~ The number you have called is not in service.

I guess anyone my age has a lot of good telephone stories.  “Telephone” was a game when I was young, people sat in a circle, you know the drill.  But telephones were not a game.  The Bell System spent millions publishing pamphlets on “telephone etiquette”.  Millions more on how to be a good party-line person.  AT&T charged a dollar a minute (or more) for any long distance call (1950’s until the breakup).  It was serious money for a serious activity.  Local calls were generally of course free.  As if the monthly service and equipment rental bill didn’t amount to anything.  It did; and a lot of people didn’t even have phones.  Telephones through the fifties were still a bit of a luxury for most Americans.

There were no phone banks then; call centers pitching consumerism; ruining the dinner hour and ones whole day if given half a chance.  Businesses answered their own phones then, real person, real place - local (unless long distance).  People were friendly and helpful and informed.  Children and the uninformed were expected to stay off the line when it came to business calls.  “Let your fingers do the walking” was the slogan of the telco that reminded one that one didn‘t drive to the local stores and one should not waste money when a kind and knowledgeable and helpful (did I say well-informed) person would pick up the phone and answer your every question in a most satisfactory way.  Call centers have been the ruination of America.  The banks started them.  Don’t be deceived.  The other corporations quickly followed and in time they broke up AT&T and the Bell System and soon talk became cheap not just inexpensive.

One should appreciate the novelty of working in a telephone call center in India or the Philippines when ones parents never even had a telephone when they were growing up.  These “first generation” phone warriors don’t just make local calls; they get to talk long distance, to America in fact; calls that used to cost $3.00 or maybe $5.00 per minute.  Now these special children get to argue with Americans each and every day, long distance, and get paid to do it.  They get to lie, to vent, to outwork their frustrations at being paid 20 cents per hour (or thirty sometimes) when the very RICH Americans they talk to make maybe $20 (per hour); maybe a whole lot more.  Language (the English one) is the great equalizer; people think that a common language equals a common pay, a common outlook on life, an economic equality of sorts.  The Americans forget the inherent inequality of the conversation; the impossibility of getting a fair return when the odds are stacked against the call-center employee 100 to 1.

The voices are all so pleasant.  Each one so anxious to preserve and serve.  That’s on the surface.  Unflappable.  Please hold for my supervisor.  Thank you “Donald” or whatever other name you might be going by.  Please repeat your birth date, your social security number, your wife’s mother’s maiden name and all the other private ID you’ve ever had - “it’s just to confirm who you are”; I don’t mean to be so demeaning, so nosy, so ready to know the every secret of your private life.  Trust me; at twenty cents an hour and computer literate why would I be tempted at any theft of your identity.  They screen us before hiring us for 2 bucks a day; no Al Qiada here.  We will destroy America from the inside, one telephone call at a time; slow and painful, no towers down - that’s the cabal.  “We are the real enemy, that’s why we sound so sweet and have such a sugar coating.”  “God, Americans are so easy and so dumb.”

US West became Quest.  Just another name for US Worst Communications.  Give the bad association to any “quest”; denigrate the name and the concept with just bad management; fat and sassy leftovers from the days of monopoly and not competition.  GM was a monopoly too; in it with Ford and Chrysler - like the Bell labs and AT&T; two names, one purpose.  Bad cars, bad time, bad money, bad memories just waiting for a bailout that makes good.  Hang up the phone.  The talk is cheap.  Everybody is doomed anyway.

I think I will disconnect my phone.  I don’t need the line.  Call centers just make me sad.  There is no remembering the way it used to be; no happy honest voices from businesses - from any business.  You get my drift.  The past is dead and gone; hang up (on it), let it go.  Telephones are just a luxury, mindless chat mostly.  I do not chat when I need to talk.  “Chatty Kathy”, now that’s a different story.  I wish him well.

The phones were not ringing at the mall yesterday evening, after dinner or before.  No phone squads out to break the slumber of the “dinner hour”; no dining, no diners.  There was no business at the Mall.  Nobody informed, no knowledge, no one “to take your call” like in the old days.  Fingers still do the walking but Malls depend on feet (foot traffic); and America’s feet are tired.  Peddle to the metal for far too long.  Gas up or down America is out of gas and talk and money too.  Everybody knows who lives away from the Beltway and Wall Street and Beverly Hills; those are the exceptions.  La, la lands of the funny farm where the leaders are still laughing while everyone else only cries.  Oh Lord, Hear my cry!  Because the bureaucrats, the bankers, the politicians will never listen.  No telephone is necessary if you want to talk to God.  Some people just still don’t get that.

Ring ring; ring, ring.  Hello.  Goodbye.  It’s just the telephone.  There’s no need to answer it.

[2009.03.31 / Tuesday - Telephone]

~ The lesser part of knowing.

Beyond the numbers of the Nicolas Cage movie “Knowing” is an unseen movie guest.  You know the type.  Every movie showing has one.  They come in unannounced, or without a ticket.  You see them and instantly know that they don‘t belong “there”; which is “here”; which means here in my theater while I am watching my movie (or about to).  The “unseen guest” (too visible patron) is the reason why everyone has home theaters if they can afford them.  The conspiracy theorists might suggest that these people presences were actually hired to be in movie theaters so that people would buy big screens.

So much for today’s metaphor.  The point is that the Cage movie has this big ponderous “oaf” in it that is occupying the seat directly in front of you and he still has his cap on and the back of the bill (facing you) says something like “up yours” and he smells of alcohol above the faint scent of petiole oil left over from his last romp with the girl he picked up at the local head shop.  The Nicolas Cage “oaf” is (like the girl) determinism.  The idea is that if everything is not “random” and “an accident” then EVERYTHING has been pre-planned; has been determined beforehand.  There is no “free will”, no choice, no opportunity to influence events or history or to even “make a difference” unless you have been pre-selected to be a “difference maker”.  In that case it still doesn’t make a difference - not really.

I don’t think Shakespeare said it first when he suggested that, “All the world’s a stage.”  He then mumbled something about scripts and parts and predestination and the audience fell asleep mostly, but it was good for the robber barons to convince the peasants that they were peasants because it was their pre-destined lot in life; and Kings being kings was the other “part” of the lot of life.  Hollywood (of course) sees life as just a movie and movie as just life and the important thing is the king makers who write the scripts as if they were the Gods of this here earth, like Shakespeare too implied he was.  I should have just walked out.  Ebert was wrong about 4 stars; this was a 2 star movie at its best, but Ebert is getting old and Boomers really should know when to retire.

So the central thesis of the grade ‘B’ flick is that everything is so determined that every notable event (death event) is pre-planned, and that at least 50 years in advance.  Is it God or is it the cabal that has such power?  Since “the evil that men do live after them” (Julius Caesar ala Shakespeare) let’s just assume that it is the cabal that has the power and that God is powerless to prevent the cabal from controlling everything.  Except that the “whisperers” seem like a higher force that can find better fields to replant the seeds of civilization, tree of life, the cabal will implant a snake and “boom” you’ll have the same movie playing again in the dollar theaters or sold for what it’s worth at $1 per pop on a pirated DVD.

Did I say I didn’t like this movie?  Any good seven year old could come up with a more credible script.  Except the seven year old has not been favored by the cabal, so the pre-determined nature of our life on this planet plays out.  Yes, maybe at least when it comes to movies EVERYTHING is pre-determined and that is why you probably believe what you probably believe.  And what about the movie cabal folks suggesting that all the death scenes are set-up by the cabal at least 50 years in advance?  It could happen (maybe).  Or maybe not 50 years, but five, or three.  Or maybe Nicolas Cage and Ebert are really trying to tell you something.  “When it comes to death, as in disaster, everything is planned”.  And the movie - another disaster - planned.  But so too (if you check out the web) are all the weather, war, earthquake, and major accident type events - planned and orchestrated by the big bad cabal.  Not God; the cabal.  Maybe the legal clause should exempt “acts of the cabal” from insurance coverage.

So are Cage and Ebert and Hollywood just stupid or is it just about the money and the dumbing down of every word, thought, and deed?  Let’s try some real thought.  Everything is not just an accident; that’s one.  There is free-will; that’s two.  Bad things happen because the bad guys (like Avis) try harder.  The good guys and gals know better, but help the bad guys (and gals) by going to head shops and drinking and buying stuff (like tickets to bad movies).  Bad events can be predicted only to the degree that people behave predictably; the cabal is totally predictable (and like Shakespeare boring).  It is the unexpected “little person, lesser person, everyday person”; the “extra” without a speaking part that can make or destroy the whole movie or disaster in the making.  A disaster destroyed doesn’t happen.  One determined loudmouth could have stopped the whole Cage movie from ever being made; just like the “oaf” in the audience, but a good oaf.  Random stuff can happen, should happen, by choice and not by script.

I could have gotten my money back; saved my time too.  But I was too predictable, too determined to walk out of a movie that I knew (from signs and signals) was going bad.  My home movie thing is better.  No flash to pre-empt my show.  Lots of foreign flicks.  Oldies from better and wiser times.  I can choose my content carefully; not get sucked in to somebody else’s show (or script, or plot, or end of the world scenario).  The cabal does not write my lines; set my thoughts; make me see things their way.  I am free.  I am not pre-determined.  I have a choice when it comes to me.  I have no desire to control the acts or time of others.

It’s really about the battle on this planet for the hearts and minds and evolving souls of each individual.  Of course the bad ones do exist, free will means that for awhile they really do have a choice.  One bad, my bad.  10,000 bads and you are out; or maybe it takes a million; or maybe things wait until one is just “all bad” and that ain’t good - it’s just a way of saying good riddance and at that point I have even forgotten that you are gone.  Cage could have gone.  He had a choice.  He made his bed long ago and kept on thinking that someone else could and should tell him what to do and think and believe in order to survive.  He got his wish; they said no and he believed them.  Had he lived a different life he too would have moved on when the time for moving on became apparent.  For you; it’s not too late to change.

Bad dreams?  As my mother used to say, “It’s only a movie.”  But it was my seven bucks.  “It’s only a movie.”  It’s only a bad movie.  Movies will not make you free.  It’s the popcorn that’s food for thought.

[2009.03.29 / Sunday - Determinism]

~ Numbers, numbers, and more numbers.

I guess the rest of the world saw the new Nicolas Cage movie last week.  I didn’t.  Ebert called it “intelligent”.  He may have a point to a point.  Anyway, I saw the movie (“Knowing”) on Friday afternoon (saving money on the matinee), yesterday or something not unlike today.  Stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie; keep reading if you think you never will.  But let’s just assume you’ve seen the movie and have somehow gotten over the plane crash scene and the subway crash scene and those stupid scenes that get in the way of what might otherwise make for a better movie.

It’s not that Hollywood never gets things right, but it is hard when you use screen writers that are under twenty-five and their task is to write the movie that they wished that they had seen when they were eighteen or sixteen or maybe seven or twelve.  I liked seeing movies when I was seven and twelve so I’m not saying anything bad, but then the movies were written by people in their forties or fifties or (God forbid) even sixty something.  I digress.

Anyway, you can’t expect a twenty-something to have ever been a first-responder so how could one possibly know what a flaming catastrophy really looks like.  If one were there they would realize that the real thing doesn’t make for good movie footage so why not make it up with special effects and animation and computer wizardry because (mentally) idle people need jobs too.  “Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  Don’t blame Cage, he’s just the hired help.

But the intelligence (excuse the pun) in the movie comes in the form of numbers.  The theory is that earthly time and space can be reduced to a few simple digits, and a few names (or number substitutes for names) and you have the setting for an event.  It is a theory I’ve been working on for about the last thirty years or so; so I’ve got a bit of a track record on the matter.  Let me explain.

I can explain it easier now, now that you’ve seen the movie and have grasped the basic concepts.  I call my system the Tepp System.  TEPP is an acronym for Time, Event, Person, Place.  Think “people” if more than one person is involved.  The theory is that whatever happened is the “Event” which is just a name and since all events are seen somewhat differently dependent upon who sees them then the names will change and that in and of itself is what makes history so very hard.  It is better to just know the place and time (Space-Time) or the Time and Place (Time-Space) and let the definition and interpretation be left alone to others.  Just the facts, as Joe Friday used to say.

In the movie the people are reduced to numbers.  I never thought that this was ever such a good idea; social security numbers and (later) identity theft and you really need a lot of numbers just to keep track of the 12 billion people alive or who have ever lived.  The SS number system can only accomadate a billion.  Then like California license plates you need to add another digit and then you loose the benefit of plates that can be recognized and are left with only a seven place alpha-numeric that is only good for taxation and control.  I grew up thinking about all these things.  My mother was a statistician; very gifted, she placed 4th on the state civil service exam in 1938.  She helped set up the Social Security system (in California) and the unemployment system as well.  My father too was not too shabby  in math; majored in astronomy and engineering and never stopped.

Anyway, to define the 81 people dead (as in the movie) one would need a number 10 digits long; 810 digits (individual numbers) just to get things right.  So the movie sees that the higher intelligences of the universe would just go for broke and do a body count and come up with one single number.  Oh, the 25 year olds.  They do not know that casualty counts almost always go down with the passage of time from first report.  And the first reports almost all differ.  Check the web yourself; watch the news.  People cannot be reduced to numbers; not in real life - not in any real movie.

But Time and Space can be reduced to numbers.  This is where the movie is interesting and ratifies the substance of my work.  Let me explain.  There is only one time system using numbers instead of names or letters that makes any sense.  You will see it at the bottom of my every post.  One begins with the year and then moves to ever more precise divisions of time.  4 digits for the year, 2 for each month, 2 more define the date.  Nine numbers could narrow the window to about 2 hours; ten numbers could narrow it to 15 minutes or a quarter of an hour; eleven digits and you know everything you need to know within 2 minutes - the two minute warning thing.  In the movie Cage is content (like I) with just the day.  But his sequencing is absolutely wrong, no computer could ever sort or arrange the Month, Day, Year system or even the European Day, Month, Year.  Don’t schools teach one anything?  Certainly a scientist should know.

The movie assumes that space is limited when time is short.  It is the issue of an economy of digits.  The North and West (or other semi-cardinal directions) of the latitudinal and longitudinal grid have been reduced to two places, an NW for example.  Letters not numbers; two not one.  I decided (in 1977) that a better system would be to reference these areas as “World Quadrants” and number them from 1 to 4, based on the land area and the population of the largest (1) to the smallest (4).  North America is in World Quadrant 2.  Then the latitude is always two digits (00 to 89 baseline) and the longitude is always three (000 to 179).  The AREA defined is a Degree Unit; about 4,800 square miles at the Equator and about 35 when 70 miles away from either pole.  All this with only six digits; the world devided into about 64,000 specifically defined places.  See 1864 / October on your sidebar to see how this system works.

Of course Cage got it wrong.  Lockerbe would be in World Quadrant 1, not 2.  He had no way of knowing with just his number only code.  My system would make it clear.  He uses the decimal version of minutes and seconds.  His extra digit would get him only within six or seven miles mostly (25 square miles that far north).  The New York crash scene becomes ridiculous absurd when it is pinpointed to just one block.  The one block designation would take another six digits (not just two).  I’ve worked it out; two systems, one for cross-hairs, one for area.  The area is probably best; just over one square mile or as close as 50 x 50 feet.  Extra digits can define real space to a nano-meter if necessary.  But most scientists still do not believe that real events are conditioned by space.  They just believe in time and the uniformity of it all.

The other point is that the movie failed in not understanding the matematical depiction of the magnitude of things.  My system is predicated on the existence of a system of reference to convey the size of an event.  A Whole World event is easy.  A World Quadrant event would leave ¾ of the world in tact.  A Century Unit is 10 Degree units by 10 degree units in size; about 50,000 square miles in area.  A degree unit event is only 5,000 (4,800) square miles of impact.  Eastern states are often one or two degree units in area (Rhode Island is about 1/3 of a degree unit), western states may be as much as twenty or forty.  Alaska is 250 degree units of area.  You get the idea; you can do the math and crunch the numbers.  There’s more.  But again, I digress.

So is the central thesis of the movie sound.  Yes, I hear you.  There is a higher intelligence in the universe.  And it’s getting through to anyone willing to listen; or to read.  You have the number(s).

[2009.03.28 / Saturday - Oh, My!]

~ Why are crystal balls so cool?

Let me see.  This is Friday.  It’s the 27th .  Saturday is the 28th.  Sunday is the 29th.  Monday is the 30th .    Tuesday is the 31st.  I can count.  Good.  So can you count too?  Everybody knows that Pearl Harbor was on the 7th of December.  Except dates don’t work that way.  The Japanese attacked on the eighth.  It was the eighth in Japan and in China and in the Philippines and in all the other Pacific Rim places that were attacked almost all at the same moment, given the factor of “dawn” as in attack at dawn.

So I guess that Tuesday might be seen as the first; as April the 1st.   I went to Afghanistan on April the first.  That is to say that it was April fool’s day that I left and soon was over the waters of the Pacific rim and April the first soon became April the third because through the passage of time and space during the time of flight April second just never existed except for one anomalous hour in Shemya (Alaska) which was actually only 45 minutes in length and Shemya is in the Aleutians, at the tip of the chain, far west of the International Date Line, but still under US time for what it’s worth.  “Time Out in Shemya” would be a good title for a book.  The Japanese actually militarily controlled Shemya during the most recent world war; but that doesn’t count because Shemya like Hawaii was only a US territory; but I forget myself and my topic, so onward.

So, if I have got my bearings right in time and in space and in the circularity of the sun it might be safe to say that on Tuesday the good North Koreans might launch their good rocket with it’s very good payload toward the island of Shemya or more toward Hawaii and fifty years to the lost day that I was going west east and west may meet and the eastern moving rocket will cross paths at some point in lost time with my historic venture westward to Afghanistan.  If this is so, then at that magic moment world’s will collide as US or American missiles might or might not collide with the Korean rocket and troops could then pour over the armistice line dividing the two Koreas (which there is really only one Korea) and then all the fun can really begin if only in my mind.

I was raised in a world of work and worry.  I was raised to worry about such things as war and nuclear attack and how to contain communists and fascists and terrorists, but not the capitalists that always made so much money by creating so much worry about all the other “ists”.  That is where the work part came in.  Jobs begat the taxes that could be overspent through deficits that could create the profits for the endless wars necessary for Americas defense.  Mostly fantasy.  But I’ve learned my lessons well so I worry constantly about such little things as Korea War II and nuclear missiles and the war creating potential of acts of preventative war.  Why was I a Poli-Sci major when I might have just studied art?

We all seek signs and portents and portends and synchronicity in our lives.  We see secret signs and numbers.  We find memorable such dates at 9-1-1.  What is so special about May 1st , the Ideas of March, the 4th of July or the 5th of May?  Does August 9th mean anything to anyone except perhaps in Japan.  Is Halloween not just the date of statehood for Nevada?  What is really up with Christmas considering God is not really just a Capricorn, the horn thing is just a myth?

I was reading a note written by my mother just the other day.  It was a day in 1939 and her mother had sent her a Life Magazine - one copy.  It was about the Germans or about tanks or planes or something with pictures on every page, mostly advertisements as I recall.  She wrote that she might save the copy (for her infant son) so he might someday learn something about the war.  People used to want and save artifacts of each and every war; picture postcards of the battles, Napoleonic cannons for the Courthouse steps, field howitzers from the battle of the Marne or the battle of the Bulge; Japanese flags with “Banzai” slogans and the signatures of all the men.  Attack at dawn or midnight, but save the relics of the war.  Did I say that my grandmother saved the buttons from her husbands suit in which he served while preparing to die on Flanders Fields or somewhere else “over there”.  He did not die, but I’ve still got all the buttons.  Why not save relics of each war?

The Brits carried off the gates from Ghazni (city in Afghanistan).  Took them to India, maybe now in the British Museum in London; who cares except the Afghans that might want the gates returned.  Maybe then the wars might be over, the Taliban might be put to rest, the killing might then be over.  It’s the symbolism contained in each thing, the dates that are remembered, the collective unconscious raising up in each memory of the mind.  Give us back our gates.  Turn the cannons into rail cars.  Let the buttons go.  There is a fortune to be made making military buttons for 50 million soldiers fighting World War I across the whole of Europe (a billion carefully embossed military buttons at the least).  The money is lost, they have no real value.  But even more money was made making the uniforms in which a million soldiers died.  And the flags for the coffins is worth a fortune more.  Isn’t it just about the money?

I used to read through my parents collection of “Life” magazine.  I soon learned that life meant death; people paid good money for the pictures of every war; the bigger the better on each oversized page of propaganda extolling the virtues of each war - Second, Korea, the French in Vietnam, the Cold War too.  The collection was forever lost when we left for Afghanistan.  No need for relics of a US war in Afghanistan which stayed at peace while others a part of empires died.  I guess the magazines were recycled to some school or some library or some VFW Hall where the veterans could say “Yes” this was our finest hour, “We killed so many Krauts and Japs and Commies on that day”.  My son or daughter will be so proud.  I’ll take this issue home for the remembrance of such things.  I know why we fought.  “We fought to kill and the killing felt so good (or maybe not).”  “Let’s not talk about it with any truth” (each returning soldier has always thought).

It’s just another Ruby Tuesday (coming).  My memories or yours.  My thoughts or yours.  Does it really matter anyway?  When will they (we) ever learn?

[2009.03.27 / Friday - Ruby Tuesday]

~ Never, never, never!

Never borrow money.  Never incur debt.  There is never a good reason to do so!  How many ways can I say it?  Debt is bad, very bad, very very bad.  There is no moral obligation to ever pay back any money ever borrowed because the institution of loaning money is itself inherently immoral.  The idea of “lending” money is to acquire power over the debtor, to enslave them, to make the person a slave and a serf and a worker bee who has lost all control over how they live the life that they were freely given.  Money lenders are the scum of the scummiest that ever lived.  They are inherently dishonest.  Do you hear me now?  Do you hear me now??

I saw a supplement for Sears today.  Their stores are not making money.  Sears makes money by lending money.  The supplement was about fine print and about Citibank and about 29.9% annual interest rates.  I’m not kidding.  Buy at Sears and you’ll be in debt forever.  Sears is so close to hell that it doesn’t just burn, it sears.  I grew up with Sears.  That was when Roebuck was in the picture.  He’s dead.  Sears is dead too, but they still do damage.  All credit instruments do damage.  This is an important message for your health and happiness.  Never borrow money!

Credit cards are bad.  All credit cards are bad!  Do not use credit cards.  Credit collecting is NOT a job; it is being a destroyer.  Credit collectors destroy everything they touch or call or write to.  They know they are destroyers.  They lie.  They cheat.  They steal.  They make nothing but false promises.  They work underneath the law and lie about the law being on their side.  They are shills and scum and deadbeats who are afraid of all honest work.  Do not participate in the “debt system”.  It is a system of slavery.  Debt will never make you free.  Do you hear me?  Please.  Please hear me.

Destroy your credit cards if you have them.  Never apply for credit.  You may never own a home.  Good.  Be grateful.  Be grateful that you will never have to have your home repossessed after you paid all your money to bankers and money lenders and the scum of the earth.  Speak up about debt.  Be proud if you are debt free.  Save your money for food and winter warmth.  Don’t ever expect that any loans you ever make or ever made will be repaid.  Forgive them.  Most in America will never be forgiven, which is why America is oh so doomed.  Debt is dooming America!  Stop loaning money to the banks.  Never make a loan.  Each dollar in a bank is a loan to the bank.  They charge 29.9% for their loans and pay you what?  They pay you squat!  Money is to save, not loan.  Stop loaning your money to the banks.

Do not support any bond issues.  Bonds are debt.  Debt destroys.  Bonds destroy.  Never a borrower or a lender be.  Never a borrower or a lender be.  Don’t be fooled.  Be free.  Be free.  Be free.

I have never had a credit card in the past 21 years.  I sinned and I’ve saved and been saved (from debt) and from the culture of debt.  Free yourself.  The banks will fail and will take your money.  They will not repay you.  They are not honest.  They will default on all their loans; why should you not default on yours first?  Isn’t it only fair?  You NOT defaulting will not save the banks.  The banks are doomed.

Run, don’t walk, to your bank.  Take out your money.  Save the few dollars that you may have saved.  Let the banks go.  They don’t need you and you don’t need them.  Don’t loan your money to companies.  They can make it by working hard and saving.  Companies and corporations don’t need loans (in the form of stocks).  They can lift themselves by the same bootstraps that the rest of us must use.  There is no respect in being a debtor company.  Support debt free companies that are stock free.  Stocks and bonds are a form of punishment.  From Jamestown to Williamsburg to Boston; stocks and bonds and the public pillory.  Respect yourself, be debt and debtor free.

Buy less every month.  Spend less next month than you did this month.  Do with less until the whole world is on the same page.  The glass is not half empty, it is all empty.  The world of debt is a false fuel.  Any government that supports the legal enforcement of contracts is tyranny.  Contracts are “hand-shakes” or they are worthless.  Paper contracts are just theft or greed.

I have a freedom to advocate my position just as others have advocated theirs.  They have advocated against the public interest and against freedom.  They have promoted tyranny and slavery under the name of “liberty”.  I propose a land of the free; free of all debt; free of all banks and bankers.  Nobody needs a credit card.  You can’t fly?  Don’t fly.  The promise printed on the currency is already a lie.  The currency is already not honored by the airlines.  The lawyers are afraid to support law.  How can you see that it’s not over?

If I ever borrowed money that I was unable to repay, please forgive me.  If you owe me money, or ever did, let it be; it’s over, keep what you have.  It’s a new day.  This is a debt free zone.  And please don’t ever suggest anymore loaning of money.  As a people we are better than that.

[2009.03.26 / Thursday - Never Make a Loan]

~ It’s different once you’ve been there.

It’s different once you’ve been there.  And it is different again once you know you will never be there again.  I’m talking about the moon.  Or, I’m talking about the rocket.  Or, I’m talking about the metaphor of the moon and the rocket metaphor and mostly about life here on earth.  Is the rocket the sky-rocketing stock market blasting off to heights still unknown.  But as a student of the early sixties I know that most rockets end in failure, explosions on the launch pad after the scientists let their dreams skyrocket to where no rocket dared to go.  But these are not the sixties.

I’ve never been to the moon.  But I have met a man that was there, or said he was there, or said something about space programs and small capsules and places to walk around which was what one could not do in the space capsules.  It was an anomalous topic for a geography bee.  The speaker too was anomalous come to think about it.  What does space have to do with geography when you think that the word “geo” means earth and that earth ends where space begins?  Whatever that means.

Dizzying heights used to refer to towers in Vertigo or cliffs on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.  Or, maybe the heights were on the slopes of Mount Everest, the canyon tops in Arizona or the mesa tops of New Mexico.  Lowell Thomas wrote once about the “dizzying heights” involved in building the skeletons of steel at 100 or more stories above the canyons of New York.  Maybe he was writing about Wall Street and the robber barons and the financial tycoons that stole from the poor to feed the rich.  Or maybe he had never traveled to the moon; drank the nectar of the stars; filled his faith with the wonder of that which is out of and beyond this world.

We’ll do the shift now.  We’ll move from lift off and acceleration to the time of orbiting.  An orbit is just an endless freefall; to some a lot like hell.  It’s about weight and mass and physics and momentum.  The point is that at some point things can fall for ever and never crash to the ground; to zero; to ground zero.  That is the difference between earth and space; between geography and the cosmos; between where you really are and some rocket to the moon, lost in space - you will not witness man ever going there again.

There is a settledness to earth.  Our blue-green planet is still the place we live.  Our planet still revolves in even circles while going ‘round the sun.  Ours is a better orbit than the ones made by man; communications satellites must someday fall down from the sky, burn up, be silenced in their day.  They are subject to the laws of economics, physics, gravity and corporate greed; not earth.  Earth has no owner.  The planet has no mortgage, no bank loan to default, no need of any bail-out; no danger of default.  Now don’t you feel a whole lot better?

When I see the moon I see no man.  I see a rabbit.  I see a rabbit licking; ever cleaning; ever cleaning the moon to make it brighter, to liven up the shine, to maximize the pale glow and make it ever lighter.
It is the oriental way of seeing things, originally from Japan perhaps.  Perhaps a woman may make it to the moon, a moon goddess, a great Amazon going to where no man can ever go (again, if ever).  But dead planets are the ones that stop revolving, same face always to the sun; they do not turn from night to day.  To our moon the earth is the sun.  The brightness is only borrowed.  We need new metaphors and better.  The rabbit may be in jeopardy.  It’s the physics thing, time and motion - add a little weight.

Will the moon explode in our lifetime.  Will Al Gore be the first to know?  Probably not; he’s such an earthly guy, or is it “earth-bound” that describes his simple thoughts?  We really could have “breaking news” that really was about something really breaking, falling out of orbit, exploding into bits and pieces as the point of gravitational equilibrium is lost.  The rings of earth is such a romantic thought.  A token of the marriage between earth and sky.  So many new and better fables.  Be the first to write them now.

Why did not the “financial experts” give us the proper warning about the collapse of Wall Street and the banks?  Why do we trust that the “scientific experts” will serve us any better?  Nothing is too big to fail.  It is just our imaginations that have been too small.  We know so little.  We watch for so much less.  We hope for so much less.  Where will be the rocket to the moon when even the moon is no longer there?

[2009.03.22 / Wednesday - Rocket to the Moon]

~ Without empathy life itself is hollow.

Every home should have a dictionary or two.  Three would be better, or at least one good dictionary.  The dictionary should not be too modern; hence the web may not make for a good dictionary.  You see, both the use of words and the use of dictionaries changes.  My father always thought a dictionary was a useful thing to have around; the “seat of learning” he called it.  Their were no booster seats around houses in those days and only the very young were assigned to highchairs at a festive get-together like Thanksgiving perhaps.  My father did not believe in children’s tables when the best of what there was to learn might be learned around the common table that mixed both the young and old; the learned, the senile, the unlearned, and budding sojourner in life.

So my father boosted the young learners upon the seat of knowledge, a large and pretentious (if not so worn with age) tome of large and thick pages and cover and binding sufficient to support even the greatest aspirations of even the wiggliest of children.  If someone might object their protests became instantly mute as all could easily see (or know) that even this least guest at the table was supported by all the world’s knowledge and every acceptable word of discourse ever written.  What better a person to have a seat at any table?

The issue is of course not knowledge, but access.  It is not what one knows, but how and when they use it.  One may accumulate facts about the lives of famous women (or men); but it is the ability or interest in getting beyond facts that distinguishes the ready scholar from one perhaps honored by merely being placed upon the elevated seat of learning.  The most rudimentary form of this is empathy; the ability to project oneself into another’s shoes or if they have no shoes, their footsteps; and if they have no feet, the very life of their whole being and their body.

Empathy requires understanding.  Sympathy requires merely agreement.  The difference is that one may understand ones position or how one arrived at their condition but does not necessarily see or appreciate the same choices or the same decisions.  Sympathy implies a certain predestined hopelessness.  Empathy reserves the paradigm of choice, of decisions and their effect.  Sympathy is but a blush, empathy to be real requires real thought and knowledge and the ability to distinguish between truly hopeless situations (or vacuously fortuitous ones) and the mere appearance of hopelessness (or good fortune).

Sympathy is well spent where there is good cause and causation.  Otherwise it is wasted.  The I-Ching is a book about the ordering of government and society.  It makes the point that poorly ordered society with less than cosmic learning and values and discipline is doomed to doom the population.  The book itself offers two hopes.  One, as a book for the masses it offers the hope of creating within the common person the impetus to not accept poor values and poor leadership.  Two, as a book for the common person it offers the hope inherent in perseverance when things are bad; the adage that “this too will change”.

I have been working once again on my list of residence addresses.  It is the list that records where I have lived and when.  It is a fairly precise list, days with dates not merely years or months; proper addresses, not merely street names or towns or cities.  If you have lived in only one house or two you probably can’t see the point.  My life though has been different.  I have a hundred separate and identifiable addresses that indicate where I have lived.  Many times I have moved for lack of money (to pay the rent).  But before that it was my parents moves to pursue employment or a job; or for the health of their child (second born, first to die, not me).

There is a thin line between many homes and homelessness.  Each night in a new place (when there isn’t any other place to go) is ones home for a day, a week, a month maybe.  It is shelter.  It is an address for those people and bureaucrats and members of society that seek addresses, count populations by where they live and not by the lives they live.  My list of a hundred places may not be normal, but it is not unusual.  It is nothing compared to those who live in trucks (or the cabs of trucks) driving each night and day, “a Kenilworth or a Mack is the only home I’ve ever known”.  It’s the truckers that keep America moving; their homelessness is the price we help to pay for everything the way it is.  What would Confucius say?

We’re beyond the long lost legacy of black waiters and black porters as a fixture on most every train.  But we are too often not beyond the stereotype of the black father leaving home and family to “ride the rails” as if it were not just a better job.  His home was not the family home; 500 miles of field, factory, city each and every day.  America has always been on the move.  But do we treat our stewardesses any better?  Does an address on a tax return for a rented apartment really make a home?  Do we lament the folks losing their homes or those that never had one?  Is it sympathy or empathy that we lack?  Is America really on the road to make things better (excuse the metaphor and the pun)?

Well, I hope I’ve caused you a little thinking.  As for me I get refuge from my list.  At the time each move was often a rush to food or housing; no time to live each day, no time to smell the roses or to take in what life itself gave out.  But now I have my memories.  I can go back and revisit those moments never lost; relive without the worry about living life another day - would I survive to live another day (and how)?  I did survive.  Now I know.  And now I can smell the roses and count the little things and learn the lessons once at my feet but that I was too busy to learn then.  It’s like a book (my list).  A dictionary perhaps, a seat of learning.  Once I just sat.  Now everyone else is gone (from the table); I set down and kneel and turn back the cover and open each page to read.  And with each open page I learn.

Do you have a list of everywhere you’ve ever lived?

[2009.03.22 / Sunday - Homeless]

~ Good things about Dow 2,000.

It seems that the Dow has gone “up 15%” as of late.  What a gain!  Just imagine if the Dow were at 2,000 and “went up” 1,000 points in a month.  The Dow would have gone up 50%!  Such a deal!  If the Dow were to reach 1,000, then a thousand points would send the Dow up 100%, Dow 500, would make possible a 300% increase in the Dow.

Today’s topic is forgetfulness and spin.  Each new surge in the Dow is predicated upon otherwise intelligent people forgetting how hard they worked for their money, how many compromises they made in life to make the money, and how much money they have lost already because they are always forgetting things and would rather buy into other peoples “smarts” rather than use their own.

We have forgotten what honest good food tastes like in America.  We prefer fast food and fast food products and synthetic corn and cottonseed oil as a substitute for axel grease.  I chew on my cotton sheets.  I do not chew on them to eat them though, cotton is not food unless you are a boll weevil and now we have a topic to talk about.  Pesticides and fungicides and the whole idea that when it comes to GM, it’s not really failing or bankrupt or losing market share at all.  What is good for GM IS good for America it seems some say and if you’re not following this as quickly as you should then you should get some smarts or start using your own before it’s too late.  What I really mean to say is that Boll weevils are good.

Good too are field mice and flocks of starlings and a blue sky filled with passenger pigeons.  Even the Mormons were wrong about their crickets.  The cricket-locusts have to eat.  Men help them out, grow food.  There is always enough to share.  America really is the land of plenty, plenty big-gulps; plenty of super-sized portions and calories and fat to feed us all to make us big and large until we have more shops to help the economy along and nutri-system to down-size us when necessary so we can build ourselves up once again and didn’t Duncan invent the Yo-Yo?

Monsanto (now there’s a name) does not believe in “America - land of plenty”, foodstore for the world.  The company (and a few other agri-business giants) is about GM, which is not so much about the cars as about the food.  But you already have too much to think about, the recession and the depression and foreclosures and Obama-mania and how glad you are that the Democrats all won and the President is black and AIG will give the dollars back and even the recession is over because the “economy has stabilized” and Obama says that, “I won” and all in just 90 days or less.  Take a big-gulp and relax.

GM - Genetic Manipulation, or is it genetic manufacturing, or just “grow more”.  The concept is easy.  Put the pesticides and fungicides and vermicides and formaldehydes and cancerides and even the Ides of March into all the foods you eat and “they” grow and you can kill the bugs and birds and anything else that lives and breathes all in the privacy of your own stomach and the privacy of your own corporate farm that you support with every food, fruit, and fiber (purchase) of your whole being for as long as you’re alive.  Amen.

Which won’t be so long.  Amen.  But then you can easily be replaced by another billion or two born upon the planet; people not so smart; people willing to trust the smarts of others if only long enough to find the food and buy the food and eat the food so quickly that they can quickly grow and die and super-size and then get thin and WOW! Isn’t that who the Constitution was really written for?  And then you sicken and then you die, but first you feed the “health care industry” with all your toxins and all your waste stored so well inside making for a chemical soup for which there is no cure, but you already knew that - you’re so smart now aren’t you?

The organic and natural food folks are winning.  Small plot farming and farmers markets and the little guy and not so little girl are all the rage.  Ciba Gigi and ADM lost a bundle in the dive of cars when the Ethanol scam hit the wrong side of Wall Street and AIG (insurance) could not pay for all the losses.  So these “big boys” are hopping mad and always hopped on hops or other drugs from Mexico that they help grow and farm as if pot and cocaine and poppies were not just bigger crops grown on corporate farms by corporate farmers and only the enforcers are colored brown, the executives are always white and wasps and just about as useful (as the wasps with their awful sting - wipe out their corporate nests).

I digress.  But some sentences are just poetry.  The real news is about the Congress bill that would turn all our food over to the GM folks who claim that national security and food are the same and only hunger is the enemy and genetic manipulation can increase the yield by 30 to 40% (or maybe more) and since it’s all about the water (not enough) we better act (of parliaments) now before it’s too late and the whole idea of “Eat and Die” might be removed from the world menu of ideas.

John Beddington has his “conclusions” written up on BBC for all to see.  The world will die (if not saved by GM) by 2030 which might scare you if it weren’t that 2012 comes first.  You would think that he would know, smart guy if he could only think for himself instead of being some corporate patsy stooge.  Did I forget the “S-word” for scab?

Of course if you keep eating GM and Kraft and KFC and Wonder Bread and all the corporate fare of brand-names buying you deserve just what you get.  Or you could “get a life” and eat well or better, organic and natural and local and plant a garden even with good seeds not genetically toyed with.  This is not a game.  But I am not worried.  I hope the GM/Monsanto “big boys” bill passes.  It will be another nail in the coffin of the federal state.  The big boys and all the greedsters can blow this whole thing apart by twenty-ten; why wait for the big twelve or 20-30 even.  Do it now!  They seem in such a hurry.  Don’t they have the smarts to know they’ve lost already?  Eat Smart.  Eat Well.  Eat Local.  Corporate Kills, it’s the GM Inside.

Oh, I almost forget about Bert.  Bert’s Bee’s that is.  The company is now owned by Clorox, the bleach folks; caustic chemicals for all and others.  Bert sold out it seems; in bed with Beddington.  It’s not who you know; it’s what you know that matters.

[2009.03.19 / Monday - Bert’s Bed]

~ Before you go to bed buy a new mattress.

Those credited with doing the thinking about the revolutionary principals and theories of the Spirit of 1776, the “American dream” and the rights of man were rather erudite authors.  It’s a daunting word, “erudite”; but it simply means “scholarly”, as in “learned”, as in not of the common man.  There lies the catch.  The idea was that uncommon men were coming up with theories about what the “common man” needed, wanted, would find to make their life better.

The elitist mentality has always been with us I suppose.  Kings and Queens and Roman Caesars did it.  The whole idea of a Senate is about privilege and elitism.  Brain trusts, the “best and the brightest”, think tanks, are rooted as concepts in the notion that it takes an elite to rule and rule wisely.  The terms expert and specialist are but an extension of the notion of elite.  None of this has anything to do with the common man, the everyday person, and the hopes and dreams and lives of the everyday people; always a bit common; always left out of the elite and their privilege and their wealth and any real access to their ways.

The elite has never been interested in relinquishing their wealth and power.  They are ever reluctant to even share it.  There is of course an ongoing battle of the wolves mentality, competing factions and individuals who all harbor the basic underlying impulses struggling to be king of the mountain for a day, a week, a term or two.  But no one among the elite will ever pretend that the way forward is equality or freedom.  The whole basic tenancy of being of the elite; and perpetuating it; is predicated upon there being a whole slew of aimless, helpless followers who struggle and slave and work away their lives for the betterment and the ever ongoing enrichment; even the maintenance; of the elite themselves.  Call them slaves, or serfs, or common men, or citizens - it does not matter.  It is the principle of the thing that matters, not the titles or the names.

After any number of seasons the serfs catch on.  They tire of their solitude and chains and needless poverty and arise.  With pitchforks and torches, raised voices and dirty hands, they storm the Bastille, pour tea into the Bay, leave the Roman roads for the open fields and hills beyond.  The order changes, but not the principals in place.  The elite learned long ago of this periodic penchant for some change.  They accommodate it.  They let it happen.  In time they are even wise enough to encourage this thing.  They are always two steps ahead of any revolution.  In fact they “own” every revolution as they sow the seeds of rightful change to effect their own new order, a bit different than before, but the elite is still at heart the center of it all.

The notion of democracy is rooted in the idea that the best way to secure the safety of the elite is to make each person a stakeholder in the process that makes it happen.  If everyone is dedicated to the proposition that some are better and are convinced that they have a voice in identifying the best then how could these “serfs, peasants, and worker bees” be less than happy?  If they are enticed to believe that they might compete and fight to be above and better than the rest are they then not the “true believers” in the cause of nourishing and sustaining the principal of an elite?  The system is no ode to the common man, his or her interests, or of any true freedom.

So what is freedom?  First we look to what freedom is not.  Freedom is not an escape from yesterday’s tyrants, oppressive lands, outmoded structures and ways of doing things or thinking.  All that is just “change”, and change is value neutral, not good.  Freedom does not come from overthrowing anything.  Freedom can not be won by wars.  Freedom is a state of mind and a state of being.  Freedom is not a state of comfort, it is not about ease or easy feelings.  Freedom is the easiest thing to have and it is even easier to give it up.  Freedom cannot be granted by any law or Constitution, any Senate or Senator, or any empire or nation now or ever on the earth.  Freedom is a feeling, inside, of peace.

True peace comes from a certain centeredness, a sense of order, a perception of arrangement and a sense of place.  Peace is rooted once and first in humility; the desire not to rule but to be; not to control, but to exist and to embrace all that around one that is acknowledged to exist.  Every one alive has known this feeling from time to time.  Most often as a child.  The whole world stops.  The sun is shining or the moon or stars; or there is a cave without a bit of light, or prison walls and too much light all artificial.  Material things cannot stop freedom; freedom is not about the material.  Freedom is a gift of God hard won by those that are open to gifts from God.  Only God is absolutely free and true God is the only freedom sound.

It is the rush to freedom that gets us in the way.  Any true spirit or true soul can’t help but wish to extend and promote the freedom song.  The bubble of joy quickly bursts as we quickly seek to share our peace with others; as we conspire to make “them” free, as if we knew the demons in their minds and as if they did not have eyes to see.  In our exuberance and enthusiasm we misperceive what freedom is and what makes (or can make) each person free.  We proselytize, we go to war, we give to charity, we vote for change, we move the deckchairs on the proverbial sinking ship.  Soon we are back away from peace and freedom; we are once again in the clutches of the elite.  We have dropped down a level or two of consciousness, we are again willing to play the elitist game.

I recently read an author who thought what the Italians did was wrong.  They hung Mussolini up on a meat hook; he thought they might of done better just to hang him.  The difference in this case between similar sounding words is the feature of the “hook”.  I believe the Italians were really right.  The message of the hook is important, like the pirate Captain Hook.  The hook will not make you free.  Hooking up will not make you free.  Each product, each political symbol, each Wall Street buzz-word or concept, each simple salient thought that is associated with a command to do something, to fall in order, to make you or someone you know “better or the best” is fraught with peril.  These are the hooks that have caught you by the skin, hold you down, keep you away from freedom’s song.

I visualize a tree.  (Perhaps a fruitless Mulberry.)  From each limb an artist or someone else has hung a thousand strings.  At the end of each string is a “safety pin”; in reality a hook.  Each pin is open.  Each day someone new “gets it” and hangs up (hooks up) their favorite thing - a pack of Spearmint Gum, a box of Certs, “Kleenex” by that name.  Someone else hangs the US Constitution, another the Bill of Rights.  Someone else hangs a postcard of the Statute of Liberty, a photo of the Louvre, a picture of Mona Lisa.  Stocks and bond certificates are hung, a dollar bill or two, small change.  You get the drift.  With each passing day or hour all the hang-ups symbolically make us free as we purge our life from what is known, to embrace what is unknown and possible and might be really nice and new.

In time of course each thing on the tree will be forgotten.  All that is “old” will pass from all our lives.  It will be the tree itself that will embrace the difference, a tree of life on which is hung all the sorrows and the pain of all the past and of what made us all unfree.

[2009.03.16 / Monday - Freedom & Hooking Up]

~ Things you can’t see are real.

It has been awhile since I last posted.  It doesn’t mean I’ve gone away; it just means I’m less visible.  There are two trees in front of where I live, one is mine, one not mine.  They are Mulberry trees.  The “fruiting Mulberry” have fruit, little sour berry bunches that most people hate, but that I find not so bad.  The “fruitless” Mulberry has no fruit - just pollens.  This fact is what makes the tree “fruitless” in every sense of the word.  It is a useless species, or variety, or whatever it is it’s bad.  These two trees want me dead.  They spring their portions of poison each spring and I suffer, I cough, my throat closes and my nose opens and you may know what it means to have an allergy so why should I think that I alone suffer.

I do not suffer alone.  But I try.  I hole up under covers and blankets and thick “100 count” sheets and stuff Actifed down my throat and pray that my Hepa filter ionizer works.  You can’t spend enough on medical cures and science.  Blankets and tight windows and thick sheets are all medical supplies if you know about pollens and the way trees wage war and try to get their messengers in to get the humans out.  Some trees appreciate humans, are not at war.  They must be pacifist trees, the good trees, not the ones engaged in the good fight.  The good fight (for trees) is to move the human types to Antarctica or somewhere much colder where trees do not grow and people can chill for awhile while they think about all the anti-tree things they did to start this tree war thing.

Of course man kills trees, puts them together in slave labor camps called orchards, makes “mono-forests” all the rage.  Trees are routinely butchered by utility company crews.  Trees are showered with chemicals by well-meaning or over-zealous householders.  The list goes on.  Trees keep count and then fight back a little.  The weapon is the pollens.  They have a secret pollen for when the time comes for the big war; but trees are restrained, they don’t like big wars.

I am an innocent “civilian” casualty of the pollen wars.  I know the pollens are really not meant for me.  I know the trees have no personal animus or enmity toward me.  I just live here.  The trees wish I didn’t, just a categorization thing, people - not the “us”, the we of trees and all their kind.  And trees are kind.  They grow their leaves, shelter from the burning sun, branches for the birds; forked for nests.  The trees know that I live in a house made of dead cousins, stick construction, tree trunks sawed in halves and halves again and split for shingles and sanded for hardwood floors and sills and window sills not made of metal or aluminum and that’s a different issue.

If a tree fell in a forest.  Only man would postulate such an absurdity.  Trees don’t “fall”.  They only fall when felled by men.  Old trees die while still standing up.  They rot away in place.  Each year the mass gets less, the food and fruit of fiber grows.  Insects chew, squirrels hide, worms live at elevated heights the better for the passing birds.  No, trees don’t fall - they just fade away, like old human soldiers who have somehow survived the war.

Which brings me to the point of order, of organization.  If man is inclined to accumulate and collect then he is doomed if he doesn’t segregate and eliminate and pattern what defies patternization.  As a society we have built and bought ever bigger houses to accommodate our growing mounds of stuff.  In Korea they buried the richer folk in mounds.  In the center of a circle went the body.  The stuff was piled on and over the carcass next; a mound of things no longer needed or necessary and probably no longer even wanted by the decedent.  Then came the dirt.  A sufficient quantity of dirt would have to be at hand to mound the mound and to cover all the things and then to cover the cover deep enough to keep the thieves from tunneling into the mound to retrieve the things now lost and buried but not forgotten (in the minds of thieves).

The rich in the Korea of long ago apparently knew that a multitude of possessions did not make for a rich life.  Things died with their owner.  They were buried with the dead.  The dead of course did not need these things, but more importantly neither did the living.  The greater the possessions the greater the burden left behind for those left to build the mounds.  A compassionate parent might leave little or nothing; a small mound might suffice to the glory of a life well lived when spent.

So I am sorting; organizing and such.  I see a smaller dwelling in my future.  I will downsize like the trees and in so doing get away from the trees that do the harm while perhaps wishing otherwise.  I have no desire for a great mound (of stuff) to amuse me while I am living and certainly not to cover me when I am dead.  The stuff was fun once when I first came to own it; less fun now.  There is little lasting satisfaction in just “stuff”; not when “priceless” really means worth so little it has no price - just the weight is left behind, emotions at ten cents per hundred weight.  But I exaggerate a bit.

That is why I do not just flee and fly and scurry away to new places for my sanity and for my health.  I will keep some things, let others go; sell a few items, give still others away.  I will make lists and take photographs of what I had, a memory album of stuff.  Next time I will know that I can just scan the catalogue, no need to buy, save some time and money.  Whoever dies with no toys wins.  Even the oldest kid must grow up someday, Barbie Dolls are not forever.  Some museum might be waiting for your collection stored behind glass and not just in a box.

I know I could trade a forest for a flash drive.  It’s the paper that I have that counts.  I like paper better than lamps or plates or plastic flowers.  Any good city has real flowers in the park.  I slowly scan and sort and copy files into files accessible through flash drives.  Slowly the weight will lift and the trees will know and maybe some day all will be forgiven and the pollen wars will be over as I somehow mysteriously get over my allergies - the pollens gone away for me, from me.  It might not really be so simple.  Living with less and being bigger, better, happier about it.  But it could happen.

My Swedish ancestors came to this continent with the clothes on their back, a baby, a suitcase or two and a trunk.  They had fifty dollars that soon was spent.  They died with more or less depending upon how you see it.  You see, they both died blind.  But my father did them one better.  He came into this world with nothing, crying, not a stitch to wear.  He left it just about the same.  A few engineering books, some papers still unscanned; a few tools, tables; little more or else.  It’s perhaps the better way of things, small mounds; like the Korean ways of old and the old.  I shall keep sorting.  This room to keep, that pile out the door.

And if I sneeze, just remember that I’m getting there.  Are you with me?

[2009.03.14 / Saturday - Organization and Pollens]