something, and it goes all 24/7 on me for much too long a spell. No worries here, please. I’ve been fielding some pretty severe depression for a while now. I’ve been successful at managing this spell . . . well, let’s say that I’m about 75% successful. That’s good, right? Yeh buddy. This has been one of those spells where fear dresses up as apathy. That’s a tough one indeed. Where suppressed emotions dress up like shyness. A little tougher. Where natural human drives and desires dress up like languid cat on a window seat. Oh, man, I have to admit that last one is the kicker. And it keeps on kicking until you step back inside, close the front door, then take a nap, which doesn’t help much. Sigh. It has taken me years to learn to manage this monster of a mental disorder. That management in no way stops these things from being, from happening. You may as well try and catch the wind. But most importantly management allows me to sing and laugh and smile at pretty women just because.

I just stepped outside for a few minutes. It’s a balmy 22º. No wind. The snow on the deck has not melted much at all. It may not do so for quite some time to come. Whatever. It’s a workday. I don’t wanna go but I’ll have fun. No one will know I have an active depressive cycle going on. Unless I tell. Then what? I don’t know. Whatever. Then the weekend off. Don’t know what that will bring. No worries. Listen, I’d like this post to be longer, but I gotta go. One of these days I’ll roll out a longer post. Not today.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.