Friday, February 25, 2011

This is Inappropriate!

There is no excuse for a writer not writing.

Hmmm... well broken fingers David, that'd be a good excuse.

Don't start with me David!

Life's certainly changed backdrops since I started this humble documentation of how I've managed to elude mental health authorities so well and for so long... so far.

But it's only the backdrop that has changed; the play remains the same.

It's the fight to define yourself without drifting into the Golden Calf construction biz. It's about struggling to do the right thing for the RIGHT reason.

Feed the hungry because you're so freakin' cool... well the hungry still get a meal, but some small amount of evil has been released into the world by that 'good' act.

Feed the hungry first because Jesus said to, and second with heart realization we're all hungry, all the time, but only in various ways? That's the right way, and no demons get fed by such an attitude.

That is what the play is about. A passion to define yourself, but in a way that doesn't dot the landscape with Golden Calves.

Calf is a very funny word. Why is the 'L' silent? I wonder if the silent letters in words ever get jealous of the letters that get pronounced. It's just like 'talk' now why is that poor 'L' the only silent letter in a word that describes the opposite of silence?

Uhm... what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the play! Well I started this blog with intent to remind myself and others, you might be 60 some day in the future. What sort of 60yo you are is up to you.

There are 60yo people who live fascinating (why is there a 'C' in fascinating? Isn't that redundant? Oh shut up David!) lives, while there are others the very same age who are owned by the forces of entropy. Who decides these things? I suppose we as individuals do.

I still believe that forcefully. But again? It's a right thing to decide what kind of old person you'll become, yet infinitely more valuable to make those choices for the right reasons.

I realize I have to be more diligent in scribbling in here, and I'll see to that. The play goes on; it's only backdrops that change really. How have I changed? Hmmm... well I tend to think less about what people owe me, and more about what I owe people. And I tend to smile a lot. Other than that though, I'm a disappointment in the metamorphisis biz I reckon.

Got to go to Olive Branch now...

Sunday, February 13, 2011

It never fails

I'm getting older but not much wiser. My supply of answers can't ever seem to catch up with my supply of questions. I wind up saying, "hmm, that's interesting" a LOT more than I'd like to at this point in life.

Hey, did I tell you I'm growing my beard back? Well I am. Naw, not one of those ZZ Top beards, cause that's just creepy. More something well groomed and dignified I should think. I just can't do the little goatee thing anymore. Technically, I think that look is called a 'Van Dyke' anyway. Which is weird because I used to watch the Dick Van Dyke show a lot, and never saw any facial hair...

Uhm, what was I talking about? Oh yeah! Part of wisdom is your head is a peaceful enough place where supposedly antagonistic concepts can be friends. Like this for example?

The world is a VERY big place. The world ain't a big place at all, when you're in it. Those two concepts can't possibly both make sense at the same time, right?
But they do. And I don't care how many 'first three visits half price!' coupons I get from psychiatrists.

I was supposed to be watching the sun rise at Machu Pichu this morning. Yeah, no kidding. A bit of technical difficulty over the past few years interfered with that there plan though.

Machu Pichu is a long ways from here; that's just a fact. But the same sun that rises over Machu Pichu rises over Lexington, TN.

Nobody's been by here lately fitting me for a halo. I'd still rather be at Machu Pichu on this day, a particular day that has more numerical significance for me than I can explain.

But y'know something? (this is the part where I get all trippy) It's not what you look at, but the health of the eyes that look upon it. That's what I mean by the world being small when you're in it. Everything you can see in this big old world, you'll see it with your two relatively small eyeballs.

This world is as big or as small as your eyes. The mental/spiritual health of your eyes, the power of observation and analysis Watson. That's a lot more important than what you happen to be looking at, any given moment.

This world is as big, or as small as your eyes.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Deadly sex and instant zombies

I recall exactly where I was when first heard of what'd later be called AIDS. Early 1980's and I was driving a Pontiac sunbird home from Church.

The radio man said a mysterious disease was killing homosexuals. It wouldn't stay mysterious for long.

That was more than twenty years ago, long before we learned that Rock Hudson was homosexual. Heck, back then we weren't even sure about Elton John, but most of us had our suspicions.

I mention that to note my membership in the last generation to reach sexual maturity before there was a fatal venereal disease. It'd be pretty difficult to imagine all the ways that makes me fundamentally different from people now in their 20's. But I'm certain it's there.

Not that the reality of AIDS has made people more careful, not that I can tell. The culture seems a lot more sexualized now than it did when I was young. The effect is much more subtle; it's a kind of fatalism present that must be accepted generally and denied specifically.

I don't recall a moment I learned about Crack or Meth. I remember Richard Pryor catching himself on fire, but with the instant zombie plague awareness slowly came to me I guess. First came the awareness there was something cheaper and more powerful than powdered cocaine hitting urban areas.

And then the hillbillys got into the act with Meth. I'm not the first to observe how much Meth manufacture/distribution resembles the moonshine biz. But it has changed our culture a lot, the convenience of the whole thing.

We were a much different culture overall, back when getting high on illegal drugs was more inconvenient. Oh, I'm certain that drug users would protest how it's still pretty damned inconvenient.

But to me it looks convenient. That's changed the culture by drawing more people in. Instant zombies are no longer an easily identified subset of the population.

Nope, I'm not pulling a 'back in my day' rant here. Just observing those are two ways I've seen the culture fundamentally changed while I was knocking around a few decades. Impossible to say what other changes are just around the corner.

Don't spend a lot of time thinking on stuff that you'll never figure out. There's no profit in it. Try to steer towards thinking about what's unchanging among these shifting sands.