Louisiana Earthling Not Afraid Hu Jintao

Everybody's talking about China.  I attempt to watch tv like Washington Week with Gwen, the moderator. I watch, but precious little sinks in. I realize I am 40 but has my brain shrunk that much? Maybe so because I am really not concerned about the Chinese taking over. They don't need to take over, they already have us right where they want us. And we have them convinced we have them where we want the Chinese also. Exactly how all that works I am not sure.  But I think it beats the other options which all seemed to revolve around "peace the old-fashioned way" like I see on so many bumper stickers with the outline of a B52 in the background.  If I had any sort of brain left in my fractured sense of reality I would be trying to figure out how the Chinese doubled their economic output in 10 years.

In a way China may be like a flower blooming if you can appreciate capitalist ideas and the way they are connected to human motivation and psychology.  (What did I just say?)  I don't claim to understand world politics to that degree.  It falls under the heading of complexity theory -- a beautiful idea whose time my yet be on the horizon of my mind.  The patterns of change, patterns in analysis of massive amounts of data that only recently we have been able to study with super fast super computers.

But I hear that China crunches its number to make them look more favorable.  Heck I would do the same if I have under gone the transformation of their people who must feel absolutely teleported in to the 21st century.  It seems from my armchair view of the public television that changes have come rapidly to the people in that ancient culture. And I hear that "they" now have the superest super computer on the planet.

I wonder what questions are being asked of that computer in China or what it is being used for.  Surely they are not contemplating an attack on anyone.  Unlike America, China seems to take a much more tolerant role in foreign affairs.  Overall I like China, but that's just me. If Chinese do take over in my lifetime (which I doubt I will ever live to see that even though I do expect to live to see great earthquake hit the pacific coast before I die and what a crying time that will be....)  but I don't really expect China to take the reins out of the hands of the US govt if they did, by some stretch of the imagination (an that's what I'm here for -- developing the imagination) the I would be an illiterate vegetable farmer for them and I would be ok with that.  Isn't truth always stranger than fiction?

Data seems to be everywhere these days.  There is even data about data itself.  Again, like Chinese supercomputers, I have not a flippin' clue.  For me, luckily unencumbered by thought process or reality wither, I just go with my gut feeling and conjecture.  And perhaps even wishful thinking.  Overall I like Chinese and I am glad they are (mostly) our friends.  My gut tells me we are growing as a world united these days and once again I feel like we are beginning to understand that the world is in the balance now.  Maybe things have always been about the world in the balance.  Have our leaders always realized we all must together sink or swim?  Together? Having read the Tao Te Ching and lots of 25 cent fortune cookies, I think this notion of oneness with the planet has been on China's people's minds for a long long time now and we are the one's who are just beginning to reach some of the more inspirational philosophies offered by them.  Or should I say us Earthlings?

Pictures from the Shreveport sushi bar: My nephew's treat

Me at the sushi bar upon my nephews request to buy lunch for the three of us including Eric..  I had to concentrate to keep both eyes open.  Luckily I went home due to no work on Monday and slept off all the rice I ate.  You think I must have eaten a lot?  You should have seen what my nephew Ernest Ray ate that day.  He was very happy when we left and we all kind of slunk out to his truck and I shimmied in to the cramped back seat of the truck kind of all contortionist style. I think they took this picture while I was waiting for desert which never arrived.

Mardi Gras -- March 8, this year

Mardi Gras Day actually varies a bit from year to year. Apparently they time of Easter varies based on a lunar calendar.  Because the Ash Wednesday is a prescribed number of days before Easter, and Mardi Gras is always the day before Ash Wednesday, it floats around between February and early March.  Last few years in Shreveport have been kind of chilly,but I remember some warmer Mardis Gras in the past.

North LA has the Bible Belt

South Louisiana has Mardi Gras a definite Mardi Gras spirit through the year there are parades and celebrations both large and small.

Even though we technically do Mardi Gras here in North Louisiane, everyone who "knows" about MArdi Gras, knows that South Louisiana has a far better time.  In North LA we have much less Mardi Gras spirit.  For what I understand, much of the year in New Orleans, revolves around preparing for Mardi Gras.  When the big day(s) finally arrives... well, in my opinion, there are very few other places like South Louisiana and unlike here in Shreveport, New Orleans does it all year long.  That's approximately how one falls in love with an entire region.  Sometimes even lovers must part....To steal away at night and drive through crowded streets

Filled with rum and soft carribean magic

Southern ladies have a voice smoother
Than your prize bourbon which
you swigged hot out of the bottle.
WIth your windows rolled down.

Only she speaks to you like that all the time
To your heart her words flow
Sidestepping the boundaries of logic
Defying what should make sense

Suddenly you realize
You are captivated by the sound of her voice
The blues singer in the window
Catches your eyes adnd for a moment
You smile with her and nod your head in time
With the saxphone solo.

The full moon
Marries you and its lovers
For but a short night
Promanadeing below sea level
In the city between the big river
And Lake Pontchartrain.

Privacy v Progress: A Compromise?

Forty-five degrees outside and raining.  Grey skies of course, and the joggers in my neighborhood are out on the highways near the Super One Foods running through the rain at what appears to be a pace unconcerned with the precipitation.  They were all covered in apparently waterproof clothing all bright yellows an red florescent.  I for one am at home enjoying the heat and dry.  I had another self-heated MRE for breakfast: chicken noodles and vegetables like peas and carrots.

I had a great night Saturday.  Henry invited me to attend a small diner with some of his friends>  We had a sit down vegetarian meal.  There was plenty of food and conversation.  I even introduced Jeff to my sci fi poem and sent him a copy by email.  He laughed when we read it out loud and told me how crazy I am for coming up with something like that.  Renee said I should write and entire book based on the sci fi poem.  Overall it got a good reception with Henry's guests last night after dinner.  I was happy, even if I seem a little crazy.

The risk a creative writer takes is to be thought of as crazy until commercial success is at hand.   Then suddenly the writer goes from crazy to genius.  It must be a very circular evolution from crazy to genius. The two "make full circle" when a great deal of effort an sweat are applied to the enterprise of writing books whether they be novels or poems.  Poems come easily to me sometimes, but then there is the inevitable need to refine and edit all types of "writing for profit" efforts.  If it wasn't so damned hard to be coherent over an extended literary effort then it would be great fun from beginning to end.  As it is now, the most fun is the brainstorming for ideas and the initial rush to get everything important on paper -- and it all seems so important.  It is often hard to remember just how that line I am preoccupied with, how did it go when I was thinking about it just a coupe of hours ago?  Where do all these words com from?  ...and Is there a limit of how many combination s of words make sense ie is there a limit to the number of coherent works that can be created based on on language?  Does music face the same problems?  Will there be a point where we must revolutionize creative arts because the limited number of note or word combination s begin to repeat?

Well hell, there's  a whole 'nuther book there....  I have some good ideas and I wonder if I will ever have the opportunity to publish all these notions and conjecture without having to earn an advanced degree first.

Anyway, its raining today and not deadly cold so I may put om my rainproof clothing and go a-picture takin later on today.  I like to make photographs of Louisiana landscapes in the rain.  I call them thought shadows.  I run a completely different website for my photos.  For that I use a smallish red red Kodak digital camera.  It was very inexpensive to buy.  I also have a tripod to use whenever the need arises because the camera will also hold up to 2 hours of audio visual information.  It takes pictues that are adaquate for posting on this blog but not really for the ultra sharp HD photos and videos that are so popular these days.

Be sure to checkout my blog, Thought Shadows if you like to browse photos and videos.  I will most likely upload a lot of photographs to PIcassa and maybe even youtube.  This WYSIWYG technology makes it so easy to create a creative monster of interlinked pages.

It is still hard for me to believe the extent to which free storage space is available for the internet, not to even mention the mountain of free software.  For example, Audacity is a free application for sound editing and manipulation.  It is really awesome when you consider that it is free.  If you want you can doante money to their efforts in programming free applications, or not, it works exactly the same either way.  I have yet to understand that approach to marketing but apparently it is an effeective technique. It is also striking how much people are willing to trade elements of privacy in order to use free applications.

Trends in surrender of elements of personal privacy and the fact that most people do not even read the Terms and Conditions required to activate the "free" software is astounding!  I am guilty of the same behavior.  As I add applications such as iTunes, facebook, and Audacity I glance over the section headers and trudge forward with the download.  I base this behavior on the doctrine of benevolent care taking by the corporations and individuals that write the code I need and desire.  Not everyone has that brand of faith not even on Sundays .  When it comes to trusting Big Business it is easy to become a little paranoid about what Terms and Conditions were really in the electronic box which requires the consumers acceptable expectations of breach of privacy and subjection to Real Simple Copyright infringement.

This is how we usher in the 21st Century.  I wonder if I will live long enough to get a glimpse of where all this free storage space will end up.  The shedding of aspects of privacy:  what do we have to hide bout our online behaviors that isn't so hidden anymore?  how long will geeks like me continue to purchase quanta of Progress with the knowledge that what we do is potential under minute surveillance by an artificial intelligence.  Could it be that the artificial intelligence is learning more about us than we know about ourselves?  Like I said this will be an astounding proposal that homo sapiens will analyze rather than simply ignore what is the vast fields of data about human behavior. No one human can process all that information without the aid of a really fast and smart computer. 

Hey I think I just thought of another notion in sci fi similar to ideas by Isaac Asimov.  What are we supposed to do with all this data being generated besides learning how to market with laser-like precision and continue to sell everyone stuff that need at the very moment that they realize they need such things?  Then there is the "tail wagging the dog" syndrome when demand is based on "subliminal" persuasion and the demand that does not originate in the experience of the consumer, but in the collective mind of data analysts (human or electronic.)  They will be capable of engineering an individual's life experience by manipulating the purse strings of the masses who have yet to awaken, or prefer the shadows dancing on the cave walls to the blinding sunlight of all that information we generate each day.  It is far from garbage. 

We go on thinking that our activities online are no less permanent than the sands and the empty expressions and counter statements that comfort us all so much through each day, and we hope, and we have faith in the benevolence of the natural and supernatural worlds.  This is nothing new. It has always been that way.  "Cycles of surrender and Leaps of Faith" is all there ever really has been for humanity.  Is that so depressing?  Let's go back to my cave.  We can sit next to the fire and watch the shadows dance on the walls.

How many posts does it take before I run outta things to write about? About 20. That's where I am at right now. Writers block I guess, when I have writers block it seems like I will never think of anything worthwhile again. But I doubt that will happen. If I live right and sit here every night for as long as it takes to capture a few words, it will pass.

I can think of lots of things, but I am attempting to focus on positive things to say and creative ways to say them.  There's the rub.  It may take a few more days for something good to build up in my mind but it will happen.  When it does come tome I will be ready to scribble enough of an idea down somewhere and unpack my scribbles when I get home.

In the interest of me avoiding the repetition I normally fall into, I will stop here for a moment and relax and even meditate on the meaning of "good writing and creativity." I will take seriously a pass-time of poetry held by saints and drunkards alike. The muse of poetry doesn't discriminate against those who seek its inspirational phrases. Like nature itself, the writing of poetry is immune from character judgments imposed on the poet. In many cases the poets harshest critic is himself.

Madness often accompanies the really good poets to the grave. I am familiar enough with the concept of madness and mania that I a don't need to go chasing around my subconscious mind looking for that ugly hobgoblin.  Only sometimes I get curious and impatient and do just that.  What I might find I have little idea, but I describe to you what is there when I stumble across such challenging images as my mind conjures in the dark during the sleeping time when my breathing has become automatic and my eyes just start to flutter under my tired eye lids.

There are two things I write about: the story and the between story narratives.  This would be the later, but I hope to avoid too much of this kin do chatter.  It is just my way of whistling in the dark until the sunrise of a creative piece breaks the horizon.

Feeling blotto

Not drunk but stupid
and kind of washed out
like a faded very faded
button fly and tattered bluejeans

Nothing particularly bad happened
Just cold weather
Making me stay indoors
And run the noisy central heat

The air smells like baked burned fungi
at night and the gas meter outside
Kind of creaks as it measures
cubic feet and its wheels spin up my bill

My hand itches
twitches
and I think of the astronauts
I watched on tv last night.

The phone rings. My friend is on his way home and wants to pick me up. I agree. When I am at his house I get my cap from beneath the coffee table where I had forgotten to pick it up from last nast. My DVD player in the back bedroom has been there since New Years Eve. That is coming with me tonight too. I walk home in the 25 degree weather which feels more like 50 to me because I am just walking about 4 blocks. I live just on the other side of the Baptist Church from his house, which is behind the BBQ place. He doesnt eat meat and cooked brussel sprouts and ginger for himself and he drank some Landshark beer and we watched a docuentary on Jeff Bridges as "Starman" I thought that was fitting since I am on this science fiction kick lately. For some reason my mind just didnt take off with the idea of that 80's movie tonight.

Like I said before I feel kind of tired and stupid and blotto. I will be glad when the 3 day weekend arrives in memorial of MLK Jr. "Its not a day off, its a day on..." I heard on the radio. A day for rallies and speeches and feeling patriotic. One day it may be as big as the 4th of July. I hope so. For now I am just thankful for some down time on the horizon -- time away from all the sometimes rapid fire quasi-emergencies and dramas of work.

I just sit here and type sometimes as let my mind go. Usually I listen to electronic music, but tonight it is quiet and early in the evening. I am about to turn out all the lights for the evening and walk around in the dark if I cant sleep. You will notice about me, I am a writer, not a reader. I avoid reading as much as possible so I can develop my own voice. Its a hit and miss thing right now. Some nights I am right on target, other nights I cant write my own name. Funny how that works. I have also noticed that the blogs I think are great are not the most popular all the time. That's pretty cool that it works out that way. But again, I will leave the studying of such complex and vast phenomenon to some other geeky person who is more in tune with computer science than I am.

Reviewing my strengths in my mind, I cant think of anything special. That's a pretty fair assessment of me because I am pretty darned regular. Tired tired tired and I fell pretty good. I just decided not to go to bed grumpy even though I am tired. I commit myself to waiting until I am sleepy not just tired before I go to bed tonight. No brooding or self-pity. Just sleep and business as usual in the morning. Nothing cute to say or rhyme thing to inflict upon us all just a little common sense about how to avoid the toss and turning. Write or read does it for me and tonight as usual I pick write over reading. At this point it looks like you picked reading over writing. I hope you get some sleep soon too because I get tired of reading your sleepy babble. Like me you repeat yourself too much when you are sleepy again. :)

I'm having one of those days where it is hard to tell shit from shine-o-la again. It just seems like nobody shares my idea of funny any more.
I'm not funny I'm scary, I just frown and don't laugh
Like Ozzy my mind ain't quite right,

There is a whole metal industry based on war and hate
Yet crazy love just ain't happening for me at my age now.

Not that it hasn't ever happened
But not since I started writing sci fi poetry
Have I been in love!

And now Star Trek characters visit me in my sleep.
The prime directive is changing
Things may be looking up for me and my litmus test for humanity
Promise me you'll never try to sing this
In a love song.

Look at me I'm a fleet of superman
we listen to dizzy Gillespie and spew supersonic
Non sense about fiction
About science fiction and we sometimes can't spell
We are superman and in the dark
we can't type-real-well.

With that I am removing a video and thinking about removing the ads. I think the ads affect me subconsciously. It would be interesting to study blogs that are monetized versus blogs that have no ads. But I will leave that to some one else.

Far out: the deepths of my poetic soul.

Im back from walking a couple of miles in the cold. It was fun. I re read most of the posts I have done over the last week andI think I am pretty excited about blogging and writing far out stuff with bizzare titles. That can be fun.

I am recharging the batteries in my camera> They went dead after weeks of disuse. I am hoping to take some additional photos and post them on the site I call Thought Shadows. This site will just have featured poetry and videos and other written ideas. Thought Shadows will be the one with my crappy photo "art". SO you can choose: crappy sci fi poetry from Tim or crappy "art" photos. Its up to you. (lol)

As for getting anything else out of me tonight, all I can say is I watched NOVA on earthquakes, then a American heritage show about Apollo and Gemini astronauts and the greater part of a show on old trains. Henry is getting an insulin pump for his diabetes he says today which is great I hope that really works out for him. It takes some guts to try something drastic with you health like that and some strong commitment to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. When I left he had fallen asleep with all the lights on again. He works pretty hard I guess.

Me I cant sleep but like 6-8 hours a night now which is normal for me. Less than six hours sleep makes me irritable though. So I remember to take sleep and rest as seriously as what I do for exercise. Right now I am on an MRE diet ha ha. As I mentioned before I have eaten about 6 army meals ready to eat just because they are so darned convenient for hot food on cold days. Y'all readers should try it sometimes. Although it is not my favorite I am about to eat hot chicken and noodles right out of a disposable pouch from a liquid activated heating element. It kind of smells a little like fireworks and then everything is hot and completely edible. As a mater of fact tonight the entree is too hot to eat right now and feels either really fiery going down my esophagus or really really cold, burning cold in fact. And I was thinking that the whole package could be improved if it was made easier for each piece to remain one piece after opening the packages ie no torn off package tabs. Some of those packages are really hard to open, like crackers in air tight bag.

One piece of trash is better than two pieces of trash and the little torn off tabs start appearing everywhere like used bubble gum wrappers. I guess I should divulge the only reason I came into possession of these army meals is that they expired in Dec 2010 so I am technically eating expired food, along with hundreds of other Americans who like eating out of hot pouches of chicken and pasta like I do. I am not in the army if that's what you're wonder, no way! T^here was a time when I could have studies engineering and gone into the army but at that time I did not think that would be my thing. This is more my thing. This writing thing and helping people stay in their housings units and raise their families. We all should have the opportunity to pursue freedom and happiness. WE can work for cleaning up the environment. It is a bigger problem that one nation. We will all have to sink or float this time.

If I can keep typing sufficiently well in the dark like this, I could write about horrible things at this time of the night. The devils is in the details and those little devils seem to all be foaming up the tiny little spaces between things. I think of my poem about Huxley on the shore, kind of like Einstein on the beach, no?

God and his 12 Higgs paricles like lightning bold from Zeus!

Tori Amos Lyrics: "God, sometimes you just dont come through...."

The blogshere! What on Earth am I doing here? Writing a book or something with creative commons license?

Dont sell my ideas I shout! They are not really that original. No idea is orginal anymore, we are coming to terms with the idea that eveything runs in cycles. I could be made now of dinasaur dung carbon atoms.

Joni Mitchell lyrics "we are stardust... and weve got to get our selves back to the Garden" from her song Woodstock. Pray on people.

What to do about my stuff here? Pray on people. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring until it gets here and I am ok with that. Peace and love are at the heart of all things good. Evil is an unfillable void which requires some kinds of attention to maintain its existence. Wait a second, so does good require attention.

Oh I am so confused tonight but i am not tire of banging on this keyboard yet. Well, on second thought. I am done for tonight. Tired and slightly confused and sleepy. Nothing seems to be biting tonight from the depths of my poetic soul.

we got some small amount of snow yesterday and today everything was closed. I did not drive the van this morning, Andrew who has lived in Chicago drove. It was drizzly when I drove home and now everything is about to freeze again. Low should be around 20.

I'm going to hit the sack early and try to forget about writing an epic novel. I have real work to do. If it wants to be written it will more or less have to write itself.

Thanks for the positive comments Joshua Auerbach, Estelle Darling, and Robert Brian.

"Huxley held hostage on the cosmic shoreline"

Watched the Search for Spock earlier tonight. Spock was in heat. You know the one where he gets all emotional and cant handle it? Yeah I feel like I could break down and cry like that sometimes too. Science fiction makes me think. And when I think of the science fiction noble this is what is going through mi tiny little wee mind: a book whose time may soon be at hand for someone to write and really flesh out the ideas of what the future of space trvel may have in store for us all. A Noah's arc,but more. Just trying to grab at a few lines of this dream and it sift through my conscious brain like sand through a clinched fist. Heck I want to be the next AC Clarke or something. That would be nice, I think.

So this is one of my truly "Birdiest" poems of all time. Its so far out that it kind of hurts to admit that I came up with some original ideas and plots for a novel on the subject. It has been percolating through the rock hard head on yours truly shoulders by electronic music and comparative religions and an inner journey that took years and caused a lot of sweat. I'm not falling for the pseudo science of astro-archaeology but what a great thing that I must not be completely crazy because a lot of other people have had similar ideas occur to them.

So I invite you to read this glimpse into the future and the past of science fiction with me. Laugh cry throw up your arms in apathy. Here is a poem synopsis of a book I am really attempting to develop and capture on paper sometime before I draw my last breath.


"Huxley held hostage by infants on the cosmic shoreline: a surreal poem about space travel"

It was a long way to go
And knowing nothing when we arrived
Made getting back to where we belong
The highest priority
Only, which way is home now

Traveling across time
A rose dropped into deep
Ocean water in the dead night
Preserved forever in icy depths
Like traumatic stretching of the soul

Washed in the cold of interstellar nothingness
Sunlight peels across Lenny's skin
For the first time since he awoke
In a vat of A++ juice and he kicked the transparent aluminum
Of his artificial mother's metallic uterus from the inside

the brave new world approached by a gang of proto-humanoid infants
through the dark of science fiction space
No language yet embedded in their blank slate minds
No knowledge of anything that came before this moment
the gift of a now long dead culture
to versions of hope and the wisdom of a basket
In a river of gravity on its way to a younger planet
In the Goldilocks Zone

robot missions
report humanity is already there. where did we come from where are we going?
on that red 4th marble that gets a little bigger each passing day
The gravity lens turbulence faded out on this side of ringed giants and the asteroid belt
And tumbled out its living cargo
Back into our limited four dimensional sandbox

Why does it always work out like this:
Sans all memory organic or otherwise
The secrets of their origins lost in a dice game
with God and his 12 Higgs particles
In the spaces between the stars
Memories and instructions stolen and discarded by nature
And left for sentient luck and forces of the universe
To fill in the fresco plasterings of intelligence
where it is needed by nature across all creation

Like a virgin sacrificed to a volcano
The orphan spacecraft with amnesia
May be enough to placate the infinite replications
Of strings across dimensions of foaming
Subatomic demons playing a tug of war
Against a galactic ebb and flow lumpiness named Gravity
The heat of the expanding universe
Can only be measured in degree of emotional force
The grandest scheme of interlacing economies of energy
traces pathways between electromagnetism and the faster than light.

That day the bridges of tachyons became visible
Illuminated in the spectral unobtainium
Lacing up the constellations in
Patterns mysteriously familiar, to all but the unaided eye.

Homing pigeons falling outta the sky dead on top of the
Ocean going vessels of Polynesians journeying in wicker boats
Watching the stars for signs of Life and Order
Between the spaces of the stars.
When the time is right we all dream ourselves awake.

(Now Im outta gas. To sleep and dream some more about this until it is time to do more than outline my curiosity in a poem to be read by strangers and friends. Creative visualizations about novel-ism in American science fiction and conjecture here the water is much more comfortable than on my own website. I wonder why that is/? Oh well, as Eno composes: "Here come the warm jets")

Nirvana cover of Ledbelly's "where did you sleep"

Performance Today

Here a link to one of my favorite radio shows:
http://performancetoday.com





And a Nirvana cover of a Ledbelly song Dan Garner and the Shreveport All Stars played at Hospitality House yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKT1P7x_Pzo

Getting ready for Sunday yoga.  Trying to lose some weight.  I already stopped smoking 6 years ago.  Now it may finally time to shed at least 20 pounds.

Piano competition

piano competition was great.  Chopin Prokofiev and Saint Seans in piano concertos.  Of course no recording was allowed.  Each of the three got great applause.  The final was best in my opinion but I didnt have time to stay and hear the results.  I dont know who won at this point.  But in my opionthe green painist at the end playing Saint Seans was the best.  The San Franscisco native in red was a strong second and the first performer was a respectable third.  I just like the third piece of music by far the best.

This morning I helped move lunch and dinner for 300 from Giuseppe's restaurant to the soup kitchen.  When I got there I found that the Dan Garner band Shreveport All-stars was practicing there again like they do every weekend now I guess.  The play entertainment fopr the homeless and hungry to dine by and dance to.  I heard the pay "where are you going to sleep tonight"  They are a blues band you see and the likes of Victory Williams Howlin Henry Robinson and Randy Cassel and many others play there in the afternoons.  No alcohol is served or even allowed but the music gets everyone to dreaming big and trying to shape up their lives.  Myself included.

Symphony music saves the day

Looking forward to attending the classical piano competition at First Baptist Church of Shreveport on Saturday.  I am a classical music junkie even though I can't play a note of music myself.  Public Radio is the purveyor of such fare here in my hometown.  I love to listen to Performance Today while driving the company van in the mornings.  My partner James who is 70ish now and had a mild stroke last year, he loves to listen to music as much as I do.  Between country and classical, we pass the morning driving around town and collecting donations of clothing and food which are prepared by volunteers and paid staffers alike, then given away to the needy free of charge.  Everyday except Christmas.  James has been doing this sort of thing for 20 years now.  I'm on my second year now.  Things are getting tense with all the paperwork I have to collect and process and file, but with a little help from musical offering and my friends in the local symphony I think I will make this do for now.

Christmas is the busy season.  Now that it is over things are a little less hectic.  Hey I noticed that now this blog has three followers, right on!  If I can keep writing I hope my audience continues to grow.  Thanks for the comments.  I will continue to post in my creative voice as much as possible in the evenings or weekends or both.  Just thought I'd share the news that I got one ticket to the show thanks to Henry, the violinist who as of yet does not follow this blog, but maybe that will change soon.

For lunch I had a MRE today.  Not even the hungry people in America will eat those things if there is anything else to choose from.  I thought it was pretty good though.  These days they have a heating element that gets really warm when you add -- salt WATER to it!  I couldn't believe it and that's really why I was eating it: so I could play with the salt water driven heater element.  It gets really hot.  The pasta in tomato sauce that it heated turned out to be very edible if high in calories and sugar.  I mean nutrition-wise I shot my whole days diet or at least two meals with that one MRE.  Alas, I was not in the military and if I had been I don't think they would have had the cool water heater process back when I would have been serving.  There are other things in life than adventure.  Like my couch and my paperback novels and the internet where you don't have to move a muscle or risk your neck to have a good time.

OPB's or The Physics of Subjectivity

Oh well.  Can't sleep now.  Listening to HOS and reading a random sampling of Other People's Blogs (OPB)  My gosh I kind of hate reading OPB's They are not nearly as much fun to read as they are to write (blogs that is.)

Why would I want to read the blog of a stranger?  Maybe they have some novel way of expressing themselves I thought at first.  This could be but most OPB's seem to be focused like a laser on their own small lives>  It is like reading the diary of a stranger picked at random.  I hope my blog doesn't read like that too often.

But then I also discovered that there is a limit to how much space all this blogging can take up before they (blogger.com) starts charging us (bloggers) money.  I have discovered that there is a huge culture associated with blogging especially about all the techno links an ads and templates and javascript and html codes etc.  It is not a simple thing.  Times are changing fast.  All this wouldn't have even been possible say ten or twelve years ago.  Now it can all be done through the iPhone I guess.

Let me just say that if I get all sophisticated and start posting tons of pictures and videos, just slap me.  Man!  I try to do this in a literary sense.  I try to work at what I write and wryte about what works for me to keep things in order in my mind.  I am attempting to do something organized here and as usual my sense of organization is all haywire compared to Betsy Sue's sewing blog or Jim Smith's blog about his mountain bike adventures or countless families all celebrating Christmas is Appalachia somewhere.  Ha!  I falls just short of making me queasy all this cutesy mixed with technology and I wonder what on Earth they think people are doing looking at their perfect life as consumers of the blogspot!

Oh I shouldn't really harp on them too much>  I realize they have in many cases extended families, but why do they insist on leaving their personal photos of Christmas and stuff on a publicly accessible website?  Do they think I have never seen a family celebrating Christmas before? Maybe somewhere in China or the Middle East someone is looking at their blog going "Danhg it!  I must move to America and learn to celebrate Christmas in the snow and take cute little pictures of my 2.4 children and my new car or else...."  Maybe the public blog is their way of witnessing to the Earth about the blessings they have received for whatever reason.  I dont really know.

Sometimes however I think that these people that do that sort of blogging just don't know how to make their personal family blogs limited to just their families.  Sometimes I think they are accessible to be in all their multitudes because these posters just don't know anyone and everyone is looking at their Christmas and birthday photo albums.  Sometimes I think they don't know the rest of us really don't care and wish we could be spared the random glimpse at their cookie cutter approach to happiness and get on with cooler things!

Just kidding y'all.  Sort of.

I don't know.  I try not to hate.  Hate is bad.  But is it ok to hate haters?  To hate Hate itself?  I think not.  Hate consumes positive energy and positive energy is what keeps us all alive.  I think, as I listen to this electronic music that sounds a little bit like a dijeri-do drone that when I release hateful feelings they evaporate into nothing and positive energy has a chance to grow in its place.

The larger picture of the Universe is a cycle of light and dark.  In simple terms there may be no morality in Nature itself.  Science would seem to dictate that Nature is a flow of energy and matter.  But people like you and me are plagued by feelings and subjectivity.  We must make judgments as a consequence of our intellect and we have limited resources to draw conclusions about what types of decisions we should make so we rely on values.  It's all obvious to most adults that there are two distinct classes of all things -- good things and bad things.  Unfortunately for us, the boundaries between these two classes can get hazy and confused.

I mean the more subtle aspects of knowing good things from bad things that everyone has had trouble with sometimes.  Sometimes in me as well as anyone else, the negative emotions rise up and try to take over.  Let go of the negative by all means.  Embrace the light side of things I tell myself.  It takes practice.  For example, I used to curse a great deal.  Now, not so much.  It is a negative thing to curse.  In my case it seems to escalate stress rather than diminish stress or make things any better than they are.  After I quit cursing so frequently I worked on quitting other habits that escalated stress and found myself slowly gaining increased control of my life.

Control of course can be thought of as an illusion itself.  It is a subjective feeling like almost everything else in Life.  The only objective facts have to do with gross physiology and physical properties.  A few would argue that even these constant objective realities can be altered and modified by application of things like prayer and positive energy.  Calling on a higher power to change something like world hunger or the need for clean free energy would be a true miracle.  I believe that we have a chance of making it to such a paradise in this very manifestation of reality>  Sometimes I even believe that I will see great strides taken in this direction in my own lifetime.

And I write this on auto pilot.  I write as I let go of the negative energy and I attempt to describe the positive as it spreads out through my breathing and through a good posture.  My typing improves as I stop thinking about what to write an just let my fingers move across the keyboard and I listen to the music on headphone and I don't hear what the song is about.  I attempt to point toward a home run spot in the outfield of my minds eyes like Babe Ruth and smack that last pitch of the weekend over and up into the grandstands without knowing anything about mathematics or economies or even seeing the ball as it hurtles through space with all its precision and inertia and then violently changes direction in a shape deforming impact but it refuses to split at the hand-sewn seams. It flies yes.  And it eventually falls to Earth somewhere intact ready to be used again and again sometimes more or sometimes less dramatically.  Its just that sometimes I feel like Babe Ruth swinging the bat and sometimes I feel like that traumatized baseball.  :)

New Year' Day: Versions of Hope

Now that it's the New Year, I had a hard boiled egg, cabbage and black eyes peas for dinner with Henry.  We had some chocolate and talked a little bit about college football and his traveling to the East Coast over Christmas.  It was a little cold to walk tonight, but very clear.  I could see Orion and Cassiopeia very clearly along with a few of the planets.  It is around 40 degrees which is cold for Shreveport.  There is not much traffic through the neighborhood, just the occassional popping of firecrackers like random gunfire.

Now I am home.  I have taken off the sneakers which I bought last year before I went to New Orleans to visit Brian, the aikido master, who lived near the 9th ward for a while there.  I have put on a warm new robe.  I am listening to Mozart on Windows Media Player and drinking Diet Dr Pepper, mainly because I am temporarily out of Earl Grey Tea.  Later I may have some red zinger by celestial seasoning.


Henry and Brian are two of my friends whom I have known for years now.  I enjoy their company and conversation.  I think we are all "into" music like classical and jazz.  We all like public radio most of the time and tend to eat more vegetarian food than really meaty dishes.  I am the heaviest among us.  I am trying to diet but it is not easy when eating plays such a central part in the things I look forward to each day.  Both my nephew Ray and I are pretty heavy and I think it just runs in the family.  We are from the South and have been raised on biscuits and gravy and pork chops and corn bread and all that.  Of course we are both 40 now and should know better than to eat such fattening foods when we are overweight.  We shouldn't need comfort food at our age.  It is just one of those things I guess someday soon I will get over it or it will get me.

It's the new year now -- 2011.   I have to admit that I slept through the last three hours of 2010.  I slept well and I don't regret missing the ball drop in New York City one bit.  Another of my friends, a neighbor named Eric, and I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie at Henry's house.  Henry wasn't due back in town until the next day (today) but having a key to his house and needing to feed his cat anyway, I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up with Eric and watch a funny, dark, suspense/comedy movie like Sherlock Holmes and kind of kill two birds with one stone.  I took my DVD player to Henry's and Eric provided the movie from the Red Box machine and away we went.  At first the DVD player failed to work properly, but eventually the machine read the disc.  Overall, I was happy with the movie.  It was not too cerebral and may even be a minor cult classic someday.  It was definitely not the worst movie I have ever seen.

I shopped for clothes at the department store sales today in the big and tall section.  I took about 10 minutes to pick out 200 dollars worth of shirts that all were marked down after Christmas so that the total bill was less than 80 dollars.  Granted these are not name brand shirts, but they fit and I am not so picky when it comes to work clothes.  Remember, I work at the non profit where we serve many people who do not have enough food to eat.  We give away second hand clothes, and 2 hot meals a day, for free.

We served people that are usually quite happy to have second hand clothes for themselves and their children.  Keeping warm is far more important to them than making a fashion statement.  I feel obliged to stay on their wavelength and as much as possible.  I try to live my life now with the same sense of priorities that the homeless and hungry in this community feel.  Otherwise what am I doing there?  If not trying to get in touch with the plight of the under privileged, what business do I have even walking through their neighborhoods?  I ask myself this every day as I drive to work deeper and deeper into the wooden row houses: as cars yield to old men on bicycles and former prostitutes with toothless grins wave at everyone passing by; the now empty lot that once contained their house now holds nothing but hay and mist and a dying sycamore tree in front of the ruins of some crumbling concrete steps that lead nowhere.  "What could I possibly be doing here?" I ask myself every day.

Usually my answer is two fold: 1) helping to keep these people reasonably healthy and happy and 2) keeping myself out of this sort of poverty myself.  When I realize, "there but for the grace of God go I" the feeling of purpose really does penetrate my heart.  My priorities which can so easily get shaken out of place by ads and music and magazines, falls back into the basics and I spend all day in the back of my mind trying to make sense out of all the poverty and sickness even here in the backyard of my hometown and many other places throughout this great country.

And Mozart still plays in the background.  Things haven't really changed much for mankind.  The heavens still dance in the sky as they did for all the great composers of music.  The scale of change is so much bigger than the life of any one man, like the curvature of the Earth:  it is there right before your eyes but only so slightly that we cannot see it.  Change -- the great delta -- will stay the same enigmatic force just beyond the perception of the living save perhaps the keen perspective of visionaries, historians, and hopeful social scientists.  Even in this advanced year of 2011, we all fight against the desire to lose our own versions hope.