How, and What, to Be?

I was going to write about the resiliance and frailty of Human Beings. But then I got off on another tangent. You know, thinking about the bane of our existence in 2023: Assholes.

Yes. Thinking about: What exactly is our job on the planet? You know, being a Human Being? How to be? How, and what, to do?

There are all those voices floating in the air, those folks who want to tell you the way of the world. There are  the Teachers, the Wise Ones, the Elders, the Church-types, Pastors, Preachers, Politicians, the Philosphers, the Life Coaches, Friends, Family, your chosen Icons, or maybe your personal Heroes, (although, I think in this day and age having heroes is a quite dicey proposition).

So many folks who want to tell you what's what.

It is not an easy thing. You have to decide what type of Human Being you want to be, and then, your job is to embody and actualize that. It's tricky. You only have one life, unless you believe in Reincarnation, and, I mean, well, wouldn't it be nice, another chance, but, really, who knows?!

But, anyway, you are here now, and it's all basically up to you. Your life is in your hands. You observe other Human Beings doing their thing, and you note that often much of Human activity is a fucking clusterfuck. Bad shite, bad actors, bad action. The Assholes amongst the Human Herd have been amplified and elevated. They dominate in Politics, Business, Pop Culture. They are thriving. It is the Apotheosis of Asshole-ness. Yikes. 

My humble word of advice: Don't Be an Asshole. Yep. That's it. A guidebook. One line. Simple. Clear. Don't be an asshole. That's all I got. But maybe it's everything. A way forward. A code to live by. Think about it. Go forth and multiply (or not), with a bit of grace, and a healthy dollop of humility. Really. That's pretty much it. The whole shebang right there.

Of Course, We Do LIve In a Hellscape. Have a Great Day...

After I wrote yesterday's post, (see previous post), I had two early morning conversations with close friends. One about the on-going, and accelerating, climate catastrophe, and the other about the terrible humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip. My thoughts about my own personal well-being quickly fizzled & faded away. It all felt a bit ridiculous, and unseemly to be talking about, and thinking about, how I was feeling.  I mean, you know, "so what?!"

That's the human dliemma right there. 

We are connected to everything. And, as per Jean Paul Satre, we are also responsible for everything that happens in the human realm. Repsonsible, and on the hook, for even the the things we don't have any control over. That seems like an impossible conundrum and a hard nut to crack.

Yes, indeed, it is. 

Bob Marley once sang: "So much trouble in the world."  Yes. Always. Much of it is our own doing. Humanity's Inhumanity to Humanity is legend. Nature is taking it's revenge for our careless, wasteful, damaging ways. And all life on the planet is under seige. And the powerful, well-armed humans are always beating, pummeling and massacring the weaker humans. So much of human history is the calculated "murder of the innocents." When it comes to war, the majority of the destruction and mayhem is wreaked upon those poor human beings who just happen to be "in the way."

It is a vision of hell. No doubt. How to navigate and deal with that on a day to day basis? Without losing all hope & optimism? How does a caring, thinking, & feeling being deal with the on-going, relentless tragedy in the world, without getting totally disheartened & crushed? 

Beats me. 

I mean, it seems impossible. I think of those "defense mechanisms" that Freud delineated. Sure, our task is to keep our heads in the game, lean to the light, and do the best we can. We need to be totally alive, aware, awake. But we live in a technicolor hellscape too. A globally-interconnected hellscape. How to digest and navigate it all? It's a dilemma, a conundrum, an impossible situation. It's the human thing, writ large. Heaven & Beauty sit side by side with Hell & a Deep in the Bone Mayhem & Ugliness. We tread the path between those extremes every damn day.

Carress the Day...

A matter of degrees: the difference between "feeling," jagged, ragged, faded & jaded, under seige, stressed, over-matched, and not into it, AND instead, happy, relaxed, mellow, clear-headed, well-rested, energized, in the moment, meeting the day with a smile.

My partner and I are lucky we missed the lastest round of Covid Roulette. Being sociable can be super-detrimental to one's health. We find ourselves pretty much Healthy & Happy. An agreeable circumstance. Pure dumb luck. The mysterious workings of luck, a certain kind of fate.

How to explain the good feeling of feeling good? I think it's simple chemistry. The Alchemy of Living. All the elements gathered together, working synergistically. Hard to know what all the "correct" elments are, sometimes small changes have major effects. We embody, and are examples of, the butterfly effect. 

Don't want to jinx it. And don't exactly know how it all happened. But pretty damn "sunny," this morning, even though there is no sun up in the sky, yet. The last week or so has been surprisingly refreshing and renewing. I say: Carress the day and damn the torpedoes!

Navigating the New...

I am playing "musical mansions."  Just checked out of one amazing abode, and checked into another one a couple blocks away. A neighborhood of prodigious weatlh and rolling estates. My life is sort of silly. Not very Shakespearian, much more Becktian. As in Samuel. Waiting for the next shoe to drop. So imagine you are a gypsy. No caravan, just a travel bag, a bicycle, a chromebook, the clothes on your back, extra socks, underwear, t-shirts, jeans, hats, hair-brush, toothbrush, tooth-paste, tea, phone & charger, knick-knacks: headphones, Walkman CD, coffee beans, bean-grinder, a novel by Murakami, two or three handfuls of CDs; albums by Neil Young, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Steely Dan, Daft Punk, My Bloody Valentine, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Nick Cave, the Grateful Dead, Warren Zevon, John Martyn.

A lot of shite to lug around. I think of all that baggage as just the bare necessities. My identity is emobodied in that ramshackle inventory of stuff.

So yes, a new mansion. New bed, new coffemaker (Mr. Coffee = one button on/off), a new furry critter and confidante.  Maybe all this new-ness is good for me? Must be aware of everything. These rooms, these stairs, these implements of creation and destruction. Every step counts. Make a routine, break a routine. I am thinking/hoping it keeps me sharp. Navigating the new. 

I am here for a week or so. Living like a priviledged gyspy. Living in surroundings way beyond my means. I am a floater. A temporary worker. A migrant. A marginal character dancing on the margins. I get paid for it all. Being the caretaker. So weird. Not totally disagreeable. Actually pretty agreeable. Not at home, trying to make my temporary surroundings as home-like as possible. Definitely a bit weird. Yes, sort of a silly way to make it. But make it I intend to do.

Space: Outer & Inner...

Up at an ungodly time. Unseasonably mild. Climate-catastrophe is fucking with the seasons. Still dead-dark. A brilliant, shiny-pale-white, very plump, full moon dangling overhead in a westerly sky.  A slight glimmer on the eastern horizon, a ghostly prelude to a coming sunrise which won't be breaking for at least an hour or so. Walking with a little furry critter, my pal. Everything, the lakefront, the rocks, the paths, the stones, the trees & grasses appear otherworldy.

Thinking about "space," not outer space (planets, stars, galaxies etc), but inner space. Suddenly a certain calm center has opened up in my being. A few days of holiday. A few days of decent, restful sleep. A few deeply healing meditations. A few excellent meals. Lots of great music on the box.

Worries, doubts, crazed-obsessive rabbit-hole-searching,  random thought-trains have all vanished. The woes of the world have fallen away. My fellow human beings and their craziness and madnesses no longer seem to have a hold me.

Floating in my own space. The center of my head. Good vibrations. Suddenly my inner landscape is expansive, and expanding. The chemistry is working. There is no excessive needing, wanting, grasping. It is surprising when everything clicks. Meeting the day on my own terms. Very, very copacetic.

I find myself singing a Neil Young lyric while walking in the dark with glimmers of light flashing around me: "I'm too far gone, too far gone, too far gone, to marry you." Singing Neil's song to myself, I realize that is a good sign. Alive in the moment, the always rolling out moment to moment. Self-possesed. On my own, in my own time, kind of seems oddly, uncommonly, perfect.

Olympic-Style Eating. Whew!

Food. 

In the Midwest we are known for Olympic-style eating. Maybe it's the cold weather? The days grow shorter, the temps go lower, we end up putting on multiple layers of clothes, and  the meals, hot, steaming meals start adding up. We begin to resemble those fat, furry, slow-moving squirrels in the backyard. Overstuffed. 

What has lately been on the menu? Pizza. I actually ate a whole 16" pizza (mushroom & onion) in one sitting. It was kind of like a snake eating a whole pig. Yikes. It was not my intention. I have been quite disciplined, eating less, moving more, but confronted with a beautifully contructed pizza I was helpless. As Oscar Wilde once remarked: "I can resist everything, except temptation."  Exactly. It was great, chowing down, a legendary performance. I was so hungry, voracious. It was like I had never eaten before in my life. Even I was shocked.

"Jimmy ate the whole pizza by himself!" 

Yep. And later I ate 4  little pieces of chocolate, they were wrapped up in a delicate little box, sitting inside like exotic, precious jewels. Memorable, delicious, decadent.

The next day we ate at one of our favorite Asian restuarants. A much more delicate performance. Miso soup, broccoli and brown rice, vegetarian sushi. Yes. That was more in line with my philosophy of eating light and super-healthy.

Yesterday, we plunged back into pasta-land. A beautifully-made vegetarian lasagna. I was on a short leash. My partner was monitoring my performance. Three servings max. We saved the leftovers for another day. Whew. As per William Blake:  “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.” Yikes! That is a tricky saying and a slippery slope. Maybe not the best way forward? Could lead to lots of misadventure and mischief.

This morning, back to a much more Spartan type approach to food. You know, maybe less is more? It's all a balancing act. Food is medicine, food is fuel. Food keeps us going. And variety is the spice of life. Right?! Whatever keeps us going, keeps us in the game. It is important to be light on our feet, always be moving. Patience. Discipline. Clear-headed.  Focused. We truly are what we eat. Eating smart, smartly. That's the way to do it.

Brilliant Works of Others...

We turn to "Art." 

If my partner and I have a tribe it is made up of Human Beings who "create." It is a large, sprawling, rough and tumble tribe; a wildly diverse collection of beings: inspirers all, Human Beings from all realms, all kinds, all classes. Beings who pour the best of themselves into the "good work."

Yesterday, we didn't do any creating ourselves, like hungry vampires, we fed on the brilliant works of others.

We had a bit of space, and we filled it with reading books: she is reading Prophet, and I am reading Norwegian Wood. There is something so healing and wonderful about plunging into other worlds and times. Cracks open the head, fills the heart, expands the soul.

We also listened to these extraordinary albums on the CD player:

"Kveikur" (2013) from Sigur Ros

"The Köln Concert"  (1976) from Keith Jarret

"Pastel Blues" (1965) from Nina Simone

"Tucaloosa" (released 2019, recorded 1973) from Neil Young & The Stray Gators

The music washed over us, healed us with it's amazing, soul-enriching, vibrations. Engages the head, the heart, the soul.

We also went to the movie theater to see an amazing film, "Poor Things." Vivid, beautiful, wild, funny, eye-opening, head-spinning, completely wonderful. Every frame of the film is suffused with a startling uncommon energy & intelligence. Thrilling and thought-provoking. Refreshing.

Yes. Hanging out with our tribe. It was a healing, a baptism, a renewal, and a total recharge.  It felt like a soulful welcome back to the core of our creative roots. A certain kind of creative homecoming. These Human Beings and their very inspiring works: "Our kind!" Works of art, art-making. The best of us. Humanity in the mode of creation and inspiration. The good work, writ large.

The Essential Tool-Kit...

Sigmund Freud. The Sugar Daddy of Psychology. Maybe not so favored anymore. Psychology has been swamped over by the scientific method &  Pharmacology.  You know, it's about all the Drugs, now, man. But I always thought Freud was a damn good storyteller, and super-on-target on what makes Human Beings tick. Maybe his method was more "art" than "science," but maybe "art" is a worthy frame, useful for basic understanding of the Human Condition?

After a day of spending lots of time  in close proximity with a variety of Human Beings, an up close and personal deep-lesson in both Normal and Abnormal Psychology, I think of Freud and his concept of Defense Mechanisms. Oh baby, this is the Motherlode of Human behaviour. The hidden key that unlocks the treasure of Humanity's flaws and features. At least, that's how it resonates with me.

These are like the Ten Commandments of Human Psychology and the defensive tactics for keeping oneself from going over the edge. Of course, they are all double-edged swords, taken to the extreme, they actually hasten one's plunge into the deep abyss of dysfunction and madness. They should be carved into tablets and carted down the mountain for all to gaze and wonder at. Be aware, and beware...

Projection, Denial, Repression, Rationalization, Displacement, Reaction Formation, Sublimation, Intellectualization, Compartmentalism.

All of these methods of survival were on display yesterday. Yes. Indeed. These 10 methods are pretty much the Swiss army knife of defenses in our basic & essential tool-kit. Yes. We are all so damn Freudian.

Sanctuary Days...

Gravitate to the poetic, to the beautiful, to the harmonic, to the graceful, to the wonder. 

My partner and I are always doing our best to lean to the light. We are into that idea of  "alive, aware, awake," but it also has it's downside. We are both very, very sensitve. Maybe too sensitive; we are overly-excitable, wildly-variable, easily-animated, we are often totally lit, and on fire. We are often rocking and reeling from the vibrations of everything that surrounds us. Maybe we are not unique, but we both feel pretty strongly that we are not exactly like other folks. We aren't putting on airs, we aren't pretending we have anyting over anyone else. This super-hyper-sensitivity actually seems like a flaw, a fly in the oinment of our personal makeup. We are often diffcult, gnarly, "needing special attention." 

We have built a home, and a life, all about finding sanctuary, finding shelter from the storms of the day to day. Those stacks of books on every shelf, those vinyl records, and those rows & rows of CDs in the kitchen and living room are little bricks of protection. We fill our hearts and heads with other worlds, other sounds, vibrations and ideas from writers, poets, playwrights, musicians and songwriters from around the world. They are the models, inspirers, creatives who open doors and windows to alternate ways of being, seeing and interpreting the world.

We are both long-time meditators. It's a way of grounding ourselves. Learning to retreat to the center of our heads, to find a place of calm and clarity, submerging deep down in our beings. It's an on-going process. It's a protective strategy, for sure.

We are both very private people. We project out into the world via our music and our band, but even this activity is a bit of a protective pose. We let our "art" speak for us. We bring folks together to bathe in the vibrations of the music. We actually try to disappear in the making of the work. It's just another way of sublimating our deep senstivity and trying to create something stronger, more resilient and hopefully, enlightening. When it all flies, it represents the best of us.

Anyway. We have a few days of breaking a routine. No appointments. We will do only what we want to do when we want to do it. Lots of time pointed inward. A postive, healing motion. Holidays. Holy Days. Sanctuary Days.

Questions. No Answers. Certain of Nothing...

I had a nice conversation yesterday with a dear and beloved confidante & friend who had read my last post (see previous post), and who thought I was a bit off-target. I listened, and learned. What did I learn? I am certain of nothing.

I was left with questions, many head-scratching questions. A blzzard of questions. It sent me reeling, but you know, it's sort of an agreeable state for me. Sometimes the best conversations are the ones that leave you with a million unanswerable questions. It really was that kind of conversation.

What questions? For instance: 

Maybe "the people" aren't really all that intelligent?  Maybe all this hope for the human herd is just naive?

Maybe human beings are basically selfish, greedy, small-minded, blinded by their ignorance? Maybe it is the rare, good find when someone emerges out of that realtiy with a bit of goodness and clarity on display, but for sure buddy, don't count on it?

Maybe stupidity and ignorance truly do run rampant thru the human herd? (For evidence of such a damning generality please refer to the long, crooked path of the History of Humanity).

Maybe common sense & the common good are overrated, and just fancy misunderstandings?

Maybe this idea of a "shared reality," is a chimera, a ghost, an illusion?

Maybe we are all stuck in our own heads, and what see & hear in the Universe all around us is really just projections of our own inner states?

Maybe life is just a hall of mirrors?

Maybe we really all have no fuckng clue?

Maybe questioning the fundamental nature of our existence is the first step to a certain intelligence, but it's also a gnarly road, a slippery slope, with no clear anwsers?

Maybe I should just get on with living and forget all this navel-gazing?

Maybe all this chatter about fixing the world, or saving the world, is just a way of flattering ourselves?

Yikes. What's a Humble Pilgrim to do? Back to base this morning. 

Sipping a great coffee brew, typing into the void. Leaning to the light. Thinking: Damn the Torpedoes, and Rock & Roll.  I mean fuck it. Let it  All Come Down, Baby. Live life to the fullest, and let the chips fall where they may. And those other folks, the ones who are unfathomable to me? Live and let live. Hope we out-number, out hustle, out-work and out-vote them.

I mean, sure, a change of conciousness can happen in an instant, like a lightening bolt out of the blue, but all you can really do is try to save yourself,  aspire to a life of alive, aware, awake, and hope others do the same. Amen Brothers & Sisters. Amen.

Hard Limits on the Human Highway...

Ha. A bit eye & head opening. Turns out human beings really are capable of anything, for the good, and for the bad. Humans easily reach the heights of glory, and the depths of depravity.

It is safe to say that human beings are pretty limited. Stuck in the middle of being human. Being human makes it hard for us to see our own flaws, but of course, we basically live those flaws out in the world and take them to term every damn day. 

If you put on glasses of clarity, do a bit of clear-seeing, it is so much easier to see the flaws of others, it is obvious that the hard limits of humanity are on technicolor display in every human realm. I guess it's a bit surprising just how badly much of humanity performs. There are the limits of reason, the limits of sanity, the limits of clear thinking, the limits of love, and good intention, etc. Yes. Hard limits.

Lately the stupidity, the bad-faith arguments, the clearly flawed thinking, the selfishness, the greed, the paranoia, the weird-everything-is-a conspiracy madness, the hate, the outlandish lies, both big and small, are flooding thru the human highway. It doesn't take a brainiac to see the willful and woeful swamp of idiocy, that humans love to wallow in. Strikingly weird.

One extreme example: There is a guy out on the hustings, talking like Hitler, and Americans are rushing to support & defend him. Oh yeah, and it just so happens to be the same guy who wanted to use violence to keep his job.  A job he was ceremoniously booted from, after a sizable majority of Americans freely and fairly decided he was done. In the ensuing months and years; temper tantrums, outlandish lies, whiny and blubbering double-speak, threats of revenge, retribution and violence. What the fuck, people, how do we tolerate such complete shite? We must do better.

It's pretty weird, and strange, and tiring. One hopes for a bit of clarity, humility, common sense. A grounding. We are those complicated, contradictory, tricky monkeys, but you know we just aren't as clever and together, as we pretend to be.

Cling to No Thing...

As a long-time meditator I find this Sean Illing conversation about "Mindfulness," super-important, and in the moment relevant. As it has been said, "The life you save may be your own." Yes. Indeed.

Sure. I have meditated for many years, it doesn't make me an expert. I swim towards mindfulness, but I don't always get there. Or, you know, even mindfulness just descends upon us, and evaporates from us too, in an instant. Just like pretty much everything else, it's a process, a practice, an intention to be aware, alive, awake. This idea of "falling awake!"

"Actually, it’s the one human activity that you engage in for no purpose. Not for some kind of contrived goal that you want to attain and then you’ll be happy or whatever. This is a practice for falling awake, so that you actually are living the life that’s yours to live in the only moment that you ever have to live it, which we don’t usually realize is this one now."

AND

"The Buddha is famous for having said his 45 years of teaching could be encapsulated in one sentence. And I like to say to people, “Well, on the off chance that that’s true, maybe we should memorize the sentence.” Here it is: “Nothing is to be clung to.” The operative verb being clinging, self-identifying, as I, me, and mine." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Right. Cling to nothing. Cling to no thing. Absolutely no clinging.

Easy, right?! 

Sure, as I cling to my self, this coffee cup, that acoustic guitar, these daily routines, those beautiful people, these sunny thoughts, those crazy dreams and plans, these deep-seated worries too. 

My own personal earth-shaking epiphany that happened to envelope me during one deep meditation? A plain morning, a powerful, all-consuming, hard to convey, insight and feeling: Connected to all. Intimately, mysteriously, connected to everything in the Universe. Heady. Profound. Glimmering. Shimmering. Glancing. Ephemeral.

Sure. That  was a life-changing meditation. It wasn't an intellectual idea, or a fleeting feeling, it was a profound, indelible experience. It has animated me ever since. Connected to everything. Truly a beautiful reality.

Yes. Mindfulness. The way of the Buddha: a practice, a process, a path.

Floating on the Ground...

On the other hand (see previous post), maybe we can just float? Sure there are folks with more, folks with less, folks with everything, folks with nothing, "Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night." - Wm. Blake. We just have to deal with the deal we have been dealt. No sense worrying about how others are making it, or not making it. I mean, sure, have empathy for the humans. Support the idea that we are in this together, and support efforts, governmental and otherwise, to help those in need. Our task is to make it the best we can. So, yes, floating, not clinging. Float, but also keep your feet on the ground. Ok. I know. That's a bit contradictory. So be it.

Horrorshow on Public Trans...

Yes. Our adventures on Chicago Public Trans continues. We have long used the rails, and the buses too. It's a great way to navigate the City. No doubt. We are long-haulers. Don't own a car. So public trans is pretty essential.

But something drastically bad has happened. I think it might be a post-Covid phenomena. As my friend put it: "The people have fallen off." Yes. It's true. We had another werid, torturous experience on the train, it's now a frequent, pretty much every time kind of thing. Sort of excruciating.

Witnessing the unraveling of Human Beings: there is pain and sorrow in the watching, but also a visceral horror too. Folks who have fallen so far from making it. This time a very edgy, gnarly man started into a crazy monologue, something about being a "85% to 95% Virgin."  Wow. I guess it's hard to be precise in the measuring? I didn't know it was a variable state. He also wanted everyone on the train-car to know that he didn't "rape anyone," especially no one "underage." A long rambling loop, a torrent of words, a very sick, deranged performance. It sounded like a torturous confession in reverse.

A broken brain. A damaged soul. A human being totally unwound, seemingly capable of pretty much anything. There was a palpable sense of danger, like bolts of electricity zinging and zapping in the air of the car. A fleeting shattering thought floated thru our heads: "Hope he isn't armed." We all  are very aware that tragedy is often just being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.  This all felt very, very wrong. The words of his rant poured out in an agressive, panicky, persistent, whiny and threatening voice, a voice of anger and pain. This man delivered it all right in front of us. An intimate private horrorshow. We did our best to not react. We exchanged glances, felt like we could read each other's minds, we told ourselves: "Be still, let's hope the storm passes."  At a stop we jumped up, fled that car, and re-entered another car down the line.

Funny. On that car a long, thin, deranged & dark figure was pacing up down the aisle. Everyone was doing their best not to see him. A specter, a ghost, a druggie burn-out, not so much a human being as a stick-figure zombie, who knows, maybe it was meth, or crack, or some other terrible substance that was animating this  hollow husk of a person? He too was rambling, chattering, making not quite human sounds. Sad, pathetic, a bit scary. We held on tight to the straps hanging overhead and counted down the stops until we could leave this rolling hellscape of human wreckage behind. Yikes.

Yes. "The people have fallen off." Seemingly untold numbers of them. It's truly a thing. Sad, but true. You know in America we don't talk about class very often. We live with this illusion that we can float across any class, but it's probably not true. Class is just a reality, the aquarium we all swim in. Some of us are born into it, locked in deep; some in luxury, some in plenty, and too much, some in barely enough, too little, just getting by, some in ugly squalor, so little, a life of scraping and lacking, and then some of us are just beyond it all, in total free-fall. There are the haves, the have nots, and the seriously lost and deeply warped & broken ones. Seems they all converge on public trans.  Eye-opening, and sadly horrifying too.

The Power and Glory of Yes, and No...

Another day of walking in my own shoes. 

You know, one's personal experience is just so damn personal, so much our own. We are born in a particular time and place. What is alive and real in our hearts and heads seems so deeply us. Unlike anyone else. As Tom Petty once sang, "No one knows what it's like... to be me." Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical or self-centered, and maybe it is, but you know, it's also true. We are all on our own singular roads, experiencing life in our own way. We made an entrance somewhere along the way, and will make an exit all on our own time and terms. You know the terms dictated by our particular genetic heritage, by luck, pluck, & the unfathomable, madly-varying, hurly-burly and circumstance of living a life. Sure there are resonances with others, we are uniquely us, but we are also not so unique, just very human beings, so very similiar to everyone else. It's a weird conundrum. We are truly, madly, deeply uniquely us, but we are not so uniquely us that we don't truly, madly, deeply and uniquely resemble pretty much every other human being on the planet. 

Alive, aware, awake. I find myself pinballing from two modes, one, the affirmative way, and the other, the negative way, the first learned from Improv: "Yes, and..." and the second learned from the hard lessons of too much "Yessing." That would be the bodly negative: "No. No fucking way. Not gonna do it." You have to choose wisely dear Pilgrim. Yes and No. They both have their rewards and downsides. Those anwsers can be tremendously liberating, but also quite enslaving. One person's fun-time, can be your hell-time. One person's super-food, can be your kryptonite. You must always remember who's shoes you are walking in. No one else can get in them with you. You have to do the walking on your own, even if you are walking hand in hand with another human being,  two beings, being human. Together and Alone. Always.

Mighty Frauds = Rude Awakening...

There is a decidedly American type. The Confidence Man. The Clown. The Flim-Flam Man. The Fraud. The Scoundrel. The Glad-Handing-Bible-Thumper. Or the Flag-Waving-Constitution-Cllinging-Dick-Wagging-Wanna-Be-Authoritarian. 

There are two super-sized examples of this type that have dominated a certain segment of our gutter politics and who have saturated our media landscape with their toxic nonsense, famous New Yorkers: Trump, (Rick Wilson's "Everything that Trump Touches Dies!"), and Guiliani (Hand in his pants, black dye streaming down his face, swaggering-drunken-Mussolini Wanna Be).

Media Creations. False Idols. Fake Tough Guys. They both rose so high, well beyond their sell-dates. And lately they have been in a slow-motion, perpetual free fall. Satisfyingly, I predict we will finally see both of these bilious dirigbles, implode, no explode, in dramatically, technicolor fashion.

Rudy was just saddled with a $148 million Defamation Judgment. Easy to say: Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. Let's celebrate for a moment. Turns out spreading idiotic lies, trying to hustle a country out of a free and fair election, has fucking consequences. Yes. Sometimes gravity does exist. Common sense, common decency, can come to the fore. Truth rules. The fraud is exposed, weighty consequences can come down like a ton of bricks. 

My easy, off the cuff response? Yay!

"Chickens coming home to roost."  Ha, ha, ha. Let it come down.  I expect more, most excellent fireworks in the next few months. You do not want to be either one of those oh so rudely-trumpy, toxic clowns. Mighty Frauds coming to Rude Awakenings. Karma, Baby!

A Self Contained Cool...

The people. Talk to the people and you quickly discover many of them are just total downers. You know, it is sort of understandable, the news is generally not good. Lots of major stories with harrowing details, bad outcomes, tragic consequences. 

Also, anyone paying attention can plainly see and hear that we all are daily being pummeled, and inundated, with total shite. The bad actors, yes, the evil-doers are busy doing evil, filling our heads with disinformation, lies, innuendo, and crazy-ass conspiracy theories. It is so easy to succumb to fear, doubt, worry, cynicism. Almost makes one want to just throw up your hands and beg for mercy.

What's a humble pilgrim to do? 

I say, be recalcitrant, be contrary, show a little gumption and discipline, take the postive, optimistic path. You can just resist engaging with those thorny, hard to fathom, basically unanswerable questions. I say, just take a pass. Deflect and deflate at all times. 

You can fall back on sentences like: Well, no one  really knows. We shall see. Maybe it's not as bad as it looks. The future is unwritten. 

Bad vibes? Worries about the present and future? 

I say, fuck it, keep your head. Point out that there are plenty of people trying to do their best. Folks doing the good work in the face of darkness & adversity. Folks keeping calm and carrying on. I mean, match that picture of fatalistic bleakness with an exuberant Hope, Joy, Humor, and a certain self-contained cool. Be aware it might not go over well. The doom-sayers really want to wallow in their pools of doom. But you know, you don't have to join them. Damn the torpedoes.

Changing My Life, Again!

I have lately turned to oatmeal. My thinking: if it was good enough for Secretariat, it is good enough for me. Just like that, I given up my love affair with bagels and English muffins, which I was totally mad about for a time, and I have completely truly, madly, deeply, embraced oatmeal.

I know. Sounds silly.

Yes. I can say that now it is oatmeal that has changed my life. It's funny, discovering things that change my life happens quite often. I mean it happens so often, it is a running joke around here. Turns out this old dog can learn new tricks. I am often trying new things on for size. So, yeah, modifiying my morning routine with a bowl of oatmeal is a new thing. To me it seems sort of earth-shaking, an amazing discovery. Oatmeal. Easy to make, easy to eat. Good for you. You know, nothing fancy. Basic. Simple. Plain. Changing my life one bowl, one spoonful, at a time! 

Hit Bottom, Now Renewed...

Unexpectantly hit bottom yesterday. Bad karma? Strange Juju? Sometimes you just don't have your MOJO working. Yes. I had little bit of a spin-out. Maybe the wrong chemistry? My body was sending me a message. "Get back to base." I carried on anyway, making all my appointed rounds, putting on the mask of "everything is totally fine."

It really wasn't, but, you know,  what's a humble pilgrim to do? "Fake it to make it." So, I did.  

What remedies, notions and potions did I reach for? Black tea. Steaming mugs of warm soothing water. A sweet potato. A chocolate bar. A delicious oatmilk hot chocolate. Miso soup! These were rare, uncommon, almost magical substances.

The day was cold, but very, very clear. Pure, righteous clarity. Funny I hit upon a state of exuberance mid-day. Maybe hitting bottom is necessary? Maybe it is the first step to a cleansing and a re-boot? Who knows? 

This morning I am sipping cups of coffee with oatmilk, alternating with steaming cups of black tea. Listening to music. Two fabulous records, Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," (1959), one of my all-time favorite albums, any genre, and my recently discovered Neil Young album, "Songs for Judy," (2018) raw, thrilling acoustic gems from Neil's 1976 tour. Do I think listening to great music is important? Soul-enriching? Heart-expanding? Consciousness-raising? And healing? Yes. Indeed. I do. You know, it's the vibes, man, washing over, and into, the core of your being. Essential, excellent, otherworldly medicine.

Yes. The tea is essential too, the coffee too, the oatmilk, and yes for sure the music. Art, good art enriches us all. This morning a certain strange euphoria has grabbed me by the t-shirt. Right now I am typing into the void, in the very early hours of a another new day. It is still dead-dark out there, the sun won't make an appearance for a few hours. Still, feeling totally renewed. Yes. Indeed. Sort of funny how it all works out one way or another. A bit of a strange, and you know, wonderful mystery. 

The Lies of a Coward...

This post from Rick Wilson is just so good and eye-opening. Of course, it's so obvious, it has been staring us in the face all these many years. We have lived under a tsunami of lies.  Big lies, little lies, ridiculous, head-spinning lies. We have been swamped, overwhelmed with a whirling dynamo of lying. It is the unending, black-hole pit of Endless Lying = The Lies of a Complete Coward. Trump's constant, over the top, relentless lying isn't a sign of strength, it is not a super-power, it is pure unmitigaged cowardice. Cowardice on steriods. He is a man truly, madly, deeply afraid of the truth.

"He lies because he’s afraid of the truth. The truth of his smallness. The truth that he was never a real billionaire. The truth that his ongoing criminal enterprise disguised as a real estate development firm is one concatenating series of scams, grifts, tax frauds, flim-flams, foreign influence schemes, and long cons.

He’s afraid of you knowing the truth of his intellectual shortcomings. (He can barely read.) The truth about his weight and his health. (275 on the low end.) The truth about his vulgar taste. The truth of his accidental victory in 2016. The truth of his weirdness, his unsexy history of paying for sex, his shit-tier parenting, and how many times he’s failed in business and life.

Autocratic bullies and braggarts need an unending string of victories, a potent and positive image protected by a bodyguard of lies and deceptions. Why? Because they’re deeply, profoundly afraid of the people they rule." - Rick Wilson

Simplicity, Honesty, Clarity...

Simplicity. Honesty. Clarity. You know, simplify your thoughts & actions, and be honest with yourself and others. Thinking & doing what you say you will do, without hesitation. Clarity. Clear thinking, clear seeing, clear doing. Maybe it takes a bit of concentrated discipline? I think it is worth it. We found ourselves out in the cold last night doing a simple task, backing up our words with deliberate action. Yes, it was just a minor schlep, but a good & necessary thing. No sense in worrying or arguing about it. There was a clarity in the darkness, a clarity in the doing. There is something enriching to the soul; doing an honest task to the best of your ability. A small thing. A simple thing. Everything.

Playing Forward to Go Back...

Songwriting session. 

Sometimes you are just trying to catch the butterfly.  You want to catch it, but you don't want to harm it, or squelch it, or hold onto it too tight. You need to be gentle, you need to be relaxed, you need to not be trying too hard, trying not to chase. I find it's best if I accidentally stumble into a song.  I try to short-circuit my conscious mind, and tap into the vast unconscious stream. It works best for me if songs come as an accident, a gift , a surprise. Yesterday my partner had all the lyrics, I had a few riffs and chord sequences up my sleeve, that I have been playing with over the last few weeks. We sat on a comfy leather couch in our rehearsal room, totally unplugged. My acoustic guitar, my partner with a classic bodhran. We tried out various approaches. I did some finger-picking, alternate picking, hybrid picking, vigorous strumming, played with different tempos, weird time-changes. We ran thru a few parts trying to marry words and chords naturally, organically. It's all vibe and feel. When we felt we had come close to the heart of it, we turned on our little digital recorder. Best to capture the moment, turns out the best parts are always so fleeting and ephemeral. The defining character of a song is often found in the pauses, the silences, in a particular up-stroke, down-stroke, or oddly-weird strum. My partner's voice floated in the air; ethereal, gentle, wonderful. We worked, meaning we played, for nearly two hours. Time evaporated. We were in the moment, the expanding moment. We walked out with a 5 minute recording. Pretty sure it is the song. The song that really wanted to materialize before our eyes and ears. It was exciting, grafiying. It's always a surprise too. The song seems old, so, so old world, ancient; another time and place. That has been where we have been going with our songs. The lyrics point to the mystery, the beauty, the grandeur of our natural world. Yes. And the mururation of starlings.  All sadly vanishing and imperiled by the careless, life-nullifying ways of Human Beings. How tragic, that it is human beings who emerged directly from nature, who rely on the interconnected web of life to survive, are now destroying it all at an accellerating rate.  Anyway, heady stuff for a song, hopefully delivered in the most poetic and exciting way we can conjure up. We are playing forward to go back to another time and place. To my ears it all sounds very Druidic and Celtic, a sort of a Celtic blues alive in a Pagan world, the  woruld ruled by The White Goddess. Handmade, homemade. Other.

The Ideal Picture Comes into Focus...

Making it, faking it. Faking it to make it. 

Sometimes you feel like you are falling apart. You know, you are tired, and a bit brittle, and you seem sort of shaky. You are doing your best to hold it all together. You put on a "false front," in order to face the day. It's sort of like putting on the right sweater, the right pair of boots, the right hat for the elements. You are living up to a certain ideal that you have in your head, a picture of being happy, healthy, easy-going and free. That is the image you want to project into the world. So yeah, that's the mode. And you know what? As you go thru the motions of the day, that ideal picture comes into deep focus and sort of becomes true. That feeling of falling apart vanishes. You realize you are happy, healthy, easy-going and free. You make it. In the evening, you and your partner watch a fabulous, hilarious, super-intelligent, beautifully-filmed movie, "The Favorite," (2018) with a perfect cast of characters, actors performing at the height of their powers, and the best performances are from these incredible women. And it just works it's magic upon you both. And then, you put your headphones on to listen to a great album, "Gaucho" (1980) by Steely Dan, and when that finishes you put your head on the pillow and sleep like a baby. All your dreams are good. You make your connections, you excell at every task. Everything works out. Amazing. You wake up alive, refreshed. That's the power of living, the power of art, the power of paying attention. Yep. That's how to do it.

Treasures in the Used CD Racks...

I had a few extra bucks burning a hole in the pocket of my Levis. I stopped into one of my favorite local record stores. They have used CD section, pristine copies of new and old CDs for $5. It's always a kick to rummage thru the racks and see if I can find a treasure.

Yesterday, I scored 3 treasures. 

Neil Young's "Songs For Judy," solo acoustic songs recorded on a cheap cassette player in 1976. Raw. Beautiful. Thrilling. Neil was supposedly often fortified with Tequila and Coke at these concerts. Just fantastic singing and playing with an edge with some rare songs never offically recorded and released. There are couple really funny monologues. The ghost of Judy Garland speaks to Neil.

Also nabbed a pristine copy of The Pogues, "Rum, Sodomy the Lash." (1985) Shane Macgowan and the boys at their finest. Rambling, shambling. Funny. Poetic. Produced by Elvis Costello. Fabulous. Essential. 

And Stereolab's "Margerine Eclipse," (2004) - kicky fun. A feast for the ears. A great trip with a good pair of headphones. The band said it was recorded as "dual mono." What does that mean?

"Margerine Eclipse was mixed with full stereo separation – or as Stereolab termed it, in "dual mono".[21] For every song, the band made two recordings – each with a different arrangement – then created a final mix by synchronising both recordings together, with one on the left channel and the other on the right channel."

The results are pretty amazing.

Cheap entertainment. Plus soulful, thrilling and inspiring music. Love.

Ridiculous and Frankly Dangerous...

A close friend turned me on to this story: American Evangelicals and Political Extremism. One of the weirdest, most confounding, strange, ridiculous and frankly dangerous of political phenomenas.

When I think "trump," I think: idiot, liar, conman, rapist, creep, authoritarian, racist. Bad. 

When white, American, christian-nationlist, Evangelicals think "trump," they think: idiot, liar, conman, rapist, creep, authoritarian, racist, jesus, moses, david. Good.

Hard to get your head around, for sure. I suppose we can try explain it to ourselves by pointing out that those white, christian-nationalist, evangelicals seem to hate the same people that trump hates. trump seems to hate anyone who doesn't kiss his ass. And it turns out that many, many people just love to kiss trump's ass; senators, house representatives, and of course, the MAGA hordes.

So, yes, strange bedfellows, bonded by hatred.

Scary. Creepy. Irrational. A little insane. That is a toxic combination. Super-dangerous too for our delicate and precious Democracy.

We Shall See...

Good Lord. Yesterday a nasty subject came up in our household. What subject? The Future. My good friend put me on the thought-train of the future, our future, my future.

I realized this was not a subject I usually entertain. Mainly because I don't find it entertaining. I never think about the future. Or, I mean, I never or, rarely, think about my future. I spend nearly every moment of every day living, thinking, breathing in the ever-expanding present moment. I just have very little room inside my own head for a imagined, or projected future. Plus, I think most of the talk of the future is really just projecting the present forward, projecting our hopes, fears, little madnesses onto a imagined, fabricated picture. Like I said, not really enteraining, or enlightening.

Is this dismissive attitude towards the future a good way to live? Beats me. It's just so me. It is my practiced tendency to put on a complete, all consuming profile of being ZEN. I don't always get there, but it is one of my go-to modes. So, I pretty much stepped out of the conversation instantaneously when I realized we were onto the future. I just didn't want to go there.

Ask me one of those ridiculous questions folks like to ask when you are interviewing for a job: "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" My answer (not the silly b.s. I would come up with in an interview): "I don't. Really. I don't see myself in 5 years. Maybe I make it, maybe I don't. Whatever."

Yeah. Never said that in an interview, but it was what was floating in my head, left unsaid. I think of that Joe Strummer line: "The Future is Unwritten." That's more like it. That seems like a window, a doorway, a crack in the fabric of the Universe. Yep. "Wonder what's gonna happen next?" We shall see...

Republicans: The Party of Liars, Cowards & Hypocrites...

I have to say it is quite surprisng & strangely gratifying, to see, and hear, that Dick (Darth Vader) Cheney's daughter has become the most powerful, insistent, pull-no-punches voice on the right; the great conservative, in-the-moment-truth-teller opining about our precarious & very dicey, political environment. 

Of course, Liz Cheney was the leading voice on the January 6 Committee, she lost her Congressional seat in Wyoming because of her bold truth-telling, and she has eloquently made the case that our Democracy is in grave peril. She was courageous enough to tell the truth, even if it meant that she would lose her position of power and influence. That is extraordinary in this day and age of unbridled groveling & desperate clinging to power at all costs.

LIZ CHENEY: "I think that the Republican Party as it exists today is dangerous to the country. And I think the most important thing to do now, without question, is to make sure we stop Donald Trump. What American politics looks like after that, what the Republican Party or a new Republican Party or a new conservative party looks like after that remains to be seen."

All of this totally rings so obviously true.  "Liars, Cowards and Hypocrites." That is the Republican Brand in the age of MAGA.

LELA FADEL of NPR sums up Cheney's new book: "... she does not hold back in this book. And she said she wants Americans to know everything that happened in Congress and in her party that led to what she calls a terrorist attack on the Capitol. And she names names - describing former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as a hypocrite, a coward and a liar who told her Trump acknowledged that he knew he lost the election, only to then repeat Trump's lie on television. She depicts the current speaker, Mike Johnson, as a dangerous anti-constitutionalist And she says she wants people to know every detail of what happened in her party and in Congress and how many of her former colleagues, she says, betrayed their oath."

Yes. Indeed. It is so refreshing to hear the truth injected plainly & forcefully into the political discourse. And to hear it from a long-time Republican insider is so very necessary. 

Living in the Poetry of Life...

Living in a world of signs and wonders. Living in a world of poetry, of symbol, of metaphor; a world of magic where everything points to, and resembles, something else. It's a trick of the mind; a certain approach, a certain attitude, a certain method for perceiving everything we call the world. Yes, swimming in the poetry, navigating a world of mystery & wonder, interpreting the signs, the symbols, tuning in & resonating moment to moment. 

Lost in Sub Bass...

It is funny. The more you listen, the more you hear. It's not just an experience, it may also be a philosophy and a way forward. You can take that simple lesson and apply it across the spectrum of living and being. The more attention to detail, the more detailed the listening, the more detailed the living, the more detailed your life experience becomes. It's a double-edged sword.

Living a life filled with rich detail; a very good I thing, indeed. 

Of course, it can get a bit extreme & obessive. It is easy to get swamped and lost in the midst of an ever-expanding Universe of details. We have been submerged in soundwaves and in listening to musical tracks for a long, sustained time, months & months over the last year. There is a purpose: create a beautiful, amazing, rich and powerful work of art. I mean, at least that is the goal.

We have been working with two mixing engineers, which has complicated things. Two different styles. It's all an art, with a little bit of science mixed in too. We are working on making these two approaches work seamlessly on a cohesive album. 

Details, details, details.

Lately we have been grappling with sub bass. What originally sounded like a fabulous hefty bass sound, anchoring one of what we were hearing as a standout track, turns out to be an unwiedly, messy, & annoying sonic wave that sort of dominates and kills the song.

It took many listens on many different devices, in many different listening rooms, to pin this down. We sat with the engineer and adjusted the sub bass. Suddenly the track opened up and sounded better than ever. A small change can have major efffects.  Yes, getting lost in sub bass. That was a new experience. Close listening: the more you listen, the more you hear. And small changes can have major ramifications. 

It's a process, a journey, a singular road towards some kind of nebulous ideal. We are getting there. So close. Maybe. Lost in a sea of details. A well-tempered Life.

You Do Not Want to Go Down that Road...

We bumped up against one of those doom-sayers yesterday. Someone who is stuck on the bleak-side of things. A pro. An accomplished, and quite successful, Human.  A person who knows his shite, but who has descended into the hell of his own mind;  a hall of mirrors of unhappiness, a man seemingly out of time. Maybe his accomplishments have sort imprisoned him in a reality that no longer exists? Maybe it happens to many? Seems that as the decades unfurl, the accumulation of experiences can sort of handcuff and blind you to the reality of the present?

It seems the years can make some folks bitter, fearful, super-aware that they are out of step, lost in the past. 

Hard to say, hard to see. We were locked in a room with this guy, and he flailed and railed. We were there for a very specific task. We just needed to get a few things done. We walked in trying to cultivate an attitude of graceful neutrality. Tempers flared, it all got a bit heated. 

Funny. My attitude of Zen easily melted in the face of a smouldering-hostility. I pushed back pretty hard. There was a blistering, buzzy, tension in the air. My partner and were sitting side by side, she texted me: "Don't have a heart attach."  It was an iPhone autocorrect miscue, she meant, "attack," but you know, from now on this will be known as the "Heart Attach Session." There was a moment where it seemed it could all blow up and get really nasty. 

Tick, tick, tick.

The moment of fury passed. Cooler heads prevailed. And then we got down to the task at hand. We did accomplish what we wanted to accomplish. After a couple hours we walked out thinking: "what a so very unhappy Human Being." 

What was that all about? I chalk it up to ego, grievance, a certain arrogance, and fear. Yes. Fear of change, fear of the moment, fear that life is rolling on, fear of losing control. And that fear feeds a bitter disappointment, and a wide-ranging hostility to the present.

Hell, that was instructive. It is much easier to see the flaws in someone else. Much harder to look into your own soul. It was an awesome demonstration of a deeply unsatisfied mind. You do not want to go down that road. 

Instead: Alive. Aware. Awake. Open headed, open hearted, eyes wide open too. Be here now. Meeting the moment to moment. The better way forward. Onto the next thing. Yes.

A Thorny Conundrum...

Objective vs Subjective: "The basic difference between objective and subjective information is that objective information is based on facts, while subjective information, or a subjective perspective, is based on opinion, emotion, or feelings." 

A thorny conundrum. 

Of course Human Beings are subjective instruments, navigating an objective Universe. Human Beings are also objects in that Universe. Much of our pain & suffering, and misunderstanding seems to come from the clash of objective vs. subjective.

It's up to us to see, hear, feel; to discover facts, and to interpret those facts as best we can. As William Blake once wrote: "We are prisoners of our senses five." Math & Physics are awesome tools that appear to be really good at interpreting and predicting how the Universe acts.

But maybe it is poetry, theater, music, that gets us closer to a heartfelt, real understanding of the what hell is going on in the Universe and the ordinary life of a Human Being?

Human Beings are not very good at being totally objective, we are flawed; tricky, complicated.  We are stuck in the Human. A very subjective thing, indeed. A thorny conundrum. Yes.

Heady topic. Kind of a philosophical riddle. One wonders if the whole objective/subjective thing is just another misunderstanding, a misapprehension and mis-perception of the Universe. Maybe our Human Brains and things we conjure up are just off-target? Who knows?!

How did I get on this thought-train? Ha. I am thinking of buying another pair of headphones. On the hunt for the perfect sound. It probably doesn't exist. Another shimmering chimera dancing just out of reach. Another mystery that can only be solved by my own very subjective experience. I have been studying charts, soundwaves, frequency reponses. Comparing specificaitons. 

Still, in my heart of hearts, I know that it's all a crap-shoot. How will these headphones fit, feel & sound to me? My head, my ears, my body. How do those vibrations get intrepreted by my very human instrument? Super-subjetive. No doubt. Funny. Thorny.