You can click the images to make them bigger - - - -
As the title suggests - these bits of writing would be homeless without this page. I'm gearing up to start on a large work of writing - but have been blowing off steam with journal blips and other fictional mishaps ; )
I'll be adding things here as they come / as I find old things in work notebooks ; )
This bar ____________________ means you're on to something new ..
____________________
The tub faucet leaks in this old country trailer ...
And I catch the drips in a pail, and once a day, I collect enough to fill the back tank of the toilet for a recycled flush.
(... you know we're a mellow-yellow household)
And every time I do that .. about 3 million other people flush a bugger, kleenex or a daddy long legs down the toilet, and offset that savings ..
Have I failed in my effort to help the planet?
No - I choose to think that instead I've succeeded in the ongoing battle we face with apathy....
Don't worry about how big the problem is .. just do your part and hold your head high : )
loVe,
p&j
____________________
************ I think the next 3 pages go with the above, not sure though .. a continuation based on the above ??
____________________
____________________
____________________
____________________
_______________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
Just found this in the blog edit page - a piece that I started and never finished - titled:
"update on peter's grand delusions of personal and spiritual growth. "
I've been thinking in pictures for the last few weeks - in chapters and quotation marks and pseudonyms and even sometimes in rhyme. This is the case most of the times, but it's controllable - I can flatten it with a few long emails explaining 'minimum opening orders' or customs declarations to this country or that .. that is to say, work, business, black and white, left brain - ready - go! But now there's this audio book playing, just a little bit louder, and I'm tuning in, and rolling my eyes, and trying to explain that there's just not time for that - it's a lot of work to write a book, no turning back.
Now. I asked for this. In fact, I paid for this to happen. I took needles in my wrists and arms and painfully, on the hard crowns of my feet.
I lied out, bare chested on a table, surrounded by the sounds of (chimes) and birdsong, so he could pour a cup of sea salt on my stomach and then start a smoldering fire atop the white sand.
The conversation that started all this went as such:
Him, at the end of an acupuncture session, "So. .. how do you feel?"
(Sometimes this elicits just a "Good. .. Rested." which isn't surprising since I'm laying in a small, dark room, serenaded with meditative Mandarin music. And at other times, my reply might sound like I'm reliving the final seconds in a near drowning beneath the ice. I've felt electrical vibrations, head to toe, and melting and warming sensations. But it wasn't always like that - and my expectations have changed a lot from the first time I was needled and thought things like, "I wonder how many needles they're going to use - more is more, you know, right? or Hold on .. something just twitched! Was that something happening ?? !!)
I think my response was of the former example, but then I went on, "Hey - you know how you asked me if there was anything in particular that I wanted to work on? I was thinking about that a little, and, well ... you know that feeling that you used to get when you were younger and experienced something new .. or maybe the way you felt the first time you traveled overseas, and even the smell of the air was something new and delicious?"
(he's used to questions that start like this from me, knowing there could be volumes more to come .. before I get to the point.)
He nods and smiles.
"
___________________________________________________
Random thought of the Day:
"The greatest miss-use of your own civil liberties is to deny another theirs."
This phrase sums up an encounter, well, a voyeuristic encounter that I once had back in Venice Beach, CA.
I was at Whole Foods, in the front patio section on the curb .. maybe eating a grass fed burger with no bun, and the gay rights people were out there, waving their sign and trying to get people to sign their petition and pledge money to Prop 8, same sex marriage.
This is a painful thing to watch for an introverted, over-thinking creature: rapid fire rejection. The awkwardness of it when the passersby are nice but unhelpful and the coldness of when they look right through you. The petitioner jumps around, actually dancing at times (to draw attention, I am told). It's repetitive and very humbling, the numbers game ...
And out walks a rather large black woman, pushing a cart. The young girl waves with both hands, one, still holding the clipboard, and says, "Do you want to help all citizens get their rights by supporting Prop 8?"
At first, I thought this woman was just going to be a walk-by. She takes a few more steps, now past the questioner, purses her lips, and then stops, unable to go by, and says, "No. I don't think they should be getting married. It's a sin, and that's not the way it's supposed to be."
I forget what the young girl said in response, probably whatever she was trained to say to defuse things like this, maybe, "Okay, you're entitled to your opinion." or something like that.
This woman had no obligation to fund and help the cause, but I had no doubt she'd actually vote against it when the time came. As she walked past me, I just ran the situation over in my head again and again, but I'm not great at quick responses all the time, and I wasn't going to chime in anyway, but the irony of it really stuck with me:
I felt like asking this woman, "Are you glad that slavery was abolished?"
I'm guessing I'd get a "Yes." Or just a blank stare ...
"And what about women .." I might have asked, "do you think they should have the right to vote and hold jobs and wear pants?"
Yes - against all the people who tried to block your rights and freedom, others stood up and fought so you could finally be standing here, free to block the rights of others in this great democracy.
"The greatest miss-use of your own civil liberties is to deny another theirs."
___________________________________________________
Just a scrap of paper that fell out of my notebook .. I have thousands of these, starts with no endings:
... you can click it to make it bigger.
Written in the early AM of March 6th - just after leaving a party, brushing my teeth and crawling into the Crow's Nest:
___________________________________________________
But he could not – so what does he do? The same thing that every other invisible member of the family does: kick the dog.
As the title suggests - these bits of writing would be homeless without this page. I'm gearing up to start on a large work of writing - but have been blowing off steam with journal blips and other fictional mishaps ; )
I'll be adding things here as they come / as I find old things in work notebooks ; )
This bar ____________________ means you're on to something new ..
____________________
The tub faucet leaks in this old country trailer ...
And I catch the drips in a pail, and once a day, I collect enough to fill the back tank of the toilet for a recycled flush.
(... you know we're a mellow-yellow household)
And every time I do that .. about 3 million other people flush a bugger, kleenex or a daddy long legs down the toilet, and offset that savings ..
Have I failed in my effort to help the planet?
No - I choose to think that instead I've succeeded in the ongoing battle we face with apathy....
Don't worry about how big the problem is .. just do your part and hold your head high : )
loVe,
p&j
____________________
************ I think the next 3 pages go with the above, not sure though .. a continuation based on the above ??
____________________
____________________
____________________
_______________________________
___________________________________________________
Just found this in the blog edit page - a piece that I started and never finished - titled:
"update on peter's grand delusions of personal and spiritual growth. "
I've been thinking in pictures for the last few weeks - in chapters and quotation marks and pseudonyms and even sometimes in rhyme. This is the case most of the times, but it's controllable - I can flatten it with a few long emails explaining 'minimum opening orders' or customs declarations to this country or that .. that is to say, work, business, black and white, left brain - ready - go! But now there's this audio book playing, just a little bit louder, and I'm tuning in, and rolling my eyes, and trying to explain that there's just not time for that - it's a lot of work to write a book, no turning back.
Now. I asked for this. In fact, I paid for this to happen. I took needles in my wrists and arms and painfully, on the hard crowns of my feet.
I lied out, bare chested on a table, surrounded by the sounds of (chimes) and birdsong, so he could pour a cup of sea salt on my stomach and then start a smoldering fire atop the white sand.
The conversation that started all this went as such:
Him, at the end of an acupuncture session, "So. .. how do you feel?"
(Sometimes this elicits just a "Good. .. Rested." which isn't surprising since I'm laying in a small, dark room, serenaded with meditative Mandarin music. And at other times, my reply might sound like I'm reliving the final seconds in a near drowning beneath the ice. I've felt electrical vibrations, head to toe, and melting and warming sensations. But it wasn't always like that - and my expectations have changed a lot from the first time I was needled and thought things like, "I wonder how many needles they're going to use - more is more, you know, right? or Hold on .. something just twitched! Was that something happening ?? !!)
I think my response was of the former example, but then I went on, "Hey - you know how you asked me if there was anything in particular that I wanted to work on? I was thinking about that a little, and, well ... you know that feeling that you used to get when you were younger and experienced something new .. or maybe the way you felt the first time you traveled overseas, and even the smell of the air was something new and delicious?"
(he's used to questions that start like this from me, knowing there could be volumes more to come .. before I get to the point.)
He nods and smiles.
"
___________________________________________________
Random thought of the Day:
A few weeks ago - when we were down in the canyon at the hot springs for our weekAway, we were walking in the sun down the long fire road to the river crossing, and a small vermin of some kind - maybe a prairie dog - bolted across the path ahead of us.
He made it up the hill on the other side before we were even 40 feet from him, but as we passed by, I looked up in the direction he'd gone, wondering if I'd see a burrow of some sort, a place where he'd escaped to, but rather, there he was, standing on his hind legs in the shade of a mesquite.
He wanted to see us go by, out of sight and out of fear-range. I thought this was a very enlightened thing to do ... to watch his fears fade away on the horizon, from the comfortable place of observation, and not just bury his head in a dark hole and hide out in the paranoia of his own mind, from which place, he could envision that we were out there waiting for him. Forever.
A guru can come in any form .. if you're paying attention and realizing your humble place in things ; )
loVe.
A few weeks ago - when we were down in the canyon at the hot springs for our weekAway, we were walking in the sun down the long fire road to the river crossing, and a small vermin of some kind - maybe a prairie dog - bolted across the path ahead of us.
He made it up the hill on the other side before we were even 40 feet from him, but as we passed by, I looked up in the direction he'd gone, wondering if I'd see a burrow of some sort, a place where he'd escaped to, but rather, there he was, standing on his hind legs in the shade of a mesquite.
He wanted to see us go by, out of sight and out of fear-range. I thought this was a very enlightened thing to do ... to watch his fears fade away on the horizon, from the comfortable place of observation, and not just bury his head in a dark hole and hide out in the paranoia of his own mind, from which place, he could envision that we were out there waiting for him. Forever.
A guru can come in any form .. if you're paying attention and realizing your humble place in things ; )
loVe.
___________________________________________________
Random thought of the Day:
"The greatest miss-use of your own civil liberties is to deny another theirs."
This phrase sums up an encounter, well, a voyeuristic encounter that I once had back in Venice Beach, CA.
I was at Whole Foods, in the front patio section on the curb .. maybe eating a grass fed burger with no bun, and the gay rights people were out there, waving their sign and trying to get people to sign their petition and pledge money to Prop 8, same sex marriage.
This is a painful thing to watch for an introverted, over-thinking creature: rapid fire rejection. The awkwardness of it when the passersby are nice but unhelpful and the coldness of when they look right through you. The petitioner jumps around, actually dancing at times (to draw attention, I am told). It's repetitive and very humbling, the numbers game ...
And out walks a rather large black woman, pushing a cart. The young girl waves with both hands, one, still holding the clipboard, and says, "Do you want to help all citizens get their rights by supporting Prop 8?"
At first, I thought this woman was just going to be a walk-by. She takes a few more steps, now past the questioner, purses her lips, and then stops, unable to go by, and says, "No. I don't think they should be getting married. It's a sin, and that's not the way it's supposed to be."
I forget what the young girl said in response, probably whatever she was trained to say to defuse things like this, maybe, "Okay, you're entitled to your opinion." or something like that.
This woman had no obligation to fund and help the cause, but I had no doubt she'd actually vote against it when the time came. As she walked past me, I just ran the situation over in my head again and again, but I'm not great at quick responses all the time, and I wasn't going to chime in anyway, but the irony of it really stuck with me:
I felt like asking this woman, "Are you glad that slavery was abolished?"
I'm guessing I'd get a "Yes." Or just a blank stare ...
"And what about women .." I might have asked, "do you think they should have the right to vote and hold jobs and wear pants?"
Yes - against all the people who tried to block your rights and freedom, others stood up and fought so you could finally be standing here, free to block the rights of others in this great democracy.
"The greatest miss-use of your own civil liberties is to deny another theirs."
___________________________________________________
Just a scrap of paper that fell out of my notebook .. I have thousands of these, starts with no endings:
... you can click it to make it bigger.
Written in the early AM of March 6th - just after leaving a party, brushing my teeth and crawling into the Crow's Nest:
___________________________________________________
A dog tried to bite me tonight, on the wrist. I don’t know
why it wasn’t able to get its teeth in. I barely reacted as it went in for the
kill. I saw its lips curl back but thought it was getting ready to sneeze. This came about 2 or 3 minutes into a homely scratch behind the ears and
a petting and cooing session - "look at you.. look at how soft you are.." to which it showed no specific aversion. It may have
been growling – I couldn’t tell. It was too noisy in the room of voices and
scratchy vinyl records.
The dog,
one of about nine roaming the floor of the party, had one blue eye and the
other eye was blue-grey with marbled brown – like a cloudless swirling earth seen from space
with a black hole at its center and lazy malice in its glare. The little magic
carpet, velvety-fluff-ball killed my bright mood in an instant – I was on a roll until
she engaged me in this ancient dynamic of teeth and reflexes – slings and
arrows, spears and snares. I have no business in that place .. and neither does man’s best
friend.
I was
petting her silken head – right between the floppy ears as she sat there beside
my chair, facing in the opposite direction ... staring at the kitchen cabinets –
at a ghost, maybe. A ghost who looked like me, maybe. An old man who’d hung
himself in the attic - who no one else could see, and who’d pestered the dog for
the simple fact that she was his whole world – the sad, googley eye’d, fluffy,
frumpy, four legged validation of his existence.
He would
have rather bit me himself – I’m sure. Felt the elasticity of my skin between
his teeth. Dumped a glass of wine in my lap. Turned out all the lights and blew
out the candles.
But he could not – so what does he do? The same thing that every other invisible member of the family does: kick the dog.
The dog
just sat there afterward – in fact – she lowered down to her belly and rested
her chin on the floor at my feet. She was totally calm and cool about the whole
thing .. . this disturbed me. I thought about reprimanding her. Displacing her from her cozy
nesting place below the table. But she wasn’t my dog – and I barely knew the
people at the house, and if I prodded along her with my feet, I’d probably lose a toe
.. .
So I
took a blue corn chip from the party platter on the table, leaned over and
fed her. She ate it, gently, and my heart relaxed a beat, so I gave her another, and
then I left the party and went home.
___________________________________________________
Posted under
Random thought of the Day:
.. On Facebook:
A spunky 57 year old woman steps onstage for the first time. She's drank 7 cups of tea over the course of the day - which she'd begun with little sleep for the jitters and what she hoped would be the worst of her stage fright. She's hoping she's peed for the last time - which was just 3 minutes ago. Carried out in a last minute move which left the entry curtain still, and heavily draping as her name was announced the first two times.
Her lips are red with makeup and her cheeks, with adrenaline and fear and excitement and dread. She feels like the pounding of her own heart is shaking her entire frame .. like a broken buoy just outside in the cold and dark Oakland harbor .. she fears the audience will get sea sick just watching her ... if the impending heart attack leaves her onstage long enough. She wants to cry - to just sob and fall to her knees and let someone, anyone, crawl away from their cocktail and cover her beneath their raincoat - even for pity - she'll take it. She wants to cry for the battle she waged in finding her own two feet on that stage, in that light, and that awful silence .. she wants to mourn the thought that she's lost and it was for nothing.
It's beaten me. It's still here, stronger than ever. I was a fool, cocky, stupid, and now I'll pay the price a fool pays - the one we all fear most - shame, laughter .. the wrong kind of laughter. And she wasn't here to bring laughs at all.
She was here to sing. To find a place for her hands, a natural place without moving them too much or too little. To sing a song from her childhood - a place where she used to feel strong and proud and hopeful and light.
She gulps - her dry tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, and it must have seemed like she was trying to be cute, because a young guy in the front row smiled at her and almost seemed to wink .. or maybe he was just squinting at the idea of being watched himself - no longer safe in the dark crowd and cigarette smoke.
Those lights - lamps - heat lamps baking her in her own sweat and fear, and just then, her gag reflex, thank God, stopped the unconscious momentum which her stomach had put into action.
Her mouth watered now, and she swallowed, her tongue moving freely now, no longer glued to the roof of her mouth, but free.
In her brain, the first few words to the song had been circling round-and-round like a toy train. She waited for it to come back around, the opening words, and when they did, she saw them ..
and she sang.
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
Posted under
Random thought of the Day:
.. On Facebook:
A spunky 57 year old woman steps onstage for the first time. She's drank 7 cups of tea over the course of the day - which she'd begun with little sleep for the jitters and what she hoped would be the worst of her stage fright. She's hoping she's peed for the last time - which was just 3 minutes ago. Carried out in a last minute move which left the entry curtain still, and heavily draping as her name was announced the first two times.
Her lips are red with makeup and her cheeks, with adrenaline and fear and excitement and dread. She feels like the pounding of her own heart is shaking her entire frame .. like a broken buoy just outside in the cold and dark Oakland harbor .. she fears the audience will get sea sick just watching her ... if the impending heart attack leaves her onstage long enough. She wants to cry - to just sob and fall to her knees and let someone, anyone, crawl away from their cocktail and cover her beneath their raincoat - even for pity - she'll take it. She wants to cry for the battle she waged in finding her own two feet on that stage, in that light, and that awful silence .. she wants to mourn the thought that she's lost and it was for nothing.
It's beaten me. It's still here, stronger than ever. I was a fool, cocky, stupid, and now I'll pay the price a fool pays - the one we all fear most - shame, laughter .. the wrong kind of laughter. And she wasn't here to bring laughs at all.
She was here to sing. To find a place for her hands, a natural place without moving them too much or too little. To sing a song from her childhood - a place where she used to feel strong and proud and hopeful and light.
She gulps - her dry tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, and it must have seemed like she was trying to be cute, because a young guy in the front row smiled at her and almost seemed to wink .. or maybe he was just squinting at the idea of being watched himself - no longer safe in the dark crowd and cigarette smoke.
Those lights - lamps - heat lamps baking her in her own sweat and fear, and just then, her gag reflex, thank God, stopped the unconscious momentum which her stomach had put into action.
Her mouth watered now, and she swallowed, her tongue moving freely now, no longer glued to the roof of her mouth, but free.
In her brain, the first few words to the song had been circling round-and-round like a toy train. She waited for it to come back around, the opening words, and when they did, she saw them ..
and she sang.
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment